Hello, Chris Anderson here. You're about to hear a talk from the historian, futurist, and

best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari. In the talk, Yuval presents his idea that the fundamental

building block of our society is stories, our ability to believe in a shared fiction.

If the talk is compelling to you, I've got some good news. I got to sit down with Yuval for an extended conversation for my podcast, the TED interview.

In that conversation, he talks in depth about why we may have lost the biggest single story that connected us

and what the consequences of that might be.

That's the TED interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

70,000 years ago, our ancestors were insignificant animals. The most important thing to know

about prehistoric humans is that they were unimportant. Their impact on the world was not

much greater than that of jellyfish,

of fireflies, or woodpeckers.

Today, in contrast, we control this planet.

And the question is, how did we come from there to here?

How did we turn ourselves from insignificant apes,

minding their own business in a corner of Africa,

into the rulers of planet Earth?

Usually, we look for the difference

between us and all the other animals on the individual level.

We want to believe, I want to believe,

that there is something special about me,

about my body, about my brain

that makes me so superior to a dog or a pig or a chimpanzee.

...