[captioning made possible by kcet public television] tavis: good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. first up tonight a conversation with the "new york times" business columnist andrew ross sorkin on his critically acclaimed new book, "too big to fail." he takes the most sweeping look yet at the economic crisis that sent the u.s. into a tailspin. also, piano virtuoso lang lang stops by. he was named to "time" magazine's list of the 100 most influential people and in addition to his new c.d. he's out now with the new paperback release of his book "journey of 1,000 miles." we're glad you've joined us. >> there are so many things wal-mart is looking forward to doing, like help -- helping people live better but mostly we're looking forward to building relationships and stronger communities because with your help the best is yet to come. >> nationwide insurance proudy supports tavis smiley. nationwide and tavis smiley. working to improve financial literacy and the empowerment that comes with it. ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: andrew ross sorkin is a widely read business columnist and reporter for the "new york times" and author of the text "too big to fail". he joins us tonight from washington. andrew, nice to have you on this program, sir. >> thank you for having me, tavis. tavis: let me start with how if these banks are too big to fail, how do you even get your arms around the story? how do you get your arms around what's happened economically in the last two years in this country in? well, hopefully not too dense. i like to think it's -- it's like danielle steele. it's not so much about banks that think they're too big to fail but people who think they are too big to fail. i try to bring you behind the scenes so the reader could actually make a judgment about what mistakes were made and what was done perhaps even correctly occasionly. tavis: some of the players include? >> hank paulson. dick fold alt his house, 5:00 in the morning the day after j.p. morgan buys bear stearns and takes you all the way through the spring and summer and that cataclysmic fall. you have seen the movie "crash" -- tavis: emmitt >> where you are following four or five different plot lines, and they seem like they're happening independently but they're all interconnected and the whole story cataclysmically comes together in that fateful week. tavis: now that you've had a chance to cover all this and write the text what do you make of all these lines, these parallels, these trajectories around the different story lines? >> that's the most remarkable part for me as a reporter who thought i was covering it from the inside but then i realized how far i really was from the story because there were really 10 or 20, maybe 0 people on the outside who were enter connected the entire time, who had previous relationships, petty jealouses, all sorts of things that ended up infusing and infecting the decision-making process and so much of what we saw -- we woke up in september 2008 and it seemed like a grand surprise but when you start peeling back the curtain, peeling the onion, you see somethg different, the government trying to intervene behind the scenes before we ever knew it. the famous tarp plan, the $700 billion plan we heard about in september, this is almost eerie but they wrote that plan in april. april 15, a meeting at the federal reserve where treasury presents that plan to ben bernanke. it's about 11 pages and you read if and you sayo, did, oh, my god, they saw this couming. -- coming the they see the train barreling down the track but everybody is trying to get out of the way. tavis: and this is not to cast aspersions -- >> fair question. i know where you're glingt tavis: if you thought you were on track or on target and you get a chance o write this to really spend time digging into this and up find out by your own admission how far off, how little you really did know, what's that say about what the american people are really being informed about? >> i agree with you, when you get an opportunity to peel back. curtain and really delve into this and open up in ways i don't think anyone was prepared to do for the paper specifically at that time, i don't want to say we were being lied to but there's a lot of things the government and this company were doing throughout this period we did not know. so to the extent we did not blow the whistle, i think we actually wrote a lot good, fair stories that did blow the whistle, that talked about the sub prime crisis and housing prices getting out of control but we clearly didn't blow it loud enough. but there is so much that e don't get to learn con temp rainiously in part because nobody wants us to learn it and that's why it takes this kind of dig after the fact. even as i was reporting, people were give me a very hard time to get there. tavis: what is the most eegregious thing the reader is going to find out that his or her government did or did not do in this process? government specifically. >> the eegregious part is that people, the government did see this coming. there are enter vention meetings to save lehman, where they're trying to put bank of america together with lehman not in september 2008 but in july. the c.e.o. of a.i.g. goes to tim geithner and, in august, and says we may have a problem and need you to turn us into a bank holding company. and geithner doesn't move on that. there's a lot of things we end up doing later yet dick fold asked for that in july and they thought that wasn't necessarily the best idea so there's questions about whether the government could have mitigated this better. and optically this doesn't look good. there is a meeting -- people talk about the gold medal -- goldman, sachs conspiracy theories and i am not sure i believe in the conspiracy theory per se but there is a scene in june 2008 in moscow, russia, in the hotel room of hank paulson where the entire board of goldman, sachs shows up and you say oh, my god, i don't even believe this is happening. i can't tell you anything untoward happened in the meeting but it does raise judgments about what of these people were making at the timente tavis: did you find it at all ironic that the team -- folk now running the team for obama are the same who did that deregulation in the first place m >> well, right, thepeoplet the scene of the crime are still on the police force. you're going to have a hard time with that. there is a regulatory portion where you need to be minding the store and we weren't properly and you have wall street. let's not let them off the hook because clearly they were taking advantage of the rules to the extent there were rules left. we talked about this before, tavis. the thing that needs to change more than anything is we need to make sure the banks are regulated in a way that they actually have money in the bank. one of the problems that happened over all these years is that for every dollar they were handing out they were able to keep less in the bank. there was no rainy day fund or anything like that. that would solve ail lot of other problems. you hear about the huge bonuses on wall street. huge disconnect on this in america. how is it possible we saved them and they're making all this money in if you told them they needed to take that profit and put it back into the bank it would make the bank safer and the system safer and would mean these huge bonuses wouldn't exist. tavis: so now they've been bailed out at taxpayer spen. where do you see evidence that geithner is stepping up making these suggestions? voleke, making these suggestions, is being laughed at. nobody wants to make him -- take him seriously inside the administration. so you lay it out but where do you see in the administration these suggestions being taken seriously? >> it's funny. treary is pushing for a couple of them. capital requirements and a couple other things but the real change that has to happen is it's got to be the ethos. the ethos on wall street has to change and that's not going to come from the corner office. that's going to come for better or worse from washington and the whole idea that greed is good is still pervasive. so many of these people on wall street, c.e.o.'s, management, today they think of themselves as not as being rescued but as survivors and that is going to take a very long time to really change. tavis: i've got a couple more questions for andrew ross sorkin but we're out of time so if you go to our web site you will hear andrew on a few more items i want to cover on his book, "too big to fail." the inside story of how wall street fought to save the financial system and themselves. thank you for being here. >> thank you for having mement tavis: my pleasure. up next, lang lang. stay with us. pleased to welcome lapping lang back to this program, the the acclaimed music is one of the biggest names in classical music, out with a new c.d. called tchaikovsky/rachmaninoff piano trios. and you can pick up the paperback edition of his memoirs out now, "journey of 1,000 miles." he was named to the time 100 this year. here now, a small sampling of lang lang's brilliant work. ♪ tavis: chopin? >> yeah. concerto. tavis: very nice jim i was just thinking, the time 100 list of the 100 most influential folk in the world, that's a long way from a little town in china. >> i was just trying to follow you. tavis: oh! as a matter of fact i was looking for you. i was on -- honored to be on this list with lang lang earlier this year, the time 100 list and i -- they had a big party in new york and i looked all around to find you but you were playing a concert in holland. >> i could not be there that night, unfortunately. tavis: how much traveling do you do around the world doing concerts? >> 130 concerts but next summer i'm taking two months off. tavis: seriously? >> emmitt tavis: what brought that on? >> i've been working hard in the summers and i think this summer i'm going to really take time off. tavis: any idea what you're going to do in that two-month hiatus? >> maybe go to the beach or study another language maybe. tavis: i was saying to you how much i like the scarf you have on and you, to my surprise, you designed this scarf? >> yeah, i designed this and the aim is to help my foundation. so the profit goes to the foundation. tavis: your foundation does what? >> to support young pianoists and to rebuild the education programs around the country. tavis: yeah. yeah. speaking of helping young people with music, what do you make of how far you've been able to come in such a short period of time? you are so influential now where music is concerned. did you ever imagine this when you were a kid arguing with your dad about rehearsing and the like? >> no, i never really thought about it. i knew concert pianoists you perform a lot but i didn't know you actually can inspire other people to become a musician and to living a better life. i didn't realize that as a kid. tavis: whenever i get a chance to watch you in concert, everybody who gets a chance to see you notices the energy and passion and power with which you play. have you always have -- had that or did you develop that over time? >> i was watching my voo -- video when i was 5 years old. obviously i didn't have the power but i always had this, what you call some kind of energy, high energy, tribe -- trying to make things work so i didn't really change that much if you take from there. certainly the power, the physical power came later, of course. tavis: i mentioned your father earlier in this conversation and i want to go to your book out in paperbook written with our friend david rich. in this book you really tell the story of your partnership -- relationship with your father. you love your mother and father. mom is here today, sitting off camera. >> yeament tavis: you travel with mom and dad, and yet you and your father have had an interesting, my word, relationship over the years? >> yes. it was complicated. i always had a great relationship with my mom from when i was a kid but with my father he's -- he's more like my trainer and maybe because of that he needs to kind of becoming very tough on me. so he was very tough. he was really pushy. but when i turned 21 years old he changed. he become one of the sweetest person i know. [laughter] i don't know what happened. frr this police guy, i mean police man and becomes the sweetest guy. tavis: how do you look back now on the tumult, the difficulty in your relationship when you were so young? how did you navigate your way through that? >> it was kind of dufment i mean because i -- first of all he really sacrificed a lot. basically he quit his job. he came to beijing with me and my mom stayed in my home town when i was 9 years old to earn money for us. so he did have a lot of pressure because he also, you know, during their time was the cultural revolution and in that time china is basically a revolution, there's nothing else. they had a huge dream to become musicians. both my parents, they loved music but just couldn't achieve anything. then comes china's one child policy in the early 1980's. i was born in 1982 so i was actually the first generation after this policy was established. so think about it, two kind of pushy parents with one kid, so everything goes to the kid. tavis: with all due respect to all the kids in china, if you were forced to have one kid, larning lang -- lang lang ain't the worst kid to have.÷ make a world-class musician like lang lang. not bad. . your relationship is your father now is -- >> it's very good. he manages my career in china and he's now on a promotion tour for me on the upcoming tour. tavis: do you ever get ask -- asked, and i don't main to make you political, but it's hard to mention china and not mention all the burgeoning growth on the one han and there are still conversations about human rights abuses in china and trying to get china to take those abuses more seriously. did you ever engage no -- in those kind of conversations? >> as musicians the best thing we can do is be the cultural ambassador and make understanding between people. obviously china is a big country. from what i see is that every big country has their own problems and i think that some of the problems need time to solve and -- but the thing about it, from what i see is that china is working hard to improve itself. and i think that's a positive direction. tavis: yeah. yeah. so the c.d. of all the things you could have done at this point in your career, why these, tchaikovsky tchaikovsky and rachmaninoff piano trios? >> did a big project called carnegie hall live, but i think now my age -- i'm 27 but still i like to do more intimate project and i think chamber music is something that is is not very commercial but very intimate and you learn a lot of things from the wonderful violinists, the beautiful cellists and they give you a beautiful influence in the sound you try to create on the piano. and trying -- playing a trio is a balancing act. sometimes up let other people become the main role and sometimes you are the leading role. it's much more a conversation between. tavis: kind of like jazz? >> yeah, it is like that. i must say had -- i had a great tour with my favorite herbie hancock. tavis: oh, yeah. >> so that project gives me the idea to do more o of chamber fusion project. tavis: how do you or how do the people who help manage you let you do a project like this that isn't the most commercial project maybe but it's what lang lang wants to do? >> this is actually my decision and the record company support it, fortunately. and -- because also i'm now building kind of a wake in one city. this season i'm doing in berlin, then in new york. so in one week we do chamber music, we do education program, going to the school and this morning i went to the grammy museum and did a high school lecture with school kids from the santa monica area. we do the whole package, one city in one week so therefore i think it's nice to bring some chamber music project with the same project. tavis: you like that opportunity, being able to switch gears so quickly in one city every other day? >> yeah, i mean it's challenging. soloist. chamber musician. accompanist. teacher. it's fun. it's challenging. i love challenging stuff. tavis: yeah. tell me about your two colleagues on the project. >> first of all, they are really passionate. musicians and great musicians and musicians that i worked with before and so i know, this is the great siberian violinist and the beautiful sounding and rely cool guy, 60 years old but he looks like 30. very cool colleagues. tavis: what's fascinating is you really have three generations of classical musicians on this project. >> right. but fortunately we think in the same generation. tavis: yeah, you think the same way though. i hear you saying to me that as you get older, only 27 now, but you want to try different things, putting your own stamp on the zigs you are making the where do you see this thing going? what else is out there that you think you want to take a stab at? >> i mean seriously i'm still working closely with unicef as their goodwill ambassador and now my foundation, that's going to involve a lot of work and in the ture i'd really like to do more educational sides to really inspire more kids. maybe they don't like to be a musician but they like music and through music they see their life, in a different dimension and to bring some inspirational feelings and emotions to their lives. i think this is something that as a musician we should focus on. tavis: your future is not just music. you want to do other stuff? >> yeah. sharing music. tavis: ever get blown away by the power that music has to rm change people's lives, to inspire people? i mean music is such -- i don't know if there is any force in the world as powerful as music. >> my mentor, daniel barenboim, he's playing after he created ork extrawhich brings palestinians and jewish together and that -- that is something i really admire and they really crossed so many barriers. i look at the ew york philharmonic two years ago. they made the first-ever visit to north korea. that is something really uneeevepblgt at least people understand something through the visit. so i think music does make a change. tavis: the child prodigy is now 27 years young and doing his thing. first the new c.c. -- c.d., lang lang. it's tchaikovsky/rachmaninoff piano trios. two -- with two wonderful fellow musicians. that's the new c.d. and hen his book now out in paperback, the story of his life, "lang lang, journey of 1,000 miles," lang lang, good to have you on the program. all the belvet like to get one of those scarves. >> here. tavis: oh, thank you! [laughter] tavis: that's our show for tonight. catch me on the weekends on p.r.i., public radio international. i'll see you back here next time. until then, good night from l.a., thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> for more information on today's show, visit "tavis smiley" at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time when former u.s. senator max cleland and r&b singer marie. that's next time. see you then >> there are so many things that wal-mart is looking forward to doing like helping people live better, but mostly we're looking forward to helping build stronger communities and relationships. because of your help the best is yet to coe. >> nationwide insurance proudly supports tavis is smiley. tavis and nationwide insurance. working to improve financial literacy and the empowerment that comes with it. >> nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> we are pbs.