"If You Want To SUCCEED In Life, DEVELOP THESE SKILLS!" Yuval Noah Harari & Jay Shetty

Yuval Noah Harari 0:00 Like in that moment in the supermarket that I stand and I see these two brands, and how to choose, I choose this brand. The mystery of the universe. It isn't the mystery of the universe. We know today a lot about what's really happening in your brain, in your mind, when you make this choice, and it's increasingly becoming easier and easier to manipulate these choices.

Jay Shetty 0:21 [upbeat music] Thank you everyone for coming back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the whole world. Thank you for making us the number one podcast in the world. It means so much to me. I'm so grateful for all your love, all your engagement, and most importantly, for choosing education, for choosing enlightenment, for choosing empowerment over everything else in the world. You're taking out your time right now, whether you're walking your dog, you're at the gym, you're commuting to and from work. Thank you for taking this time to invest in yourself. Now, today's guest is someone that I've been looking forward to for such a long time, so I'm so happy, I'm so excited that he's finally here. His name is Yuval Harari. You've probably seen it in every bookstore in the world. If you travel at all or if you ever walk into a shop, you will have seen it. His amazing international bestselling books, Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. He's also a two-time winner of the Polonsky Prize, which he won in 2009 and 2012 for his originality and creativity. And today, we get to dive into his incredible mind and find all of these insights that he shared. Yuval, thank you so much for being here today.

Yuval Noah Harari 1:38 Yeah, it's great to be here. I'm grateful that, uh, that you're allowing the opportunity.

Jay Shetty 1:42 No, I'm, I'm so excited. I genuinely was so looking forward to this discussion because the... It's not only about the success of your books. What you've been speaking about in your books have dipped into so many different parts of mainstream culture.

Yuval Noah Harari 1:58 Mm.

Jay Shetty 1:58 And I love that how a thinker like you has been able to do that in today's incredible world. So congratulations, uh, for everything that you've done, and I'm hoping this is the start of a new relationship for us as well.

Yuval Noah Harari 2:08 Yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 2:09 [laughs] But I'm gonna get straight into it.

Yuval Noah Harari 2:11 Okay.

Jay Shetty 2:11 And I wanna start off talking a bit about happiness, because happiness is a big theme for my audience. It's something that my audience cares a lot about. And I picked out something that I wanted to read that you say in your book, and you say, one of the chapters in your 21 Lessons for 21st Century is, "Happiness equals reality minus expectations." Right? "Happiness equals reality minus expectations." And I wanna dive into that, because I wanna ask you, how should we set expectations? We all have expectations. I have expectations. Doing this podcast, I have expectations. When I'm thinking about, when you think about anyone investing in their job, they have expectations. When someone starts a relationship, they have expectations. What is your take on how we should form, set, and create our expectations for happiness?

Yuval Noah Harari 3:00 Oof. [laughs] That's a big one to start with.

Jay Shetty 3:02 Yeah, definitely.

Yuval Noah Harari 3:03 Um, I think that we need to, uh, we need to relax control a bit. I mean, not to s- I mean, not to say to ourself, "These should be my expectations." The first step is actually to familiarize yourself with what you already expect and with the internal processes that have generated these expectations. Because usually we know almost, most of us know extremely little about w- really what's going on inside us and about what forms our opinions, our desires, our expectations. There is a general tendency to identify with whatever pops up in your mind, and we are encouraged a lot by our culture and by the key ideologies of the age, whether it's liberal democracy, whether it's capitalism, consumerism, to just identify with our inner voice, with our w- um, you know, all these slogans that, "Just, just do what feels good. Just connect to your heart," and all these things. And people mistake it to mean just identify, just look inside you, and the first thing that comes up, identify with that. And my, my, my advice would be to really take the time to explore what is happening inside you and where do all these things really come from. So much of our expectations and our desires, they don't reflect any inner true self. They reflect, um, a million manipulations done on us either by external forces or even by internal forces that we know so little about. So before we reach the point when, like, we, we write ourself the list of items, "This is my agenda for life. This is my expectation from life," take a, take time, a long time, to first of all familiarize with yourself with what is actually happening inside.

Jay Shetty 5:07 Yeah, absolutely. I, I think you're spot on. I completely agree with you. I was sharing with you earlier that I was training to become an investment banker and work in business growing up, and then I got to a point where I looked at that and I was like, "Is that even me?" Like, "Why do I even want to do that?" And I realized because in the part of society that I grew up in, that was the most glorified role.

Yuval Noah Harari 5:28 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 5:29 So the people that I was surrounded by had made that seem as the peak role or job that someone in our society could attain.

Yuval Noah Harari 5:36 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 5:36 And so actually it wasn't my goal or dream, it was just the dreams and goals of people around me.

Yuval Noah Harari 5:41 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 5:41 Is that what you're referring to about how we, there are a million ways in which we're forming our dreams and goals?

Yuval Noah Harari 5:46 Yeah, that's part of it.

Jay Shetty 5:47 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 5:48 And you know, th- that's, that's a very old story. Throughout human history, you're always influenced by your friends, your family, the culture around, and much of what people took to be their innermost desires and expectations, it's ac- it actually came from outside.

Jay Shetty 6:04 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 6:04 Uh,

Yuval Noah Harari 6:04 today it's even more extreme because, uh, we are increasingly, uh, acquiring technologies that enable external agents, whether corporations or governments or whatnot, to really hack the, the human mind and hack the human brain and manipulate us in ways which were never possible before.

Jay Shetty 6:25 Hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 6:26 Which makes, uh, it's even more urgent than ever to really get to know yourself. Um, you know, the, the, the advice know yourself, it's the oldest advice in the book.

Jay Shetty 6:36 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 6:37 You go back thousands of years, you meet Socrates or Buddha or Confucius, this is what they'll tell you. Get to know yourself. It's the most important thing in life. And but there is something new today. What's new today is that for the first time in history, you have real competition. If in the time of Buddha you didn't make the effort to know yourself, "Nah, I'm too busy," uh, so you missed enlightenment. But you didn't, you, you, you didn't face any competition out there because the kings and the aristocracy and the merchants in the time of Buddha, they couldn't get in your head. But today you have real competition. You may not have the time to get to know yourself because you're too busy. I'm too busy with the family, with the, the work, with w- whatever. But there are people who have the time and the money to get to know you. That's their business, to really get to know you. Their entire business model is based on that, or their entire political model is based on that. And, and so you now really have competition from these corporations and governments. And it's, it's a very simple equation or a very simple, uh, uh, idea. If they get to know you a little better than you know yourself, game over. They can manipulate and control you, and you will not even realize it because the easiest people to manipulate are the people who believe in free will, the people who believe that their thoughts and desires and expectations, they reflect some authentic inner self. And they don't question is, is this really the case?

Jay Shetty 8:16 Right, right, right. So how much does that person have free will? How much do you think a person does have free will?

Yuval Noah Harari 8:23 Uh, I would say as a first approximation, extremely little.

Jay Shetty 8:27 Okay.

Yuval Noah Harari 8:27 I mean, I don't want to delve too deeply into the argument about the theoretical possibility of free will. Uh, if you w- if you want, w- we can go there.

Jay Shetty 8:36 I wanna go wherever you wanna go.

Yuval Noah Harari 8:37 I mean, but, uh, but, uh, as a first approximation, I would say that even if you believe that free will is possible theoretically in some situations, you should at least acknowledge that 99% of decisions don't reflect your free will. They reflect something else. So I don't mind even conceding the philosophical point, let's say that there is free will, but free will is not something you have. S- free will is something you need to struggle for. And the, the, the, the wrong idea about free will is that I have free will. Any thought that pops in my mind, any desire that I have, this is my free will. So it is sacred, and it represents something, uh, uh, sublime. And this is nonsense. The, that is, this is not the case. Maybe if you work really very hard, you would reach a point when at least some of the decisions in your life will reflect freedom. But it's not something you can just take for granted. Now, there are a lot of forces in the world which encourage us to have this simplistic idea that anything that pops in the mind is the reflection of my free will. It comes, uh, most notably in the economic sphere from the whole consumerist and capitalist system, which it's built on the premise that the customer is always right. I mean, you know, when you talk to the big corporations or to some business magnates and you ask them about their practices and, and about problematic things they do, they, their final line of defense is always, "The customer is always right."

Jay Shetty 10:20 Hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 10:21 "Yes, we are doing these things, but the customers are buying it, and the customers are the number one authority. This is their free will. If the customers want it, who are we or who is you to tell the customers that they are wrong? Are you some big brother that knows better than them?" So this is like the final line of defense, the customer is always right. And this is based, in a way, on the idea of free will, that the will of the customer represents this sublime, I don't know, force that manifests itself through your desires. Like, I want this brand of cornflakes. Ah, amazing. That's human free will in action. And it's the, the, the mystery of the universe manifests itself, like in that moment in the supermarket that I stand and I see these two brands and how to choose. I choose this brand. The mystery of the universe. It isn't the mystery of the universe. We know today a lot about what's really happening in your brain, in your mind when you make this choice, and it's increasingly becoming easier and easier to manipulate these choices.

Jay Shetty 11:30 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 11:30 And again, the easiest people to manipulate are those who think that when they choose this brand in the supermarket, they are exercising their free will.

Jay Shetty 11:39 Hmm. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's interesting you say that. Before I go into the question, I'm taking off a tangent, was how some of the biggest creators and inventors in the world have not thought customer first. So when you think of people like Steve Jobs or even Henry Ford-

Yuval Noah Harari 11:53 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 11:54 ... I think it was Henry Ford who said that, "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Yuval Noah Harari 11:58 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 11:59 Right? And, and so he said, "I didn't ask people what they wanted." And Steve Jobs would often say that too as well, that you are creating because the audience doesn't actually know what they want.

Yuval Noah Harari 12:07 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 12:08 But so some of the most powerful inventors have actually gone the opposite way. But in regards to that point that you're making there at the end, then what does one do? And I agree with you. You're saying that the person who becomes the most fooled or deluded is the one who believes that they have the most choice and free will.

Yuval Noah Harari 12:23 Yes.

Jay Shetty 12:23 So what do we do? What does an individual do in that scenario, in this crazy information-filled world where... I was saying that the other day that, you know, before we were targeted by billboards-

Yuval Noah Harari 12:34 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 12:34 ... which was only if you drove, and then it was the television-

Yuval Noah Harari 12:37 Mm

Jay Shetty 12:37 ... which, again, you had to own one, and you only spent a few hours a day. And then it was the internet-

Yuval Noah Harari 12:44 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 12:44 ... which you still needed a computer and a dial-up connection, and now it's all the time, right?

Yuval Noah Harari 12:48 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 12:48 So what does one do when they're being bombarded with all of that information?

Yuval Noah Harari 12:53 Oh, take time off is [laughs] the, the, the, the, like, the, the best advice I, I can give, you know, that the first... Take time off.

Jay Shetty 13:00 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 13:00 It's extremely important during the day, during the month, during the year. Um, I don't believe in, in, in... I mean, I, I don't think we can or should completely disconnect.

Jay Shetty 13:12 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 13:12 I mean, we are now having this conversation. We hope that millions of people will see it. I have nothing against, you know, social media or the internet. They have done wonderful things for humankind. I don't know, I met my husband online in a dating, uh, uh, site. I-

Jay Shetty 13:26 That's awesome.

Yuval Noah Harari 13:26 So, yeah. So I, I've n- some of my best friends are applications. So [laughs]

Jay Shetty 13:31 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 13:31 I, I have nothing, like, in- inherently against them, but not all the time.

Jay Shetty 13:36 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 13:36 The, the first thing is just take time off.

Jay Shetty 13:39 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 13:39 Then you ask yourself, "What will I do in this time off?" So I would say different things probably work, work best for different people. Like, I meditate. I do Vipassana meditation. Other people, they do different kinds of meditations. Some people find that art is much more ef- is a much more effective way for them to explore their inner reality. For some people, it could be sports or going hiking in nature. Many things. But I, I would say two things in, in general about all these things. Whatever works for you, do it quickly-

Jay Shetty 14:12 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 14:12 ... because you don't have much time. I mean, there is this race going on. As we now talk, there are these corporations and governments that are busy trying to hack you.

Jay Shetty 14:24 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 14:24 And you need to stay a few steps ahead of them.

Jay Shetty 14:27 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 14:28 So that's one thing, which was never the case before, or was, was less the case-

Jay Shetty 14:32 Less the case

Yuval Noah Harari 14:32 ... before. And the other thing is it won't be so much fun.

Jay Shetty 14:38 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 14:39 I mean, some people have this idea that a, a journey of inner exploration is, is a fun journey. "Oh, I'll discover all these amazing things about myself and what a good person I am, and I will have these wonderful experiences of bliss and peacefulness and oneness with the universe." And sometimes it happens. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 14:58 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 14:59 I don't say it never happens. But a lot of that is, uh, is painful experiences, it's boring experiences. Like, you have, like, to, to go through a desert of boredom. And one of the, I think, biggest obstacles for people today, in, in, in the world of the 21st century... I don't know how it was, you know, 2,000 years ago. But today, I would say that bor- that, the inability to deal with boredom is one of our greatest weaknesses.

Jay Shetty 15:29 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 15:30 And in almost any meaningful journey, you have to go through boredom.

Jay Shetty 15:36 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 15:36 Uh, whether it's you're traveling to another country and you have to spend some time in the airport, or whether it's you're having a conversation with somebody. I, I found from my experience that if you're in a conversation that doesn't allow space for boredom, it will never reach anywhere.

Jay Shetty 15:55 Interesting.

Yuval Noah Harari 15:56 Like, if you meet... I, I now travel around the world, and I meet these very, uh, uh, uh, powerful and famous and influential people, and the problem with powerful and famous and influential people, they don't have time. So if you get an hour with this person, then every minute should count.

Jay Shetty 16:14 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 16:15 And boredom is, is the scariest thing because if the conversation becomes boring, it's over.

Jay Shetty 16:21 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 16:21 "I don't have time for this nonsense. I have to run this company. I have to run this country. I c- boredom, you go bore somebody else with, w- w- with that."

Jay Shetty 16:29 [laughs] So true.

Yuval Noah Harari 16:30 And-

Jay Shetty 16:30 I love this

Yuval Noah Harari 16:30 ... and then what you find is that you're forced all the time to all the time think, "What's the most interesting and important thing I can say?"

Jay Shetty 16:38 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 16:38 And then you reach... you usually reach out for the things you've already said a million times before, and you know they're effective. And both of you find yourself just exch- ex- exchanging these slogans.

Jay Shetty 16:52 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 16:53 And you never reach anywhere new. And to reach someplace new in a conversation, like, you need to go somewhere and, and, and nobody really knows what they're talking about, and you're wandering around, and you realize, oh, it's not going anywhere, and you come back, and you wasted 20 minutes on, on something which was, in the end, it, it was nothing. And you, you can't do it when you meet the president or whatever. But the most interesting conversations I had in life, it was, like, this long conversation when much of it was, was quite boring.

Jay Shetty 17:23 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 17:24 So, and it's the same when you go to explore yourself. Like, I don't know, i- i- and not necessarily in, in meditation even. Like, you, you want to... You, you go to... You use sport. So, okay, you say, "I'll go on a hike," and you start going, and after three hours you feel thirsty, and it's hot, and it's inconvenient, and there is nothing to see, and you say, "Oh, forget that. I'll go back and watch some, some, some movies." And you'll never reach the interesting parts of the journey, either the geographical journey or the kind of inner journey of exploration, if you don't allow yourself, if you don't have the, the discipline-

Jay Shetty 18:02 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 18:03 ... to go through these boring and sometimes painful and sometimes scary bits.

Jay Shetty 18:09 I love that. I am so glad you brought that up. I think it's such a brilliant point. I think you're so right because as soon as you put the pressure of performance on, whether that's the pressure of performance through time, like when we know we have a time limit, like you were saying when you're meeting influential people, and you've got, like, 30 minutes to say something profound-

Yuval Noah Harari 18:30 Yes

Jay Shetty 18:30 ... or you've got, like, 40 minutes to prove that you have more knowledge or wisdom or whatever it is.

Yuval Noah Harari 18:34 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 18:35 And so sometimes time's the pressure. Sometimes the pressure is not time, but the pressure is the people at the table.

Yuval Noah Harari 18:40 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 18:40 It's like you know that everyone's powerful at the table, and so the pressure is, "Oh, my God, I know he's smart and she's smart, so what do I have to say?" And, and I think you're spot on that in those times, our lateral brain completely switches off, the logical brain switches on-

Yuval Noah Harari 18:54 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 18:54 ... and we just say stuff we already know.

Yuval Noah Harari 18:56 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 18:56 And, and y- you don't have moments of brilliance, and you don't have a moment that, that sparks unique thought.

Yuval Noah Harari 19:02 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 19:02 You don't get into flow state, for example.

Yuval Noah Harari 19:04 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 19:04 You can't, you can't generate anything new. I think that's so true, and I have to say in my training as a monk, which I loved and was an incredible part of my life, a lot of it was just discipline and doing the same thing over and over and over again in the beginning. And what you said, walking across that desert of boredom to then find a breakthrough.

Yuval Noah Harari 19:26 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 19:26 And it's almost just like that painful 99% to experience that 1% of bliss.

Yuval Noah Harari 19:31 Mm-hmm. Yeah, like, i- in the movie, it always gets condensed-

Jay Shetty 19:34 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 19:34 ... into this fast track one minute or two minutes. Like, I don't know, you have Yoda training Luke Skywalker. So in the movie, it just got condensed into these two minutes. Y- you get the point. Let's move on. Nothing here. And it was probably very... I don't know. It's, it's fiction, of course. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 19:49 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 19:50 But probably v- a lot of it was just, you know, this tedious thing-

Jay Shetty 19:55 Yeah

Yuval Noah Harari 19:55 ... that you have to go through, through with.

Jay Shetty 19:57 Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Are you bored right now?

Yuval Noah Harari 19:59 Uh, right now, no.

Jay Shetty 20:00 No?

Yuval Noah Harari 20:00 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 20:01 All right. Well, we've gotta get bored for a bit, guys.

Yuval Noah Harari 20:03 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 20:03 We've gotta get bored for a bit so that you, well, you know, get some space. No, I, I think that's a great point. I think becoming okay with boredom-

Yuval Noah Harari 20:10 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 20:11 ... is such a useful skill, and I think you're spot on that in the journey of self-exploration, or any journey for that matter-

Yuval Noah Harari 20:17 No, I, I, I just came now from Silicon Valley, and what we, what we just said is the greatest heresy possible in California in 2019. In LA in 2019, in San Francisco in 2019, to say, "Let's just give some space to boredom"-

Jay Shetty 20:32 Yeah

Yuval Noah Harari 20:32 ... there is nothing more radical and [laughs]

Jay Shetty 20:35 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 20:35 ... and subser- subversive than... I, I just, I, I just, uh, uh, saw that, uh, Reed Hastings some- some time ago said that Netflix biggest enemy, like, w- uh, they, they, th- he was asked who is the biggest competitor of Netflix, and the answer was sleep.

Jay Shetty 20:50 Mm. So true.

Yuval Noah Harari 20:51 It's not Hulu. It's not any of the other-

Jay Shetty 20:54 Other than, yeah

Yuval Noah Harari 20:54 ... it's sleep.

Jay Shetty 20:55 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 20:55 That's our biggest competitor. So, you know, boredom, if people could get along with boredom, you know, entire industries will crash.

Jay Shetty 21:03 Would just collapse.

Yuval Noah Harari 21:04 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 21:04 Yeah. No, it's so true. And, and the instant gratification industry, the instant excitement industry-

Yuval Noah Harari 21:10 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 21:10 ... is, is thriving off that. We know that. That's obvious. There's a, a stat that-

Yuval Noah Harari 21:13 Let, let, let's start here the, the boring movement.

Jay Shetty 21:16 Yeah, let's start the boring movement here.

Yuval Noah Harari 21:17 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 21:17 I love it. This is the boring podcast. We're gonna call it that. I love it. No, and it's, and it's true. I read a study that 80% of us pull out our phone in a crowd just to not feel lonely.

Yuval Noah Harari 21:29 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 21:30 Right? Like, not even to do anything. Just when we're walking through a crowd, we pull out our phone-

Yuval Noah Harari 21:34 Mm

Jay Shetty 21:34 ... just so that we feel like we're doing something, and that pressure of always wanting to do something, just so high. No, I love that. I think that's such great advice. Find time this weekend to be bored.

Yuval Noah Harari 21:44 Mm.

Jay Shetty 21:44 Right? Be okay with boredom.

Jay Shetty 21:45 Do you have a, have you... And, and this, I don't expect you to have an answer. I'm just exploring it because-

Yuval Noah Harari 21:49 Mm

Jay Shetty 21:49 ... I, I love the point you brought up. Do you have any ways of becoming more okay with boredom or letting there be moments in a conversation? Like, I'm sure when you went out on your first date with your-

Yuval Noah Harari 21:59 Mm

Jay Shetty 22:00 ... husband when you met through online dating, I mean, was there any boredom there, or were you, like, having to say stuff? Was it, did you allow space for boredom? Because there's-

Yuval Noah Harari 22:07 Uh

Jay Shetty 22:07 ... so much pressure when you date someone, right?

Yuval Noah Harari 22:09 I, I don't remember that it was boring.

Jay Shetty 22:11 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 22:12 [laughs] But yeah, th- there, there is definitely a lot of pressure in, in, in those situations. Um-

Jay Shetty 22:18 To be charismatic, to be, you know, to be attractive, to, to-

Yuval Noah Harari 22:21 Yeah, not, not, not to bore the other person.

Jay Shetty 22:23 Exactly.

Yuval Noah Harari 22:23 It's the worst thing you can do. He was so boring. I mean-

Jay Shetty 22:25 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 22:26 ... w- uh, w- uh, that's, um, it's, it's difficult. Again, I mean, it, uh, I don't want to give, like, a single recipe.

Jay Shetty 22:33 No, no, no.

Yuval Noah Harari 22:34 I mean-

Jay Shetty 22:34 Yeah, no, rather

Yuval Noah Harari 22:35 ... I, I do it, you know, with my meditation practice.

Jay Shetty 22:37 Sure.

Yuval Noah Harari 22:37 So you really familiarize... I mean, boredom is, you know, it's an abstract idea. What, what does it actually mean?

Jay Shetty 22:42 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 22:43 What it actually means is our, our particular sensations in the body.

Jay Shetty 22:47 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 22:47 It's not an abstract. And when you actually observe, I mean, you see that they are extremely unpleasant. Like, when you're bored-

Jay Shetty 22:56 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 22:56 ... we tend to think about boredom as something like nothing happens.

Jay Shetty 22:59 Mm. Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 23:00 But actually, a lot of things are happening. There is a lot... It's not, you know, it's not like severe pain.

Jay Shetty 23:07 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 23:07 It's actually a m- a, a more subtle kind of pain in, throughout your body, which many people find far more intolerable-

Jay Shetty 23:17 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 23:17 ... than the heroic, severe pain-

Jay Shetty 23:20 Mm-hmm

Yuval Noah Harari 23:21 ... that, you know, again, I, I'll take as an example just for meditation because, because I, I'm more familiar with it, but I know that a lot of people when they sit for meditation and there is a strong pain, they, it's quite easy for them to deal with it. They're actually even enjoying it in a way because they feel, "Eh, I'm doing something very important now. I'm getting over this pain. No pain, no gain. Wonderful. Pain is good." And then when boredom comes, it immediately breaks them. They can't deal with it because it's, it's, again, it, it's a very unpleasant feeling in the body. It's not abstract. But part of it, you don't feel heroic. You don't feel you're doing something important. You feel that you're wasting your time, that you're so little and insignificant. And, and especially people who, say, come to whatever practice it is- Uh, again, it, it could e- even be art. Like, you, you're learning to paint. And, ah, now I'm Picasso. I'm doing this great work of art, and I'm having this, this artistic crisis. That's wonderful. But if, if you're just bored, you don't know how to deal with it. It's, for most people, I think it's, it's actually diff- more difficult-

Jay Shetty 24:29 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 24:29 ... to deal with this subtle pain-

Jay Shetty 24:32 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 24:32 ... of boredom than with the heroic pain of some great crisis.

Jay Shetty 24:36 Absolutely. I think you're spot on. That's, yeah, for me, bor- for me, when I'm bored, I find a, I use it as space to breathe properly. That's, that's kind of what I do.

Yuval Noah Harari 24:45 Mm.

Jay Shetty 24:45 When I'm just in a gap or I'm in a moment where I'm like, "Ugh, a bit bored right now," you know? And, and it's so easy to do the habit of just picking up my phone, and, and I know that, and I've noticed myself do that over and over again, that whenever I'm bored or there's a gap-

Yuval Noah Harari 25:01 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 25:01 ... I just take out my phone without any purpose, without any intention, without any goal. And so for me, I've stopped doing that and using that as a moment to breathe.

Yuval Noah Harari 25:08 There is actually something, when you pick up the phone, what actually happens in, in your body is that there is a little excitement. "Ah, maybe I get some, th- some email. Maybe I got some like to my Facebook," whatever. And so the moment you pick up the phone, there is a rush, a s- small rush of excitement in the body. And actually, this is what makes it so addictive.

Jay Shetty 25:30 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 25:31 People are addicted not actually to the phone. People are addicted to the small rushes of excitement that they think they can get dozens of times a day every time they pick up the phone to see what, what's there.

Jay Shetty 25:44 Yeah. And those pleasure centers keep decreasing.

Yuval Noah Harari 25:46 Yeah, so we have to do it again and again. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 25:48 We have to do it again and again and again.

Yuval Noah Harari 25:49 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 25:49 We have to accelerate to keep up-

Yuval Noah Harari 25:50 Yeah

Jay Shetty 25:50 ... because that pleasure center's depleting every time. And I think that's what we don't realize, is that the more you do it-

Yuval Noah Harari 25:55 Mm

Jay Shetty 25:55 ... the harder it becomes to experience that feeling again-

Yuval Noah Harari 25:58 Yeah

Jay Shetty 25:58 ... because you've just dropped it lower and lower and lower. Amazing. Okay. We started the Boredom Movement-

Yuval Noah Harari 26:02 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 26:03 ... today, on this day, 26th April, 2019. Yuval and Jay, the Boredom Movement, the Boredom Podcast. Okay.

Jay Shetty 26:11 The second thing I really wanted to dive into, apart from happiness with you, which, which leads nicely to this, because I think this boredom experience also slightly links to what I wanted to go to, which is education.

Yuval Noah Harari 26:20 Mm.

Jay Shetty 26:21 You speak a lot about education. I've made a ton of videos about education and the education system and my challenges to it. Just yesterday, I was talking to people about how, like, when we were educated, we were taught to believe we had to be good at everything. We were taught that you had to get an average grade at this and an average grade at that and an average grade at that, and you had to be equally good at history and science and math and English. And a lot of the videos that I've made on these topics have, have been shared a lot. So one of the videos I made on this topic has 367 million views-

Yuval Noah Harari 26:52 Mm

Jay Shetty 26:52 ... on one video. It's been shared like 8 million times or something crazy like that, and it's because we feel this pressure through our education. Now, I believe that the ideal education system should have a head, a heart, and a hand.

Yuval Noah Harari 27:07 Mm.

Jay Shetty 27:07 A head for critical thinking, a heart to understand, to experience, and then a hand to give, to serve, to make a difference. And you talk in your chapter about the four Cs of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

Yuval Noah Harari 27:22 Yeah, that's not my, uh, my idea.

Jay Shetty 27:23 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 27:23 I mean, it's like the, the, the experts in the field-

Jay Shetty 27:25 Yeah

Yuval Noah Harari 27:25 ... are increasingly talking about these four Cs.

Jay Shetty 27:28 Absolutely. So tell me about your thoughts on the education system and, and why you got fascinated with that-

Yuval Noah Harari 27:33 Mm

Jay Shetty 27:33 ... and how you think that's impacted some of our mistakes we make now.

Yuval Noah Harari 27:37 Uh, my interest with the education system comes... I mean, I am in the education system. I, I, I am a professor at the university-

Jay Shetty 27:44 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 27:44 ... [laughs] so, so it's part of my life. But now it's mostly from thinking about the coming revolutions, especially in the job market, that again, we're in a unique situation in human history when, for the first time, we have no idea how the job market would look like in 20 or 30 years.

Jay Shetty 28:03 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 28:04 That was never before the case in history. I mean, there are always things you couldn't predict about the world 30 years from now, you know, political revolutions, wars, plagues, economic crisis. Nobody could ever predict that. But at least about the basic skills that humans will need in 30 years in order to get a good job and in order to support themselves and get along in life, we always had a quite a good understanding of that. So if you lived a thousand years ago in the Middle Ages in some small village, and so people didn't know who would be the king in 30 years. People didn't know there might be a plague or an earthquake. Who knows? But they knew what they needed to teach their kids if they were to have, uh, a, a, a, a reasonable life in 30 years. You need to know how to plant rice and how to take the goats herding and how to make cheese and how to make bread and, uh, how to build a house and all these. And today, we just have no idea what people will... what skills will people will need in the job market in 2050.

Jay Shetty 29:15 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 29:15 Anybody who tells you, "I know how the job market would look like in 2050 and what skills will be needed" is, uh, this, uh, delu- deluding either you or also themselves. Um, the only thing we know is that it will be a completely different job market-

Jay Shetty 29:32 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 29:32 ... because of the amazing advances in AI and machine learning and also in bioengineering. Uh, so more and more jobs will be replaced by machines and computers and robots. Some jobs will be transformed, and new jobs will appear. Now, I don't think we are facing a situation, no more jobs in the world. There will be new jobs. The big question is going... I mean, there are actually two big questions. One big question is about training and retraining. There will be new jobs. Will people have the skills necessary for these kinds of jobs? Um, previously, when machines replaced humans, for instance, in agriculture- So machines replaced humans in low-skill jobs in farms, but a lot of new low-skilled jobs were created in factories. Like the tractor replaced you on the farm, so you moved to Detroit to work in, uh, Ford's Corporation-

Jay Shetty 30:31 Car manufacturer, yeah

Yuval Noah Harari 30:32 ... to build a tractor.

Jay Shetty 30:33 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 30:33 And the new job was usually a relatively low-skill job. So within a couple of weeks, perhaps two, three months, you could transform a farm worker into a worker in a tractor factory. But today when you look to the future, so people say, yes, there will not be any more jobs for truck drivers because you have self-driving trucks, and there will not be a lot of jobs for people producing shirts in textile factories and things like that, but there will be new jobs in the creative industries-

Jay Shetty 31:04 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 31:04 ... uh, whether in art or whether in science or in, in, in, in, in interacting with people. But the problem is these new kind of jobs will require high skills. So it won't be so easy to take an unemployed textile worker at age 40 and transform her into a s- software engineer that, uh, creates virtual reality games.

Jay Shetty 31:29 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 31:30 And what makes it even worse is the huge gap between different countries. I think that in a country like the US, which is bound to reap much of the benefits of the coming AI revolution, because California, along with China, is one of the, of the centers of this revolution, there will be immense new wealth created, at least in some parts of the United States. So I don't worry for the Americans. But when I look at other parts of the world, countries which depend almost entirely on cheap manual labor, say, just south of the border. You go to Mexico, you go to El Salvador, to Honduras, to South America, what will happen there? I mean, we are not educating the young people today in Honduras or in, uh, Colombia to be software engineers. So even if there are a lot of new jobs in California for software engineers, this is not going to help the kids who are growing up today in Honduras or, or, or, or, or Colombia. So what will they do? And we have no answer. And th- that's actually m- my, my biggest worry about the education system now is from a global perspective, the huge gap that is opening between different countries in the face of the coming AI revolution.

Jay Shetty 32:50 Mm. If you were in charge of the education system south of the border, what were the things you'd be thinking about at least?

Yuval Noah Harari 32:56 I need money.

Jay Shetty 32:57 Okay. [laughs] But w- if you had the money-

Yuval Noah Harari 32:59 Oh

Jay Shetty 32:59 ... if you had the money, what would you be thinking about?

Yuval Noah Harari 33:01 Well, yeah-

Jay Shetty 33:01 Because money's not a never an issue really.

Yuval Noah Harari 33:03 Oh, it i- [laughs] north of the border, even north of the border it's an issue. But south of the border it's, you know, you, you go to Brazil-

Jay Shetty 33:10 Mm-hmm

Yuval Noah Harari 33:10 ... and, uh, we are, uh, just going to Brazil in, in, in a few months, and you have people coming to Brazil with all these ideas about we should teach kids this and we should teach th- kids that. And the local people come and say, "We don't even have schools."

Jay Shetty 33:23 Right.

Yuval Noah Harari 33:23 I mean, where do you want us to put the kids?

Jay Shetty 33:24 In that sense money. Right, right, right.

Yuval Noah Harari 33:26 That, you know, I mean, i- in some places you have s- the schools run in, in a shift system.

Jay Shetty 33:32 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 33:33 Like, because you d- you just don't have the facilities.

Jay Shetty 33:36 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 33:36 So some kids learn from 8:00 in the morning to 2:00 in the afternoon. They go home, another shift come.

Jay Shetty 33:42 Right, right, right, right.

Yuval Noah Harari 33:43 And another shifts come at night because they just don't... And, you know, this is v- uh, uh, some things you can't just throw money at.

Jay Shetty 33:52 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 33:53 You need more than that.

Jay Shetty 33:54 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 33:54 But the basic infrastructure-

Jay Shetty 33:57 Right

Yuval Noah Harari 33:57 ... basically the first thing you need is money.

Jay Shetty 34:00 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. And but there m- yeah, so looking at it from that perspective, my hope is that there are people who believe in those communities and want to invest in them.

Yuval Noah Harari 34:11 Uh, yeah, I, I, I hope so. And, and again, the, the, the main thing is that we need a global thinking on it, on this-

Jay Shetty 34:18 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 34:18 ... because in the last few decades, what we've seen is, um, a, a, a, a reduction in global inequality. Global inequality was extremely high in the early 20th century when you had a few industrial powers colonizing the rest of the world. So, say, uh, uh, Britain dominating India and much of Africa and, and much, uh, uh, of the Middle East. And the, the disparity was enormous.

Jay Shetty 34:44 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 34:45 And then in the last few decades, uh, the gap wasn't completely closed, but India and Britain are now far, far closer than they were 50 years ago or 100 years ago. So we have seen a, a reduction in global inequality. But now we are on the verge of a new burst of growing inequality. Just like the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, this is what created initially the gap between Britain and India. So now you have the AI revolution, uh, concentrated in just a few countries. Uh, the USA and China are leading the race. You have a few other countries which, which joined the race. Most countries are far behind, and the economic consequences will be enormous. So the danger is that what we've seen a century ago wi- will, will come back. And then it's not just a question, say, of people in Brazil, rich people in Brazil caring about poor people in Brazil and investing in their education and healthcare and so forth. There won't be enough resources in, in Brazil, or, or maybe not Brazil, but, but, but some other countries. So we need global thinking on that.

Jay Shetty 35:54 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 35:54 Otherwise, it will be a rerun of the Industrial Revolution, uh, with these enormous gaps-

Jay Shetty 36:01 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 36:01 ... between a few countries that dominate the world and most of humanity, which is far, far behind.

Jay Shetty 36:06 Absolutely. No, I agree. And m- I guess my thinking from where I'm always coming from is just- To me, the global thinking always needs to be towards how we create more meaningful careers, how we create more meaningful jobs-

Yuval Noah Harari 36:19 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 36:19 ... how we create opportunities for people to be better engaged.

Yuval Noah Harari 36:23 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 36:23 Because that's what's going to create a happier, more peaceful, more cohesive world.

Yuval Noah Harari 36:28 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 36:29 It's almost like otherwise there's a rerun in culture of you slot people in to jobs they don't wanna do, that aren't good for their health, mentally or physically. That then leads to another repercussion of that person being dissatisfied, and then that reruns.

Yuval Noah Harari 36:41 Yeah, yeah.

Jay Shetty 36:41 Like,

Jay Shetty 36:41 do you think that where you... Do you think, having met some of the most influential people on the planet, do you feel that that's the dial, that's the compass that we're trying to get to? Or do you think that's just far off?

Yuval Noah Harari 36:52 Well, the most influential people-

Jay Shetty 36:53 Yeah

Yuval Noah Harari 36:53 ... uh, they are, most of them are too busy with the immediate crisis.

Jay Shetty 36:57 Right.

Yuval Noah Harari 36:58 I mean, part of the problem, and this a little goes back to what we discussed earlier about boredom and then things like that-

Jay Shetty 37:04 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 37:04 ... that they [laughs] are overexcited. And, I mean, I can understand them. I mean-

Jay Shetty 37:08 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 37:08 ... I, I, I'm lucky I don't have a country to run.

Jay Shetty 37:10 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 37:11 I don't have a multi-billion corporation to run.

Jay Shetty 37:13 Yet. [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 37:13 So I can allow myself the time to, you know, r- just read a book, or just go for a walk, or go for medi- uh, take a ret- meditation retreat. They can't. And part of the issue-

Jay Shetty 37:23 They can't or they won't?

Yuval Noah Harari 37:25 They really can't. I mean, they have so much on their plate. They have all these immediate crisis. And like we had just the c- the case in, in, in France with the protests against Emmanuel Macron.

Jay Shetty 37:38 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 37:38 And one of the things that the prot- protes- protesters told him, and I'm not judging who is right, who is wrong, I don't understand French politics well enough. I was just struck by what they said that, because he, uh... The, the, the, the initial cause was that he wanted to impose a new tax on, on fuel, uh, in order to, partly in order to combat tr- uh, climate change, and this caused a huge backlash. And some of the protesters told the president, "You're thinking about, uh, what will happen 20 years from now. We are thinking about the end of the month. We don't have money for the end of the month. We don't care about 20 years from now." And that's a real issue.

Jay Shetty 38:21 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 38:22 Um, it's, again, it's, it's easy and I talk a lot about the need to, we need to do something about climate change.

Jay Shetty 38:28 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 38:28 But then a simplistic answer, "Okay, let's just put money on, on the, a tax on fuel," and if this tax, uh, hurts disproportionally, uh, poorer people, then this is not a good solution. So now he has this crisis on his hands, and he can't just, "Okay, uh, uh, uh, okay, I'll, I'll just go on this long two-month retreat, and I'll, uh, uh, uh, do meditation, I, I do, I, I'll, I'll hike in the Alps, and I, I'll, uh, inform myself about climate change, and I'll..." He doesn't have the time. He has that. He has Brexit. He has the UA- EU elections. He has, uh, the crisis in, in Libya. He has the, the, the, the relations with, with China. And by the time you reach this s- influential place, you really don't have the l- luxury to think slow and broad, and that's a huge, huge problem, uh, uh, for, for the system. And again, I t- I don't have, like, these easy solutions. Part of the idea of, you know, addressing the general public, like what we are doing here, and not just going and talking with a few presidents and, and, and CEOs, is to realize that yes, they are very influential people, but they are also extremely limited by their position of power and by the enormous pressures on them from different directions. So even for the influential people, it would be easier to do something on climate change if you have tens of millions of people saying that this is their number one priority, and that they are willing to make some painful sacrifices, uh, uh, for that.

Jay Shetty 40:13 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 40:13 And it's the same with the kind of global educational crisis that, um, you... I, I, I hope that more and more people around the world understand that, you know, the consequences of these cri- of this crisis, we will see them only in 20 years.

Jay Shetty 40:32 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 40:32 When the people today in Indonesia and Nigeria and Brazil who are now, uh, in kindergarten, when they will be 30 and 40, this is when the full force of the crisis will hit.

Jay Shetty 40:45 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 40:46 But if we wait until they are 40 to do something about it, it's too late.

Jay Shetty 40:52 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 40:52 We need to think what we are teaching youngsters today in order to, uh, to solve the, the, the, the coming crisis of 2050.

Jay Shetty 41:04 Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. And, and I think those are ... I think that's a very good analysis of the situation, because I, I appreciate that there is no quick solution. There is no easy recipe. And when I'm listening to you talk, there's parts of me that are thinking, like, it's the way we've constructed these roles of influence that these people don't have the time and space and the boredom to be able to actually-

Yuval Noah Harari 41:27 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 41:27 ... do their jobs properly. Like, we've not created these roles efficiently and effectively. And at the same time, the responsibility on each and every one of us listening and watching right now-

Yuval Noah Harari 41:37 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 41:37 ... to actually become change makers ourself, to be someone who takes responsibility for action, to be a part of the solution, to, to actually step up and say, "No, this is a priority and we need to go in that direction."

Yuval Noah Harari 41:47 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 41:48 I think that is, even though it's not a quick recipe, I think it's a good wake-up call.

Yuval Noah Harari 41:52 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 41:52 I think it's a good wake-up call that can make us all aware that we can't just wait for this to be solved from the top-

Yuval Noah Harari 41:58 Yeah

Jay Shetty 41:58 ... because that's not really gonna happen.

Yuval Noah Harari 42:01 E- e-

Yuval Noah Harari 42:01 especially assuming that a lot of our viewers and listeners are, are in the United States-

Jay Shetty 42:07 Mm-hmm

Yuval Noah Harari 42:07 ... then America is still the most powerful country in the world, economically, militarily, politically. So Americans can do more than the citizens of any other country. Um, and there is still, you know, this expectation that America will be the leader of the world. Uh, in recent years, it's been going [laughs] in the opposite direction.

Jay Shetty 42:30 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 42:30 That it's really, I think that it's very unfortunate. It's abdicating, uh, willingly abdicating its role as leader of the world. For decades, you know, both from the right and left, Republicans, Democrats, what was common to all the spectrum of, of, of, of American political system was that, uh, they intentionally saw themselves as the leaders of at least the free world. And then in the last few years, America comes and says, "No, we don't want this job anymore. Uh, for us, America first. We need to, first of all, think about ourselves and our own interests." And, uh, nobody wants to follow a leader whose motto is, "Me first." So the rest of the world, I mean, is now, you know, some countries are trying to step up and fill the vacuum. So in climate change, now China is becoming kind or, or tries to depict itself as the leader of the world in trying to combat climate change. But then in, in other, uh, areas, uh, it's, it's definitely not li-

Jay Shetty 43:36 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 43:36 ... like that. So we, in this moment of, of, of real crisis in, in human history, we find the world without a leader. And this, again, this is something that people in the US can do more about than in any other place because still the US is kind of the, um, uh, uh, almost natural leader for humanity because it is still the most powerful country in the world. Other countries, of course, have to step in, and it would be good to have a world which is yes, less unipolar when we can't just trust a single country to do everything all the time.

Jay Shetty 44:17 Yeah, definitely.

Yuval Noah Harari 44:18 But, um, there is still a huge disparity in, in, in powers between the different parts of the world. That's, that's, that's still the case.

Jay Shetty 44:26 Yeah, definitely. Uh, but I, I do like that point you made there, even though it's a subtle point, is that ultimately, if we live in that belief that this country is the most powerful and they're gonna solve everything-

Yuval Noah Harari 44:37 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 44:37 ... then we also kind of just dehabilitate ourselves.

Yuval Noah Harari 44:40 Yep.

Jay Shetty 44:40 And we just go, "Oh, well, if they're not going in the right direction," or wait for them to go in the right direction. And actually, what we all need to do, in my opinion, is pull our socks up and get stuck in, because there's no... The, I'm not a big fan of the victim mentality or the mentality of waiting for someone else to solve a crisis.

Yuval Noah Harari 44:59 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 44:59 It's like if your, you know, if your house is on fire, you don't wait for your mom or your dad to fix it.

Yuval Noah Harari 45:04 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 45:04 You, you get involved too, right? And so if we believe that there's a crisis, or even if we don't believe there's a crisis, but we believe things are not going in the right direction, I would want everyone from every country, whether it's India, whether it's Australia, whether it's, uh, across Europe-

Yuval Noah Harari 45:17 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 45:18 ... to step in-

Yuval Noah Harari 45:19 Yeah

Jay Shetty 45:19 ... and take action.

Yuval Noah Harari 45:20 And in, in that sense, actually, the, the one good thing that comes out or could come out of the current retreat of the United States from the position as, as leader of the world-

Jay Shetty 45:31 Is everyone

Yuval Noah Harari 45:32 ... is that it, it kind of forces other countries and other people to step in.

Jay Shetty 45:37 Yes.

Yuval Noah Harari 45:38 And I hope th- th- this, this will happen.

Jay Shetty 45:40 Yeah. Good. We have the same hope.

Yuval Noah Harari 45:41 Yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 45:41 We have the same hope. I love this. Okay, great. So we've kind of gone from happiness and inside to global macro viewpoints. I wanna go back inwards again.

Yuval Noah Harari 45:51 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 45:51 And this is actually from a couple of days ago. I read somewhere that when Tim Cook was speaking at the Time 100 Summit, an event that happened this week, he was speaking about how if you're spending more time looking at a screen than in someone else's eyes, then-

Yuval Noah Harari 46:06 You have a problem

Jay Shetty 46:07 ... you have a problem.

Yuval Noah Harari 46:07 And we have a problem.

Jay Shetty 46:08 You're get- you're getting things wrong.

Yuval Noah Harari 46:09 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 46:09 And, and I know you-

Yuval Noah Harari 46:10 That's, that's a good line.

Jay Shetty 46:11 Yeah, it's a very good line.

Yuval Noah Harari 46:12 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 46:12 And, and you also said that, you know, you said that it's so much easier now to connect with your cousin in Switzerland-

Yuval Noah Harari 46:18 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 46:18 ... than it is with your husband because he's always looking at his phone at breakfast.

Yuval Noah Harari 46:22 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 46:22 You did write that down. It is out there. You did say it.

Yuval Noah Harari 46:25 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 46:25 So t- walk me through that addiction. We spoke a bit about the, the excitement we get from the phone, the addiction we have from the phone, but how have you seen people overcome that, combat that?

Yuval Noah Harari 46:37 Yeah, I mean, part of it is also that when you connect, when you connect with somebody through a phone or through a screen-

Jay Shetty 46:45 Mm-hmm

Yuval Noah Harari 46:46 ... um, again, it's, it's easier to deal with the problematic stuff because you can just shut the phone once it becomes problematic. Uh, and with a real person, you can't do that. So it, it, it, like, real relationships forces... Again, it's like the boredom thing. They force you to deal with the difficult issues.

Jay Shetty 47:08 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 47:09 And part of the attraction of all these online communities and online relationships and virtual relationships is that once a difficulty arises, you can just immediately disappear.

Jay Shetty 47:23 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 47:24 Uh, like, you can unfriend your Facebook friends in a way that you can't un-neighbor your [laughs] real neighbors. If you live in a house and there, just this annoying family just moved in, and the kids are making a lot of noise in the middle of the night, and you can't just say, "Okay, I'll, I'll press a button, and they'll disappear from my life."

Jay Shetty 47:43 Can you imagine that? Eject. [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 47:45 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 47:45 Really, yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 47:46 Un-neighbor.

Jay Shetty 47:46 Yeah. [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 47:48 It doesn't work like this.

Jay Shetty 47:49 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 47:49 So you have, so you need to develop these social skills. Okay, what do I do? Okay, I'll go there, and I knock on their door with a, with a cake or something, and I'll try to have a nice conversation, and then somehow make them understand that I need to sleep, and they should keep their kids more quiet or something.

Jay Shetty 48:05 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 48:05 But it's, it forces you to develop these social skills and, um, and that's extremely important, and we are losing these skills. I mean, the more time, again, you spend watching screens than watching eyes is you, you are, in this sense, kind of downgrading some of our human abilities. I've just seen this wonderful- Uh, presentation by Tristan Harris-

Jay Shetty 48:28 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 48:28 ... who is this-

Jay Shetty 48:29 Yes, yes

Yuval Noah Harari 48:29 ... tech philosopher f- from, from, from Silicon Valley, and he just had this wonderful presentation about how technology is basically downgrading humans, downgrading human skills, like what to do when you have a problem with your neighbors.

Jay Shetty 48:47 Mm, right. So, so actually instead of technology upgrading us, it's downgrading our human skills.

Yuval Noah Harari 48:52 Yeah. It, it, it, it... We upgrade our, our, our phones all the time-

Jay Shetty 48:56 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 48:56 ... but inadvertently, it downgrades-

Jay Shetty 48:59 Yeah

Yuval Noah Harari 48:59 ... our, a lot of our social and personal skills.

Jay Shetty 49:02 Yeah. And which ones are you think are the biggest ones that we're losing? So one of them is, you know, deleting our neighbors [laughs] and, and, and yeah-

Yuval Noah Harari 49:08 Sure

Jay Shetty 49:08 ... I completely agree with you. What are the other ones that we're losing out on that we can be aware of? So anyone who's listening and watching right now, how can they become more aware of the types of skills we're losing? 'Cause sometimes I don't think it's as obvious to us because everyone's on their phone.

Yuval Noah Harari 49:20 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 49:21 Our careers are now digital.

Yuval Noah Harari 49:23 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 49:23 We just talked about AI and the rise of technology in every area of our lives, whether it's work, health. Like, your, your dentist now wants to you, you to use a toothbrush that can notify them when something goes wrong in your tooth, right?

Yuval Noah Harari 49:35 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 49:36 So it's like all parts of our lives are becoming automated-

Yuval Noah Harari 49:38 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 49:38 ... and systemic. So w- how can we become more aware of the skills we're losing, or which ones are those top skills that we're losing?

Yuval Noah Harari 49:45 Well, many of the top skills are, are social, of dealing with other people.

Jay Shetty 49:48 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 49:49 Uh, so another example which is now ex- it gets a lot of attention, and there is a lot of talk about this, is all the issue of filter bubbles.

Jay Shetty 49:56 Okay.

Yuval Noah Harari 49:57 That people kind of lock them... Or, or, or even inadvertently, the algorithms, the Facebook algorithms, the Twitter algorithms, the YouTube algorithm that gets to know us increasingly show us, uh, uh, videos or articles or opinions which are aligned-

Jay Shetty 50:13 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 50:13 ... with our own opinions.

Jay Shetty 50:14 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 50:15 And we think that the entire world thinks like me.

Jay Shetty 50:17 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 50:18 Like, I don't know, I'm a Democrat and I don't know any Republicans, and I never see any Republican videos. And, and, and then when the, uh, Trump wins the election, I can't understand. How could it be? There was, there were no Republicans, so who voted for him?

Jay Shetty 50:30 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 50:31 It's all the people not in your filter bubble who voted for him.

Jay Shetty 50:35 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 50:35 And what we are losing is the ability to engage with, uh, opinions, with people who think differently for, from us.

Jay Shetty 50:44 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 50:45 Now, one, uh, crude way of trying to fix that, that at least some corporations like Facebook, uh, uh, tried to do, is every now and then show you a, uh, an article from the diff- a different side of the political spectrum. But this didn't work because it only made people even more angry, because it wasn't in a, in a situation when you can really engage with the people behind it. Like, you have this, your view on the world and you read something from another perspective and you become very angry. "Who are these stupid people who think like that?"

Jay Shetty 51:17 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 51:18 And it actually made things even worse. Uh, now again, a century ago, if you lived in some, uh, small town, then the situation was such that you all the time encountered people who think differently from you-

Jay Shetty 51:34 Mm

Yuval Noah Harari 51:34 ... because the community, uh, uh, was made of, you know, of, of, of different, and, and of, of different viewpoints.

Jay Shetty 51:41 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 51:41 And you had to develop these skills of how to engage, uh, with, and, and how to cooperate.

Jay Shetty 51:48 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 51:49 And, uh, part of what technology is doing is that it downgrades these skills, and it makes life easier.

Jay Shetty 51:57 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 51:57 I mean, it's all these things which are difficult and uncomfortable to do, like having a real conversation with somebody who thinks differently.

Jay Shetty 52:06 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 52:07 And it's, you know, it's just so much easier just to talk with the people who think like me. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 52:12 Totally. Absolutely, yeah. And, and it's that principle of, like, non-judgment, being able to view, observe and entertain a thought without judging it.

Yuval Noah Harari 52:22 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 52:22 And that becomes extremely hard right now.

Yuval Noah Harari 52:24 Mm.

Jay Shetty 52:25 There was a great study by MIT where they showed two people's networks, and it was looking at their online network and saying which one is more creative and impactful and innovative. And it was employee A and it was employee, uh, B, and their Twitter networks. And they found that when you know the same people who know the same people who know you back-

Yuval Noah Harari 52:42 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 52:42 ... you end up being less creative, less innovative, and come up with less interesting ideas because you don't have that challenging of thoughts.

Yuval Noah Harari 52:49 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 52:50 And so I love that one of your solutions to that, or one of your recommendations at least that I gained from the book, was this beautiful qual- quality of humility-

Yuval Noah Harari 52:59 Mm

Jay Shetty 52:59 ... of being the, the openness that we have towards other people's views, and not this kind of deep religious belief about the truth of our views and how we're always right.

Yuval Noah Harari 53:11 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 53:12 I, I love that. Let's, let's dive into humility. Uh, first of all, I'm, I'm fascinated that you brought up humility because humility's probably my favorite quality in the world. Uh, I find it the most endearing thing in the world when I meet someone who has it-

Yuval Noah Harari 53:23 Mm

Jay Shetty 53:23 ... especially someone who's very accomplished. And my favorite story about humility, and I'm sure you know this, but I'm sharing it for anyone who's listening and watching right now, is from Benjamin Franklin and his 13 precepts. So Benjamin Franklin had 12 precepts, 12 things that he wanted to live during his life, that he wanted to aspire for, and once one of his friends said that, "You're getting a bit egotistic about these things."

Yuval Noah Harari 53:45 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 53:46 "You're pretty good at it," so he added a 13th one. And then when he was dying, supposedly the story goes that he was asked which one he didn't achieve, and he said it was the 13th one. And they said, "Which one is the 13th one?" He said, "Humility."

Yuval Noah Harari 53:57 Mm.

Jay Shetty 53:58 He said that was the one that he didn't achieve in his lifetime. So humility-

Yuval Noah Harari 54:01 Yeah. The, the, uh... A- another saying that what... Uh, I think about monks in the Buddhist tradition or, or Hindu tradition-

Jay Shetty 54:06 Yeah

Yuval Noah Harari 54:06 ... whatever the monk cuts from his other vices, he adds to him, to, to his, to his ego-

Jay Shetty 54:13 Yes

Yuval Noah Harari 54:13 ... to his, uh, pride.

Jay Shetty 54:14 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 54:14 "I overcame this, I overcame that." [laughs]

Jay Shetty 54:17 Exactly, exactly, yeah. As soon as we feel we've achieved something, yeah, it becomes a step-

Yuval Noah Harari 54:21 Yeah

Jay Shetty 54:21 ... on the other side of ego. Absolutely, I completely agree. So I love humility. I'm fascinated by it.

Yuval Noah Harari 54:25 Mm.

Jay Shetty 54:26 Uh, I would l- what's your definition of humility?

Yuval Noah Harari 54:29 Oh.

Jay Shetty 54:29 And, and how do we start increasing humility in our lives in a positive way?

Yuval Noah Harari 54:34 Well, I mean, i- in, in the book, it's, it's more, again, in the, in the more political and, and historical context.

Jay Shetty 54:39 Yeah.

Yuval Noah Harari 54:40 And the, the idea is don't think you're the center of the world.

Jay Shetty 54:43 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 54:44 And this is actually ... Again, in, in the book, it's more about collective humility.

Jay Shetty 54:48 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 54:49 The humility of groups, of, of political parties, of nations, of religions. Um, one of the curious things to see as a historian is that everybody thinks they are the most important thing in the world. Uh, even you wouldn't believe, these tiny tribes or insignificant nations, they somehow manage to kind of turn the whole history around so they turn out to be the most important thing. Anyway, if you think that the ... And I, I don't know, if the Chinese think they are the most important in the world, then okay, I can understand it to some extent.

Jay Shetty 55:23 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 55:24 But then, then you go, say, to Israel, and you find this tiny nation utterly convinced that we are the most important thing in the world. The entire world revolves just around us, and it was always like that, that we invented ev- any- everything. A- and I, I, I use the example of Israel as in Jews because it, you know, it's, it's not so nice to criticize [laughs] other nations and other people. It's, it's easier when you criticize your own.

Jay Shetty 55:50 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 55:50 But this is not meant as a kind of anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli thing. Whatever your nationality or religion is, now, after we, you, you finish watching this, do this exercise on, on your group.

Jay Shetty 56:01 Mm-hmm.

Yuval Noah Harari 56:02 And, you know, in almost any invention you would mention, they would say, "Ah, y- we invented it first." There is even a story that Jews invented yoga. Would you believe that?

Jay Shetty 56:12 [laughs] Really?

Yuval Noah Harari 56:12 That ... Yeah.

Jay Shetty 56:12 Oh, wow. Okay.

Yuval Noah Harari 56:13 The, y- the, the postures of yo- ... I, I, I, in Jerusalem, when I was a student, I went to, uh, uh, this-

Jay Shetty 56:18 That was definitely India. No. [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 56:20 [laughs] I went to study yoga-

Jay Shetty 56:22 That's right

Yuval Noah Harari 56:23 ... with this teacher in Jerusalem, and on the first class, he explained to the students, "You know that lots of people think that yoga comes from India, but no, no, no, no, no. Actually, yoga was invented by Abraham."

Jay Shetty 56:36 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 56:36 "And the postures of yoga actually reflect the, uh, letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the aleph, the bet, the gimmel, the da." And, and people, uh ... And you know, a- I quit after this first class. Uh, this is not a person I would be studying yoga from. But you have people ac- seriously believing that. And, um, when you look at the, at the great span of human history, it should be obvious that nobody's at the center.

Jay Shetty 57:06 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 57:06 Yes, almost every nation or religion contributed something, but most things when ... If you had to live y- your life based only on the inventions and creations of people from your nation, you would have a very miserable life. You'll probably be dead. I mean, if you have to eat only the, uh, uh, things that were domesticated by your direct ancestors, like, I don't know, Italians, you must now stop eating tomatoes because tomatoes were domesticated in Mexico and not by Italians. And Indians, forget about these chili peppers. No more chili peppers for you. Chili peppers were also domesticated by Mexicans. And Mexicans, don't put yourself too, too high-

Jay Shetty 57:53 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 57:53 ... because you like your steaks and hamburgers. They ... There were no cows in America before Columbus, and no horses. They came from the Old World, and so forth and so on and so on. And it's just, not just food, it's everything. So really understanding how interconnected the whole humanity is, and that, yes, your people contributed something, but it's a small thing. It's not the whole thing. And it's most important, I think, in the field of morality because, again, I mean, in, in Israel, there is this very strong belief we invented morality. Before the Jews, there was no ethics in the world. We invented it, and the entire world owes us this huge debt of gratitude because all the morality in the world came from the Jews. And this, you know, this is absolute nonsense.

Jay Shetty 58:45 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 58:45 I mean, even monkeys have morality. Even animals. It goes, it's millions of years ago. It's in evolution. Uh, some at least social rules of do and don't do.

Jay Shetty 58:55 Mm.

Yuval Noah Harari 58:55 And hunter-gatherers tens of thousands of years ago had ethics long before they knew anything about the Bible. People in India, in China, in Australia, had extremely wonderful ethical systems, in many ways much better than anything that came out of the Judeo-Christian tradition long before, uh, uh, uh, they knew anything-

Jay Shetty 59:15 Mm-hmm

Yuval Noah Harari 59:15 ... about, about the Bible. So, yes, Jews contributed some things, but don't let it go to y- to your head.

Jay Shetty 59:21 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 59:22 You are not so important.

Jay Shetty 59:24 What a beautiful message to, to, to end on, on that message. I love that message. I think it's incredible. If we all looked at our wardrobes, our kitchens, our refrigerators, our homes, our cars, we'd notice that it was inspired by the globe.

Yuval Noah Harari 59:39 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 59:39 It was never one or the other. It was never just one place or one country or one region. I think it's such a beautiful message. I have so many more questions I wanna ask you. I hope we're gonna do this again on-

Yuval Noah Harari 59:47 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 59:47 ... nationalism, competition, and a billion other things.

Jay Shetty 59:49 But we end every interview with what we call the final five quick-fire, rapid-fire questions.

Yuval Noah Harari 59:54 Okay.

Jay Shetty 59:55 So these are one to three word answers. One sentence-

Yuval Noah Harari 59:57 One to three words? Okay.

Jay Shetty 59:58 Yeah. Or, or one sentence maximum.

Yuval Noah Harari 1:00:00 One sentence.

Jay Shetty 1:00:01 So this is number one. What is the biggest mistake we make as humans? One word, three words, one sentence max.

Yuval Noah Harari 1:00:09 Underestimate our stupidity.

Jay Shetty 1:00:11 Nice. I love it.

Yuval Noah Harari 1:00:12 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:00:12 Okay, question number two: What is the best advice you've ever received?

Yuval Noah Harari 1:00:17 Observe your breath.

Jay Shetty 1:00:18 Nice. Number three: What is the worst advice you've ever received?

Yuval Noah Harari 1:00:22 Just follow your heart.

Jay Shetty 1:00:23 Nice.

Yuval Noah Harari 1:00:24 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:00:24 Okay. Number four: What's the one thing you want to learn this year?

Yuval Noah Harari 1:00:28 Ooh.

Jay Shetty 1:00:28 Or you're trying to learn this year?

Yuval Noah Harari 1:00:31 Hmm. Um, how the other side is think- is thinking.

Jay Shetty 1:00:40 Nice. I like that. Awesome. And number five: If you could get everyone in the world to practice one thing for 30 days, what would it be? [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 1:00:49 Um, I won't say meditation because it's not going to work.

Jay Shetty 1:00:52 [laughs]

Yuval Noah Harari 1:00:52 Uh, [laughs] um, well, humility. Uh.

Jay Shetty 1:00:57 I love it. Yuval, you are incredible. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really enjoyed it.

Yuval Noah Harari 1:01:02 Oh.

Jay Shetty 1:01:02 I, I didn't ... I'm hoping I got-

Yuval Noah Harari 1:01:04 We failed on the boring stuff. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:01:05 I'm, I'm hoping I got bored at one point because otherwise this won't live up to your standards. But we started the Boredom Movement today. I hope we're gonna keep in touch, hope we're gonna be friends, and I'm just so grateful that you took the time to do this. Thank you so much. Uh, all the best for all the incredible work you're doing. I'm excited to see how your incredible mind and thoughts seep its way into our entertainment world as well, and continue to help us make education more accessible and relevant. So thank you so much.

Yuval Noah Harari 1:01:31 Yeah, thank you.

Jay Shetty 1:01:31 Yeah. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you everyone for watching. Make sure you subscribe to the show if you haven't already. Share this on Instagram as well. Remember, I'm always looking for your insights, the quotes that you took away. Feel free to share them on Instagram as well. Thank you so much for being here and being an incredible audience. See you guys soon. If you want even more videos just like this one, make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here. I'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book, Think Like a Monk, from thinklikeamonkbook.com. Check below in the description to make sure you order today