to winnie mandela, who's died aged 81. she became an international symbol of the fight against white minority rule when her husband nelson was sentenced to life in prison. but her reputation was damaged when she endorsed the killing of alleged informers and was accused of fraud. the united states has criticised china for imposing new tariffs on 128 american—made products in retaliation for the trump administration's new duties on chinese steel and aluminium. the dow dropped more than a50 points on monday and tokyo stocks opened sharply lower. train drivers and other workers in france have begun several months of strikes as trade unions battle president macron‘s labour reforms. it's expected to be the biggest wave of industrial unrest since mr macron was elected last may. now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk.

i'm stephen sackur. this programme, like so many others in the churn of 24/7 news, tends to focus on people and places facing problems and challenges. more often than not we hold the powerful to account for things that went wrong, not right. are we missing the bigger picture about the world we live in? my guest today, the psychologist and writer, steven pinker, certainly thinks so. his new book, enlightenment now, is a paean to human progress driven by reason and science. just how convincing are his reasons to be cheerful? steven pinker, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you. this idea of the enlightenment is very dear to your heart. can you briefly, if you will, just capture for me what you mean by the enlightenment. it refers to the intellectual movement in the second half of the 18th century that put a premium on reason as opposed to authority, tradition, dogma, charisma, on science, on the attempt to explain the world by testing hypotheses and on humanism, on the wellbeing of individual humans as the ultimate good as opposed to the glory of the nation or the tribe, or perpetuation of the faith. and a movement borne out of european thought but is it your proposition that it captures universal values?

european and also american, but i guess that's an offshoot of europe. although every idea has to come from somewhere, so it is european in that sense, but it is based on reason which humans are universally capable and it's based on universal human interests. everyone wants a long life, everyone wants to be healthy, almost everyone wants knowledge and education. people would prefer to live in safety rather than in danger, all things being equal. science and reason have, i think it's fair to say, underpinned so much of human thought and human scientific and technological developments in recent centuries but is it your feeling that this enlightenment is under threat? it absolutely is and in fact it has been since it was formulated. the counter—enlightenment

of the 19th century arose very quickly after the enlightenment. the romantic movement, the glorification of blood and soil, romantic militarism, the idea that the individual is merely a cell in a super organism, consisting of their nation or their race or their ethnic group. and we are seeing a resurgence of counter—enlightenment thinking in authoritarian populism, in trumpism in the united states, in the populous movements in eastern europe. by saying that, you are sort of suggesting that trumpism in the unite states is, what, as far as you are concerned, and utterly illogical, counter—productive political movement. i so would argue that it is counter—productive, indeed. although, talking about the intellectual roots of trumpism sounds like a bit of an oxymoron but in fact it does have a pedigree. he was advised by people like stephen bannon and steve miller and michael anton who consider themselves intellectuals, who are influenced by

a counter—enlightenment tradition and you can see some of the themes of trumpism, such as that there's an inherent virtue in a particular people, and that whose soul is embodied in a strong leader, who needn't be encumbered by the milestone of an administrative state, which it voices their goodness directly. these are themes that run through counter—enlightenment. it would seem to me that donald trump's politics is a politics driven by emotion, driven by an appeal to a person's gut instincts rather than necessarily their rational brain. and he connects. the skill of donald trump is that, unlike many of his political rivals, he found and continues to find a way to connect with a very significant part of the american population. indeed and certainly emotional impulses such as tribalism, such as authoritarianism, that is vesting power in a charismatic leader, reasoning by anecdote rather than by facts and data —

that is the compelling story about the american who is mowed down by an illegal immigrant breaking a traffic law — this is an appeal to our not so rational side... but if trump isn't an aberration, he is not a bleep, he is part of a long line of politicians that, while you would say the last few centuries have been a triumph of science and reason, many would say the last few centuries have absolutely shown us that the human species is often driven by gut instinct, by emotion and by feelings that are not anything to do with science or reason. indeed. in fact, one of the misconceptions about enlightenment thinkers is they assumed we are all rational. that we're all like mr spock from the original star trek. but enlightenment thinkers

like hume, like spinoza, like adam smith, like the american founders, they were avid students of human nature and they were all too aware of human flaws and they proposed norms and institutions that were work arounds for our darker impulses so those impulses are always with us and at various times in history they do predominate. but if i understand your most recent book, enlightenment now, correctly, you are saying that we need to understand that we as human beings have never had it so good and that in terms of statistics on world hunger, on poverty, on loss of life to warfare, that really things are rather wonderful on our planet today and that is not the way many people in both the developed and developing worlds actually see and experience of the world? that is right. as long as tragedy and problems have

not been reduced to zero, there will always be enough of them to fill the news and since our sense of risk and probability is driven by anecdotes and images and narratives rather than by data, unless we actually see the data, we can miss the fantastic progress that has been made. not uniformly, progress isn't magic... we cannot surely dismiss half of all syrians, that is 12 million people, being displaced on their homes, many hundreds of thousands killed. we cannot dismiss that as some sort of unimportant bleep in the data. absolutely not but we do have to realize that, because of our rising moral standards, we care more about people than our ancestors did so things can can often look worse even though we're more compassionate... how can you measure compassion? how can you be sure we are more compassionate — this generation in the early 21st century, than any other humans? you're right, i do not have

data on compassion but, if you look at just the way events are described and categorised, people forget that there were greater number of displacements during the bangladesh war of independence, during the partition of india, the korean war had far more casualties than the war in syria. this is not to minimise the horrific suffering of the syrian people but the imperative to recognise the suffering of people in earlier eras and to realise that we're not stuck with the amount of suffering that we see. just as earlier generations reduced the amount of warfare — not to zero — but we can eliminate the wars that are taking place now. it emboldens us with the realisation that these are not utopian aspirations, that displaced people and wars and refugees can be reduced. i come back to the point that most people on this earth do not think

the way that you do, partly because they are not trained in the way that you have been trained, but also you are driven by — your book is full of it — by big data, meta data and you crunch the numbers and you take a very sort of high overview of the way the world works. most folks do not do that. they relate to their own experience and their own perception. howjust wonder how much value there is in you telling us all that we should be more cheerful, we should be more positive and optimistic about the human condition, when it does not match reality for most of us? that is why we have education, that's why we have persuasion, that's why we have discourse, that's why we have debate. in order to counter our intuitions and our impulses which are often highly misleading. that's one of the great lesson of psychology in the second—half of the 20th century. a lot of our intuitions are systematically biased. something that can be amplified...

but you have bias also, don't you? we all do. you are the product of your nurture just as i am of mine and any body else in this world, watching on tv or listening on the radio is of theirs. when people today express doubt about expertise and they sometimes say, "you know what, you can prove almost anything with statistics," they have a point, don't they? no, you cannot prove almost any thing with statistics, at least not if you do it honest but who is to define honest? this is one of those perpetuating spirals of argument because in the end we all make choices — you make choices about the data you put into your numbercrunching computers, you decide what particular facet of the human condition to profile, these are all subjective. then you challenge me and observers get to hear the various sides and they can see who has the most persuasive case.

the fact that science has progressed shows that, despite human disagreements, despite the fact that all of us are blinded by our own biases, over the long run, with free speech, with open debate, with the ability to challenge people, with the onus to provide data to support your beliefs, over the long run, we can approach understanding and explanation and truth. no question i think that everybody would agree that data on global hunger and poverty eradication does suggests that, for most people in the world, in that very material sense, things are better today than they have ever been, for most people but, if you take the most advanced society, the united states, your idea of progress runs into real trouble because for generations the middle class in the united states of america has seen their living standards stagnate and, in some years, actually decline. and there is a feeling when you look at the polls, and americans say that, by a clear majority, for years they have felt their country to be on the wrong track, that in the most advanced society in the world,

your theory of the eternal march to progress has been thwarted. forget eternal march to progress — not eternal, not a march. eco progress. —— we eek out progress. problems are inevitable. we solve them as they arise. on average, we make progress but it is not some inexorable force. the us is a peculiar case because even though people think of it as the prototypical advanced western democracy, in many ways the us is an outlier, a laggard among western democracies... you cannot have an outlier that is the most important and powerful economy in the world. it sets a standard and it is in many ways a country that the rest of the world looks to and if the message from the united states is that the values you espouse, the science, the reason, the humanism can take you so far but then things start to go wrong, then that is a message that is important to the entire world.

it is an unfortunate message and the united states is in many ways a backward country compared to it's western peers. the united states has higher measures of crime, of child mortality, ogf maternal mortality, lower lifespans, greater drug use, more abortions. it doesn't meet any measure of social pathology. it is ahead of most countries of the world. but behind most of the countries in western europe and the anglosphere... why and how does it fit into your theory? the united states is an ambivalent enlightenment country because though its constitution was perhaps the most famous product of the enlightenment, and the declaration of independence, and its founders — mathison, jefferson, adams, were men of the enlightenment — in many ways the country itself has been divided. it's almost been two countries. there is an enlightenment country, there is also a more traditional culture of honour, more heavily represented in the south than the west, in which the ethic is that, instead you having disinterested institutions that meet outjustice and secure social

welfare, it is up to the individual defending himself and his family by the justifiable use of violence if necessary and a lot of american politics has always struggled between the culture of honour and the culture of the enlightenment. and so it is a peculiar example of a western democracy. he did not like my phrase, "the eternal march of progress" and i can see why but it does strike me that there is a tendency toward i could say triumphalism or hubris in your theory in that you know what you believe to be the most important values to humanity today, they are those born out of the enlightenment, and you seem to be convinced that, as long as we continue to adhere

to them, we are on, frankly, a i—way ticket to better times. francis fukuyama, the historian, looked at what happened after the fall of the berlin wall in the triumph of sort of capitalism and markets over communism and he concluded that we could celebrate the end of history. and i just wonder whether there is the same sort of danger that you're declaring the triumph of a particular set of intellectual values, when those values, whether it be from russia or china or elsewhere, are being challenged in a concerted and important and significant way. they certainly are being challenged, that's why i would not allude to an inexorable march of progress. it's not a mysticalforce. the end of history was a brilliant bit of marketing. well, up to a point. up to a point. that's true. it's now a millstone that hangs around francis fukuyama's neck. in defence of fukuyama, the number of democracies has increased since the end of history was published. and yet freedom house, when it studies democracies every year, says that over the last 12 years more countries have experienced a regression in their democratic values

than those that have experienced an advanced. freedom house is one of the more pessimistic measures of democracy. freedom house is also an activist organisation and activist organisations are always biased towards a crying crisis and other indicators of democracies. so there's certainly been a deceleration. but freedom house has a somewhat alarmist picture. when you think about it, in our youth we both had 31 democracies in the early 19705, half of europe was behind the iron curtain. there was barely a democracy in latin america. taiwan and the philippines, indonesia, greece was a military dictatorship, spain and portugal were under the control of fascism. it's true that there has been a push back in countries like russia, turkey, poland and venezuela. but still the overall trend continuing through the end of history has been

towards democratisation. in your world view, is religion nothing more than an aberration when it enters the realm of public policy and governance? well, it's certainly... theistic belief, belief in a god who can wreak miracles, that's something that should be kept out of politics, yes. in the united states we have the separation of church and state, and i think this is an excellent principle, yes. we should not base policy on miracles. do you think you have too rosy a view of human nature? oh, i'm well—equipped to deny that charge. i wrote a book called the blank slate: the modern denial of human nature in which i make probably the strongest case that's been made in a popular book that human nature is saddled with flaws such as dominance, egocentrism, revenge, magical thinking and so on. i am the last person that can be accused of having too rosy a view of human nature.

but i do think human nature is a complex system and together with our darker impulses, there are, and i hear i stole the phrase from abraham lincoln, the better angels of our nature, sides of human nature such as reason, such as empathy, such as self—control, such as moral norms that are in constant tension with our darker sides and it's up to our institutions and our norms to empower our better angels, the parts of human nature that over the long run can lead to institutions that tame our inner demons. your academic discipline is psychology rather than history, for example. i want to quote to you something that perhaps puts an historical sense of perspective onto your thinking about the enlightenment, it comes from a commentator here in the uk responding to your book, jenni russell, she says, "every civilisation has believed in its in vulnerability

until it actually falls." she says, "from the greeks to the romans, the mongols, the ming dynasty, each failed because it couldn't grasp its own flaws or the threats to it until it was too late." "and pinker‘s blindspot is believing that the appeal of liberal democritus sees and the enlightenment values that underpin them are so powerful that they need only to be spelt out to be accepted." yeah, no. if anything i would identify the blindspot among people who confuse the existence of progress with some force toward inevitability or indestructibility. people are so unused to even conceiving of the fact of progress that they can't distinguish a factual claim, like things are better than they were several decades ago, or several centuries ago, with these mystical notions of vulnerability or inexorable marches. they're not the same thing. you can acknowledge that we live longer without saying that we live in a utopia, that we're going to live forever. what about science, you are a scientist of a sort, but if one looks your claims

for technology and science and the degree to which they continue to deliver us to a better place, one can quite quickly counter with obviously climate change, being a massive global problem which science, for the moment, seems incapable of coming up with a clear solution. one could look at the degradation of our environments, particularly the oceans and microplastics right now. one could say that your faith in science looks misplaced. all of the facts you mentioned of course are scientific discoveries, and so without science... they're discoveries of the harm science is doing. that's what technology has done. the way to deal with them is to understand what caused them and what can reverse them. that's why you have to marry human ingenuity and science and human motivation and science. right now we don't appear to have the motivation to undertake the massive international cooperative effort to tackle these problems of technology.

we do, not enough, but we do. the paris climate accord certainly shows the world, again with one conspicuous exception, can come to an agreement. the exception is pretty darned important. although remember that the pushing back on our president, and by the way we cannot withdraw from the accord for another three years anyway, by which time it's possible president trump will be a lame duck and his successor will reinstate the american participation, but individual states, individual corporations, the rest of the world and the rest of the world of course can push back against the united states if it violates the paris agreement by putting tariffs on american goods based on their carbon emissions. so the acts of one president won't necessarily undo the progress, although they might.

when you talk like that i'm just reminded that the historian mal ferguson said at times he is reminded of doctor pangaloss when he listens to you. doctor pangaloss. .. that's a mistake because pangaloss was a pessimist. he said, "we live in the best of all possible worlds." someone who believes in human progress believes the world can be a much better place than we have now. you're much more optimistic than doctor pangaloss? pangaloss was a defender of theodicy, the belief that god was incapable of making the world any better than the way we find it today. so just go back to climate change, we are not on track to solving the problem of climate change, there's no doubt. i'm not an optimist in the sense that everything will all work out. we're almost out of time but in essence you almost are. here's my invitation to you at the end of this programme, some people today look at where we are with climate change, for example, or indeed with nuclear proliferation,

and in particular the nuclear stand—off right now with donald trump's united states administration and north korea, and they think to themselves, we've probably never been closer to seeing existential threats to humanity come to reality, but your worldview would suggest we have it within us always to avert those sorts of existential threats? i think there's an imperative to see our way through to avoiding the existential threats, to treating these as problems to be solved, not to declare that we're doomed so we may as well enjoy life while we can, but to put the pressure where it has to be placed for there to be changes of policies, changes of administration, so we mitigate the severest threats. and your life, your experience suggests to you that there is every good reason to continue to believe human beings will get to where they need to be? well, not that there's every reason but there is a reason, not that it's inevitable, who knows what the probabilities are, but that it is possible

and therefore there is the imperative to take the steps that have the greatest chance of solving the problems. we have to end there but steven pinker, thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thanks for having me. thank you very much. hello there. well, it's certainly been a fairly unsettled easter break, and for some parts of the country, quite a wintry one too. we've still got some snow lingering, across parts of scotland in particular. here was the scene on easter monday in colchester, in essex. so cloudy conditions, we've had outbreaks of showery rain around, too. now, through the next few days, things are turning much milder across southern parts

of the country. still chilly and wintry in the north, and that unsettled theme continues with sunshine and showers. but what we are seeing is this milder air, the yellow colours pushing northwards across the country. still holding onto the colder air across parts of scotland in particular. so for tuesday morning, your morning commute back to work, it will be snowing still across northern scotland, north of the central belt. towards the southern uplands, it'll be turning back to rain through the course of the morning, but that snow for northern scotland still causing a few problems. it'll ease away through the morning. further south, those showers moving in across england, wales and northern ireland, followed by more sunshine, and actually, in the sunnier spells, by the afternoon, temperatures 01:14 or 15 degrees — will feel quite pleasant in the south. much colder under the snowfall across parts of scotland. for a time that snowfall will invigorate once again, so further heavy snow as we head through tuesday night into the early hours of wednesday.

but further south it's another fairly mild night to come, with further bursts of showery rain across england, wales and northern ireland. eventually that snow across the north of scotland will ease away later on on wednesday, turning back to rain, particularly at lower levels further south. heavy rain, showers and thunderstorms rolling in across england and wales, though, although in the brightest spells we'll see temperatures up to around 13 degrees or so. it still will be colder further north. now, looking through from the midweek onwards, we're going to be seeing low pressure just starting to drift away towards the east, and a ridge of higher pressure building. so, as we look further ahead into thursday, it'll probably be the best day of the week in terms of lots of dry and bright weather, with some sunshine on offer, and a lot less cold than it has been recently. so temperatures between around about 7—9 in the north, still fairly cool here, to around 13 further south. it will feel quite nice. now, during thursday evening and overnight into friday, another area of milder air moves in, but you can also see some fairly strong winds here. so heading on into friday, we are likely to see a little bit of rain, particularly heading in towards the west, with some brisk winds

around, as well. further east across the country, though, we keep the drier and the brighter spell in the weather, too. so, with those southerly winds in the sunshine, we could well see 16 degrees or so on friday. that milder theme continues on into the weekend, so by saturday, one or two areas at about 17, possibly 18 degrees. still a few showers on the cards. bye for now. hello. this is the briefing. i'm samantha simmonds. our top story: president ramaphosa of south africa leads tributes to the anti—apartheid campaigner winnie mandela, following her death at the age of 81. france prepares for months of disruption, as unions strike over president macron‘s labour reforms. under siege in yemen — the un says 22 million people are now in need, as a donor conference opens in geneva. now, listen to this. music streaming service spotify will make its debut on the new york stock exchange later today, but it's not your usual share sale. we'll explain how the company does things differently. and, in the business

briefing, i'll be speaking to a professor of international economics about those strikes in france and their impact on the french ecenomy.