Equal amounts of sorrow and anger he once said there'd be a special place in hell for brakes it is probably planned for brakes it and always seem to hope it might be reversed the former Belgian prime minister Sean Michel is like to take a more sanguine approach like the French President Emanuel macro to whom he's close they want Briggs it done to ease disruption they intend to defend the e use interest vigorously in any negotiations 3 men have been given lengthy jail sentences in Australia for plotting a large scale terror attack on the city of Melbourne in 2016 the men inspired by the Islamic state group had arranged to use machetes and explosives to maximize casualties during the Christmas period at the time the government described it as one of the most substantial terror threats to Australia in recent years. This is the world news from the b.b.c. . The Russian Federal Security Service has arrested a woman in the Crimean city of service to pro on suspicion of spying for Ukraine the f.s.b. Says the woman is a Russian citizen accused of state treason for allegedly collecting secret military information on behalf of the Ukrainian government Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 prompting international condemnation Hong Kong police have lifted the cordon they placed around a university they were proceeding the force said it had found nearly 4000 petrol bombs and more than 500 weapons in a search of the campus the scene of intense battles between police and pro-democracy protesters the police who entered the site on Thursday have made no arrests but it's possible some demonstrators remain hidden at a news conference in the past hour one Hong Kong officer gave more details of what his colleagues had found the campus was left in ruins the one thing got building or given one single for what's being up on the damage we saw a large amount of gas canister and petrol bombs if both are direct sunlight meeting today Reece of explosion a Japanese department store where staff could wear badges if they were on their period has said it will rethink the policy the badges which featured a cartoon character known as Miss period were intended to signal of staff needed extra help or longer breaks but there were complaints from the public when some media outlets mistakenly reported that the Badger was to let customers know if a woman was menstruating Disney has agreed to allow a dying man and his son to watch the new Star Wars film before it's released a hospice in England had appealed on Twitter for an early screening for the man who's not been named to protect his privacy and health care support worker who helped the patient's wish come true said she was utterly speechless at the news b.b.c. News. Welcome to heart talk of the b.b.c. World Service would be short like sometimes a t.v. Drama does more than entertain it brings a life to an audience a world they fail to see for many in the United States and beyond the wire which methodically dissected America's War with drugs was an eye opener to play detective Bunk Moreland brought Wendell Pierce international attention now he's on stage in London as Willy Loman the protectionist an alpha male is like death of a Salesman Wendell Pierce describes the parties playing is the American 100 is today's American reality you're on you're a 12 piece welcome to Hardtalk thank you very much for coming to the same for having me sure let's begin if we May 14 years ago her contract Katrina you were visiting your parents when the evacuation was mandated Yes it was your family home the city you'd grown up in the city were all your friends were from and your family still lived how they did now the pictures in your mind memories of what you saw when you returned to what had been your home oh those images. And double the will. There will always mark a distinct period in my life is always. Post Katrina New Orleans. It will be the defining moment in New Orleans history you know that was. My mother was my late seventies in their golden years and to see everything that you have built to be destroyed. At that time in your life lost my older brother. Years before and those are just 2 of the darkest days for my parents and involve them to make sure to get them back into the home before their dying day so that they could actually have some sort of sense of redemption Redemption is a powerful word and it's one that you return to a concept you return to last in what you've written and spoken about the times then and since in your book the when did the Ricci describe the impact of the levees. Failing the destruction least as was appended to the city hundreds of people drowned as the 20 foot wall of water flat never anything in its path it was people from the single building a historic African-American neighborhood of 14000 souls among them the city's poorest ceased to exist and that neighborhood is historic in the sense that in the most violence. Segregated times of these Yanna in New Orleans it was the neighborhood through which all African-Americans who were coming to the city you know the way people come from the hinterlands to London. People came from all over Louisiana when they come to New Orleans it was through the 9th Ward Lower 9th Ward was homeownership contrary to the belief that poor people not only homes it was land owned in generate for generations in a family where anyone who would take that trip to go to New Orleans would go through and to see that neighborhood affected that way was devastating and also has the legacy of knowing in 1927 that it was in that area that they did blow the levees to protect the city for after Katrina a lot of people were suspicious about why that neighborhood was so heavily damaged . I believe it was a. Complete failure of the levee systems around the city that destroyed the city not a malicious act with this still to this day a lot of people feel as though it was all this is a particular cause but some people said let's not rebuild that's. Absolutely and we still have to fight that today there are people who there's been no effort on the part of city government or state government to actually rebuild the lower 9th Ward but there has been planned stew build a cruise ship terminal down there so if you kind of let it linger. Was that cruise ship terminal comes on board then all of a sudden the property is very very valuable and so you see those efforts that are made by sea. The plan is that I'm not in the best interests of people who don't have the social political and economic power that they should there's a big point isn't there about the status of African-Americans to the stag in that country in a sense some people whether or not the United States is that Khomeini's that nation your you come from very much your sick family are very proud of you felt this was said that your father was very out of service and proud of his not for his country and his flag and yet when the biggest crises hit New Orleans was if the country did not want something who right. You know what happens is we don't believe outlawing eyes and what happened was Katrina lifted the veil and showed people that there's a disparity in 2 Americas for those who are white and those who are black or those who are poor those who are rich class and race or always intertwined and even when you see videos of the non-black men being you know killed by police officers overreacting because they have a. Prejudgment in their head about that black man being a criminal even with those pieces of evidence people still want to dispel this idea that there is 2 Americas and. The lesson that they have to learn which is until we reconcile that we are cannibalizing ourself you are destroying the very thing that makes America great which is its people and African-American people have. The reason my family's patriotic is because we realize that the African-American community built America you know 1st in slaves and then afterwards I mean if there's one group of people that should not believe the viability of the Constitution and liberty and justice for all of the people that have been denied for generation after generation after generation but we still believe in that idea of equality so me. So that we are willing to continually vigilant vigilantly fight for those constitutional ideas I wanted to ask you about life in New Orleans after Katrina because one of the motivations that you had was seeing the absence of help the absence of an outside force a. Break it satirised as I'm for the company and I'm here to help contain that was a bad thing but that was what people would need in that direction it wasn't that this but it did me is the immediate immediate week and in terms of what you then drew from that was a belief in self help which you have maintained to this day. In what ways 1st of all didn't it wasn't born out of Katrina it was something that has always been a part of the African-American culture an experience that is with the whole civil rights movement was about it was exercising the right of self-determination. Clearly going all the way back to our entire experience in America starting in 6090 it is those who do not have our best interests at heart I will tell you that we you know. Always self reliant on others always overloads government independent in a way that is not true at all if you just look at the the sense of improvisation which I believe with his unique contribution to the human diaspora from the African-American culture of being bored changeable and being able to have a sense of individual ism in the midst of constriction. You see it in the improvisational major of jazz you see it in the improvisational nature of our political movements like the Civil Rights Movement and all but I feel as though we have to do that and you see it in a bad way when it comes to the economic system because what happens is what we depicted on the wire was an underground economy which is if we were not if you don't have access to the. Mainstream economy you will create an underground economy to try to survive and people will do that as a hard part of human nature. That's what happened with the numbers you know people read numbers yeah I can today and then the government all of sudden said whom I kind of like got I'm going to be let's bring it above board we'll call it a lot of time and we'll be able to tax it digs what's happening now with the legalization of marijuana around the world cannabis as we should probably now say. To give the posher. Sense but it's it's it's a part of the exercise the right of self-determination that I realized in the face of government feel yes yes it was we're going to have to call on the best part of ourselves to do that and that's what I will denies my neighborhoods and kind of do our own redevelopment so it was. Not for profit which is built houses now only yesterday but we built about 40 houses and he just sold it. So to a group. That is now continuing their construction and starting from supermarket to buy food I saw a need for commercial districts so we saw a need. In food deserts which is areas that were designated as not having access to a decent grocery store I felt I found out quickly as any actor will that my business that human. There's ups and downs so the store lasted about a year and a half the grocery store we still have the smaller convenience store so yes I. Did 8 years of Barack Obama as president done much do you think in terms of attitudes too right. Attitudes to race. That's going to be an ebb and flow constantly I think one of the greatest. Misconceptions was this idea of we're post racial because Barack Obama became president. The ugly part of human nature is the fact that it will always be there we have to be ever vigilant and we see in this age. The veil being lifted and show you how race is America still is because President Trump is now in office and then you know you have Steven Miller and he's literally feeding the media. You know the manifestos of white supremacists and white nationalists you know Steve Benen going around the world tried to unify white nationalism and doesn't realize that the operative word is nationalism is of the hung Gary and white nationalists are going to get together with Kosovo. White guys with very nationalistic but thankfully so that ignorance of policy an idea they they rationalize it and it's just it's just hatred of someone else and until America starts to realize that they're cannibalizing themselves and realize that they can't afford to be 2 Americas. We will suffer a dysfunction of self. Inflicted wounds until we come to that realization raised the question of the impact of bombing because I think I might say that turnout among African-American voters fell between 22 and 2016 his 1st election is reelection by something like 7 percentage points and I wonder if because we make the mistake of taking it seeking those voters for graduates but in a Democratic primary debate. Coming to her a smidgen of dissolve you know black women in the recent elections of a Democratic senator in Alabama the move. I think she would have been governor in Georgia red state a black woman would have been there if it wasn't for voter suppression. And and in Florida also on the side of government black women with the. The a major constituency in the Democratic Party that is being taken for granted I mean just the way that she's treated in in the debate as if you know she's only asked questions about race is only questions about you know that some coaches policy is that all of us conscious buys and that's what happens on the Democratic side and on the Republican side they know they just need to peel away a certain amount of the black vote which will automatically cause turn out to go down and suppress votes in different I think 6 percent of African-Americans voted for Donald Trump last time I wonder if some of that is kind of legitimate from your point of view as a Democrat support and you're backing. A legitimate frustration with the pace of change and Democrat presidents over the last quarter century know that. Some of it maybe. What happens is no. I actually met a young man African-American into all this. Who voted for Trump. That's what I knew he was going to when I actually met him on the Hollywood. Night October 30th 2006 I . Said I'm voting for my Jesus and he was a contractor and he's like Man I'm just looking for another way he's looking for another way out I try this way I want to drive away and usually for black Americans it comes out of economics you know. Looking for some sort of way where we can stop the economic suppression of the redlining keep us out with the least leaded to the red line all the time and in a lot of time the carrot on the stick for a lot of American politicians is if you vote for me you might become a member of the rich guy club you know and that works especially on the largest voting bloc that they have his poor wife if you know if you can have a right wing populist when the president say I'm not you know many months before people had written off why can't you have a Democrat populist win the presidency why would have a radical left wing voice I think. That's why the niche I think I think that's possible you're seeing that reflected in the primary right now with some of the the completely left. With a lot more run sound as it is with this war and you know the voice the voice of Alexandria. I think see if you can. Always butcher her name. You know Congresswoman. Congresswoman. They have given voice a platform to that as someone said at the best in the last election when some elections you have to you have to you have the voice you have the populous you have to move the needle by actually getting the ground work of getting people into the polls because food 4 years ago you were backing Hillary Clinton rather than that he saw and say yeah now looking looking at where you sit now it is not quite as unelectable as you do. For me. I mean Hillary Clinton I was supporting Hillary Clinton because of her c.v. Was one of the greatest. That could ever have been presented by any presidential candidate but she didn't connect. I feel that she was death by 1000 Cuts you know death by 1000 Cuts you know we litigated that all these 3 years everyone comes to the table and says it was this and I say all of the above. Could he win the general election. And I think all of any Democrat and every Democrat when you think about like she's able. To literally think Trump is beautiful. And the thing we have to do is got to get away from the partisanship and speak to his speak to his supporters there are millions of people listen for Donald Trump against their own best interests and so you have to point that out you know playing as I said at the start of the program we live in the death of this has been here in London at the moment of you describe the pontiff as the American hunt as it is as was said before you. Completely for tea. Physically emotionally. Psychologically it is. Is a challenge to the greatest challenge I've ever had in my life. Not just in my career in my life. Seem to be unable to. Find a way every evening to claw Mount Everest and that's before the lights go up. I'm looking up at this peak saying I have to summit you know by the end of the evening and when I have guests come back they're always surprised at how festive I am unhappy and I just did Willy Loman I said Man I just climbed Mount Everest so and usually I'm filled with energy and I'm up all night and then the spin the entire day preparing for it. He's a character whose dreams are shot it I think spirits who kind of faces the daily grind of the daily grind ultimately wins in the most horrible way possible for him and for his family it's not a hopeful play it is a cautionary tale you know. Because the hope is in the fact that you see all the mistakes he makes if you would only see if you would only listen to his son he was if you would only listen to his wife. If you could only see what was ahead. If you only realized that his best days were ahead of him and not behind him and if you only realized that all that he put his faith into. Was a. False dream and the real dream. The real American dream was the family and the love that he had a rally. He would not you know fall victim to his hubris and. He's investigating it's doing the play I'm investigating and. It's just the deep self reflection on our My best days behind me one of my inadequacies where I've failed where have I put. My false hope and. It's. This is come to Jesus moment as we call it you know for me and for him. And what it is and the broader message is the condemnation of capitalism and democracy and how it could destroy the individual if we allow the larger idea to be bastardized into become a state of capitalism being something that can be found a common good just become about greed democracy is not equal for all if every man and woman don't have access to life liberty and pursuit of happiness then the whole idea of democracy fails. We know everyone by the nature of our humanity and existence everyone will not be successful. But have an idea of how we can lend a helping hand to fellow man and woman. But is a condemnation of all of the bad parts of democracy and capitalism and it's a cautionary tale Are you hopeful or pessimistic about the prospects of reuniting Americans this leave the kind of politics aside but just the kind of common values that can bring Americans together if yes because what happens is there's always an epiphany for people when they start to realize how much we have in common. And it happens for different people or different times and I think if we take the time to go into each other's communities if we take the time to actually. Reach up to someone who disagrees with me. Then that's. That's where the possibility is it's strange because as I sit here in the studio and I'm buying a radio station in New Orleans. We have to look at our contribution to the dynamic . For media outlets to become partisan. With the power that they have of influence has really really thrown fuel on the fire. And whenever someone says that they don't fall into line of the partisanship you're seeing like an alien. I verily oppose. All of the politics of John Voight. I mean but I did read on of it with. And you just see an eye on this costly talk about acting sharing ideas really s'posed all kinds of different things and he's getting the National Arts Award. From President Trump and I agree with all of those who say he's probably getting it because he's of course trumps and Trump looked around and said Who can I give this to. And who's to say that those were the reasons that Obama gave it to Tony Marse you know. But I know him as an actor and a friend. We've even had our political arguments you know. And I congratulated him with social media the other day and I was attacked you know and I was just like I don't want to allow politics to come between friendship it shouldn't it shouldn't be like that my thing is if someone is my friends I'm willing to take those lumps but if we can get past that and tried to look into each other's humanity that I don't understand why politics became the the forefront of our existence I mean now it is the forefront of our existence and it shouldn't be. It should it's important. But it is part of the last yes it's not it's it's not the masses the servant and not the master and if we can find other parts of our humanity to put up and to the forefront and. I think that's more important Wendell Pierce thank you very much for being with us on the whole top Thank you. Distribution of the b.b.c. World Service in the u.s. Is supported by c 3 da Ai addressing the world's most challenging problems at the convergence of artificial intelligence audio t. And a lasting cloud computing learn more at c 3 Ai and from t. Rowe Price offering a strategic investing approach that examines opportunities 1st hand since 1937 t. Rowe Price invest with confidence. We think of Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving as a time of crowds lining up outside stores ready to fight over T.V.'s and toys only to see what happened here this morning was under all that. But are consumers and retailers losing enthusiasm why are we doing this why are we paying people double overtime to do be here to serve is not so great customers on the next Morning Edition from n.p.r. News. This morning starting at 5. Great question what is a great question and it's a great question wow that's another great question that that's a great question so. That's a great question that is a great question Rick great question on Fresh Air feel here unexpected questions and unexpected answers. This morning at 9 b.b.c. News with David Alston there have been celebrations in the Sudanese capital Khartoum after the former ruling party of the deposed President Bashir was officially dissolved activists described it as a major step towards building a democratic state in another widely welcomed move Sudan's transitional authorities have scrapped the Public Order Law which was used to regulate the lives of women. According South Korea has jailed 2 male k. Pop stars after they were found guilty of several sex offenses including gang rape John Jr and choice Chong whom were charged with raping a number of unconscious women Joan was sentenced to 6 years in prison Choi was ordered to serve 5 years Hong Kong police have lifted the cauldron they placed around a university they were proceeding before said it had found nearly $4000.00 petrol bombs and more than $500.00 weapons in a search of the campus the European Council has a new president from today when the former prime minister of Belgium a Shelby show takes over from Donald Tusk the e.u. Council brings together the leaders of the member states in a decision making body and its president acts as its convenor the government of Malta has turned down a request for immunity from prosecution for a prominent businessman in return for testifying about the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galatea the businessman Yogen Fennec has filed a direct appeal to the president the Russian Federal Security Service has arrested a woman in the our next Crimean city of Sevastopol all suspicion of spying for Ukraine the f.s.b. Says the woman is a Russian citizen accused of treason for allegedly collecting secret military information the Japanese department store where female staff could wear badges if they were having their period has said it will rethink the policy that has had prompted public complaints. B.b.c. News. Welcome to business daily from the b.b.c. Coming up the trouble with meetings the more meetings you have the more meetings you have to schedule for discover problems in meetings and then you need more meetings to discuss those problems but do we actually secretly love them I don't think people hate meetings as much as we like to say we do we are social creatures we are humans we like to interact with each other it's just not. Like needs plus tips on how to make meetings more bearable That's all here in Business Daily from the b.b.c. . I wanted to say it's night that in the morning which means a for other business news department here at c it's meeting time an editorial meeting where the team is discussing the day's news agenda deciding which stories to cover on a good day it takes no more than 10 to 15 minutes of a bad day dragged on for up to 40 teams now on to discussing topics that don't really affect this program business daily but it would be a bit rude to walk out looking I'm standing at the back of the room next to a window so I can out side at my the great London streets or I might even just slightly scroll through my phone and her in that one notices and loads of money to try to hold a meeting here. The point is meetings are often the bane of an office workers existence that's not to say they're all pointless but many see meetings as a distraction from actually getting a job done yet the evidence is we're having more meetings than ever before we have these statistics that I like to spout about your the u.s. Has 55000000 meals a day well the u.s. Is not alone in having lots and lots How many did you say 5X5W5X5W every single day 55000000 meetings every single day in the United States correct. Joseph Allen that he's professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of Utah in the u.s. Yeah I mean it's just crazy it's you know so for a couple other news that has 6 around that if you're a manager in a large organization you'll spend about 75 percent your time preparing for and you know doing meeting related work that's a lot of your working life that goes into meetings will come back to Professor Alan a little later because he has some good advice 1st though why are we having more meetings than ever if so many of us loath them well that was a question academics from the University of Momo in Sweden try to answer the study was done by Patrick who He's a professor of political science at Moma university there the result was published earlier this month professor who told me what he found that I think we have a tendency to over organize things at least chance we had among you have to have a lot of meetings and that because a kind of self fulfilling process I mean the more meetings you have the more meetings you have to schedule for because you discover problems in meetings and then you need more meetings to discuss those problems and these problems are most often about organizational stuff you study also found that it was almost like a form of therapy rather than about decision making Yeah obviously it's not at all just about decision making you can say that maybe things are the decision making sometimes I mean you know progress tonight decisions by holding meetings not always but sometimes sometimes So yes therapy. About maybe your role as a manager for instance to reinforce some of the sense of being a manager you mean that they have to have these meetings to sort of establish their oath oratory I think so I mean. Increase of managers in both the private and public sector and many of these managers or unclear about the role don't really know what what they should do so I think they have these meetings to become informed. The studies show that meetings are more about information obviously than decision making so you inform each others often in management committees for instance when there are a lot of managers around so they inform each other and try to get hold of a sense of direction so that that's the Terra peptic Gill thing I think the therapeutic did you find that there are generally movie things happening within organizations yes I would say so the little we know is that meetings are increasing Yes globally you how do you account for fun there are more meetings happening than ever before and yet people say they don't like them how does that work I think we have more large scale organizations today meetings become a little bit the schedule of the organization you're my say well like the calendar of the organization so I mean I sit here and we have a local government with staff of 25000 people the only way they get a sense of direction that they belong to the same organization I would say through meetings I think meetings are holding this local government together so I think you can differ between large organizations and small organizations very small organization I don't think they need so much meetings or maybe they meet all the time little bit depending upon how they see it but I mean they can talk to each other well the time they don't don't have to schedule a meeting they can just go to the neighbor and discuss but in large scale organization you don't have that you study does it look mainly Sweden or other countries well our own research was mainly about Sweden but of course we have done some comparative outlooks on looked at the other countries and I think one thing in Sweden I think is very much a tension between power and of course here in Sweden it's a little bit sensitive in power so I think managers in the way they want this which will Court has weighed on participation. Or something like that they want to like get the team involved so to speak so sometimes they don't not really dare to take decisions which. Some of the personnel would like them to do so oh that's a Swedish thing and I'm not so sure that is the same case in some other countries so what you're saying is it's a way for people to avoid making decisions if they have a meeting they can avoid decision making they can reach decisions of course but the do this from meeting rather than just command like this command management style is not very popular in Sweden I would say in that sense then the meeting would reinforce this consensus decision making process that everyone being all those really is that necessarily a bad no no not at all I mean I mean this is an extreme example of course but I mean as a Swedish political scientist I was astonished by this Bret said thing that may and Corben obviously hadn't met before the issue reached Parliament I mean I couldn't see it simply because it was true I mean it would have been much more effective if the meeting so to be fair that was one of the criticisms of a lot of market watchers here that there should have been some attempt to build a consensus across political parties that's almost like a different program because there is no tradition of consensus decision making in the u.k. Whereas I think in the rest of Europe because of proportional representation in government and much more likely Yeah I know but I think these sort of political culture spill so are also to business an organizational culture and so I think in Sweden Denmark the Netherlands concerns decision making is is smore spread I think the name in the us Professor Patrick who at the University of moma in Sweden so a country's politics can spill over into management and meeting styles Rebecca Henschke a Gnosis Well she's the B.B.C.'s Asia digital editor here in London before that she was the B.B.C.'s India. These are correspondent she lived there for 13 years it's a country where hierarchy and consensus building or. As it's known is taken very seriously indeed I've sat through many meetings but I can remember one name in a village in Java or a decision was meant to be made about a piece of land there and it went on literally fall for hours so at the beginning they had to have the introductions we had to have there to wait for people to arrive and then once they did once that kind of process underwent everyone needs to have this even though if it's often quite a lot of repetition so someone was saying that this is what should happen to that and that that it shouldn't be built on because of these previous reasons and then someone else would come in and repeat the same decision but everyone had to respect that and listen to that and then at the end of that meeting it wasn't clear exactly what was going to happen to that land but then everyone left the meeting we had we had lunch together and people felt that that was a 1st step but to coming to some kind of understand so we're meeting in a chain of meetings where it really and I think that is how people see meetings in Indonesia they're in initial meetings are just as important as the final decision something is not decided within a single meeting and I think when westerners come to do business in Indonesia it's one of the 1st things that they need to understand that the process can be seemingly slow and long and frustrating but you need to build up that relationship and trust I think meetings in Indonesia don't often have a clear defined purpose all and in then people are quite comfortable with that So in terms of the time that they saw very except a board to be very late for a meeting people will come maybe half an hour or even an hour late and it's quite. Cept it and then once it started there is there's a need very much for everyone to feel comfortable and that usually involves a lot of introduction even if people know each other and that needs to be done in order for the process of doing business in Indonesia or making decisions in Indonesia to go smoothly Indonesians call a bus a bus or small talk but it's very important and also in Indonesian culture it's very important not to be seen as being frustrated or confrontational and that goes against the grain I get of water a lot of business meetings are around the world they're about someone getting what they want but in Indonesia if you're even if you're trying to do that you can't show that you're doing that you can't seem to be trying to win someone over with an argument has to be a much more gentle approach coming to a sense of consensus but definitely not being confrontational The B.B.C.'s Rebecca Henschke contrast that with the us where some bosses have famously taken steps to curtail meetings Amazon's boss and founder Jeff Bezos for example he reportedly uses the 2 pizza rule in other words never have a meeting where 2 pizzas can't feed the entire group the thinking is the fewer people there are the more productive a meeting is others have a rule of making people stand at all meetings in an effort to curtail them but shock horror there are people out there who absolutely love meetings Yes yes I do back to Professor Joseph Allen who we heard from earlier well I love them because they're so fascinating you know I enjoy learning how people interact with each other the interesting thing about means I love to be at meetings where I don't have a kind of a scene of the game and I can just observe and see how people are doing in the meeting because I see meetings as a window into the way people in an organization operates everything that about the organization is on display within a meeting you can see the high. Structures you can see the way people normally talk to each other you learn so much about who they are who the organization is and what's going on there so I I really enjoy that aspect of meetings and so I enjoy meetings very much and Professor Alan has some tips there's so many very intuitive things that we all know we should be doing that we would actually make them better how do you make meetings more meaningful that probably one of the easiest and most surprising things is to manage them effectively from a time perspective start him on time and in Amman time you be proactive on managing your time and respecting the time of all those who were invited to the meeting that would that respect being respectful of other people's time if people were more respectful of other people's times perhaps they wouldn't cool so many meetings there's a default in the sense that oh I need to make a decision and I probably need to have these 2 people talk to me and make sure that they're Ok with it so let's call a meeting well sometimes that's necessary and sometimes it ends up being a 30 minute or a half an hour that is unproductive because that decision could've been made in a 2 2nd Yeah sure go ahead email or text message or whatever catch him in the hallway kind of thing so I think we default to calling more meetings that we actually absolutely need and so I think you'd be good if everyone would just to pause before they say let's have a meeting and say Do I need a meeting what is the purpose for which I'm going to have this meeting and who needs to be in the meeting just ask yourself those questions before scheduling the 1st place thereby respecting your time their time and the Purpose for which you're trying to gather people together in the 1st place and then once our meetings are starting to be a little bit more effective we can start talking about how do we optimize them not just how do you make them less awful but how do you make them really good not just tolerable How do you do that and then you go into more fine green things which is what I get really excited about which is this whole area of when I say something I'm looking for a response right now if I get into this back and forth if we start. Complaining we get into what's called a complaining cycle right and it'll end till someone says something to get us out of a company cycle will go into that complaining mode as long as it takes us to get out of ourselves which could be a couple minutes could be 10 minutes so there's a lot of interesting interaction processes that go on that if you know those as a leader or a manager or even as a meeting attendee you can control the flow of communication of information and keep things on track and get the decisions done that much faster that's an easy bit of advice as well yeah I mean maybe science isn't that complicated Ok you've given us some tips about how to make me meaningful dislocation matter I just wondered if you know if you have a meeting so nice outside on a nice day instead of in the office or down to the local cafe or if you bring along biscuits and tea and cake does that make a difference it does one of the earliest as I did on the area of meetings looked at meaning design characteristics are looking at you know lighting and set up and seating and so on and so forth and essential we found is that if you kind of get outside of what is normal but in a place that you can still have a nice conversation you actually can enable people to feel more comfortable so you get to think about you've got introverted extrovert you've got all people of all different types you got to go off on his monologues and cetera and so if you get him outside of that boardroom type setting it changes the dynamic and can actually enable a more frank and open conversation there is a sort of a global thing going on here that everyone around the world hates meetings that after you noticed any difference between countries where there is a tradition of consensus decision making when meetings are either though tolerated more Seymour's sort of something essential that just belongs in corporate culture more than say in other countries what's interesting about the cross cultural thing is that it doesn't seem to make a difference whether you're you know in the u.s. U.k. China Japan there's certain aspects of meanings that people really don't like one that that I've been looking at a lot recently. Is meaning lateness universally It seems as though people really don't like that so the studies I'm referring to was published in journals or dish behavior we found that somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes people start to get pretty angry and if it does start late the meeting itself is less effective it's less satisfying and the team is there making a decision or coming up with ideas they perform worse the other day we can complain about meetings but meetings are just about social interaction at the end of the day it's what makes us human so our complaints have bit silly I think ultimately I don't think people hate meetings as much as we like to say we do we are social creatures we are humans we like to interact with each other we enjoy each other's company and that can mean people at work that community people you know outside of work but regardless we'd like to need to with other people it's just not cool to say like meetings Professor Joseph Allen. Some to stories of your not many take so why not even the meetings that went particularly well you can do so on Twitter the Twitter handles are at b.b.c. Or at b.b.c. Business Today's produce is Lindsey that's meeting adjourned from this business daily We're back again at the same time on Monday. And that cuts miles and you're listening to witness history on the b.b.c. World Service 'd today's episode is about one of the most significant and Hering events in both medical and human history the Aids epidemic the rocks the world in the 1980 s. Many people compare the experience of living to the Aids epidemic to war rages spreading and explosive rate there's a new h.i.v. Infection every single minute there's a new aids death every half hour I have 4 friends that have died and I have 2 friends that die it already is tearing society apart and putting group against group even the federal government has been accused of discrimination by a lack of funding for research White House officials how the president had to speak out. But the story begins nearly 2 decades before Aids was 1st identified in North America and what happened totally changed our understanding of the disease origins. Back in 1968 a 15 year old African-American boy named Robert Ray food referred to as Robert because of his age was admitted to hospital in St Louis Missouri he had a variety of symptoms that completely bewildered his physicians Dr memory elven Lewis was working as an assistant professor in microbiology at the time what I saw was in a small in stature a very wasted young man with covers up to his neck lying there in the room with a number of people around him Robert was a quiet boy he hardly said anything to his doctors but his symptoms set a lot in many cases raising more questions in my own state some of them suggested an infection with a kind of to media the often sexually transmitted disease which was one of memories medical specialist seems because of my expertise simply I was asked by Robert's clinicians to help with his diagnosis since some of. His clinical presentation suggests that he might have a tropical disease called limb for granuloma thin area that was certainly not something that was common in United States the doc to Swiss stopped Robert was suffering from numerous seemingly unrelated conditions and they were struggling to find any common cause for them he had so many underlying problems that it was quite obvious that this was a very complex case Clemente elem factions usually located in the genitalia the eyes so finding actually that the committee a were circulating throughout his body through the lymphatic and blood sister was interesting and the one from Interesting extremely unusual in his particular case he had something that was very rare at the time and only had been reported in 1962 that was a juvenile form of Kaposi's sarcoma an extremely rare kind of cancer that appears as dark lesions on the skin at the time to see a young woman covered in these lesions was practically Kaposi's sarcoma at that time was known to Ashkenazi Jews and certain people in the Mediterranean because of their genetic predisposition for them but it only appeared in elderly gentleman so why was a young boy 15 presenting with something that elderly Jewish men have rabbits was a difficult case and there was little his doctors could do to help his clinicians who are most caring they were frustrated they tried to do everything they could and they were fairy very caring to him in the end their efforts were in thing and in $169.00 he died because it was a very rare event he had an autopsy and I was present so I know that everybody was very anxious to know just exactly what it cost his day it was found that robot had old some of the diet for. And during the autopsy his doctors also found evidence that he may a one time have been penetrated a nearly though he claimed he had only had sex once before with a girl from his neighborhood some of the clinicians suspected abuse and this only added to a growing list of unanswered questions that might have been the end of it but memory was too taken with the case to let it go I believe that it's very very important if you don't read a totally understand what is going on you keep the specimens until there is technology to rappel the case determine that his tissue samples might one day provide some un says memory put them into a freezer in 1969 and that's when the story went quiet it stayed that way for over a decade but then in the early 1980 s. Something began to happen in North America 'd. It appeared world. When the Aids epidemic exploded in North America the sentinels to this to say swore a number of infections including Kaposi sarcoma posy sarcoma posies psychoanalysis sorry. That's the same Kaposi sarcoma which previously had been seen almost exclusively in elderly Jewish men and the now all but forgotten case of a very sick 15 year old boy. This alerted the clinicians to the fact that possibly Robert may have had. One of those conditions was Malise which he and she contacted memory to ask for the specimens she had kept as tissue I gave them to or but told her she was not to do anything to them until she found a viral or just that could actually work with these specimens the person which you found to examine the tissue was Dr Robert Gary who used the most advanced tests available at the time in the hope of finally diagnosing Robert when Gary went through and looked at my specimens he was able to find that this young man had a child and it was a tight be like the one that is known today but this was one that just disappeared with him or perhaps with other people that had acquired it originally and were not recognized as having Aids so this discovery made nearly 20 years off to Robert's death predated any previous diagnosis by at least a decade and blew apart our understanding of just how long the still mysterious virus had existed and where it come from this is considered the 1st case of HIV in North America there were a few old cases where symptoms suggested that individuals may have had a child in Europe but these were not isolated as a child be positive this was the 1st time that a real defendant have isolation of the virus was made and that significant Robert Redford's diagnosis represented a major discovery it's still widely considered the 1st confirmed case of HIV But there remain almost it questions why did this strain of the virus come from how did will become infected Was he abused and is it social and sexual to be used as kept the truth hidden all this time 50 years later memory is still on the case. I'm now on the cusp of finding the out says where the Enigma lies is how the young boy like that gets the diseases that he had how did these infections come to St Louis I believe I've worked this out I'm writing about but that's another chapter to be resolved in the future when you realize what possibly was the way he acquired these infections it will became self-evident how important that was or is. This edition of witness history was written and presented by me Coach Miles it was just a radio production for the b.b.c. World Service. And this week's On the media seeking answers to our domestic troubles we look east to Poland a country wrestling with this information then a phobia and a battle over its own story the assumption that we had finished with those arguments of that we'd all learned the lessons of the 2nd World War was wrong tune in for this week's On the Media and w n y c. This evening at 6. San Francisco 91.7 in the Bay Area and streaming worldwide. Live it. 10 am in London 5 am in Washington 1 pm in Nairobi this is Dan Damon at the b.b.c. . The former president's party to a claim on the streets where really delighted and happy. Very very. Growing public anger over the murder of a prominent blogger an investigative journalist the prime minister has refused to give immunity to a main suspect but is himself under a cloud of suspicion they have to go.