>> the california endowment. health happens in neighborhoods. learn more. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ the affordable care act is opening the door for more americans to receive the health care they need. well and good, but many physicians insist that the best medicine is preventive medicine. in other words, do not get sick and the first place. the centerngus had for applied molecular medicine, and he is also a best-selling author. his latest tome is called "a short guide to a long life," offering some tips. thanks for the time. was on this show not long ago, and i read somewhere that he calls you the most controversial dr. in america. what did he mean by that, and was that a compliment? show, and ihis said, how can you do that? i said everything is data-driven , and he said, if i said that, nobody would watch. tavis: what were some of the things that he said were controversial? >> against the popular thought, like do not take vitamins and supplements. some of them cause significant harm. no benefit, possible harm, do not do it. a lot of people take the vitamins, and that is where the discord came from. as i mentioned, is your second book. i think this story is true, but had a parteve jobs in renaming your first book question mark is that a true story? >> there was a key question. what is health? is it a blood test? is it how you look or feel? you do not have a parameter, and one week later, i got a callback from the publisher who said, steve jobs changed the title to your book. he said, you cannot put the word health in the title. it is a bad word in our country. it is like chewing cardboard. you need a bold, declaratory title. and i said, why would you call the publisher and not me, we speak almost every day, and he said, it is their job to market the book. tavis: i assume you are happy with the change. >> i tell you, it was a privilege to know him, and everything he told me, especially on that kind of thing, i did right away. put you do not want to in a position to violate dr. client privilege, but what do you take away with the relationships you have had with a long list of high-profile americans as their physician? each one, you learn something. steve lives every day until he died. some people die mentally the day they are diagnosed. steve literally live until the day he died. looking at every day that stays with you as something that stays with you forever. sadly, that is one, comes to mind, and we talk about it, the executive producer of my radio program. a beautiful assistant named cheryl flowers who died way too at 42 of breast cancer. i got to know her doctors, and i visited her when she got her treatments, and i will remember her as long as i live, the difficult time that her physician had when she passed away, and i remember looking at him and thinking, how does he do that consistently, because i know that cheryl was not the only patient he ever lost, and you have got a tough job. >> if i can make someone live longer or better, even if they die from the disease, if i can make the process better, i have done a good thing. i wrote a book on preventive medicine. the best way to treat cancer is to prevent it, and much of cancer we can prevent or delay, but yet we are not doing it in this country, and that is what we need leadership to do. the greatest leader is the mayor of new york city, and you know there is something wrong with it in this country. balanceow is it you your life when you have to tell people to or three times a week, i do not have anything for you? >> part of what i do is research. a new drug for breast cancer came from our lab, and that gives us hope, technology and drugs, so you have to marry taking care of patients and seeing the upside with the downside, that there really is hope that we can make a date difference, and for me, the it is my family, and making us better people. short so for the text, a guide to a long life, is it that simple? >> 65 rules. all of these are data-driven. these are the ones we have to act on. tavis: how do we go about preventing the cancers? >> there is a pill that costs three dollars per year that reduces the death rate of cancer by 37%, heart disease and stroke. it was first described by hippocrates years ago when they said you take the bark of the willow tree, and pain and fever go away. a baby aspirin. just that will have a marked effect on cancer, and behavior matters. it is what you eat and when you eat. all of those things have an impact on disease, and then it is a screening part erie it the key is to put all of the odds in your favor. tavis: and with all of these percentages, how high does the number end up being? >> i now, we think about half of the disease comes from your parents, you inherit it, and the other half is the savior. andan change the habits, genetics with medicines. you can reduce this by 50's percent to 75%. that is pretty high. i know these are all data-driven. i am sure it could have been more than 65 or less than 65. >> these are ones that are actionable. more than one study shows they work. there are many other things that are getting there and that will over time get that way, but these are the ones that have hit critical mass on data and that we need to start to move. the 65, pieces of advice, apply to fellow citizens across the board, or are there distinctions to be made by gender, by race, by ethnicity, etc.? >> these are more across the board, so within them, there will be subsections. there may be some that have a higher risk. i do not mean for everybody to do all 65. i just want them to know them. taste on their race, their risk of disease, their family history, they talk to the doctor and make the right decisions for them, but i want the conversations to happen. all too often, your doctor makes the decision for you, and i want you to take control. dr. king said in that mountaintop speech that longevity has its place, i would like to live a long life, but there was a point he made when asking about his life that he did not necessarily want to live a long life. that was not his priority, that he wanted to leave a good life, what heed he -- and wanted to leave behind was a committed life. the reason i raise that is that your book is called a short guide to a long life. i wonder if we overvalue, if we put too much on living a long life, number one, and number two, are our systems ready for the baby boomers to live a longer life? >> if you're 80 years old, and you are not enjoying things, and everything hurts when you move, that is not a good, long life. you could do this with 1953. dine with a deficit of it that said old age. dying with aen, -- definition of old age creates ever since then, we have called it something. if you live past the mid 80's, we do not put you on a ventilator. it cost society a tremendous amount, but the key is getting people to taking action today that would help them tomorrow. 19% of kids in high school today smoked tobacco. they are portending for themselves a bad outcome, and they do not get it yet. how do you get a 20-year-old to change something 30 years from now? do it now, and it will help you 30 years from now. they would look at you like you were crazy. let me go out on a limb. i started this conversation by talking about obamacare, and yet it occurs to me as i sit here and talk to you and listen to you is that the real way to solve our health care problem in america is not to get sick in the first place, because the system is just not designed -- well, let me be frank about it. it is designed to make money, and the system is designed to make money when you get sick. at least we are living longer lives. somebody ain't making as much money, but i can handle that as long as i am living a good, long life. but how realistic is it that we can actually get a handle on the things that do not just make us sick but, indeed, the things that make the health care industry money? you would be out of a job, wouldn't you? >> i would love to put myself out of business. surgeons get paid for doing surgery. doctors get trained -- paid for treating disease. i once talked to one of our legislative bodies that you would only have to pay a drug company if the drug works. why would you have to pay if it did not work? at the same time, we have to change our system to incentivize doctors for health. can be smoke and you large. you can drink soda, and they pay for the ramifications of your behavior. we have to take responsibility there, and the affordable care act does allow that. smokersllowed to charge higher premiums. it is really for the first time on a federal level that that is possible. the problem is in the last 15 years in washington, it has all been about finance. we need to change that and move that to talking about health. i am a believer in access to care, which aca brings us, which is awesome, and at the same time, we have to bring that conversation out about how to make the system better. >> at the beginning, you gave a huge shout out to michael bloomberg. do you want to unpack that for me? >> the mayor said you cannot have trans fats and sodas, and everyone was talking about nanny ittes being bad or good, but brought understanding. with discourse comes understanding, so whether you were tall or short or rich or poor, you when shopping in new york city, your behavior was different after that discourse. and i say this tong in cheek. bush did the exact same thing with stem cells. it was brilliant. he told people no federal funding for stem cells, and now everybody knows what a stem cell is. obviously, we are being somewhat facetious, but with discourse comes understanding. we have to start talking about these things and get people to understand what health care means, what health means, and what are the ramifications of the things that we do. tavis: what would the ramifications ultimately be on our health care system if we could get fellow citizens to employ the advice in this text? financially or beyond. again, these are the costs that seem to be bankrupting everything. corporations are trying to figure it out. and then health care costs. how would us following this impact our entire system? >> it is for individuals and society and government. companies are buying this for their employees. i care about you. one heart attack cost $70,000. $120,000 to cancer, the bottom line of a company. when they save a case, it affects the bottom line and productivity. these rules are aspirational by all. and for relatively low money, it can have an impact on our health. it is not just when you meet, it is how you can dramatically lower diabetes if you have your meal at the same time every day. there is a rule about getting naked every week, because it is like taking your own measurements, like your blood pressure, but i believe in them, and i hope you can make a difference in health care. dr., dr. david agus, and his new book is "a short guide to a long life." our next guest is julianne nocholson. stay with us. despite more than 10 years of solid work on television and many, she hasfor seem to come out of nowhere with the acclaimed series "masters of county," andge her latest is called "the red road," and she plays a troubled wife, and we will take a look at a clip from that first. >> you know my brother drowned. but he did not need to. a boy i used to know got messed up on drugs. and made him go swimming in the lake and just watched, watch tim brown, let him die. i want you to think about that. tavis: this thing is really good, but it is really intense. >> yes, not a lot of laughter. tavis: ok, do you see these shoes? from the red road -- nice shoes. red shoes. it is good, but it is intense, and i do not know how one goes about researching the character that you play, who has a bit of schizophrenia. you have pulled this thing off though. >> that is so nice. i appreciate your saying that. i am jean. my character. she has been hearing voices for about 17 years, but she has been denying it, and she started drinking to cover it, and she felt more comfortable labeling herself an alcoholic more than schizophrenic, and then things come up in the first episode that pushed it. she cannot deny it anymore. i did a lot of reading. i did a lot of speaking to people who have schizophrenia in their family, and i felt like it was there on the page, and it was great. i do not want to give too much away, and i have a habit of saying too much, so i am going to let you just kind of set the stage for what this series is about, what we do, in fact, see in the first episode. roin the series, "the red crime occurs in these communities, a white community and a native american community. they have a lot of history with each other, being so close to each other, and there is a lot of animosity between the two communities, and this specifically happens and puts some up against each other. the things ine of was heartened by, and i give the people at sundance a shout out for this, i cannot remember the last time i have seen a tv series, and there are some with elements of it, i cannot remember the last time i have seen a television series where native americans are featured so prominently. >> it is one of the reasons i wanted to do it. 26 miles from manhattan, one of the riches communities, cities in the world, and so close, this experience can be happening, and i think people should be aware that there are other experiences out there that we do not know about. to see it, just glad because this is my own soap box. even the president, with all respect, he is well intended when he says slavery is america's original sin. he is wrong. what we did to the americans is the original sin. i just wish we would get that right in the textbooks. but it was moving for me to see that this community, even though there is some drama here, you need some of that to make it work, but they are prominently displayed here, which it is. >> thank you. at this stage in your career, and we will come back to that, because people have just discovered you. you have been in all of the right places and all of the right raw x, which is a beautiful thing, but, since we are there, how has that made you feel, when you have put in all of this work? >> i feel great. tavis: yeah. >> i feel better than i ever have. it is a career. momentsike you have low and high moments, and i feel what i have been given the opportunity to do in the last few years has made me feel more settled and more secure and confident in the work i am doing now and that i will continue to do, because so much in this business is about perception, and you can be doing good work, but until people see you in that movie with those people, they do not give you opportunity, so it does not feel major, but there is a little shift in perception, which will hopefully lead to continuing to do good work. if you wanted to pick a picture to be noticed and, you picked a good one. >> i know. "august: osage, county," is up for awards. dream one, this is the one. and waiting as long as i had, it feels good. i feel like i am right where i am supposed to be. tavis: what do you make of why that film has, in fact, connected so well? >> i saw the play on broadway when it was there six years ago, and i think the story is amazing, and the writing is incredible. it is a movie about grown-ups, which feels exciting also. there are so few of them now. for peoplethem are in their 20's, and i feel it is people who have experienced life, and it is refreshing. ers of sex" "mast came out, my producer said, we should look at that, and honesty is good for the soul, and i slept on it. >> you mean like this,zzz? tavis: i mean i slept on it because i did not know how good it was going to be, and then i watched an episode, and i got pulled and. >> really? how nice. you know what? that happened to me also. watch thesemally things, because i do not like to do it very much, but my aunt i watched gw, and episodes, and i was hooked also, but it took a couple of episodes. of thishat do you make doing so well? these period pieces are working so well. >> i love the allison janney storyline, and brokerages, i think they are amazing, a shining light of what it was like then. t andow, you get a little a in there, but not mine. i am staying tuned, just in case. the beau bridges character though is really, that's tory line is -- >> it is amazing, and i think that whole storyline with the hustler, the guy hustler, it is fascinating and surprising and so moving. well, as you can see from this conversation, she is in a bunch of stuff right now, and we have discovered her. >> yes, 20 years. tavis: overnight success. >> i will take it. tavis: you should. check out "masters of sex" and and "august:" osage county." your last this is not time. >> i will bring these shoes that. right, that is our show for tonight, and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with oscar winner forest whitaker about his new film, a psychological thriller called repentance. that is next time. we will see you then. ♪ >> the california endowment. health happens in neighborhoods. learn more. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. thank you. >> be more. 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