Raven: Montel, from my heart, thank you so much.

Montel: Thanks for having me Raven. This very powerful message that you have for listeners, it’s not just about empowerment over a certain age. It’s about empowerment. It’s about taking charge of your life, and that message especially right now couldn’t be more poignant for people of every age to start to determine that you don’t have to live down to anyone else’s expectations. You can set the bar as high as you want for yourself, and attempt it. Not just attempt, strive to live up to that bar, and I’ll guarantee you start way further than anybody expected you to be. There’s no ifs, ands or buts that whether you believe or not, as much as given is as much as expected. Unless you do what is expected of you, or it comes back to you may not necessarily be ten fold what you want, but it will be tenfold. Seventeen years of my own show, I was in people’s living rooms everyday for seventeen years. Really, one of the only shows of the history of television to maintain the identical core, we ended up with about three million people watching, and we started out with about three million people watching. We went up as high as seven or eight million people watching everyday, and it stayed that way for many years. Then, it stayed at three. Three million people, I think like some of your listeners felt a void. Believe me, right now I’m trying to fill that void through Montel across America, which is my radio show which you can kind of tune into and catch me streaming live. This is an opportunity that I’ve wanted for a long time. It’s part of the public discord. I think anybody who knows me and remembers anything that I’ve said along the way is that number one if we want to sit back and complain about the ills of our society and not step up to the plate to do something about it, then you may as well keep your mouth shut. For me, right now, this is an opportunity for me to not just complain about the ills of our society, but to try to motivate others to understand that we can make it an individual difference, and the individual does make a difference. It’s really incredible just keeping in mind what it is you’re trying to promote, and that is you’re making your listeners understand that again, we live in a time that right now may be described as one of the most stressful economic and depressions or recessions that we face, but what we haven’t been paying attention to is that this economic downturn, this downturn financially and fiscally for a lot of us is causing an emotional and psychological downturn that we may not bounce back from as quickly as the stock market does. People have to stop and pay attention to your emotional health and your psychological well-being because without that, you’re like the pillars of a building, the four corners of a building. That’s one of those corners that has to be shored up, or none of the rest works. It’s very funny. I’ve got an opportunity; a lot of people have called for this network, America Progressive Radio. For some reason, that’s taken on some bad name or some bad moniker in society. I’ve become a part of Air America’s Network because they really firmly believe in independence, and they believe in unfaltering. This gives me an opportunity to speak to you completely unfiltered. I’ve never been one to filter my feelings or filter my opinion, and for now you’re not going to get it. I’m also hoping that like I tried to do throughout the entire time the Montel Williams Show was on the air, that is try to give you the information that can help you best make decisions for yourself, and then canalize you into action. © MMVII JS&M Sales & Marketing, Inc. San Diego California -Tel. 858-274- I think unfortunately so many of us are just sitting back and waiting for things to happen to us rather than understand that we can be proactive and make things happen ourselves. It’s like that old stupid saying, “A person who is in the right place at the right time.” No, that’s a bunch of garbage. You should be making everyplace you’re in the right time everytime, and good things will happen. One of the things that’s so crazy, I think we go through life and forget how fleeting it is. Let me give you a little story. It was about almost ten years ago, as a matter of fact, it’s crazy but I just thought about that because it was pretty much ten years ago this month that I was laying on a gurney in Manhattan at Beth Israel North and watched my heartbeat go from 61 to 42 to 33 to 27 to 15-16 before I blacked out and thought that I heard the little noise. When the called the code blue and all the doctors come running in, and they touched me on the chest. They started performing CPR to bring me back. Then, I went through an eighteen hour surgery the next day. I started to recognize and truly understand the value of every breath I take. For us to actually not even ponder how important those seconds are. I know that seems a little bit lofty, but I almost completely checked out. Had I been gone and died and not carried on any of the work that I’ve done, three million people might not have gotten medication that got medication through that program that I did for two years called the PPA program. If I had passed away, another twenty kids may not have gone to college. Had I passed away, we may not have had more people interested in voting. Who knows? For whatever those reasons, there’s a reason for me to be here. So, every single day that I wake up in the morning, I find it an abomination that others don’t think this way. I don’t get up in the morning ever with any trepidation or any anxiety about what the next day has to offer me because I’m having an opportunity just to participate in that day. That right there should bring me joy enough to expect of myself the best that I can do that day. To be any less is really just, you’re not living. You’re really just marking time waiting to die. You’re cheating yourself, but then, here’s what’s so crazy. Why do you have to wait for the wake up call? Someone else is giving it to you. I’m giving it to you. Raven, you’re giving it out when you talk about the experiences that take place in your life. People should stop and learn from that rather than sit back and wait for life to give you something. That’s the attitude of waiting to be in the right place at the right time. No, make sure you’re in the right place everytime, and you should do that in every aspect of your life. Most of us right now, there are people out there who are listening to this radio show and they just lost their job, and they’re saying, “Oh, Montel, you don’t know what you’re talking about. How can you be positive when you know I went to work yesterday, and for no reason whatsoever, the boss just fired me?” Well, you know what happened, that just gave you an opportunity to go out and look and see what other skills you have that are marketable. About a year and a half ago, I had a person call me on the phone who really didn’t have control, but I had control, and literally fired me on the phone, just over a phone call after I worked for this company for seventeen years. I get a fire over the phone. Now, it’s really kind of crazy. I wrote about this in my last book Living Well Emotionally, and you know, I’m not trying to in any way shape or form imply that my fire precipitated what happen, but the person did this over the phone after a seventeen year relationship, a month later drops dead of a massive heart attack. He was one of the top people in this entire industry. I could have rolled over and cried and went, “Oh woe is me, oh woe is me,” but instead I was unemployed for a year and a half. In that process, started looking at the skills that I have, and it’s crazy like a blessing this opportunity for this radio show fell from the sky. I could have just sat around and said, “I don’t want to do radio. I’m a television talk show host, no, no, no.” There’s an opportunity here in radio that I never knew existed, and once I found out it existed, I had to jump as quickly as I could to see if I could beat people down and beat the doors down to open one up to get this radio show, and I got it. So, the thing is rather than sit back and wallow in the misery of an incident, I decided to use that as a springboard, did the most discerning thinking to figure out the tools that I had that were worth marketing, and have gone out and marketed them. Just in this thought process, just remember, even for your listeners, those out there right now who may be in a situation where they feel © MMVII JS&M Sales & Marketing, Inc. San Diego California -Tel. 858-274- little a down. No one has knocked you out. Thomas Edison tried a thousand times before he figured out how to light a lightbulb. Walt Disney got canned by his bosses because they accused him of having a lack of imagination. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were blown off by both Hewitt Packard at a time when they pitched their prototype Apple Computer. J.K. Rowling, a mother who was homeless living in the back seat of a car, attempted to get her books; Harry Potter published, and was passed on by every one of the top publishers in all of London. It took a very small publisher to publish her and that woman is now worth a billion dollars. Michael Jordan, he was caught by his high school basketball team and goes on to still be the preeminent basketball player that everyone compares every other player in the league, too. You’ll see the same thing probably happen right here with President Obama, born in a situation at a time where most people would consider him written off. He’s now the president of the United States, and will probably end up be one of the most influential presidents in the history of this country. One of the things about his message that his so powerful and so real is the message of inclusion, the message of everyone matters, everyone’s opinion is worth hearing as long as it’s an opinion that’s tendered with respect. Isn’t it interesting that it takes a new president new to the walls of Washington, DC to remind those in DC to respect those who put them there. I think the good thing is that we’re living in a time of openness. The information is there to be able to make good decisions based on fact not decisions made based on hyperbole and a bunch of garbage. I’m really happy with the times that we live in, and with the times we live in for us as individuals. Again, your message out there to the women and men across this country that it’s time for us to take charge of our lives, transform our life, that’s what I wrote about in my book, Living Well, how to transform your life and supercharge your health, how to live well emotionally and breakthrough to a life of happiness even in tough times. Both of these books I’ve just written, I think can help you step through a path to get there. Hi, this is Raven Blair-Davis reporting for Michael Senoff’s

Raven: Living Well Emotionally Breakthrough to a Life of Happiness is Montel’s latest book, a New York Times best-selling author. You have to pick it up.

Montel: Your show is geared for women over forty. I’m 52, and I’m proud of it, and I have more ravages going against my body than I think the normal person does, but the truth is through this book Living Well Emotionally, I tap into some wisdom of the ages, and I’ve tapped into some information that’s helping me maintain as healthy a life as I can even with MS, helping maintain the vigor that I have, helping maintain the attitude that I have, all through programming. Of course, any of your listeners can come on with my website. It’s MontelMedia.com, and get some information today. This is something that is kind of exclusive. You’re the first radio show that I’ve had an opportunity to talk to about this. Right now, on my online website, if you come up and you press the icon that talks about Protandem. I have a product on our website that right now will make a difference in your life in a couple of ways. One, everybody is looking for the fountain of youth, and everybody is trying to figure out how they can fight off the ravages of aging and also of disease, heart disease and cancer and other things. That are some things out there that can help us. We all know that anti-oxidants have been a radical breakthrough right now when it comes to your health, taking anti-oxidants is what helps remove the free radicals from your system. Free radicals is what causes the damage and aging, and also causes oxidated stress which can lead to things like heart disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and other things. I have a product on my website right night called Protandem. I’ve been taking it for three years straight. You wonder why I look the way I do at 52 with no wrinkles around the eyes, take a look at this product. Not only should you look at it from the standpoint and taking it and consuming it yourself, but there’s an opportunity right now to become part of the business of Protandem, and we identify right there on my website. So, it’s MontelMedia.com, all you have to do is mention my name, and you can end up getting more information about the product and I’m telling you it shows you step by step through my two books © MMVII JS&M Sales & Marketing, Inc. San Diego California -Tel. 858-274- plus this, how you can kind of maintain your health and combat the ravages of aging and the ravages of bad care. You know right now the African American community is hit the hardest when it comes to foreclosure, and media and information, stats that have come out very recently say that most people are know more than $350 a way from a foreclosure. If that $350 extra a month, that would have stopped or prevented their foreclosure. Through a program like Protandem, you have the potential to make that and much, much more.

Raven: I want to talk about in chapter one I believe it was, the very first chapter, you talk about the brightest and darkest place. You said, “I am having a heart attack. Oh my god, I think I’m having a heart attack right in the middle of a casino lobby in Las Vegas.” I think you said instead of you thinking about the good things, you were thinking about cameras and everybody being.

Montel: What happened was I was going to an event that was called The Ante Up for Africa. It was an event that raises money for Darfur. Don Cheadle and a woman by the name of Annie Good put it on every year during the World Series of Poker. They were raising almost a half a million to a million dollars every single year for Aid to Darfur. It happens to take place right there the first week of July, which is normally the hottest time of the year in Las Vegas, and most of your listeners know that I suffer from MS. Because of MS, I am extremely heat sensitive. If the temperature goes above 85 degrees and it shuts me down just like a short circuit to your computer. I step out of limosine and have to walk about fifty yards, sixty yard red carpet into the back of the Rio and it was about 117 degrees. It was one of the hottest days on record. I literally stepped out of the car and one of the symptoms that a lot of us who have MS have is something called a chest hug. What that is because again your brain is short-circuiting, I’m saying this as elementary as I can. When that short circuit happens, it’s not sending a signal to the diaphragm. So, your diaphragm can contract or freeze, and your diaphragm if you suck in air, if that doesn’t expand, you can’t breath, and if it clamps down, it can stop you from even catching your breath. My diaphragm locked up so hard from the heat that I literally thought I was having a heart attack. I didn’t even think chest hug. I thought heart attack. So, then I thought, “Okay, here I go. I’m going to fall down on the floor right down in the lobby of the Rio, and there’s going to be all these people taking pictures of me going, ‘Oh, there’s Montel.’” Of course, you know at six o’clock on the news, they’re going to have a picture of me dying. So, of course, I started spiraling myself down into a deep state of depression before I realized, “No, I’m not having a heart attack. It’s a hug.” I had to stop and regroup, and part of the reason I talk about that story is that what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to prove to people that it doesn’t matter how bad things are, you have control of how you feel at every given second of the day. You have control emotionally. In fact, logically, forty percent of how you feel, you can control right then. There’s a brand new formula, I think it’s called Happiness Formula, it was produced by a doctor by the name (inaudible), and they came out and identified the fact that genetically, we all have a preset happiness quotient about how happy we can be. That represents about fifty percent of how we feel at any given day. You can be only so happy, and you’re only going to be but so sad. Another ten percent about how you feel at any given second of the day is controlled by your environment. You got fired. You got in an argument. You broke up with a loved one. You lost a person who passed away. Ten percent of how you feel at a given second is based on environmental things. The other forty percent, you can control right then and there, like right this minute with people listening to me. If you decided right this second to just start thinking about positive things, start thinking about things that you remember that are the most beautiful thoughts and memories that you have. You will within two minutes change the way you feel and the mood that you’re in, no ifs ands or buts, and I realized that when I was getting ready to fall down on this floor at the Rio that if I just stopped for a second, and stop with the negative, “I’m dying,” thought and start remembering that I’m not dying, I’m okay. Montel stand up. You can talk yourself out of an abyss as quickly as you can talk yourself into one. © MMVII JS&M Sales & Marketing, Inc. San Diego California -Tel. 858-274-

Raven: You pushed past your pain to assist others with multiple sclerosis. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve given over $1.2 million in grants.

Montel: It’s crazy. The Montel Williams MS Foundation has been able to give out grants over the last three years, really the last four years when we started giving out grants, and that’s some of the top hospitals around the world – Harvard, John Hopkins, the Nobel institute in Stockholm, Sweden, UC San Francisco. We’ve given out grants around the world trying to see if we could do what everybody wants to do, and that’s try to come up with a cure. In the interim while we’re waiting for a cure, I also want people to understand that you can impact the way you feel every single day. Number one, taking charge of your life includes taking charge of your diet, exercising and taking charge of your self emotionally. That’s what it’s all about. We’re going to be getting ready to do a whole series around the country which is just living well. That’s how people tap into the fact that even during the toughest times we can still strive and flourish. You just have to put yourself in the right mindset, and it can be done. We have a campaign that’s going on right now at the Montel Williams MS Foundation which is one dollar, one person. It’s just about just if you want to assist right now, we’re trying our best to put together again more money for research for MS. That’s the most important thing you can do. Come on to my website which is MontelMS.org, and we have a really great campaign. See, a lot of people don’t think that they can make a difference. I’m telling you that if you call three friends and say, “Look, I’m giving a dollar to the Montel Williams MS Foundation. Will you give a dollar too? Call a friend to give a dollar.” If I have 10,000 people to give a dollar, I’ve got $10,000. With that $10,0000, we fund research that doesn’t go into people’s pockets to buy desks and buy computers and buy carpets and chairs and salaries. We fund the research down to the Petri dish. So, we have an advisory committee that reviews all grants that we put out, and those grants are for specific research issues that can come up with definitive markers. Do you understand what I’m saying? We’re not funding the projects that are five years in the making. We’re going after projects that have the most efficacy to see if they can come up with something that can move this whole process forward.

Raven: Final question, as we close out, as the greatest talk show host of all time, Montel Williams, what golden nugget can give you those aspiring to be – not just a good talk show host but a great one like you.

Montel: This has more to do with not just the method of being a great talk show host, this is how to be, and I hate to use the corny phrase but all that you were meant to be. I’m living on this planet hoping that on that reckoning day, the day that I have to go see my maker, I can stand before them and say, “I used every gift that you gave me to better mankind.” There should be no other goal. Honestly, for life, and how I did that and how I will do that from now until the day that I meet that person, I do that by this one tool. I alone own the definition of who I am. For how much is given, that much is expected. That’s just part of life. That goes along with that. I feel like that is almost one of the rules of life rather than a saying by virtue of the fact that I was given air to breath. That’s what I owe back, so as much as given that much is expected. The truth is if you live your life never living up to or down to any one else’s expectations but your own, you set the bar. If I had listened to the garbage that people said to me as a child, I’m a child that was born in one of the biggest ghettos of all the entire east coast of America which was Baltimore Cherry Hill. That’s where Bethlehem Steel was. That was one of the first national clean-up sites, and when the federal money was put forth to clean up waste dump area, I was born and lived three blocks from that dump when I was born. If you go back to my neighborhood right now, I believe that out of the fourteen or fifteen African American male children that were born in that neighborhood, I may be one of two that may be alive today. Some of my fellow mates that were born in that area lived down to other people’s expectations because they wound up as one of the statistics that are in jail. When I was in elementary school, I had a teacher look me in the face and told me that just because by virtue of the color of my skin, I would never be anything in life. Rather than live down to her expectations fulfill her dream, I decided to fight against that my whole life, and that’s the reason why I pursued education as hard as I have. That’s the reason why I’m so angry that we in our community haven’t understood © MMVII JS&M Sales & Marketing, Inc. San Diego California -Tel. 858-274- the fact that a 75 percent dropout rate among African American children in this country is an abomination. That’s no one’s fault by ours. It’s not about being in the right place at the right time. It’s about making every place you’re in the right time everytime.