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

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

Yuval Noah HarariguestNikhil Kamathhost
Feb 11, 20261h 23mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:18

    Introduction

    1. SP

      [upbeat music]

  2. 0:18 – 1:31

    00:00:29]

    1. YH

      ... Very good morning to all of you. Thank you.

    2. NK

      Joined by an incredible panel of- Um, it's a very important topic, which the entire discipline wants to take-

    3. YH

      Session on redefining Europe's place in the world.

    4. NK

      What do you think, Yuval, of what is happening in the world today?

    5. YH

      Terrible! I mean, we are going back to kindergarten.

    6. NK

      Don't politicians say they believe in God-

    7. YH

      Mm-hmm

    8. NK

      ... because people vote for things that resemble them?

    9. YH

      Uh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you cannot be elected US president if you say that you're an atheist.

    10. NK

      Right. Same for Russia, maybe.

    11. YH

      Uh, I don't think in Russia you, you really get elected, but [laughing]

    12. NK

      [laughing] Does it worry you to speak about Trump in a manner that you think, "Can I go into America again?"

    13. YH

      It's worrying that we even have to raise this question.

    14. NK

      So if religion were to be a story, and many people wrote many stories, why did the stories of the religions we have today sell?

    15. YH

      History is shaped by the human imagination, by fiction, and not just by truth.

    16. NK

      What truth?

    17. YH

      The truth ultimately is one, because reality is one.

  3. 1:31 – 3:57

    History, change, and writing books

    1. YH

      There is just one reality. Reality can be extremely complex.

    2. NK

      If I were, Yuval, a twenty-five-year-old boy in India, what would you suggest I optimize for at this point of time?

    3. YH

      My gut reaction is nobody has any idea.

    4. NK

      Do you believe there is a purpose to life? And if yes, what is it?

    5. YH

      People think there is a big story, the drama of the universe. This is something I don't believe.

    6. NK

      What do you believe is the purpose?

    7. YH

      I don't believe that the universe works like a story.

    8. NK

      Right.

    9. YH

      I think the ultimate reality-

    10. NK

      Hi, Yuval. Thank you. How do I say your name?

    11. YH

      Yuval, yeah.

    12. NK

      Yuval.

    13. YH

      Mm-hmm.

    14. NK

      Uh, thank you for doing this. Uh, I have read many of your books, and I'm quite the fan of how you write and how you think as well. For my audience back home in India, uh, the young wannabe entrepreneurs-

    15. YH

      Mm-hmm

    16. NK

      ... maybe we can begin by you introducing yourself a little bit, just for context.

    17. YH

      Mm-hmm. Well, I'm basically a historian.

    18. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    19. YH

      But I'm the type of historian that thinks that history is not just the study of the past. History is the study of change, of how things change in the world, and so it means it's also the, the study of the present and the future.

    20. NK

      And how did you go from being a historian to being a thinker who's coming out with new thought and books? What, what goes on in your mind while you write a book? Is it an idea that come first, comes first?

    21. YH

      Yes. I mean, usually I try to, to ... I don't start with a plan, "Oh, I need to write a new book, so what should it be about?"

    22. NK

      Right.

    23. YH

      Uh, usually I have kind of ideas building up inside my mind, and when they reach the point when, when it feels like, ah, I actually have something new to say, uh, then I'll write a book.

    24. NK

      Sapiens, I read. I think that was the first interaction I've had with any of your books.

    25. YH

      Mm-hmm.

    26. NK

      Uh, brilliant book. I don't know if I remember all of it. [laughing]

    27. YH

      [laughing] I won't test you. No.

    28. NK

      What, what has stayed with you? That book is a little old now.

    29. YH

      Mm-hmm.

    30. NK

      What has stayed relevant

  4. 3:57 – 9:33

    Religion as humanity's most powerful fiction

    1. NK

      from then to today?

    2. YH

      I think the main point of Sapiens, which is as relevant today as ever, is that, uh, in hi- history is, is, is shaped by the human imagination, by fiction, and not just by truth. That humans control the world because we know how to cooperate better than any other animal on the planet, and cooperation relies on storytelling. That so much of the world is run on fiction, is fueled by fiction. Uh, it's most obvious in the case of religion, but even if you look at something like the economy, um, corporations, money, all of these things are stories that we invented. They did- they, they don't have an objective existence outside our imagination. I think this was the most important message of, of Sapiens, trying to understand history as the product of the human imagination and of human fictions. And, um, it's even more true today, I would say, than it was ten, fifteen years ago when I, when I wrote Sapiens.

    3. NK

      So if religion were to be a story-

    4. YH

      Mm-hmm

    5. NK

      ... and many people wrote many stories, why did the stories of the religions we have today sell and kinda like permeate through time? What was so good about these stories, or what was so ... What was the reason these stories did well and the others did not?

    6. YH

      Hmm. We don't know for sure.

    7. NK

      Hmm.

    8. YH

      Um, to some extent, it can be accidental-

    9. NK

      Hmm

    10. YH

      ... that you have hundreds and even thousands of different religious stories competing for human attention.

    11. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    12. YH

      And, um, of, of course, you need to pass a, a, a certain, a, a, a certain level-

    13. NK

      Mm

    14. YH

      ... of attractiveness, so humans will be interested in that story. But beyond that point, I, I belong to a school of historians that think that, uh, accidents-... and luck have an enormous impact on what is happening in history, even on the biggest things, like why is Christianity the most widespread religion today in the world? Um, to some extent, it's, it's, it's just, uh, it's just luck.

    15. NK

      Luck and good storytelling?

    16. YH

      No, a combination, of course.

    17. NK

      Yeah.

    18. YH

      You needed-- I mean, Christianity has a very compelling story. It has something that people really want to believe. You know, at, uh, deep down, if you ask yourself: What is the, the, the crucial story that Christianity tells people? It is that you are loved by the God that created, that controlled the universe, that God loves you so much that He was willing to suffer and sacrifice Himself for your sake, and that, you know, this is not like the love of a human that you always doubt. Yes, maybe they love me, but maybe they'll change their mind. Maybe they love me, but they don't really know who I am. If they can actually see what is happening inside my heart, inside deep down in my mind, they wouldn't love me. No, no, no, this is the love of an omnipotent, omniscient creator God, who knows everything about me and still loves me. This is such an attractive, uh, uh, idea. You know, the irony, to some extent, is that the more attractive an idea is, chances... the, the bigger the chance that it's not true. It's so easy for people to find evidence supporting the story they want to believe. So the more you want to believe a story, the more suspicious you should be about how easy it is for you to, to, to, to fall for it. And-

    19. NK

      Can you give me an example?

    20. YH

      Uh, this is ju- You know, everybody wants to believe that there is something after death.

    21. NK

      Mm.

    22. YH

      You know, this is universal in almost all religions, in different forms, and the evidence is so meager.

    23. NK

      Mm.

    24. YH

      I wouldn't say there is zero evidence. I mean, people-

    25. NK

      There is evidence?

    26. YH

      Um, uh, l- let's agree that whatever evidence there is is very, very shaky.

    27. NK

      Mm. What is the evidence?

    28. YH

      And, and, mm?

    29. NK

      How can somebody prove there is life after death or not?

    30. YH

      Oh, don't ask me. [laughing]

  5. 9:33 – 16:27

    Geopolitics, power, and losing trust

    1. YH

      their homes? Absolutely not. This is not the action of a man who feels loved.

    2. NK

      Don't politicians say they believe in God-

    3. YH

      Mm-hmm

    4. NK

      ... because people vote for things that resemble them?

    5. YH

      Uh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you cannot be elected US president-

    6. NK

      Mm

    7. YH

      ... if you say that you're an atheist.

    8. NK

      Right. Same for Russia, maybe.

    9. YH

      Uh, I don't think in Russia you, you will get elected, but [laughing] -

    10. NK

      Okay. Did you watch any of the politicians speak here this week?

    11. YH

      I, I, I'm afraid I didn't have time. I, I read some of the transcripts-

    12. NK

      Right

    13. YH

      ... of, of the speeches, but I, I didn't have time to actually go and, and listen to the speeches.

    14. NK

      What do you think, Yuval, of what is happening in the world today-

    15. YH

      Oof

    16. NK

      ... geopolitically?

    17. YH

      [chuckles] Terrible. I mean, we are going back to kindergarten-

    18. NK

      Mm

    19. YH

      ... to kind of the first, most basic lessons of politics and of human behavior. You now see the, the rise or the, the reemergence of this view that the only thing that, that exists, the only thing that really matters in the world, is power, is force, and especially military force.

    20. NK

      Mm.

    21. YH

      You hear many leaders and many ordinary people now say this, that everything else is just façade, is just veneer. It, it, it never really existed. The only thing that really happens in the world is power, and all human relations are power relations, are power struggles, and if anybody tells you otherwise, this is just a trick they are tr- they are using to gain power over you.

    22. NK

      Hasn't man always been like that-

    23. YH

      No

    24. NK

      ... from the beginning of evolution?

    25. YH

      You always had people with this, uh, uh, with this belief. You always had people who said these things.

    26. NK

      Mm.

    27. YH

      And the whole history of human spirituality and human philosophy is one long struggle against this very nihilistic and cynical view of the world. If you'd read... I don't know, you know, you read Plato's Republic-

    28. NK

      Mm

    29. YH

      ... one of the key texts, at least in the West, of political thought, it starts with Socrates asking this, one of the, the, the people in Athens, "What is justice?"

    30. NK

      Mm.

  6. 16:27 – 19:53

    Greenland, tariffs, and negotiation tactics

    1. YH

      Denmark came to the u- to the help- to help the, the Americans.

    2. NK

      I heard Emmanuel Macron wearing-- I watched him wearing really cool sunglasses and speaking the day before, and I heard Trump last evening and again this morning.

    3. YH

      Mm-hmm. [clears throat]

    4. NK

      It feels like they're negotiating for something that is not being spoken about-

    5. YH

      Mm

    6. NK

      ... overall. I don't think it's about climate change, or Greenland, or the ice melting, or the routes opening up. It feels like it's something else altogether, but that maybe that's just my opinion of it.

    7. YH

      What, what, what is, what is your h- hypothesis? W- what's your guess? What is it about?

    8. NK

      Yeah, like, you know when you're negotiating with someone, you anchor with something really expensive, so then they take the product which is less expensive-

    9. YH

      Mm-hmm

    10. NK

      ... in a store? Greenland seems to be anchoring-

    11. YH

      Mm-hmm

    12. NK

      ... in order to get the other person to take something else maybe.

    13. YH

      Which is?

    14. NK

      More tariff acceptable, which it doesn't seem to be right now.

    15. YH

      Hmm. [sighs] I don't know. I mean, again, I, I, I still don't feel that these tariffs are doing anybody any good, not the Americans, and certainly not the rest of the world. Um, and as a negotiation tactic, and you're negotiating with your best friend-

    16. NK

      Mm

    17. YH

      ... and you're, you're doing something that really frightens and humiliates them, they will not forget that, even if you get what you want in the short term. And what happened in the last... Of course, it's not just the last few weeks, it's the last few years, but the, the Europeans will not forget that.... And the, the, the feeling that you get that, I don't know, y- your best friend is willing to, to stab you in, in the back and, and, and to, to step on you, to humiliate you, and then he says, "No, no, no, I was just joking." But it didn't feel like joking at the moment. This is something that can ruin the friendship years ahead. You know, trust, you, you need to work for years to build trust, and you can lose it in a day. To take an example maybe from a different, a, a field of life, think about finance. A bank about, you know, let's say banks.

    18. NK

      Yeah.

    19. YH

      Carpenters build tables. Like this table, some carpenter built it. Uh, uh, engineers build buildings and bridges. What do bankers build?

    20. NK

      Mm.

    21. YH

      Bankers build trust.

    22. NK

      Mm.

    23. YH

      This is what they do throughout their life. That I trust them, that if I will need that money, they will give it back to me. And then the banker goes and builds another trustful relationship with, say, some entrepreneur who wants to s- to, to, to start a new company, and she needs money. So the banker and the entrepreneur build a trust- trusting relationship, and the banker lends basically my savings to that entrepreneur-

    24. NK

      Mm-hmm

    25. YH

      ... so she can start her company. Now, I don't know this entrepreneur. I wouldn't give her my money. I don't know her. I don't trust her. You have the banker in between. The banker has built a bridge of trust between me and the entrepreneur. Now, suppose one day the banker, I don't know, goes to, uh, on television

  7. 19:53 – 28:19

    Democracy's self-correcting mechanism under threat

    1. YH

      and says, "I have no intention of, of giving back. M- my bank will just take the money and run with it. We are not giving... If, if, if the customer-- if my customers wants their money, there is no more money in the bank." No banker would be so stupid. You've just this-- You've worked years to build trust with these people. Why destroy this trust? This is the basis for everything you do. And politics, like banking, is most-- You can't trust everybody in politics, of course, but this, if you finally managed to build a trustworri- trustworthy relationship in politics, this is your, your biggest asset.

    2. NK

      Could this be the problem with democratic politics, where politicians have a finite tenure? 'Cause friendships don't have to last forever-

    3. YH

      Mm

    4. NK

      ... but only three, four, five years at a time.

    5. YH

      The basic idea of democratic politics, and even of modern politics, is that the relationships are between states, not between families or dynasties or, or people.

    6. NK

      That doesn't seem to be the case right now.

    7. YH

      This is crumbling.

    8. NK

      Mm.

    9. YH

      This is another plank of trust-

    10. NK

      Mm

    11. YH

      ... that is collapsing in the world. Like, I heard Trump some time ago talking about Putin invading Ukraine, and people, uh, ask Trump: "How can you trust Putin when he broke so many promises previously?" And what was Trump's answer? He said, "Putin did not break his promises to me.

    12. NK

      Mm.

    13. YH

      He broke his promises to Obama."

    14. NK

      Yeah.

    15. YH

      "He broke his promises to Biden." Now, this is, you know, this is going back to the Middle Ages.

    16. NK

      Mm.

    17. YH

      Modern politics is that it's not Putin making a promise to Obama, it's Russia making a promise to the US. It doesn't matter who the president is. The whole idea is you sign a p- say, a peace agreement, you sign it with another country, so even if the president changes, it still holds. And this is, again, part of destroying the modern political system and going back to a medieval system in which it's relationships between dynasties. Uh, so it's now foreign relations increasingly is relations with the Trump family, not with the United States, which is why so many countries are doing business with certain members of the Trump family in order to influence US foreign policy. So this is really going back to the Middle Ages, when relations are between dynasties and not between nations or countries.

    18. NK

      Yuval, you're originally Israeli.

    19. YH

      Mm-hmm.

    20. NK

      Does it worry you to speak about Trump in a manner that you think, "Can I go into America again?"

    21. YH

      Um, it's worrying that we even have to raise this question.

    22. NK

      Yeah.

    23. YH

      If they don't allow me into the US, so they don't allow me, but my job as a public intellectual is to speak my mind. If I can't do that, then I can't do my job, so why invite me to a, to a podcast to, to, to, to hear me say things I don't really believe just in order to curry favor with some politician?

    24. NK

      Isn't that the media today? Everybody is saying what they don't believe, but-

    25. YH

      No, not everybody. This is, I think, the most... Again, this goes back to this kind of cynical worldview.

    26. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    27. YH

      Everything is a power struggle, nobody cares about truth, everybody, whatever they say, is just some kind of manipulation. This is giving an open check-

    28. NK

      Mm-hmm

    29. YH

      ... for the real liars. Not every politician, uh, is engaged in, in, in, in this type of, of cynical manipulation. And, and it's, it's a sign of the time that more and more people say these things, that everybody lie, everybody is corrupt, which again, it basically says everything is just a power struggle, and nobody cares about-- just as nobody cares about friendship, nobody really cares about the truth, which is a terrible thing to believe, because do you really believe that about yourself? Like, when you look in the mirror, do you see there somebody who doesn't care at all about the truth? And the thing about the truth is that, yes, you can gain a lot of power-... by, by lying. But the price you pay is that ultimately, you cannot be happy if you don't know the truth about yourself. Because if you don't know the truth about yourself and about the world, about life, then you don't know what are the true sources of misery in life. And if you don't know that, even if you become the most powerful person in the world, the richest person in the world, you will waste all your power and riches on solving the wrong problems, because you don't know what actually makes you miserable.

    30. NK

      What is the truth, Yuval?

  8. 28:19 – 33:44

    AI taking over religion's authority

    1. YH

      he's doing are good. Some of the, some of his intentions are good. I do hope that, uh, Gaza will be not only reconstructed, but that the Palestinians will have a good future, again, in which they can live in the country of their birth, and not just live, but live secure lives, live prosperous lives, live lives with dignity. Um, and I hope it succeeds, but [chuckles] I, we have to be cautious. We need to see results because we had so many promises that were broken-

    2. NK

      Mm

    3. YH

      ... that just to believe the words in this case, it's, it's, it's difficult.

    4. NK

      Do you believe religion is dying, Yuval, amongst the youngest of people?

    5. YH

      No, it's changing. It has been changing throughout history, and it's changing again.

    6. NK

      How is it changing now?

    7. YH

      How is it changing now? Um, one thing very, very, very interesting is that AI is increasingly taking over religion, especially religions of the book. You know, um, if I take Judaism, for example, Judaism grants ultimate authority, not to human beings, but to words in books. It calls itself the religion of the book. Humans have authority in Judaism to the extent that they know words in books.

    8. NK

      Mm.

    9. YH

      Now, until today, nobody, not even the most learned rabbi in the world, could read and remember all the words in all the Jewish books because there are too many of them.

    10. NK

      Right.

    11. YH

      AI can easily do that.

    12. NK

      Mm.

    13. YH

      So for a religion that gives ultimate authority to words in books, now there is a non-human intelligence that is about to take it over. Because it can take over the source of authority, the wo-

    14. NK

      So AI can't change the book, but it can...

    15. YH

      Reinterpret it.

    16. NK

      Reinterpret.

    17. YH

      I mean, the book has been reinterpreted again, and again, and again. This is a game being played for thousands of years.... And this is how all, all the other books got written. They're all reinterpretations of the original book.

    18. NK

      Mm.

    19. YH

      And now we have something that can read and remember all the books and has a chance of becoming the new authority.

    20. NK

      Mm.

    21. YH

      That people will increasingly, if they have a question, they will not go to a human rabbi, they will go to an AI, and it's the same in Christianity, and it's the same with Islam, and it's the same with many other religions.

    22. NK

      With trust depleting in the world as quickly as it is, don't you think people, millions of not-- millions of people will not want to resonate with one book, but smaller groups of thousands of people will find their own representation of each of these books?

    23. YH

      Could be. And again, an AI could write new books.

    24. NK

      Yeah.

    25. YH

      Um, almost every religion claims in its story that it was created by a non-human intelligence.

    26. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    27. YH

      Maybe for the first time in history, it will actually happen-

    28. NK

      Mm

    29. YH

      ... that we will see the emergence of new sects created by AI and spread by AI missionaries. And, you know, to, to change people's minds, the most powerful thing is, is intimacy, not, not, not power, not force. A good friend can change your mind in a way that almost nobody else can. And what is happening now in AI, that if for the previous decade, we saw this competition for human attention, that the algorithms are competing to grab our attention, now the front is shifting from attention to intimacy. AIs are learning how to create intimacy with humans, how to create friendships, how even to create romantic relationships.

    30. NK

      Can you tell me what you mean by intimacy?

  9. 33:44 – 39:59

    Purpose, suffering, and controlling your mind

    1. YH

      what, th- what is emotional attachment, they learned it through a relationship with an AI. What will this do to the social and romantic, uh, uh, capacities and relationships in fifteen, twenty years? Nobody has any idea. And it's amazing that we, we just allow it to happen.

    2. NK

      If you wrote the book, Yuval the AI-

    3. YH

      Mm-hmm

    4. NK

      ... you wrote the new book that people interpreted and reinterpreted as whatever religion they want to believe in, what would Yuval optimize for? What would be the three tenets of the new religion the world needs? [chuckles]

    5. YH

      I'm not in the business of creating religions. [chuckles]

    6. NK

      Joking.

    7. YH

      I've seen enough of... [chuckles] As a historian, I know there are many, many ways in which this can go wrong.

    8. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    9. YH

      I don't want anybody seeing me as a rabbi or a priest that holds the truth and tells them how to live.

    10. NK

      Yeah.

    11. YH

      This is extremely dangerous to them, even more dangerous to me-

    12. NK

      Mm

    13. YH

      ... because it kind of inflates your ego, and you become, and you, and you go crazy.

    14. NK

      Yeah. And it would be hard to pull off alive. You need somebody who's dead who wrote the book.

    15. YH

      Um-

    16. NK

      Or artificial int- artificial intelligence.

    17. YH

      It's easiest with dead people-

    18. NK

      Yeah

    19. YH

      ... because then you can do whatever you want [chuckles] with their words. Uh, but yeah, AI will be a book that talks back to you.

    20. NK

      Mm.

    21. YH

      Like, we had all these sacred books, and they were silent. When we had a question, we had to find a human expert on the book.

    22. NK

      Mm.

    23. YH

      Just imagine what happens when the book can actually talk back to you.

    24. NK

      Isn't the book respected in the manner that it is because of the finality of the book and the, the fact that it is not dynamic? And when I read the book or I read an interpretation of the book, and Yuval does, we read the same thing?

    25. YH

      No.

    26. NK

      If the book were to change-

    27. YH

      Because people constantly reinterpret it.

    28. NK

      Mm.

    29. YH

      You look at Judaism or Christianity of today, Christianity of today, completely different from what they were a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago.

    30. NK

      Mm.

  10. 39:59 – 48:02

    Algorithms destroyed the public conversation

    1. YH

      courts, the media, and then rig the elections, and you can't go to the courts because the courts are in the pocket of, of, of the new dictator, and the media won't report about it because the media is in the pocket of the dictator. So you still hold elections, but there is no longer a self-correcting mechanism. Like in Russia, there is no way that Putin can actually lose an election, and the same we saw in Venezuela, that Maduro, by all evidence, lost the, the last elections big time, but the election committee and, and the Venezuelan media and courts, they all said he won, so you could not get rid of the, of him that way.

    2. NK

      If you had to build a media house from scratch, this is something I'm passionate about, Yuval, what should the media for the new world look like? Is it something that is not behind a corporation? Is it more like a cooperative, more fragmented media? Because if large corporations that are the social media companies of today have algorithms that optimize for a reaction-

    3. YH

      Mm

    4. NK

      ... control who consumes what, it doesn't even matter what media is being reported and generated because they get to choose who reads what.

    5. YH

      Uh, yeah, that, that's the big problem today w- w- with the media world.

    6. NK

      Mm. How do you fix it?

    7. YH

      And, um, don't let non-humans control the human conversation. Our biggest mistake is that over the last 10 years, we gave one of the most important jobs in the world to algorithms, and they did a terrible, terrible job. You know, one of the, uh, h- h- human society is ultimately a conversation between humans, especially in democracies. We come together, we discuss what to do, foreign policy, economic policy, and for that, you need media. How do you manage a conversation between millions of people? [lips smack] And we built institutions over centuries to manage the public conversation. They were not perfect. No institution is perfect, but they learned from mistakes over time, and they became better. And then we turned... We did a terrible mistake. We gave the job of managing the public conversation to algorithms.

    8. NK

      And why did it work? Why did the algorithms manage this job in a manner that it got more reaction?

    9. YH

      Because the algorithms were given a very, very simple task.

    10. NK

      Mm.

    11. YH

      The algorithms were not given the task, "Okay, manage the conversation in a way that will build trust."... or in a way that will promote truth, or in a way that will improve society. How do you measure improved society? This is a very difficult metric. We want a simple metric. They were given a very simple metric-

    12. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    13. YH

      Increase engagement.

    14. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    15. YH

      What does it mean? Make people spend more time on the platform and engage more. Like engage, you read a story, you send it to your friends, or you write a comment. This is engagement, and the business model was, if people spend more time on our platform, engage more, we make more money by showing them more advertisement or taking their data and selling it to a third party. This was the business model. The metric was extremely simple, which was, which, which was good for the algorithms because these are very primitive AIs.

    16. NK

      Right.

    17. YH

      This is like the first generation. And the AIs experimented on billions of human beings and discovered something, that if you want to increase engagement, to grab people attention and make them stay longer on the platform, press the hate button in the human mind. Press the greed button or the fear button. You don't need truth. You don't need trust. You don't need social accountability.

    18. NK

      Mm.

    19. YH

      And if anger is more engaging than compassion, so let's drive anger, and this is what happened over the last ten years all over the world.

    20. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    21. YH

      You know, you have these... People ask, "Why are Republicans and Democrats no longer able even to talk to each other, to agree on the most basic facts?" You don't-- You can't explain it by just American society, because you see the same thing in Brazil, you see the same thing in Israel, you see the same thing all over the world. It can't be something specific to one country. It's the underlying technology. We have given... You know, in the twen- the, the job of, say, editors of news, was one of the most important jobs in the world in the 20th century.

    22. NK

      Mm.

    23. YH

      And you ask today, who are the most important editors in the world?

    24. NK

      Social media.

    25. YH

      It's algorithms. They don't even have names. The, the editors of, of, of TikTok and Facebook and, and X, they are not human beings.

    26. NK

      So Yuval, data shows that the youngest of people, age group 16 to 20, 22, are spending lesser time on social media, significantly less.

    27. YH

      Good news! [laughs]

    28. NK

      [laughs] If I were to build a new social media-

    29. YH

      Mm-hmm

    30. NK

      ... and have a new alga- algorithm that does not optimise for hate and greed necessarily, what do you think would be good, but also work?

  11. 48:02 – 55:06

    No purpose, just understanding suffering

    1. YH

      and you increasingly, you, you, you radicalize yourself more and more because you increasingly speak only to this one group of people, and the fact that other groups are completely put off by the way you speak, you don't care.

    2. NK

      You bring up Greek philosophy a fair amount-

    3. YH

      Mm-hmm

    4. NK

      ... with Athens and, uh, Plato and Socrates. You said something against being nihilistic in the beginning.

    5. YH

      Mm.

    6. NK

      So if you're not nihilistic as a person, do you believe there is a purpose to life? And if yes, what is it?

    7. YH

      Um, I don't speak in terms of, of purpose. You know, purpose, people think there is a big story, the drama of the universe, and I have to play a certain role. Again, let's go back to the Greeks. They invented theater, drama, so life is like a drama. I need to find out what is my role, what are my lines, and perform it.... this is something I don't believe.

    8. NK

      What do you believe is the purpose?

    9. YH

      I don't believe that the universe works like a story.

    10. NK

      Right.

    11. YH

      I think the ultimate reality is the reality of suffering and liberation from suffering, which is not about these dramas that people construct in their minds. The dramas we construct in our minds very often obscure the reality from us, that don't allow us. We c- we, we often, you know, we sometimes cause immense pain to other people and to ourselves because we think this is... W- we do it while pursuing our role in the, in, in the universal drama.

    12. NK

      Is this a bit like the Buddhist school of thought, where desire is the root of all suffering? How do you eliminate suffering, or how do you take cognizance to what is causing your suffering?

    13. YH

      And the ultimate, what I would say, is not desire, it's ignorance.

    14. NK

      Ignorance of?

    15. YH

      Ignorance of the reality. That, again, ultimately-

    16. NK

      Wouldn't ignorance of the reality actually make me suffer lesser?

    17. YH

      Why?

    18. NK

      Because if I'm not thinking of something actively, I'm not suffering by virtue of having that thought in my mind.

    19. YH

      Mm.

    20. NK

      If there is pain in the world, say, for example, people are dying in Iran today-

    21. YH

      Mm-hmm

    22. NK

      ... my ignorance of people dying in Iran will make me suffer lesser, no?

    23. YH

      From that particular thing, but if then you get into the habit-

    24. NK

      Mm

    25. YH

      ... of ignoring inconvenient things-

    26. NK

      Mm.

    27. YH

      This is a-- If you just ignore the suffering in Iran, okay, nobody can care about everything that happens in the world. We are just, you know, we are just frail human beings. We can't carry the whole world on our shoulders. But if you get into the habit pattern of ignoring things that are inconvenient, then you will bring this habit pattern into everything in your life.

    28. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    29. YH

      Into your family relationships, into your professional work, into your relationship with yourself, and again, this will cause you to be ignorant of the ways that you hurt others and the ways that you hurt yourself, and then you can't do anything about it. We can't fix something that we are busy ignoring.

    30. NK

      I hear you, but how do I take cognizance of my suffering-

  12. 55:06 – 1:02:38

    Who actually runs the world today

    1. YH

      what is the purpose, what are the... You know, I-... people want money. Why do they want money? In order not to suffer.

    2. NK

      Mm.

    3. YH

      People want power. Why do they want power? In order-- they think, "Oh, if I had all the power in the world, if I had billions of dollars, then I can, I, I, I can prevent myself from being sick. I can prevent myself from being sad. I can prevent-" B-- and it's, it doesn't work! People have been doing it [chuckles] you know, for thousands of years. You can ask the previous generations of dictators and emperors, and kings, and billionaires. This, this path doesn't work.

    4. NK

      Aren't people optimizing for attention, deep down?

    5. YH

      For-- In, in what way?

    6. NK

      Let's go back to the time when there was a society with ten people-

    7. YH

      Mm

    8. NK

      ... and they were hunting for food.

    9. YH

      Mm.

    10. NK

      The hunter who hunted the biggest animal-

    11. YH

      Mm-hmm

    12. NK

      ... beyond a certain point where everybody had enough to eat, did not hunt this really large animal, risking his life because he wanted to eat the meat-

    13. YH

      Mm

    14. NK

      ... but because he got the attention of being the biggest hunter.

    15. YH

      Mm.

    16. NK

      Attention bar status.

    17. YH

      Mm.

    18. NK

      Don't you think people are optimizing for that? Money could be a pathway.

    19. YH

      Sometimes-

    20. NK

      Morality could be another pathway.

    21. YH

      And the world is complex.

    22. NK

      Yeah.

    23. YH

      People optimize for many things at the same time, for money, for influence, for beauty, for many things. Each of us decides to put kind of, you know, different quantities in these different buckets.

    24. NK

      All leading to attention?

    25. YH

      No. Um, all, again, all leading to trying to escape suffering. We are all aware, ultimately, of the fact that we are mortal. A couple of months ago, they caught Putin and Xi in Beijing-

    26. NK

      Mm

    27. YH

      ... talking privately when they thought that nobody was listening, and the microphones were, were on. And this was amazing, because what were Putin and Xi talking about in private? They didn't talk about Ukraine, they didn't talk about Gaza, they talked about living forever.

    28. NK

      Mm.

    29. YH

      They, they, they-- these people really... You know, if you're just, you know, some poor guy somewhere, and you're going to die, y- you still don't like it.

    30. NK

      Mm.

  13. 1:02:38 – 1:07:50

    Nobody runs the world alone

    1. YH

      a single-cause explanation for a war, know that it's wrong. No war in history was caused by just one thing. Similarly, a person is never one thing or caused by one thing. We are partly the product of biology and evolution of millions of years. We are partly the product of, uh, our own personal history and psychology. At the present moment, I'm partly the product of what I ate, uh, for lunch-

    2. NK

      Mm-hmm

    3. YH

      ... and of the last words that have gone through my mind or through my mouth.

    4. NK

      Who actually runs the world today, Yuval? If I'm a twenty-two-year-old boy-

    5. YH

      Mm

    6. NK

      ... and I have a hundred million followers, am I more relevant to how the world thinks, or is a politician?

    7. YH

      Um, [chuckles] n- no single person or group of persons runs the world.

    8. NK

      Agreed. But-

    9. YH

      And when you talk, you know, you're in Davos, you talk to the most powerful people in the world-

    10. NK

      Mm-hmm

    11. YH

      ... and you always get a double story. Sometimes they will, they will try to exaggerate their power and give the impression that, "I'm so powerful," uh, whether as a banker, a politician, or, and whatever. And then when it comes to solving problems, they tend to run away-

    12. NK

      Mm

    13. YH

      ... and say, "I-- this is not my responsibility. I don't have the power to solve it. This is because of somebody else."

    14. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    15. YH

      And to some extent, they are correct, that, um, again, even if you are the most powerful person in the world-

    16. NK

      Mm

    17. YH

      ... um, you cannot solve by yourself most of the world's problems, and this goes back to the beginning of our conversation. This is why, uh, trust and friendship and cooperation is so crucial. Because unless you build, uh, uh, even a s- a limited network of cooperation, you can't really do anything. So whether you're an influencer, an investor, a politician-

    18. NK

      I hear you. I'm trying to establish the hierarchy of power.

    19. YH

      Mm.

    20. NK

      Not trying to determine if a group has all the power.

    21. YH

      Okay.

    22. NK

      Who has more power today? Is it... Again, all the people we have seen here, I think Elon is speaking next.

    23. YH

      Mm-hmm.

    24. NK

      Is it Elon? Is it Donald Trump? Is it the person who's programming the algorithm of, uh, Instagram and TikTok?

    25. YH

      W- w- we'll, we'll know in a hundred years who was really important, or in, in a thousand years.

    26. NK

      Who do you suspect?

    27. YH

      You know, if, if I, [clears throat] if I talked with you like, "Okay, we are in the Davos of the Roman Empire."

    28. NK

      Yeah.

    29. YH

      "This is the year third... No, not twenty twenty-six, this is the year twenty-six."

    30. NK

      Mm.

  14. 1:07:50 – 1:14:44

    Can capitalism survive without human effort

    1. NK

      with most influence today-

    2. YH

      Mm-hmm

    3. NK

      ... is the person controlling the algorithm or the groups of people.

    4. YH

      Mm.

    5. NK

      And I hope any of the other people have more influence, but not the algorithm, 'cause I don't think it's optimized for the right thing, if I had to wish.

    6. YH

      But then maybe the answer is that the most important, powerful actor today is no longer a human being.

    7. NK

      Mm.

    8. YH

      That I think... I don't think we have reached that point in 2026.

    9. NK

      Mm.

    10. YH

      But I think we are close to the point when the most important, powerful, if you want, entity on the planet is no longer a human being or a group of human beings, but an AI.

    11. NK

      If we were to tread down that path, if AI eliminates the need for effort, a society of a- abundance, where intelligence does not have a premium anymore because AI has a higher IQ anyway-

    12. YH

      Mm-hmm

    13. NK

      ... does capitalism survive?

    14. YH

      Uh.

    15. NK

      Like, what would be the point?

    16. YH

      Capitalism, yes, of course. Capitalism doesn't necessarily need people. [chuckles] It needs money and profits and growth. Uh, and-

    17. NK

      It needs shareholders who...?

    18. YH

      AIs can do, can do that.

    19. NK

      Mm.

    20. YH

      I mean, w- [exhales] capitalism already created non-human persons which run the show, and they are corporations. Um, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, corpo- these are not humans.

    21. NK

      Mm.

    22. YH

      These are corporations which are legal persons, even though they don't have a body or a mind.

    23. NK

      I consider them not-

    24. YH

      But, but, but until today-

    25. NK

      ... not AIs. Mm.

    26. YH

      Because when, say, Microsoft decides to buy a certain other company, it's not really Microsoft. It's human beings. It's the executives or shareholders that decide to do it. Um, but with AI, AI... What, what defines AI is the ability to make decisions by itself. If something cannot make decisions by itself, it's not an AI. So we could be close to the point when AI can be a corporation that makes its own decisions without any humans. Now, imagine a world in which there are maybe thousands, millions of AI corporations, in which the AIs decide, "We'll buy that, we'll sell that, we'll invest here, we'll buy..." And the AIs interact with the other AIs, and if they are more intelligent than us, they will make better business decisions, they will gain more money, um, and they will take over the financial and economic system. The, the, the legal framework is already there with corporations and legal, legal persons. The AIs just need to kind of get into it.

    27. NK

      Interesting. Uh, is money also losing relevance?

    28. YH

      It could. Um, depending what you mean by money. Money could change its character.

    29. NK

      Store, store of value, exchangeable for effort.

    30. YH

      Mm-hmm. Uh, it could. We see already the decline of traditional currencies and the rise of cryptocurrencies, which are managed and created by algorithms. We could reach a point when, for instance, currency will be AI tokens or even time on servers or data-

  15. 1:14:44 – 1:21:11

    Venezuela, Iran, and rebuilding democracy

    1. YH

      I want to understand the thought in my mind, where do they come from? And I investigate that, and this investigation, for me, is spirituality.

    2. NK

      This word, investigate, is it very common in Israeli...? I have a speech trainer who's Israeli-

    3. YH

      Mm

    4. NK

      ... and he says investigate a lot.

    5. YH

      Mm. [chuckles] Is it? Um-

    6. NK

      I don't hear other nationalities using it.

    7. YH

      Okay.

    8. NK

      'Cause he says-

    9. YH

      I haven't thought about it. [chuckles]

    10. NK

      He says when you deliver a speech, you say a line, and then you investigate the people listening to the speech in terms of what expression they have on their face.

    11. YH

      Mm.

    12. NK

      So he says, investigate.

    13. YH

      Interesting. Um, [chuckles] could be.

    14. NK

      Geopolitically, Yuval, uh, any views on Venezuela, Iran? It seems like so much is going on. I'm trying to-

    15. YH

      I'm not sad to see Maduro go. [chuckles] I will be very happy to see the current Iranian regime disappear.

    16. NK

      Yeah.

    17. YH

      Uh, the question is always what replaces it?

    18. NK

      Mm.

    19. YH

      Replacing one dictator with another-

    20. NK

      Yeah

    21. YH

      ... we saw it, you know, we saw it with Gaddafi.

    22. NK

      Yeah.

    23. YH

      We are so happy how Gaddafi is gone.

    24. NK

      Yeah.

    25. YH

      Did it really improve things in Libya? We are so happy Saddam Hussein is gone. Did it really improve things in Iraq? So, you know, it's not like these Hollywood superhero movies-

    26. NK

      Mm

    27. YH

      ... that you think, "Oh, the problem in the world is because this one big, evil guy, we just get rid of... We get Superman to get rid of Dr. Evil," end of, end of the, the movie ends, happy ending. Doesn't happen like that in history.

    28. NK

      Yeah.

    29. YH

      Very often, okay, you got rid of the bad guy, now you start the really difficult job of rebuilding society, rebuilding democracy.

    30. NK

      Mm.

  16. 1:21:11 – 1:23:50

    Don't believe everything is just power

    1. YH

      is not getting rid of bureaucracies. It's getting rid of human bureaucrats and replacing them with AI bureaucrats, which are far more opaque, far more secretive. You can't understand what they are doing. They are far less accountable. And this, again, it's the shift in power and authority from humans to algorithms, which we, which we saw in social media. You know, previously, the job of the editor was done by a human being. Now, the job of the editor is still there, it's just being done by an algorithm, and the algorithm has so far been doing a much, much worse jobs, w- worse job than the humans before.

    2. NK

      Last thing, Yuval. I think this is the end. You wanna leave us with a fleeting thought of some sort?

    3. YH

      All thoughts are fleeting. [laughing]

    4. NK

      [laughing] Fleeting for today.

    5. YH

      Ah, fleeting for today. [chuckles]

    6. NK

      In the current circumstance of the things around us.

    7. YH

      Hmm. I'll just repeat, I think, maybe the most important message.

    8. NK

      Mm.

    9. YH

      Don't believe people who tell you that, that all reality is just power-

    10. NK

      Mm

    11. YH

      ... that power is the only thing that matters. Um, first of all, on, on the personal level, it will make your life miserable.

    12. NK

      Mm-hmm.

    13. YH

      You don't want to be the person who thinks that all their relationships are just power struggles. It's a miserable life, and [coughs] on the collective human level, it will be very miserable existence for humanity. If our, our leaders, political leaders, business leaders, have this mindset that the only thing that matters is power, that all human relationships are, are power struggles, then we end up in a world... First, in a world in which you have to spend fifty percent of your budget on the military, and nothing is left for healthcare, and, and, and then everything collapses. Uh, w- we reach anarchy because then the country itself, uh, people will start fighting each other because, you know, if everything is just power, so why is this guy in power and not me? So the, the, the thought, again, it maybe goes back to the thought. If the, if the thought enters that everything is just power, observe this thought and let it g..., and let it fleet. Let it go away. Don't hold, hold on to this thought. Don't identify with this thought. It's very cynical, it's destructive, it's, it's a very dangerous thought.

    14. NK

      Well said. Thank you, Yuval, for doing this.

    15. YH

      Thank you.

    16. NK

      [chuckles] Cheers. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 1:23:50

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