tavis: good evening. tonight, a conversation with writer brian jay jones about his new biography of jim jensen, creator of one of this country's most beloved characters, come at the fraud. despite his childlike wonder, he was a complex man -- kermit the frog. despite his childlike wonder, he was a complex man can and then we will talk with kathy eldon about the struggles to rebuild her life after the devastating loss of her son. we are glad you have joined us. those conversations coming up right now.

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: jim henson, creator of kermit the frog, ms. agee and so many of the muppets is no doubt a beloved american icon. more complex than his

followers made have imagined. book written by brian jay jones, let's take a look first at a clip at how jim henson action created kermit the frog. >> he is one of the supposed puppets. inside of his head, there's nothing in there but my hand. so it's just a little cloth pattern here. the eyes were half spheres. but he's very simple as puppets go. some have gone a lot more completed. but he is truly a glorified sock puppet. tavis: you were telling me during the clip of that for you he was what you referred to as creatively restless during >> yeah, a guy -- restless. but yeah, guy who is constantly pitching. even a guy with the most famous always the world was

creating stuff. >> that creative restlessness was born of what? >> from the very early age, his dearmother, who he called , always encouraged him to drive to painted to so. he was always encouraged by his parents and his grandparents to go out there and find the fun in things, find the fun in life. had he been he references a wee bit and you go into it much more in this new book. in terms of talking about the way he redesigned these muppets, , whenpuppets, as it were they were at the time many still made of wood. i will let you tell more about the way he treated them. nuc kermit's face move or the other -- when you see kermit's face move or the other muppets, in the actual design of these characters. >> his real genius

in puppets on television is he figured out two things. first of all, if you are on television, the to -- the puppet has to be expressive and you have to have a mouth that moves and eyes a look focus. he figured i'd have to design and build puppets that look like that. but the two things that he did that seemed natural in our same little mole -- or seem normal is that you don't need a puppeteer. he would just film the puppet show. jim decided and realized early on you don't need that. the four sides of your tv screen are your puppet theater. that was a huge breakthrough, realizing you can just film the puppet in real space and real- time. but the other thing he also figured out was that, if that is what matters, you need to know what the camera is seeing at all times. so he put a monitor on the floor so he can always watch his performance and adjust in real- time. and they still do that today on "a misuse street -- "on sesame

street." thes: i came across for umpteenth time the movie "ted" with a little talking teddy bear. a huge hit,s obviously, in part because ted was so crass, the teddy bear was so crass. it made me think about jim henson and how he had become iconic the world over for muppets that were funny but also had something to say. he succeeded in a world where crass cells but that is not the route he decided to go. >> someone once said that jim made to get hollywood without ever raising his voice and that he was a guy that, for him, he sort of hit that sweet spot between the chaos of the looney --es cartoons and never got there is nothing ever mean- spirited about the muppets.

they were funny and they were poking at each other and, at the end of the day, they came together as a family. tavis: there is a good picture on the back of henson with all of these muppets. hemeans sensome sense on how can up with all of these ideas. >> he was a great collaborator. he always gave his performers the room he needed to find a character. sometimes a came up with a scrap an idea in drying. ernie and bert was a contrast. jim had drawn a horizontal character and a vertical character. that was re: funny. puppetsy put on these once they were built. iny would play with them front of the mirror and figure out who is going to do what. and people would say that it made sense because frank was ernie and jim was bert. but then you take a ms. piggy

that they had elves as a background character in one of the two muppet posted did not catch fire. in the first season of the muppet show, that actors past that and for. her voice is early set get there was a d jackson that called for her to slap kermit. and frank oz decided to turn that into a karate chop and hit kermit with that karate chop and you immediately knew you had it. they knew that that was the character right there. bonnie erickson, who designed her, described her as a truck driver who thinks he is a fashion model. [laughter] tavis: there are a couple of things you said. one of them is -- this is so uncommon in the world of needed today -- if the pilot doesn't catch fire, if the first half of the first season doesn't catch fire, somebody gets canned. infamously now -- i should say famously now, this thing didn't

catch fire. stickand it was really a to address from jim. it did three times to get the muppet show on tv. he had been on variety shows in the 1960s. he knew they could work. he knew they could hold their own for 30 minutes. i'm a, after sesame street hit, he managed to convince michael eisner when he was i -- at abc to fund a pilot. the first pilot was called valentine show. it doesn't do anything. the second one is called the muppet show, sex and violence, which he thought was hilarious and it didn't catch fire either. those people after the first and second would have said alright, that's a point to. jim knew that it would work. found someoney who invested in jim and said i will give you $125,000 an episode, which is if i'm a low amount of money in 1935. -- which is a phenomenal amount of money in 19 75.

what does the muppet show, when it was on, say about our culture? it's not just characters. why did he think that they would play in the culture at that time? >> there is a timelessness to the muppets even then. the muppet show is fascinating because it is a time capital -- time capsule of the 1970s. you have elton john and the crazy feathers and alice cooper and steve martin. it sort of personifies the 70s and it still has the timeless feel because jim placed it in that vaudeville theater. that gave it the timelessness it needed for people to feel like, geez, the muppets have always been here. it just feels like they were always there from the very beginning. tavis: what is the story for how kermit turned out to be a frog? >> kermit was kind of kermit the thing when it started. he came out in 1955. he was ill from jim's mother's

coat. he was always loving muppets -- built from jim's mother's coat. he was always building muppets. the faces is the kind of the same shape and he has big padded feet and floppy arms. he was just this abstract and all ofn the cast the characters are kind of vague and abstract. and jim really like to that. but as the 1960s progressed coming eventually, he took that character and put a collar on him to narrate something. when you see the footage of that in black and white, he has a crenellated collar around his neck. there's the frog right there. i think that was probably one of the moments when they knew that was it. jim later on said come in a way, it was a little sad to lose that abstract because he really liked that. he thought it something between warm and cool. begin the something to hang onto

at that point. anyway, they are not working quite as hard. the relationship between the audience and the puppeteer is a little different. he likes that abstraction. top line for me what you think sesame street and beyond, its value to the culture has been and will be? >> for jim, starting with sesame street, he really wanted television to matter. jim always wanted his projects to matter. that is one of the big sort of values and ethics that always informed jim's work. sesame street was about making learning fun. something like friable rock was three different species living together harmoniously, whether they knew it or not and how thebs was imagination can solve a problem in a multiple different ways. jim wanted things to mean something. le famously told his fragg

rock team that i want to come up with something that will stop war. it had to meet something -- it had to mean something. it makes the characters timeless and resonate with us today. they had to be about something. tavis: puppetry and animation are two different things. does this tell us anything about henson might say about the state of puppetry today? >> it's hard to tell. at the time of jim's death, he was trying to sell the company to the walt disney company and put the muppets and sort of a -- and place them in the hands of the dismay company to manage. one of the conditions of that agreement was that he also wanted his own independent company. so he was ready to let the muppets be on their own and take his own production company and do something we hadn't even thought about now. so it's hard to say what he would have done with puppetry later. it is hard to say where he would have gone with technology. someone once asked me if he

would use cgi. or what he would have done with it. he always found a different way to use a thing. that is where jim today you would really see him doing some really fun and interesting things. but he is so hard to pin down. you don't know where he will go. tavis: because he is so far ahead of us. [laughter] pretty simple, pretty straightforward. henson was known -- was not so supply straightforward. jim henson, the buyer fee, written by brian g jones. thank you for the work. good to have you on the program. coming up up, kathy eldon, author of in the heart of life. stay with us. tavis: putting your life together after a catastrophic losses at the center of a new memoir called "in the heart of life" by kathy of them.

she struggled to have a meaningful life for herself after her son was killed at the age of 22 while covering the conflict in somalia for reuters. to forgivend a way her son's assailants was one way . kathy eldon, good to have you on this program. >> and lead you mention the humor. tavis: let me start, if i might, given that you lived in nairobi and the kenya, with your thoughts on this still developing story in some ways, about this terrific incident at this mall in nairobi. >> there's not a civil person that i have talked to in nairobi that wasn't personally affected by the killings and i feel particularly sad because it takes us right at 20 years to when my son was killed and the underlying causes of why daniel and his colleagues were killed, as to why these young men are so angry and beyond evil. they are

really related. >> and the underlying causes then and now are what? >> it is a lawless country and there's a sense of desperation, hopelessness, helplessness. there is a fundamentalist, way outsiders who have been trained by al qaeda. al qaeda was actually nurtured in the lawlessness of somalia after the americans were pulled out after black hawk down, which was just after my son was killed. tothere is this direct line what is happening now. i am so troubled because i can't figure out with. it. ie sense of vengeance -- can't figure out what will stop it. the sense of vengeance. avenging and avenging come i don't know what will stop it in . when dan and his colleagues were

there, no journalist had been killed. so it was a different situation than now. now, the only journalists covering somalia are local journalists and they are incredibly brave. i am in touch with a number of somali journalists. if we didn't have any journalists and that, we would know what's happening. we would be able to respond or get behind her advocate for policies that might actually improve things. i am in all of the journalists who actually take upon themselves to cover conflict zones or places where their lives are at risk. tavis: you did a special for cnn at one and talking about this very issue. >> yes, called dying to tell the story. my. remy -- we went to seven different countries to understand why rimless do what they do and what that dog does to them. one could really interesting incident in my book, when we visited kris jenner among poor, one of the bravest people i have ever met.

but she is doing her job -- , oneed christian amanpour of the bravest people i have ever met. but she's doing her job so that people understand what is going on in the world. threats of what we need to understand and the will to be informed and engaged, that is sometimes a challenge. tavis: i am seeing more and more women who are courageously putting themselves out and npr has some courageous reporters. laura logan comes to mind at cbs when she was over there. obviously, christian and others. i'm not trained to pull names. i'm just making the point that there are more women courageous now than ever to get these stories out. what do you make of this? >> i said -- i shared an office with marianne fitzgerald. she was so insanely brave. she got more stories than the guys sometimes. she was beautiful. tavis: that helps. >> absolutely. why not? i was a journalist myself in

kenya but i wasn't covering war zones. of course, women are just as rate as men and sometimes even braver. tavis: tell me about your son dan. i don't want to color that question too much deliberately good but tell me about dan. courageous, active, creative spirit. he saw the light in people. esop potential. he was a closet artist. he created journals that we did not even know about. after he was killed, we discovered about 20 journals that he had sort of locked away. and those we transformed into a series of books. i have had the joy of watching those oaks inspire people all over the planet to really find their own creative's ark and their own sense of activism. about his professional choices and decisions to do what he was doing as a photojournalist. >> i suppose in a way he -- my footsteps.

he was trailing me when as following people in nairobi for many years and taking photographs for me. so it was a very natural thing. but when he heard about a terrible famine in somalia, they wanted to go find out for himself what was happening. he went in with a friend from reuters. his photographs were among the first to awaken the world to the famine that was raging there. it helped launch the operation restore hope and bring in the marines. you know yourself. it is very compelling when you have that power, your perceived power. he went back again and again for the next year and became the photojournalist for reuters in the country. he was not a cowboy. he was a very cautious person. everybody wanted to be with him because he had been brought up in africa. so his decisions were very conscious big when he went in that final time, he was under protection and there was no reason to believe that he would be killed. witho get -- but together three other journalist, he was stoned and beaten to death.

in the book, there is an image. three years before he was killed, he did that picture. tavis: he ended up being subjected to what he drew. what do you make of that? >> i don't know. i have grappled with all of these questions. i believe that spirits have an enduring quality. emerson always talked about the one thing in the world of value is the active soul. and i don't think that soul necessarily dies after we are dead and maybe there is a sense of sometimes we know more than we think we know about our lives and our demise. tavis: emerson talks about an active soul. your subtitle is a restless soul . i know that mothers -- i know it's not supposed to be this way. parents are not supposed to bury their children. i recognize that you never close on the death of a loved one the way you close on a house. how do you can do terms -- i don't want to say peace with it, but had you come to terms with

losing a son? >> i'm so glad you didn't say the word closure. after dan was killed, i realize i had to transform that horror into something that had purpose and value it immediately, we get very involved with journalists at risk. we created a foundation that is all about creative activism and it's about all about those great effect a people that i got to interview in nairobi. andocus on people in arts media for good. so every moment in every day of my life, i get to wake up and work with amazing people and nurture them in the way that i might have nurtured my son or my grandchildren that he might have had. we have a loss of any kind, it's important that you find something to focus on two takes you out of the horrific sorrow. you have to go through it, but don't remain in the grease. find something that you can nurture the way that you would that being a loved. tavis: is it your way of saying that you are no longer searching

for meaning, that you found what you need to be doing for the rest of your life? >> i think i will continue to be an active and restless soul. i have found tremendous peace and joy beyond my wildest imagination in my deepest sorrow when i was there in the sense of possibility. and i think that what i do which is help nurture their attention, not only for the best for themselves, but also for the world. it is not always easy. but it's -- i'm never bored, not for a minute. and again to continue being a curious soul, like you, you know? tavis: yeah. did me a sense of what it has , as ano your life american, to have lived abroad. >> it is the best thing ever. when it was 16, i was a foreign it stains student -- a foreign exchange student living with an uncle who was defending nelson

mandela. so people who were tragically brainwashed about anybody of color as being -- you had to become a part. so that initially, to realize -- i'm from iowa -- that the world i hadt exactly what perceived it to be, it gave me less for much more and have traveled to many countries. it is in that travel where we see the scripts we are given i just really scripts. other people see the world in a completely different way. and maybe more clever or more brighter than the way we are perceiving it can tavis: the american people are a very caring people and all it takes is for some disaster to happen for you to see that kind of outpouring of concern. i sometimes fret and fear that come as hard as photojournalist and foreign correspondents work to empower us with information -- with information, is because we are jaded or cynical or nativist or

quite frankly just busy trying to navigate our own lives in a country where are own democracies being threatened by poverty and other issues, that we don't pay attention, that we don't connect to what is happening in places like kenya or somalia or whatever. say a word to me about how journalists navigate oohing the kind of work, their calling, their profession, their vocation, knowing that there are a bunch of folks back home and some don't get it and most won't. >> it is pretty tough. in the congress part of that come if we can educate children -- right now, in america, the world doesn't exist. if we bring news into classrooms -- and i think it was every four cnn had a wonderful newsroom and maybe there still some attempt -- but the only way you can engage people and they are older is if they have caught the bug when they are younger. the canadians do that with better than probably we do. it is engagement in the sense

that you have the potential to do something. it's teaching people that they can be the creative activist in their own environment and in the world, the larger world. tavis: thank you for sharing your story. i appreciated. the book is called "in the heart of life, a restless soul commissioners for meaning and a bond that nothing could break." eldon. memoir by kathy at the heart of the stories the death of her 22-year-old son dan, a third journalist in mogadishu. a photojournalist in mogadishu. that is our show for tonight. as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley on pbs.org. tavis: join me next time for a conversation with henry louis gates junior about his new six- part series "african-american." that is next time.

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more.

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