WEBVTT - Interview With Yuval Noah Harari: Masters in Business (Audio) 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.040 Masters in Business is brought to you by proper Cloth, 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:08.160 the leader in men's custom shirts, with proprietary smart sized 0:00:08.200 --> 0:00:12.600 technology and top rated customer service. Ordering a custom shirt 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:16.400 has never been easier. Visit proper cloth dot com to 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:22.319 order your first custom shirt today. This is Masters in 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:28.440 Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. This week. On 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:33.720 the podcast, I sit down for really a fascinating conversation 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:38.479 with Yuval Noah Harari. If that name sounds familiar, he 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:44.159 is the author of a book on human history called Sapiens. 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:48.080 I can't begin to tell you how many people have 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.159 raved about this book, and whether it's Bill Gates or 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:56.640 Mark Zuckerberg, UH, or Danny Kaneman or go down the list. 0:00:56.680 --> 0:00:59.320 I've had a number of guests. When we get to 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:03.800 the books segment, that's that's the book they recommend. Uh. 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.319 It's it's really a fascinating history and and a very 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:11.880 counterintuitive history of the development of the human species and 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:18.800 why we have succeeded so well. It isn't necessarily our intelligence, 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:24.880 It isn't necessarily our adaptability. According to Harari, it is 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:30.759 our ability to cooperate with each other and to tell stories, 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:35.600 myths and stories are at the core of what allows 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:41.039 human cooperation to succeed. It's a fascinating conversation. Uh. We 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:44.520 talk about his new book Hamodeus, A Brief History of Tomorrow, 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:48.000 which I have not yet read, but the people I 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:52.840 know who have read loved it, and so it picks up, 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:56.360 it picks up with the last book left off. I 0:01:56.400 --> 0:02:00.960 think you'll find this really a fascinating conversation. We he's 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:04.800 in the midst of doing a nationwide tour. They're creating 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:07.520 a documentary film or or some sort of a series 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:09.639 on this. So we got him in and out in 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:12.639 less than than an hour. So this is a relatively 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:16.080 fast show. So with no further ado, here is my 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:23.880 conversation with Yuval Noah Harari. This is Masters in Business 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:31.000 with Barry Ridholtz on Boomberg Radio. My special guest today 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:35.400 is author you've all Noah Harari. You should know his name, 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:39.760 and if you don't, you will soon. Harari specialized in 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:44.480 medieval history and military history, studying at the Hebrew University 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.040 of Jerusalem. He completed his doctorate of All Places at 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:51.600 Jesus College in Oxford, and he is the author of 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.480 two of the most fascinating books you will come across 0:02:56.120 --> 0:03:00.360 um in the next few years. His first book, Say Biens, 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:03.840 A Brief History of Human Kinds, was one of those 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:07.560 books that very quietly caught an audience. It was on 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:11.600 the summer reading list for Barack Obama and Bill Gates. 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:13.960 That's all it really took for the book to go viral. 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:18.400 His new book, Homo Dais, A Brief History of Tomorrow, 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:23.040 comes out shortly. You've all, Noah Harari, Welcome to Bloomberg. Hello, 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:26.880 it's good to be here. I'm fascinated by your book 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:30.080 and a quick story I read. Was reading a book 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:32.880 called Last Day Ape Standing and it was really a 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:37.640 good name Darwinian history of human kind. And a friend said, 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:41.280 how are you enjoying that book? I said, I'm liking it. 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.440 He goes, I have a book you're gonna love, and 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:47.800 he was right. He gave me Sapiens. I love the story, 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:50.720 I love the background about this. But let's let's jump 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:55.480 right into a little discussion of of Homo sapiens. A 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.680 hundred thousand years ago, Homo sapiens were just one of 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:04.760 a number of different human species, all competing for supremacy. Today, 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:09.440 Homo sapiens dominate the planet. What made Homo sapiens so 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:13.560 different and so successful? Oh, we are the only mammal 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:17.039 that can cooperate in very large numbers and do so 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:21.800 very flexibly. We tend to think that our superiority comes 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.760 out of some individual ability like we have we are 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:29.320 smarter than everybody else or whatever. But on the individual level, 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:32.560 we are not superior to chimpanzee is Our real advantage 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:36.400 is the unique ability to cooperate in very large numbers. 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:40.560 If you cram a hundred thousand chimpanzees into Yankee Stadium 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:44.080 or into Wall Street, you get chaos. You cram a 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:48.040 hundred thousand humans there, and you get very sophisticated networks 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.440 of cooperation. And all our achievements are based on large 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:55.640 scale corporation. Now what made this possible? Why are we 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:58.640 the only ones that can cooperate in large numbers? It's 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.839 because we are the only ones that can tell fictional 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:06.000 stories and believe them. At the basis of every large 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:11.360 scale human cooperation, you always find a fictional story about gods, 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:15.919 about nations, about money, corporations, all kinds of things that 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:19.880 exist only in our own imagination. You cannot convince a 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:23.320 chimpanzee to give you a banana by promising him that 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:26.320 after you die, you go to chimpanzee heaven and there 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:28.760 received lots and lots of bananas for your good deeds. 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.880 Chimpanzee wouldn't believe that humans believes our stories, which is 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:36.400 why we cooperate better than them. So the power of myth, 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:40.320 the power of storytelling, is what led to human cooperation. 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:44.200 Exactly as I said, check any large scale human cooperation. 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:48.040 There is always some fiction at the basis. It's easiest 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:51.080 to comprehend it in the context of religion, but it's 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:56.080 the same with political and economic corporation. And money is 0:05:56.080 --> 0:06:00.839 probably the most successful fictional story ever told. So why 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.960 is money fictional? Because money has no objective reality. It's 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:08.320 not like a coconut or a banana. Um, It's only 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.520 value comes from stories that people tell about it. The 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:14.839 consensus of this piece of paper has value, and that 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:18.159 piece of paper doesn't exactly that the group consensus is 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:20.240 a fiction. In other words, yeah, I mean, I'm not 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:22.640 I'm not saying that fiction is wrong or we should 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.920 stop believing in fictional stories. There are the basis of 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:29.480 our society, but I am pointing out that it's all 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:33.600 based on stories and our belief in the stories. If 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:35.680 if it were up to me, I would give the 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:40.000 Nobel Prize in Literature to the person of the Federal Reserve, 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:44.680 not to the usual suspects who get the get the prize. 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:47.320 I still, I still like your concept of a hundred 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:49.960 thousand chimpanzees in Wall Street. I don't know if the 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:52.159 chaos would be very different than what we are actually, 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:54.320 I think it will be much worse, much worse. So 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:56.440 here's a quote about money of yours that come straight 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:59.440 from the book that I think is absolutely fascinating, and 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:03.640 it puts the concept of faith based belief and money 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:07.360 into some context. The sum total of money in the 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:12.119 entire world is sixty trillion dollars. Add up all the cash, 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:15.280 it up all the paper money and coins, and it's 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:19.720 only six trillion dollars of all money in the world 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:24.640 exists only on computer servers. Therefore, money is a faith 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.320 based object. And even the six trillion that are in paper, 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:30.560 I mean the paper is worth nothing. Really. You can't 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:33.400 eat it, you can't drink it, so it is it too, 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:37.040 is based on on faith. And even gold was based 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:39.880 on faith, on on on belief because you can't do 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:42.520 anything with gold. I mean again, you can't eat it, 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:45.480 and it's a very soft metal, so you can't even 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:49.320 make useful implements out of it. You can't kill somebody 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.119 with a sold made of gold. Um, So it's really 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:57.960 all based on trust. The real material from which money 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:02.280 is made is not gold or paper. It's made of trust. 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:07.520 It's the most sophisticated mutual trust system ever created. It's 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:11.160 the only system really that managed to be completely universal. 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:15.440 Not everybody believes in God, and not everybody believes, say, 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:19.480 in human rights, but everybody believes in money. I mean, 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:21.920 even if you think about I don't know, Sama bin Laden. 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:26.360 He hated American politics and culture and religion. He had 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:30.120 no objection at all to American dollars. You reference that 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:34.840 even something as ancient as the Roman Empire collected taxes 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:37.520 at one point, at their peak, they had a hundred 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:41.040 million people paying them taxes. Is that number right? A 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:45.679 hundred million people paying them Roman Empire some form of taxation, yes, 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:47.679 I mean you had a hundred million people in the 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:51.960 empire as it's the need. Of course, not everybody pays taxes, 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:55.440 you have families or only one person pays, but generally speaking. Yes, 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:59.480 they collect the taxes from the entire Mediterranean basin, from 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:02.880 tens of millions of people. That's amazing. I'm Barry rid Hilts. 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:06.080 You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:09.240 special guest today is you've all Harari. He is the 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:14.080 author of the book Sapiens, A Brief History of Human Kind, 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:17.280 And let's jump right into this. And and there's so 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:22.040 much in this book that is so fascinating and so counterintuitive. 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:24.960 And yet when you think it through, you start to 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:28.160 say to yourself, maybe maybe he's right. Let's talk about 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:32.760 the agricultural revolution began around twelve thousand years ago, and 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:38.600 you say, surprisingly, the pursuit of an easier life leads 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:43.160 to more hardship. Now, I think of the pre agricultural 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:47.040 era as as short, nasty, and brutish. You never know 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.200 when your next meal is coming from. You're you're constantly 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:54.959 at at the mercy of the weather, of of other animals, 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:59.200 of other bands. But I assume that agriculture allows you 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:01.479 to have a home and roof of your house, And 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:04.960 you're saying that just makes things worse. Yeah, for most people, 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:07.480 it made things worse. If you're a king or a 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:10.680 high priest. Life is very nice in ancient Egypt. But 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:13.760 if you're a simple peasant, life is actually much harder. 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:17.240 First of all, is a peasant you work harder than 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:21.720 your hunter gatherer ancestors. Our bodies and our minds evolved 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:25.320 for hundreds of thousands of years in adaptation to living 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:28.320 as hunter gatherers, going to the forest to look from 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:32.160 mushrooms or hunt hunt rabbits, and suddenly you find yourself 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:36.680 all day working very hard on very monotonous and boring 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:40.840 jobs like bringing water buckets from the river or harvesting 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.440 the corne. Even today you have hundreds of millions of 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:48.720 people working in much more difficult and boring jobs than 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:52.920 our ancestors in the Stone Age. In exchange, you've got 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:57.080 a much worse diet. Hunter gatherers eight dozens of different 0:10:57.200 --> 0:11:00.720 kinds of animals and plants and mushrooms and tever, so 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:05.360 they had a very rich and balanced nutrition. Usually peasants 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:09.000 subsisted on a very monotonous diet. If you live in 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:12.600 ancient Egypt, you basically eat wheat unless you're faero. If 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.400 you live in China, you eat rice for breakfast, rice 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:17.960 for lunch, and if you're lucky, you have enough rice 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:22.839 left for dinner. In addition, peasants suffered far more from 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:27.840 infectious diseases because almost all infectious diseases humans suffer from 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:32.760 actually came from domesticated animals. Hunter gatherers had very few 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:36.760 infectious diseases. There were tiny bands roaming around, not enough 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:40.920 to to sustain an epidemic. You start seeing epidemics of 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:44.800 infectious diseases only with agriculture. And if this is not enough, 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:51.079 peasants suffered far more from social exploitation and political inequality 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:56.800 than hunter gatherers. Inequality both between classes and between genders. 0:11:56.840 --> 0:12:00.760 So I'm not saying that life was paradised as unter gatherers. 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:04.720 You had many difficulties, but all in all, the life 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:08.360 of the average person got worse instead of better as 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:12.280 a result of the agricultural revolution. Only around the nineteenth 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:17.280 century you begin to seem real improvement in the life 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:21.240 of the average person. And even today, as I said, 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:24.080 there are hundreds of millions of people around the world 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:28.240 whose life is much more difficult and much more grim 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:32.079 than the life of hunter gatherers twenty years ago. I'm 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:36.080 also fascinated by the book I didn't realize it was 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.640 first published in Hebrew in two thousand and eleven, and 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:44.680 then it didn't come out in English until what What 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:47.400 was the process? How did it go from a Hebrew 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:52.480 book to something that was published now globally. Well, Um, 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:56.040 I rewrote it in English. It's not really translation, it's 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.959 rewriting it. Um. And I changed many of the example 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.480 polls from things from Israeli and Jewish history, two things 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:07.559 with more international familiarity I used. I got a lot 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.760 of feedbank from the Israeli audience about all kinds of 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:13.000 things in the book. So I had the opportunity to 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:16.360 change things and update things, and I had to find 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:20.000 a publisher, which wasn't easy. Uh So it took three 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:23.960 years to to make the transition. Really and now it's 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:27.439 we have something like fifty translations all over the world. 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:32.560 That's quite that's quite fascinating. You mentioned agricultural lead lead 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:37.080 to communicable disease because you have people working close together. 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:41.080 What about the rise of cities and urban population centers. 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:44.800 We always think of that as a positive or at 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:48.679 least historically that's been portrayed as a positive. Look. We 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:52.200 have culture, we have learning, we have knowledge, you're saying 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:56.120 not so much. Well, that depends on your viewpoint and 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:59.360 on your metric. If your viewpoint it's say, I don't 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:02.079 know the upper a class in Athens in the fifth 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:06.400 century b c. And you measure progress by the sophistication 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:09.200 of your philosophy or your theater, then yes, it was 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:11.880 an amazing development. But if you think about it from 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:16.720 the viewpoint of a slave woman, uh, working to death 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:20.400 in some field that belongs to Socrates, then it looks 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:24.120 a bit different, to say the very least. Um, let's 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:27.720 talk about cognitive dissonance, one of my favorite phrases. I 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:32.040 always think of that phrase as a negative of of 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:34.440 somebody who was so wrapped up in their own bubble 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:37.080 they can't get out of their own way. But but again, 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:42.600 very counterintuitively, you describe it differently. Quote. Cognitive dissonance is 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:45.800 often considered a failure of the human psyche. In fact, 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.640 it is a vital asset. Had people been unable to 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:52.240 hold contradictory beliefs and values, it probably would have been 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:56.760 impossible to establish and maintain any human culture. Explain that 0:14:56.760 --> 0:14:59.800 that that's quite an interesting assertion. Well, in contrast to 0:14:59.840 --> 0:15:05.560 the laws of nature, which have no contradictions. Humans have 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:08.440 not been able to come up with any system of 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:13.359 laws or values or views which is completely coherent and consistent. 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:18.280 So unless we had this ability of cognitive dissonance, we 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:22.760 could not have had any culture or any human human 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:27.280 generated a code book. And to give a few examples, 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:30.360 if you think, for example, about the monoteistic world view, 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:36.240 so people believe in a single, all knowing and omnipotent God, 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:40.000 but somehow they also manage to believe in an independent 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:43.920 satan or devil, and to blame the devil for all 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:46.400 kinds of bad things that happen in the world and 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:50.000 exxonerate the all knowing and all powerful God. Now this 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:53.440 is a contradiction, but people do it similarly in in 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.640 in today's culture. If you go to a hospital, or 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.920 if you go to the department of biology, then human 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:03.520 and are basically these biochemical machines. And there is no 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:08.440 such thing as free will in today's biology. But then 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.720 you leave the hospital or the biology department and you 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:14.840 go to the law department or to the courts, Suddenly 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:19.360 free will comes out of nowhere. And our entire legal 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:22.280 system is built on the assumptions that yes of course 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:24.720 humans have free will. How else can you hold them 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:28.480 responsible for crimes and other bad actions? Exactly, And there 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:32.000 is a contradiction there, but um, we kind of managed 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:35.040 to go away around the contradiction, and we think in 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:38.200 different ways when we are in the hospital or when 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:40.960 we are in the courtroom. I'm very rid Holts. You're 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.680 listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.800 guest today is you've all Noah Harari. He is the 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:52.440 author of two highly regarded books. The first is called Sapiens, 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:56.680 A Brief History of Humankind. The next is called Homo Daeous, 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:00.280 A Brief History of Tomorrow. We were talking earl Elier 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:05.840 about how gold isn't especially valuable intrinsically. You can't eat it, 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:07.639 you can't wear, you can't use it as a tool. 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:10.679 But some of the things you reference in in some 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:14.399 of the books are quite fascinating. The first was that 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.720 the fact that Mediterranean people believe that gold had some 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:24.080 value ultimately lead to Indians and Africana's believing that gold 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:28.400 had some value. How did that mechanism work well? Um, 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:32.320 in order to believe that something is valuable, it's you 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:35.439 don't need to believe it yourself. It's enough if somebody 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:38.360 else believes in it, because you know that you can 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:42.880 trade it for things that you consider valuable. If suddenly, 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.680 I don't know, aliens from outer space would invade Earth 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:48.879 and it turns out that they have there is a 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:54.480 huge market for onion pills on their planet, immediately the 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:58.440 price of onion PILs on Earth will skyrocket. We can't 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:00.760 do we don't need these things, but we can sell 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.400 it to the aliens and get in exchange. I don't 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:06.760 know what urani or or robots or whatever they produce. 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:10.720 So suddenly you have reason to value this. And this 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:14.000 is what happened with gold in many places when Europeans, 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.600 for instance, reached America or Polynesia. So some of the 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:22.320 local people they just couldn't understand why are these strange 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:27.119 white people so obsessed with a nice shining metal, but 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:29.639 that you can't really do anything with it. So so 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:34.400 once trade connects to different regions, they're supply and demand 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:38.160 naturally leads to prices equalizing. Is that pretty much what happened? 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.800 Pretty much? Yes, So so let's jump a little bit 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:45.480 towards your your writing process, because I'm I'm fascinated the 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:51.720 book Sapiens is a serious piece of work that looks 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:55.679 like there was an immense amount of research and thinking 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:59.880 that went into it. How does your your writing process begin, 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:03.440 How did you start, how did you conceptualize the book initially? 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:07.560 And what led to it? Actually, I it came out 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:10.080 of a course that they gave in the Hebrew University 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:13.400 as a professor, as a professor to first your students 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:16.840 about trying to summarize the whole of history to first 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:20.760 your students. And I gave it for several years, and 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:24.240 I had the opportunity to test all kinds of ideas 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:27.800 on the students and see the reaction. Uh. If they 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:30.800 were very bold, then I understood, Okay, something is I 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:34.280 should change something here. Instant feedback. Yeah. If they asked 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:36.919 a lot of questions, maybe I should talk more about 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:40.160 this issue. If something is unclear, I should find an 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:44.399 example or some other way of explaining this difficult point. 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:49.360 I generally think that at least in history. Um, if 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:53.280 first your students cannot understand what you're saying, you're probably 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:56.719 either you don't understand yourself what you try to teach them, 0:19:56.920 --> 0:19:59.320 or you're saying it in the wrong way. I mean, 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:02.160 I don't know. In quantum mechanics, it's not the same. 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:05.480 I mean, there are good reasons why, even very good ideas, 0:20:05.520 --> 0:20:08.679 you cannot explain it to first few students. But in history, 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:11.960 I think it almost all cases you should find a 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:14.359 way to be able to to to explain it to 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:16.560 first few students. How long did it take you to 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:19.960 write sapiens Um, either the first or the second time? 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:24.399 The Hebrew edition, it took me like six years or so, 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:27.000 and then you had another two years for the English edition. 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:31.879 And I know people who when they write, they'll do 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:34.560 all their research for two years and then they'll sit 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:37.480 down and write, and other people research and then write 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:39.720 and research and then write. And what was your what 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:42.959 was your process like? It sounds like you were pretty interactive, 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:45.800 pretty dyning. It was very dynamic and interactive. It was 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:48.320 not like, Okay, I'll read all these books and then 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:50.880 I'll sit for one year and just write it down. 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:53.920 It was very interactive and then fluid and changing all 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:58.520 the time. And Homo Days seems almost like Sapiens Part two. 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:01.320 Here's the history looking act. Now let's look forward and 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:04.000 trying and imagine where this leads to. Is that how 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:07.480 that was conceived and and when did you start thinking, Hey, 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:11.280 I could continue this this process. It actually also came 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:15.400 about in an interactive manner because after I published Sapiens, 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:18.679 I gave all these interviews and went and gave these 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:22.560 talks and seminars, and in many places most of the 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:26.919 questions were actually about the future. It was like, Okay, 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:30.240 you now wrote a book about the whole past of humankind. 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:33.800 What can you say based on that on where we 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:37.520 might be heading? Talk too? So my thinking went more 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:41.080 and more to the future, and I began to give 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:44.800 talks and to write articles more about the future, until 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:47.880 at one point I said, hey, actually, heavier enough material 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:51.119 for a new book. I'm very ridults. You're listening to 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:54.719 Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:58.760 is Juval Harari. He is the author, most recently of 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:02.800 Homo Days, A Brief History of Tomorrow, and and let's 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:06.600 jump right in because this is really a fascinating discussion. 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:10.840 I want to start with a quote. Science no surprisingly 0:22:10.960 --> 0:22:17.120 little about the mind and consciousness. Why is that because 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:21.600 the only mind you can observe directly is your own. 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:27.439 In science, if you investigate any phenomenon, it's very important 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:30.840 to have direct observation of it. If you write about 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:33.960 someone culture, people will tell you, okay, go to some 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:37.479 more and and investigate it for yourself. If you write 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:41.000 about business, it's good if you can observe business people 0:22:41.280 --> 0:22:44.720 or have direct business experience. But with the mind, you 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:48.159 just can't access the mind of anybody except yourself. You 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:50.680 can access the brain, but the brain isn't the mind. 0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:56.159 The brain is all these synopses and neurons and electrochemical reactions, 0:22:56.240 --> 0:23:00.880 and scientists assume that this is the substrate for the mind, 0:23:00.960 --> 0:23:04.560 but it's not the mind. The mind is the subjective experiences, 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:08.359 the experience of love and hate and joy and pain. 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:13.080 And you can see the behavior of other people, but 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:16.720 you can't feel the love of the hate that somebody 0:23:16.720 --> 0:23:20.239 else feels. So if you want to research that, you 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:23.720 can only research your own mind. And this is extremely 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:27.639 difficult because you it's very difficult to be objective and 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:31.680 systematic when you try to observe your own mind. So 0:23:31.840 --> 0:23:34.800 let me push back on that a little bit, because 0:23:35.680 --> 0:23:38.280 lots and lots of what we've been learning about the 0:23:38.320 --> 0:23:43.920 brain recently have been teaching us that much of what 0:23:44.000 --> 0:23:47.159 we previously thought of as the mind is really a 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:50.919 combination of, as you said, biochemical reactions. We've seen in 0:23:51.000 --> 0:23:55.640 APHASIAX people lose the ability to read, but they can 0:23:55.680 --> 0:23:59.520 still write, They get they can't speak some folks, but 0:23:59.560 --> 0:24:02.320 they can saying. And what we used to think of 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:05.560 as part of the personality is really part of the 0:24:05.760 --> 0:24:10.600 biomechanics that exist. So so let me ask a related 0:24:10.720 --> 0:24:14.480 question and I'll use another one of your quotes. There's 0:24:14.600 --> 0:24:20.720 zero scientific evidence that, in contrast to pigs, sapiens have souls. 0:24:20.840 --> 0:24:23.879 So I have to ask a question, what is the soul? 0:24:23.960 --> 0:24:29.600 And how can we, as you said, objectively measure it? Well, Um, 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:33.640 the soul, at least in the Christian version, is some 0:24:33.880 --> 0:24:38.359 unchanging essence which is your true self, and it remains 0:24:39.119 --> 0:24:43.120 completely without change from birth to death and hopefully even 0:24:43.160 --> 0:24:47.439 beyond death. We have absolutely no evidence that such a 0:24:47.520 --> 0:24:51.720 thing exists. Uh. And it stands really in direct contradiction 0:24:52.240 --> 0:24:55.119 to the theory of evolution, which is why there we 0:24:55.320 --> 0:24:58.760 so much objection and hate red even to the theory 0:24:58.760 --> 0:25:04.320 of evolution. We which no other scientific theory receives so much, 0:25:04.400 --> 0:25:07.200 so many objections and hatred as the theory of evolution. 0:25:07.400 --> 0:25:10.200 If you think about it, why I mean, the theory 0:25:10.200 --> 0:25:13.480 of evolution is actually quite simple in contrast to other 0:25:13.600 --> 0:25:17.679 theories like quantum mechanics or relativity. But nobody has an 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:23.200 objection teaching relativity to kids. Maybe the kids object, but 0:25:23.200 --> 0:25:26.520 but not nobody else. So what's wrong with the theory 0:25:26.560 --> 0:25:30.479 of evolution? And I think that what's really bugs people 0:25:30.760 --> 0:25:33.760