tavis: welcome. per se, a conversation with singer and actress olivia newton-john. she is out with a new cd. she is also one of the most prominent breast cancer survivors in the world. also, a conversation with tennis channel founder steve bellamy. the ski channel is launching a series of documentaries about skiing and other sports. >> all i know is his name is james, and he needs extra help with his reading. >> i am james. >> yes. >> to everyone making a difference, you help us all live

better. >> nationwide insurance proudly supports tavis smiley. with every question and every answer, we are proud to work to create financial literacy and remove obstacles to economic empowerment, one conversation at a time. nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- tavis: please welcome olivia newton-john. the grammy-winning singer is celebrating her 40th year in the music business with a new cd

called "grace and gratitude removed." she is also taking place in a new breast cancer documentary. here is the video from the new single. >> ♪ help me to heal helped me to deal -- help me to feel how i know with what i feel so won't you help me to believe? help me heal help me feel ♪ tavis: looks like fun. >> it was a wonderful experience. we did it in toronto. i wrote all the songs with her. tavis: this title grabed me the

minute i saw it. why grace and gratitude? >> i have a lot of gratitude for being here. recording this music, i still have a hard time believing i have been doing it this long. for being alive and being healthy. i made this record as a healing cd, it is very relaxing and peaceful and hypnotize in. tavis: what do you make of your journey? i am talking specifically about the cancer. we are fighting this every day, trying to raise awareness every day. yet some people make it, some people do not. you have. >> i am grateful for that. i am an 18-year survivor, because i feel like i am surviving my life. i want to encourage other women that here i am. 18 years ago, right when i had finished my treatment, i ran

into a lady in the bathroom in australia. she said the simple words to me. she said, "i had breast cancer 20 years ago, and i am fine." those words were so powerful. she had it all those years ago and she was fine. that is all i can pass on. tavis: i am glad you said that. because the numbers are what they are -- the survival rate is obviously better than it was back in the day. but still, too many women die for this. when you run into people who want to ask your advice or cry on your shoulder, what do you say to them, given that some do not make it? >> i would preface it by saying i am grateful that i made it. i am lucky. a lot of people have positive attitudes but are not as fortunate as i am. i preface it with that. but i talk about trying to stay positive on the journey. it is a very difficult thing to go through, but a positive

attitude helps your healing. eat well, exercise, and stay focused on something you enjoy. for women, do something for yourself. we tend to put our husband, our children, our family first. have somebody else talk to your friends about your treatment and how you are feeling. take that time to walk, meditate, or go to swim or do something you like in nature. tavis: because you spend so much of your time, as grateful as you are, raising awareness and raising money, and all the work you do around this issue, do you ever want to step back from it? do you ever feel you are too involved in it? you cannot seem to get away from it. >> i chose to do that. i think maybe that is why i went through the experience. i feel that it gives me a reason. it feels good to help other people. i am building hospitals and doing all these things.

there is a lot of commitment. i feel good about it. i meet a lot of wonderful people who are working in the healing field, whether it is doctors or whatever. i meet the most amazing people with stories. tavis: you and i were chatting before we came on camera. i was talking about a trip to china for a few days. you asked me had i been before. i said no. you have been. what you did, i am not going to do. you have asked me. what were you doing in china raising money for this cause? >> i took a three week walk on the china wall to raise money. tavis: you walked on the wall? >> went to five different provinces. i met celebrities and cancer survivors who came with me. we did the work in different sections. it was the most incredible experience i have ever done. it was difficult. it was challenging. we went from the gobi desert,

the biting wind, to incredible heat, to snow, to what rain. it is a beautiful country and the wall is like this. trying to get your feet on it is amazing. tavis: i will take your word for it. i will not be walking on the wall for three hours, much less three weeks, but i am glad you did. you said you did not feel like it, but 40 years in the music business? >> it is a surprise isn't it? tavis: do you recall why and how you got into this? >> i recall how and why. i could not do much else. i could not focus in school, so thank goodness i could sing. i went to a talent contest when i was very young. my sister put me up for one of them. i went into a local talent contest that had a national prize of a trip to england. much to my surprise, i won this contest on a television show. there are so many of them now,

but way back when. the prize was a trip to england. a year later, i took the trip. i was working in local television at the time. that is how i started. i had a year of tv experience. tavis: what did your parents say? your father is a professor and your maternal grandfather is a nobel laureate. >> nobel physicist. tavis: and you are going to sing. >> exactly. there was a lot of pressure there. my grandfather was a nobel prize winner. my brother was a doctor. my sister and i went into show business. there is apparently a line between music and math, so i got the genes. my mother wanted me to go to university and get a degree or do something. my father liked opera, so he was fine with music. he wanted me to be an opera singer, and i did not have the

strength to do that. he was not too thrilled. but they could see i could support myself and i was doing okay. tavis: if you live long enough, speaking about grace and the fact that you are still here after 18 years, and 40 years in the business, if you live long enough, you see this come full circle. they tickle me. i am curious how you process them. this tv show "glee." they reprise your hit, "physical." that came out years ago and is back now. house real is it when you watch "golly" -- "glee"? >> brian murphy asked me if i wanted to be on it and play myself, a different version of myself. that was fun. the cast are amazing.

james lynch was fantastic. it was fun and i was excited to be asked to do it. tavis: you have been around long enough now that "grease" is a classic. look back on that experience. >> people ask me, "did you ever know it was going to be?" of course not. i have little kids in the audience, and their parents, and their parents. the have all watched it and liked it. it keeps finding a new audience. it is fun. it is great. tavis: when you are doing music projects these days, what is your process for deciding the kind of music you want to produce and want to perform these days? >> it is kind of -- the last two records -- this one is where i would love to be. it fits with everything i am doing in my life.

i have my hospital and my husband has a company that gathers herbs in the amazon. everything i am doing is about healing. also, when i perform i do my old songs as well. i mix it up. tavis: what is and olivia newton-john show like? >> kind of a compilation of all the music from all those years. a bit of rock and roll, a bit of "grease," a bit of "xanadu," and various things from my career. a mixture of all of that. tavis: we are meeting for the first time, but listening to this cd i get the sense that at this point in your life lyrical content is very important to you. >> it is. tavis: even the titles of some

of these songs. >> thank you. i think what i wanted to put across with this cd is that we are all connected. we are all beautiful in our own way. we are all connected, whatever you want to call the greater being. we are all connected in that way. the songs reflect that. they are just about that, the love it gives. there are some questions and things. there are tibetan chants, buddhist chants. tavis: during your life and during your diagnosis and recovery, were you in search of -- did you pull down on all these different faiths and traditions, or is this a journey started after that process? >> that is a good question. i think i have always been on a search. i have my own kind of belief in love as the beating, but i think

i have always been searching for truth. i think there is lots of truth. i think we should respect that in each other. that is really what i wanted to get across. tavis: since october is breast cancer awareness month, let me close by asking how hopeful you are, given all that is happening in the world that you're such a vital part of. are you hopeful about where we are headed? >> i am hopeful. i see even from the research at my hospital, a cancer wellness' thing built in australia and the moffett center in tampa, florida -- what i am seeing in their research is finding out what is triggering it. they are individualizing treatment for patients and finding more about how diet and attitude play a role. there are many more things you can tell patients. do not just at the diagnosis and

let them tell you what to do. take control of ydo regular sel. eat properly. think properly. it is all those things. i am involved in a wonderful thing called "one minute," a movie about the journey of a young woman -- a courageous young woman who made a movie of her experience going to breast cancer. she interviewed a lot of celebrities to give some expression of courage through it. there is a lot of wonderful things happening. i believe cancer will be a thing of the past. tavis: you do have a lot to be grateful for. >> i really do. tavis: "grace and gratitude renewed" with a libyan newton- john, not only a survivor but its driver. it is good to have you on and nice to meet you. i love your name and everything you have ever done.

a mutual admiration society. up next, tennis channel founder steve bellamy. steve bellamy is a media entrepreneur who founded the tennis channel in 2003 and now serves as the ceo of the 2-year- old ski channel, which just announced a film series. the first is called "the story" and includes olympic heroes. here are some scenes. >> i do not want to look back -- i want to look back on my life and i do not want to have any regrets. >> i stand up on the podium and have a metal. i cried for hours. >> if you have an open mind you can question anything you want. >> i ended up breaking every bone. >> a 250 foot cliff.

i was just having fun. >> your life and your friends -- you develop close bonds. >> you get out and do it. you can do anything you put your mind to. tavis: three times in that package i found myself saying "do not try this at home." that sounds interesting but extreme. what is driving americans with regard to outdoor sports and extreme sports? another are different things, but they are the boom these days. >> outdoor sports is interesting. i have gotten to know the culture a lot more in the last few years. i know a lot of basketball players, baseball players, football players. they love their sport when the adjusted to. when they become professional, the love gets bifurcated. they like the money and the trappings and do not play the sport as much in the off-season. skiers and snow borders and more

mountain-oriented people love the sport. they go and live on a mountain and wash dishes to be able to do what they do. the love grows as they become 30, 40, 50. it is passion driven. tavis: what made you think or believe that a ski channel -- i am always amazed by disney channel's -- by the niche channels. using people like you are interested in watching the same thing all day long. what made you think a ski channel would work? >> i came from the opposite end. when the golf channel came out of the ground, it rose really quickly. at one point in time it was worth over $2 billion. i was scratching my head, going when is somebody going to start a tennis channel. when is somebody going to start a ski channel? i was sprinting to get to market first or this was never got to happen. basically, the same amount of

people play tennis, ski, and play golf, what i would call the three lifetimes sports. the numbers of participants in those sports are bigger than baseball, basketball, and football, which are spectator sports. when you have that nucleus of people who are so passionate that they buy a home in the mountains or join the tennis club and live there on the weekends and after school, those people watching would be enough to sustain a business. tavis: here is a crazy question i will probably regret asking. i have announced the four years, so this is going to come back and haunt me from all my friends to ski. steve and i went to school together in indiana university. another issue there. i have never skied before, so i do not get -- i can see the rush people get when they come down this hill successfully. but the danger present in that sport has not convinced me that it is something i ought to try. help me understand what it is about that mountain that turns

people on. >> you can control the danger. you can decide how far you want to push it. most of the people getting hurt live on the edge, not in the middle. there is nothing in the world like the rush of going down a mountain and tarnishing all that -- harnessing all that gravity and using it for your pleasure. it is similar to surfing. i do not serve, but it is similar. there is nothing like it. you have to try it. tavis: will or the hurdles you had to get through to try to rush to market? what does one do? take me to the process of what you have to do to get a tv network like the tennis channel. you get this idea. how do you get it started? >> candidly, one was extremely challenging and one was easy. the ski channel was incredibly easy to get off the ground. the tennis channel was another deal. i was a tennis pro very unhappy with the amount of tennis on

television. baseball and football demand giant right fees from the networks and in return the networks hurt the image and voice. i was fighting for tennis. i was an evangelist for tennis. it was passion that kept pushing. the amount of times that the word no was said to me was beyond logic. in life, i have always been the guy who if popular opinion is one thing, if common sense is one thing, i will go the other way. i kept pushing for seven years. i had to raise tens of millions of dollars right after 9/11, when there was not a lot of money out there. it starts with raising a lot of capital, having a great concept, and getting the cable and satellite community to buy into it, which is challenging. tavis: how difficult is it? i know it is inside baseball, but all of us watching now have 2 million choices.

you come up with a couple more choices. the cable industry -- how does that work? >> it is going through a metamorphosis because the internet is basically television. every day it comes closer to it. the amount of truces is going to infinity very quickly. i could not tell you what is going to happen in three years. i think you will see the middle networks go away. you will see big networks gets dirtier and tiny networks will probably survive because they do not need a big audience. tavis: i assume that to get a niche network off the ground you need the by in of the stars in the sports. how critical is that? how successful were you in getting that? >> that is one of the reasons the tennis channel worked. every big star said, "i will do what ever you need to make this work." two of my biggest investors at first for pete sampras and andre agassi.

they are the apex of the sport. that helps out a lot. the tennis world was amazing. the business world was not amazing. the amount of meetings i sat in was incredible. the athletes unilaterally said, "whenever you need me for, you have got it." tavis: what is your sense with the environment we have in now, whether it is good or bad for entrepreneurs? the ski channel is not that old. the tennis channel is not much older. you were able to get these off the ground in an era when people are trying to figure out where that entrepreneurial spirit is, whether there are opportunities for it to thrive. >> i say this. in the next 50 years forward and backward, we might be in the most for tile, amazing time to start businesses, to start things. raising capital is not a picnic, but everything is in flux. when a thing is in flux, that is

when google appears, twitter appears, and new forms of communication and business -- which are just changing. smart people are going to be able to take advantage of those shifts. tavis: tell me about this project with "the story >." >> i am sitting in a chair talking to these pro skiiers every day. every story was the same on the tennis channel. >> i was from russia and hit a trillion tennis balls and now i am one in the world and the everyone." in the ski industry, it was like, "i stopped at jackson hole and love the mountains so much i quit my competitive career and was a dishwasher and road that mountain every day. i lived in my car to be able to ski." these guys have depth of

character. i am going to build a ski movie based on their stories. we took 23 amazing athletes and amazing people from bodie and lindsay and told their stories and splice them together into what we consider a pretty good film. tavis: maybe i will be convinced after seeing it a third, fourth, or fifth time to try it one day. in the meantime, thank you for coming on. >> thank you for having me. tavis: that is our show for tonight. catch me on the weekends on public radio. you can access our podcast to our website. good night. thanks for watching, and as always keep the faith. >> we put 1 foot in front of the other. you are on top of it. >> he drops in first and has picked up a lot of speed.

he makes it over the first run. now another term. -- turn. >> for more information on today's show, visit pbs.org. tavis: join me next time for oj's lead singer and his tribute to his son. >> all i know is his name is james, and he needs extra help with his reading. >> i am james. >> yes. >> to everyone making a difference, you help us all live better. >> nationwide insurance proudly supports tavis smiley. with every question and answer,

nationwide insurance is proud to join tapis in working to provide financial literacy and remove obstacles one step at a time. nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. you. thank you.