tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. the conversation with hip-hop artist talib kweli. is back with the new cd called "prisoner of conscious." also conversation with environmentalist dan fagan. his new book is about how they fought back against one of the country's worst polluters. glad you joined us. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only

halfway to completely eliminating hunger and we have work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: talib kweli has always pushed the boundaries of hip-hop with political lyrics the tackle the big issues of the day, so much so that his work has been prejudge before it was released. this may challenge what has come to be expected of him with his

new album, "prisoner of conscious." ♪ ♪ ♪ let's waste no time hitting the high notes, low key ♪ ♪animated like jessica rabbit the third is so real you can see it, especially when you drop it low, you have got to know ♪ good to have you. how're you doing? >> i cannot complain. tavis: i have said this is a departure -- a little different from the flow you had before. is that a fair assessment? >> i would say it is slightly

different in terms of the focus. my focus for most of my career has been lyricism, and at this point i think i am confident and often my craft that is going to be there. -- confident enough in my craft that is going to be there. in puerto rico. we did a record of feels like a west african music. me removing myself from just being beholden to hip-hop and where i am from and giving myself to the whole world and trying to do that without losing the essence of what people love. is the risk of doing that where the fan base is concerned? no realme there is

risk. first i am confident in the music. i think it sounds good and stands on its own, but even if people do not like the songs there is enough catalog they can go to. i stand by the songs. this notion i raised earlier of people expecting a certain things from you and judging the project before it even comes out based upon what they have come to expect from you, what kind of box does that put you in? >> nobody likes to be put in a box. i am sure with what you do people might assume things about you. i do not know what projects you have of your sleeve, but i am sure you have a couple when people see them they are like, why is have as doing them? and you know why.

doing them?vis but you know why. people have invested in new, so they feel like they have a stake in sometimes to i choose to work with, the beat selection or whatever, and that is understandable. the burden is on me to represent. for me to create a project that is so crazy that when you finished listening to it your preconceived notions are shattered. i appreciate the challenge. tavis: i never thought of it that way. as fans and consumers, we have been buying your stuff for years. so we areall of it,

investors to some degree, but usually investors have a say in the shareholder meeting. music is a little different. where is the line between what investors have to say and what talib has to say? >> they are invested as an artist. the only way for me to be an investor is to do my craft. sometimes it is my job as an artist to know what i want to do even if the fans tell me different. to be a leader. as an artist, i have to be a leader of my fans and not to follow them. if i choose to follow them, they could do it. i think the line is where you are in the studio. that belongs to you as an artist, and nothing should take that. you should not be thinking about what the fans want, what your label wants. a song for the street.

you should be honest and creative. how you put it up for sale, you market and promote isnt is p to you. i believe in even exchange. if a fan pays $10 for an album, they have got the album. it is an even exchange. if you keep doing business with somebody, you owe them a little more. did you want to give them a little bit more. you do free concert. you do all the extra stuff. tavis: the one thing you have been consistent about from the beginning is collaborations'. fromave never shied away collaborations'. >> i like collaboration because i am good at writing lyrics. i do not know how to make seat. i am not a good singer.

-- i know how to know -- i do not know how to make beats. i liked the idea of people coming together. i like the spirit of jazz. that would play with coltrane or miles and have their own album. a drummer might have his own album and get people to come together. even now in commercial hip-hop you see a lot of that. it is corporate, but i liked the idea that a lot of his records have multiple people on them, so i have done that. project, it is the most i have had on one album. eardrum was longer.

this time i was free. myself.t limit it was my vision. someone at a party, i was like, let's just get busy. tavis: is there a certain confidence or courage it takes to be so collaborative on your projects vs. during the solo -- doing the solo thing? you have to be pretty aware to be willing to share that much space with another artist. album, i listen to the there are a lot of features, but it does not feel like less of me, and hopefully that is how others perceive it. it does feel like it is my of them.

it is confidence, but it is more like this is my fifth solo album. this is my 11th or 12th album in so at this point, you do not want to rest on your laurels, but when you have a ,roduct that is still for sale when you have of products and -- if you wanto say, tune here just me running, get rainbows. if you want to hear me doing another reflection of eternal, we did. of the album. . think it is good quality work i feel like i have done a enough to where i could reference to my own catalog and point to certain but in the meantime, i

am going to be doing this. tavis: i always ask how your mother is. i have worked with your mother over the years. i want to take a second to talk about the impact your father had on your musical choices. >> without a doubt. when my mother who has influenced me in terms of my riding, but my music -- terms of writing, but my music comes from my father. my father was a dj. he had vinyl everywhere. he had vinyl all over the house lined up on the walls. everything from bob dylan to --l cosby to marvin gaye everything. he was into pop music.

we were listening to it in the mornings on the way to school, and on the weekends we listened to kids. i got a pop music was the old records. i knew a lot of music, so i did not get into the pot until junior high school. when i got into it from -- into hip-hop until high school. gooi knew the samples and was familiar with the records. >> you knew they were not the first ones to come up with it. >> even when i did not know them, that was one of the things about being a teenager, hearing the record and getting the sample. that is crazy. ifis: i love that you do

your own way. i am always honored to have you on the program. tell your mom i said hi. >> i will. with us.ay a conversation with dan fagan is coming out in just a moment. ago, a die manufacturer brought jobs to a small new jersey town, but it also spewed chemical waste into the air so toxic a community was riddled with cancer. the efforts to close that is in his book. thank you for your work, and i am honored to have you on this program. >> toms river is a town in new

jersey. it is halfway between new york city and philadelphia, and it is too far from either city to benefit from prosperity. times were tough in the early 1950 costs. the chemical industry came to town in 1953. plant, ned a huge dye and at the time the people thought it was a wonderful thing. those were good middle-class blue-collar jobs so you could buy a house if you were fortunate enough to get that --d of opposition puritan that kind of position. in the short run things were looking good. >> what happened? there was a specific reason the swiss company that ran the it was an be welcome there..

when you make this eye you generate -- this dye, generate a lot of waste. they started generating huge volumes of waste, and they would or intot on the ground the river, which is more like a creek, so it starts to generate a lot of pollution, and it contaminated the water wells. though first were on the property itself, so they knew what they were doing quickly. >> they knew what they were doing quickly, but it often takes a while for these medical repercussions to show themselves. >> that is true. that is one of the great frustrations about environmental health issues.

sometimes you have immediate affect. you often have chronic affects the take a while to show themselves. it is tough to tie it to the original cause. that is why we have the study of patterns, but it is hard to draw those connections. my book is about the essential process of connecting the dots. about the your point subtle, difficult way to connect the dots, the kind of work it takes to make this happen, it raises the question about who steps up to fight for these communities, often impoverished, when these kinds of atrocities are being leveled

against them. found is it is often the community itself. the impetus often has to come from the community itself, and that is what happened dinin toms river. there was a woman who knows what look like a lot of cancer among children, including her own child. that really bothered her. the experts said, and you do not understand. this is complicated science. this is beyond you. let us take care of it. she would not shut up. she was not the only one. there was also a nurse. she saw a lot of cancer cases going to philadelphia. a wonderful hospital bed its patients from all over the world. why were there so many from toms

ver. they told her, you are just a nurse. she did not feel that way, sir she spoke up. people that are not experts, observant members of the community spoke up, and eventually knowledge came. tavis: that is a great illustration. a knowledge and a kind of justice. >> justice to me means a fair recompense, and i do not know what they're could ever before the loss of child -- what there could ever be for the loss of a appropriately compensate someone. came in the form of

legal settlement. it came in a vindication for these families who had been told over and over, there is nothing going on here. we have got it under control, and ultimately a very sophisticated investigation found there was a cluster, and at least for certain kinds of cancer it was quite likely the reason there was a cluster of cancers was because of pollution from the factory and an illegal different part of town. that almost never happens. it is difficult to draw the line, but that happened in this case. i think that is a really good lesson. historical a car -- historically, what kind of

partner is the government in pushing back on what is typically corporate america, which is most often responsible for this? >> i have been writing about these issues for a long time. i am not naive, but i was they consistently took the side of the polluters, and that finally began to change once the community raised and also was there was a political thet in america starting in 1980's and the 1990's. eventually the government became a force for good, but it took a long time, and the real impetus had to come from the community. i will let you unpacked about then words

turning of of a blind eye by the about putting the kind of focus on these kinds of stories, on the issuesf environmental justice that come to light. >> i am a member of the media myself, so in a way i am criticizing myself, but my friends who are environmental journalists generally agree. we see a rollback of environmental coverage, and we are very distressed about it. i belong to a great group, but the people who work in that group are increasingly stressed about how to make a living, because many of them used to work for newspapers but do not any more because of environmental coverage has been cut back, and it is a chronic knee problem. i am also a professor,helping ct

generation, and i am worried about work. will they be able to reach an audience? these are critical to the future of our world. tavis: talk to me about the decreasing coverage media outlets are giving to environmental issues, yet the turning up of volume in society about sustainability. how can the conversation be growing and the coverage be --inking >> is strange. it is a good thing we are talking about climate change, which is an epic issue.

one of the two or three most important issues we will confront over the next century. that conversation is largely happening outside of journalism, which is a concern for me. i worry about our people getting good quality information that helps people make decisions. if all they are getting is , i really worry they are not going to be able to make a decision in the voting booth, and i am concerned that is going to happen. tavis: what say you as a journalist about the ongoing debate about the science of these issues? >> people have a funny idea about science. they think it is tantamount to magic that will give you the

answer if only you know the right incantation. that is not what science is. science is a process. it is the best school we have, but it is not perfect. -- it is the best school we have, but it is not perfect. and we still have to make ethical choices. science cannot do it all. we have to be wise human beings. tavis: finally, in your subtitles' salvation. >> it is salvation. the water and the soil is reasonably clean. it is certainly no reason to be concerned about living there now, and for the families involved, after many decades of fighting, they know their instincts were right. there was a cancer cluster, and as best science can determine,

it is likely at least some of those cancers were caused by pollution. that is a form of salvation, but it is not perfect. nothing will bring the children back. ." the book is "toms river thank you for your work, and i am honored to have you on the program. good night from l.a. thanks for watching. as always, keep the faith. today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with olympia snowe about why she walked away from her senate seat she had for 18 years. that is next time. we will see you then. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i try to live my life every day

by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminating hunger and we have work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. pbs.

schools are the big winner in governor jerry brown's revised budget while he pushing back on calls to spend elsewhere. >> this is not the time to break out the champagne. >> over $1 billion unspent in a home loan program for veterans while thousands of vets go homeless. will the new bay bridge be safe? a federal probe puts transportation officials on the hot seat. >> what is caltrans going to do to earn the trust of the public? and anna deavere smith on the value of empathy from the board room to the court room. >>