on robert mueller. it comes a day after the former special counsel refused to exonerate the president of obstruction of justice. mr trump described mr mueller as totally conflicted. the trade war between the us and china shows no sign of easing. in just a few hours, china is expected to impose tariffs on about $60 billion worth of us imports, including cooking oil and vegetables. and this story is doing well on bbc.com. a baby born weighing just 240 grammes, thought to be the tiniest on record to survive a premature birth, has been discharged from hospital in the us. saybie weighed the same as a large apple when she was born at 23 weeks and three days. that's all. stay with bbc world news.

now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. there is a basic human impulse to understand better the world we live in. it motivates scientists, economists, historians and the like to seek out patterns and connections. most stay within a single discipline, but not my guest today. jared diamond's hugely successful big—picture explanations of the way human societies develop in books such as guns, germs and steel, and his latest, upheaval, draw on biology, geography, anthropology and more. so what is his conclusion about the long—term viability of homo sapiens?

jared diamond, welcome to hardtalk. it is a pleasure to be with you. i have just mentioned some of the academic disciplines that you have trodden into during a very long career. when people ask you "what do you do?", what do you say? nowadays i say, i'm a geographer, i'm interested in lots of things. at present, my two main careers are history and geography on the one hand, and new guinea birds on the other hand. my third major career is gall bladder physiology, i pursued that from 1966 to 2002, i was a professor of physiology, the world's expert on gallbladder transport at the university of california, where i was hired in 1966, but it was the birth

of my twin sons in 1987 that triggered my shift, because i realised that their future did not depend on gall bladders but on history and geography. this sounds like some kind of late 20th and early 21st century renaissance man i'm talking to. i do have interests in lots of things, and that has been the case for a long time. how many languages do you speak? i have dealt... i have known 13 languages, three of them i only read, latin, greek and dutch i've only read, ten languages i have spoken at one time or another. half of them are rusty, i could give lectures today in english, italian, german, new guinea tok pisin, and i can have a functional conversation in indonesian. it is all fascinating. ijust wonder whether one of the reasons there has been, — i'm going to put it this way: some jealousy towards you in some academic circles, and some questioning of your actual deep knowledge of some of the subjects

you delve into, is perhaps a product of the spread of your knowledge. some might say you are spread so far it must be thin. it is true that i violate one of the grand principles of academia, two of them... first of all, in academia one is taught to be specialised and not stray outside your discipline. i certainly do get into other disciplines. the other principle is that once you talk in complex language, comprehensible only to other academics. if you try to explain things to the general public you are a populariser, and the only reason to become one is because your research is washed up and you are prostituting yourself. i think these are two motives for objections. before we get into the serious ideas you have developed in the books, let's talk about your upbringing as well. it seems to me that being a child born pretty much

into the second world war had a huge influence on the way you saw the world and your interest in it. it did, i was born in 1937. my second... i grew up during world war ii, my first memory in life was boston's coconut grove fire during the war that killed a95 people, my father was a physician so he was involved in the mop up. my second memory in life is the first picture the american military released of dead american soldiers face down in the surf at buna beach. i grew up in world war ii, it stamped my mentality, and i grew up with my father having put on the wall of my bedroom two maps, one of the european theatre and one of the pacific theatre, moving the pins. so i grew up with geography in my face. interesting. your latest book, upheaval,

looks at half a dozen crises that faced nationstates in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it roves from the us to japan to finland, to chile in south america. i wonder whether you believe there are things you have learned in these political crises that are universal, that span all of the different geographies that you lay out. there are general things that are universal. of course, there are big differences. the united states with oceans on two sides, and canada and mexico on the other side, is geographically protected. finland is not geographically protected, it has an 800 mile border with russia. so there are big differences between individual countries but there are general principles with politics, as there are with life. for a person to get through a personal crisis, whoever you are, you have to acknowledge a crisis and accept responsibility, and similarly with countries.

that seems to be the idea that you have arrived at, that we can in some ways look at the history of crises in these nations, and apply some of the principles that we apply to individual human beings in crisis, the degree to which psychic crisis has to be solved or at least addressed by acknowledgement and acceptance of the nature of the crisis, and then communication and the ownership, responsibility. and then, the search for solutions. it is sort of psychotherapy for nationstates. does that really work? no, i would say it is not psychother. .. that is a good way to formulate it, but it is not psychotherapy for nationstates, it is instead that the outcomes of personal crises depend upon a dozen factors, my wife marie being a clinical psychologist... she advised you on the development of this theory of how to tackle political crises.

she didn't advise me, instead she explained to me each week the dozen factors that made it more or less likely that a person would deal with a personal crisis, and i realised that those factors suggest in some cases closely, and in other cases just as a metaphor, outcome variables to be tested for national crises. i want to relat it to the current day but before we get to the present day, it seems to me one of your conclusions is that if one wants to look at a nationstate that collectively acknowledged a problem, addressed a problem in the deepest sense, you would point us to germany after the fall of the nazis, after world war ii, as a prime example of a collective determination to learn the lessons and be better. that would be one good example, germany addressing the legacies of nazism slowly after world war ii.

i lived in germany in 1961, i was there when the wall was erected. at that time germans were not yet dealing with the legacy of nazis but it accelerated especially with a student result of ‘68 to the point that today german school children learn about the holocaust in schools, they are taken to concentration camps, which are now museums, where the german government has explanations that are pitiless accounts of what germans did. that contrasts with how the wartime atrocities are not dealt with injapan, and it also contrasts with how germany in world war i did not deal, after world war i, with how they got into that mess. what is america not dealing with today that they must deal with? in upheaval you barely mention the two words "donald trump", but you do address the degree to which you see a looming crisis, and upheaval, in the united states today. you say, "the first, and in my opinion the most ominous,

of the fundamental problems now threatening american democracy is our accelerating deterioration of political compromise." i want to explain exactly what you mean by that. by political compromise i mean being able to reach an agreement between groups with different perspectives, such as republicans and democrats. compromise is essential to a democracy. it is not that you can agree about everything. of course we had a civil war because of non—compromise in american history. there are certain principles people stick to because they truly believe they are beyond compromise. to compromise would be to sacrifice a fundamental value. that's right, at some point you have to decide when would i rather die than compromise? but apart from the civil war we have had a good history of compromise, even as recently as president ronald reagan. he and the democrats argued but had a productive relationship and lots of legislation got passed. it started to deteriorate in the 19905 to the point that today, recent congresses have passed

fewer laws than any congress in american history. why do you think there is something special about — your word — polarisation that you see in the united states at present? that is a big question, about whose answer i have not been certain. i have two hypotheses, one is the development of indirect communication. in contrast, in new guinea all communication is face—to—face. you look at someone in the face, you read their body language, you are... i doubt that is true of new guinea today, because i imagine they have smartphones just the way we do, at least some people in new guinea... some are, some are, but until recently there were no cellphones in new guinea. i don't mean to be flippant, but are you saying that there is something corrosive about the smartphone world we live in? the internet, the digital communication, the fact that face to face communication is no longer what we expect and what we do. is that something that is really

damaging human beings? yes, i think so. if one experiences someone as words on a screen, it removes the inhibitions about being rude to a person. you are a few feet from me, i am not going to start cursing at you, but if you were words on a screen, i would be disinhibited and more likely to curse. the fact is that civility in the us has crashed over the past couple of decades, raising the question why in the us more than other countries? interesting, because i'm thinking, who is the most famous user of social media in the world, and it is probably — well, you could argue about a few popstars — but it probably is donald trump. i know in the book you say you don't want to talk too much about donald trump, because he will be overtaken by events as will my book if i focus on him. but let's just talk about donald trump and his use of twitter, for example. do you see that as part of america's problem today? i would say yes, it raises the question — why... because italians and japanese use

cellphones every bit as much as americans, but why has political compromise deteriorated further in the us, and i would suggest two reasons. one is that most of these technologies began in the us so maybe we just have a head start and it will soon get as bad in italy orjapan. the other reason is that there is just less social capital, less social glue, in the us, than in italy or britain. distances are larger, we move more, friendships account for less in the us. there is less social glue to oppose the corrosive effect of non—face—to—face communication. that is my hypothesis. it is fascinating stuff, and i want to ask you about the country you are sitting in today. you are with me in london, and britain is going through a form of a political crisis, all about brexit. whether or not we are going to fulfil the wishes expressed in the referendum to leave the european union. it seems to me it is a question of identity, britain is addressing their fundamental identity. you know britain well,

you first came here i believe in the 19505 to study. what do you make of brexit and how does it fit into your theory of "how cope with crisis"? several things to be said about brexit. first and foremost, brexit is an argument about national identity, who are we? that is natural and healthy, australia after world war ii, germany after world war ii, went through these arguments about who are we. that is necessary. that is a positive side. the negative side is that to get through a national identity crisis one has to be honest with oneself. they need honest self—appraisal. it seems that is conspicuously lacking among british politicians pushing for brexit. that is to say they don't acknowledge honestly the big drawbacks of brexit. and the third thing i would say about brexit, striking me as an american and also spending

a lot of time in italy, is that if you can have a referendum, there were referenda in wisconsin, california, and italy, there are ways to do them well and ways to do them badly. there are models available for how to run a referendum. britain didn't look to those models. as a simple example, there wasn't a barrier for percentage of voters voting, and there wasn't a barrier for the percent opting for a given solution. whereas in italy, in a major referendum, there have to be 70% of voters turning out, and there has to be 70% approval for that result. yes, no, iunderstand the point you're making. i'm just wondering, as you talk about britain and the united states, what place you see for the importance of individual leaders and leadership? because you're a man known for your big, sweeping ideas, the connections you make across continents and regions, sort of making sense of human history, but what perhaps you don't

do in your geography and history is give much importance to the agency of individuals. so how important could and should leadership be, for example, in today's united states or in today's brexit britain? key question — the role of leaders depends on the circumstances and the question. the role of leaders have nothing to do with the origins of agriculture over the last 10,000 years. that had to do instead with the availability of wild wheat and barley within those individual regions. well, this is when you get described as the determinist, the geographical determinist or the environmental determinist — a word which i think you get sometimes extraordinarily irritated by, but nonetheless a word which does capture the degree to which you do say, in the broader sweep of history, you can explain huge things, the nature of development in different continents, by a simple, deterministic relationship with the forms of agriculture, the geographical position of those places. that is determinism, isn't it? and it's completely true.

that's determinism where it is valid. there are some things that are determined by geography, and some not. if you would go to the north pole in january and try to stand there in a t—shirt and shorts, you will discover that clothing in the north pole, for the inuits, is geographically determined. and similarly, the emergence of agriculture over the last 10,000 years did not depend upon brains or an individual leader. it depended on the availability of wild plant and animal species for domestication. but to come back to the question you raised, which is a key one, what impact can leaders have today... in that context, the big—picture determinism is valid. in that context, what role is there for human agency, and in particular for leadership? for the emergence of agriculture, 10,000 years ago, zero. for the settlement of brexit and the polarisation in the united states today, a lot. what is lacking in the united states

today is a leader who will focus on unifying us rather than dividing us. what seems to be lacking in britain today is a leader who will deal honestly with the issue of britain's identity. if remaining separate from europe is so important that you're willing to make economic sacrifices, fine, but be frank about the economic sacrifices. in the case of the united states, what we need is a leader who, instead of dividing us, talks about the things that unify americans, and of which americans can be proud. what about inequality in all this? because you talk — we — i led you to talk about the role of the internet and changes in communication over the years, through technology. but what about the corrosive impact of what many studies suggest is widening inequality in developed, industrialised societies? that's true, and it's even something that i discussed in my book. when i discuss problems of the united states, one of the four biggest problems i see is inequality, in particular the increasing socio—economic inequality and the decline in

socio—economic mobility. the fact remains, though, that all americans, poor and rich, we share some things. and those are the things of which the united states can be proud, and which our current president is not mentioning at all, which are the things that a future president, i hope, will invoke to hold us together. our history of liberty, the fact that we fought for our independence, and americans got killed in order to become independent, the overcoming of our geography, the role of ellis island, the role of immigration. all americans are immigrants, whether we immigrated, whether our ancestors immigrated like my father in 190a, or with the mayflower in 1620. so there are things that unify all americans, rich or poor, just as in britain today, with brexit, there are things that unify all british people, regardless of whether they're derived from people who came with william the conqueror or whether they're west indians who came in the 1940s. i am intrigued by the degree

to which you have made a very conscious effort to look at societies across the piece, from the most developed, the united states, western europe, to what some would regard as much more traditional societies, in new guinea, a place you know very well. your critics have said that, despite your best efforts not to be sort ofjudgemental, you have brought a western mindset, a notion of progress, a notion of where humanity is and should be going, to your work. do you think you have? no. as for a notion of progress, notion of technological progress, ask my 32—year—old sons what they think of their father's view of technological progress. it will be quite negative. the issues that humanity faces today are issues of getting onto a sustainable economy, of dealing with climate change. they're not issues of so—called progress.

there is in fact a saying in a textbook of economics written by an economist. in a world of finite resources, the only people who believe in the possibility of indefinitely continued growth are idiots and economists. so you absolutely do not feel that you project a notion of ever greater technological advance, ever greater standard of living for people around the world. that's not your thing. greater technological advance, no, i don't care about it, and i don't think that technological advance is essential for getting out of our current problems. but a better standard of living, absolutely, yes. but that is clearly not being delivered right now in the united states, in western europe. actually, people are saying that the children are probably not going to be better off than their parents, and maybe we shouldn't assume that that's the norm anymore. maybe we should assume, on the contrary, that given the very steep challenge we face with climate change, we can't expect ever greater standard of life,

quality, economic quality of life. we actually have to, because a world in which there are gross discrepancies in standard of living is not stable in this globalised world. 50 years ago, it didn't make any difference to americans if there were desperately poor people out there, because they couldn't visit their anger on us. but now, in this globalised world we've seen in world trade, we cannot live separately from the poor anymore. so i'm tempted to ask you, after all your travel and your learning and your writing — human beings face an existential challenge, the challenge of a warming planet, which promises so much devastation unless we address it. how are we going to address it? are you optimistic we have the means, given all of your thinking about how nations cope with crisis? never mind nations, what about the planet as a whole? i'm cautiously optimistic, despite all the bad things that i write about.

the reasons why i'm cautiously optimistic are that the problems threatening humanity today are problems of our own causation. we're not threatened by an unstoppable asteroid coming towards us. we're threatened by things that we're doing — climate change caused by fossil fuels, unsustainable resource use, inequality, and so on. since we're causing the problems, it's within our power to stop causing them. but by definition, if they are planetary problems, then it can only be by planetary cooperation that we can credibly attempt to resolve them. and what we've discussed in this interview is the rise of a form of politics perhaps typified by donald trump, but many other nationalists around the world, which runs contrary to a focus on cooperation. that is true, and for me the most illuminating six pages of my book, and i think for many readers, will be the six pages at the end of my chapter on the problems

with the world, where i looked at the track record of the world in the last 50 years in solving really difficult world problems. the ones that we've managed to deal with include delineating overlapping economic zones along the coast, providing a legal framework for mining the seabed that will satisfy landlocked countries and countries with a coastline, dealing with chlorofluorocarbon release destroying ozone into the atmosphere, double—hull tankers. so the world has a successful track record of solving difficult problems in the last a0 or 50 years, so i'm cautiously optimistic. interesting, because let me frame this last question in personal terms. you said that when you had your twins, some 30—odd years ago, you began to care a very great deal more about the future of the world. so in that sense, with that in mind, what do you think the chances are of the world actually being sustainable beyond the next, say, 50 or 100 years? my flip answer would be

the chances are 51%. the reason why i say 51% is that i think the chances are better than even that we will succeed, but it is dicey, and it is going to take work. particularly it's going to take political will, which is the ingredient that is deficient at the moment. jared diamond, plenty to think about. thank you very much indeed for being on hardtalk. thank you. well you may have heard by now that it is turning a lot warmer, but the forecast isn't quite as straightforward in fact. it's not going to be turning hot everywhere, and in fact some areas are still in for some rain. but i think the main message is that yes,

broadly speaking, we are all in for at least some warmth. but a lot of cloud out there right now. it's very muggy — a very muggy night with temperatures in the mid— teens in some areas of the uk. this is what it looks like the early hours of friday, some bits and pieces of rain around western scotland, some in northern ireland, a scattering of rain across parts of the lake district and the temperatures are 1a in london on friday. a lot fresher in the far north, only five degrees. here is the forecast for friday, moist south—westerly winds will drag in a lot of cloud, mist and murk around the coast. rain in northern ireland. by the time this weather front is through, we will have seen about 40—50 millimetres of rain, that's a lot. the warmest and brightest

of the weather will be across central and southern areas. temperatures reaching 22, but not clear, blue skies. there will be a rare amounts of cloud on friday. —— afairamount, the oranges warm air spreading across much of europe. in fact, the near continent, the images will be reaching 30 degrees. we will get some of that warmth, it will be reaching towards southern and central areas. this portion of the uk will see temperatures may be in the high 20s in one or two spots. but further north, it's a case of more cloud. only 17 in belfast, squeezing 19 there in newcastle. then it's all changed because on sunday a low pressure comes in off the atlantic, it brings some showers, almost anywhere, really. it does sort of spoil the second half of the weekend a little bit. and it will turn fresher. in fact, temperatures will start to back away into the low 20s across the southern and eastern areas. so that high is just

a one—day wonder. in fact, the low pressure is with us during the course of monday and tuesday. you can see there it's anchored to the north of scotland. so that does mean after that brief spell, of very warm weather on saturday, from sunday onwards and into next week it will be turning cooler and more unsettled.

hello, everyone, and welcome. this is newsday on the bbc. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: donald trump lashes out at robert mueller a day after the former special counsel refused to clear the president of obstructing justice. the whole thing is a scam, it's a giant presidential harassment. no, russia did not help me get elected. you know who got me elected? i got me elected. russia didn't help me at all. another front in the trade war as china prepares to impose tariffs on $60 billion worth of american goods. i'm lewis vaughanjones in london. also in the programme: