Hi there, Rory here. You're about to listen to the second episode in our two-part series

with Yuval Noah Harari. If you haven't heard the first episode where we talk to Yuval about

the current situation in Israel, just scroll down on your podcast feed and listen to it now.

Welcome to the rest of this politics leading with me, Rory Stewart.

And me, Aleister Campbell.

And very, very rarely, I'm in the privileged position of having a friend on the show,

whereas usually it's Aleister. Usually I'm being teased by Aleister for

claiming to have any of my friends, because they're usually his friends. So I'm very,

very grateful that you're here. And so just to explain for people listening,

we have Yuval Noah Harari with us. And Yuval is 47 years old, right?

Yes.

And is many, many, many things, but I'm going to try to provide a rough, one-minute summary of your

life. And then I'd love you to come back and tell me what I've missed and how I've misrepresented you.

So my sense of Yuval was he was born in Israel, was a bright, precocious little boy.

He studied medieval history, both in Israel and did a doctorate at Oxford University.

He then returned to become an academic and teach. And in the process of teaching,

began teaching a general course to undergraduates, essentially on the entire history of the world.

I'm out of his course on the history of the world. He produced his first book called Sapiens.

And Sapiens became an extraordinary best Saturday. Yuval will have better figures than me,

well over 10 million copies sold worldwide, was followed up by a second book called Homo Deus,

which looked at the future of humanity, then a book on lessons for the 21st century.

And I've never really managed to pin Yuval down enough on his work on medieval warfare because

...