tavis: good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis splile by. first a conversation about combating around the world. he influenced bill and melinda gates in an effort to encourage private citizens for the least among us. it is called the life you could save. also tonight a conversation with lemndry singer songwriter neil sedaka. he released his first studio project in a decade and is out with a book for children called, "waking up is hard to do."

[captioning made possible by kcet public television] nationwide is on your side. >> tavis smile kw4r0eush is brought to you with contributions from viewers like you. thank you. >> peter singer is a professor of bioethics whose efforts to eliminate poverty has influenced so many. his book is called "the life you

could save." an honor to have you here. >> thank you. a pleasure to be with you. >> why can't question seem to get the traction and you and i others would appreciate around the notion of poverty here at home, muchless abroad? >> i think for many people the problem is that it it seems to big that they're worried that they can't really do anything about it. they focus on the size of the problem. we talk about the statistics over a billion people living in extreme poverty, 9 million children dying each year from poverty related causes that we could help. they feel, how can i make a difference? the problem is that we need to focus on the individuals we can help. we can't help a billion people, but we could help one family, maybe we can save one child. perhaps twro or three children depending on how much we do. we need to get that message across to people that they're making a concrete difference. this is not a sort of bottomless pit or hopeless program.

we're make -- we're making progress. >> do you believe we each can save a life? >> i would say every middle class american and above, even with some spare income who spends maybe over a year $500 or $1,000 on things they don't need, even if that's a couple of cups a coffee a day at a cafe they don't need or a vacation they could have taken a less expensive vacation or clothing, those are the thoughts of some that i think i demonstrate in my book. you could realistically expect to save a child's life if you take that money and use it by giving it to an effective organization, i suggest some organizations that -- that are particularly effective and i have a website with the same address as the title of the book so i can keep that up to date and the read kearse go there and check the organizations that are going to make a difference. >> the book starts.

it starts with people being asked to make a pledge, why was that important in the design of the text? >> well i think -- it is really unusual because -- you know, when the book starts, it has got a page that basically says, you could pass this book on to others, to make a difference to the poor. it is like a sign-up sheet, where there's a number of spaces that you can sign to pledge to give the amount that is recommended in the book, which for most people is only 1% of your income, a bit more if you earn really in the top 10% of the country's income earners. i thought it was great that the publisher was prepared to say, yes, we want it to be effective for the poor. even if it reduces the sales that we get, we want to encourage people to pass the book around from hand-to-hand and when the sign-up sheet is field, send it off to me so we could add you to the several thousand people that already pledged to meet this goal. >> there was recently a wonderful piece on 60 minutes about bill and melinda gates and

how much of their wealth they're giving away. we know their friend warren buffet is doing the same thing. you have been influential in getting them to consider consider the strategies they're employing with regarding to give their weather away. when you talk about folks like that, what is the argument that convinces them to do what they are now doing? >> i think it varies from person to person but certainly for bill and melinda gates, they're committed to the idea that ull a human lives are of equal value. they were just -- sort of shocked by the number of children that die needlessly, just because we haven't given them measles immunization or they don't have bed nets to protect them or they don't have safe drinking water, even. they were determined to use their wealth effectively. and they also believe that you know, if you been fortunate in life as they have been, extremely fortunate, obviously, you have a greater responsibility to give.

i think that's important for many people. but really all of us, i mean everybody growing up in the united states is fortunate compared to people growing up in some countries where far fewer resources and far fewer opportunities. for warren buffet that was a factor too. he said that -- if he was, if he grew up in rural peru, he would be as poor as the next person because the skills he had could be used to accumulate great wement in the united states but that doesn't work for other people. but the skills or however they work, they can't get out of poverty. >> indeed there's poverty in this country to be sure and we're seeing more of it given the recession we're enduring at the moment. how much of our being, for lack of a better word, an ness thighsed to poverty around the world, that so many of us haven't seen or lived in that abject poverty? >> i think it has a great to do with that.

i mean we see that boston sometimes on television, certainly when there's a disaster like the earthquake in haiti. we see people in extreme need. it has to be something like that that shakes us out of com placeancy, and what we don't see because it doesn't make the news, the number of people that died in the earthquake in haiti is about 10 day's worth of the toll of people that die needlessly from less dramatic causes because they don't have safe drinking water or sanitation or they can't get enough food to feed their children. if people could really go and see this, for themselves, and talk to the people -- i think many more of them would be motivated to give. if that's not possible, some other way of contacting people, of having the link on an individual basis so that you know you can help an individual or a family or a village. i think that's what it is going

to take to really get us more connect and get more people to feel that they could make a difference. >> you believe and indeed argue that to allow harm is to do harm. tell me more about the connection or the lack there of for many of us between poverty and our ethics. >> well, you know, our ethics is very old, it comes out of tradition. most were in a time that the people that you could help were those limited to physically close to you, the village. you couldn't really travel far. you couldn't make a difference and basically most people were fairly poor anyway. they didn't have a lot of resources. the world has changed dramatically, just in a century or so. so first we have much more wealth even in the times of you know, economic downturn, we still have vastly more wealth than we had before. also of course we have the

communications and the transport and the know how to help people far away from us. so the problem is that our ethics hasn't really changed enough. i believe that in this new world that we live in we often have a responsibility to go beyond the thou shalt knots and not harming others and say we could help others and should be helping others. if we don't it is equivalent to us harming them. very often we're living on things that -- that have been traded, perhaps with a not gare -- not fair balance of trade with the country or we contribute to climate change and make lives more difficult in that way. i think the world is -- interconnected in a way that it wasn't before. and we can't therefore just say, well so long as i don't do them any harm, that's the end of my ethical responsibilities. >> finally, i wonder how much progress we could make if the issue of poverty in this country and indeed around the world

became -- was moved higher up on the list of action items by our elected officials, by our leaders. your work is wonderful. the work that bill and melinda are doing is wonderful. for many americans you seem removed given the fact that you're in the ivory tower there and bill and melinda depeats, microsoft is one of the great inventions, crazies in the world. for dafere people that elect the politicians to represent them, if they could -- they would take the issue more seriously, would we get more traction? >> we might but for that to happen, the people that elect them will have to say to the officials and candidates, this is an important issue for me. what is your view on then by want to vote for someone who will make a difference for global poverty. i hope in the election that is coming up, people will ask their candidates that question because -- you know, they are our elected officials, they respond

to the issues that of concern to us. and unfortunately, we haven't really told them that this is an important issue to us. and we want them to make sure that the u.s. gives aid that is effectively directed at the world's forest. it doesn't have to be so much more, but it has to be directed and the poorest people in the world. >> it is powerful and persuasive. by peter singer. it is called "the life you could save." congratulations and good do have you on the program. >> it is great to talk to you and i'm glad i could reach your viewers with this message through you tavis: we're glad to have you with us. up next neil sedaka. stay with us. tavis: pleased to welcome neil sedaka, the legendary songwriter has been a fixture in the music

business for years. he released his first studio album in over 10 years, called the music of my life. he's out with a book for children, called "waking up is hard to do" honored to have you on the program. >> thank you for inviting me. >> i want to say thank you. >> it is a gift -- this isee a surprise for me, this book. i actually started as a concert pianist,ly a schoolship to the juilliard school of music. my father was a taxi driver and couldn't afford it so i started at nine at the prep school and i went to the college and had every intention of becoming a concert pianist and -- tried out for the competition in russia but they found out i was a rock and roller, so i was disqualified. gift of song writing, i started to write songs and the

first people i went to were jerry wexler at atlantic record. as a teenager i was writing for lavern baker and the cookies and the clovers before -- before anybody else. that was my first records. as a songwriter. >> i -- >> that's an olde. they're the cookies. >> because i'm a little younger, i came to know you around the time of the big hit, "laughter in the rain" when i heard that song, i said, who is this neil sedaka and i got that record and played it over and over and over again. i loved -- >> i wonder who that person was that bought it. now i know. >> that was a big hit. >> i tell you it was a comeback for me. because i was out of work for 12 years. the beatles and rolling stones came in -- tavis: that happened to a hot of

people. frank sinatra. >> yes. then i met a guy by the nainl of elton john. heard of him? i went to england because i couldn't get work in america, they had respect for the rock and rollers of the early days. soy went to england melt elton who was starting a record company called rocket records. he signed me and wroy a song called "laughter in the rain" and sedaka is back was the name of the l.p. that dates me, l.p. it has been a hong wonderful career, 51 years. i have written for -- i -- i'm fortunate some great singers from frank sip nat tra to elvis pressly. >> captain and tinal. >> love will keep us together. >> i got a grammy for love will keep us together. and i must tell you that i'm going back to my roots. i started as a pianist and i

just wrote my first concerto and my first symphony. next month i'm going to london to record with the hond fill harm mon nick. both pieces. >> i'm excited. >> you have a achieved what age now? >> 71. >> what do you make of starting in this venue in this genre at nine and at 1e, you fine yourself back to where you were at the age of nine? >> i always have been a dismight notted serious musician. i think the reason i'm around so long is i like to reinvent myself, try new things and write differently, raise the level, raise the bar for neil sedaka. there are very few, i think on mccartney and billy joel have written classical music in my -- in my kind of genre. so i am also very excited about a show in england called

laughter in the rain, speaking of laughter in the rain, it is a musical based on my life from my birth to age 5. someone is playing me, my wife, and my mother, and my father, and i watched in england, i was sitting in audience and i couldn't breathe. i had to go again the second night to see it. tavis: surreal. >> it was surreal. there were 40 of my songs. i wrote over a thousand. they picked 40 big ones and it is coming to the west end which is their broadway. so cross your fingers, jersey boys, move over. you never know in this crazy business. tavis: how did you -- how have you survived by your open admission the lean kearse? how do you survive the happy years when you're not on stage and people aren't screaming your name and you're not in front of 40,000 people? >> it is a difficult thing when you're a creative person, you

really feel deep down that you have more inside you. you keep it quiet until the right timing. and it is all, as you know, timing. i waited for the singer-songwriter cat stevens, joni mitchell, early 0e's, gordon lightfoot, and carol king who i dated for two minutes. and tavis: lucky you. >> i brought her up to the brill building. >> lucky her. >> greenfield and i were the first writers to go to the building, i brought carol king and her -- all of the people in this were neil diamond, stole has. it was a great -- it was a great bunch of writers and we were teenage new yorkers writing for the teenagers. so, i was lucky between 1958 and 1963, i sold about 0 million records to the shock of my mother and father because i was

always playing beethoven. i bought my mother a mink stole and she said, i think this is better than bait toven. they just signed elvis presley and it was a new teen age market, and our -- r.c.a. was distributed all over the world, so i got to -- to be heard and -- in every country in the world and i didn't want to be a rock and roller. i wanted to be a bobby daryn because he was the -- the epitome of the performer, the sophisticated, so i played the copa and i played all of these adult places. and i got to sing in had five different languages, all over the world. and that is what kept me alive. during those hungry years. i went all over and sang in italian, and spanish, and german, french, all over. >> wow. >> yeah. >> now here you are, these years later with the children's book called "waking up is hard to do"

that title rinse a bell. it rings a bell. >> you're right, the third version, the first one i wrote as a rock and roll song. down douby down. and then 13 years later i redid it as a slow balad. "don't take your love away from me." it was number one again. the third time, i changed the words to waking up is hard to do because -- >> instead of breaking up is hard to do. >> because my grandchildren are big fans of papia neil's old rock and roll songs. i'm papia neil, there they are. >> there they are. that's charlotte and amanda. when they're i thinking, the background vocals, so -- a publisher approached me while back -- and said, we think this would make a very nice illustrated children's book. i been -- it is a new career for me.

>> wow. >> how does it feel after all of these years to still be doing what it is that you love, to have survived all of this time, to have thrived during this time and now to have your twin grandchildren singing back ground on your stuff? >> i never expected to be singing with my grandchildren. i have three. >> yeah. >> i have michael who is five. it is a marvelous thing to sit around the piano at their home and music brings family i think together. and -- music is such a marvelous thing. i think every kid should learn an instrument in school and play in front of friends and family -- it is a marvelous thing to be able to let your emotions out, with music. it is very they are pute tick. and -- i am very thrilled, sometimes i get them up on the stage and they dress up and -- they sipping the months of the year for the calendar girl.

that may be the next book. i love my dinosaur pet instead of calendar girl and they're going to the sipping the months of the year. my charlotte said to me, she said, look at these people watching you, papia, i'm jealous, you're my papia, i don't like them making such a fuss over you. >> she she doesn't know we made a fuss over you for duck aids. >> they weren't sure what was going on. as you said, i -- i had just the first album in many years of new -- new material because i have so many -- i think 60 or 70 c.d.'s and l.p.'s they reissue it. last year i wrote a new collection called the music of my life. and i wanted to get out of my comfortable sphere write something that is a little more mature, i think people -- i think people want to -- want you to grow and develop. they want to hear something new all the time. and i have to keep entertaining

myself, if i'm happy, then i think the audience will be happy. tavis: you made many of us happy for decades. i got to find a good excuse to go to the west end so i could see this play about your life. i would love to see it. >> you're invited it opens next year and it is hopefully going to prodway, the fol year. my wife and i sat this and we were shocked because my mother, her mother, and elton john, do not kevinener from the brill building and you watch your life unfold in front of you and -- you know, it is harm -- it is not a musical either. it got drama. all of us in our family have drama. my mother, i'll tell you a little secret before you see it. my mother was very happily married, but she had a lover, for 0 years, to the full knowledge of my dad, who

accepted us. they were before their time. >> i'm going to the west end. i got to see this now. my mother's lover was an air ing salesman but he bought the most beautiful jewelry and -- and -- clothes from -- for mom and i slowly realized that i was buying it because he page my manager, i was a momma's boy and my mom said, i want ben to be your manager. i said sure, mom. after a couple of years, went down the tubes. the career went down the tubes and my mother was wearing bigger and nicer jewelry. i found out about it. i -- that i was buying the jewelry. so i said ben, i think we come to the end of the road. i think maybe i should get another manager. he said well i'm coming to peat petitioner you up. i said what? and i'm going to lock the door. he was one of these.

and i said, well, i'll call the police. and my mother took it very badly that her son and hover were at odds. she took an overdose of sleeping pills unfortunately. but thank good, she -- goodness she survived. my father stayed with her for seven years and pass ad way. my mother and i made up and we were fine until we lost her seven years ago. >> wow. i didn't -- i i'm thinking laughter in the rain. i didn't know. >> smiley and happy. >> i didn't know all of this. it has been quite a life, quite a wonderful life. i hope and pray it does well enough in the west end to come to prodway so we could see the back story to the wonderful life and the wonderful legacy of the great artist named neil sedaka, a new chirp's book. it is called waking up is hard to do with performances, a c.d. of neil sedaka's music with his

twin grand babies, doing the backup. neil, an honor to have you on the program. >> thank you for having me. >> thank you so much. >> that's the show for tonight. you could catch me on public radio international and the 30d cast at pbs.org. good night and thanks for watching and as always keep the faith. ♪ >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs did the org. >> join me next time with -- with olivia newton john. that's next time. we'll see you then. >> all i know his name is james

and he needs extra help with his reading. >> i'm james. to everyone making a difference, you help us all live better. >> nationwide slrns supports tavis smilely. with every question and answer, nationwide insurance is proud to join tavers in improving ill literacy. nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. you. thank you. ♪