tonight on "nightline," heart attack grill. thereatliner fries. the quadruple bypass burger. this restaurant boasts its food could kill you. can you really eat yourself to death? the npr tapes. another scandal at the publicly funded network. an executive caught on tape. what really happened? who is the man who may cost them their federal funding? and why worry? worrying and other behaviors that might surprise you might be

the key to a really long life. so can we forget about the treadmill? good evening, i'm terry moran. simple rule of modern eating. fatty foods in huge portions are bad for you. you're about to enter a dietary twilight zone. the name of the restaurant? the heart attack grill. they bring a sort of comedy to serving up recipes that have been favorites for generations. beyond the comedy are come very real health concerns. >> reporter: in a country where calis are posted on the menu, and the white house has a vegetable garden, sometimes the

reality looks more like this. this monument to greasy gluttonny is called the heart attack grill. it's located in chandler, arizona, a suburb of phoenix. >> we have full sugar mexican coke. >> reporter: every customer must wear a hospital gown. they're waited on by scantily clad nurses. the single, double, triple, or quadruple bypass burger. and they do have fries. called flatliner fries. fried in lard. and those are unlimited. to wash it all down, how about a butter fat shake? the restaurant has become a bit of a national sensation. >> i'm up another few inches. who needs these pants. >> reporter: in no small part,

thanks to this very big man. he's featured in some tongue in cheek commercials. we met blair in january. he said one of the perks of the job is eating free. anyone over 350 pounds doesn't have to pay. >> i'm big. you know what i mean? and so, why not? i don't eat here every day. why not have fun with it. >> reporter: sadly, we now know how long that was? blair died last week at the age of 29. his family says the cause of death was pneumonia. the cdc says every year, 112,000 deaths with be linked to obesity. when your spokesperson drops dead at the age of 29 and he's morbidly obese, don't you have a problem? >> absolutely.

who wouldn't? >> reporter: john basso owns the heart attack grill. he draszs dresses up like a doctor. >> every one of us cared about blair. >> reporter: there's an argument to be made that you used this guy in his life. now you're morbidly using his death to promote your restaurant. >> i agree. his death has gotten the message out further. >> reporter: his death has not given you pause? >> zero pause. >> reporter: he has a most unusual justification. that america needs shock therapy to cure its obesity epidemic. he says he tried other ways. he once owned jenny craig

studios and several personal training studios. >> i'm saying loudly and as clearly as in business in america can, this is dangerous. >> oh, he's using it as a marketing tool. the word that leaps to mind is hypocrisy. >> reporter: you won't be surprised to hear real nutritionists take issue. >> i think there are ethical issues in what he's doing. if he believed that diet had nothing to do with health, at least you could think, he's misinformed. he knows what he's doing. he's deliberately trying to get people to eat more than they need. >> reporter: blair, you say, was also your friend in addition to working with you. >> i loved working with him. >> reporter: do you have a conscience at all? >> it's simply this. what would blair hovering abf me want me to do. he would say, put back on the

stethoscope. let's keep being the doctor that everyone loves to hate because that gets the message out. >> reporter: a week after blair's untimely death, the heart attack grill has another spokes model. >> here you go. >> bernie hart. yes, that's his real last anytime. he is chowing down on a quadruple bypass. >> my cardiologist and my wife tell me not to come. after surviving a coma and multiple heart surgeries, i still come. i enjoy the burgers. >> reporter: he was the spokes person before blair but had to take a few months off because of open heart surgery. ♪ that's the taste worth dying for ♪ >> reporter: now blair is dead and bernie is back. what share of the responsibility

do you have for his death? >> the equal share with anybody who provided junk food for an adult. >> reporter: aren't you gl glorifying obesity? >> we're past the point of no return at the heart attack grill. we have blood on our hands at this point. >> reporter: he's opening a second restaurant if dallas this summer. to spread his morbid message to an even bigger audience. i'm ryan o wens for "nightline." >> i'm flabbergasted. up next, we're going to turn to npr. we go inside the hidden camera scandal today that led to the resignation of the chief executive.

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now to national public radio. someone called them the charlie sheen of broadcasting today. they've had a rough time of it recently. first, the mishand med firing last fall of juan william. thn today, all hell broke loose. critics accuse them of a liberal bias and argue they shouldn't receive a dime of taxpayer money. here's how it unfolded. a sting, a ruse, a trick played on a top npr executive. ron schiller was lured to cafe

milano by two men posing as prospective donors to npr for a front group of the fu fundamentalist brotherhood. they were trying to get schiller to reveal the entrenched liberal bias. he fell for it hard. >> the current republican party, particularly the tea party is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental chris yann. >> reporter: he went on a blatantly, brutally stereo type conservative conservatives. >> they believe in sort of white, middle american, gun-toting, i mean, it's scary.

they're sca they're racist people. >> it's not just a matter of polite disagreement. it's we hate you. we think you're stupid. we don't think you're christians. >> reporter: a lot of people feel disdain or contempt from npr. >> conservatives feel a hostility. it's not just what is present. it's what is absent. like you'r side is not getting represented. >> reporter: ron schiller got fired. his boss, vivian schiller, no relation, got fired, too. it's a sign of the times to ken. >> we're this a very polarized political situation. is news biased? is there a conservative bias to

fox? this just fed that narrative. >> reporter: the architect of the sting, james o'keefe. his mission was to expose what he claims are liberal institutions by going undercover. >> i want to expose truth. americans can play judge and jury. >> reporter: he's the guy that brought down a.c.o.r.n. they caught officials offering advice on how to evade the law to get a mortgage loan. he's targeted planned parenthood and new jersey's teacher's union. he pled guilty to a misdemeanor after he was caught trying to tape inside a senate office. >> these are tactics that have been used for decades.

>> reporter: after the controversial firing of juan williams who was on fox last night. >> he wants to make it out that npr and he are the good guys, the smart people. isn't it sthatd more people like them aren't running america. >> reporter: npr gets 2% of its funding from america. even losing that could force it to close. how are they going to rebuild trust? >> put a microphone in front of a conservative congressman and say, hi, this is npr. we would like to interview you. >> reporter: many conservative no longer believe that public broadcasting represents the whole of the american public. >> i would be surprised if there was a con seven active kris kran

gun owner inside of npr. in the taxpayer dollars, a small percentage of the budget but a big deal for the local stations. when we come back, what is the secret to a longer life? opportunity can start anywhere. and go everywhere. to help revitalize a neighborhood in massachusetts, restore a historic landmark in harlem, fund a local business in chicago,

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in 1921, the psychologist lewis turman launched a stud toy did i to track children their entire lives. some of the subjects lived longer than others. but why? did certain traits seem to add or subtract to their live spans?

here's john donvan. >> reporter: what do sisters get to be when they're born within 15 minutes of each other? and then spend their childhoods in each other's company. and then reach a rare old age together. they marked birthday number 100 not long ago. what they get to be is in synch. do you ever get tired of each other? >> no. >> reporter: you've been together for 100 years. >> no. >> reporter: what is your dad's name? >> william. >> william. >> reporter: they grew up near los angeles. the day we visited there was a scientist studying their blood. their exkeedingly rare. maybe the secret is genetics. maybe there's another explanation. >> people do assume a loft

things we didn't find to be true. >> reporter: a new book looks at behavior, and what they discovered want who gets to stick around the longer may surprise you. >> we wanted to ask the question, what happens over long periods of time? what makes people healthy and live a long life. >> reporter: surprise number one, don't worry if you worry. >> we didn't find worrying makes you sick at all. >> a mild amount is not a bad thing. >> reporter: surprise number two, too much optimism can kill you. >> to come to every decision and every situation with the attitude that, it's going to be fine, that pushes you in a particular direction. i don't need to wear my seat belt. sure, i'll have another drink or another doughnut. >> reporter: better never to have married at all than to have married and divorced. >> a divorce increases your

chances of earlier mortality. healthy marriages increases your life span. >> reporter: hard work will not kill you early. >> clearly, work that you hate is not a good idea. people two worked into older age drived. >> reporter: hard-working, slightly worrying, non-divorcing individual. it's a personality they call conscientious. >> conscientious people are more likely to gravitate into stable marriages. stable jobs they enjoy and are passionate about. it's that pattern that encompasses a whole lowe's of individual behaviors that they do. >> reporter: and behaviors that help you live longer. the sisters were not part of the study and don't fit into each

and every part of it. they both had long-held jobs. they picked up hobbies. >> this was my first. i probably did it around 70. >> reporter: way past 50. >> oh, yeah. >> reporter: they stay connected to people through church and they ate well all their lives. >> we always had a sal willeasa. >> reporter: conscientiously. do you worry? >> so. >> just a little bit. >> reporter: to stay safe? >> life goes on. no matter what happens, you have to accept it and make the best of it. >> reporter: bingo. there sit. >> we enjoyed the family together. >> reporter: not one word in there about spinning classes or eating