tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight, as a u.s. warship had to the korean peninsula, we look at the escalating crisis with asia expert richard sullivan. rattling iss saber nothing new, but even china is scrambling for diplomatic solutions. we will pay closer to home for a conversation about what they see as a fallout assault on our children's future. those conversations are coming up right now. >> there is a saying that dr. king had said, there is always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only about halfway to completely eliminate hunger and we have work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to

fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: kim jong un inherited the military first policy that seeks to destabilize the region. despite sanctions, north korea continues to develop a nuclear arsenal. the former ambassador to the

philippines and asia expert richard solomon is a senior rand is to two. dodge this is a timely issue to look at. the korean war and it with an , now is the .roliferation tavis: what makes this different? the middle of a leadership transition. the comments targeting us, the hostility level that has been raised. the way to look at this situation is the fact that the north koreans are facing a

fundamental choice. a militarized regime that has fallen behind all of the progress in the world. has been a spectacular success in terms of its economic development. south korea is about 10 times greater than is in the north. and they tried to defend themselves against outside influence with this military capability. the chinese have been begging the north koreans for two decades to open up their economy has yet to produce the kind of progress that has enabled china to achieve economic growth. the north koreans refused to do it. when he came on just a year or so ago, he talked about

instituting chinese-style reforms and he began a few things that suggested he might want to do some reforms himself. he brought out alive. his father never brought his wife out in public as his grandfather never did. there was a cultural show that had some mickey mouse kind of figures. dennis rodman was brought over because he is apparently a basketball fan for his time as a student. that he needed to open up and build this economy. the chinese don't want to have said -- to subsidize the failed regime. , webest that we could tell are guessing to some degree is that there was a big fight

internally. said, you can't do what the chinese did because if we open up our country, it will expose it to the kind of political instability that china had some years ago. the military understands that if the people who have suffered under this regime, if they see what happened in south korea, the level of living and the standards of health care, all the things that are taken for granted, the no. 3 in population would go crazy. the military wants to wall off this country. it was traditionally more korean over the centralist. they tried isolate themselves from foreign influence. they had been run over by the

japanese. -- ahave been the us; a semi-colony. tavis: let me ask a couple questions. what is there to be gained by these threats? most persons i have read been these threats to be hollow, a bunch of empty rhetoric. but even if you take the rhetoric seriously, what is there to be gained? is this an attempt to control and convince nation's to provide more aid? what is to be gained? target of these moves is the internal audience. what the military regime wants to do is convince north korean people that the outside world is very hostile to them and they can't open up and engage a world

that is hostile to them. you raised the point about is this an effort to extort aid or assistance from the outside world? that had been the pattern up until a few years ago. i think we are at a point where after two decades of efforts to negotiate, agreements might have been reached and were not followed up on. i think it is not likely that we will see the outside world to anotherrespond series of extortion threats. tavis: i asked specifically about him and i don't mean to the ages, but he is such a young leader, having taken over from his father. sometimes the more susceptible you are to being pulled one way or another. the nature of his

age and inexperience concern you about who is pulling the strings? question, and i don't think this young man has been in a leadership position in a very long. his father had over two decades to work himself to a leadership position in north korea. this fellow has only been in a position for a year or two, so the question is, who controls whom? is he controlled by the military? does he have significant influence and much less control over those that have dominated the economy in the political system? believe there is internal political factions that the debate, can they survive as a military regime?

as i said earlier, the chinese are telling them that you have to reform. in is not clear that the internal political support the reform process. tavis: what does the u.s. say? we have tried sanctions and now what do we do? >> our primary responsibility is to reassure our allies, south korea and japan. they are watching the united states. we have been through two wars over the last decade and we want to stay at home and deal with our domestic situation. people brought are wondering if the united states will continue to play a stabilizing role that we have done since the end of the cold war period we made it

possible for the chinese economic takeoff. we enabled not just east asia, but other parts of the world to go through this tremendous hot of economic growth. they're looking to us for continuing leadership and the reason that we engaged in the is an effortcises to reassure our allies that we are still around and we intend to try to maintain stability. can north much longer korea go before this is some sort of an uprising amongst the people about conditions inside the country? we have seen an example of this time and time again around the world. if the domestic agenda is not longer do how much

you see this kind of bluster being the answer to the problem is that every day people have to navigate every day? >> i think you are pointing in just the right direction. i would look to the leadership splitting up. as you may recall, the head of google was over there recently with our ambassador to the un, and they were talking about bringing the internet and to sell funds and in north korea. i would be surprised if that happened because it was the information revolution that facilitated the arabs praying at the kind of public uprisings we have seen in other parts of the world.

it is within the leadership. we have got to deal with economic problems and we can't just stand here behind our nuclear weapons and arm muscles. it will likely be an issue that is undoubtedly already being debated. are undoubtedly urging elements in the leadership. tavis: what is your sense to about south korea a's response? >> i think they are fed up with the provocations, the recent sinking of a south korean ship by the no. 3 and torpedo, the shelling of one of their islands, they are spring loaded

to respond in some violent way to further north 3 and provocations. one of the challenges is to keep any response from the south koreans should there be another north korean provocation escalating. we don't want to see the situation get out of control. i don't believe they want a full-scale war. they will try to keep the hostility level to a point where negotiations don't seem possible. saidparty congress, they they would never negotiate away their nuclear weapons. i don't see it as something likely to resume anytime soon. does not develop in the coming days.

joining us tonight from the rand corporation in washington, that you for coming on the program. about a a conversation serious health crisis facing our children. stay with us. tavis: the crisis facing so many kids, childhood obesity has caught everyone's attention as of late. experts,rs and health there text is called always the fat kid, the truth about the enduring effects of childhood obesity. i am honored to have the doctors on this program. when i first saw this text come across, what got me was the title.

quicklyt that was incorrect. >> it is, that is part of why we used it. we seem to have gotten into a culture of avoiding calling things what they are. people talk about it in terms of obesity, but the issue is that the kids are too fat. we think the conversation is going to keep getting help where it is. tavis: what do we mean? >> a stage where a third of children are overweight, and that is where we feel that children and as a nation, we are at a critical point in our history. time, givennt in the fact that we have the investments that are extraordinary, the vaccinations

that we have, the medical advances, surgeries that can extend the lives. and we are hearing news from researchers that this may be the first generation of children that actually will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. hearing the juxtaposition of those, it indicates we are at a crisis. tavis: what is driving that? >> increase in portion sizes, the availability of food, a lot of it comes down to other factors such as aggressive marketing of unhealthy food items to children which continues despite the evidence is actually affecting the quality of food that they eat. sometimes you don't have a choice. wind michael bloomberg went

out of the soft-drink industry, he got a smack down. he tried to push back and got smacked around. >> there has to be a strategy of combining smaller legislative action at targeting people to change behaviors. from a legal standpoint, it will not have the full effect. changing the availability of food at school, we should not te legislation that we impleme. this is an individual based issue just as it is a state and federal issue. truly, it takes a village to solve this type of crisis. tavis: i don't want to say problem, but the challenge that we face to getting paris to do that israel. wayave to navigate our through it.

you see the evidence. youdo not have to be -- don't need perfect vision to see that our kids are overweight. they are fat. and with all of that evidence that we visually see every day, the evidence does not suggest to me that we are making progress understanding the problem. >> we aren't. there is a perception that it is just a little baby fat and it will go way over time. the point outing that 75% of adults are overweight. it is an issue of how to teach parents to teach behaviors to their children. tavis: against that backdrop of

negativity, why does rival with the fat kid? thee have experienced personal and professional journey that we experienced. are also universally based health researchers. as we start to delve deeper into the research, we noticed that something started to emerge that .as really consistent there were gaps in the discussion related to childhood obesity and a lot of it was focused on physical health. missing are what is the psychological issues related to childhood obesity, that children that are overweight are

-- more likely to become there are also shows no consequences. these consequences can last into adulthood. all of that led us to say that this needs to, we need to have this discussion. tavis: what are the truths that you believe are not being told? >> that it is not something that will go away once they reach adulthood. there are these the fact that accumulate over time. a disease. is not it is a behavior. it sounds a little depressing but is powerful because you have the choice to change the situation. there are negative effects but

it also provides the path of how to get out. tavis: you said professional and personal journeys, can you tell me about your personal journey? and what it was like being one of these kids? fortunate that i experienced being overweight as a kid but i had a lot of motivation to overcome being overweight. i certainly experienced the negative consequences of being overweight. this. to overcome afternoonde in the after school, and i noticed a big change in myself and how i felt internally. not just physically but internally. i know that jacob story was a bit different but there are similarities in terms of the hang over the fact that is there

in relation to self-esteem. body image related things that might come out. there are certainly consequences of being an overweight kid. i was the one on the school bus that everybody picked on. once i lost over 80 pounds, i did not like to eat in front of people or to be photographed. tavis: i wonder why we see -- or why we don't see kid ambassadors for fighting obesity.

weight-loss programs over time, i wonder how this conversation by change if somebody got behind a campaign that featured kids that we could see losing the weight in their childhood. not when they are 12 and 25, but had an 13 or 13 and 16. people, ire a visual wonder if seeing that campaign on television, you see kids losing weight. i wonder if that might have an impact. , howat children look for do i make this happen? it is a challenging thing. we have experienced it and we have been there.

thing yet toenging see the models will be helpful. the book is called away the fat kid, the truth about in during childhood obesity. you might want to get this book right about now. that is our show for tonight until then, thanks for watching. as always, keep the faith. today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with emmy winner jeremy given whose series on pbs.

>> there is a saying that dr. king had said, there is always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only about halfway to completely eliminate hunger and we have work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

>> be more. pbs. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with emmy-winner jeremy