tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight, a conversation with author jared diamond. is new book, the world until yesterday is already generating intense debate. and what has been gained or lost over the millennia. we are glad you have joined us. coming up, right now. >> there is a saying that dr. king had. he 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: jared diamond has never shied away from tackling difficult subjects. his first book on why europeans were able to conquer some much of the world as a best-selling novel. he followed that up with collapse, why civilizations falter. he is tackling nothing less than the sweep of history.

the world until yesterday, what we can learn from society. always good to have you on this program. glad to have you back. i want to get this right. what might be an unorthodox commencing to this conversation critics said. here comes my friend, mr. provocation. you said, which one of us would that be? start with what the critics say about your work and we will move to the text. this notion that you have a broad stroke approach with wild, overreaching generalizations using data you have selected to support your feces -- theses. >> it is true that i take a

broader approach to discuss societies around the world. as for taking my data, i picked on thehe best studies continents. it is a wide selection. based on detailed studies. i deny the charge. say traditional societies, let's start with the definition of that term. like all human societies, until 10,000 years ago. small societies of a couple dozen to a few hundred people. it is only with the explosion that agriculture began possible that you started to get societies of thousands or tens of thousands of people.

both of us would be terrified and one of us would have tried to kill each other. first societies are not accustomed to strangers. tavis: i know where this is going believe us in terms of this conversation, so let me start by asking how it is that anything can be learned from traditional society that is applicable to the world that we said given what we have now. >> how can we learn anything from these traditional societies that is relevant to the society of 310 million people? the sameome of problems. we have children, we grow old,

we face dangers. not just being killed by enemy but dangers of slipping in the shower. we have religion, we get married, the same problems have been with us for a long time. we come up with thousands of different ways of dealing with these problems and we can learn from these solutions. regard toh geography, is there a true line regarding these lessons? in other words, are the lessons consistent from one region to another region? in a sense, yes. all small societies share some things in common.

they don't have leaders, they don't have king this. that is true of small society is whether they are in california. is far moree diverse. once you get a state government, you have to obey the government whereas traditional societies, some of them do weird things. dies, his widow calls upon her brothers to strangle her. that is not universal. tavis: you mentioned smaller societies and modern societies, i wonder what the differences leadership that

as horizontal. verses leadership that is vertical. the jargon that anthropologists and sociologists societies are egalitarian in that you don't need a leader that you can support. , we of got the of leaders. we are not going to discuss the quality of our leaders. small societies don't have leaders, for better or for worse. tavis: are there lessons to ?earn

choosing an deciding? >> there are so many lessons that are trying to grope with. you have to be very careful because if you slip, you don't call by 11. societies, that is an area that has influenced me in my life. what really are the dangerous things in american life that we tend to obsess about? very few of us are going to get killed. will slip in the shower or

slip on the sidewalk. the most dangerous thing that i already did today was i took a shower and was really careful because i am 75 years old. i have to reduce by slipping of the shower. they will die prematurely because of slipping in the shower. me worry.s tavis: i want to spend the balance of my time, i think, trying to walk through the lessons. i have pulled out some lessons the-car were the -- that i think are worthy of bisecting.

your reference to this a moment ago, giving more respect and esteem to the elderly. some and we can learn from traditional societies. >> anybody with old appearance knows that the situation of the elderly is one of the disaster areas. some people have happy lives. lonely, theyre live apart from their children simply because we americans move every five years and we end of separated. people stay in the same village all their lives.

there are movements and fans like senior care were all the people get together and support each other. there are movements with old people that are brought together with young people. tavis: as these societies were us on thisat put path toward having a decreased level of respect. case in everye major society. they are treated with a different level of respect.

thate is the core reality with the rapid pace of technology, older people are less able to cope with the new technology. 1948, wetelevision in had knobs. there are 41 buttons on my wretched remote. older people are less familiar with technology, they are more helpless and less useful. specific difference in the united states. the all show young people raising their beer cans. budweiser would never future meets in a beer ad.

it elevates the use and means high have looked out over people. tavis: we go from elderly to the babies. that newise the fact guinea children are more self , and while i was aere, one volunteered to be porter for me. he made the decision himself, went off with me for a week, making a decision to go take a job. razed to make their own decisions, they make their mistakes.

are precociously skill. this is something that i would love for our children, what they should do. of course they have difficulty making their own decisions. tavis: what about having to better deal with these diseases. >> there are lessons with traditional societies. single got heart disease or stroke, those that killed most of us here. it is a matter of lifestyle and diet.

the lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, food with lots of livestock't have raised on grass with fatty meat. talk while you are eating, i don't sit there. you eat more than you need. he slowly. -- eat slowly. we can have a healthier diet, and we can avoid this uses, and we have a healthy lifestyle. talk about how we assess how dangerous situations. we can learn that from these traditional societies.

means having exaggerated fears. can seere paranoid, you a psychotherapist. fact that wey the will protect ourselves. i am unhealthy condition at 75 and i hope to relate that. >> the flip side is that you are not living more reveling in the moment because you are always off into what might happen in the future. >> that is the flip side that

one might get paralyzed. but i came back from indonesia six days ago and indonesia is a somewhat dangerous place. it is not that i am paralyzed by fear, i do adventurists things, but just very careful when i am doing that. i will drive and be pretty careful. certainly tavis:, if you live in this country, people are suggesting that you have to learn spanish or if you're going to live in this world, hew will want to -- you will want to learn mandarin. this is a lesson we can learn from traditional society.

>> there are 1 billion people that speak english, but there - -every new guinean i know speaks five languages. surprising most discovery was a finding that was , the onlysychologists protection and the new discovery we have got, if your multilingual -- if you are youilingual, you bestow -- can push alzheimer's back for five years. the brain,ease of just like working out and doing

pushups, it builds up my shoulders. the and multilingual as the best possible exercise for the brain. -- it being multilingual as the best possible exercise for the brain. tavis: there are lessons you and i can talk about tonight. this was intriguing for me, personally. focusing on what you define as restoring relationships, as opposed to seeking justice for compensation. something that is right and fair. made me reexamine my assumptions and expand my own inventory of ideas. rather than to focus on restoring relationships.

talk to me about this first and --emost >> if you have an argument with pay me forey did not mary and her brother, you will live next to that person for the rest of your life and you have to get along with them. is having acounts good relationship with this person for the rest of your life. it counts as right or wrong if you have a car accident, the likelihood is that you will not see that person again so the court system is concerned with right or wrong. we have disputes with people

that we are going to remain involved with. everyone who has been through a lotrce, the couple and the with a restored relationship. the court doesn't care if the brother or sister and those each other. they don't focus on how much it was worth, but restoring relationships of let you can view a person. last, il save it to country,w is, in this we can take seriously and embrace the notion of resolution as opposed to right and wrong and i want justice for this.

specifically, to what happened in south africa, rather than those black south africans seeking justice, revenge, or retribution, there established the truth and reconciliation commission. you come before this commission and confess what you have done, that notion was mind-boggling for a lot of us around the world because you don't have people main you can't kill you and steal from you. when we think about the atrocities that were committed in the age of apartheid, they and we and confess, focus on restoring alationships, and it is

country that would still be in civil war right now. restoringn of relationships is important to me. i am trying to imagine how beething like that would part of that. >> it is restorative justice. victims' are brought together with criminals in order to get emotional clearance, and there was a case where a woman whose husband had been killed by a crazy driver met the driver, the murderer in prison. it was agonizing for both, and the woman said, for giving is hard, but not for giving is more

difficult. -- unemotional clarence emotional clearance is something being tried in the united states. this: when you're doing kind of research, with regard to what we are facing in the real ,orld, is this kind of research how does it make you hopeful or more fearful? >> neighboring of their children into influence my wife enemy and how we bring up our own children. son wanted a pet snake but my wife and i are not to make lovers. , so we a young child gave him a pet snake and he had

147 pet snakes, and that is what he wanted. he learned to make decisions and this is a boy that lent to make his own decisions. tavis: the world until yesterday, what we can learn from traditional society. the book is not one that you can do justice to. i hope you get a sense of what is inside the text. good have you back. that is our show for tonight. 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 album and aout his memoir that includes michael jackson.

we will see you then. >> there is a saying that dr. king had. he 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. yourd by contributions to pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more.

hello. welcome to this is us. i'm beck can king reed. this week we're at st. joseph's cathedral. we're going to do exploring and hear stories. we'll also meet a former speech writer for president a sen how -- isenhower and we'll have a love story for you. we've got a lot of stories to share and it all starts now.