Hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. While the likely pick for pentagon, Michele Flournoy stresses the need for the usa to become a force to be reckoned with. Coming up on the show, there will be a smooth transition to a 2nd trumpet ministration. Right. Took us 37. 00 plus days, you know, watching back in 2000 conducted a Successful Transition then did the corporate funded Networks Call it too early . As u. S. Attorney general bill barr authorizes federal prosecutors to investigate allegations of voting irregularities in last weeks president ial election. We speak to barry richard, the more who helped win george bushs legal fight against al gore in 2000. And this coronavirus lockdowns on the robot revolution forced us to ask questions about the very ways we live and work and apologist james suzman, whose groundbreaking new book and work a history of how we spend our time, examines the history of the universe and humanity to ask if the key to tackling not just the future of work, but everett saying from pandemics to wars, to inequality, lies in our affluent come together up honest colas, more coming up in todays going underground. But 1st as the 2020 u. S. Election appears to still be the subject of litigation. Lets go straight to Award Winning lawyer. Barry richard who represented george w. Bush in the florida litigation. Thats all al gore beaten in 2000. He joins me now via skype from tallahassee in florida. Thanks so much for coming on. Is joe biden, the president elect . Yes, he is. Thats an easy question. Well, russia, china, they are still waiting on it. What makes you so sure that the u. S. Attorney general bill barr is wrong about investigating voting irregularities at the election and well, i am not suggesting hes wrong about investigating irregularities, not some inappropriate about that. Hes the attorney general younes the right to investigate anything within his jurisdiction. Im just saying that i dont see anything that i think would result in a change in the election. But presumably you watched rudy giuliani, who i should say has been on this show. He was on this show on election day. Hes now produced witnesses claiming republicans were prevented from monitoring absentee and made them ballots. You know, you can usually find witnesses in any election. Those songs alleged irregularities, elections are big, messy businesses. The issue is whether there is credible evidence of either on the radio, larry, sure, or that situation magnitude to change the results of the election. So the fact that you come up with 2 or 3 people who Say Something but look right. Doesnt mean that the election is going to be overturned if that were the case, wed never have anybody like hes saying what youre saying. Partly because the margins a so different this time till what they were in 2000 when you won for george w. Bush against al gore. Well, they were jute big differences. Thats one that margin in pennsylvania was over 46000 votes, so you would have to be able to walk into court with credible evidence that there were well in 46000. 00 ballots at the validity, in which part in question, i havent even seen anybody come in with a 100 pieces of evidence of a flaw regularity a 2nd in 2000, the problem was one that everybody acknowledged. It was a expect that leave you signed a ballot and there were many, many thousands of doubts that had been rejected by the other readers. And a difference was only 537 votes, so that was a big difference from what were doing with here. Ok, so the monitoring doesnt matter so much. What about military ballots that have yet to come in . Because, you know, trump says that he wants the troops home from afghanistan by christmas, and biden has been a bit more nuanced about his position on afghanistan. You know that the military ballots could turn over the modules you just talked about. It depends upon the number of military ballots that there are. I dont know how many military ballots there are from pennsylvania, but i doubt that there are more than 46000 ballots. So you agree with james baker that trump certainly shouldnt have called a halt to voting in a, in a democracy. Oh, of course not. Why would we halt the voting simply because in a democracy the president doesnt call doesnt halt the voting, and the court doesnt hold the body. Not under these circumstances now, the supreme court, the u. S. Supreme court did order a net ballots that received after november served which was the use shoe that was brought to the or now before that the slowly election should be segregated and preserved, which they were. But i, i dont say there were more than a couple 1000 now i know judge and lito didnt go all the way from the trump side. Big doesnt impress you the u. S. Supreme court justices, Clarence Thomas and neal gore search all say along with alito that there is a strong likelihood, a Pennsylvania Court decision of separating mail in ballots, violated the u. S. Constitution. Well, i think that, that, i think i cant question the validity of what theyre saying as a matter of law, i dont necessarily agree with that. Its a matter that has to be determined, but it is the one issue which is fundamental, is that even if the court were ultimately did get to determine that it violated the law, it would have to once again affect the number of ballots that would make a difference in the election, thats a fundamental principle that every court recognizes, including the United States supreme court. So as a matter of academic interest. And it may or may not have been in violation of u. S. Constitution, but it would make any difference. I think that might be one of the things the court had in mind when it, when it held off to wait until after the election. Presumably going to tell me the number of dead people, all of those who voted wont affect those margins. But fundamentally, if the highest office there in the land, the attorney general himself says to pursue substantial allegations of substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities. Pride set of occasion that still doesnt impress you well 1st of all the characterization of them as stansell by the attorney general is not a law. Hes an advocate and hes abrogated his current position. As to whether or not theyre important. I all im saying is i have yet to see any credible evidence of sufficient number of votes being in fact in a change the election. I did read by the way that with regard to the supposed dead people. But the doubt was investigated by the pennsylvania authorities and found to have substance. I cant, i cant speak to whether a thats any more credible than what the attorney general said. But i know that regardless of what either one of those says, we have to see evidence that would change the result of the election. And we havent seen it yet. I you surprised by whats going on. I mean, at the moment the department of justice and action Crimes Branch boss has resigned. And also, at the same time, the General Services administration boss or administrator emily murphy says there will be no immediate help for any biden transition till at least the middle of november, maybe not the not even then. What exactly is going on as compared to what you were going through back in 2000, when i can only speak to whats going on out while i am nonpartisan, in my representation of candidates in public officials. But i can tell you the difference between now and 2000 is that in 2000, as i mentioned, everybody acknowledged the problem. There was no question that there were defective ballots. The only issue was how we got them only challenged to determine who the real where was the other 3 differences. Both candidates at that time were committed to letting the courts do their job and to accept in the results and supporting whoever the winner by richard. Thank you. Well, while Mainstream Media speculates about a biden presidency and celebrates a covert vaccine from share price, rocketing scandal, hit drugs make a phase a. Is it something more profound that were missing joining the Global Pandemic . Does society need to be reordered . And should we really worry about jobs lost through automation . Dr. James looks at humanitys past from the discovery of fire to the present day and finds lessons for the future in the affluent and fiercely egalitarian lives of our hunter gather ancestors, author of work, a history of how we spend our time. He joins me now via skype from cambridge. James, thanks so much for coming on. Millions of people are in lockdown because of covert. Many of them desperately worried. Their Mental Health issues being considered by the authorities. Tell me how this book in a way that may suggest that they shouldnt worry so much given that work is actually a relatively new phenomenon in the us. Yet its often easier to look at the world in really long time scales. And, you know, certainly at the moment where, oh, absolutely swept up in the immediacy of this pandemic. And, you know, we are one of the 1st generations through all of Human History that actually hasnt had to do you really serious illness. And to be confronted by our own mortality. So this is really absorbed in the eaton. You know, what ive tried to do in this book is really stark. A far longer picture to understand these broad currents that are not just shaping work, but really human life. And work is an incredible prison through which to see it and taking that much longer perspective invites us and puts it puts a completely different shine on where we are now. It makes us realize that these kind of changes that weve had and that weve endured over the last months of working from meeting on zoo, on and so forth. That these are really all fairly small waves in what is a far deeper set of currents that are fundamentally going to change our relationship with walk. And with that, because work is so central to the way we organize our lives, our societies, our politics, those changes in work which are going to be brought about by automation, climate change, which were having to adjust our working practices to. And out of the reality that were so extraordinary productive at the moment and these are going to make everything changed fundamentally. And theres so many such a range to this book. You talk about hunter gatherer civilizations and the mythologies about them. Do most people watching, they will think that hunt together lives were, as you say, in the book, nasty, brutish and short like hobbes. Youve got some tools behind you. They werent apparently. Indeed they, indeed they would look. The truth is, you know, our deep history, you know, from 10000 years ago theyre not a lot of traces fok, you know, just to look at, we dont have, we, you know, theres not a huge amount of material evidence. What we have to do is contextualize the broken bones in the rock star tools that we find. We can text and eyes and by looking at societies that for one reason or another continued to hunt and gather into the late 20th century. The group ive worked with the city. So it was a popular known as the bushmen. They lived in the kalahari desert and they really form part of a continuous lineage of hunting and gathering people in Southern Africa as pows, we can tell really from the very 1st origins of homo sap in st. 100000 years ago. And on top of this, they live in a desert. Its not 0 allowed of milk and honey. Its not the easiest place and were not to apologise when the 960 is expecting to see it. Endless struggle for survival. You know, people in popular mythology, the bushman were ready to consume, considered to be the most a published and miserable of all humans. And that the anthropologists who went there discovered that despite living in a desert environment which is considered incredibly hostile and bleak, they only worked 58 hours in a week to get that basic food needs that were very skilled for which is very skilled hunters. And so theyre already work 15 hours and more than that, there were actually at the time these studies took place in the 1960 s. , there were better nourished then the average european was at the time. I mean, it was before that huge surge in postwar agriculture. But they were well nourished, healthy, and content, and enjoyed a great deal more leisure time than we do now. And it raises very profound questions about the nature and the way were all going to rise societies. And of course, what happiness and contentment means. And indeed, what one means and why we worked as hard as we do know. If i had to gather our ancestors, looked like people like this in jossy, and we have every reason to believe that they did, or that there are at least a reasonable adult. Then it means that for really most of Human History, 300000 years for the 1st 290000, years of Human History, people had a very, very different approach to work that we do know. It wasnt seen as but you know, it wasnt seen as the thing that organize our lives. It wasnt seen as the ticket to participate meaningfully in a society. It was seen as something very, very different. So where we are now is a very recent sliver of history. James, ill stop you there. More than dr. James been on the history of how we spend our time after this break. This is a story of women, women with troubled histories and complex court cases. You know, some of those deadly leave out there who were not the person that theyre accusing this of the they are considered the most dangerous of criminals. Shes in a still well below 23 hours of the day. Tell me that its not enough and isnt it in world of women on death row . Welcome back. Im still here with anthropologist and author of work history of how we spend our time dr. James has been one of the Management Consulting companies being commissioned by the government here to work on coronavirus. Transmission. Ideas is mckinsey, you talk about them in the book, the bedrock of our Investment Banking system, Financial Services terms like scarcity, which relates to gone together as you talk about at the heart of our meritocratic system. Socalled is this. Is this a habit spencer, quote, some high level of the fittest . This is the progress. This is the great, this of human civilization. You call into question all of the. Yeah, its a very look, this isnt very fun. You know, we all grew up have or will, but i say we all im excluded to gather. As you know, i grew up beautiful quite literally. I actually had my school were beaten when we didnt work out. And theres this whole idea that hard work is an absolute call for to, and its beaten into us. And its one of these absolute ideas, and thats underwritten by a whole series of economic ideas, which in a sense we take for granted in one of these paths that we have organized how society round. And it sort of borrows from biology is this idea that one humans are hideously competitive creatures and this constant survival of the fittest, which is a kind of corrupt reading will evolution anyway. And then the 2nd thing is this idea which, funnily enough, very few people interrogate. But every single want to you can all make institutions is based on this assumption of scarcity. You open any economics textbook or in chapter one it will be, you know, what, what is the definition of economics . It is the study of how humans distributes gas resources, why resources scarce . There is also a scar sketch, apparently because we all have infinite desires and limited means that is the mission of economics. Thats the organizing principle that, you know, its a funny concept because firstly, i mean, i think very few of us actually think about selves as infinite, having infinite desire. Know whats really interesting though, is that hunter gatherers like this in zazi that i worked with that had the opposite approach. They did not see the world as shaped by a fundamental scarcity of there was a competition for resources. They viewed the world in which they were only 50 nos weak. They viewed it as generous as providence as sharing. And lets be clear, they had much tougher lives materially than many of us do know, but it was an approach. And it was a different way of seeing a while. And as a result, they organize their colonies on the basis of an assumption of abundance rather than an assumption of scarcity. And that produces very different kind of social forms and ways of organizing their life. So this fundamental thing, you know, and economics pretends its a science or it doesnt, you know, most economists who know that it isnt the sides. Me even though that kind of grass and all these things. But this kind of popular myth that you know, economics, our economic systems, a built in some fundamental assumptions on some basis in human nature. And biology is a myth. And what this does is it frees us to really liberate ourselves. And when we start looking at the challenges of life in a much more automated future and with constraints like climate change, it allows us to free our imaginations from this prison that weve sort of bodges knocked our selves into and advising on it. As you mentioned, the graphs you do talk about the club of rome report that appeared to show that it is precisely opposite preoccupation with g. D. P. Growth that will destroy g. D. P. Growth. Tell me about that and why i say the New York Times call that garbage in, garbage out. It was so attacked as they can use. Yet it was, it was, it was stacked as early fake news have capitalism and this kind of growth focus that we have had, has been very effective in providing us all sorts of games and you know, how we live long lives. Were actually materialist on the shingly, comfortable at the moment. But you know, this point at which the medicine, when you take too much of it, can, may stop making the patient sick. And the club of rome report really is that 1st stop warming of saying that. You know, all productivity comes with costs and that cost is ultimately that we reach a point where what a serf does so well in getting reaching levels of development and so on. And non life spans ultimately is going to cannibalize our future. And that is really what were seeing with the sustainability issue and, and to be sure there, the idea of progress is still in the air. You talk about skyscrapers, i dont know being similar to the spots on the peacock tails. People dont necessarily do things that we think of as work full work reasons, they can be leisure. Saluting, look our relationship with having this is sort of, i suppose, you know, theres this big story about the future of work in the future of energy. But theres also something we have to acknowledge that within ourselves is that were walk is, you know, but then all life works or life goes and Captures Energy and use that energy to grow, to reproduce, to order. It sounds into whatever hole that has and happens to end up and to go and capture more energy in the morning. Capture. The more that you do and humans have evolved through millions of years of natural selection, a whole series of traits which make us super designed to be purposeful creatures. We are, you know, if you think about the basis of prison is in a sense, in many ways its not out of the ability to be purposeful, but work is not always our job. Most of us go into our day jobs, which, you know, in many cases already boring and unfulfilling and they go and do their day jobs on the basis of that they can afford to go and do some other kind of work as a form of lesson. Now if you think about a very prince, the water, some of the biggest leisure time activities here in britain, you know, fishing, hunting, got a name or of those actually work godling is, you know, having a vegetable patch made vegetables is very, very fundamental sense. Well, we have to recognise that we all like to work, you know, what constitutes fulfilling and meaningful work. And this is sort of what the strange situation at the moment is. Now as you know, we run a position where actually we should be empowering people to be able to fulfil it. Yet we have an economy organized which incentivizes people to do work, which is deeply unfulfilling. And things like this covered crisis says the, you know, the pandemic has made it very clear to many people. I think that, you know, its a reasonable question to ask us of what is, what is it with an economy in terms of if, how economy is meant . Judy kaye can allocate resources to our specific needs. How do we have an economy that attracts the greatest and the brightest into being derivatives . Trade is rather than being a happy dimeola, just sort doxes or notices or cares when were coming up. And these are the sort of Big Questions that i think we have to engage with and look at. Well, i want to return to the practical suggestions in the book, but so many characters walk through the pages of this book that you critique, adam smith and, and others. Notably, just take us through one of them since i have to be speaking to you next through m i 5 and my 5 trying to hunt him down very goal child just very briefly explain his contribution to the foundations of this new work of us. Whether a very big golden child was, you know, he was no stranger and stranger an archeologist. He was also a bizarrely. He grew up, he grew up in the sort of late phases of or in the early 20th century at the end of the 1st global. And he was at the time i met about an avowed communist had dreams of this kind of communist socialist utopia, nudging out of the ashes of the us, what was that didnt happen . Many ended up focusing being that kind of be, you know, a fairly noti fellow, he ended up focusing his efforts on revolutions of a different sort. And the revolutions he was most interested in was understanding the transition, the revolutions in a deep history. Things like the transition from foraging to pumping. You know, we will now talk fairly comfortably about the agricultural revolution or the Industrial Revolution as if they sort of moments before, very potent august of writing these really one things that were talked about a great deal. The point with big odintsov, the most interesting thing about is highlighting all of the transitions that came out of agriculture. And he had to differ slightly different ways of looking at things too. Certainly the way i did, but you know, agriculture is the most important transition in history in Human History, what it fundamentally changed our relationships with everything we went from being these fargas who were very little to farmers who were tied to seasonal cycle who were tied to a limited number of crops, who had these fast growing populations, and this isnt all ideas about what can in fact, lots of our economic norms and institutions all emerged out of what happened in funding when i talk about scarcity. Scarcity is a pro. I drew a cultural revolution. You said right at the beginning of the interview, the most famous phrase used to describe forages. Societies like this is an aussie, a hunting and gathering ancestors, as far as we can tout is the price fish got a terrier. And when you said fish, they got a tear and there is no who, you know that its not exaggeration people in those societies and there are no gender that theres no gender hierarchy, what 7 gender roles of different women do of things. And so, but nobody puts a higher value on one or the other. And the minute anybody starts getting ideas above their station, they get knocked down muscle to sleep by their peers. And it looks to me and certainly the evidence suggest, given the small scale sizes that humanity lived like this for the bulk of our history again, and that this was a very successful model for engaging in living sustainably as parties. It was only really with the invention of farming and farming had all these risks that came with it. And the need to, you know, the scaffold, see suddenly there needs to accumulate. So misses. And you could accumulate scepticism different by growing more stuff by taking more stuff or somehow accumulating social capital. So it changed the entire dynamic, i mean really inequality. And the idea that inequality is natural and systematic, i think, was very much a product of farming and very much a product of scarcity and farming. And again, i think now, you know, we talk a great deal about living in equal societies, not real equal under the law, and so on and so forth, equal under the bill of rights and what have you. Its interesting in namibia when the maybe it became independent from their parts a government 1991 and i was city explaining to someone else, i well know youre all equal under the law old. And so then they said, well, what does equality under the law mean . Where were all materially unequal. Well, how to get there. And i presume die electrically using both so that we have the benefits of both. You say that the bull jobs of corporate lawyers, p. R. Health and academic administrators, the Financial Services industry. There is a chance to change the way you say its going to be climate change, a 917. 00 russian type revolution due to that inequality or a viral pandemic. That could be the catalyst that i wish i wish i had written that now. Its like hundreds of, well look my, my sense is this, you know, where i do unique time in Human History. I mean, nothing that weve ever done before is a model that we can transpose and use now. And any human kind of, generally, im, you know, history, you know, the reason why we have these kind of lurching things we dont as revolutions is we tend to get quite fixed in our ways were species whos so brilliant to change. And so it dr. Who an amazing but at the same time were fearful of change. And so its only really what changes for stocks that will surprise us. And so i hope are we how do that rather . Well, people handle very difficult things all the time. And in fact, you know, when i look at this pandemic in the lockdown, people coped with it remarkably well. So changing habits often requires some kind of x. Tunnel shock. And thats why i talked about whether its the stresses of inequality that pushed us to that show. I think most likely coble climate change. So theres a, you know, there are these big risks and it is really about getting us to position of saying the world is different. Now, how do we make the best use of what we have . And for me, the answer to that is to experiment, to have experiments, not work, and to try something else. You know, we keep hoping that there are these ready answers. And what we need to do is embrace science embrace the fact that weve got these absolute constraints and recognize that we are in uncharted territory. And so this requires imagination and a little bit of bravery. But above all, it requires a kind of openness and a consensus to say, you know, the future is in front of us, how we going to get that, and what do we need to do to do it . And we have to recognize will make mistakes in the way. Talk to james as a thank you. Thank you. Thats when the show will be back on saturday in a week when palestine negotiated with an atheist of the day israel launched operation pillar of defense in gaza. Which killed or wounded hundreds of palestinian men, women, and children, as nato nations promoted israels right to defend itself. And join the ongoing. You tryna Facebook Instagram for headline stories in the u. S. State of georgia border, a local recount margin of victory. There are several other states, the president ial election was stolen and riot police fired tear gas in the media and capitol as the government of capitulating to the army and Prime Minister to troops most still be disputed