You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today has

become one of those hybrid historian, thinker, writer, intellectuals whose ideas prompt

discussion and argument across the world. Dutchman Rupka Bregman has achieved this level of

international recognition while still in his early 30s. His latest book, Humankind, a hopeful

history, spans thousands of years to make the argument that we humans

are driven by positive, decent impulses, that we underestimate our capacity for acting collaboratively

in the collective interest. There is a political edge to Bregman's work. He suggests that the politics and economics of our capitalist societies have undermined and betrayed mankind's better nature. But he says, we retain the capacity to make things better. Perhaps it's fitting that his book has been published with the world plunged into a public health

emergency thanks to COVID-19. What is this global pandemic telling us about who we really are?

Well, Rutger Bregman joins me now from his home in the Netherlands. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thanks for having me. We are all living

in this time of COVID-19. It is a global health emergency and in times of emergency, perhaps we

learn more than usual about the nature of human beings. What do you think this pandemic right now

is showing us about humanity? I think it is showing us that most people are actually pretty decent

and that especially in the midst of a crisis, people, most people at least, show their better

selves, you know, and you see this explosion of cooperation and altruism.

I think that's one of the most important lessons.

An explosion of altruism.

I'm just wondering what you then made, how you process some of the other scenes we've seen,

of people at times literally fighting to get

essential supplies from the shops, blaming each other, scapegoating outsiders for spreading the

virus. We've seen lots of very difficult things too. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm not denying any of that.

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