Hi everyone, welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. I'm Sonal. And we're very honored today to have as our special guest, Yuval Harari, who teaches at the Department of History and the University of Jerusalem and specializes in macro history and the relationship between history and biology. He's the author of Sapiens, which is a mind-bogglingly good book and now has a new book just out. Homo Dius. Did I pronounce that

properly? I use the Latin pronunciation with Homo Deus. But you can say homo dues. I say the really

bad, like non-accent deus. That by the way was Kyle's voice, who's also joining us on

this podcast.

He's on the deal and investing team and covers a lot of the technology like drones, AI,

and a bunch of other stuff.

So just to get things started, we talk a lot about innovation and technology.

And I've always wondered what's the simplest definition of technology and innovation. And reading your book, Sapiens in particular, and then Homo Deus,

the thing that really struck me is that

technology is the greatest accelerator humankind. In fact, our evolution of all the species on Earth has ever seen because it allowed us to essentially bypass evolutionary adaptations where we could become seafarers without having to grow gills like a fish, for example. And so that is an incredibly powerful idea, but that's non-directional.

And given that your new book and your work essentially, the first phase was talking about

its organic history of our species.

And your new book is shifting to a more inorganic version.

I'd like to hear what drove that shift.

Well, I think that so far for thousands of years, humans have been focusing on changing the world outside us.

And now we are shifting our focus to changing the world inside us.

We have learned how to control forests and rivers and other animals and whatever, but we had very little control

over what's happening inside us, over the body, over the brain, over the mind. We could

stop the course of a river, but we could not stop the body from getting old. If a mosquito

annoyed us, we could kill the mosquito. But if a thought annoys us, we don't know what to do about it.

Now we are turning our innovative gaze inwards.

I think the main products of the 21st century will be bodies and brains and minds.

...