tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight, a conversation with oscar winning film maker michael moore. so much to get to, including a spot on the release today of the president's plan to do with the debt and shocking numbers about poverty in america. michael is up with a new book called "here comes trouble: stories from my life". our conversation with michael moore coming up right now. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where wal-mart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and answer, help tavis improve 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] tavis: i am always pleased to welcome michael moore to the program. he is out with a terrific new text called "here comes trouble: stories from my life". he joins us tonight from seattle. good to have you back on the program, sir. i assume you will indulge me and asking a few questions about stuff and the news before get to the book, which i am anxious to do. let me start with your thoughts about the president's plan today to cut the national debt.

today, he puts the plan on the table. what do you think? >> i think the best part of the plan is the fact that he has come out aggressively for making our tax system fairer so that the rich have to pay their share. i think that is just one of the best things i have heard from him in some time, so i was very happy to hear that. and i think he said it pretty clear that people did not have to worry about social security or medicare or medicaid being affected in any way by this. so i think that is a good move. i do not know if he saw him this morning when he was speaking, but he certainly seems to be getting a sense that three years of him being a person who has turned the other cheek, who has

held out the olive branch, believed in the adage that you should love your enemy and do good to those the persecute you . , he has done good to those who have persecuted him and he does not have much to show for it. so if i were him, he is not going to enter -- he is going to enter his fourth year of his presidency soon. when you are behind the like this at the end of the third quarter, boy, you really want to have an incredible fourth quarter. so i remain an optimist as always and hope that is what he is planning to do. tavis: people make decisions to change course for one of two reasons. because they see the light or because they feel the heat. so is campaign season. has the president really seen the light about the venom and the vitriol and the solidarity of the enemy he is up against? has he seen the light or is he feeling heat because of the election time?

>> we missed each other today on the phone, back and forth, the president and died. so i do not know how he is feeling about this. i will take a stab at it and say that he might of started to see the light. the front page of "the new york times" on a sunday where they laid it out with basic statistics that his attempts over the past couple of years to move to the center, to appeal to conservatives, to sound republican has garnered him the following -- not a single republican vote amongst the electorate, independence not moving at all towards him, and his basic feeling completely depressed and debilitated by his lack of standing up for what -- see, here is the thing. if i did have five minutes with him, i would just like to say to him, what part of your 10 million vote victory, 10 million more votes than the other guy, what part of that do not get?

the people were with you. the people wanted change and they wanted it now. we stood at the edge of the abyss. we were looking into a very big, deep, black hole. and we voted for you to pull us back. and you have done a number of things, you've tried. i think, i mean, it is amazing. i have to say on some level because of the vitriol that he said we have suffered, he has handled it quite well. i do not know if i would handle that as well. i liken it oto this, tavis. he has so many times held out that all the branch and had it wacked out of his hand. republicans admitted, they went to dinner on inauguration night, the top leadership, and they decided there were going to stop him from doing anything. they're going to grind the wheels of government to a halt, and they were going to essentially ignore him for four years. there were going to stop what ever they could stop, even when

he put language in that was their language and proposed bills that were their old bills, they decided it would stop him. and it is like he did not exist. like he was a ghost. and they would wait him out for four years and get rid of him. and it reminded me of the book i read in high school by ralph ellison called "the invisible man," where he spoke so eloquently about what it was like to grow up as a black man in the 1930's and 1940's in the u.s. where people would talk past year. it would be in the same room like you did not even exist. it could be on the elevator, you lived on the other side of town, out of sight, all of mind. well, they have treated him like the invisible present. they have tried to get away with this. and i do not make the racial comment there lightly either because i think there has been this a racial element, and it has been very sad to see some of these tea party people and the

language to the use and the signs that they have. the america that we live in now. a majority of people do not live -- feel that way. i would hope that president what hopeful now in it will not be his last year -- will stand up to the taviis. tavis: the tea party notwithstanding, how much of this has to do with the president having assembled the wrong team. before you answer, i want to tweak this a little bit so people do not think i am naive. speaking of naive, i have always rejected the naivete that is found in that assessment, because he cannot tell me barack obama is a brilliant. he cannot be all that and then be suckered by a team of people around him. those two things cannot coexist. how much of this to your mind has to do with having assembled

the wrong team? >> h'e's not dumb. he is berlin. he knew exactly what he was doing putting larry summers and tim geithner into office there. and so, if you want to accept that assumption that he is a pretty smart guy, then you then have to ask the more difficult question -- is this an affect how he really thinks? does he really not think the banks are really such a bad entity? that wall street is not to blame? and the reason he has been so soft on them is because he believes in them. if that is the case, then we have a much deeper problem that we have to deal with pair. tavis: your comment leads me light -- nicely to the test. these poverty numbers of late --

it is a national disgrace what say you about the fact that these numbers have grown? he inherited a mess, to be sure, but these numbers have grown under his presidency. and now -- let me stop. your thoughts about these poverty numbers, like . >> it is disgraceful and shameful. you know, if we did not have social security, our seniors will live mostly in poverty. you have another 18 million people in poverty. it is actually 46 million right now. it would be well over 60 million without government assistance. so we like to think of ourselves as number one and the world. we are not number one hardly in anything that counts anymore. we're number one in a lot of the bad stuff. but i've just refused -- i do not know what to say -- i refuse

to live in a country like this, and i am not going anywhere. i'm going to devote whatever i can. i spoke at a college in south boston here a few days ago, a community college, and before i spoke, the ministers t -- the administrator took up a payment not for tuition or books, but it is an emergency fund. it is for gas money, babysitting money, things like this because the students are not able able to go to school because they are trying to hold down full-time jobs which are close to minimum wage jobs carrot a lot of them are single parents. and he is having to beg people for this monday. i just came up on stage and i said, i reject this. this is what i grew up in, and i am not going to live in it . tavis: a quick programming of, talking about poverty. i was on a party to work earlier this summer all across the

country. nine states, 18 cities talking about poverty for all races, colors and creeds. we're going to the week of october 10-14, a full week, five nights. a first time on national television in this country that the entire show for zero full weeks has focused in on party in america, the new phase of party, for an entire week. october 10-14 on the show every night talking about poverty and bring new footage of those troubles this summer across the country talking to people about poverty in america. that may ask what it was about growing up in flint. done a then put the cover of the book. i love the cover. you have not changed a lot. there you are under tricycle. you have your baseball cap on. you're still looking mischievous. you have not changed in the years. what was a specific, you talk about your childhood. what about growing up in flint,

moving in the direction of being the she missed that you are? > well, i gerw urew up in a working-class and firemen. my dad worked and general motors factory, my mom was a secretary in a township office. you know, they taught me some pretty good values about, that we would be judged about how we treat the least among us, etc.. flint was a great place to grow up. it was a middle-class town. our guest and not have to have a college education to earn a good wage. it puts food on the table and a roof over our heads. my generation was able to go to college. we had vacations every summer that were paid for. we had health insurance, everything. it was a quite a good existence. and the rich, the general motors executives and the top brass, they lived a really good life. even though there were paying a

lot of money in taxes, they were taxed duffel monte, a full load. they paid it all. and i seem to remember them living in really big mansions, having a great life. and for some reason, i guess that was not good enough for them and their class. they wanted more and more and more. and and of was the dirtiest word in their language. so they could not get enough and they still cannot get enough. growing up in that environment, plus the sit-down strike that started the uaw was there, and all of that played into -- i was very fortunate to grow up in flint. tavis: people know from falling to work that you have legitimate league criticize our body politic in just about everything you have done. and yet, one learns that you were yourself in fact a very young, public elected officials.

>> yes, i was one of the first 18-year-old elected to public office right after 18-year-olds got the right to vote in the early 1970's. i ran for the board of education. i did not like some things at my high school and i decided i was going to fix it by becoming the boss, one of the bosses of the principal and the assistant principal and all that. and i got elected. did a number of things that can cause a bit of a ruckus at times . other times, it worked out well. but i served for four years, and i learned a very early age that sometimes, if you just did just a little bit, you could create some good change. and it got me thinking at an early age to that if everybody knew that secret, that it's better if we didn't have just a few people doing a lot, but rather, if we had millions doing a little bit. that little bit, boy, it would

help to change things for the better. tavis: and yet something about that experience or something since has convinced to that you create greater leverage, could have a more significant voice by operating on the outside of the system as opposed to the insider if so how does one go from believing in the system on the inside to bleeding at the real power, the real work you must do is from the outside? >> again, i learned that action before was elected to the school board, when i was a junior in high school. i gave this speech at the speech contest down and the capital of michigan, in east lansing. it was a speech exposing the private organizations in the u.s. could still discriminate on the basis of race. this was in the early 1970's. you could still have caucasian one -- the elks club was whites

only. a lot of these men's groups were whites only groups. i just thought that was wrong. so i give a speech about it. the next thing i knew, it was on the associated press and on the evening news and national networks that this 17-year-old was speaking out against racism in private clubs. and the whole thing's sort of snowballed. by the next year, there were lawsuits and bills introduced in congress. and these private groups all have to change their ways and they could no longer be whites only organizations. and that was just, i was not the only one doing this, but it was a big push that started when i gave the speech in east lansing, michigan. a dangerous lesson to teach a teenager that just by writing down three pages of paper or what i wanted to say have this impact. again, i am going, wow. so i learned this.

i have had to take my knox ford, it, too. when i got on the school board, they had a recall election at two years into my term to get rid of me. i propose we name it is elementary school martin luther king elementary school. this is not one of those cases where they named to the school in the worst part of town, the poorest, martin luther king elementary. this was in an all white, very nice neighborhood. just because i thought it should be spread around. martin luther king is a great man . to be ever were. they're upset. they had a recall. are one of the recall of election. something small like that will offend some people. tavis: there is another man who comes up who is sassy in some ways and forever linked to dr. king, and his news comes up in the telling of the story.

his name comes up and you're telling of the story of having gone to the capital and got lost, and you were found by a rather unlikely united states senator by the name of -- >> robert kennedy. i was 11 years old. my mother had taken us down to our nation's capital, because like most kids that got to go to the lake or go camping, we were always taken to washington, d.c., to read the documents at the national archives or through the smithsonian. and so we were in the rotunda. i lost her, and my sisters. i am 11 years old. i am wandering all over, i cannot find them, i start to cry. i see an elevator that is open. i walked into the elevator. the doors shut. there is one man in their reading the newspaper. years the boy crying and he puts the paper down. and it is bobby kennedy. he says, what is wrong little

man? "i cannot find my mommy." so he took me off the elevator at the next floor and helped me look for my mom. then we got the capitol police. and he waited there with me and spoke to me. and it was very comforting. with something, i'm sure he was very busy that we, because that week my mother and my sisters and i got to sit in the house and senate galleries. in one house, they were debating the voting rights act of 1965. and in the other house, they were debating this crazy idea of providing free health insurance for old people. it was called medicare and for poor people -- medicaid. so i was watching those debates. and kennedy was in the middle of both of those. he was taking the time to help this lost child. so it had quite an impact on me as i was growing up occurr. tavis: with the gang of kids

he had, he knew something about young girls and boys. the vote shed some light on your childhood, but it also comes into adulthood and the chapter that i was anxious to get to was the part about what actually happened afterward your famous or infamous, depending on one's perspective, oscar speech. you go into debt in this book. the book is to dozen short stories from my life. these are non-fiction short stories. and today -- all stores except the one you mentioned are before i was a filmmaker. i begin the book with the epilogue of what would be the next volume of these stores, which is in the present. and in the years between i give the oscar speech i gave on the fifth day of the war where i referred to mr. bush as a fictional president elected with fictitious election results, giving us fictitious reasons to go to war. as a result of my saying the

world wide on television, i was instantly under numerous threats. and then attempted assaults and then real assault and finally culminating with someone who ended up in prison for his actions, his violence. but this violence perpetrated against me was being stalked a lot by hate radio, by people who were then or now, fox news hosts, people like glenn beck, people like bill o'reilly making a joke about i don't believe in the death penalty unless it is for michael moore. fantasizing about telling me. but that out over the airwaves, and there will be people who are not well. so i had to bear the brunt for a number of years.

i have never talked about it publicly. and so i decided in this book to sort of laid it out, because they continue to do it. they do it to other people. it happens every day, this kind of hate-filled talk. and if you do not stand up against it, someone else will be hurt. so i talked about it in the book. tavis: dr. king once used the phrase, describing the kind of work to do and the kind of work i tried to do it and others around this country, he called this work of vocation of agony. a location of egg and . which leads me to ask, whether or not you love or hate michael moore, one ought not to be subject to that kind of hatred how had he stayed committed to your cause? how you stay in touch with the humanity of other people when one is subjected to that kind of

response to your work? >> that is a good question. the last time i was on your show, i alluded to the fact that i did not know whether i should continue to do this, because i did not know whether it was worth it to put myself and my family through this sort of attack. and i don't mean just the attack of the debate, i am literally talking about physical attacks. and i think where i met right now is that we all have to do our part. i'll make sure that i will never use that kind of language when i talk about the people i disagree with. i have never uttered the word i hate george w. bush. i would never say that, probably because i do not feel it. i do not hate the man. and i do not want to be done in that gutter. i do not want the debate to be down there. let's have the discussion. if you are a republican, do not

be afraid of that. if he feels strongly, let's have that debate. it is a democracy, a free society. the republicans do not seem to want to have the debate. they want to stop the debate. they want to change matt from the majority being 51% to 61%. so that filibuster every thing obama does fifth. the demonization of the president, all of these things. like he was not born here. i think theds - - best way to stop it is don't participate in it and don't respond to it and do not be that way yourselves. i say this to our side of the fit rigid political fence. if you see somebody that you do not agree with, whatever you do, do not de-humanize them. they are human beings. they are god's children. we are all part of the same human family. tavis: they are very entertaining short stories, 12 of them, in a new book by michael moore.

we would expect to be entertained and inspired by the michael moore. the book is called "here comes trouble: stories from my life". michael moore, always good to have on the program. >> thank you . thanks for what you and cornell did on that tour. i am anxious to see that on your show. tavis: that is our show for tonight. until then, good night from los angeles and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with with active danny glover. plus singer tori amos. that is next time. we will see you then. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where wal-mart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and answer,

help tavis improve 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.

steves: from towns on the valley floor, a train takes tourists and adventurers alike to the region's ultimate perch, the jungfraujoch. this breathtaking station sits like a fairy castle at 11,000 feet between two of the region's highest peaks. the weather's usually better in the early morning. we're on the first train. towering high above are the jungfrau, monch, and eiger peaks, named for the legend of the young maiden -- jungfrau -- being protected by the monk, or monch, from the mean ogre, or eiger. continuing on, we change trains at kleine scheidegg, a rail junction at the base of these peaks. it has shops, rustic beds, and hearty food for hikers. this is the jumping-off point for rock climbers attempting to scale the foreboding north face of the eiger.

this train incredibly tunnels through the inside of the eiger on its slow yet exhilarating climb to the literal high point of any trip to the swiss alps, the jungfraujoch. swiss engineers dug this tunnel and built this railway over 100 years ago. why? because they could, and for the viewing pleasure of those 19th century romantic age visitors. halfway up the eiger, the train stops at panorama windows. rock climbers can exit here into an unforgiving world of ice and air. after another short tunnel ride, you emerge at 11,000 feet, the top of europe. spectacular views of majestic peaks stretch as far as you can see. cradled among these giants, you understand the timeless allure of the swiss alps. an elevator carries you to the highest viewing point. from there, you can see aletsch glacier, europe's longest,

stretching 11 miles south towards italy. the air is thin. people are in giddy moods. it's cold even on a sunny day. while the jungfraujoch station calls itself the top of europe, it's possible to venture even higher.