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RELATED LINKS

• Nick News on Nickelodeon
• Ms. Ellerbee and Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State
• Ms. Ellerbee on Lifetime's Intimate Portrait

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Tavis: Pleased to welcome back Linda Ellerbee to this program. The award-winning journalist, producer, author, and popular TV host is out this summer with a new book about her many adventures around the world. Next month she vies for an Emmy award for her terrific children's series, 'Nick News.' That Emmy, I suspect, would fit nicely on the mantle, assuming she has room, alongside her other Emmys, her Peabodys, and her Alfred Dupont award. The new book, though, is called, 'Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the world And Across the Table.' She joins us tonight from New York. Linda, nice to have you back, and happy belated birthday.

Linda Ellerbee: Hey, Tavis, and thank you for the happy birthday.

Tavis: You are more than welcome. And congratulations on the Emmy award.

Ellerbee: Well, we haven't won it yet.

Tavis: The Emmy nomination. That was a Freudian slip, Linda, a Freudian slip.

Ellerbee: I hope you're right.

Tavis: Congrats on the Emmy nomination; and this nomination is for a piece you all did called, 'Never Again: From the Holocaust to the Sudan.' That's some heavy stuff.

Ellerbee: Well, you know, for 14 years, we have been explaining the news to kids on 'Nick News' on Nickelodeon, and we don't shy away from the heavy topics. And we did this one for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, because we thought it was important to tell this story to kids. If you're going to keep the promise, "Never again," you have to know what the promise was about.

And also because, you know, you said, "Well, is that an appropriate subject for kids?' Let us never forget that Hitler's most famous victim was a 13-year-old girl who kept a diary.

Tavis: Yes, Anne Frank. Let me throw a couple issues at you if I can right quick, because I'm just curious how you explain, how you discuss these kinds of issues with young people, specifically the Iraq war.

Ellerbee: Well, we've done two shows already for kids on the Iraq war, and we are very careful. We explain the issues, explain the facts, and then we listen to kids about their fears and their thoughts, because it's important to give them a place where they know their voice is heard. But one of the things we always do, whether it's the Iraq war, whether we're having to do shows about that, or whether it's September 11th or the Oklahoma City bombings, we always point out to them that wherever in the world you find bad things happening, you will always find good people trying to make it better.

Tavis: Is that the same storyline for talking about the Gaza pullout?

Ellerbee: It's interesting. We were over there this spring, and we produced a show for kids on the whole subject of the pullout, and the roadmap to peace, and we talked to so many kids and their parents as well, and good-intentioned, well- intentioned, decent human beings on both sides who say they really want peace, and I believe them. And then you say, "What are you willing to give up for peace?' And it sort of stops there.

And, eventually in that show, I sort of, at the end of the show, said to kids, "You know, it may be up to your generation to solve this, because my generation hasn't done a very good job on solving this.'

Tavis: One last issue, those are two international issues that are gripping the world as we speak. How do you talk about a domestic issue, particularly one that has politics all over it, like the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court? How do you cover something like that with kids, where there are so many, you know.

Ellerbee: I'm not sure that I would cover that one with kids. We'll see what the hearings, you know, bring out. I mean, we really sort of have to wait for these hearings to find out truly who this man is. He's a bit of an enigma. Most of his writings are from when he was a lawyer, and there's a limit to the number of conclusions that you can draw from somebody who was an advocate.

I have to believe, I think that George Bush must know his core beliefs, but then I remember that his father named Souter to the Supreme Court, and Souter turned out to be far more liberal, and I would explain that to kids, that once you're named to the Supreme Court, presidents don't control you anymore. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court. Once they're on that court, they are pretty much their own guys, and women.

Tavis: There you go, although not this time around, given Mr. Roberts' nomination to replace the retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Ellerbee: No, not unless he's contemplating a sex change, no.

Tavis: Exactly. (laughs) Now, that...would get these hearings covered live on television.

Ellerbee: It certainly would, wouldn't it?

Tavis: Yeah. (laughs) Anyway, let me segue from that, not so easily, to the book, Linda Ellerbe, 'Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table.' I love the way you've gone about putting this book together, and I could explain it, but I'll let you do the honors. But each chapter is laid out in an interesting sort of way.

Ellerbee: Well, each chapter takes place in a different part of the world at a different time in my life. And at the end of the chapter, there are a couple of recipes. And partly the reason for that is that, and one of the reasons I wrote this book is it seemed to me to be a very good time to encourage Americans to travel overseas. We need to get to know people all around this world, and see what they believe and who they are. And one of the best ways to do it is to break bread with them. To break bread with people you don't know has always been a symbol of peace, and it's time for us to know these people and not think of the whole world as our enemies.

It's also, I think, a pretty good time forus to travel around this country and start meeting other people, people who are different from us. You know, red staters go to blue states, and blue staters should go to red states, where they will then learn that neither states nor people are so easily categorized.

Tavis: Yes. I want to come back to the book in just a second, and pull out two wonderful chapters I want you to expound upon briefly, if you can. Before I do that, though, I did some international traveling myself over the summer, earlier. And while I think you're absolutely right and I agree with you that it would not hurt us, as Americans, to get out and see the world and quit being so pompous and arrogant about this place called America. On the other hand, you have to be ready for the reality that we are not loved the world over. Now, I have had no difficulty in being able to sit and break bread with people and have great conversation, but you do discover that we ain't as loved as we think we are.

Ellerbee: That's true. In many cases, we are not. But if you listen to why, you may go and think, "Well, it's just, they don't like our administration," or "They don't like the war. They don't like this.' You're going to hear a lot of people tell you, well, they don't like the MTV culture. They don't want Britney Spears to be the role model for their daughters. They don't like, I mean, they have concerns that address their own issues of how they're raised.

On the other hand, I was with a group in Alexandria, Egypt, this summer, this spring, actually, and we were told that we must travel only in a bus with these armored car escorts, that it was too dangerous to go out and walk around Alexandria. Well, another journalist and I didn't much like that idea, so we set out on our own, wandering around this beautiful, old white city on the Mediterranean. And, sure enough, at one point on a busy street, Tavis, we heard shouting and hollering, and we turned around, and a man was running toward us through the crowd.

Ellerbee: And we looked at one another and went, "Have we made a big mistake here?' And when he got to us, all out of breath, he reached in his pocket, and he handed me a half empty plastic bottle of water that I had left in his store about a half mile away. And he had been chasing me this whole time to return the bottle of water.

Tavis: Yeah. That's a great story about humanity. I love hearing those kinds of stories. Speaking of humanity and your travels and exposure to so much of it around the world, pardon the phrase, I want to nibble around the edges.

Ellerbee: You just go to it.

Tavis: Yeah. Let me nibble around the edges of this book, if I might. Although the center is awfully nice and sweet, let me stay on the edges and offer two things that we found of interest. The beginning of the book, 'The Prism of Memory.' Take it.

Ellerbee: I went to Vietnam. I took my son to Vietnam the year after they lifted the embargo in 1995. We went, I was 50. He was 25. We went with totally different perspectives. He was born in 1970. He had no memory of the Vietnam War the way I did, and we sort of saw two different Vietnams, and then I realized once we got there, that the Vietnamese saw us differently. We got there, and we discovered it was Liberation Day, big celebration, and then we looked around, and we realized, they meant liberation from us.

So there is this prism of memory, and it's, again, back to not thinking that the whole world looks at the world through American eyes. On the other hand, we had a wonderful time. But I remember when we were leaving, and another American woman came up to me and she said, "Oh, such a poor country.' And I said, "Well, you know, yes, it is, but that may change.' And she said, "And so few Americans.' And I said, "Well, yes.' And she said, "Well, you'd think we would have kept a base here.' And I said, "Well, ma'am, we lost the war.' And she said, "Well, in that case, a small base.'

Tavis: (laughs) All right, so the book starts with "The Prism of Memory.' It closes with "The River of No Return" on the occasion of your 60th birthday.

Ellerbee: Yes. I decided to go for a little walk on my 60th birthday. I loaded up my backpack, I went to England by myself, and I followed the River Thames 200 miles from its source, to the sea, in celebration of my 60th, or as some of my friends say, in denial of my 60th birthday. And it was an interesting trip because I meant to 'walk in beauty,' as the Navaho say, and to be mindful of all the life around me and my connections to it. But I was really not handling turning 60 as well as I thought, and I had a bad case of monkey brain.

It kept saying, "You're getting old. You're getting old.' And, you know, I didn't like that feeling. But something happened at the end of the trip, and I won't say what it is, because it's in the book, that finally led me to deeply understand that I was as young that moment as I ever would be, and I would never be a moment younger. Whoops. There goes another moment, Tavis.

And I finally came to the conclusion that James Taylor was exactly right. "The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.' And that is how I'm living now.

Tavis: Can I just tell you that I went to see James Taylor earlier this week, on Monday? He sang that song, and it was the most, I mean, I love James Taylor.

Ellerbee: Me, too.

Tavis: But I saw him Monday here in LA, he sang that song. It was a great moment at the Hollywood Bowl, listening to him expound on the lyrics to that song.

Ellerbee: And you knew that you were where you needed to be at that moment.

Tavis: And you know that, and I know where I'm supposed to be at this moment, because any time I get a chance to talk to Linda Ellerbe, is a special moment for me. The new book from Linda is 'Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table.' It's the usual good stuff that you get from Linda in written form, but these recipes are good, too. So, Linda, nice to have you on. All the best to you.

Ellerbee: Thank you so much, Tavis.

Tavis: Take care. Up next, from the hit TV series 'Lost,' actor Naveen Andrews. Stay with us.