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If Books Could Kill

Sapiens

If Books Could Kill

Michael Hobbes & Peter Shamshiri

Arts, Politics, Books, Society & Culture, News

4.68.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 98 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How do you tell the entire history of humanity in a single book? Whatever you do, do not open a browser window. Thanks to Dorsa Amir, Duncan Stibbard Hawkes and David Perry for help researching and fact-checking this episode! Where to find us: Our PatreonOur merch!Peter's newsletterPeter's other podcast, 5-4Mike's other podcast, Maintenance PhaseSources: A Response to Yuval HarariYuval Noah Harari’s History of Everyone, EverHow Humankind Conquered the WorldThe revolution that wasn...

Transcript

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0:00.0

Do I come across as 510?

0:39.2

I'm actually, I actually, I'm like shrinking prematurely because I have scoliosis. Your body's catching up to your personality. Well, now it doesn't matter because I'm just a married old man. It's like kind of irrelevant, you know? My whole, my whole aura is kind of gone anyway. I will say numerous people have clocked me as 5'6. without me having said that on the show. I think I have like very five six energy. I think five six is just a placeholder height because five seven is like, that's a short man. Five six is where it starts to get funny. I also, I just don't, sorry if this is homophobic. I don't think it's relevant for game men. If anything were, we're, like, I'm pretty discriminatory against people over, like, 6-1.

0:41.2

I don't need redwoods in my home.

0:43.7

Okay, let's do this, Peter.

0:44.2

What do you have?

0:46.9

I know it's going to be something about homo erectus.

0:50.1

We'll just get whatever you need to say, just fucking get it out now.

0:51.1

I think I've got something.

0:55.3

You're ready? Okay. Peter. Michael. What do you know about sapiens?

0:57.9

All I know is that I should have done that book.

1:00.2

That way I could have started this off with,

1:03.8

you bring the homo and I'll bring the sapiens. I'm going to saypians. The full title of the book is Sapiens, colon, a brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.

1:25.9

It was published originally in Hebrew in 2011 and then in English in

1:29.8

2014. It has sold, as usual, we don't know the numbers, but I've heard 12 million, I've

1:35.7

heard 40 million. It has sold numerous copies. Forty million cannot be right. I know that I feel

1:40.7

like people just like say shit. It was a huge hit among the Davos set.

1:45.2

Bill Gates wrote an entire blog post about how much he liked it.

1:49.4

Like, everyone should read this book.

1:50.8

Barack Obama compared reading the book to visiting the pyramids of Giza.

1:56.0

This book was also in Mark Zuckerberg's book club, which was not something I was aware of before.

2:00.7

But he did a very long, like one-on-one interview where he interviews Yuval Harari about the book. And it seems very clear that, like, Mark Zuckerberg found this very influential. This was right before they facilitated a genocide. This was mid, I mean, depending on the genocide, it's hard to say. I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific. But also, like, if you go to

2:19.8

Harare's Twitter feed, it's all like, I'm speaking today at the AI summit in Singapore. And he's

...

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