hello, everyone, and welcome to "amanpour and company." with here's what's coming up. election day in america. as results pour in, we take a bird's-eye view of politics in this country, looking forward with lessons from the likes of the unlikely bipartisan duo, republican and democrat governors, kasich and hickenlooper. plus, important journalism has a major renaissance in the trump era. "new york times" editor dean beckey tells us how he navigates the new normal. and economic disruption defines our times but the author of "sapiens" tells me that artificial intelligence will

bring plenty more of that. >> uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour and company." when bae tollman found a collection of big hotel, she had bigger dreams and those dreams were on the water, a river, specifically, multiple rivers that would one day be home to cruises and their floating boutique hotels. today, that dream sets sail in europe, asia, india, egypt, and more. bookings available through your travel agent. for more information visit uniworld.com. >> additional support has been provided by rosalindp. walter, the sheryl and philip millstein family, setot melvin, judy and josh weston and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you.

thank you. welcome to the program, everyone. i'm christiane amanpour in new york. at the best of times, elections heighten our differences, as politicians vie for power. the 2018 midterms are considered the most important in a generation, a referendum on the trump era, and in these divisive times, it's been a brutal campaign season. but a most unusual partnership has entered the fray, seeking to reestablish some common sense bipartisan guidelines to everyday politics. republican governor john kasich, and democratic governor john hickenloop hickenlooper, they warn that only a return to bipartisan cooperation can lead to important policy break-throughs for america. we thought it was a good time to hear again from the two governors about the blueprints and the open letters that they've crafted on issues ranging from health care and immigration at home to international trade policy.

governors, welcome both of you to the program. i have spoken to each one of you separately, but the whole act? >> like when they're normal, it's kind of a natural thing that you kind of click with somebody, you get along with them, and you work together on projects. this is not like some -- unless you want to give us the nobel prize, maybe we'll take a nobel prize. other than that, it's not that big a deal. we're friends, and we can maneuver through things. we don't have that many problems anyway. so it's fun. >> i think that part of the, of our relationship is that, as a republican and a democrat, we are able to find compromises on

some of the more difficult issues, and i think that's a mod model -- health care, big complex shall ubut if a republican governor and democratic governor have to implement the same policies if we can find compromise doesn't that suggest congress should be able to improve things and move forward? >> that's what we get to. you as governors said quite interesting things right now. governor kasich, what's the problem, we can get along. senators in the congress, the image of it is right behind you, have been mired in this terrible toxic partisanship. recently the republican senator flake said tribalism is ruining us. this is no way for sane adults to act. commentators are saying there's a civil war in the united states between democrats and republicans, and it shows up especially in congress, and obviously in the executive as well. how do you provide an example to

those people in the building behind you? >> i don't know if they're really paying attention. you know, in the big days, when people could actually get chris one of the negotiators with pete domenici to get the budget balanced. it was a hard road, but we got it done. being a governor now, you have problems to solve. see, john and i don't operate in a zero sum game here, like if i get something, he gets nothing. we both benefit from the cooperation. although, i don't think we even think of it that way in terms of what's a benefit. it's just natural that he and i can figure out what our reasonable solutions to the challenges problems for our country. do i think these other folks are -- we can do our job. do i think they're sitting there watching? i don't. i think they have it all figured

out, but the zero sum game mentality, whether it is in sports, whether it's in politics, whether it's in religion, whether it's in business, never serves anybody well. everybody has to gain a little something when they work together. that's why we work together and have better progress. >> right. exactly, you raise this issue whereby the opposition is now the enemy, not just somebody you disagree with on policy. so governor hickenlooper, you mentioned and we've mentioned that it is health care that has brought you two at first together. president trump published an op-ed in "usa today" this week. basically he said the democrats, your party would gut medicare with their "medicare for call" proposal. this has been debunked by fact checkers and "usa today's" been criticized for running this op-ed. what is your reaction to it, and how does an op-ed on this sort of very touchstone issue by the president affect americans' understanding of even what's at

stake? >> well, i think president trump has, i mean he's not constrained by facts or telling the truth, and i think that is a problem. it creates a lot of confusion in terms of what the american people think, certainly what they hear, but also i think it confuses them what they think. the bottom line is that governors are aware the buck stops. right? the federal government may make these national policies, but we're the ones who have to implement it. we have to make sure that we're taking their rules and regulations and trying to apply them as best we can, and the key here is, both john and i feel i think strongly that we didn't want to go backwards. you can fight over whether you want a single payer system or medicare for all, fight over any of those different types of getting there but we all want to have more people covered. that's maybe not completely universal but almost universal, so what are the pathways by which we can get more people

covered and when we first got together, and president trump had just gotten elected and was going to completely eliminate the affordable care act, both of us didn't want to have to roll back our medicaid coverage for the last and the least in this country and wanted to find ways in the private marketplace to make it less expensive for all of our citizens at both in colorado and in ohio. that focus of, all right, we want to get this system to perform better, how can we compromise, because we disagree on many things. if we're able to compromise, why can't congress compromise? i think that model is relevant today and i think we're still making progress today. >> it's really important, because many, many political leaders identify health care as a key issue for american people, as they go into the upcoming elections. so to have you both on the same side trying to get this done is an important marker for the people. what it -- >> christiane, there are

principles that john and i agree upon. if you have a preexisting condition, you shouldn't be denied coverage. health care costs are too high. we both believe in the concept of paying for performance, pay for quality not for quantity. we both believe there are ways in which to deal with rising costs of pharmaceuticals. you take all these things together to make the package of obamacare more affordable. there's a lot of things that, principles that we agree upon, and if you say we have a problem, these are the principles. let's go to work and fix them, it's not that complicated and that's why it's been easy for us to work together. what has to happen ultimately, christiane, is senators pushed by governors have to make sure they don't do something that is really irresponsible. medicare for all is ridiculous. we'll be bankrupt. we're already headed toward bankruptcy. we're not going to do that but what we call agree is you just can't say some people ought not to have health care coverage. then they can't work.

they go into debt. their children pay a price. we think there are ways in which you can get that done with really reasonable approaches. the whole health care system has to move from a quantity based system to a quality based system and for people who are really hurting, they have to get what they need. >> absolutely. >> i'm hearing you say that despite our differences, we should not throw the baby out with the bath water on this issue, and presumably on other issues as well. governor kasich, you obviously were an opponent of president trump's during the campaign. you were presidential candidate. the america first rallying cry of this president has really been felt in the trade area. you've got the whole renegotiation of the nafta. you have this issue of trade war, trade tariffs back and forth between the united states and china, and just this week, the head of the imf warned this is going to cost america's global growth or economic

growth, and that of china, and that means the global economy. so what would you say to the president on this issue of trade? what would you both say and how is it affecting people in your states? >> first of all, trade has an economic and geopolitical side to have it. obviously, free trade means that you have innovation, you have products that cost less, and we also know that geopolitical side, when the u.s. withdrew from the pacific trade agreement, it overshadows the countries we were hoping the united states would be in league with them and offer them support. in addition to that, what i'm concerned about and timely is the fact that, for some reason, we have been unwilling and the administration level to condemn the actions of autocrats, and that's daeng russ.

when autocrats think they can do things with impunity, then it's a major, major problem. we see what's happening now in the developing story with saudi arabia. the united states needs to be a voice for higher ideals. it has to be a voice for free trade, for free enterprise, for human rights, for freedom of speech, freedom of religion. these are the things that make america so special, and if it all becomes about what's in it for us, and we'll pursue our agenda, and you can pursue yours, we lose the teamwork that has been so vital in keeping the peace for the last 70 years and this has got to stopped. >> this is -- >> wait a minute, profound consequences for the united states and its citizens in the western world whoo share our ethic, not just today but in the days to come. >> you used the word teamwork in relation to propelling america's agen ka forward.

governor hickenlooper, if i could pick up with you on that issue of what to do about saudi arabia, because from the united states' perspective, from the in thes now who have written a letter to president trump asking him to hold the saudis accountable and get the truth, what should the president's do? >> i can't imagine we won't eventually get the facts on eventualhis, if saudi arabia di many people are saying they did, they've got to be held accountable. the united states can't look the other way and have any credibility, not even from a moral point of view, that would be first and foremost, but from a trade or a partnership and international commerce. we've got to be the bellweather of doing and supporting what's

right and beannouncing and acting against what is clearly criminal behavior. >> what's an interesting development, christiane, is the activity of turkey. i think the west ignored turkey for about ten years, a decade. no policy from us, no policy from anyone, ander this a critical nation between the east and the west, and somehow, and i know we have big problems, erdogan, he's another autocrat, but we have not been able to figure out how to develop a more robust and better relationship, and what is happening now is very interesting in terms of an opening for us to perhaps reengage, recognizing the downside of a guy like erdogan, who is an autocrat. furthermore, the issue of teamwork matters so much, because we have a thing called the wto, the world trade organization. china's activities are terrible, but it would be much better if our allies, the countries that all stand to lose because of china ripping off our

technology, because of chinese aggression economically that, in fact, we could work through the wto to have the most effective way to get china back in line, but to doing it alone is not as effective as having a team. >> there is a fraying of the major institutions and pillars of american democracy, and some of these autocrats around the world are looking at that, and feeling potentially that they can get away with the assault on human rights and basic civil liberties as you've been outlining. at home in the united states, there is a civil war going on between the two sides. you spent the last two years talking about civility and the need to restore civility as anything else. i want to get your reaction to an interview i did with hillary clinton this week, caused a lot

of fallout on this issue. this is what she said to me when i asked her about the need to restore and rebuild civility in the american public sphere. >> you cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. that's why i believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the house and/or the senate, that's when civility can start again, but until then, the only thing that the republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength. >> so first to you, because she is from your party, your party's standard governor, hickenlooper. is she right? does hillary clinton have a point and do you translate that as calling for uncivility? how do you assess what she just said? >> certainly she reflects a growing sense of frustration and anger with not just democrats

but a large number of independent numbers and a large number of republicans where they feel that the present administration has attacked rule by law, attacked the courts, has attacked and tried to diminish the free media, cast doubt on any story that doesn't agree with what they want to be said on tv or in the media. i think that kind of a frustration leads to the kind of incivility that secretary clinton was talking about. now, i don't agree that's the only way, and i think that you always need to look at other approaches that can challenge -- if you've got a bully in the school yard, you don't just go up and punch him back. i will say sometimes, as someone who was bullied when i was a little kid, sometimes that's the only thing that works, but oftentimes you have to make their actions the humorous part the butt of other kid's jokes. in it ermz of this administration, we can't just resort to anger and attacks and

incivility. there's a different way of doing things, maybe a different approach and it's a funny thing. abraham lincoln said do i not conquer my enemy when i make them my friend. i'm not saying you go out and reach out to president trump and try to make him your friend because clearly that hasn't been very successful from anyone's point of view, but i think many republicans who are torn between his approach and his incivility and the way he conducts himself, and yet they're republicans and they have a republican in the white house, i think a lot of those people are vulnerable and ready to be, you know, persuaded that they can no longer support a president who, again, is as you say, fraying the very ponds that hold democracy together. >> governor kasich, do you

agree? >> that's why i like john so much. let me be stronger. i am shocked that hillary said this. i've known her for a long time, and i don't know -- maybe she got up on the wrong side of the bed, to say that what we need to do is get out and fight, and i know there was a republican preacher who said we need to elect more street fighters and we need to win! that's the zero sum game i'm going to vanquish my opponent. that does not work. you have to take a deep breath and our tongues, which have been described i think in scripture as more powerful than the rudder on a big ship, we have to restrain ourselves, and be patient, because there's a long game we're playing, and to say well, we'll be mean until we take over, then everything will be nice, i think you've studied civil wars in the world and that approach is, we're going to be nasty 'til we win, that's not a solution. so i bet hillary would like to take that back.

>> i ask you both, because actually, she's reflecting quite a lot of commentary right now. there are even in british newspapers sort of commentators who say actually the democrats should be taking a page out of the republican leader senator mitch mcconnell's book, where he has played cynical and savvy politics on just about every issue and has looked at the long game and they say stealing a supreme court nominee from president obama, and, and, and. there's a new book by professor at roosevelt university called "it is time to fight dirty" he's talking for the democrats. again, governor hickenlooper, you've heard governor kasich view on this. is this time for the democrats to take a beige page out of the republican's playbook? >> that's happening. so many democrats are so angry and so frustrated that they can't, they can no longer restrain themselves. that's what we're devolving too.

i don't think it's a long-term solution. it's a more successful strategy, and perhaps you need both. there has to be an arm that's attacking and aggressive, and venting that frustration that so ma many, and it's not just democrats. it's independents, a number of republicans feel just as angry, just as frustrated with the behavior of the republicans in washington right now, but i think even as that attack and that aggression takes place, there's got to be a group of democrats that are providing solutions and a vision to the future that allows us to see how are we going to create the jobs and make sure income gets distributed more fairly. how do we address issues around health care and as numbers of people live longer and more people with alzheimer's, how do we deal with the large scale problems if we're still fighting each other over every little

issue that comes across the newspaper? >> let me just say one more thing here. that is if dps focused on health care, if democrats focused on border separation, family separation at the border, they don't need to yell and scream. they need to make their case. i was on the stage with 16 people a number of whom were yelling and screaming. i don't think it gets you anywhere at the end of the day. >> the yelling and screaming got you to the white house, referring to president trump. >> we live in the what's tomorrow but we need to start thinking about the long-term implications for our country. >> right. >> our own personal long-term futures about how we want to be judged once we depart this earth. >> and i will wrap that up on precisely this note then. one of the greatest existential threats to us, to humankind is clima climate, and the two parties at

odds over how to deal with this. you've seen another hurricane, a massive storm wipe out parts of florida. this is on and on and on, not just in the united states, but we've seen it in indonesia just this last week, and elsewhere. can your model to get people to get together and depoliticize such an issue like climate? can it work? >> absolutely. if you look in the past week, there was a news article about exxon putting $1 million into supporting a carbon tax that wouldn't be an additional tax but the money would be used to make sure that we address climate. if you look at walmart, one of the largest retailers on earth, if not the largest, and they are on a real steep course to be totally sustainable, they're looking at the largest grocer in the united states, if not the world, and they're talking about

how are we going to get to the point where all of the produce, all of the meat that we purchase is grown sustainably. the animals are raised sustainab sustainably. once you get the large corporations to recognize they're not having a successful business model unless we address climate change in real time, not 25 or 50 years away but change our behavior now, if we don't get those companies, we'll have a hard time turning the ship of pollution and air quality. we've worked very hard in colorado. we were able to get the oil and gas and the environmental community to put down their weapons for 12 months and figure out appropriate methane regulations. how do we cut down methane getting into the atmosphere, 60 times worse than co2 and no one was addressing it. sit down and get both sides, this is a common threat to everyone.

how do we move forward. i think the storms in florida, just the incredible disruption in climate all over the world, the acidity in the oceans, all these things are getting people to the tipping point, where they're going to take action from the biggest companies down to the smallest. >> governor kasich, do you agree? >> of course. we've dealt with the methane problem in our state. i had a battle with some in the legislature, send me something that reduces the goals that we want on renewables and i'll veto them and i'll vespre veto them . we have to look at the issue of climate and rely on a ground it's not win/lose. we'll put all of these things in and you lose all of your jobs. there's a way to take action quickly, immediately that can have profound benefits for the environment, including improving the health of people. as arnold schwarzenegger says, stop worrying about what's going to happen in 20 years.

let's talk about the damage being done to people themselves because of the degradation of the environment. i think it's possible to get there, and we just have to keep cool heads. i read about destruction of the coral reefs. the lord created the environment. we're supposed to take care of it, not worship it, and we're not doing a good job in taking care of it. more and more enlightened people and companies are saying this is something we must do. i agree with them. >> that's a wonderful way to end. both of you, thank you very much. i'm sure there are many, many people watching this program across the united states who applaud your sense of bipartisanship and try to take the bitterness and enmity out of politics. governor kasich, governor hickenlooper, thank you for joining me. >> thank you very much. >> so if after the midterms governors kasich and hickenlooper's hope for a new political era does materialize, it will be dean becke ye's job

to chronicle it, executive editor of the "new york times." "all the news that's fit to print" for the past two years, this must seem like a thankless task. the paper is the president's favorite punching bag which he still turns to again and again to judge his performance. four years ago he began the first black american to head up the gray lady. in the thick of this unholy war between the president and the press, our walter isaacson, also from louisiana, sat down with backey to discuss the current state of journalism, reporting me too and the anonymous trump administration op-ed that rocked the world this september. >> welcome to the show. you grew up in new orleans in a black creole family. >> yes. >> what was that like in terms

of your concepts of race and class? >> it's interesting. my whole world as a kid was black new orleans. i went to, i grew up in a black neighborhood in trumaine, a black catholic grammar school and black catholic high school. the only people who weren't black we were exposed to were nuns and priests. my first experience of a sort of larger world in terms of race was going away to college. >> i think you had a great, great grandfather, george bachet's father, passed for white when he went to los angeles. >> achille played in jirmy d durante's jazz band. he passed for white. that was pretty common. >> went to the times picayune.

>> i learned parts of the city i didn't know before. i made a lot of mistakes as a journalist. i learned how to be truthful. i got exposed to cops. i got exposed to a whole different world than i had grown up in. >> donald trump slams you almost daily, "the failing "new york time times", "the fake news." does that affect how you cover him? >> yes. you have -- there was a script to covering a president, and the script was, if the president said something, that was news. he was likely to do it or to try to do it. this is a very different president. first off, you know, he on fa obfiscats. we had a debate during the campaign whether or not to use

the word lie, which i decided to do. i can't imagine another executive editor of the "new york times" ever had to decide whether or not to call a nominee and possible president of the united states a liar on the front page. that just shows how much it changed the game. >> have you ever talked to trump? has he ever called you? >> he has called me. he's called me. he's called me to complain, and i've listened to him, and he has been to the "new york times" a couple times. >> at times when the publisher of the "new york times" has a meeting with him, you decline to go. >> yes. >> because you don't feel like going? >> i don't think the executive editor meets with heads of state. that's a personal issue. when i was a washington bureau chief, i never met barack obama, because i didn't think the washington bureau chief should talk off the record to the

president. my view is, whatever the. >> you know the editorial page is liberal. the "new york times" is made up of a lot of stuff. i would make the case that our business section carries with it the fact that we have a business section, carries with it the view, the obvious view that capitalism is an important part of the life of the country. lot of people would say having a business section and covering wall street and covering winners and losers is not a liberal thing to do. i actually don't. >> we're in the middle of almost a category 5 swirl in the me too movement, and this latest wave

of it was pretty much started when the "new york times" began doing its stories and then eventually culminated with the harvey weinstein story. did you have trouble, did you get a lot of pressure on the harvey weinstein story? are there two sides to that or was it gung-ho? >> he was one of our biggest advertisers. when we started working on the story, and i was deeply involved, when he called and wanted, going back to the earlier point, wanted to talk off the record, and i said i don't talk off the record. first off, i don't talk to people who are the subjects of stories without a reporter in the room, first thing. secondly, i don't talk off to the record people who are the subject of investigative stories. he was upset, lobbied a lot of people. it was interesting but there was never any thought about not pursuing the story. >> but you had to pause before you published it, until you

finally felt you had nailed it. what happened then? >> the moment -- we had a debate in the newsroom. we heard, just as we were nearing the end of it, we heard that "the new yorker" was working on a story. >> roanin farrell. >> it was ronin and we got anxio anxious. i don't like getting beat. i called the reporter answer their editor and and said we have to do it now. they argued, we have the story but we think it's important to name a couple of moverie stars movie stars in the story. i said wrongly, let's just do the story. rebecca corbett, the editor, said no, if we name stars t will have much bigger impact. me, being somebody who don't go to a lot of movies said i'm not going to get beat on the story. i kept pushing and this wonderful moment, where one of the reporters walked in, jody canner, tears in her eyes, said

ashley judd agreed to be on the record. they were right. the reason the stories had so much impact, and this may be unfortunate but i think it's true, is because these are people who people could identify with. ashley judd, gwyneth paltrow. readers read those names and they resonated unfortunately, but they did resonate a lot more than the women, for instance, who were in the stories we did about donald trump. >> was there ever a point you said to yourself, this is a big deal in america, sexual harassme harassment, aggression. let's make this our big -- >> yes, but i didn't know it would be this. i had assigned, i remembered a case in which bill o'reilly was accused of something years and years before, and nothing had come of it. so after the election, and after we had done the trump stories about trump and the allegations of harassment, i assigned a couple reporters to look at that case and it led to the stories

that led to bill o'reilly forced out. me and other editors said we need to put together a team. this is a real issue in the country. and i said find out if there are other cases like this and harvey weinstein ended up coming from reporters that way. i did not know this was going to be the moment that it was in the life of the country. i had no -- i had no idea. >> every now and then you have to say i'm not going to publish something. did you that with debra ramirez, the third person who accused brett kavanaugh. >> in that case we chose not to publi publish. partly we didn't have an interview with her, "the new yorker d york yorker" did. all we had were people who knew her, who couldn't support her account or disagreed with certain aspects of her account. i felt like i was sitting there with paragraphs 30 through 40 and not par xwragraphs 1 throug,

which would have been the interview with her. >> you had to deal with it in your own newsroom. how did you decide not to fire glenn thrush? >> a signed someone to look into all the allegations. i put together a diverse team of women and men, and we sat down in my office for two days, in an office next to my opinion for two days, and we debated it. we did believe the women, that wasn't the issue. the question was, was this enough to drum him out of the profession forever? it had not happened while he was working at the "new york times." it had not happened in the newsroom. his behavior was awful, but in the end, the group, and actually, even though it's my decision, i wanted, i did not want this to be one i made alone. the group decided to give him

another chance. we took him off the beat that he'd always dreamed of, which i think in journalism, he's no longer the white house reporter. in journalism, people get that that's a big punishment. this guy, from the time he was growing up, wanted to cover the white house. we took it away from him, and we did some other things. we suspended him, and then we brought him back, and i get that there are people who disagree with that, and it was really hard, but maybe it's what's left of my catholic upbringing. i still think people deserve another chance sometimes, and i thought he did. >> the op-ed page done "fall under you" it did publish something from anonymous, a person in the trump administration. >> now i'm going to say who it is. no, i'm not going to. >> did you sic reporters and say i want to you find out who it is, even though your own op-ed page promiseed anone nimity?

>> i do not know who it is. >> if you did, you'd. unlish it? >> if i did, i'd publish it but i also want to make one thing clear, i did not assign reporters to go nuts to find out who "anonymous" was. first off, i didn't think it was that important. it wasn't out of the blue. it was consistent with what people had said in bob woodward's book. it's not like i said let's put together a team and of all the things in the world we can investigate, let's do this. >> was the op-ed page right to publish anonymous? >> i would have published it. whoever wrote that piece had something for all of the stories we've published about trump and inside the white house, it was something different in that piece. you were actually in the mind of one of the people in the government talking about how they deal with donald trump. our anonymous sources state facts.

this person was saying here's why i stay, here's how i regard myself, here's why i do what i do. that was different. i actually found it instructive. >> do trump and the "new york times" need each other? >> i wouldn't say -- we need good stories, and donald trump is one great story. >> does he need you? he needs the foil, the guy from queens who wants respect? >> i think there's part of donald trump's psyche. i'm not going to use this to forgive him for beating us up but the boy whose family made its money in queens who wanted to come to manhattan who, to my mind made some more money building apartment buildings for people who could not get into fancy east side buildings, wanted to be accepted by the establishment, and we're part of the establishment, i think there's part of that, but i also think there's the part that he's doing destructive stuff to us and to the press. >> we live in a very polarized media environment.

"fox & friends" is in a different realm than the "new york times." is there any way we can heal that and what could the "new york times" do if it made it part of its mission to heal the polarization especially in our understanding of the world? >> that's a good question. i should say "fox & friends" is bad for journalism and bad for the country. i think you could say whatever you want to say about the "new york times" and "the washington post." we don't appeal to the don't.ing elements of society. they do. it's in their business model to do that. i think we can be truthful. the transparency part is a big deal. it's important for people to know that not everybody in the "new york times" or "the washington post" newsroom is the same. it's important for people to know what my background is.

i don't think there's anybody in my top three or four that has a background that resembles what people would expect. i think that will help with some of it. i travel a lot. i go out in the country and try to talk to people. i think seeing that maggie haberman is a parent with kids, i got to believe that people look at that and say, boy, it's hard to hate that person. boy, maybe, i should read what that person has to say. i this i that helpthink that he. >> dean, i hope in a decade you come home to new orleans. >> we'll talk about that later. >> until his job as editor of the "new york times" is to publish the stories about the facts that his legion of reporters bring back. that is more important than we might think because story telling might be what separates

us as the apes. the global intellectual superstar sold books about human creation and its future. latest work requesting 21 lessons for the 21st century" which shifts his focus to the present day. we thought on this midterm election night as economic disruption is still such a raw political issue, we turn to uval hirari's examination of the big threats facing workers in the future, which he says is not exploitation, but irrelevance. welcome, uval noah hirari. you have made a career now out of charting our exist ence of or species. are we homosapiens or sapiens?

>> good question. i say sapiens. >> same people say sapiens. how did we come to be dominant? >> we are the social mammals that can cooperate in very, very large numbers in flexible ways, and this is the secret of our success, simply. it's not on the individual level. it's on the collective level. if you look at any large scale human achievement, flying to the moon or splitting at tom or e result of large scale his is cooperation. we are the only mammals that can cooperate on a very large scale, because we are the only ones that can create and believe in fictional stories. >> what do you mean? we are in this era of fact, fiction, fake. when you say our civilization and fiction and cooperation, what do you mean by that? >> the most obvious example is religion, that even religious

people will agree that all religions except one are based on fictional stories. >> you mean exception their own. >> except mine. ask a jew and christianity, this is fake news. ask a christian, they will say islam is fake news, so this is for all religions and also true of nations. nations exist only in our own imagination. it's also true of money and corporations. the only place google and toyota exist is in the storieies that r shamans called lawyers invent and spread around. i don't mean to belittle them. they are the most important thing in the world. if you can get millions of people to believe in the same fiction, it becomes the most powerful thing in the world, because it enables them to cooperate effectively. >> we live, it seems, in an era now of increasing discorporation, uncorporation.

our politics are polarized in every country, not just in the usual suspects. is that part of what will contribute to the demise of our species th speci species? >> that depends. we are gaining the ability of creation, to reengineer and create life, and the big question is, what will we do with these immense powers. the only effective way to regulate our powers, artificial intelligence and bioengineering is through global corporation. you cannot regulate ai on the level of a single country. if you're afraid of some dangerous potential, say the creation of autonomous woe upon systems, killer robots or bioengineering human babies, and you ban these technologies, let's say in the u.s., it won't help if the chinese and the russians and the israelis and

whatever are doing it. soon, the americans, too, will be trempt tempted to break thei ban because they wouldn't like to stay behind. the only way is through global cooperation. if we don't have global cooperation, the future of humankind does not look promising. >> we live in the era of global disruption, that is what president trump is doing. openly overtly, that is his agenda, of disruption and chaos. what happens then to this cooperation you say is vital? >> it breaks down. it's very simple. >> if it breaks down, what happens to our species? >> we have three big problems as a species that we need to confront and confront it now, not in some distant future. we need to confront nuclear war. we need to confront climate change and we need to confront the technology disruptions caused by ai and bioengineering. if we prevent nuclear war and climate change, ai and

bioengineering are still going to completely disrupt the job market, the global economy. our bodies and brains are going really to be disrupted. we need the global cooperation to deal with that. with all the talk of nationalism and isolationism, nationalism has many good ideas about how to deal with the issues of a particular country, how to run the u.s., how to run russia, how to run india, but the big question to ask any nationalist is how are your country by itself going to prevent nuclear war, to stop climate change, and to regulate the disruptive technology, and the answer, the obvious answer, you can't. >> so it's a little disheartening. wherever we look, we don't see that cooperation. we see the cop siopposite. >> there's more cooperation than ever before. we live in the most peaceful

world. there are wars in place, i come from the middle east, i know it perfectly well but compared to this time in history, far more people die from obesity than from violence. >> is that true? >> yes, sugar is a greater danger to your life statistically than gun powder. not everything is lost. the global order has taken quite a few hits over the last few years, but it is still in far better shape than let's say 50 years ago, in 1968 or 1 hurn years a -- 100 years ago in 1918. >> we're living through this disruptive dynamic regarding globalization, the liberal world order. too many people have felt left behind. you and economists say the obvious, this can only work if there is sustained global economic growth, and that is not a given. >> no, absolutely not. >> that may peter out, and the

whole dream of the world, it's not just the american dream, that my children will do better than i'm doing may come crushing down. >> maybe the bigger issue is one of inequality, but not income inequality, but future, the inequality of the future, that we tend to speak in terms of "we" but maybe there are no we. maybe homosapiens, this one species that took over the world is in the process of splitting, is in the process of speciation really, and different people in different parts of the world have a different future. if you live in one part of the world, the best is investment, is to learn how. if you're in i different part of the world, the best investment is to learn how to shoot a kalashnik kalashnikov. this is the biggest problem, there is no "our future." this is true of countries like the u.s.

one of the interpretations of what we're seeing with the rise of populism and the rise of trump and so forth, in tessence people are sensing correctly they are left behind. the future doesn't include them. the future doesn't need them. the big struggle in the 21st century might be against irrelevan irrelevance. the 20th century, the conflict was about exploitation. some people exploiting others. in the 21st, century, maybe it's irrelevance. nobody is exploiting you. they don't need you. it's far worse. >> existential angst on a massive level. >> yes, and it's also just much harder to struggle against it, because if you are exploited, it means they need you, but if you're irrelevant, what do you do? >> this is something that i try to get my head around often,

because we talk about populism, anger, worry, fear, alienation, left behind, all of that, and people point to globalization or this or that or the other, but they don't point to the very thing you're talking about as the behavior, that is technology. so technology has disrupted people's jobs and disrupted their human relevance, and you're saying that, i think, biotech and info tech and technology have to be harnessed to continue and to solve these problems. >> the technology -- one thing think is absolutely crucial about technology it's never deterministic. you can use the same technology to create the same technology. it 1st century you could use radio electricity and trains to build communististic deistic di

or fascist technologies. the same with ai and bioengineering. you can use them to create paradise on earth or hell. >> where are we going, towards hell or paradise? >> at present, we are midway. we are undecided, and again, some sort of the world may become hell while other parts may become paradise at the same time. >> you see in a mere two decades, billions have come to entrust the google search algorithm with searching for relevant and trustworthy information as we rely on google, so our ability to search for information by ourselves diminishes. >> yes. we just trust the algorithms more than we trust our own abilities and instincts and often for a good reason. this is not a big, terrible conspiracy. in many cases, there are excellent reasons to trust google or amazon or the government or whatever to make

better choices on our behalf. but this is happening in more and more fields, and this view of human life as a big drum of decision-making which you find in every novel, every hollywood comedy is about some big decision, the hero or the heroine needs toic ma. the same in religion, but what happens if increasinincreasingl just about buying things, or just about finding your way around town, but the really big stuff, what to study in university, where to live, whom to marry, whom to vote for, what happens if you learn by experience google makes better decision, on average. >> the world is becoming too complicated for our hunter/gatherer brains. you step off and step away for

about 60 days per year, right? >> yes. >> you take an absolutely vacation somehow for 60 days a year. that's amazing. why do you do that? >> i go every year for a long meditation retreat, so i talk so much for the rest of the year, and i travel. it's a wonderful thing to just be able to stop, completely everything, for two months, and just be in the present moment without emails, without tweets, without computer, smartphones, anything, and just focus on reality. you have this thousands of years of traditions, of telling people know yourself. it's the most important thing in the world is to know yourself, and to know yourself, you need to really observe yourself. if you outsource, knowing yourself to an algorithm, you don't need to do it. you can trust google to get to know you better, but if you want to know yourself better, you

have to observe yourself. you have to spend time with your mind, with your body, and it's an amazing experience, and sometimes can be shocking experience to just be there with your mind, with no distractions. something comes up, and you cannot run to the television, to the smartphone, to the computer. you just have to continue being there with whatever comes up your mind. >> i would say that'ssss of the most profound of your it 21 lessons for the 21st century. that is it for your program tonight, but join us tomorrow night for comprehensive coverage of the results of these midterms. thank you for watching "amanpour and company" on pbs, and we'll see you next time.

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