i had no young to have any of this. i had no idea who this person was. i ran him from baywatch and from knight rider with his car, with the irritating voice. i didn't watch that, it was more of a boy thing. i know you should not see those gender specific thing. in this case you might be right, and a favoured at a d riverless right, and a favoured at a driverless car i hope it will have the accent of kit. he has become an extraordinary phenomenon. and dave at the voice in my year tonight, reminded me that he performed in berlin when the wall came down. a p pa re ntly berlin when the wall came down. apparently he was hugely popular, because he is of some german extraction apparently, and he even made hit singles. he is not renowned for his voice but he made a hit single. apparently a lot of people had hit singles, an actor from dallas also had a hit in germany. yes, he is quite popular in germany. add single is the equivalent of a

download. thanks for that! played on your sony walkman. finally, the ft, in the briefing section. trump dismisses diverse and career effort. rex tillerson meeting president xi jinping in china says we have back channel chat with pyongyang, we are not ina channel chat with pyongyang, we are not in a dark situation. donald trump has slapped that down. not in a dark situation. donald trump has slapped that downm not in a dark situation. donald trump has slapped that down. it used of wasting time. it is interesting because rex tillerson was donald trump's choice for the role of secretary of state, and no one else was mike. he's not a diplomat. he had a career in the oil industry and many republicans are critical of them taking the job because of his ties to russia and partly his experience. clearly he is dealing with a very, very difficult and delicate situation with north korea and is being completely undermined through twitter which is trump's

method of communication of choice. what's interesting about this latest twitter thread is that trump calls kim jong twitter thread is that trump calls kimjong un twitter thread is that trump calls kim jong un rocket man and says people have been trying to deal with him with diplomacy for 25 years. he may not be aware that the happen other leaders of north korea, he has got mixed up with his father. not so nice to have your efforts slapped down. it must be tough for him. i've interviewed a lot of chief executive vs, interviewed a lot of chief executive ‘s, and have never met one treated like that way rex tillerson is. he's not used to being undermined. he is a hitter in the team being made to look foolish by his boss. that's it for the papers this hour. thank you, rachel and tom. coming up next — it's meet the author. siri hustvedt is a prize—winning

american novelist who also writes about art and philosophy, and lectures in psychiatry. so it's not surprising that in her book of essays, a woman looking at men looking at women, her mind races back and forth from the visual arts to sex, to the science of the mind, and of course to the question of how we see ourselves. welcome. siri, you begin this book in your introduction to the essays by recalling cp snow and his famous

description of two cultures — a scientific culture and an artistic culture, literary culture, which couldn't talk to each other in the ‘505. and you seem to be suggesting that we still haven't got over that. yes, i think that that very famous lecture that caused a great deal of controversy is something that most americans and people in the uk remember, so i wanted to begin by asking that question — have we come much further? i think the gulf continues to exist. i think what's changed is that science certainly has taken pre—eminence over what snow called literary intellectuals. literary intellectuals don't have the same clout as they may have had in the 19505. one of the things he was lamenting at that time wasn't so much scientists' ignorance of shakespeare but the other way round.

if you said to, you know, a great literary scholar, "what's the second law of thermodynamics? they wouldn't know. that's right, and i think snow has a point. becoming literate or reasonably literate in both the arts and the sciences is extremely useful. well you are... you talk about art, you talk about how we deal with visual images. many of these essays reminded me of people likejohn berger, for example, writing in ways of seeing, which was almost a revolutionary book. he was writing from a marxist perspective but it was all about how we look at things, which most of us are often not conscious of. yes, i think the way we frame questions in the culture is vital, and i think we need multiple frames. so, if you are literate in both the sciences and the humanities, you have access to a number of different perspectives and that allows you to dance, as i call it,

among those perspectives and solve problems in the particular discipline that you are working in. that's the crucial point. you are... not uniquely but you are splendidly placed to do this because you are a novelist, a very successful novelist, you love the visual arts but you also, as we speak you are on your way to deliver a paper at a neurology conference. you are making a case for the importance of thinking, of looking at an image and trying to work it out, of looking at ourselves and peeling away the layers of superstition or falsehood in getting to the real thing. are you concerned about the kind of culture we now have? well, i think we have to be aware that our perception of anything includes bias so there is some agreement now that generally we see what we expect to see, that perception is not passive. we are notjust taking in the real

world, but we are actively creating it through our expectations. and imprinting our thoughts and beliefs... yes, and that would mean that perception is, by definition, conservative. so we bring our biases to our perception of things. one way, say in a work of art, to get past that to some degree i think is to spend a very long time in front of say a single canvas or work of art, and then time begins to play. you write about this, you know, very tellingly and almost with a sense of tension, about how long you should spend, you know, looking at a great picture. if it's a picture that will take that attention. yes. and what you get from it over time. say, if you care about an image, if you care about the work of art, two hours will give you a lot,

i think, and it will change your ideas about the picture. rather than racing around a gallery and saying, how many have i seen? yes, there's a pursuit of greatness, right? and greatness will influence how we look at an image. we've had that, er, attributions are changed so a painting that was attributed to rembrandt is then discovered not to be a rembrandt, and what happens — the museum either puts it in the basement or moves it and the spectators' experience with the painting will be changed by the attribution. we all know this is true. one of the things that i think is difficult to avoid is that you have been writing these essays in an age, particularly in the united states but not only in america, where there has been almost

a deliberate attempt to say, you know, cultural complexity really doesn't matter. we shouldn't care about this stuff. and of course, with respect to the sciences, where there has been an attempt by some people to say, well, why do you believe these guys in white coats? exactly. for somebody who's going about this kind of thinking, that's a pretty depressing atmosphere. it is, so we live in the sound—bite world, everyone knows that, but also the anti—science movement, you could almost call it. people who say, well, i simply don't believe it, i don't believe climate change. so what is science? science moves and changes and discovers new things all the time, so it's not a static reality. at the same time, there is a consensus about what is true or more true. that's what a scientific finding is.

that could change over time, but to deny that scientific consensus is extremely dangerous to my mind. but it's equally important to go back to where we began, in your view, that we take artistic sensibility and thought just as seriously, so the way we apply our own minds to beauty and truth. that's right, so every discipline has its strengths and handicaps. i think that's important to understand. so scientists are not always philosophically sophisticated about what they are doing. sometimes the work rests on paradigms that they have not interrogated. philosophers can help that, philosophers can help understand how the scientific consensus is arrived at. or, for example, historical changes. historians, i think, are invaluable in showing why some scientific ideas are accepted at a particular moment and others are discarded.

we need all of these points of view to think carefully and subtly about who we are, what we are, and how we become what we are. in a sense, what you are arguing for is the release of what was called in a famous book, you know, a long time ago, the liberal imagination. not in a political sense but in a sense of, you know, applying minds to problems in an open way. yes. i actually gave a lecture at massachusetts general hospital in january, and it was a grand rounds lecture, but i got the extra bonus of being taken into research facilities. and they presented, these young scientists presented their research to me, and at the end we began to talk about multidisciplinary approaches. and i said to them what i deeply believe — i am not telling you to read philosophy and literature and look

at visual art because i think we should all be well rounded, lovely people. i'm telling you this because i think it will help you solve problems in your own work. i believe that. siri hustvedt, author of the essays in a woman looking at men looking at women. thank you very much. oh, thank you having me. increasing as a heavy showers will blowing, especially across scotland and northern ireland. temperatures will not be as low as last night. the badgers 12—13. poor weather for the morning rush hour, especially in scotland, gasps had even up to 60

mph and combined with liquid and heavy showers. through the day the showers become fewer. the winds gradually ease in touch. further so that will not be as windy. sunshine in the morning but more cloud in the afternoon. more rain arriving in mid—afternoon in south wales and the south—west. colder air on monday and still with us on tuesday. the wind is not strong by this stage, not many showers in the north. many places dry with high temperatures of 13 or 1a. this is bbc news. i'm martine croxall. the headlines at 11pm: counting is under way in a controversial referendum on catalan independence. hundreds of people were injured as spanish police tried to prevent the vote from taking place. this is the people facing down the police. these are riot police drafted in from other parts of spain, but their heavy handed tactics appear to be making deep divisions in this region worse. theresa may insists the cabinet

is united behind her as she begins the conservative party conference with policies designed to attract younger voters. the islamic state group claims responsibility for a knife attack in the french city of marseille which left a 17—year—old girl and a 20—year—old woman dead. also coming up, 11th hour talks for monarch. the airline is fighting for its future after worries