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The Next Big Idea

SAPIENS: Yuval Noah Harari on Our Past, Present, and Future

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Education, Science

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2022

⏱️ 82 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Yuval Noah Harari is a historian and philosopher whose books — "Sapiens," "Homo Deus," "21 Lessons for the 21st Century," and most recently "Unstoppable Us: How Humans Took Over the World" — have sold more than 40 million copies. He joins Rufus for a wide-ranging conversation about storytelling, life in the Stone Age, the future of democracy, and the threat of AI. --- If you enjoy this episode, check out our interviews with David Wengrow, Jennifer Raff, Christopher Ryan, Ray Dalio, and Jane McGonigal. You can listen to them ad-free by downloading The Next Big Idea app.

Transcript

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0:00.0

LinkedIn presents.

0:06.0

I'm Rufus Griscom and this is the next big idea.

0:10.0

Today, you've all known a Harari on our past, our present, and our future.

0:30.0

I want to tell you a story.

0:36.0

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a shy boy.

0:42.0

He was shy but very curious.

0:44.0

He built a map of Europe out of wood blocks and plastic tiles.

0:48.0

He said to himself, when I grow up, I will never get bogged down in the mundane troubles of daily life.

0:54.0

I'll do my best to understand the big picture.

0:58.0

So the shy boy became a college professor.

1:01.0

And one day, his boss said, because you're so interested in understanding the big picture,

1:06.0

we want you to teach a class called an introduction to the history of the world.

1:11.0

This made the shy professor nervous.

1:14.0

What if he got in front of the class and forgot what to say?

1:18.0

The shy professor hatched a plan.

1:20.0

He decided to write down his lectures as scripts that he could read aloud to his students.

1:25.0

That way, he would always know what to say.

1:29.0

About 14 billion years ago, he wrote,

1:32.0

matter, energy, time, and space,

1:35.0

came into being in what is known as the Big Bang.

1:38.0

He wrote about the three revolutions that defined our species,

1:41.0

cognitive, agricultural, and scientific.

...

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