Yuval Noah Harari: Stories, Power & Why Truth Doesn't Matter | Nikhil Kamath | People by WTF

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

February 11, 2026

Duration

1h 23m

Channel

Nikhil Kamath

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

I sat down with Yuval Noah Harari at the World Economic Forum in Davos and we ended up covering everything from why Christianity's core story is essentially "you are loved by an omnipotent God" to why Greenland might just be the world's most expensive real estate play. He walked me through how algorithms were handed the job of managing public conversation and optimised for hate because hate drives engagement, how AI is about to become the new rabbi because it can read every religious text ever written, and why the friendship between Europe and America — built over generations — is being thrown away for a bit of ice. He also told me that the biggest political achievement in human history was governments spending more on healthcare than military for the first time — and that it's being deliberately destroyed. Footage courtesy: WEF | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 | Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eq5mK2OrWw [00:00:18 - 00:00:29] #nikhilkamath Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast Twitter: https://x.com/nikhilkamathcio/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikhilkamathcio/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilkamathcio?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikhilkamathcio/ #YuvalNoahHarari @YuvalNoahHarari X - https://x.com/harari_yuval Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/yuval_noah_harari Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@YuvalNoahHarari 00:00 Introduction 01:31 History, change, and writing books 03:57 Religion as humanity's most powerful fiction 09:33 Geopolitics, power, and losing trust 16:27 Greenland, tariffs, and negotiation tactics 19:53 Democracy's self-correcting mechanism under threat 28:19 AI taking over religion's authority 33:44 Purpose, suffering, and controlling your mind 39:59 Algorithms destroyed the public conversation 48:02 No purpose, just understanding suffering 55:06 Who actually runs the world today 1:02:38 Nobody runs the world alone 1:07:50 Can capitalism survive without human effort 1:14:44 Venezuela, Iran, and rebuilding democracy 1:21:11 Don't believe everything is just power Watch 'WTF is' Podcast on Spotify https://tinyurl.com/4nsm4ezn Watch 'People by WTF' Podcast on Spotify https://tinyurl.com/yme92c59 Watch 'WTF Online' on Spotify https://tinyurl.com/4tjua4th #WTFiswithnikhilkamath #PeopleByWTF #WTFOnline

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Yuval Noah Harari

  guest

• Nikhil Kamath

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Nikhil Kamath, featuring Yuval Noah Harari and Nikhil Kamath, Yuval Noah Harari: Stories, Power & Why Truth Doesn't Matter | Nikhil Kamath | People by WTF explores harari on stories, trust, AI, and democracy’s fragile future today Harari argues that human dominance comes less from “truth” and more from collective storytelling—shared fictions like religion, money, nations, and corporations that enable mass cooperation.

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