States next week as nervousness continues on global stock markets they'll be the 1st face to face discussions since President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump declared a 90 day truce in the trade war in early December the dispute is one of the factors behind the recent falls in share prices worldwide has Rico his own China's Commerce Ministry said a working team led by Deputy u.s. Trade representative Geoffrey Gerrish well be coming to China to have positive and constructive discussions next week the u.s. China trade meeting hopes at the end of this feud that it's inflicting increasing pain on both economies and dragging global markets lower but it is unclear if Beijing will give in the u.s. Demands over trade imbalances market access and alleged Chinese abuses of intellectual property police in the south Indian state of Carolus a 3rd woman has succeeded in entering a well known temple despite fans opposition from religious conservatives security camera footage showed the woman leaving the shrine of the temple on Wednesday 2 women ended a long standing ban on women of menstruating age entering the temple protests followed some of the violent world news from the b.b.c. The foreman a son chairman Carlos Ghosn who's in detention in Japan is due to appear in court next week to him why he's being detained the executive has invoked his rights to hand the accusations against him he's been behind bars since being arrested in Tokyo in November prosecutors say Mr go under reported his income by tens of millions of dollars there's been criticism of the length of his detention. An unusually powerful tropical storm has made landfall in southern Thailand in the peak tourism season Tropical Storm public is packing 75 kilometer an hour winds and lashing rain it's churning up the sea with waves up to 5 meters high Here's our correspondents Jonathan Head this time of year we get a lot of storms in the Gulf of Thailand on that east coast but this is the strongest that they've experienced in 30 years now a lot of people have fled the islands but they got off the islands largely because all sea and air transport has now been suspended those who are there have been advised to stay away from beaches and to stand solid buildings and not to stand where there is close to where there is a risk of a tidal surge this storm has now actually made landfall so they're feeling the full effects of it now and the possibility of landslides as well Zimbabwe's biggest drinks company Delta has abandoned Japan to accept only hard currency and payment after the government declared the move illegal the country's central bank has promised to ensure that the firm has the cash it needs to pay suppliers Zimbabwe is suffering a severe shortage of foreign currency and a collapse in confidence in locally issued bond notes medical experts in Britain have said there's no firm evidence to support the idea that spending time on computer screens and smart phones is harmful to children's health in the 1st such guidance to be published in the u.k. The Royal College of Pediatrics and child health avoids setting screen time limits but it recommends that devices aren't used in the hour before bedtime and that's the latest b.b.c. News. Welcome to talk on the b.b.c. World Service with me Stephen Sackur my guest today is that poet and Performa of the most intimate kind with his words he lays bare the pain and hurt that lies deep in his past and still resides in his heart and head let me just say was given away as a baby by his 21 year old Ethiopian mother who had just arrived in the u.k. To study she intended for his foster care to be temporary but she never got her child back instead he was raised by a Christian couple in the northwest of England a black child in an insular white world age 12 he was rejected by his foster family and put into council care over the following 6 years he experienced increasingly prison like conditions routine racial abuse and the denial of even his right to learn about his real identity and yet in the midst of so much darkness a creative impulse flickered to life let me say started writing poetry Fast forward 30 years and he's an artist of national renown by the queen voted to the post of Chancellor of Manchester University and on earth as official poet of the London 2012 Olympic Games still at the heart of Lem says there is an effort to come to terms with rejection loss and a fragmented identity is that a process that will ever have an ending well he joins me now let me say welcome to hard talk even if you are a writer a poet but you're also a public performer one is very solitary by definition is clearly public which is the more authentic comfortable you. You know I think they're both authentic and both comfortable you need to. You need to. You need to be alone to to rights and to explode. And to find the sort of chemical compound of the poem and you need to read on stage so that the chemical compound. Blows into fireworks and sheds light you know. That's what poetry as opposed to other art forms when you've done other things in particular you've written quite a lot of plays but I think you've said poetry is your true self the voice that lives at the back of your mind is there something special for you about poetry as a child poetry was a place where I could find a familial resonance in other words when I had no family as a child the writing of poetry would act as a memory so that I could identify where I'd been who I'd been with what I felt at any given sort of time in my childhood and that that's really what family does and in lieu of that poetry allowed me to have a place to look back and say oh I was there then I mean I don't want to be too literal but I mean your poems are almost like your surrogate family substitute family absolutely if family is a collection of disputed memories between one group of people over a lifetime of which I didn't have I didn't have anybody to dispute the memory of me memory is a central part of a family and my poems were a memory of any given event in my in my life while you introduced me already to thoughts about your childhood colors so much of your writing and I guess your take on the world really what what you went through. As a child as a young one so I do want to talk about it a little bit. For people who don't know your story I mean you were you your mom was young Ethiopian woman who came to the u.k. To study I think she came with the expansion of Ethiopia through the Emperor Haile Selassie who was sending out students across the world to get an education and then to come back and feed back into the growth of Ethiopia it was a very exciting time in Ethiopia at that time when she pregnant actually when she arrived good question I'm not sure she was pregnant when she arrived I think I was conceived quite literally in the journey interesting but there she was a young woman in a new country an alien culture trying to find her place and she then found herself pregnant had the baby and clearly decided she could not live her life with this baby at this particular time and decided to give it up what would you of course women are incredible Ok and the act of giving a child away to be fostered or adopted is is is to me the option of a heroine and what my mother did was she asked me to be fostered for a short period of time while she studied so that she could then take me back to Ethiopia say a year year and a half the social worker gave me 2 foster parents and said treat this as an adoption he's yours forever His name is Norman so that there was a fundamental deception which changed the course of your life it or too late to change the course of my life yeah so the foster parents took me and they said Where are your parents now and where your parents for ever and I thought they were my mum and dad they grew up in the north of England you know very it has to be said White fairly insular community where you were there's brown skinned baby and complete so novelty and alien to many of the people in the community the 1st time I met a black person I was 9 years of age. So they the foster parents held me there and said that they were mine forever. And 12 years of age they put me into children's homes and said that they'd never contact me again and didn't you know you've had years and years to reflect on this why do you think they rejected you having raised you who 12 years and then sent you away for no more contact that seems the most extraordinarily cruel and strange thing to do. They I was going through adolescence so I was the eldest child in the family and I was taking biscuits from the tin without same please and thank you I was staying out late with my friends and they've not had an adolescent before and this is what I think this is the Only when you're 12 you want 16 you want sniffing glue and i wasn't anything serious crime no no no I wasn't doing that either. They. They they were they you know they meant to do the best for me I think but they were naive and they were also. Extremely religious and. They perceived. That the devil was working in this equation. And yeah and that's that's that's what they did it's it's the most immense complete form of rejection Yes and it was complete I lost everybody I lost my mother my father my sisters my brothers my uncles my cousins my grandparents my Tell my 1st girlfriend everything from that moment onwards I was in no contact with any of the family ever and I was placed into children's homes with lots of other children who come from abused families and. Etc and you were abused I mean there was racism there was physical abuse racism there was physical abuse I was in wood and Assessment Center at 17 years of age so I was held in of it was a virtual prison for children for 48 months this notion that you've already talked about writing poetry in a sense to store memory in a way to poems being the witnesses to what you were going through when did that begin did that begin when you were in the Children's Zone Yeah it began at 12 years of age I knew what I wanted to be I've always known that I wanted to be a poet I was very clear about and I've made b.b.c. Radio documentary where one of the staff in the children one of the cleaners cleaners a really interesting people in institutions because they see everything they see what's wrong and they see what's right because they're not staff they're not social workers you know they see everything there are quite incredible resource to a child and actually they should be paid more. But one cleaner said you know I remember you in the children's home and I remember when you were writing and I remember your script and your piece of paper and throwing them away and stylus and again etc I didn't know invited your should discuss this because you've agreed to do I've invited you to read a poem because I want everybody to get a flavor of of the poetry and your voice Yeah well and it's called Children's Home and it is a very powerful and very bleak. What a little bit of it felt like but I just wonder this sort of poetry which is somewhat typical of things you've reflected upon in your life and about your past is this something you wrote. Long afterward I mean when did you write down some of these things these memories you know that I wrote some of these at the time and I wrote some of them after leaving care you know you really do live your childhood out in your adult life it's not in your childhood that the abuses of being in care actually come to light when you leave and you draw on your childhood as you grow into an adult it's then that you see. The effect that it's had on you and it's then that you look back and realize whatever abuses of happened. To you can reuse one yeah one verse from children's home we've been given booby trapped time bombs trigger wires hidden strapped on the inside it became a place of controlled explosions self mutilation screams suicide of young people returned return to sender dorms of midnight moans we might have all been children but this was never a children's home mutilation screams and suicide Yeah all of those things happened in the care system some of them yeah I mean you. Been through the most extraordinary journey in recent years because you having reflected for so long and what happened to you you decided you were going to seek some sort of legal recourse against the council that lied to you lied to you about your own mother about your own history and identity and kept you in those homes for 5 or 6 years and in the course of taking them to court you had to go through a psychologist report in depth sort of forensic look deep into your psyche that I imagine has really introduced you to so much of the pain thats been inside you for so long yes I would say that when somebody else takes a look at your life and and they they break it down into into a report which outlines the damage that was done to you via your childhood. That's quite. That's quite an event to read that what I tell you was even more extraordinary is your decision to only see and hear what was in that report live as it were on a theater stage when a fellow actor played the role of the psychologist and read the report to you and you sat in a chair and listened and it was the 1st time you'd ever heard it listen to this long exposition of the damage done to you including the post-traumatic stress the abuse of alcohol other forms of. Mental damage that the psychologist found in you and you took it all in front of an audience yeah on stage a one off completely extraordinary performance why did you do that I did it because other people have been through this process particularly in Wales and they've had a psychology report written about them. And. The suicide rate of people who've been through this process is I didn't want that I don't want that to happen to me so I felt safe to hear the reports read to me on stage by an actor called Julie has been dull she here in England and I felt I feel safer on stage than I do off it is probably the truth. What were they like listening to it was quite disturbing. But it was quite liberating as well because there were 350 people 400 people at the Royal Court Theatre in west London there just to support me. Just to just to be with me just to hold me in mind it was like being home. By a nation it was a beautiful event and. I'm proud to have done it I've not looked at the report since then now I haven't and I won't you talked about how any society can be judged by the way it deals with the children who do not have their own families institutionalized cared for by the state you said in 2012 you can define how strong a democracy is by how its government treats this kind of child you know I don't mean children I mean the child of the state Yeah if you're in care the government is legally your parent so does it say about the Britain that you've grown up in your treatment what happened to you what does it say that you know children still struggle and suffer in care today. This care system in England stole my family from it it named me after the social the social worker named me after himself. Really called Norman I was called on the for 18 years. Norman it locked me away and imprisoned me. As a child I want redress for that redress for that and that's important clearly because you've been. Determination But there's something else about you that fascinates me is this idea of forgiveness because you in another way as you've conducted your career writing and becoming a renowned poet you've also been on a long term quest to find family to find your own birth mother make sense of her life and her decisions and the sort of half siblings that you have around the world and I'm surprised that you have framed that in terms of forgiveness rather than anger in a way is there no anger in you I've been angry I've been incredibly angry and I've been hurt and I've come to realize. That I'm not defined by my scars but by the incredible ability to heal and that ther given this is part of healing and that and that it's really important that I forgive my foster parents and I forgive the social services here in England who stole my mother from me I even should forgive my mother because it's very difficult when an adult child comebacks comes back to find you it's very difficult I think what people watching this would probably want to believe is that when you found your birth mother and indeed when you went back to your foster parents much later in life when you become a very successful artist what Perhaps we'd all like to believe is that you found relationships that were meaningful but you found family in a way in these 2 different strands of your life did you I think I found I think it's it's complicated when you find your family my father's family his sisters and brothers my aunts and uncles and my mother and her children . We're talking about now the birth family yeah yeah yeah they're you know your life today. I now know who my family. So the truth is that it's very difficult for them or for me or for any of us to form familial relationships they're all good people but. It's quite shocking when somebody comes into your family like me in a sense demands of them a form of truth telling and exposing of secrets your families don't want truth a lot of the time you know families want to be Ok they want the structure to stay as it is and you alone are I do challenge that unfortunately that mean you can't and I know that I can tell this is extraordinarily difficult for you but does that mean you can't really have. Long term close relationships with the people from your life you would have to ask them about that I mean just imagine somebody coming into your house and standing there and saying Ok I'm now the oldest brother and by the way your parents were sleeping with other people and at some point in their life that you don't know about and stuff so I think that possibly possibly I don't know for family families about what's not said it's about not saying things it's about holding the collective group in mind and I'm somebody who wants answers my name Lemmen it I'm Herrick said Lemmen in I'm Herrick the language of my father's on my time it means the question why you know Ethiopians my people now know me as the person called Wiley So I I come into a family that I've searched for all of my life with the question why as a name that's quite a challenge to a family most of my family don't speak to me my my my my my father's children and my mother's children actually and my mother and it's complicated. Through all of this you've kept writing and it seems to me there's something interesting about your creativity and your poetry in particular you say. That you have to live in the moment you say you know I can't live in the past and I can't look too far into the future I have to be and I have to create in the here and now and I understand that and yet so much of your your writing in this sort of anthology and others is actually about this past so you do go back to times in your head yes I have to live in the present Thanks for the reminder. That we can start the interview. Because there's no right that's the survivor present is is actually a product of you coming to terms and coping with and weaving stories about your past you can't you can also if you live in the past you know you're not you're not in the present and you're not a lot of leave and real and authentic and Shruti yourself I don't believe that I do live in my past. In terms of morality and I write about what what inspires me at the time. And if that includes my time in the children's homes then then that's all well and good but what happened then affects who I am now and I think living in the present is a way of of living the best life you can live and forgiveness is one of the best ways of being able to live in the present because otherwise you're always looking to the past to work to find an appalling blame it's like war and the troubles for example in Northern Ireland you know we go through the process of anger or Ethiopia or anywhere in the world you go through the process of anger you go through the process of war and then you have to equip yourself to go through the process of peace with yourselves as a people and with anybody you communicate with and if all you've ever had is the defense mechanisms or the fight or flight mechanism then you have to learn new ways of being true. To yourself and to everybody else around you and being in the present is one of the ways to do that that is interesting and what's striking to me also is that in your young life you were so much an outsider and so much alone and I think you're reflected at one point that you didn't have anybody in your life who'd known you for more than one year I think that was when you came out of the children so much for your answers an extraordinarily difficult and isolating place to be in so many ways and yet now you are and you are a man an artist who is widely respected and renowned you've received all sorts of accolades a gong from the Queen you've got your poems inscribed in granite in London and Manchester you were the official poet of the Olympic Games and of course you're the chancellor of Manchester University which is a lovely and highly prestigious thing to be do you no longer feel like an outsider do you do you feel in some ways now a bit of an insider We all feel like outsiders. Yeah forever whether we're inside or not and it's Ok to feel like an outsider you get it you get a perspective on things but I don't think it's unique to me I think we'll do and I think you know there's tons of others out there who are outsiders who've lived through the care system and who have have become successful but I'm successful in spite of what happened to me not because of what cause of what how does notion that art and I be reflected on it in the very beginning when I talked about art coming out of dark and painful places you don't believe that your art in a sense or your suffering was a requirement for you to be the artist you are you know you need to feel a reason to write that's all you need it doesn't have to be about experience you don't need to have a bad experience to become a good artist otherwise I would tell people to have a bad experience to become a God this is not true we've all got stories you know one of the things that I treasure is the fact that. A story like mine allows me to build bridges to people and for people to build bridges to me I don't feel isolated as much as I feel like I have a reason to communicate a reason to build a bridge to people and that's that's a gift and thanks for sharing it with us but if it's in the. Distribution of the b.b.c. World Service in the United States is made possible by American Public Media producer and distributor of award winning public radio content engaging audiences creating meaningful experiences and fostering conversations a.p.m. American Public Media with support from indeed used by over 3000000 businesses for hiring where employers can post jobs and use screener questions to build their shortlist of preferred candidates learn more at Indeed dot com slash higher at 2 o'clock this morning half an hour from now a b.b.c. Special this is 2018 Childish Gambino as this is America video spawn cover versions last year in Nigeria Iraq and other countries this is 2018 examines the global impact of this is America and asks those who made their own versions why they did so and how they chose their themes offering insights into the issues that resonate in those countries that's a half an hour from now at 2 o'clock this morning here on k.q.e.d. Public Radio. This is the b.b.c. World Service with me. And in business daily shortly we're talking about loneliness in the workplace recess suggest it affects employees productivity and that it's contagious so what's the best way to manage your lonely colleagues Plus we hear from the top company that turned loneliness into a business opportunity that's often things. You. B.b.c. News I'm John Shea Germany has suffered one of its biggest ever hacking attacks with the personal data of leading politicians and celebrities published online the president Frank Vellar Steinmeier was among the victims the only party not affected was the right wing Alternative for Germany. The u.s. House of Representatives has passed bills aimed at ending a 14 day partial 14 day partial government shutdown despite a threatened veto by Donald Trump he says he won't sign legislation unless it includes $5000000000.00 for a planned border war with Mexico the new speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said it would not provide funding for the ball. The Chinese government has announced that it will host talks next week with the United States on their trade war that with the 1st direct talks since the 2 sides declared a pause in the dispute a month ago in Thailand the most powerful tropical storm for decades has made landfall in the southeast tens of thousands of tourists have been evacuated from islands in the area police in the south Indian state of carolers say a 3rd woman has succeeded in entering a well known temple despite fierce opposition from religious conservatives local television channels broadcast security camera footage which appeared to show the woman leaving the shrine at the Sabra Mala temple the foreman a stand on Carlos go on who's in detention in Japan has invoked his right to hear the accusations against him his lawyers have asked for a hearing in which prosecutors will have to explain the reasons for his detention Mr go on is alleged to have under reported as income by tens of millions of dollars . Brazil's new president Jaya balls a narrow says he would consider allowing the United States to build a military base in the country if Russia increased its presence in neighboring Venezuela Mr Bolton are also said he intended to rearm the Brazilian military it was his 1st television interview since his inauguration on Tuesday b.b.c. News. The room Hello and welcome to business daily from the b.b.c. I'm on way to. Coming up more than anything to me it's about feeling isolated and not feeling like you're a part of the community that you're in favor not that they're. Used to feeling there's an academic of loneliness so said the former surgeon general of the United States should business play a role in stemming it because loneliness is contagious and because it's influencing the people around them and because it's also influencing their performance there are a lot of incentives to try to go ahead and address this. That's all in business daily from the b.b.c. Says. There's a common assumption that loneliness mostly flicks the elderly but policymakers around the world are increasingly worried about loneliness throughout old age groups stories like that of Kona from Bradford here in England who felt quite isolated when he started university stress all the time for me next feel quite low and I still like I don't especially this year with a lot round and fair in class like because I'm not feel like that's why I slipped on anything and sort of the hell I am. Paypal that I'm always opens up with them regardless of whether I know them or not if I don't if I don't know yet let's say to get knowledge of the I do know yeah. That's if you want space and that and hopefully it's a reciprocal thing something that's really positive analysis of slash and stories like that of Connor who we just heard that have committed some governments to tackle the issue of loneliness head on that Murthy the former surgeon general of the us called it an epidemic and compared the effect of loneliness on how. To obesity or smoking in the u.k. The government has even appointed a minister for loneliness but how do you measure whether people are indeed more isolated whether the truly is an academic over to Eric Cline and he's a professor of sociology at New York University I don't think it is correct to speak about a loneliness epidemic we have a lot of good science about loneliness Now that tells us how dangerous Loneliness can be and I think we're more attuned than ever to the health consequences of untreated loneliness but that said there's just not great reason to believe that we're lonely or than we've ever been so why a government suddenly so very worried about it partly it's because the science about the dangers of loneliness really is profound and different than what we've had before and so we know just how important it is to treat loneliness when it does become a problem if you looked at any given period in the last 150 years or so you could probably find a newspaper article saying that people are lonelier than they've ever been because that's just a feature of modern societies this time around I think we've become concerned that people are spending too much time with their devices and not enough time with each other so that would imply less a case of loneliness but if people are making their social interactions primarily through technology a kind of more like social disconnection there is something strange about social life today I mean who hasn't had the experience of feeling like they struggle to be where they are with the people they're sitting with because if you're carrying a phone in your pocket you're always tempted by the idea that there's going to be something more exciting happening there but at the same time the evidence tells us that people are connecting in new ways and often in positive ways with technology as well so it's not a simple story of disconnection you mention the science is my. More advanced now and we know understand the effects of loneliness a lot more what is the effect of loneliness them so we now know that loneliness can lead to depression it can decrease cardiovascular health it can lead to all sorts of stress related diseases it can lower life expectancy it makes it more difficult to recover from illnesses and so there's every reason to treat loneliness as a serious health problem when it's not the run of the mill loneliness that most people feel which is just a bodily signal to get into the world but if governments are getting involved that would suggest that people also are attaching economic costs to us if you're lonely and disengaged your productivity can diminish I have no problem with governments getting involved to address loneliness I do have a problem with exaggerating the concern and calling something that has been part of the modern condition for ages an epidemic when there's just not great evidence that we are seeing spikes that are durable across all populations So you think governments are going over the top with that they're pointing of loneliness ministers with statistics agencies collecting data on how alone people feel is it all a bit over the top I think it's a serious health problem and should be treated that way but it would be a problem if we focused on loneliness at the expense of other kinds of issues like social isolation which is actually different from loneliness because it means a lack of social ties particularly among older people and poor people or people with mental illnesses there's something almost faddish about the concern for loneliness because it's tied to our anxieties about the Internet and technology and there's this sense that it's increasing and unfortunately I think the story is just more complicated than that you know what I am concerned about is. Societies this investing in social infrastructures that would bring people together to promote better interactions and better collective life but you know it was the likes of Facebook which were originally set up to sort of help more connectedness between people is actually not doing that a tool I think we now know that social media and other technology that are were designed to create meaningful communities they say I have failed to deliver on that if we want to address loneliness as well as social isolation the way to do that is by investing in gathering places like libraries and parks and playgrounds where people can come together and have meaningful interactions that's what we really need to do. That was Eric Klinenberg of New York University so does business have a role to play in all of this so you go Boss 8 is the Joseph Frank Bernstein professor of management at the Wharton School of Business in the us she's conducted research into workplace loneliness what we found in our study was that the reason that loneliness influence performance it operated through 2 mechanisms the 1st one was that people who are lonely or were less after actively committed to their organizations they didn't feel as identified with them they didn't feel as loyal to them the 2nd reason was because they were viewed by their colleagues as being less approachable and affiliate if somebody who is lonely is dying to reach out and really wants to connect but what happens is when we get lonely and we become very socially vigilant what that dies is it actually hurts our social skills and that's what's so insidious about loneliness if it hits a certain tipping point it starts to become self reinforcing Is this something manages a work environment can even address I mean is it really appropriate for a work environment to address that one of the things that we did find is that if an organization had what's called an emotional culture of companion it love this is a type of organizational culture but rather than focusing on the cognitive aspects which means how we think about how we do work emotional culture focuses on the underlying values and norms around what emotions should be expressed in that workplace and what emotions you're better off suppressing could give an example I mean I'm just trying to sort of picture a situation where you know that distinction is made so you have an employer you see a colleague and you know they've been working all through the afternoon and haven't had a break and are really stressed and you bring them a cup of coffee it's a situation where you know you're a manager and you're tough accountant comes in in the middle of accounting season and says. I'm really sorry I have to leave I have a family issue and even though in your head you're saying oh my God no please not have a family issue you instead say I understand we're going to help you you know go deal with it and the small gesture is writ isn't it well you know it's the daily interactions and very importantly at the strongest way an emotional culture gets transferred is actually through facial expression and body language how do you train a whip fools to do that the media either your compassionate as an employee or you and as a manager or you will not it's very difficult to change someone's nature so what I would say about that is that you have to remember the power of social norms it's the same way that you would transfer anything by culture it has to do with leadership what leadership is modeling and then does the organization then put structures into place that support that and what I found in other words that I've done with my colleague Mandy O'Neill on a study of a culture of companionate love we find that it absolutely spreads through organizations and I've also done work on something called emotional contagion and emotional contagion is when we catch each other's emotions like viruses makes it sound bad. You're right actually I but it is kind of like it in the sense that what's really intriguing about emotional contagion is that the way it happens is through facial mimicry and body mimicry and then through a series of physiological processes we actually feel the emotion but what's fascinating about emotional contagion is that people don't realize it's happening for example in times of economic crisis all the sort of anxiety that people see around them even if they don't actually have a reason to be anxious financially they will start to be anxious but they won't realize that it's because of everything around them for example and so in the case of the workplace with a culture of companion and love or any other type of culture people actually catch the emotion. I have a wonderful quote from our other study where somebody literally addressed what you said when she said you know you come here and even if you weren't that compassionate a person to begin with just being surrounded by these people it just makes you more compassionate and then what we found was the opposite a culture of anger which was you know showing anger irritation frustration well that completely triggered the social vigilance of people who are lonelier and that actually made the effects of loneliness worse in the workplace I can imagine a lot of people who run businesses employees Bittles employees are listening to us and called out sounds like a lot of hard work and you know frankly we've got enough to do as it is I understand that but not only will it make the people who are lonely or feel better because loneliness is contagious and because it's influencing the people around them and because it's also influencing their performance there are a lot of incentives to try to go ahead and address this and I think from kind of a world perspective I think that there's been an increased recognition though that the negative effects both on the people themselves and the people around them through things like the contagion of loneliness have made this something that societies are really starting to pay attention to. I was speaking that seagull boss a professor of management at the Wharton School of Business in the u.s. Business is paying attention to loneliness in other ways to their tech companies in particular who believe they have a role to play in relieving it one of them a Norwegian startup came to visit us here in our studio at Newport costing house in London Hi I'm Karen the over c.e.o. At snow isolation which is a tech company who are working tirelessly to help people out of loneliness and you've come into the studio here we've got on the studio desk what looks like a flat screen 950 style t.v. He said that was the intention and there's a knob on the bottom right hand corner which literally just turned to switch on and how does this help lonely people it's called comp and it's a specific we designed for the seniors who are unable or unwilling to teach themselves new technology and we wanted to create a device for them that would let them stay in touch with their families without having to learn anything new that I mean to learn how to use an i Phone or an Android or anything like that and so we did quite a lot of research before starting development and we we learnt that Ok dementia is a huge problem dry fingertips because of poor blood circulation is a huge problem because the touch screens won't work and there's quite a lot of full pits when developing for the elderly group and the point of this t.v. Like device is someone with dementia or with an ability problems for example would have that in the house and they would literally just turn around and on and automatic family members would be able to Don And yeah so the senior at a very clear image have to say he's really really clear image you know invested quite a lot in making this as high quality as we could he described the typical customer a typical customer would be daughter or son 45 to 65 and yeah they would have a large family so probably care. And siblings themselves and then a mom or a dad or both they're unable to use a smartphone or maybe living in isolation somewhere either in a care home or alone in a village somewhere yeah but we're often seeing people living quite close as well but then you know grandkids that are going to university in another country and you have this unfulfilled need of how do you send photos how do you communicate with these elderly who are not online how many of you sold there's 500 of them out there and we launch mostly in a way mostly in the Nordics So we have quite a few in that market in Sweden some in Amsterdam How much does it cost it's $899.00 including the 80 pounds so we're talking about a $1000.00 approximately Ok so it's not cheap so high quality product and that's a one off price is specifically aimed at the elderly but you also do products at a for younger people who might find themselves in situations of isolation and loneliness Exactly so we pick up like specific problems and then we develop solutions for that problem and the 1st product is telepresence robot called a.v. One it's made for kids with severe illness a long term illness like cancer or chronic fatigue and these kids has to stay in bed at home or in hospital for long periods of time so the robot goes to school for them and they remote control it so there's something like an avatar It is an avatar Yeah for them in the classroom and they dress it up like an avatar as well and make it really their own and then through the Avatar robot they can see everything and talk to their classmates and come along for field trips and really be a part of that normal everyday life even if they're chained to a but we often hear from the parents of course we get e-mails saying that we've gotten our lives back and we were getting e-mails from people who's gone through their illness and now are getting better again and how much easier it is for them to come back to school because they were there yes. Which is the whole point of the robot not to miss out on those small daily activities that we take for granted but that's kind of taking away from these kids is that your background you sort of have an engineering technical background technical about how did you come on to the idea of to killer of addressing the loneliness long journey I think we've all experienced loneliness in our lives I had been working in the startup community and I just strongly believe that technology can do something more you must believe that technology can solve loneliness it can definitely be a part of solving it I think we all need to bring people on board along the way are you making a profit and. We've raised private capital from quite a few investors then we've invested heavily in product development over the past 3 years but there were quotes so loneliest bit of a business opportunity there I think so it's a huge market and if we're going to make the world a better place then there has to be money and being kind and yeah I want to provide that to a business founded on being count kind sounds good to me that was Karen doll the c.e.o. Of the Norwegian tech startup no isolation she brings us to the end of this edition today's producer was Stephen Ryan a man with us our Business Daily is back again on Monday. The b.b.c. B.b.c. . Down the b.b.c. World Service on history programme witness with me Alex Nast and today it's the story of an amazing discovery that resolved a 1000 year old mystery where the Vikings the 1st year of peons to actually make it to North America. I am. Going to. Miss some of 960 I know we can couple the adventure Helgi inspect and his wife the archaeologist and Stina sailed up to a remote tiny fishing village called Lonesome meadows in the rugged northern tip of new found on Canada's Atlantic coast so they came children last I met us in $1060.00 in the summer they asked around about where are they might be old wounds and the absence of talk to George decker that George Decker was my grandfather that saloon Retta Deca she works for Parks Canada and she spoke to me on a crackly line from my home in lunch so matters is the area was battered by a snow storm their area I'm in isn't right on the edge of the North Atlantic my grandfather being stage keeps the call of the big chief since he was your representative of the people in the little village here my grandfather said yes I know where there are old ruins too it's essential in our patch to land in our meadow and there's a freshwater brook that goes down through the salmon when there's a Marine Terrace is the scription of it but it's a raised beach and it's meadow and grass it's a beautiful spot and there in that meadow there are essentially the outlines of houses now for generations it was called Indian can't people here assume that it had been indigenous people that were living there but when the instead Sol It really reminded them all since they had seen in Greenland Now this was a tantalizing discovery because the ink stats were hoping to be the 1st people to find physical proof that Vikings had come from Greenland to North America 1000 years ago and were in fact the 1st Europeans on the continent some 500 years before Christopher Columbus the remains of these buildings suggest. Did they were on to something and so excavations began and as Dana said you know the locals they hired excavators were some of the best years ever worked with no training yes their work ethic and your determination L'Anse aux Meadows is a tiny crafting community of only about 70 people at the point where Newfoundland almost touches the coast of Labrador Scandinavian archaeologists have uncovered the remains of 8 turf walled structures here of characters to clean Norse type. They were built in a row along the Marine Terrace formed by the action of the sea. Now the story that the Vikings had made it all the way across the Atlantic was old very old in fact it was contained within the pages of Norse sagas the ancient Scandinavian collection of myths than legends which also chronicled the heyday of Viking conquest and exploration a 1000 years ago according to the sagas of Viking code Erickson had led an expedition from the new Norse colony on Greenland and went even further west sailing into the unknown world in search of land and resources to bolster the Greenland colony and according to the sagas he found it a land of forests the Meadows we streams full of salmon and most crucially he found vines of wild grapes and he says that was why he cood the new territory Finland scholars for a long long time would be that we're been was there were sailing direction there were descriptions but nobody actually was there is really old that the whole map let's debate about whether or not a good one but it shows a potential where there mystical then right was held in his dad and his wife and they thought that that local life inordinately of the island land and so that's how the inkstands came to lance a meadow is in search of the fabled Vinland new evidence of an archaeological kind has been alleged you know we journal. That and his archaeological wife Anna Stina claim on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland we have discovered the 1st proven remains of our Norse settlement in the Americas when I this is a very considerable claim I think in the early days they got a fair share of skepticism. And criticism and not another claim the evidence on the ground that we saw was not sufficient to make a statement one way or the other one semester hasn't proved that there is no ifs oncological evidence yet but at the excavations continued what they found would change will that some of the artifacts that were found quite clearly were Norse one was the bronze ring had it been they also found of course much evidence all of wood work with an iron tool and they found a Yorkie in Pine which wasn't even growing in North America at that time they were able to produce nails we have evidence of what will be here plus there were details on how the buildings were built how they were laid out but they also found evidence of iron production as well as forging which means the real clincher the ultimate proof that the Vikings were here now is imbedded in these these are not jewels of Bergen or how it was from these ores that the Vikings and ice in Greenland as we know smelt turned in for just iron for their weapons and tools and this was something that the natives with their stone age culture here by very definition never do. So lots of meadows was finally the proof that the Vikings had made it to North America and the discovery was heralded around the world but was this the fabled Vinland and if so where were the grapes which off through the growing new found land we don't look at lesser metals is actually we look at L'Anse aux Meadows as being the major base there is this is right along here but then on itself it's like a province or county or state it's a large land mass and really in that larger landmass you have several different locations that they're utilizing and says Loretta there are tents lighting signs and lots of meadows the Vikings find grapes on expeditions further south we have piece of it's a not from a body not tree and we also have some butternuts. Now on their own they indicate the Norse had to go as least far south. Because that was the North range of butternuts but we know that while great called reserved a right actually grows in the same force as the butternuts and they both write in late August because they found the butternuts they had to have down the wall graves so that kind of proof claim that they did find grapes but the Viking settlement lonesome Meadows lasted only about 20 years why well perhaps because the Norse colony in Greenland had become part of a wider European trading network so there's less need to enjoy the hard life in their American colony Well now actually having to leave your family for 2 or 3 years out into the wilderness if you can stay in Greenland European traders are coming to you their brain not only would bring you whine and spices news from home it seems rather foolish to still persist in company. Lonesome Meadows is now a world heritage sites and near the ruins reconstructions of the Viking houses have been built from wood and covered with just as they were 1000 years ago men some portraits of this discovery here that lands are matters it is quite literally unique one and only authentic nor sight yet found in North America this white America this continued journey of moving west they encountered vicious people here and that was the 1st time that humanity encircled the globe and then each other again it's the same human story no matter what country you're from it's that same human story of trying to live trying to survive trying to live here for. The rest of decade ending this edition of witness with me Alex lost from all of our history programs just search online for b.b.c. Witness. This is a test of the Emergency Alert System. 'd in the world last in 1st out it's how u.s. Immigration has been handling asylum claims they consider the newest arrivals 1st and sent people with older asylum claims to the back of the line their story on the world here the world this afternoon at 2 o'clock here on k.q.e.d. You love a good story dive into Finding Your Roots a show that explores the family trees of our country's most notable figures catch the season 5 premiere Tuesday night at 8 on k.q.e.d. 9. This is k.q.e.d. San Francisco in North Highlands Sacramento it's 2 o'clock good morning hello Was it my name is. The bad guy and you're listening to the b.b.c. . Back in May and new song and video screamed for our attention. This is America has been downloaded hundreds of millions of times and rappers all over the world made their versions I got to carry on. I mean it has the rhythm it has the click his movements are as of in the choreography is beautiful a good start there. And I think it's a song we'll be talking about and a video that will be talked about for years to go. Why did it generate such a response. And love there a smile and you're listening to this is 2018. After the news. B.b.c. News I'm John Challis Germany has suffered one of its biggest ever hacking attacks with the personal data of leading politicians and celebrities being published online the president Frank Vasser Steinmeier was among the victims Damien McGuinness reports from Berlin this is the largest leak of personal data Germany has ever seen hundreds of politicians in well known journalists have been hits in some cases their personal details such as banking information private chats or addresses and phone numbers have been leaked or political parties have been affected apart from the right wing populist Alternative for Germany it's unclear yet who is behind the attack but given that Green Party under the left wing politicians have been particularly targeted some suspects that right wing extremists might be involved the u.s. House of Representatives has approved measures aimed at ending a partial government shutdown in defiance of a threatened veto by President Trump he said he won't sign legislation that doesn't include $5000000000.00 for a border with Mexico but the Democrats' leader and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi insisted the president would not get his way the wall isn't in the reality between trying to say it's an old way of thinking it isn't cost effective that it is a diversionary tactic on the part of the president and now he wants to use the shutdown of government taking nice and public employees and not raise them that this people who are served by then hostage to his his war. China says it will host tried talks with the United States next week as nervousness continues on global stock markets this will be the 1st face to face discussions since President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump declared a 90 day truce in that trade war a month ago the dispute is one of the factors behind the recent fools in share prices worldwide Yes Rico he's on. China's Commerce Ministry said a working team led by Deputy u.s. Trade representative Geoffrey Gerrish will be coming to China that to have positive and constructive discussions next week the u.s. China trade meeting hopes out to end the dispute that is inflicting increasing pain on both economies and dragging global markets lower but it isn't clear Beijing will give in the u.s. Demands over trade imbalances market access and alleged Chinese abuses of intellectual property an unusually powerful tropical storm is battering southeastern Thailand in the peak tourism season Tropical Storm public with 75 kilometer an hour winds and lashing rain is said to be the worst storm to hit the region in 30 years at least one fisherman was killed when his boat capsized in rough seas off Pattani province the storm has brought waves up to 5 meters high and all sea and air transport has been suspended. Well news from the b.b.c. . The former Nissen chairman Carlos Ghosn who's in detention in Japan has invoked his rights to hear the accusations against him his lawyers have asked for a hearing in which prosecutors will have to explain the reasons for his detention Mr Cohen is alleged to have under reported his income by tens of millions of dollars. Police in the south Indian state of Carolus say a 3rd woman has succeeded in entering a well known temple despite fierce opposition from religious conservatives on Wednesday 2 women ended the long standing ban on women of menstruating age entering the temple Yes John the giving police say the woman in her late forty's entered the sap Imola temple late on Thursday local television showed security camera footage which seemed to confirm this but the woman herself denied it saying she'd been turned away some reports suggested she had a medical certificate showing she qualified for exemption but that hasn't been confirmed news on Wednesday that 2 women entered the temple led to widespread protests led by religious hardliners and to clashes with police more than a 1000 people have been arrested Zimbabwe's biggest drinks company Delta has abandoned a plan to accept only hard currency and payment after the government declared the move illegal the country's central bank has promised to ensure that the firm has the cash it needs to pay suppliers Zimbabwe is suffering a severe shortage of foreign currency and a collapse in confidence in locally issued bond notes. Medical experts in Britain have said there's no firm evidence to support the idea that spending time on computer screens and smartphones is harmful to children's health in the 1st such guidance to be published in the u.k. The Royal College of Pediatrics and child health.