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How FaceTime Calls With Mom Became a TV Hit
What started as a way for the filmmaker Josh Seftel and his mother, Pat, to stay in touch has become a popular feature on “CBS Sunday Morning.”
At 87, Pat Seftel has a thought to share about almost everything.
On Tinder: “If you want to meet somebody for a real relationship, that’s not the way to do it.”
On artificial intelligence: “It could get out of control.”
On climate change: “This is destroying our planet.”
For more than 10 years, Ms. Seftel has shared those opinions, and others, on “CBS Sunday Morning,” appearing in semiregular segments that have become popular with viewers, who look forward to her life advice and seasoned perspective on the modern world.
In the segments, Ms. Seftel usually appears from her home in Sarasota, Fla., in conversation via FaceTime with her son, Josh Seftel, a documentary film director who lives in Brooklyn. The two catch up briefly, and then he poses a question, such as how she felt about quarantine, which he asked during the height of the pandemic.
“After I talk to my family, I hang up, and I’m all alone,” she said in the segment from May 31, 2020. “It’s very hard.”
The prompts, Mr. Seftel said in a recent interview, are usually about current events or their own lives, but he never tells his mother what he will ask ahead of time.
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