Yuval Noah Harari

Summary

This Life of Mine with James Corden

Guest: Yuval Noah Harari

Date: February 3, 2026
Host: James Corden (for Lemonada Media)

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Overview

In this episode, James Corden interviews Yuval Noah Harari, renowned historian, philosopher, and author of bestsellers like Sapiens. Their conversation explores the pivotal people, places, possessions, music, and memories that shaped Harari’s life and worldview. The discussion ranges from personal rituals to AI, education, meditation, philosophy, and what it means to be human in the modern era. Harari brings both humor and depth, reflecting on the pressing existential questions of our time, leadership, and the balance between intellect, emotion, and action.

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Key Discussion Points

The Role of Philosophers in Business & Learning from History

• Philosophers and Business Boards

  • Harari believes companies, especially in tech, should include philosophers on their boards to keep them mindful of historical perspective and ethical considerations.
  • Quote:

    “Tech companies...sometimes think they are exempt from history, but they are not. They are just part of it, like everything else.” (04:17 – Harari)

• Ignoring Historical Lessons

  • Harari illustrates how companies believe they’re exempt from established ethical guidelines ("don’t steal") because data is “different,” and recounts parallels with the era of the printing press, where the first bestsellers were guides to witch hunts and not scientific treatises.
  • Quote:

    “People say...the printing press, it brought about the scientific revolution. Well, not exactly. It first of all brought about a wave of wars...and witch hunts.” (05:17 – Harari)

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The Nature of History

• Against the 'Single Cause' Fallacy
  • History is not “just one thing after another.” Harari warns against simple explanations and mythology, urging recognition of the complex, multi-causal web that shapes societies.
  • Quote:

    “History turns into mythology when you think it’s just one thing leading to another thing.” (06:50 – Harari)

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The Music That Shaped Him

• Duran Duran’s “Save a Prayer”
  • At age six, Harari was captivated by the video filmed among Buddhist ruins, sparking an enduring fascination with Buddhism.
  • Quote:

    “It made me realize how huge and amazing the world is, which is a very strange connection to make...It just made me realize what the world is so big.” (08:14 – Harari)

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Meditation and Dealing with Boredom

• Annual Retreats

  • Harari spends 30–60 days each year on silent meditation retreats, seeing it as “the most interesting thing in the world” for understanding the workings of the mind.

  • The Challenge of Boredom:

    “Boredom is one of the hardest things to deal with. A lot of things in life are driven by boredom.” (09:38 – Harari)

  • On Excitement and Modern Life:

    “We need more boring politicians, for instance. For sure we need more boring times. And the problem is not the excitement, it’s the boredom.” (10:27 – Harari)

• Memorable Moment:

  • Harari recalls entering a retreat before the 2016 US election:

    “I earned something like 30 days in a world in which Donald Trump is not the President of the United States.” (11:39 – Harari)

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First Historical Memory

• The Sinking of the HMS Sheffield (Falklands War, 1982)
  • As a child, Harari was struck by seeing a posthumous interview:

    “How am I able to...he’s now talking and he’s dead...maybe it was really this interview with this dead person which kind of shook me.” (12:31 – Harari)

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On Gifted Education & The Value of Skills

• The Pressure of “Gifted” School

  • Harari describes his time in a school for gifted children as “horrible”, calling it a “Darwinian nightmare” focused almost exclusively on intellect to the detriment of social and physical skills.

  • Quotes:

    “It was the most competitive place I’ve ever been in the world.” (15:54 – Harari)
    “The intellect is vastly overrated in human society. It has its usages, but if you ask me what is the most overrated thing about humans except for excitement? It’s the intellectual.” (15:58 – Harari)

  • On What’s Underrated:
    “Every time we kind of focus on just one thing, it’s a mistake...you need all three: head, heart, hands.” (16:21 – Harari)

• Education for the Future

  • With AI disrupting professions, Harari urges balance:

    “We don’t know what will be the job market like in 20 years. So if you place all your bets on just one set of skills, this is a bad idea.” (16:34 – Harari)

  • Emotional and Social Intelligence:

    “We will need the most kind of psychologically robust and flexible generation ever to deal with what’s coming in the next 20 or 30 years.” (18:51 – Harari)

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Charles Darwin: Person of Significance

• Darwin as a Model and Inspiration
  • Harari calls Darwin “a prophet of gay liberation,” explaining how evolutionary theory strips away the notion of essential purpose in biology and naturalizes variations in sexuality and behavior.
  • Quotes:

    “Anything that exists is in line with the laws of nature...In evolution, there are no purposes.” (22:40 – Harari) “You can’t ban homosexuality because it’s against the laws of nature. Find a better excuse. Now if you say, well, it causes suffering to people, no, it doesn’t.” (26:39 – Harari)

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Media, Evolution, and Fear

• Our Evolutionary Bias for Bad News
  • Harari explains our attraction to negative stories as a product of evolutionary survival mechanisms that are now exploited by social media algorithms.
  • Quotes:

    “We are primed to focus attention on dangerous and frightening things. And now this evolutionary mechanism...is being hijacked by social media algorithms against us.” (28:09 – Harari) “If you have all these good stories and you have this one scary story, you will pay attention to the scary story.” (30:01 – Harari)

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Book: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

• Influence and Writing Model
  • Diamond’s work inspired Harari’s approach to writing sweeping, accessible, big-history narratives, culminating in his own books like Sapiens and Nexus.
  • Quote:

    “What I was missing is then somebody taking all these pixels and putting them together to give us a big picture.” (31:51 – Harari)

AI: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

• Harari likens humankind’s relationship with increasingly autonomous AI to “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”—potentially unleashing forces beyond our control unless we proceed with caution.
• Quotes:

  “AI is different from every previous technology in history because it’s not a tool, it’s an agent.” (33:24 – Harari) [On the future] “The AIs of today, they’re like the microorganisms...We are now at the beginning of a parallel evolutionary process which is inorganic.” (36:53 – Harari)

• He contrasts “tools” and “agents” and explains AI’s exponential development compared to organic evolution.

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Place: Dhamma Dipa Meditation Center (UK)

• The Power of Silence and Direct Experience

  • Harari recounts the life-changing simplicity of his first 10-day silent meditation retreat:

    “Just observe your breath...no mysticism whatsoever. And I was really amazed by how little I knew about myself and that I can’t control like my attention even for a few seconds.” (39:15 – Harari)

• On Worry, Rest, and Human Limits vs. The Digital World

  • Harari discusses the importance of rest and cycles for human well-being, juxtaposed with the 24/7 pace of the digital/AI-driven world.
  • Quotes:

    “Worries are like gas. They expand to fill whatever space you give them.” (40:21 – Harari) “We are basically carbon animals in a silicon world, organic beings...now more and more of the systems in the world, they are not run by human beings. They are run by these inorganic silicon entities that never need to rest.” (41:54 – Harari)

  • He cautions that our systems force us to adapt to machines, not the other way around, which is harmful for human society.

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Possession: His Morning Porridge Pot

• Ritual and Home
  • Harari describes the humble, lidless pot he’s used for a decade to make his daily breakfast as a grounding ritual:
  • Quote:

    “It has no lid. It had a lid when it was born...But I didn’t switch to a different pot. And it works well...rituals are important. They give you some kind of ground of stability in life.” (44:48 – Harari)

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Concluding Reflection: Hope for the Future

• Human Mind vs. AI: Parallel Potential
  • Harari closes with guarded optimism:

    “AI is nowhere near its full development, its full capacity. But the same is true of the human mind. We still utilize just a small part of its capabilities. If for every minute and every dollar that we invest in developing AI, we will also invest a minute and a dollar in developing our own minds, we will be okay.” (46:40 – Harari)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Tech & History:

  “They sometimes think they are exempt from history, but they are not.” — Harari (04:17)

• On Meditation & Modern Life:

  “We need more boring politicians, for instance...If you don’t know how to deal with boredom, you’ll be constantly chasing the next exciting thing.” — Harari (10:27)

• On Diversity of Skills:

  “If you have a human with just a head, not a good idea.” — Harari (16:35)

• On Darwin and Gay Liberation:

  “Charles Darwin, in many ways was a prophet of gay liberation.” — Harari (22:40)

• On Social Media & Evolution:

  “This evolutionary mechanism, it’s now being hijacked by social media algorithms against us.” — Harari (28:09)

• On Human Limits vs. Machine Cycles:

  “We are basically carbon animals in a silicon world, organic beings...now more and more of the systems in the world...are run by these inorganic silicon entities that never need to rest.” — Harari (41:54)

• On Rest for Leaders:

  “Obviously [the Prime Minister] should go on vacation. He’s a human being. I mean, I don’t want any country to be managed by people who never go on vacation, who don’t have time to relax, to think.” — Harari (41:54)

• On Hope:

  “If for every minute and every dollar that we invest in developing AI, we will also invest a minute and a dollar in developing our own minds, we will be okay.” (46:40)

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Important Segments (Timestamps)

• 04:00: Discussion of tech companies and ignoring history
• 07:40: Harari’s significant music choice and influence of Buddhist imagery
• 09:14: Meditation retreats and insights into dealing with boredom and excitement
• 12:05: First historical memory — HMS Sheffield
• 14:26: Gifted school experience and critiques of overemphasis on intellect
• 22:40: Choice of Charles Darwin as a person of influence, and implications for gay liberation
• 28:10: How humans are hardwired for fear, and social media’s exploitation of this
• 31:51: Book selection: Guns, Germs and Steel
• 33:24: The unique risks and nature of AI as an “agent,” not just a tool
• 38:09: Place: Dhamma Dipa Meditation Center and the impact of silent retreat
• 44:48: Possession: The story and symbolism of Harari’s morning porridge pot
• 46:32: Closing note on hope for humanity’s future

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Final Thoughts

This conversation offered an intimate look at how Yuval Noah Harari’s early experiences, daily rituals, and philosophical influences shape his views on history, society, technology, and the future. Both Corden and Harari blend humor and depth, resulting in a thought-provoking yet accessible talk that’s rich with reflection, anecdotes, and concise wisdom for anyone wondering not just what the future holds, but how best to meet it as a human being.

Transcript

[James O'Brien]

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[Yuval Noah Harari]

Lemonade.

[James O'Brien]

You can listen to every episode of this Life of Mine ad free. With Lemonada Premium you'll get access to a quick fire round of questions with this week's guest. And I mean quickfire really quick. Like two minutes or less. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonade premium.com to subscribe on any other app that's lemonadapremium.com. Hello and welcome to this Life of Mine, the show where our guests pick the places, people, possessions, music and memories that have made them who they are. My guest today is a historian, a philosopher, and one of the most successful non fiction authors of recent times. His books have sold over 45 million copies and fans of his work include, frankly, some of the most powerful people on planet Earth. When he's not writing bestsellers and influencing global conversations, he's a history lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and and a distinguished research fellow at the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. For any of us who have ever lain awake at night wondering what on earth the future holds for humanity, our guest today just might have some of the answers. Are you ready?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yes.

[James O'Brien]

Then take us away.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I'm Yuval Noah Harari and welcome to this life of mine.

[James O'Brien]

I was thinking on my way in today about when I last saw you, which was a couple of summers ago. I saw you give a wonderful talk with Alan de Botton.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah.

[James O'Brien]

You and Alan de Botton were talking, and you said something that really stuck with me. You said that in this room where you were talking, it's important to say there was a lot of big CEOs and world leaders and things like that. And you said that you felt that all big public companies should give up a board seat to a philosopher. Have you had any phone calls from any of these big companies? And has anyone as far as, you know, taken you up on this? Great advice.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

No, actually, I'm not a philosopher myself, so it's not a job for me.

[James O'Brien]

Yeah, but you'd be pretty good in those rooms, wouldn't you?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I'm not sure. I think my husband is much better at business than I am.

[James O'Brien]

Tell me why you think that that would be an important thing for a company to do. Because I do think it's a good idea.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Because ultimately, the impact of the products the company produces comes from the interaction with people. So if you're a tech company, you need to understand not just computers, you also need to understand people. And for that, you need to understand history and philosophy and things like that, and psychology. And, you know, especially tech companies, they sometimes think they are exempt from history, but they are not. They are just part of it, like everything else.

[James O'Brien]

Gorn, in what way would you say they think they're exempt from history? That's interesting.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

For instance, we had thousands of years of experience with things like don't steal. And they come and says, you know, you know, this doesn't apply to us because information is different. So we can take your information and sell it to third parties without your permission. And this is not stealing. And this is basically taking thousands of years of history and saying, well, it doesn't apply to us.

[James O'Brien]

Because at the very core of it, that really is the main business model of lots of these companies. Right? That's it.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

And similarly, you know, we have lots of experience before. When a new information technology comes along like the printing press, very quickly you realize that unless you regulate it, you get a flood of lies and conspiracy theories and fake news and social disturbances. You know, people say, ah, the printing press, it brought about the scientific revolution. Well, not exactly. It first of all brought about a wave of wars of religion, that and witch hunts. The biggest bestsellers of the early years of print were not scientific books like Copernicus on Astronomy, it was witch hunting manuals. Teaching people about the great conspiracy of witches against mankind and how to identify and kill witches. Do it yourself, basically.

[James O'Brien]

And yet now we find ourselves basically back in the same place. Right.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

If you think that what you are doing is completely new, completely unprecedented, unconnected to anything that happened previously, then you think that you're exempt from it.

[James O'Brien]

20 years ago now, I was in a play called the History Boys, which was about a group of boys being prepped and groomed to get into Oxford and Cambridge to do a history degree. And there was a really famous line in the play. And I wonder if you would agree with this. It just made me think of it when you were talking. Then they're doing a mock exam, like a interview exam for Oxford or Cambridge, and a teacher says, how would you describe history? And he says, history, it's just one fucking thing after the other. Would you agree with that?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

In a way, yes. But I think that it's not just one thing. That's a big problem because people often fall into the kind of single cause fallacy that one thing caused the war. One thing. And it's never one thing. History turns into mythology when you think it's just one thing leading to another thing. Right. Then you think that, for instance, I don't know, the origin of the United States is just the heritage of England.

[James O'Brien]

Sure.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

And of course the heritage of England is extremely important for the United States, but it's also influenced by the heritage of so many other cultures and places. So it's never just a single cause.

[James O'Brien]

This is already going to be one of my favorite shows we've done. I can already feel it on this Life of Mine. We've asked you to pick a person, a possession, a place, a book, a memory and a piece of music. And we're going to start with music.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Okay.

[James O'Brien]

And it's not what I expected. What did you think of a world renowned historian? I don't know. I don't know.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I think this is probably what was your expectation?

[James O'Brien]

I don't. Some obscure piece of classical music that I'd never heard of and.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yes, doesn't fit the bill.

[James O'Brien]

Well, I guess it is a classic. I mean, share with us the piece of music that you have chosen as significant in your life.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Save a Prayer by Duran Duran. I was 16, 6 years old in 1982, and I saw there the video on Israeli television. I think it's in Sri Lanka.

[James O'Brien]

Right.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

And they visit like these archaeological Buddhist sites. It really kind of blew my mind. Strangely enough, Buddhism afterwards played a very Very important role in my life. And when I tried to look back, when was the first time in my life I saw an image of the Buddha or of Buddhist monks? Ah, it was in Duranduran's Save a Prayer. You know, it's a bit strange to say it about the Duranduran song, but it made me realize how huge and amazing the world is, which is a very strange connection to make. I know. No, I understand. They just made me realize what the world is so big.

[James O'Brien]

How much of a role does music play in your day to day life at the moment?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I guess not a very big role because I don't have much time.

[James O'Brien]

I guess the reason I ask is I know that a lot of your meditation is a huge part of your life.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah.

[James O'Brien]

Is it true you go away every year to a sort of silent retreat? Is that every year or every few years?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Every year I go to a long retreat between 30 and 60 days.

[James O'Brien]

And this is on your own?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I'm in a meditation center, so there are other people there, but it's basically just me with myself meditating.

[James O'Brien]

And what's the benefits of that, of 30 to 60 days of silent meditation? What's the best, Right?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I mean, it's the most interesting thing in the world to get to know your own mind, because everything else you experience in life you experience through your mind and to understand where thoughts come from, where emotions come from, what are emotions, what is anger? What is boredom like? Sometimes you get a day of boredom or a week of boredom on the meditation retreat. And boredom is one of the hardest things to deal with. A lot of things in life are driven by boredom. People change jobs, leave relationships because of boredom.

[James O'Brien]

Yes.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

The most misunderstood word in American English is excited. They seem to think that it's a good word, like, I'm excited to meet you. Oh, the new book is so exciting.

[James O'Brien]

Yes.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

And sometimes excitement is good. But something to know about organic beings is that we live by cycles. If you keep an organic entity excited all the time, it collapses and dies. To some extent, you can say that this is now true of the whole of our society. It suffers from too much excitement. We need more boring politicians, for instance. For sure we need more boring times. And the problem is not the excitement, is the boredom. If you don't know how to deal with boredom, you'll be constantly chasing the next exciting thing, ramping up things more and more and more until you collapse.

[James O'Brien]

Is it true that when you went to one of the retreats that you went on, you went in before the 2016American election. So when you came out, you had no idea that Donald Trump had been elected the President of the United States?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yes, I think that the retreat started on the 1st of November. It was a 44, 5 days retreat, so until the 15th of December. So kind of, you know, I didn't miss anything.

[James O'Brien]

That's one way to come out of a meditation retreat, isn't it?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I mean, you know, I earned something like 30 days in a world in which Donald Trump is not the President of the United States.

[James O'Brien]

Let's move on to your memory, because interestingly, your memory took place in the same year that the piece of music that you've chosen was released.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Apparently an important year in my life.

[James O'Brien]

Well, clearly tell us the memory that you wanted to talk about on the show today.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

So the memory is the sinking of the Sheffield, of the Warship Sheffield during the Falklands War in 1982. It happened halfway across the world. And it's really my first historical memory. It's again the realization that there is a very big world out there which is not about me and my family and my school and my neighborhood.

[James O'Brien]

You were six years old.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I was six years old and I was watching the news and there was one thing that really kind of shook me, that they showed an interview with one of the crew members who died in the attack in the sinking of the ship. And of course, the interview was done before. And then they reported that the ship sank and they show a footage of the ship. And then they have this interview and he's dead. I remember kind of struggling with, but he's dead. I mean, how am I able to kind of, he's now talking and he's dead. And maybe it was really this interview with this dead person which kind of shook me.

[James O'Brien]

Do you think this would have informed your life? And these are the first times that you perhaps even considered the idea of being a historian?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

It could be. I mean, my favorite book at the time was A History of the World for children. In a way, it goes back to your first question about history as a chain of events, one damn thing after the other, that you realize that there are so many things happening at the same time, all of them influencing you. That this basic question of why is the world the way it is? It has no simple kind of mythological answer as an origin story. Like, you know, in mythology, when they try to explain why the world is the way it is, they usually tell you just, you know, there is a single reason that explains why we drink tea or why we play football like this or whatever. And in history it's never like that. You have the combination of so many different things from all over the world. I didn't think like that when I was six. Oh, that's.

[James O'Brien]

That was my boy. Because that's what I was trying to. To think about. Because I know that it was. I think it was when you were around eight or nine, if I'm right in thinking that you were identified as gifted.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah.

[James O'Brien]

And you went to a. You moved to a different school. A school specifically for bright students, which was horrible. Why?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Absolutely horrible.

[James O'Brien]

As someone who this will never happen to. To be singled out. Lucky for you. Go on. Why was it horrible? Tell me why.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Because you had all these very smart kids picked from different schools, but then brought together, which was like a Darwinian nightmare.

[James O'Brien]

Right. How many students are we talking in this?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Like, 30 students.

[James O'Brien]

Okay.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

And, you know, you come from a place like in your old school. You are the smartest kid around. This is your identity. I'm the smart kid. And they picked you because you're the smart kid. And then they throw you in the arena with 29 other very smart kids. And suddenly you are not the smartest kid around. And the entire program is built around. These are gifted students, so we need to kind of nurture their intellect and so forth. So all the emphasis was again, on the intellect. Like, social skills were neglected, physical skills, sports were neglected. It's all about the intellect. And then you are in this double bind that your entire identity more and more is about the intellect. But you're surrounded by other very smart kids. So it's very hard to distinguish yourself intellectually. And then it becomes like this gladiatorial fight.

[James O'Brien]

I was going to say. Is it competitive?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

It was the most competitive place I've ever been in the world.

[James O'Brien]

Wow.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

One of the things I learned from there is the intellect is vastly overrated in human society. It has its usages, but if you ask me what is the most overrated thing about humans except for excitement? It's the intellectual.

[James O'Brien]

And what's the most underrated?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I think we should value a broad set of skills.

[James O'Brien]

Yes.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

That every time we kind of focus on just one thing, it's a mistake. Like, you have this classical. You know, it's a very simplistic way, but thinking about it, that you have the head and the heart and the hands, you need all three.

[James O'Brien]

Right.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

If you have a human with just a head, not a good idea. So you need to invest roughly the same, or at least in a balanced way, in. In your head, in your intellect, in your heart, in Your social and emotional skills and in your hands, in your physical and mortal skills. And this is especially true today, you know, with all the AI revolution and so forth, that people constantly ask, so what should we focus on? Don't focus on one thing. Like if couple of years ago they told people, okay, focus on learning how to code computers, because they will need a lot of coders. They will not need all these other professions, but coding. This is the future. Now AI codes better than people. In five or ten years, maybe. There is no job whatsoever for coders. And we don't know what will be the job market like in 20 years. So if you place all your bets on just one set of skills, this is, this is a bad idea.

[James O'Brien]

But yet school. So I have three young children. My children are 13, nine and six centuries ago or decades ago. Whenever it was there was a moment in time, wherever you were young, it was absolutely necessary that you were taught to churn butter. If you couldn't churn butter, you couldn't survive.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Right.

[James O'Brien]

And then there must have been an overlap where people were learning to churn butter. But butter was readily available in the shops. But it was like, no, no, no, but it's necessary that you learn this. And then as we evolved, we were like, well, you don't really need to learn that anymore because look, it happens here and you can buy it. And I feel that looking at this generation now, I look at some of what my children are learning and syllabuses and all these things, and I think, oh, I don't know if this is.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Ever going to be necessary because history is accelerating what you described earlier happening over generations, even centuries, it now happens within a few years.

[James O'Brien]

Yeah.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

It becomes more and more difficult to know what to teach young people because nobody has any clue how the world, and specifically the job market would look like in 2050.

[James O'Brien]

I wouldn't mind it at all if my kids teachers said, look, we don't know what to teach you, but we can teach you about compassion and empathy and love and understanding and a way of treating each other which feels invisible in their syllabus.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah, I think emotional intelligence and social intelligence are the safest bets. Yeah, they are going to need it even more and more because in a very excited world where everything is accelerating, the psychological pressure is increasing dramatically. So we will need the most kind of psychologically robust and flexible generation ever to deal with what's coming in the next 20 or 30 years. And we already have a mental health crisis, certainly after Covid and after all that. So we should definitely invest more in that, which is, of course, difficult. It's much easier to teach dates in history or equations in physics than teaching people emotional skill, how to deal with failure, or how to deal with other people.

[James O'Brien]

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[Yuval Noah Harari]

Charles Darwin. His work shaped not just my scientific views, but on a much deeper level. For instance, I'm gay. And I think that Charles Darwin, in many ways was a prophet of gay liberation. He basically tells people that anything that exists is in line with the laws of nature and that there are no purposes in biology, there are only causes. Like the idea, for instance, that sex exists for a particular purpose. And if you use it for any other purpose, this is a sin or this is a violation of the laws of nature. Marvin comes along and says, nonsense. Biology was not created by any creator God. With purposes. We know how things evolved. This is the theory of evolution. And in evolution, there are no purposes. Things evolve because of certain reasons, certain causes, but they never have a purpose. What animals do with their capabilities, with their bodies change all the time. Wings originally evolved as a way for lizards to warm themselves. Wings and feathers. I didn't know. You know, you're just lizard. It's cold in, I don't know, in Britain. And you warm yourself with your feathers. And then at a certain point, when something chases you and you run away, you leap and it gives you a little bit ahead of your. For the predator, your life is saved. And generation after generation, this ability develops until you fly. Now, you can't come to birds and tell them, no, no, no, no, no. This was not the purpose for which feathers and wings evolved. You should use this thing only in order to keep yourself warm. If you are using your feathers to fly, you are violating the laws of nature. This is nonsense. And it's the same with sex. Yes, sex originally evolved in the context of procreation, but over millions of years, evolutionary processes, not just among humans, also among many other mammals and animals. Animals used sex to, for instance, cement social relationships and create intimacy and create friendships and partnerships and relieve tensions. Most sex, for instance, among chimpanzees, is not for the creation of little apes. And it's the same with humans, it's.

[James O'Brien]

The same with us.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

And it's natural. Yeah, this link, which actually comes from Christian theology, the purpose of sex. God said that sex is only for procreation. So any sex which is not for procreation, this is a sin. And this is against nature. Darwin comes along and says, this is all nonsense.

[James O'Brien]

Well, I'm the creation of marriage. Something which I think I'm right. I think, you know, but I think I'm right, that really the creation of marriage was for the carving up of various land rights.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah.

[James O'Brien]

Who gets the land stem the desire of women. Here we are now. I'm very happily married. But it is a strange concept, if you think about it, that the idea of saying till death us do part.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

This originally was said in a time when people lived to be false.

[James O'Brien]

Yeah, exactly. This is the issue all about. Alan de Botton, actually, we spoke about the start of the show, has a wonderful, wonderful book about love where he says, all of our references to love are from 18th century poets who then informed the songs that we've listened to. It was, you know, how do I compare thee to a summer's day hurt? Diphtheria, dead at 39. Like the idea no one really wrote. He says it brilliantly in his book. He says, no one wrote a love song about someone who consistently leaves a wet towel on the floor. You know, and. And what is love and what is it? And that's so interesting that you look at Charles Darwin in that way. That's amazing.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Basically what Darwin is saying is that anything that exists is in line with the laws of nature. You know, all this talk about this is against nature. If it was against nature, it couldn't exist. You know, what is against nature? Like running faster than the speed of light, as far as we know, is against nature. Nobody ever made a law forbidding that people would run faster than the speed of light because you can't. It's not like you run faster than the speed of light and then some galactic cop shows up and gives you a ticket, hey, you violated the laws of nature. You should pay this fine. You just can't. Now, of course, it doesn't mean that anything that is natural is also good. People can say, you know, murder is natural. Yes, but you cannot ban something on the ground that it's not natural, because there are no such things. If you want to ban something, you need to come up with a better explanation. We ban murder not because it's against the laws of nature, but because it causes terrible suffering to people. You can't ban homosexuality because it's against the laws of nature. Find a better excuse. Now if you say, well, it causes suffering to people, no, it doesn't.

[James O'Brien]

But this, I think also comes back into the way that we are consuming so many things now. Media, the Idea that for so much online media, hate is the only viable business model. So that will generate more ad revenue and all these things. So the stoking of fire, that's Darwin again.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah, that's Darwin tells us, you know, this comes from evolution, that if you live in the African savannah hundreds of thousands of years ago, so you're constantly on the lookout, if you miss something benign, nothing bad happens to you, but if you miss something dangerous, like a predator or like somebody from a different tribe who is ambushing you and trying to kill you, then you're dead.

[James O'Brien]

Yeah.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

So we are primed to focus attention on dangerous and frightening things. And now this evolutionary mechanism, it's now being hijacked by social media algorithms against us. They constantly show us conspiracy theories and fake news about things that could destroy us, and we are hooked on it.

[James O'Brien]

I read something just last week where a climate activist was saying that the biggest challenge facing the message that trying to get across and trying to spread to as many people as they can is that people have no interest in reading good stories about climate change and evolution. So if there's a story about a small village in, I'm making this up in Norway or Sweden who have managed to harness natural energy and it is now powering a huge amount of this small town and it could be done on a larger scale and this could really combat CL climate change. It may be read by 300 people. And yet if there was a story about how the world is going to end in 20 years time and it's the world is going to be on fire and everything is awful, it will be read by 3 million people. And it's the idea that we don't even want to read good stories about these things. We are only attracted to bad stuff.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Again, because this is evolutionarily, it made sense because you need to pay attention to the dangers much more than to the good news. Again, if you have a tree full of ripe fruit and there is a snake there, you need to pay attention to the snake, not to all the ripe fruit. So if you have all these good stories and you have this one scary story, you will pay attention to the scary story.

[James O'Brien]

Let's move on to your book.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

So it's Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared diamond, which is a big history of humankind. And he explains tens of thousands of years of human history over entire continents from an ecological and biological perspective. This again really changed my understanding of history and of the world, but it was also the model for my writing. When I came to write Sapiens Then later my other books and my new book, Nexus. So I looked to Jared diamond to understand you can actually write such books. It's possible to write a book about thousands of years of human history because, you know, when I studied history in university, almost all the books were about very limited subjects, like about one person, one battle, just the changes in the family structure in late medieval England after the Black Death. An entire book which is very important because this is the basis for all our historical knowledge, these very in depth studies that somebody spent five years, 10 years in archives all over England just to research that. But what I was missing is then somebody taking all these pixels and putting them together to give us a big picture.

[James O'Brien]

Your new book, Nexus, which is to give it his full title, Nexus A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. You really have an amazing, I think your greatest skill. For me, for someone who I so much of what you say, I'm just trying to keep up, but you have an amazing way often of just describing things in a way which makes me, and I think many, many others go, oh, oh, I get it. And in the book, you compare humans creating artificial intelligence to the story of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, which many thanks to Mickey Mouse in the Fantasia. Can you explain what you meant by that and what those similarities are?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Well, in the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Mickey Mouse or the apprentice creates or enchants a broomstick to bring water, but then loses control over it and the enchanted broomstick floods the whole workshop. And, oh, this is of course a very old cautionary tale and we are now basically doing the same thing, but on a much, much bigger scale. We are not just enchanting broomsticks to bring water, but to fight wars, to manage our finance, to manage our relationships. It has enormous positive potential, like to provide people with the best healthcare in history, but also very, very dangerous potential if this thing gets out of our control. And the most important thing to understand is that AI is different from every previous technology in history because it's not a tool, it's an agent.

[James O'Brien]

Right?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

A tool is something that you, it's in your hands, you use it, you decide how to use it. An atom bomb is a tool. You need a human being to decide to bomb Hiroshima. An AI is not a tool, it's an agent. It makes decisions by itself. It can create new ideas by itself. It can, for instance, decide by itself. An autonomous weapon system can decide by itself to bomb a certain city, and it can even invent new kinds of bombs, new kinds of military strategies that Never occurred to any human. Now there is a lot of hype around AI so now everything is AI like whenever they try to sell you something, they say it's AI like this is an AI table, this is an AI glass. So not every automatic machine is an AI if you think for instance about a vending machine that sells you tea and coffee and stuff like that, this is not AI this is just an automatic machine. It doesn't decide anything by itself. It's pre programmed by humans to do everything that it's doing. Like you press the espresso button. So it's pre programmed to prepare you an espresso. In a certain way, a vending machine will become an AI if when you in the morning you come to the machine, the machine tells you, hello, James, I think you would like a double espresso with one sugar. Because I've analyzed your patterns from the previous year and I think I know what you like. This is an AI. It learned something by itself, it made decisions by itself. And it's really an AI if it then tells you, and actually I have something new to offer to you. I've just invented a new drink called BofI. I think it's better than coffee and I think you like it. This is an AI Think about a world which is increasingly populated again. It's not like the Hollywood scenario of one big evil computer trying to take over the world. It's millions and millions of agents everywhere. AI bureaucrats, AI soldiers, AI bankers who make decisions about us and invent new bombs, new medicines, new financial devices, new whatever. I hear people compare it to previous information technologies, like, I don't know, the printing press. It's not a printing press. A printing press only copied our ideas. It never created a single new line of text. AI today constantly create a lot of new texts. Many of them are not so good, but many of my texts are not good. Humans constantly create far from ideal texts, but there are many new texts in the world which did not come out of a human mind and a human imagination. And the same with images. The same is music. And really we haven't seen anything yet. I mean, the AI revolution is what, like 10 years old? It's nothing. It's the first baby steps again, if we go back to Darwin. So he describes a process of evolution that took billions of years to get, from the first microorganisms to reptiles and birds and dinosaurs and humans. We are now at the beginning of an parallel evolutionary process which is inorganic. And the AIs of today, they're like the Microorganisms, the very, very first, the amoebas of an evolutionary process that could continue for thousands, millions of years. And it's much faster. Inorganic entities like AI they never need to rest, they never need to sleep. They're on all the time, they move much faster.

[James O'Brien]

They don't have a bad day. They. Maybe they do, but they don't have a cold.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

No.

[James O'Brien]

They don't have a sore throat and don't feel in the mood for it today.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Not yet, at least. Yes, and they develop much, much faster. It could take perhaps just a few decades to get from the AI amoebas of today to the AI T. Rex in 2050 or 2100. Now, if ChatGPT is the amoeba, how do you think AIT Rex would look like?

[James O'Brien]

That's what I find terrifying is I try to explain to friends of mine that what we're dealing with now is sort of the early days of like aol. Very, very dial up when you'd get there. That's what we're dealing with now.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah.

[James O'Brien]

And look how fast it felt like. Like the Internet is now just in your pocket and you can't live without it. Let's move on to your place.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah.

[James O'Brien]

I'm keen to talk to you about this. Tell me the place that you've chosen to talk about today.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

So I'm actually. I actually mentioned it already in some way. It's the Dhamma Deepa Meditation Center. So I was doing my PhD in Oxford at the time in history and feeling very, very miserable again because I was stuck in my intellect all the time. And you know, all the books and all the articles I was reading, they just, none of them had any answers to the really big questions. And this friend nagged me for a year. Why not just go for a meditation retreat? And I thought it was. This was some kind of mystical mumbo jumbo. Yes. Not for me. And eventually what really drew me was the promise of silence. 10 days of complete silence. Okay, I'll go Right. And it really blew my mind as I was sitting there on the first day hearing this simple instruction. Just observe your breath coming in and out again. I was expecting some kind of, you know, this mystical theory about energies and whatever. Circle. Again, nothing. This was his most practical down to earth instruction. Just feel your breath going into the nostril and outward. And this was the entire 10 days. It was instructions like no mysticism whatsoever. And I was really amazed by how little I knew about myself and that I can't control like my attention even for A few seconds. And this was the beginning of a journey of exploration. Not with books and articles and intellectual pursuits, but with direct observation, which is again, goes back to Charles Darwin and to basic science. If you want to really understand something, books are nice. But direct observation is essential. And to directly observe my own mind and body at work for 10 days, this was really life changing experience.

[James O'Brien]

Is it just overwhelming being in your mind thinking about big issues, big subjects, facing humanity all the time? How overwhelming is that for you? And is that why you think you take such solace in these moments at the Dharma Deeper Meditation Center?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I think worries are like gas. They expand to fill whatever space you give them. So if you manage a small grocery store or a country, it's the same in a way. As much space as you give it in your mind, the worries will expand to fill it. One thing I learned from meeting all kinds of CEOs and politicians, they are ordinary people just like everybody else. You know, this is important to remember. For instance, I just watched this. There was this in the uk, this debate about whether the Prime Minister should go on vacation or not. Obviously should go on vacation. He's a human being. I mean, I don't want the country to be any country to be managed by people who never go on vacation, who don't have time to relax, to think. Part of the problem, and we go back to it again and again in this conversation, is we are basically carbon animals in a silicon world, organic beings. Whether you're Prime Minister or whether you're amoeba, you live by cycles, Day and night, winter and summer, excitement and rest. And now more and more of the systems in the world, they are not run by human beings. They are run by these inorganic silicon entities that never need to rest. And they increasingly expect us to adapt to them. Like the news cycle is 24 hours a day.

[James O'Brien]

It's madness. It's madness.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

The political cycle is all the time. Think even about Wall Street. Wall street was created by human beings. So Wall street goes on vacation. The market is open, I think, only Mondays to Fridays, like 8 or 8:30 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, 4 o' clock in the afternoon. Friday it shuts down until Monday morning. So if a new war breaks out in the Middle east at five minutes past four on Friday, too bad. The market will react only on Monday.

[James O'Brien]

Monday, you're absolutely right. I never crossed my mind.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

And this is a good thing. Yes, but this is changing. Because when the computers and the algorithms take over, they never need to rest. They don't need to go to sleep. They don't take vacations, they're on all the time. And when this happens, it forces us to be on all the time. And this is destructive. Like there was recently a research about comparing different professions in terms of mental health. And politicians came last. And this is very bad news. Yes. Because if the people that make the most important decisions, they suffer most from mental health issues, anxieties, depression, burnout. This is a very bad news.

[James O'Brien]

You're absolutely right. Because if, let's say tomorrow morning we both wake up to hear that the president of a country or the prime minister, their schedule is leaked.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah.

[James O'Brien]

And it said from 12 midday till 1240 they would meditate, there would be, there would be an outrage. He sits in silence for 40 minutes a day. And without any of us going, well, no, that would be an amazing thing.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah.

[James O'Brien]

You would argue it should be necessary.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

For all world leaders to take a break every now and then and think.

[James O'Brien]

About not really what they want to do and not make knee jerk reactions to things and not be burnt out and to have a presence of mind.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

And that's true of CEOs and that's true of everybody. And the problem is it's no longer a personal decision. It's really the system doesn't allow it. Again, we are these organic animals and we've created these digital silicon systems that now the question is who will adapt to whom? Basic Darwinian question. Who adapts? And increasingly it is we who have to adapt to them instead of these algorithms and computers adapting to us.

[James O'Brien]

Right.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

And this is very bad news for us.

[James O'Brien]

We're going to move on to your possession. I was intrigued as to what you might choose. I don't know how much significance you give to possessions in your life or not, but I'm, I think this is a very sweet way to end your selections. Tell us the possession that you've chosen for the show today.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

So it's my morning porridge pot. My usual breakfast is porridge, usually from oats, but sometimes from other, all kinds of semolina or whatever. And it's like my morning ritual. I, when I wake up at the first thing I do, I meditate for one hour and then I make breakfast. And for years and years I make.

[James O'Brien]

You wake up in the morning, usually.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Sometime between 6 and 7:30.

[James O'Brien]

Right.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

And then I'll go and take out my morning porridge pot and make porridge. And it's been with me for I think at least 10 years. And it's such an insignificant possession. But in a way I Interact with it every day.

[James O'Brien]

Right.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

It has no lid. It had a lid when it was born. It was born with a lid, of course, but then it got broken. Okay. And I could have switched to a different pot with a proper lid, but I didn't. I just kept this lidless porridge pot. And they use all kinds of other leads from other pots, and it works well. And it's just, you know, it's been there for so long. It really functions in a way as a kind of ritual. And rituals are important. They give you some kind of ground of stability in life.

[James O'Brien]

This is a pot you take on the road with you. I mean, no, I don't go to.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Extreme it at home.

[James O'Brien]

Oh, that's really ruined it for me.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

I really thought. No, no.

[James O'Brien]

I really thought that this, you know, you have this pot that's in your suitcase. No, no.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

This would be biz. Dara.

[James O'Brien]

Before we end the show, we've talked a lot about worries and the future of humanity and artificial intelligence. I'm wondering if could we end the show on a hopeful note?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Yeah.

[James O'Brien]

As when you think now about the future of humanity, what gives you hope?

[Yuval Noah Harari]

AI is nowhere near its full development, its full capacity. But the same is true of the human mind. We still understand very little of it. We still utilize just a small part of its capabilities. If for every minute and every dollar that we invest in developing AI, we will also invest a minute and a dollar in developing our own minds, we will be okay.

[James O'Brien]

Yuval. No, Harari. Your music is Save a Prayer by Duran Duran. Your memory is the sinking of the HMS Sheffield and the Falklands War in 1982. Your person is Charles Darwin. Your book is Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Your place is the Dharma Dipper Meditation center in the United Kingdom. And your possession is your morning porridge pot. Thank you so much for sharing this life of yours. What a joy.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Thank you.

[James O'Brien]

Up next is this.

[Kris Jenner]

I'm Kris Jenner. Welcome to this life of mine. My possession that I chose is my stuffed monkey named Annabelle. Could you imagine that I would have a stuffed monkey named Annabelle? Hi.

[Yuval Noah Harari]

Hi, James.

[James O'Brien]

Hi, Annabelle.

[Kris Jenner]

Sometimes when I get really nostalgic, I Google it and I cry through the whole thing. And I hear this blood curdling scream coming down the hall. And she's screaming, mom, this place, this is really old. And I go, kim, it's supposed to be old.

[James O'Brien]

This is it.

[Kris Jenner]

This is culture. This is beauty. This is Italy. This is vintage.

[James O'Brien]

If you haven't subscribed to Lemonade Premium yet, now is the perfect time. You can listen to this Life of mine completely ad free. Plus you'll unlock exclusive quick fire rounds of questions with all of of my guests. They're all in two minutes or less. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonadepremium.com to subscribe on any other app. Or you can listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. That's lemonade premium.com don't miss out.