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Would a Universal Basic Income help solve inequality or make it worse, and would it protect us from robots taking our jobs?Finland has just completed a two-year experiment in doing just that. Manuela Saragosa speaks to one of the grateful recipients of the pilot project, freelance journalist Tuomas Muraja. A similar approach has already been taken for many years by some charities in the developing world, as Joe Huston of the GiveDirectly explains.So how does it work? Anthony Painter of the Royal Society of Arts in London says the financial security it provides allows people to be more creative and invest more in themselves. But Professor Ian Goldin of Oxford University is sceptical, saying there are more effective and affordable ways of helping those most in need.(Picture: Money falling on people; Credit: stocknroll/Getty Images)

To follow the world's headlines these days - from fake news to murderous terror attacks, from disease pandemics to global warming - you might be forgiven for thinking the world is becoming a pretty scary place. But is it really? Harvard University cognitive psychologist and author Steven Pinker tells us that is measurably not the case. As he argues in his new book Enlightenment Now, we are in a golden age of human existence.But, David Edmonds meets academics who are putting Pinker's ideas to the test, concluding that with climate change and overpopulation, there is a 10% chance of humans not surviving the 21st Century.(Photo: Activist at a climate change protest in Spain. Credit: Getty Images)

Are chemical elements critical for the modern economy in dangerously short supply? It's a question that Justin Rowlatt poses a century and a half after the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev published the original periodic table.Justin speaks to two chemists - Andrea Sella of University College London explains the significance of Mendeleev's scheme to the modern world, while David Cole-Hamilton talks us through an updated version of the table he has just published that highlights chemical elements that could run out within the next century unless we learn to make better use of them.However, perhaps we don't need to worry just yet, at least not for two of those red-flagged elements. Thomas Abraham-Jones describes how he happened across the world's biggest reserve of helium in the African savannah, while Rick Short of Indium Corporation explains why the metallic element his company is named after is in abundant supply, so long as you don't mind sifting an awful lot of dirt for it.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: Manuscript of Mendeleev's first periodic system of elements; Credit: Science & Society Picture Library/SSPL/Getty Images)