The following is a special presentation of WTCI in Chattanooga, north Georgia, and the Tennessee Valley.

You know, it's really interesting because the depression to me was all I knew.

He's a business mind revered on international levels with a childhood rooted in the Great Depression.

And he's made billions in his lifetime.

I don't spend money foolishly.

So what does he spend his money on?

Meet the man behind the plan, the Pickens Plan.

That is coming up on this edition of the A-list.

I have a message and I'm in a rush.

T Boone Pickens.

Like he said, he's making the rounds advocating a plan.

He is one of a very select few business leaders who could be considered a household name.

And he's now traveling the nation advocating a new take on energy reform.

The magnitude of the problem, as it's 70% of our oil, we go forward ten years like we are history for 40 years, no plan.

In ten years, we will be importing 75% of our oil and we'll be paying $300 a barrel.

Now, if that happens, we saw two problems in America.

It's health care and education, because if you're paying $300 a barrel, that $2 trillion a year for oil, you don't have enough money to take care your health care and education.

Or anything else.

His most recent endeavor brings a new distinction to the energy industry as he seeks to reduce America's dependency on foreign oil.

I got the opportunity to catch up with T. Boone Pickens himself on campus at the University of the South in Suwannee, Tennessee.

Well, Mr. Pickens, it is a thrill to meet you.

Welcome to the A-list.

Thanks.

Thank you.

I look forward to coming over here.

You're quite a rock star these days.

You're everywhere.

You're on the news, you're on the radio.

You're on Facebook.

There's not many places you're not.

Now you're in Swanee.

So welcome to the South.

The I have I have a message and I'm in a rush because of my age.

Oh, well, you're looking good for your age.

Thanks.

But the it's a message that's important for this country.

And if it's important for the country, it needs to be done as quickly as possible.

Well, before we get to your message, which you have many of and your Pickens Plan, which I cannot wait to discuss.

Let's go back a little bit, if you don't mind.

Can we talk about How far back do you want to go?

Well, I want to go from Oklahoma.

Let's go to Holdenville.

There's some great stories there which I think really, at least for me and I know for our viewers, will get at the crux of your childhood and your upbringing and the way you were raised.

And I think what has really made you the success story that you are today and the driven individual and entrepreneur that you are today.

So I want to talk about that.

Tell me about your childhood in Holdenville, Oklahoma.

There's too much to tell you.

The you know, I was an only child and.

And that's a great story.

It is.

We were you tell us that story.

1928.

I was born May 22nd.

And my mother could not deliver.

And the doctor told my dad said he's going to have to decide who survived.

And my dad said, no.

And they talked and closed the door.

And he showed him a page and a half in a medical book.

And it was cesarean section in 1928.

The lucky part at that point was my dad, of course, leadership.

He did.

And that he had a doctor that was a surgeon.

And so he talked him into to doing this, this area.

They didn't have another cesarean at hospital for 25 years.

Do you imagine being that lucky on the beginning.

For that kind of has stayed with you?

Do you think that that sort of grit that your father had the determination to say, I'm not going to accept what you give me.

I want it.

I want it the way I want?

It has had an impact on your life.

No question.

You know, I'm a lot like my dad in so many ways, but a lot like my mother, too.

My mother had some traits that were just unbelievably sound.

Everything was logical.

He didn't he didn't do anything stupid.

But my dad was liable to do something foolish from time to time.

And my mother.

And you are kind of raised by I like to call them the three wise women.

Your mom, your grandmother, and your aunt.

Right.

My aunt with my schoolteacher and my grandmother in show.

She did it.

She had it.

Now growing up, the only child in the house full of those very strong women and a father who was had that sort of influence on you.

What was it like during the Depression in terms of what your goals were, what you knew, the expectations of you were?

You know, it's really interesting because the depression, to me was all I knew.

I haven't seen anything before.

So I had nothing to compare it to.

So it was easy.

I mean, how you know, my dad didn't like it when we didn't have meat for dinner, and that's fine.

With those three women, I mean, where they garden and a lot of vegetables.

And it didn't mean anything to me because, you know, I didn't know it.

And it was.

It was good.

It was all good.

So I was never had any conflicts.

I never had any pressure.

It was just is the greatest upbringing, a boy could ever have.

You had all the leadership around you and, you know, and everybody was frugal at that point.

So it caused me to to have those same characteristic tics now.

And I heard you're an entrepreneur since a pretty early age.

You had a newspaper out which you acquired more.

That's right.

I had around 28 papers.

And then what happens around would come open next to me.

I'd talk to my boss as Ross Middleton, and I said, Let me have it.

I said, I've got a better collection record than anybody does on the round.

And that And so he I finally left 156 papers.

I mean, it was a real it was a real ride.

On your bicycle.

On a bike.

And I could I could throw right or left handed or didn't hit ever porch, but I delivered every paper.

So.

Now, did you have to have a job or was that something that was important to you at the time?

It's pretty clear to me that I needed to be occupied doing something other than just playing football on the corner lot, right?

So and would use the money for.

I saved it, drove my mother crazy because she didn't know how much money I had and I had it hidden.

And there was a Harris a crawlspace in my closet under the house, and I had a rug over there and she never thought to look down there and I hid it in a can.

And I kept and then she she tore up the place trying to find me, find the money, see how much I had.

How much did you have?

Well, when she finally got the number from me is $276.

That's a lot of money back then.

Oh, it.

Was.

It was several years to write.

A lot of newspaper throwing.

Right now, earning, saving and then giving.

It took years for pick and success to manifest.

And those studying business and Pickens career may find that he's had three major failures, only to pull himself out of those depths to reach even greater heights of success.

But just how does he do it?

Is it something one can actually be taught?

And where does all of his money go?

Talk to me about that.

Talk to me about your successes.

But what that the kind of responsibility that's come with that?

Well, I didn't make $1,000,000,000 to last seven years old, so I played for a long time before I got there.

And I've always liked to give money away for good causes, of course.

And and I have given now $700 million where I was looking forward to a year ago that I would get to $1,000,000,000 and I was going to have a big family party when we gave away $1,000,000,000.

And then along comes a bad market and and it's going to take me a while to get up to the beat.

And I was I thought I could do it maybe this year, but no way.

So but I want to do it, though.

Why is that important to you?

It's just another goal just to get there began.

But what about the giving back part?

Why is that important?

I don't know.

I just.

I figured out a long time ago, You can't take it with you.

And I don't want to leave any of my kids Rich.

If they're going to do that, they'll have to do it on their own.

Really?

And so but, you know, I help them and they're in deals with me from time to time.

And they all do.

Well, they all work.

And that's that's so important to me.

Pickens says his legacy is his family, his children and his grandchildren, and he's concerned about our nation's future generations.

In 1970, we were importing 24% of our oil from foreign countries.

By 1990, we are importing 42%.

Getting worse fast.

Now we're 2008 and we are importing almost 70%.

The cost has $700 billion.

We've got to do something about 700 billion, because just multiply that times ten and that's $7 trillion.

We can't afford it.

Time magazine listed Pickens in their top 100 Builders and Titans issue.

And as one of the most influential people in 2008.

In that same issue, Ted Turner says that Pickens is not your average retiree.

Turner goes on to say that one of Boone's favorite so-called Boone isms is one he learned from his dad, which is a fool with a plan can outsmart a genius with no plan.

Taking his father's words to heart, he launched an initiative in the summer of 2008 and now travels the world speaking and advocating.

So talk to me about 2008.

Taking a break from the oil industry and getting into wind and announcing the Pickens Plan.

Well, the wind looked like it was easy and.

But wind is priced off the margin.

The margin is natural gas power.

And when natural gas is $8, it's wind there's a good deal.

And natural gas went to $4, that means winds a bad deal.

And so we've already experienced a huge down dip in our wind operation.

And so we're now working hard to get a start.

We're going to receive start to receive turbines.

Wind turbines, big.

They're bigger in this room.

And the and they'll be arriving 2000 later in my garage in that large.

So I've got to start putting turbines spinning making money by 2000.

That's okay that's that be a challenge but we'll get there that all come together and the Pickens Plan.

I launched July the eighth, 2008, and that came out of frustration that the United States for 40 years had never had an energy plan.

And I decided I was the only one that really understood how bad it was.

And so I think, you know, here in America and you love the country and you have a mission, you do it.

And so this became my mission.

And I spent $60 million telling the people in America what we're all up against than anything to do with politics.

It's totally nonpartisan issue.

And so I did that.

And I'm still doing it, and that's why I'm here.

So on the day I talk to my clients and environmentalist and I have a talk to a large group, I think two or 300 to 2 or 300 people.

And and it's the same message.

And it's that I want to get everybody I can signed up with me because it really isn't my generation problem.

It's the young people in this university and around the United States.

They better get it solved because if they don't and we go forward like we've gone 40 years in the past is no plan.

We go forward ten years, still no plan.

Then we will be importing 75% of all the oil we use every day in the United States, and we'll be paying $300 a barrel for it.

I'm convinced of all that.

I know.

I've read that we have 4% of the world's population, and yet we use 25% of the world's oil.

So this is going to reduce.

Is going to be.

It.

It sounds terrible when you put it that way.

That's exactly right.

We're using 25% of all the oil every day in the world.

So this would reduce our dependance on oil.

By how much?

Well, I would like to have and I've talked to President Obama about this and he's in total agreement that he use in his speeches sometimes that in ten years we will not be importing any oil from the Mideast or paying his oil.

And now I think that can be accomplished.

When you talk to your grandkids about their future, what message do you hope to leave with them?

They've heard this story a lot.

And so when we have a favorite interested.

Okay, I want to give you all just kind of the blood, guts and feathers of the Pickens plan.

They said, Oh, Poppa, not again.

I said, okay, I'm going to ask three questions.

If you answer them, you don't get the whole story.

But if you don't answer them, you all got to sit here and listen.

I said, okay, what are they?

They answer every one of them.

They got it down.

So it's I tell them, you know, you had the my grandmother always said this.

She said, Sonny, that someday everybody has to sit on their own bottom.

I meaning you have to be on your own and be responsible for yourself.

And they all know that.

And then they say, then I said, Very well.

My grandmother said, Yes, we have to sit on our own.

So they get it.

I mean, I drove it in all the time, but they like it.

They think it's funny and we have fun doing it.

So they are they part of your the soldiers, part of your plan?

They're all signed up.

Yeah, all the vacancies on them.

One very interesting tidbit about Pickens comes from the 2004 presidential election.

You may remember that during this time, a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth led a campaign to discredit then presidential candidate John Kerry's war record.

Anything he can find material untrue in the ads that you'll give him $1,000,000.

Exactly.

Okay.

Has he come forward with what he found in the ads specifically?

You're very specific.

Has he found anything that's not true?

No.

And so and you're asking, hey, give me the journal, Give me a military record.

And if you do that, which he has not released, has he?

No, he is anything but John.

You know, he's just now answering something that happened three years ago.

Hey, so I don't want to rush him into response.

And eight day as long as he wants the.

And during that time, Pickens offered $1,000,000 to anyone who could disprove the accusations made by those Swift Boat vets.

I know a lot of your popularity has stemmed from the Swift Boat controversy during the presidential election when John Kerry was running.

Could you tell us a little about that?

You know, it was a long time ago.

It was the 2004 campaign.

And I felt like I wanted more people to understand and know Senator Kerry better than I feel like the media was telling the story.

So that's what it was all about.

I'm out of politics now.

And to majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat, of course.

And I talked to him.

He said, look, I'm out of politics.

And he said, let me tell you.

He said, I've competed against you for years.

You're tough competitor.

He said, I also know you're an honest man.

He said, if you're out, you're out.

And if you tell me something, I believe it.

And so he said, Good.

So I don't even dabble in politics five years ago.

Do you have pretty good bipartisan support?

Oh, I'm sure I do, because it's a non edition, not a partizan issue.

It's about America.

It's about us, the people.

And that means it's not political.

It's a problem we have.

It's very similar to war, very similar war without guns.

But this has to be solved by all of us.

Everybody has to understand it.

There could be some sacrifices.

I think it will go very smooth.

But there could be some inconveniences from time to time.

But we can handle it.

The American people can handle it if they know it's good for all of us.

We're going to get there.

I believe it.

I do, too.

Did you know America uses 25% of the world's oil, but only has 3% of the world's oil reserves.

And the big debate in Washington now is whether or not to drill.

I say drill, drill, drill.

But the debate misses the point.

Either way, we'll still be dependent on foreign oil.

And it's one thing to see Pickens name in the headlines.

To hear about him on television or to read about him on the Web.

But the true treasure is hearing the memories and reflections of this man directly from him.

I'm T Boone Pickens.

Join with me and we'll take back our energy future.

Well, tell me the story about the day that you found the wallet.

I found a wallet that is over on Broadway Street and it was in grass about this deep.

And I was walking up to the porch to collect from this for the paper.

And I looked down and saw this wallet, and I picked it up in the guy's name.

And it was not the person that I was going to the door.

The person's name is saying it live down the street, three or four blocks, three or four houses down the street.

And so I collected for the paper and went down and and told this man.

I said that, you know, found your wallet.

And he said, oh, my gosh.

He said, Thank you.

Well, then you do have credit cards.

You know, this this would be in about 1940.

And so he said but he said, I really said, I've got, you know, my driver's license, everything.

He said, I want I want to give you a reward for it.

He gave me a dollar and I couldn't believe it that that at that time, my rat, I made a 28 payment.

I made a penny of paper a day.

So I was $0.28 is what I make every day of that small rat when I started.

So that's four times what I was normally making, you know?

So I got home and my mother, grandmother.

And it was and it was in the summer, it was hot day.

It's over in eastern Oklahoma.

And so they were sitting on a back porch.

They brought it up.

And I was really excited and told them the windfall of.

Gold.

There, you know, And boy, I tell you, they never even smiled or said, Good for you, son or her bully or anything.

I said, my grandmother's wallet delivered the message.

She said, take the take the money back to to Mr. Jenkins said.

And I said, Take the money back.

He gave it to me.

He wants me to have it, she said, But we don't reward anybody for being honest.

So I said, This would be a good experience for you to take the money back.

Gosh, I didn't go down easy, you know?

I played with them, played with them, play with.

Anyway, so finally I saw that it was going back.

So I got them back, went back over there and it was about, I don't know, six or eight blocks away.

And I had to cross Burgess Street, which is a drainage canal for the for the town and I was going over there, start to sprinkle.

By the time I gave him the dollar, he said, I want you to help me out, but I've got some family members don't want me to have it as the banks gave it.

He thought I was crazy.

And so I turn and start back.

It's pouring down rain at this point.

I had to push my back through the river that was running through the town then.

And I got back.

And of course I want to make it look as bad as I possibly could.

So I rode up there and they were still sitting on the porch and I said, I almost drowned and I'll still be around.

And he said, If you're gone, when we told you to, you'd be in back for right?

And that's the kind of sympathy I got from those women.

That's also the kind of morals they instilled in you.

Are those the kind of values that you think you've taken with you into business?

Oh, the no question they are a big part of it.

Came off that back porch with those three women hammered on me.

I had a cousin who almost did everything right.

He's five years older now.

He's a lot better student than I was.

He's he my aunt, my mother sister said to her one time, she said, you know, you take too much conversation from Boone when you tell him to do something.

And my mother said, Ethel, do you realize Bob doesn't say anything?

And then he goes and does what he wants to?

I'd rather know what Boone's going to do then.

Bob do what he wants to if you tell him what to do.

So those two sisters were always a little bit at odds over their sons.

T Boone Pickens is speaking to everyone, not just to the political powers that be, but he's speaking to all voters, all energy users, to those who drive, to those who flip a switch.

He's speaking to anyone who can help him make a difference in his struggle for a solution that could ultimately save the nation billions before the end of this decade.

Yes, sir.

250 million.

And what's been the reception when you go places from universities to big corporate America?

What's been the general reception?

The guy in the USA Today on that front page story on the financial section, he said I was an 80 year old rock star.

So I like it.

He and I agree.

Good.

Thank you.

Well, we wish you well on the Pickens plan.

We hope that that this vision for America will come true.

I think if we can all get behind it in the next ten years, we can reduce our dependency on that.

And I also hope that when you have that party for giving away $1,000,000,000, you'll invite us to come.

Well, I would like to get there sooner than later on that.

But what I want is that your audience here that if they will come on Pickens plan dot com and sign up with me I need everybody's help and I think I left a good message today with the young people here that look it's your responsibility.

I had one young lady when I walked out she said I've accepted the part of the responsibility and I will be signed up and I will help.

And I think that that kind of spoke for for the students here, that they they will accept responsibility.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you for joining us on the A-list.

And I want you to know, I've signed up so thank you.

Hopefully I'll be part of the solution, too.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming.

Sure.

Coming up next week, I'll take you behind the scenes and in-depth with a man who's a PBS favorite for his ability to tell America's story.

But this time he opens up about himself.

And my dad had a really strict curfew, but he relaxed it.

If there was a movie made on TV, I'd stay up till 2:00 with him on a school night, or he'd take me off to some cinema guild and I'd see some old American silent film or some European New Wave cinema.

And it was the first time I'd seen my dad cry, Didn't cry at my mom's funeral, but he cried at a movie.

And I understood at 12 or 13 years old there was a power to this.

And be sure to join me for an intimate conversation like nothing you've ever seen with Ken Burns.

This is the A-list.

I'm Allison Lebovitz.

See you then.