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CNN Larry King Weekend

Interviews With Judy Collins, Gary Sinise, Robert Kennedy Jr., Karen Shanor

Aired June 23, 2001 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight: a music legend celebrating four decades as a recording artist, singer, songwriter Judy Collins.

Then, he helped start a theater company when he was just 18, earned his first Oscar nomination for "Forrest Gump," Gary Sinise now burning up Broadway in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Plus, his name is internationally famous, his work cleaning up the world; environmental activist/attorney Robert Kennedy Jr. also joining us in New York.

And, can brain power improve your life? Clinical psychologist Dr. Karen Shanor, author of "The Emerging Mind," gives us a lot to think about. They're all next on LARRY KING WEEKEND.

What a line up of guests tonight on LARRY KING WEEKEND. And we begin with Judy Collins, one of the greatest living female pop vocalists. 40 years in the business with 37 albums and she's starting a new tour, "The Judy Collins Wildflower Festival," which will open in July, right?

JUDY COLLINS, RECORDING ARTIST: Yes, the 12th of July at Westbury (ph).

KING: Are you going around with a whole troop?

COLLINS: Yes, I have some guests on this tour; Richie Havens and Janis Ian and Roger McGuinn are with me. And I know them all, you know, for all these years. In fact, Roger and I worked on my third album in 1963, I think, and we recorded "Turn, Turn, Turn" and also "Tambourine Man," which he later recorded for The Byrds. So, it's going to be a great, a great pleasure to be out and I'll sing...

KING: And how long are you out for?

COLLINS: ... and introduce them. We're out for 35 dates this year. This is the first Judy Collins Wildflower Festival.

KING: This is the name of your label, right?

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: And it's my record label. And then this will be the first tour. And then next year we'll have a different group, and that's coming along, so we'll have other people.

KING: Do you get more active now?

COLLINS: I do! I'm doing more things than I've ever done in my life, and I've always been, as you know, I've always had a very wonderful...

KING: Busy.

COLLINS: ... career and I'm grateful for that. And I've always toured. I'm doing about 80 shows this year, 35 of them which are the Wildflower, Judy Collins Wildflower Festival.

KING: Was your voice, that has been called everything, silver bell and all that, is it, are you perfect tuned?

COLLINS: Well, I have relative pitch, as they say. But, you know...

KING: That means you don't hit a false note?

COLLINS: Well, if I start singing to you, like "Oh Danny Boy," I don't really know what note that is, but I know...

KING: You don't read it?

COLLINS: Sure, I read it. Sure. I read music. I studied to be a pianist when I was a kid and...

KING: But have you always had that kind of sound that could...

COLLINS: I always have. I could always find the note and sing the note and sing the melody.

KING: And how did you become -- you were a hit very young, right? You had an early hit.

COLLINS: I worked a long time, actually. It didn't happen overnight for me, because I started -- well, 40 years ago I had my first album on Elektra, and actually I'm putting out those two albums in the fall, called "Maids of Golden Apples," my first two albums on Elektra, are coming out on my own label, Wildflower.

KING: What's your first hit?

COLLINS: My first hit, real hit, was "Both Sides Now" in '68. In '67, I recorded Leonard Cohen's music and I discovered a lot of singers whose songs I love and this was before I started writing my own songs. So, I was very fortunate. But I didn't have an immediate -- yeah, I worked very hard. You know, I was always singing...

KING: You were know.

COLLINS: And I was very well-known, but I didn't -- people did not start to answer my phone calls until about 1968.

KING: "Both Sides Now" was enormous though, right?

COLLINS: Enormous hit.

KING: Great song.

COLLINS: Enormous hit. It was...

KING: That was a breakthrough song, right? It was folk and beyond, right?

COLLINS: It was a breakthrough, yes. It was folk and beyond and I think that was really the thing that set up the idea that I have about music and my own writing, which folk music, people call this folk music, I'm not sure what it is. I think it's alright to call it that. But, there's music about issues and about feelings and poetry and politics.

KING: Has your voice changed as you get older?

COLLINS: Well, what do you think?

KING: No, apparently not. But to you, has it?

COLLINS: It's strengthened. I think a lot of things have happened to my voice. I've been very lucky because I had a great teacher, so I had somebody to guide me through about 32 years of singing and recording and it started to change -- it was very down here when I first started...

KING: Really?

COLLINS: I had a -- oh, yes, I...

KING: I can't picture that.

COLLINS: So, when I hear those records, it's different. And now, I have a very different range and I can sing all kinds of things easily, and so it's different and it's dependable and I'm very fortunate.

KING: No career is all ups. You wrote a memoir, right? "Singing Lessons."

COLLINS: I did. I did.

KING: And your own battles with bulimia and alcohol.

COLLINS: I have had my own struggles, it's true.

KING: Which of the two was harder to defeat?

COLLINS: I think that the food is always with you and it's a very important issue today. Young women who are athletes, for instance, who have eating issues, have to think about things we didn't even know about. For instance, bone loss starts to happen if you don't eat enough. Even if you're 12 or 14 or 20. So, things like osteoporosis happen during those years.

I've been lucky that in the case of my drinking I was able many years ago to choose not to drink, which I choose not to do today.

KING: Did it in, like, one day? Said, "I'm stopping"?

COLLINS: Oh, well, yeah, in a sense, the magic happens, but it's a day at a time process...

KING: AA?

COLLINS: ... and you never, ever, ever don't think about, at least I don't, and I don't talk about AA because that's anonymous, which means that I couldn't talk about it. But, I will say that there are lots of powerful, powerful things that Alcoholics Anonymous does for people...

KING: Sure does.

COLLINS: And that I have been -- I was lucky enough to get into treatment 23 years ago, so I have never taken it lightly.

KING: Did it effect your career?

COLLINS: Oh, by all means.

KING: You stop singing?

COLLINS: Well, I had a very rough year. For about 42 years, since I started singing in public in '59, since I started my journey as a singer, most years I've had, you know, 50, 80 concerts, this year I have about 80 concerts. During that year when I was getting sober, I really had to cut back a great deal because I couldn't sing. I also had the same problem that Julie Andrews had and I had the surgery and I was very lucky because...

KING: And hers didn't work.

COLLINS: The surgery, for me, worked.

KING: We'll be right back with more of Judy Collins. Still to come, Gary Sinise, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Dr. Karen Shanor. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Her tour starts in July. She'll be singing songs like "Send in the Clowns." Nobody ever did it better than she did. "Turn, Turn, Turn," "Tambourine Man," "Freedom," "At Seventeen," "Society's Child," "Both Sides Now." Rhino Records, in August, will release "The Very Best of Judy Collins."

COLLINS: Yes, it's very exciting.

KING: You're on a roll, here. COLLINS: I'm on a roll. Rhino is putting out this big album of all my top 20 hits and there are a lot of them. I was surprised to see how many. And that's coming out in the summer. And then I'm putting out, as I said, those first two albums that were out on Elektra, "A Maid of Constant Sorrow," those first two albums were basically folk music and there were songs like "John Riley" and "The Wild Mountain Thyme," you know, "Oh, the summertime is coming," and things like that that I will be singing again on my tour. So, I'm pretty excited.

KING: So, you've got the -- Rhino is releasing, you're releasing your own two...

COLLINS: Yes.

KING: You've got your own record label...

COLLINS: My own record label with...

KING: ... and you're touring? What else are you doing? What are you up to?

COLLINS: "Live at Wolf Trapp," which is out now, which is a television show that's on PBS and it's on the fund-raising section of PBS, so that will be out a lot and has been played.

You know, I love my life and I'm passionate about my writing; I've written a number of books, including a biography and also a novel called "Shameless," which is out.

KING: Yeah. You got a new one coming?

COLLINS: I do. I have a couple of books on the way. And, fortunately, I can write on the airplanes when I'm traveling.

One of the things about the tour that I'm very happy about is that UNICEF and Amnesty are both going to have tables at our Wildflower Festival and my concerns about land-mines and about gender mutilation and the issues of women and the safety of children in the world are very, very prominent in my life, so we'll be taking time to talk about that and certainly sing "Song for Sarajevo," which I wrote for the children in those countries.

KING: Your activism never ceases.

COLLINS: It never ceases, nor does it ever cease to amaze me how much activism is necessary in the world.

KING: Grandma Collins is still at it...

COLLINS: We don't say grandma, we say nana, but yes, yes, absolutely.

KING: How did you get "Send in the Clowns"? "Isn't it rich, are we a pair."..

COLLINS: "Are we a pair."..

KING: Oh, do it.

COLLINS: "Me here at last on the ground, you in mid-air."..

KING: Stephen Sondheim.

COLLINS: "Where are the clowns."..

KING: Did you like that -- did you like that right away?

COLLINS: Oh, immediately. But I didn't see it in the play. A couple of friends called me and said, in 1972, and said there's a great song in a great show of Stephen Sondheim's on Broadway. And I didn't know about the show, and they sent me the record. And I, you know, we used LPs, and I dropped the...

KING: The needle.

COLLINS: ... the needle on the track and I heard Jonathan Tunic's beautiful beginning of the song, the English horn. I was absolutely bowled over. So, I called Hal Prince on the phone...

KING: Producer.

COLLINS: You know, I said, "Hi. I'm Judy. And I want to record this song." He said, "Oh, that's wonderful." He said, "You know, it's been recorded about 200 times." I said, "Well, I don't care. I want to record it." He said, "Even Frank Sinatra has recorded it."

KING: Yes, he did.

COLLINS: I said, "I don't care. I love it so much."

So, I fell in love with the song and I called. I said, "Who should do the orchestration?" And he said, "Well, I think you should go back to Tunic. He did a great orchestration." So, that was where my romance with Sondheim began, and I'm going to do a new Sondheim album for my own label, eventually.

But I've recorded a number of his songs. But, of course, "Send in the Clowns."..

KING: Sinatra told me that is one of the best songs ever written...

COLLINS: It is.

KING: For lyrics and music.

COLLINS: It is. Of course, in the play, people say, well, what is, what does this mean, "Isn't it rich? Are we a pair? Me here at last, on the ground."..

KING: "You in mid-air." COLLINS: "You in mid-air." And in the play, of course, there's perfect reason for it. I think she's come back from having had an affair and he's decided to go off and have one, so...

KING: You're the best, Judy.

COLLINS: You're the best, my dear.

KING: I've known you a long time.

COLLINS: Thank you. It's been years.

KING: Judy Collins. What a talent. "Isn't it rich"?

Gary Sinise is next. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We now welcome to LARRY KING WEEKEND one of my favorite actors, now starring on Broadway as Randall McMurphy in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." When he was 18, he helped found the now-famed stage ensemble Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company and was nominated for best supporting actor Oscar for the brilliant role as Lieutenant Dan in "Forrest Gump."

Do you like coming back to the stage?

GARY SINISE, ACTOR: Oh, absolutely. I don't get to do it as often as I'd like, now. I don't make my living doing theater anymore the way I used to, but I try to, every two or three years, try to come back and do something at Steppenwolf, at least, and it's been over ten years since I've worked on stage in New York, so it's great to be back.

KING: Gary Sinise, what a great pleasure having you.

SINISE: Thank you, Larry. Thank you.

KING: Why -- do you miss it? Is it -- are you -- you were raised in theater? You started a theater company of your own.

SINISE: Well, yeah. Absolutely. The first, you know, I didn't do a movie until I was, you know, in my mid-30's. So, I spent, you know, the entire first part of my career doing nothing but theater; acting, directing, I'm a founder of the company. I was the artistic director for quite a longtime, so I was running the company and, you know, I was really rooted in Chicago and very dedicated to making the theater work.

KING: And the kick of it, I guess, is the audience is right there, right?

SINISE: Well, that...

KING: I mean, you start at a certain time and finish at a certain time. SINISE: Yes, yeah. That's certainly part of it. I love the live experience. It's different night to night. It changes all the time, constantly exploring and doing new things. But I think even more importantly, as opposed to film, the actor in the theater has control over his performance in a way that you don't really...

KING: It's the director in movie, in film, right?

SINISE: Absolutely. I mean, you can -- you have control over the scene work that you do, but ultimately you give all that material to the director and they can make it anything they want.

KING: And you would know pretty well since you've directed.

SINISE: I've done that myself.

KING: That's pretty powerful. You also have never been typed. I mean, we can't say Gary Sinise plays this kind of role. You've played bad, you've played good, you've played evil, right?

SINISE: I've played some evil characters.

KING: Is variety, then, your choice? I mean, do you like that?

SINISE: I don't know anything else. You know, I haven't really kind of relaxed and relied on my persona to drive my characters. It's sort of the characters drive the persona, in a way. And maybe, you know, that's why I'm not as big a movie star as some other people, because, you know, persona is so much about -- it's so much a part of what makes celebrity and...

KING: You don't want to be a star star?

SINISE: I want to...

KING: You're certainly famous. You're certainly well-known. You're certainly accomplished. You've certainly been applauded.

SINISE: I'm well-known enough. What I'm, what I've always been most interested in is the acting and being a good actor and trying to do different kinds of things. It just comes from my background. When I was in high school, I did several different kinds of parts and then I went on to start the theater and did several different kinds of roles...

KING: Here comes Gary again.

SINISE: We were always doing kind of different things.

KING: Why "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," a play that was not a success on Broadway, a modest success in San Francisco, an enormously successful film with Jack Nicholson; why this play now?

SINISE: It's a story -- it's a great story, first of all. It's just a great old-fashioned kind of yarn. It's almost like a western. I've said it before and my director always uses this sort of comparison, it's like a great western, you know, like "High Noon." You know, you've got the oppressive sheriff, you know, controlling all the, all the victimized townspeople and in comes the lone rider and he rebels and incites a riot in the people and makes them stand up for themselves...

KING: Except he loses.

SINISE: He sacrifices himself for his buddies, and that's a very noble and heroic thing. It's a great character. Certain things about the story are possibly dated to the period, but I think we've done a good job at kind of getting away from that and just talking about the universal elements in the story...

KING: It's also, if I remember, and I'm going to go see it, very funny.

SINISE: It's very, very funny.

KING: There is a lot of laughs in this play.

SINISE: There is a lot of laughs in the play. And even if you know the movie, if you're a big fan of the film and you know the film and the performances and what not, of the film you experience it in a completely different way. The character that I play, McMurphy, is very, very different from the character in the film that Jack Nicholson plays. He's -- in the play, it's much more like the Kesey character. You know, he's really a cowboy. He can -- even the way he talks, his vernacular is very twangish and...

KING: He's rebellious?

SINISE: Well, those elements are similar. I mean, he's still the rebellious guy who comes in and, you know, causes a lot of havoc and gets the inmates to kind of rebel against the oppressive sheriff. But the way he does it in the play is different than the movie.

KING: Do they still do lobotomies?

SINISE: Do they now still do them?

KING: Yeah?

SINISE: I think they, you know, in some cases they do, yes.

KING: Gary Sinise, who was brilliant in so many things, and who could forget "Truman" and George Wallace, the directing of "Mice and Men." Right back with Gary Sinise, who stars in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." He's in it only through the end of July on Broadway. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're back with Gary Sinise, who stars in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," then you go right to do a film?

SINISE: No. I don't have anything coming up right afterwards. KING: I'm sure you'll get something, though.

SINISE: A little vacation.

KING: You get scripts all the time, though, don't you?

SINISE: You know, I haven't gotten them for awhile because I was committed to the play and there was no point in reading anything. Now that we know we're going to close on July 29, I'll probably start looking at some...

KING: What's your determining factor when you read a script?

SINISE: The story is...

KING: You have to like the whole story? Do you have to like your part especially?

SINISE: Well, I have to like a lot of elements for me to want to do it. I can't just like my character because I won't know how to fit in if the story isn't any good. I have to be able to like the whole story, the character, the people involved, all these different elements. Is it well-written? All of those things. And part of that maybe comes, you know, I am a director too, so I tend to look at things from both perspectives and I can't help that, because...

KING: Did you think "Forrest Gump" would be what it became?

SINISE: No.

KING: Hanks had a lot of faith in it. Because he told me, I'm going to do this movie that I think is special.

SINISE: We knew it was special. But we couldn't predict that it would be, you know, as popular as it was. But, "Forrest Gump," when we were making it, we knew we were having a great time, that something special was going on. But actually, the way it was done, for me...

KING: With one leg...

SINISE: Well, I had two legs gone. But my part was very individual. You know, I did my scenes and I had no idea what Sally Field was doing or what Robin Wright was doing, because I didn't interact with those characters.

KING: Ever?

SINISE: No. Only one time, one little scene with Robin. And, you know, basically, everybody was doing their stories because Forrest would go from story to story, so we didn't really know what everybody else was doing. So, we had no idea how it was really going to all end up. And I remember when we all went to the first screening of it, and we were pleased. It was beautiful, a beautifully made movie.

KING: Playing people we knew, George Wallace, Harry Truman, more difficult? People we could see on tape? SINISE: Well, I mean, it has its own set of difficulties. You know, the challenges are different because you're portraying somebody that we're familiar with. There are images that we can see, you know, we've seen before. And on the one hand, that's difficult, because you have to live up to that. I can't say I'm going to play Harry Truman with a, you know, bald cap and a, you know, big nose and, you know, crazy eyebrows or whatever. I have to try to fit into the skin of that character and create a believable impression of that character.

But, on the other hand, because you have all those images, you know, you're not starting totally from scratch. I can look at the documentary footage of Harry Truman and so, oh, gosh, look how he does that...

KING: Are you acting or impersonating or both?

SINISE: You're creating an impression. You're acting, definitely. I'm not an impersonator, so I can't, I can't...

KING: Do the voice.

SINISE: I can't do the exact voice, or, you know, I'm not Rich Little or something like that. But what I can try to do is create the impression so that people believe.

KING: Is it all fun? I mean, Anthony Quinn said, told me, it's being a child again, acting. Children are good actors.

SINISE: Well, I think I am as much a kid now as I was when I was a kid. I'm just, you know, I have more aches and pains. And it takes more out of me to get on stage, like in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest."

KING: Because that's a physical play, right?

SINISE: "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" is the most physical work that I've ever done, I think. He comes on stage, and he doesn't stop spinning, you know, he drives the whole play. He's never off stage for more than 20 seconds for the entire play. I mean, even Hamlet goes off and takes a break, you know. I mean -- but R.P. McMurphy comes on like a tornado and he keeps spinning until the play is over.

And maybe in my 20's it wouldn't have taken as much out of me as it does now.

KING: You keep doing what you're doing.

SINISE: Thank you, Larry.

KING: You're one of the best.

SINISE: Thank you so much.

KING: Gary Sinise. Through July 29 on Broadway, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is next. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We now welcome to LARRY KING WEEKEND Robert Kennedy Jr., the president of Water Keeper Alliances, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council and a man who could be a prisoner of the United States government in July, right?

ROBERT KENNEDY JR., ENVIRONMENTALIST/ATTORNEY: Right.

KING: When you're going to be a father again.

KENNEDY: Well, my sentencing date at this point in July 6. Mary is due with our sixth child on the 12th, so we're hoping that the child gets born a little early.

KING: Why did you go to Vieques?

KENNEDY: I was asked down there by a number of groups. I'm an attorney for the Natural Resource Defense Council and Water Keeper and I actually represent them in a series of environment lawsuits in, on Vieques.

The Navy, there is a number of environmental impacts on Vieques which we're addressing. Vieques now has the highest cancer rate in the Caribbean, the highest infant mortality rate in Puerto Rico, the highest overall mortality rate. Many of the people have heart disease that apparently is connected with the naval bombardment. All of the people who've been tested have high levels of contaminants in their blood, in their hair, in their fecal samples; anemone (ph), arsenic, lead, cyanide, zinc, toxins that are associated with the detonation of naval ordnance.

There's also endangered species on the island. There's 13 endangered species in the live impact area. The Navy has never done, jumped through the hoops in the Endangered Species Act that it is required to do.

KING: What were you doing?

KENNEDY: Well, what I did is I filed an injunction action against the Navy last summer, but a judge in Puerto Rico, a federal judge, has been sitting on that action for over eight months. And because of that -- and the Navy continues to bomb, and he simply will not hear my action.

So, you know, I was down on the island, there's hundreds of people on that island; they're American citizens, but their disaffected and alienated from this country. Many of them do not believe that they, that they live with the benefits of the American legal system. And I went down there and said, you know, justice will work. The American justice system works. And even the Navy is subject to these federal statutes.

The Navy, unfortunately, we couldn't get into jail -- into, before a court, so ultimately I engaged in the civil disobedience with Eddie Olmos...

KING: Eddie Olmos was with you and who else?

KENNEDY: Eddie Olmos and Dennis Rivera. And then there was a couple of fisherman.

KING: What did you do?

KENNEDY: We went onto the live impact area during the bombing. We did a...

KING: Causing them to stop bombing?

KENNEDY: They stopped bombing for about six hours.

KING: And arrested you?

KENNEDY: Yeah.

KING: And charged you with?

KENNEDY: They charged me with trespassing.

KING: And you were found guilty of trespassing?

KENNEDY: No, I haven't been found guilty yet.

KING: Then how can you have a sentencing if you haven't been found guilty?

KENNEDY: Well, all of the people -- it's a, these trials down there are almost a cottage industry in Puerto Rico right now. I think that I have a good defense. There's a defense to trespass that says if you go onto land, onto private property, or Naval property, in order to prevent a crime from being committed, and in this case that's what we were doing, the Endangered Species Act was clearly being violated, and we went onto that land to stop that violation. If you do that, that's a defense to trespass.

But, I think the assumption is that everybody is getting prison sentences.

KING: Al Sharpton is in jail already for it, right?

KENNEDY: Yeah.

KING: So, you expect to go to jail?

KENNEDY: Yeah. I would say...

KING: Why?

KENNEDY: If I were betting money, I would say that that would be the outcome.

KING: Why do you do what you do? I mean, really? People look at you, you know, Bobby Kennedy's son, why do you get so passionately involved?

KENNEDY: You mean, with my...

KING: With your life. I mean, and in this, you know, I mean, it's certainly a stand up thing. A lot of people don't have the guts to do it. Why are you...

KENNEDY: Well, this is a justice issue, you know. And these are, it's a democracy issue, it's a justice issue, and it's an environmental issue. And all of these things, to me are critical to, you know, to our nation's mission. To how our children are raised and, you know, my father, you know, would come back from Appalachia, which he did on many occasions. But I remember one night when he came back and he had been in a home where there were 14 people living in one room. And he told us about that at the dinner table. And he said to us, "when you grow up, I hope that you'll do something about that."

And I think all of my brothers and sisters took that to heart and felt that, you know, what he believed, which was that if any Americans are suffering from injustice, than all of us are. And in this case, you know, the case of Vieques, I think that, you know, that it's clear that a lot of people are being picked on.

KING: Now, the Bush administration is going to end it in a couple of years. Does that satisfy you?

KENNEDY: Well, the Bush administration announced a policy that is no different than the Clinton administration policy, which is that the bombing terminates in May 2003. I don't think that that's a good outcome. I think the Navy ought to stop bombing today, for a couple of reasons. And I have to say this, Larry, I come from a Naval family. I love the United States Navy. We grew up revering the United States Navy.

I also believe that our country ought to have strong national security. And I also think that every nation has the right to demand or to ask its citizens to sacrifice their lives during times of war. And my family has risen to that.

KING: So you're not a pacifist?

KENNEDY: No.

KING: Let me get a break and pick up on that. We'll be right back with Robert Kennedy Jr. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're back with Robert Kennedy Jr. So, what's wrong with the three year wait? Why tomorrow?

KENNEDY: Well, because, first of all, the Navy is not getting good practice out there. The statute says that the Navy cannot use live ordnance on Vieques and, in fact, politically you'll never be able to open it for live ordnance firing again because of what we now know about the health impact. But our fighting men really need to have live ordinance training. It focuses the mind. It allows the pilots to see where they've dropped the bomb and...

KING: And you favor that?

KENNEDY: Yeah. And they ought to have -- they have to have a place where they can do that. They can't do it on Vieques. And there's plenty of other places where they can do that. You know, the Navy keeps saying there's no other place to do that, but in fact there's a national security report that the Navy created in 1999 that shows that there are many other places where they can do live ordinance firings.

KING: So why not go there?

KENNEDY: Well, that's what they ought to be doing.

KING: And why do you think they're not?

KENNEDY: I think that they're...

KING: They don't want to harm Puerto Rico.

KENNEDY: I think there's a hard-headedness among some of the admirals in the Navy. And, you know, I have several admirals testifying for me in my case, all of them saying that there's plenty of other places where they can do this activity.

Vieques is very convenient to Puerto Rico. You can see it from the Roosevelt Road space and it has a tradition in the Navy that's, that I think is a very important, symbolic tradition. But, and the Navy has said for years and years, we've got no place else to go. So, I think that there's a lot of people invested in that view and they don't want to admit now, yeah, there are plenty of other places we can go.

KING: A couple of other things. What do you think of the, so far, the energy policy? The environmental policy?

KENNEDY: The Bush policy -- the Bush administration is in attack on 30 years of environmental law. The energy policy is very good if you're an oil company or coal company and those companies are already rolling in money, they don't need these new subsidies that they're giving them. They're very bad, all of those policies are very bad for the United States. It actually will increase our dependence on foreign oil. It will, rather than reduce it, which is allegedly the objective of it.

There is no -- although some programs were added to the energy policy that appear to support renewables, in fact all of those need funding and the funding doesn't exist in the president's budget. So, all of the provisions that are actually actionable in the energy policy are provisions that are going to directly benefit the oil companies and the coal companies and they are going to hurt our country.

KING: What about the Arctic National Wildlife Area? KENNEDY: The Arctic Refuge? If you, if we were to raise fuel efficiencies of our automobiles by one mile per gallon, we would produce more oil than is in the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The oil that's being drilled there is not even coming to our country, so it's a joke. It goes to Japan and Asia, some of it comes to our country, but most of it goes to Asia. It's drilled by foreign companies, by BP, by British Petroleum. So, how is that going to help the U.S. reduce their oil imports?

The whole thing is a joke. The CATO institute, which you know, which is a right-wing, a free market institute, recently said that George Bush's claim that this was going to reduce American dependence on foreign oil, the ANWRs, was not only nonsense, but nonsense on stilts.

KING: What about nuclear plants? We haven't built once, what, since Three Mile Island?

KENNEDY: Right. And we'll never build one again. And it's not environmental policies. The only reason those nuc plants were built is because of huge government subsidies that encouraged them to build it. Once you withdraw those subsidies, no company, no utility that has to pay for it's own money, is going to build one of those facilities. They just don't make any economic sense.

KING: With all you've seen, Robert, are you pessimistic?

KENNEDY: Well, I'm, by inclination I'm an optimist. But, you know, I think we're losing a lot of values that we ought to be handing to our children. And that, you know, my -- the way that I live my life is to, you know, look at my own actions and say, "am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing to live up to those responsibilities to the next generation"? And I think that's all any of us can do.

KING: Thank you. It's always good seeing you.

KENNEDY: Thanks a lot, Larry.

KING: Good luck.

KENNEDY: Thanks very much.

KING: Robert Kennedy Jr. This is LARRY KING WEEKEND. When we come back, Dr. Karen Shanor with an extraordinary new book, "The Emerging Mind." Don't go away.

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KING: We now welcome to LARRY KING WEEKEND an old friend, Dr. Karen Shanor, Ph.D., author of "The Emerging Mind." She's a practicing clinical psychologist. She was one of the first radio psychologist back in those days.

"The Emerging Mind" means what? We're still learning.

KAREN SHANOR, PH.D., AUTHOR: It means we're still learning and it also means that we're now studying the wave forms of the mind, like radio. The brain is a transmitter and a receiver of actual energy and frequency and wave forms. Like television and radio waves...

KING: Meaning we can do things with our mind to control other things?

SHANOR: Absolutely.

KING: Like?

SHANOR: We pick up, we tap into different frequencies of the mind, for example. Well, anytime you have a thought, especially a strong thought, and science is showing this now because we know a lot about technology and especially we're understanding more about molecules and telecommunications. When you have a thought, a strong thought, energy goes out and in quantum physics, for example, it may hook up with something that matches it in some way.

KING: We don't understand this yet?

SHANOR: We're starting to understand it and amazing research is being done, Larry. But it's like when you think about somebody you haven't thought about for awhile, and they call on the telephone.

KING: That's not just -- that's not an accident?

SHANOR: No. I call it "the Internet of the mind" and within ten years, this will be an everyday thing.

KING: And you claim in the book that it can create objects, effect thousands of people thousands of miles away?

SHANOR: Yes. For instance, for the last 13 years they've been doing research showing one person would go somewhere in the world and look at a monument, somewhere like Czechoslovakia, or, former Czechoslovakia, Milan, Scotland, looking at a castle with a lake around it, and send the information back to somebody in the lab. And in fact, in one-third of the cases the person in the lab received the information up to five days before it was sent.

Now, this sounds like science fiction, doesn't it? But if we can slow down the speed of light, which we did two years ago, to 38 miles an hour, it's 186,000 miles a second, 38 miles an hour, the speed of light, think about what we're able to do with forms of energy.

KING: Are we studying this all over the world?

SHANOR: Yes, we are.

KING: Now, in your book you write how most people die of a heart attack at 9:00 a.m. Monday morning. Hostility, anger and anxiety can effect how we metabolize food.

SHANOR: Oh, absolutely.

KING: What does this have to do with "The Emerging Mind"? SHANOR: Well, once again, what the mind does, we not only receive information, the certain frequencies we tune into like a radio or television tunes in to frequencies, and the brain does this as well.

But, we have within our body, we have a certain thought and we change the chemicals in our body. We all have little drug factories in our heads all the time, that's why we don't have to take a lot of the, let's say, antidepressants or other medications that people give us. We can change our moods ourself if we believe it.

For example, if suddenly a plane came crashing into the studio, immediately our molecules, we change a billion molecules in our system just by fright and dealing with that.

KING: Right.

SHANOR: If you have a thought of anger or a thought of love, you change many millions of molecules in your system. Now, that also means your metabolism changes. If you eat, and you're feeling hostile or anxious, you are more likely to then shift the chemicals in your system and perhaps even gain weight, you know, not digest the food properly. So, you have to have...

KING: So, Norman Vincent Peale then was right about the power of positive thinking?

SHANOR: Absolutely.

KING: If you think positive, positive things result?

SHANOR: That's right.

KING: So, you're really doing that with your mind? You're causing a positive reaction?

SHANOR: Yes. And if you think negatively, and Henry Ford said this, he said there are two kinds of people in this world, those who believe they can and those who believe they can't. And they're both right.

KING: Yes. Well said. Next 10 years are the key, right? We're going to learn a lot more in the next 10 years?

SHANOR: I guarantee within 10 years, because we're dealing now with mathematicians and computer experts are talking to brain experts. My former professor, Karl Prefrom (ph), when he was at Stanford he was my professor there and now, in fact, we just taught a course together at Georgetown University.

He's been called "the Einstein of the brain" and he has been, he is doing research and has for years talked about the wave forms. He said the last century was the century of things. This century will be a century of waves and wave forms.

KING: Have we learned things from antidepressants, drugs that change the chemistry of the brain, where an outside influence can change the way someone is?

SHANOR: Absolutely. We know that there's always, there's often a chemical change. We also know that a thought creates the same situation and we learned a lot about the molecules in our cells and the memories that our cells hold, for example. And I think it's been terrific, all of the brain research we've been able to do, different parts of the brain and what's happening there.

We also know, by the way, and this just happened two years ago; when you have an idea, a quick idea or a new thought, your whole brain is energized for a few seconds. It's like in the comic strip where the light bulb goes on. It actually happens. And then it goes to different specific parts of the brain to deal with that information. So, we have wonderful technology and research.

However, biologist, many of them, have not been talking to physicists or people who know a great deal about telecommunications. Some are starting to do that, and that's why we can talk about what's happening, the nonmaterial part of our thinking as well.

KING: Just as the health industry is now open to what every day things in life can bring us.

SHANOR: Yes. And acupuncture. How it shifts the whole chemistry of the system and the electrical part of the system.

KING: Our guest is Dr. Karen Shanor. This extraordinary book is "The Emerging Mind." We'll be back with more after this.

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KING: We're back with Dr. Karen Shanor, author of "The Emerging Mind."

Sleep, dreams, what do we learn from that?

SHANOR: Isn't it wonderful? I have a whole chapter on what happens, really happens to our system when we're sleeping. And certainly...

KING: Things are happening?

SHANOR: Many things are happening. Where, we have in one part of the sleep, the non-REM time when our eyes aren't going back and forth, for example, when we're not dreaming, we have all these elves coming and maintaining our body.

KING: Elves?

SHANOR: Hormones are changing. No, that's, alright...

KING: Starting to get a little wacky here.

SHANOR: Our whole system, it's maintenance going on, right. There are no real elves, believe me. I don't think in 10 years even we'll see that... KING: But something is happening?

SHANOR: It's very -- a great deal is happening and if we don't sleep, we have many problems. For example, the earlier part of sleep regulates a lot of our hormones. During our sleep, our whole body is maintained, and then during the two hours a night, approximately, that we dream, where rapid eye movements go back and forth, our body is actually revved up, it's as if we're running about two miles an hour or something like that. And that's when we have the dreams. That's also when what happens to us during the day, what we're thinking about, is recorded as memories. And we can't...

KING: But we can't control it?

SHANOR: If we miss that REM sleep, and alcohol and a lot of medications cut down the proportion in REM sleep, you actually have memory problems.

KING: Of course, you can't control your dreaming, can you?

SHANOR: Well, of course you can. There are some people who can, and it's called lucid dreaming. It's when you are dreaming and you know you're dreaming and some people, sport's psychologists, for example, have used it and taught people to practice their tennis stroke during that time. Jack Nicholas was said to have improved his golf game by ten strokes. Not lucid dreaming, but just having a dream, programming himself as he was going to sleep.

And, of course we can be very creative. One of the top mathematicians in the world, Professor Alexander Zenken (ph), whose is Russia, actually, some years ago, he went to sleep, he had a dream. He doesn't remember the dream, but he got up and after the dream he just knew he had to write. He sat there for seven hours writing mathematical formulas, if you can believe that, and at the end he came up with a whole new theory about math. And now, there is actually a Web site on the Internet, mathematicians all over the world talking about how they discover new theories through their dreams.

KING: So the old thing, it came to me in a dream, is true.

SHANOR: Oh, absolutely. The problem is, we don't remember a lot of it.

KING: Paul McCartney, last week on our show dreamt "Yesterday." He dreamt the tune "Yesterday" and got up and played it.

SHANOR: That's wonderful.

KING: Can it improve your love life, using your mind?

SHANOR: Well, of course it can. I always talk about even a romantic placebo. If you think, if you have certain expectations, especially of yourself, especially zeroing in on something and saying, "I'm going to make this a positive situation instead of only dealing with the negative." Oh, he's got a mole there, oh this is terrible. What a terrible situation we just have here. If you actually, not only create in yourself a different approach to reaching out, to caring about that person, but also create an environment of being playful, of joking with each other. All of this, and we have, there's one thing we do have control of in our lives, and that is our mind, and we can control a lot more...

KING: So, it makes you more spiritual, too?

SHANOR: Well, the mind and the body and the spirit are all coming together. And science is helping to bridge this gap now, because when we now know more, especially about quantum physics, the radiation around us, mind waves, we are also tapping into a nonmaterial area that most of us have felt, intuition and certainly spirituality, that are there.

KING: It's exciting.

SHANOR: Science and spirit are being bridged right now.

KING: Thank you, Karen.

SHANOR: And are friends.

KING: Dr. Karen Shanor, the book is "The Emerging Mind." Hope you enjoyed tonight's show. What a lineup of guest. Thanks for joining us. Have a great rest of the weekend and good night.

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