My Remarkable Journey (17 page)

I said, “Nothing.”

He said, “How can we do this?”

I said, “Well, we’re taping today. If you’re unhappy, we’ll end it. You don’t like it, walk away.”

He said, “That’s fair enough.”

My first question was, “When we were in school, why were we afraid of physics? Why in school is physics so hard?”

His face lit up, and in his Austrian accent he said, “They teach it wrong. They shouldn’t even call it physics! They should
call it
life
! Because physics affected everything you did today, Mr. King, from the minute you opened your eyes! Physics is
life
!”

So I said, “How?”

Then he described how.

So I asked, “What’s the next great thing in physics?”

He told me it was to learn the power in the inanimate, about the power in mountains. Where did that mountain come from? How
did those granules come together?

I said, “You’re the inventor of the hydrogen bomb—”

“It was never dropped! I keep hearing that. The A-bomb was dropped. We never hear about that. We hear that I invented the
hydrogen bomb. It’s never killed a person!”

Soon, I was asking, “When you invented the H-bomb, did you need to see it blow up? Or did you know that it would work by the
math?” And he said, “Yes! I knew by the math. Once the math works, the bomb works! I didn’t need to see the test. But getting
the math to work…”

We finished up, and afterward he said to me, “Why were you kidding me? As if you didn’t know anything about physics!”

You know what my dream interview is? “Good evening…” Then the door opens and I discover who the guest is. I was talking about
this with Bob Costas while he was doing his
Later
show. We decided we’d each get each other surprise guests. No preparation at all. A guy walked in that I’d never seen before.
I asked him his name. He said, “Meatloaf.” I’d never heard of him. So I asked, “When you arrive at a hotel, do you check in
as Mr. Loaf?” I got to know all about his music by good questioning.

I used to say you could put me in a locker room after a game, don’t tell me the sport, don’t tell me if the team won or lost—and
I’d be able to tell you exactly what happened by asking questions. Questions like, What did you learn tonight?

Can you use tonight’s game in your next game?

What was the toughest moment?

What surprised you?

You’ve got to know basics. But if you have the time to draw people out, I find it’s better to know very little. You can always
get into the whos, whats, and whys. It’s not only better than knowing too many of the whos—it’s more fun. When you don’t use
any notes, you’re flying on your own. That can be dangerous. You can’t get the moment back if you fall. Maybe that’s why I
love being on live. It’s so different from taping. It’s sort of like how Al Pacino describes the difference between theater
and film. When Al does a movie, he can shoot a scene eight times. It doesn’t matter if he screws one up. The director will
use the best one. When Al plays Broadway, he walks the tightrope at eight o’clock every night.

One of the nicest compliments I ever got came at a Peabody Awards ceremony. Alistair Cook, the speaker, said, “Ninety-nine
percent of the people in broadcasting are afraid to take risks. They go the careful route. They try to do what is right, but
basically, it’s always, ‘Don’t take that extra step. Do what you’re told.’ Ninety-nine percent. The other one percent is in
this room.”

Looking back, I realize it was probably more of a risk for me to join CNN than it was for Ted to hire me. Sometimes it was
hard to line up guests at the start because people didn’t know about CNN. Tammy would actually send interns to the escalator
of the Eastern Airlines shuttle at National Airport to look for famous people coming off their flights. If the interns spotted
someone, they’d ask if he or she would like to come on the show.

If I didn’t have a history with a potential guest, they were much more likely to want to appear before the huge network audience
of ABC’s
Nightline
with Ted Koppel. But even early on, there were moments that told us there was about to be a shift in power. After a TWA flight
was hijacked by Muslim extremists, the pilot of the grounded plane was photographed talking to reporters through the cockpit
window with a gun to his head. It was one of those images that made the world hold its breath. After the pilots and crew gained
their freedom, we booked the pilot on our show. ABC’s
Nightline
suddenly found itself in the uncomfortable position of phoning Tammy to ask if we’d relinquish him so that they could have
him.

All the networks were starting to notice us. Ted Turner tells a great story about talks with CBS over the possibility of a
merger. This guy came to Ted’s office and said something like, “I’m here representing Mr. Paley at CBS. We’re prepared to
buy you.”

William Paley was the Ted Turner of his own time. He’d built CBS from a tiny chain of stations in the ’30s and ’40s into what
became known as the Tiffany Network with an all-star newsroom. But Paley was more of an executive, whereas Ted was a mogul.
And times had changed.

Ted asked the guy, “Why didn’t Mr. Paley come?”

“Because I’m Mr. Paley’s representative.”

“Well,” Ted said, “why don’t you go down the hall and speak to
my
representative? Look, I run this company. Tell you what. You go back and tell Mr. Paley that I appreciate his offer. I’d
like to know what he wants. He wants to buy me? I’ll buy him.”

It’s hard to imagine now, but CNN was the only public network to carry the launch of the
Challenger
in January of 1986. The major networks didn’t preempt their programming. The Space Shuttle had a crew of seven that included
Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space. Schoolchildren all around America were watching CNN as
Challenger
lifted off at Kennedy Space Center and cleared the tower to cheers and applause.

When I remember it, I can’t help but think of the way that Charlie Chaplin described that thin line between comedy and tragedy.
You’re at a party. There’s a man at the top of the stairs. He has a mustache and a funny hat. He trips. He hits the top step.
He makes a funny face, and you laugh. He tumbles, hits the third step, his knee turns and you’re really laughing. He hits
the fifth step, blood comes out of the corner of his mouth and you’re changed. That second, it’s a tragedy. The
Challenger
had that same feeling.

Seventy-three seconds after the joyous cheers and applause, the O-rings in two solid rocket boosters broke. The
Challenger
exploded before everybody’s eyes. It’s been reported that within an hour, 85 percent of America knew about the accident.
The replay was shown countless times that day. That night, President Reagan addressed the nation. I can still remember that
speech. Peggy Noonan wrote it. Reagan talked about how the astronauts “slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face
of God.”

We must have done a whole week of shows following the disaster. What went wrong? What exactly were O-rings? Were the astronauts
conscious as they came down? How were the relatives coping? What about the reactions of schoolchildren who’d seen the explosion?
How would NASA go forward?

Over and over, I’ve been told that my show is the comfortable place people turn to in times of grief. I’d noticed this on
the radio when the Mutual phone lines jammed after John Lennon was murdered. I don’t know where this quality comes from. But
it was magnified by television. There’s something about television that makes you an intimate part of the family. Johnny Carson
once told me that nobody ever called him Mr. Carson. They called him Johnny because people were in bed when they saw him.
I have that same quality. I’m Larry. I’m your friend.

I became everybody’s friend just as the demand for nonstop news arrived. CNN began to take off, and my show took off with
it. Little did I know that a tumble was coming.

I
N THE EARLY YEARS
, I smoked through my CNN show. Viewers didn’t know it because I had the cigarette underneath my desk—just like Johnny Carson.
If the smoke started to come up, I just pushed my hand down to hide it. That saved time. When the commercial break came I
didn’t have to wait to light a match.

There were times when I didn’t smoke out of respect for the guest. On those occasions, I would run to the bathroom during
breaks and grab a couple of drags. One of those guests was C. Everett Koop—the surgeon general under Ronald Reagan.

The warning label you now see on the side of a cigarette pack—it’s there because of Koop. The tobacco industry hated Koop.
The truth is, Reagan was disappointed in him, too. The president didn’t like it when people upset the status quo, and Reagan
was a staunch supporter of big business. Why would you speak out against the tobacco industry?

But Koop made himself so independent that he couldn’t be fired. His beard made him look like a cross between your grandfather
and Santa Claus. He was honest and very likable. It was obvious that he had no agenda other than to warn you to protect your
health. All he set out to do was tell you the facts—and he was a master at it. The reality is, we don’t know exactly why smoking
causes lung cancer or heart attacks. We only know that it does cause lung cancer and heart attacks. When someone would challenge
Koop to produce proof, he’d say something like, “I can’t prove to you for a fact that you’ll die if you fall out of an airplane.
But statistically, the numbers are impressive.”

Koop came on my CNN show in February of 1987. After we finished the interview, he turned to me with this very concerned look
and said, “You feeling OK?”

“Yeah.”

“You still smoking?”

I was still smoking in the shower. I’d been going through three packs a day for thirty-six years.

There was a lot of denial on my part. But I couldn’t deny the change in the way cigarettes were being perceived. When I started
out in radio, everyone at the station smoked. Look at any old film—all the actors light up. There’s a great movie called
The Young Doctors,
starring Dick Clark and Fredric March. In it, there’s an argument between Clark, the young doctor, and March, the old doctor,
about how to treat a patient. The two of them are blowing smoke in each other’s face as they debate back and forth. I don’t
remember the exact dialogue, but if you look at it now, it’s got to be laughable.
We’re here for health!

The strange thing about smoking to me was, it didn’t feel like poison. When you’re smoking, you never feel like it’s going
to kill you even though you know it’s going to kill you. It’s insane. Why do smart people do insane things? I don’t know,
but I can tell you that smoking produces some very complex behavior.

The actor Yul Brynner filmed a commercial to be shown after he died. In it, he said, “I really wanted to make a commercial
that says simply, ‘Now that I’m gone, I tell you, don’t smoke. Whatever you do, just don’t smoke.’” When that commercial appeared,
I’d jump to change the channel.

Yet I can also remember a USAir flight I was on from Washington to Pittsburgh. You could still smoke on commercial airlines
in the mid-’80s, though restrictions were starting to be implemented. The last three rows were made available to smokers.
However, if one person in those last three rows objected, the pilot would declare it a nonsmoking flight.

All the smokers were sitting in the back ready to light up. It was a pretty full flight. We were just about to take off, and
one guy came rushing down the aisle. He sat down in the second to last row, and we lifted off. All the people in the last
three rows—except one—lit up, and it wasn’t long before the pilot’s voice came over the intercom, saying, “Attention, people
in the last three rows. A gentleman requests there be no smoking. Therefore, this will be a nonsmoking flight.”

It wasn’t hard to locate that gentleman. You know what we did? We not only kept on smoking, we blew smoke in the guy’s face.
And then, when we saw the stewardess coming, we’d quickly put our cigarettes out and away before she reached us.

Finally, the pilot spoke over the intercom again. “Will the children in the last three rows stop? If not, we’ll have you all
arrested when we land.”

So I was flipping Yul Brynner’s commercial out of my sight. I was blowing smoke in some poor passenger’s face. And I was also
going along with the actor Larry Hagman when Larry asked to be my partner on Stop Smoking Day. The idea was for your partner
to support you through the cravings by calling you constantly. I made it for only five or six hours.

These are only a few of the different behaviors that smoking could bring out in you. It was more than an addiction. I loved
to smoke. Besides, Larry King was not going to die. I’ll bet that up until the day that Koop came in as my guest I hadn’t
missed more than a week of work in thirty years. I’d go on the air with laryngitis before calling in sick.

I guess you could correlate smoking and my workday—neither ever stopped. I was doing the CNN show, the all-night Mutual radio
show, writing a newspaper column, and doing a lot of speaking engagements. The more I was on, the more of my life I could
control.

“I don’t like the way you look,” Koop said before he left the CNN studio. “Do me a favor. See a doctor first thing tomorrow.”

We parted, and I went to do my all-night radio show. My guest that night was David Halberstam, the Pulitzer Prize– winning
writer. David’s brother was a cardiologist whom I’d interviewed many times—Michael Halberstam. Michael was one of the first
doctors to discuss the benefits of taking an aspirin every day.

I don’t know if Michael’s profession had rubbed off on David. But when we finished the interview, at 3 a.m., there was a break
before I started to do Open Phone America, and David turned to me and said, “Are you OK?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t look right.”