>> rose: welcome to our program. begin with the bin with a story of why there have been so few program prosecutions. >> here we have a trillion dollars in losses and nobody's at fault? that's hard to believe. people are relentlessly asking this question and with justice and with the right to do. so it's what people want to know. it's just... it seems morally wrong. >> rose: and we continue with one of our favorite englishmen, simon schama. he talks about the royal family, the royal wedding, about food and history, winston churchill and barack obama. >> i think what i do is probably

true of my art writing, too. that i'm a bit obsessed with, you know, memory. i think this comes on people as they get older and lose their memories, as they become obsessed with it as a subject, you know? i wrote a book with that title. >> rose: we conclude with another englishman, jamie oliver. the chef and his crusade to get school children to eat better. >> if you have food knowledge-- and i'm not talking about living a holier-than-thou life living off of lentils and incense. i'm talking about if you know about food, two things happens. you're able to be flexible to recession, to your own means. the second biggest outgoing of your life is the supermarket and food costs. but at the same time you can produce food. you can go out and have fast food when you want, you can overdin you will j when you want but the kind of bedrock of your life would be fairly good. >> rose: gretchen morganson,

simon schama and jamie oliver when we continue. we can all root for. hero who beats the odds and comes out on top. but this isn't just a hollywood storyline. it's happening every day, all across america. every time a storefront opens. or the midnight oil is burned. or when someone chases a dream, not just a dollar. they are small business owners. so if you wanna root for a real hero, support small business. shop small. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

>> rose: it is a question asked again and again in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008: why have no high-level executives been prosecuted for their role in the collapse? it was asked at the oscars by charles ferguson in his acceptance speech for his documentary "inside job." >> not a single financial executive has gone to jail and that's wrong. (applause) >> a front page piece today in the "new york times" calls it a financial crisis with little guilt. joining me from the "new york times" newsroom is gretchen her againson. she co-wrote the piece today with louise story and i'm pleased to have gretchen morgenson back on this program. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: so tell me how this originated. i mean, for all of us who have spent a considerable time since 2008 interviewing people about that crisis, whatever you would ask the question, there was never a great answer or a great

analysis. go ahead. >> you know what you hear is these are complicated cases, they're paper cases, there's no victim, quote/unquote. it's not like a murder case where you have a body. and so there are... those kinds of legal rationale that you hear. but it was so unsatisfying, charlie, because here we have whatever, name your number, hundreds of billions, a trillion dollars in lossess and nobody's fault? that's hard to believe. so people are relentlessly asking this question and with justice and with the right to do so. it's what people want to know. it's just... it seems morally wrong. >> rose: is it largely a matter of a difference between criminal behavior and unethical behavior? >> well, it's hard to believe that you didn't have criminal behavior in a circumstance that hurt so many people as this situation did. it's hard to believe that there was no fraud conducted here when

you have so many losses, hundreds of billions of losses. i think that's the suspension of disbelief that people have trouble with. and so, you know, okay, you've got brokerage firms selling things that they know may fail. you've got lenders making mortgages that they know cannot be repaid. i am not a lawyer and don't pretend to be one but it's hard to believe that there was no fraud here. >> rose: but you talk to a lot of people who know why there have been no prosecutions and when they say it's hard to believe there's no fraud here, what do they say to you other than "complicated"? >> this is where we get into the reporting that louise and i did on the story in today's paper and that is that while the mortgage crisis was excel rating, the mania was going on and then after it broke there was very little work done by the regulators on the front lines to

create cases to bring referrals to federal prosecutors to really amass the kind of information that you need to bring these cases successfully. and this is in direct contrast to what went on in the s&l crisis in the late '80s and early '90s. >> rose: where people went to jail. >> where people went to jail. 800 some went to jail. there were 1,100 criminal prosecutions. and we were talking about a much smaller circumstance, charlie. a sort of regional disaster. you know, the southwest was where it really was focused and so here we have an international crisis, much huger in scope and size, and, you know, no criminal prosecutions of any high profile people. >> rose: so what's the significance of the meeting you described between tim geithner, now the secretary of the treasury, then head of the new york fed and at that time to be an important figure in terms of how we respond to the collapse, a meeting between him and the

now governor but then attorney general andrew cuomo. >> i think it's a pivotal moment charlie, in the crisis. it's mid-october. a.i.g. has been bailed out. many of the banks, the tarps had been passed. and this is a moment where the fragility of the system is of highest priority and so looking back at that moment from two and a half years hence, you ask yourself yes we did save the system that was very crucial and important to be done and yes some of the companies are paying back their tarp and that's excellent from the taxpayers' standpoint, but there are other elements that make people frustrated about the reaction by the government in this case and so looking at it from the standpoint of prosecutions, yes we saved the system. yes tarp is being repaid, but that is not everything.

there is this moral issue of accountability that has just not been addressed and i think can be quite pernicious. >> rose: and will it be addressd? >> one can hope. now, in the s&l crisis it was a longer trajectory. we did have those criminal prosecutions occur over a longer period of time. we've been in our crisis and the aftermath for, what, pick your spot, you know. four years, three and a half. so there is more time here but also the clock is running. the statutes of limitations can expire on some of these cases and i think really it would be so helpful, i think, for the main street crowd to see some accountability here. >> rose: okay. but i would assume-- understanding human nature and politics-- that if, in fact, there were cases to be made, there are prosecutors who know that having the right scalp will

take name long way in terms of a future career. >> definitely. definitely. and here, again, is where you get back to the regulatory failure because during the time of the crisis when the information should have been amassed, when the scrutiny should have been done, when the investigations should have been taken up, there was no one doing that. and so you have a situation with a countrywide financial or an indy mac which failed spectacularly where your regulator, the office of thrift supervision, was literally considering these banks its constituents. people in it wanted to keep happy. this is something you see in the senate permanent subcommittee on investigations report. the o.t.s. had viewed these banks as his customers almost, his clients. and so of course he's not going to be aggressive about investigating wrongdoing,

digging into the practices and identifying the problematic ones. >> rose: so what about the f.b.i. and other law enforcement agencies? >> yeah, we have an interesting bit in the article about how initially in i think it was 2008 there was a memo that was prepared by the f.b.i. to get more resources, to go into these kinds of investigations and it was agreed to, it was sent out to all the field offices and then shortly after discussions with the department of justice took place it was rescinded, the plan was changed, and those resources were not applied. >> rose: you say you believe something may take place? i mean your argument is that eventually something might happen? >> i'm hopeful. i have no reason to believe that there's no case that i know of that is being prepared as we speak. but i think that everyone understands, i think, that people at the highest level in washington understand that there is this deep suspicion about the

fact that there have been no prosecutions and i would hope that they would respond. >> rose: if somebody was going to respond, who would it be? the attorney general? >> well, the department of justice certainly. as you point out, an aggressive united states attorney somewhere. pick up the case, try to make a name for him or herself. >> rose: let me turn now to the bipartisan report that was released by the senate. what does it tell us that we didn't know? >> you know what, charlie? it's very, very interesting and good reading because it fills in blanks, it gives color, it fills in some missing pieces of the puzzle. it isn't incredibly revelatory but it is very, very helpful to give you the three dimensional look at this crisis. it goes into great depth on wamu which was a huge failure and the aggressive lending practices there. it goes into very, very good detail about the regulatory failure at the office of thrift

supervision. it goes into tremendous detail on goldman sachs but also deutsche bank which we had not learned much about prior to this report. and does a pretty good job on the credit rating agencies as well. so it's very... it's four dimensions and there's a lot of very good color, good e-mail, very readable. very succinct and cogent. >> rose: to what end will this report serve? >> well, they hope... the people who wrote the report hope that they... they've made 19 recommendations. they hope that some of those will be taken up by regulators who are now hammering out, of course, the dodd/frank rules and regulations. i think also they do hope that there might be some criminal referrals or criminal angsts that take place as a result of what they're... their findings were. >> rose: when you look at the financial sector today, how is

it doing? >> it's doing very well. it's doing very well. it's bigger than ever. the largest banks control more assets than they did ahead of the crisis. too big to fail is alive and well unfortunately. and we are having a concentration in the industry that i think is troubling because it means that when one of these large and politically powerful and interconnected companies gets into trouble again the taxpayer will have to foot that bill. >> rose: so they are too big to fail? >> they are too big to fail and if we learned anything in this crisis it's this they were going to get a bailout and that has not changed going forward even under dodd/frank, with the resolution. provisions of dodd/frank, there's nothing that's breaking these banks down in size and so they continue to threaten the taxpayer. >> rose: gretchen, thank you. >> you're welcome, charlie.

>> rose: simon schama is here. he's university professor of art history and history at columbia university. as a student at cambridge his former teacher taught him to be unapologetic about the gift of communication and that he has. as an academic and journalist his work has encompassed everything from history and politics to film and food. his new book is called "script, scribble, scribble" writings on politics, ice cream, churchill and my mother. i'm pleased to have simon schama back at that table. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: another damn square thick book. >> charlie... >> rose: "cibl, scribble, scribble." >> well, you know, it's not quite shape up the, the rise and fall of the roman empire, alas. >> rose: give me context. that's what the duke of gloucester said to getman. it was another thick damn square book. >> yes, that's right. the year was 1776.

i had a kind of face to face-- i can't remember if i told you this-- moment with the queen as i was getting a minor gong as we say in britain around the neck. and it's alarms because when you have to bend your head very closely... and it has a strangely kind of you feel you're close to caricature and she said "i believe you have a video." and i was trained to say "yes, mum." and i said "yes, mum." and there was a tremendously terrifying pause and i said "would you like a box?" and i had this fantastic royal family grin and she said "that would be nice." and i thought i've just been and handled in buckingham palace. >> rose: (laughs)

>> rose: do you see yourself a bit of gibbon like? >> no, i wish is the answer really. i'll tell you what he was great at apart from the research. he had an extraordinary sense of the melody of wit. it was very 18th century. the sentences go on forever but unlike henry james they have jokes in them. they have almost absurdist things about the excess of the byzantine empire so he could get extreme gravity and levity not to be a contradiction and he could be beautiful and moving and powerful. but the danger if you actually try and be gibbonian and i fell in this trap in my first book, one of the reviewers said it was

unreasonably... i think was the phrase. >> rose: this is the same book as you said you went back to read it sentences were too long and everything? >> exactly. >> i think i had an attack of pretend gibbon and you can't do it. it belongs to a different century. >> rose: you used to be an advisor to the government about the teaching of history. >> unless they fired me i believe i still am! you may know something i don't. so the most embarrassing thing said about me was in a paper which has dogged me ever since about nine months ago was i was the history czar. you can't be jewish band a czar. so i hated that for a start. i'm part of a big group of people including school teachers as well as some academics

including my friend neil ferguson and so on who are offering-- we hope informed thoughts about what might be done with the national curriculum. there is a national curriculum in britain. >> and your guiding light in this is that history is too important not to... >> well, in a way too important only to get o hour of teaching in an english school. which is really, really shocking. that used to be the case when i was a t callow kid that we were crammed with history many hours to my constant delight. and i could actually condescend my american cousin for not getting enough and also history entombed in a most deadening of all karpiss, the title "social studies." but that's not the case anymore and the problem is this is tedious minutiae but the technical thing as it turned out, there's not enough time and specialist teachers. the problem as perceived was that the history curriculum was too chopped up and the famous

phrase about history teaching in england in some sense is that the kids only do the henrys and hitler. the henrys and so what some of us would like would be to restore a big overarching narrative which is easier if you start with, i don't know, the pilgrim fathers and end with president gingrich or something. (laughs) >> rose: but are you... if one tries to define... >> good luck. >> rose: in terms of passion or even skill would historian be close? >> yes. in fact, actually even when i do those food pieces that we eluded to there's not a memory packed in there. personal memory versus cultural memory. i have a column each month in the british magazine and they are recipes, not just restaurant

reviews, anybody can do that. but attached to the recipes i was very struck when i started cooking seriously in the 1960s. >> rose: in your opinion school. >> i was in school, in college. >> rose: you said it was to attract women. >> but i don't think i missed it and the piece was i got more interested in the food than the women. that's true. >> rose: and they got more interested in the food than you, maybe? >> i'd say so. they were only there for the beef borgen i don't know. but the restaurant that i started as we did to plunge into elizabeth david but every recipe is a mini memoir and that's true of the great fisher, one of the greatest women writers, not just food writers, america has ever produced i think what i do is true of my art writing, too. i'm obsessed with memory. i think this comes on people as they get older and lose their memories. they become obsessed with it as a subject. but i wrote a book with that

title. >> rose: do you believe as some have said, maybe even dickens, that americans do not appreciate food and conversation are synonymous and they ought to be shared at the same time? >> well, i think it's got... i think it's got much better. it's true. dickens actually was a famous sort of obsessive refrain by europeans, not just dickens. trollop. >> rose: ate too fast, didn't talk, didn't understand experience. >> yes, that's exactly right. that they were already doing drive-by food. sort of fast food and that food was really just fuel to do something else and everybody indeed talked about it where the din was silverware on plates. so i don't know if somehow... something i was going to say, really... well maybe it's the legacy of lingering aristocratic behavior really that somehow made it into the middle-classs in britain where you made a real

big thing of eating communally. but the fact is the so-called high tea which industrial working class people survived many years it was also the end of a really shockingly difficult working day. i mean, george orwell, i think, i'm right to say, you know, where he's living in a sort of room which is a horrifyingly covered with a film of soot and memorably he remembers actually the thumb prints of the head of the household's mark on the top of his bad white and moldy sandwich. he talks about how grim actually that supper was and how much there's too much romance of high tea. but i don't know, i've been to... the nearest i got to it i suppose is actually having frightening mushy peas and some unidentifiable gray mystery meat after a football game in east london. >> rose: there was praise i remember about eating alone is something. >> oh, really? >> rose: eating alone is like a crime or something. >> oh, really? do you think that's true when

you have to eat alone? this. >> rose: you know what i like to see? i was just in china. there was a woman who was read at breakfast. it was lunch and we were walking into this place, it was the peninsula hotel in shanghai. we walked into this little place for lunch and there is this stunningly beautiful woman reading. she was reading something about a french philosopher and she was holding the book like this, which i thought was interesting and eating like this. so eating alone, can be fine if you have a companion. >> i think that's right. >> rose: what's the mood in the united king come? what's the reaction to david cameron in terms of the british and the french leading libyan intervention? >> i think on that particular point it may not be so different from the way silt here. you would think it would be something which would automatically mobilize the indignation of the left. i think actually because... i

think everyone says would what would we have done if qaddafi was about to annihilate benghazi. and all hell being let loose. at the same time... >> rose: history would have judged you badly? >> yes, i think the pewer position is the position where we are a guardian on the center left. doesn't mean to say we are not on this suit. i think also the afterthought in the morning again not dissimilar from the way it is here about who's it exactly. as a matter of fact, whose aid we have come to. is there a kind of mood of retrenchment? probably. it's very difficult. charlie, the problem about saying anything at all about how the british feel is that what they feel right now is royal. you knew i was going to say that. >> rose: i knew it. >> i fear i... >> rose: what will you be doing? >> oh, i will... i don't know. you know what i think i'll be doing? one piece of me will be making some pretentious comment about how the tribal rituals of

monarchy are a harmless necessity to keep an otherwise bitterly divided class society together. the other piece of me will be disembodied staring at me prattling on saying you don't honestly believe that, do you? so i don't know. >> rose: it seems to me it's also... in a world in which everybody has difficulties and especially here to help economic times it's somehow a little bit of fantasy for people to sort of enjoy as an escape from... >> yes, that's exactly right. principally the real family sustains itself. as far as it has legitimacy it is a kind of politics-free zone. and the tricks they've tried to do and came fabulously unstuck, unglued with the father and mother of the bridegroom is to be simultaneously dine asic and middle-class. really started by victoria and albert and that huge success. we are really the ultimate family. if marriage is going to be happiness ever after, it's going

to be love and coziness and virtue and piety and useful learning, we are it. but we also are ma jest nick some peculiar unapproachable way. and queen victoria had natural genius even after she was robbed of albert for doing that. and the queen's incredibly good at that. but it's a tall order. every so often the bourgeois propriety becomes fabulously unstuck. the hope is in this young couple is that the great british noise of aww will be heard through millions of households. >> rose: is it is a reminder of british grandeur of the past? >> it's difficult... i was about to say no. but i think i'd almost go back to one. the reason is the architecture. there's something about... you've been there, westminster abbey, the tomb of kings. westminster abbey, i did a radio walk around which i love doing as a lee in to the wedding.

westminster abbey unlike the chapel in france was always intended to be a place where kings were buried and regular folk would come and see them. even king henry iii in the 13th century establishing the shrine as the saxon king and the confessor assumed it be kind of an open abbey, actually. and thus it has been. and the fact that there are poets and good men of science has only made it more so. so the actual architecture, the kind of harsh... this sort of sense of what burke thought rather eloquently was a kind of mysterious communion of past, present, and future is dripping from the masonry. and if my colleagues in television are good at their jobs that will register itself much as it did really in churchillian origin. >> rose: is there a gene for being able to communicate? being able to have?

>> i think it's probably a bit of wiring about it. >> rose: that's whey mean. >> yeah, at least i own up to... i was a terrible chatter box. i was such a chatter box, you will not be surprised to hear. >> rose: was it because you wanted to perform? it was your means of attracting to people to you and saying... >> i thought i was rather freaky as a bundle of legs and arms and sticky out ears which i had. but i now somehow i had a startingly good memory without posting about that. and also somehow from some mad box inside me sentences form themselves. in fact, i mean, in one of the essays my father, bless him, was so startled by this he used to show me off a bit. a small boy.

and at one point i thought i don't want to do this anymore. and you will not believe this, nor will any of your viewers but i simply shut up for, like, three months or something. completely. completely. >> rose: simon doesn't perform. simon doesn't even talk. >> some kids do ainl retention, i do oral retention which was much more wounding to my poor parents. >> rose: here's what's interesting to me about you and all things british. your favorite city is not london. it's amsterdam. >> i love amsterdam. it's a hard call. if london didn't exist... i think london is an inevitability with me because i taste london, i grew up in it, i grew up on the buses. i was invited to do that but it was no hardship to be so invited. it's true i feel a kind of homecoming, weirdly. >> rose: how is british food these days. >> sensationly good, actually!

i don't know what's happening to my home country. i was just in london... british food is... i tell you what happened i never thought again if we talk about london that british food is not just london food. growing up in the 50s, a very austere time, it's one of the reasons i'm sure i got to love history so early. everything else was very beige and brown and dark and repressed and austere and indoor. except my parents... >> rose: puby? >> but we didn't go to pubs. jews really didn't. what i did do in my northwest london suburb, there were the first italians, the first asians south asians, indians, sri lankans so i knew i was in a different part of london. mostly it was dark and gray and broody and understated. my father was someone who was in business unhappily who always wanted to go into the theater. my father was not understated.

he read dickens to us outloud when i was young. so i was yearning for the breakout britain which, you know happened in the '60s in spectacularly... >> rose: music and... >> wild irresponsible feckless culture. that i drank deep of. but it's happened in the sense that we have one or two generations of people who are not as e.m. forster said the ping or gray races and their food and culture and language has organically become part of the waylon don is. that's a miraculous transformation. it's the streetiest street city. it makes paris look tweedy by comparison. not really but... (laughs) >> rose: tell me about churchill >> well, i was fwhorn '45 and there are two ways in which you couldn't get away from

churchill. we really believed at home having some people in the family who perished in vienna during the holocaust but my father's family, the sharr mas, had not. they were ready in england and israel much sooner. but we fought that debate in the cabinet room in 1940. i knew about that when i was 11 or 12 years old which meant lord halifax would not become prime minister. that that churchill had made a decision whatever the consequences and the fight on the beaches to go it alone. that had saved us from the gas chamber somehow. so there was a weird fit that was embodied in my parents' generation of the kind of realive the benevolence of britain towards the jews and the great honor integrity of the british constitutional liberal past. so churchill didn't prevent my parents from voting labour when it came to 1945. >> rose: did they really. after churchill saved them >> well, i fear my father may

have. i don't think my mother did. they might have had one of their many arguments about that, actually. but father my father voted for churchill again in 1951. but my father again said to me "a jew's most important weapon is his voice." he said that. and he was a soap box orator and he was beaten up and the years of the black shirt marches in east end and that was all very important to him. so for him the sten torn voice. what i was saying about westminster abbey kind of wrapping people in a mysterious sort of possibly fantastical community he felt actually was done by churchill and the great speeches and churchill summoning we happy few from the lines of "henry v" may father made me learn that as a child standing on the chair with the broom as my sword. he felt that was really an incredible gift which we envoid. >> rose: but was that... was all

of that churchill's writing? does history tell us now that it was not, as it was with obama a combination of... >> there was some dispute and i'm not actually... as far as i can tell, actually, most of the people think who think they were written for him that actually hasn't gained credence. even some people who thought most of the time he wasn't performing behind the microphone, that also seems to be a myth. but i bow to somebody who might have evidence i didn't when i... >> rose: so what... >> i think in the end oddly enough, actually even if somebody else has written some of it, it's different if somebody else has performed it. and if you actually kind of internalize it into your own personality then it becomes... you become genuinely the author of it and i think that's certainly case with... >> rose: we're talking about your own inspiration. whoever in the end contributes

it starts with the inspiration of someone who has to mark... march up to the occasion and it ends with their delivery of a combination of words and voice and... >> rose: don't you feel, charlie about the president that actually sometimes you feel all that's happened even if there are some others... however it was written with the cairo speech, the oslo speech, the speech above all in philadelphia during the election campaign where he had to deal with the jim wright thing that it's him and the level of kind of rhetorical mel city ratcheted up. and there are other times when you think oh, someone's done a barack obama speech. i thought that at the unfortunate west point speech, defending very serious matters, the decision to stay in afghanistan. >> rose: but at the same time there was some of that-- some of that-- in the oslo speech. there is a connection between west point and oslo in terms of... >> oh, well the just war, that's true, that's true. that's true. i suppose that he looked and felt uncomfortable at west

buoyant all the cadets there and that there was a sense of sense of shifttyness going on even though when the words themselvess were forthright. in oslo i felt we had it was better, professor obama giving us the history of the distinction between the just and unjust war. >> rose: what's interesting about him, take last night, the speech he made yesterday afternoon. what's interesting about shim there is a teacher in him as a speaker, as a politician. some will argue, you know, that the professor is not the perfect kind of quality for a political leader because he's constantly going back and forth and sees all sides of the issue and this kind of thing. how do you compare obama with churchill? >> well, i think you've done it very well yourself. i think there is a kind of more reflective instinct. churchill was sort of the

opposite temperamently. >> rose: to the barricades. >> pretty much, even when he was mistaken. it was interesting in "the king's speech" i hated that... i loved the film but i hated the churchill moment not only because it's indescribebly badly acted by the usually brilliant timothy symphony hall but also because whoever wrote the screenplay of "the king's speech" had churchill doing the opposite of what he actually did which is cravenly support edward viii actually in his marriage to wallace simpson. >> rose: cravenly supported him? >> yes. >> rose: i thought he advised him not to do it or at least told him... help me with my history here. >> no, that's wrong. hang on as long as he possibly can. >> rose: i'm sorry. it wasn't about marrying ms. simpson it was about whether you should abdicate or not. >> yes, i beg your pardon. about whether he should abdicate. >> rose: but that was his sense of country, sense of monarchy. >> maybe, yes. >> rose: if it's not, what is it? >> it probably was... yes i

think probably he was sort of appeared of what might come indeed, untried, untested. but i was... what we were saying was that churchill was very kind of... even when he contradicted himself between one year and the next he was absolutely adamant, he was not really... even though... what he was reflective and tortured about were elements of his own personality which threw him into black dog depression. >> rose: who was he tortured about, snow >> i think he was frightened when he would become depressed. i think it was the indeterminate black cloud that would somehow just strangle him like a black cot thrown over the head of a parrot and the parrot would stop squawking and it would be over. we know he was frightened of that. classically clinical way. obama strikes me as a kind of non-stop reasoning machine. but what was striking... >> rose: i think that's true. absolutely true.

a non-stop reasoning machine. >> and you need something else, actually, to plant your political flag. but i thought he did that yesterday. i thought actually even though... >> rose: in terms of the words or the delivery or both? >> no, the words were extremely strong and clear and it was a kind of clarion call to strap on your armor. >> rose: but it was aspirational and... not only aspirational but also attacking frontly what the other side was about. >> yes, it was. >> rose: it was a speech technique, as you may know. it's... their vision is and if you believe that but our vision is of a better america. our vision is of a different america. our vision is connected to our history. >> that's the rhetorical, right. but usually-- and i may be wrong-- it seemed to me as someone who wanted him to put up his dukes a little bit more than we're accustomed to hearing from it seemed to me that mr. consensus and president patch it up was really mostly there and you had a kind of

search for the occasional element of dissent. not yet. >> rose: he was yesterday what you wanted him to be since he was inaugurated and you found him wanting too many times. >> in the different television station yesterday i burst into song, namely "etta james "as last. >> rose: can we have a bit of it today that? >> well, i hope adele isn't watching because it's her favorite song. ♪ at last, my president's come along ♪ >> rose: (laughs) >> that's more than enough if you want to carry on your show and have any ratings at all, professor rose. but what i did think was very interesting was that... it wasn't only that he was spoiling far principled fight and it seems to be the fight he wants to have, amazingly in the election. >> rose: it's the great debate of our time and you have to look at it and face it and show... i mean, i think he should be more

aggressive in the... in the bullpen of conversation and argument and debate because this is a crucial issue for him, for his presidency, for the country and to understand who we are and what the danger is. >> rose: but he said that. that's what actually i was so thrilled about. he said this is not a new debate. it goes back to our founding fathers. he didn't say "hamilton and madison and the debate about the article i section viii." me said in collaging times it is a sharp rough contentious debate and he said that is a good thing. that is exactly best thing about american democracy. and, you know, election of 1800, he's right about that! and you sort of feel he's run away from that notion that it's a measure of our robustness and freedom that we can have that debate without the obligation to annihilate each other.

>> rose: this is civility we're talking about? >> no, i think you can have a bruising knock-down ferocious debate about what kind of american government is right for us, good for us. we need... do we need the an e.p.a. to monitor clean air and water? you hope so but at least you want that issue to be on the table for discussion. >> rose: you're welcome to this program at any time. >> thank you, charlie. (laughs) do i have to sing? >> rose: as long as you sing. you didn't allow me to finish. "scribble, scribble, scribble: writings on politics, ice cream, churchill and my mother." i learned things about ice cream i do not know, by the way. >> oh, good. then it was worth writing. >> rose: here's what's impressive. to my editors with gratitude. generally it's to family and mentors but here silt to editors and then the famous quote "another damn thick square book, always scribble, always scribble scribble, scribble." there you go. >> thank you, charlie.

>> rose: jimmy oliver here. he's the british celebrity chef, reality television star, food activist. at the age 2306 he became famous for his hit television series "the naked chef." it taught people to cook healthly and also use simple ingredients. he has since produced some 20 television shows, published nearly 15 cook books and he has opened two restaurant chains. he's in america for the new season of the reality series "jamie oliver's food revolution" and here is a look at the series. >> my job heading up the food revolution is harnessing and facilitating activism. most people are really not aware about where their food comes from because it's so packaged, mass produced. so i wanted to do this demonstration to get the parents thinking where does my food come from and where does my kids' food come from? after seeing this food i need to need to explain to them look, i'm on side and i need access to one school.

i came here before the board today because i'm running a campaign called the food revolution. we're here working across the community, one of the three key areas we're working in or wanting to work is n is this school district. i need to start getting to know the parents that are going to go out to their groups and their schools to drum up even more support. will anyone turn up? will anyone care? we'll see. >> rose: i am pleased to have him at this table for the first time. what will come out of this series is what? we will see what? >> (laughs) okay. >> rose: why are you laughing? >> well, because in huntington, west virginia in season one as bumpy as it was at times everything i thought of and dreamt of and set up we did and still runs to this day and all they've done is add and do better things to it. with l.a. it was really tough and i don't know at this moment in time... it went from trying

to achieve and do tangible thing it became more of a public service t.v. show. totally different. very interesting, you know? emotional, upsetting, empowering but it became more about people and stunts to explain where various aspects of their food came from. it also became about... you know we sort of split the show into three, really. it was the home, the fast food industry which we took over a drive through and the school and really the fight with the l.a.u.s.d. became really about... about the lack of transparency in public services. and when you're talking about after service that represents 650,000 children a day, the ability for journalists or

television makers or your program or my program to ask questions or... not even necessarily aggressively interrogate, interrogate what you do, could you do better? what's the best and worst of you what you do? no access. so it became... for me it became some of the most sensitive t.v. i've ever made. >> rose: so they're scared of what? hearing the harsh truth about what we feed our children? >> i just think part of the food revolution is about empowering the public but also stirring the spot. and stirring the pot is so incredibly necessary to the healthy future of america. and the world. stirring the pot means that it's normal to have dialogue and to say "is that all right? is that all right? could could we be going better? where dough you see yourself in three years or ten years time?" being gracious about what you're not good at but letting everyone know that there's a plan of action and things put in place

to sort of get yourself out of it. and the reality is i'd be... i couldn't get the school as a koochblgt i couldn't get the kitchen but i got a little dming the armor. i got in the school based as an educator and i found a school that had a kind of special permission, i guess, contract, with the l.a.u.s.d. it was still an l.a.u.s.d. school but they could... it was one of the most low-performing schools in the area and i went in as a teacher. so i was teaching food through math, science, all the classes and i lasted about two weeks before i got kicked out. >> rose: how did you get on this track? you got all this. you got all these many empires that you have and all of a sudden you've become a crusader. >> that's an interesting one. i mean, it's not about being a super... i mean, i have thick morals that my father instilled in me as a child. i grew up in a family business

and he worked me hard from the age of ten and so just general moral values. but, you know, i did badly at school, didn't really have any opportunity to shine. did really well at college, catering college and loved cooking. it was the only thing i could shine at. but what happened to be honest is i was never born an activist, i was never born a crusader. i'm in nicer than the next person. but what happened really was this book here, i mean... you know, that was... i was 21... i was actually 18 when i wrote that book. i wrote that book never thinking i'd ever write a book. >> rose: it made you famous. >> i was a special needs kid and you know that book was... >> rose: were you dyslexic? >> yeah. and i... and i... that book was

in a bin liner that nearly got thrown away. (laughs) i think we sold two and a half million of those news. but i think that the point was in all honesty the sequence of events was i had my won day off of the week, someone phoned in sick, i went to cover them. the film crew was there. did my shift, six months later the show went out, i was in three different parts of the show. the next day three different people phoned up saying who's this kid? we want to do a show with you? a year later i had my own show, it was "the naked chef." and "the naked chef" was born. why is that relevant? because what happens is when you cook and when you're passionate about testing recipes and trying to give value in a recipe that works largely what happens is you build up this special thing with the public called trust. and food and memories i've always been so very passionate about testing, testing, testing. and your obvious, their obvious is all different.

but if you have a good experience and either a good laugh or romantic night i started building this relationship with not only the british publish but with 80 countries around the world. >> rose: you're syndicated around the world. >> yeah, and so what happened was by the time i was 234 24-i did a documentary... basically i felt bad. i felt bad because i'd made money and my dad brought me up to be very private about money. but i couldn't be private because it was all over the press. so i set up a restaurant called 15 which is about underprivileged kids mainly from prison. we've got four of them now. and from that point in time was the genre of kind of t.v. that was like a documentary that told another side... that really 15 was about kids that had gone the wrong way, would they take the opportunity to change their life. >> rose: right. >> two years later it was school lunches. and ever since school lunches i did four documentarys that got a billion dollars out of the british government, changed the law and created a new

conversation and a seed of change that actually went to many countries around the world. and i was... that's kind of where it came from. >> rose: okay, but measure britain, for example. what can you feel comfortable in saying you achieved? >> in britain? >> rose: yes. >> good question. i think, you know, when you're under... when you're sort of three stages removed from the government... well, obviously we achieved a billion dollars of new money in the system. we achieved the white paper that said what you could and couldn't feed children at school. before i started there were more standards for dog food than there were for kids' food and that's literally how it was. then there begins the long battle of trying to engage america, we got 26,000 schools. fresh ingredients cooking from scratch. so we're kind of five six years

into that transition and i think it's probably fair to say that just over 50% are running with it and 50% are struggling with it because they the government training never... so it's still a problem back home. but most importantly fast food... because it raised the conversation and because i'm not the only one doing it and because exposés and documentaries is much more common in england than it is over here. business is... we call it the big cleanup. literally. even the bad guys have shifted from foods full of additives and hydrogenated fats and you name it and they've cleaned up the recipes. so i don't think it's so much about what i personally achieved but apart from the noise and the fact the... when we made those four one-hour programs one thing that clearly did happen is that parents around england were

really really upset. and that scared government because it was votes and it scared businesses it was because the pound. >> rose: it will do what for the kids? >> long term? >> rose: yes. >> rose: have you diverted them from a life of obesity and degenerative diseases and all that goes with the absence of good nutrition? >> i'd like to think that to have a dream where children are put back into a sequence of events that allows them to have a best opportunity to shine and have the kids do the same thing, you have to be slightly... i mean, i often think i'm slightly autistic in my approach to think back, back, back and back. but it's everything from cull dhour school to the food industry to fast food. it's everything.

i've always sort of described it as kind of school, the main street fast food and the home and what's happened in england and america is we've had so many wonderful opportunities to do so many other things and food is a priority and food is a knowledge has been knocked back. and i'll give you an example. you know, if you have food knowledge-- and i'm not talking about living a holier than thou life, living off of lentils and incense. i'm talking about if you know about food two things happen. you're able to be flexible to recession, to your own means. the second biggest outgoing of your life is the supermarket and food costs. at the same time you can produce food, you can go out and have fast food when you want, you can overindulge when you want but the bedrock of your life would be fairly good ducking and

diving and buying and cooking. so i think that's the dream. that's the dream and i think how does that... how can that come... how do you break the cycle of four generations of english and americans that haven't been taught to cook at school and haven't necessarily been fed well at all at home and with parents working harder than ever? >> rose: thank you for coming. >> thank you. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org