38. Dr. Yuval Noah Harari — 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.4 • 921 Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2018
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this dialogue with one of the most interesting minds of our time, the Hebrew University historian and best-selling author (Sapiens, Homo Deus), Dr. Yuval Noah Harari, he and Dr. Shermer discuss the central ideas of his new book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, an exploration of: history, work, liberty, equality, community, civilization, nationalism, religion, immigration, terrorism, war, humility, God, secularism, ignorance, justice, post-truth, science fiction, education, meaning, and meditation. Dr. Harari and Dr. Shermer cover as many of these topics as reasonable in this wide-ranging conversation, focusing especially on nationalism, tribalism, God and religion, free will and determinism, AI algorithms and human volition, the future of liberal democracy, colonizing Mars, and much more.
Dr. Yuval Noah Harari has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Oxford, and now lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in world history. His two books, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, have become global best\xadsellers, with more than twelve million copies sold and translations in more than forty-five languages.
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This remote Science Salon was recorded on August 19, 2018.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is your host, Michael Sherman, and you're listening to Science Salon, a series of conversations |
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| 0:41.8 | Congratulations on your third book, 21 lessons for the 21st century, a sequel as it were in your |
| 0:47.7 | trilogy maybe of Sapiens and Homo deus. |
| 0:51.0 | I read both of those actually I listen to both of them on audio |
| 0:54.2 | the unabridged audio recordings which is a really a great way to consume |
| 0:58.6 | books when you're living in Southern California driving around a lot. |
| 1:03.0 | I do the same. |
| 1:05.0 | Most of the books I read these days, I actually listen to them. |
| 1:09.0 | Yeah, it's good and podcasts. |
| 1:11.0 | I don't know if you've discovered teaching company courses but they're also |
| 1:15.1 | really valuable for a way of consuming time and content. So do you have a hard out here today or how much time do you have? |
| 1:24.0 | I'll be in the US for about two weeks. |
| 1:28.0 | Oh no, I mean just right now in our conversation. |
| 1:30.0 | Oh, right now. |
| 1:32.0 | I was told we have an hour or so. Yep, that sounds fine. Yeah, that sounds good. I think as an entry into your book, I want to bring up the issue of CP Snow's famous essay about the two cultures now over half a century ago, he described this problem of the sciences and the humanities with this gaping chasm between them and it seems like they weren't |
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