All language subtitles for The Book of My Life - Harari

The big problem of science

is science
is not a very good storyteller,

but humans
are motivated to action

by the stories,
not by the facts.

What are the main issues

that concern voters
in the United States,

in Europe,
in other parts of the world?

So, immigration is
one of the top issues everywhere,

whereas climate change,
many people just deny it.

The attraction of immigration

is it's...
Again, it's a biological drama.

The drama
that we live in one tribe

and suddenly somebody comes
from another tribe to our territory,

this is something
that is familiar to

chimpanzees and to wolves
and to rabbits,

"Ah, there is these strange rabbits
coming here,

they will take our grass".

They understand it,
it's very, very deep.

When I meet Yuval Noah Harari,

I am struck
by his extraordinary precision

in observing his surroundings.

With humour
and a razor-sharp mind,

he tries to inform the world
and initiate the discourse

on the global challenges
of our time.

Harari is an author, historian
and philosopher,

holds a doctorate from Oxford

and is Professor of History
at the University of Jerusalem.

Sapiens:
A Brief History of Humankind,

Homo Deus and Nexus
have become global bestsellers.

Be there when I meet
Yuval Noah Harari!

Welcome to The Book of my Life.

My name is Jagoda Marinic.
I'm a writer and host of the show,

and I'm happy to lead you
through a conversation about

books, life and the world.

My today's guest is
a very special guest

who's deeply into explaining
and understanding this world.

Welcome to the show,
Yuval Harari.

Thank you.
It's good to be here.

It's good to have you here.

And I'm very curious

because I have been,
yeah, listening to

your interviews, reading
your books, like so many people,

and I'm interested
to find out

about the role
that reading played in your life.

When did you understand that books

will have this important role
that they have in your life?

I began to read
at a very early age.

I think the first book I've read,
surprisingly enough,

was a history of the world
for children.

It's a huge, huge book
full of images

and... you know,

paintings, and I can still
kind of remember now

many of the images in that book

about people in the Stone Age

and mediaeval knights on crusades
and things like that.

And do you remember your age?

I was, like, four years old.

At first, I just looked
at the pictures.

I didn't read the book, and

I asked my parents

to help me decipher
what are the signs

next to the pictures.

And then I read it,
like, I don't know,

probably hundreds of times.

I would go over it
again and again and again.

From history
went actually to mythology.

So I had another book
which really influenced me,

which was, I think,
Edith Hamilton's Greek mythology,

and it had no pictures in it.

This was just...
just text, just words.

But the words formed
these also incredible...

incredibly powerful images

of, you know,
people turning into trees

and gods creating things
out of nothing.

And it really kind of...

lit up my imagination.

How old were you then?

Probably it was a few years later,
I suppose I was, like,

seven maybe, seven or eight.

So may I try to imagine
this young seven-year-old boy.

So, I mean, you must have had
tonnes of other books

with fairy tales and

things that are more
"child-appropriate",

as we say today.

And... but then what
would stick to your fantasy as a kid

was actually the real history
and the mythology.

The two things
I'm still dealing with right now

- as an author and as a scholar.
- Yeah. That's amazing. Right.

But, you know, these are the ways
that we try to explain the world

to ourselves.

And were you fascinated
by the other books as well,

or were you so focused
as a child already?

No, I read a lot of books.

I mean, I've read
basically every book we had...

We didn't have
a big library at home,

but we had a couple of, I guess,
a dozen books, quite eclectic,

and I just read all of them,

I mean, without exception.

Some quite strange ones,
I guess, as well.

Do you remember the funniest book
you read as a kid?

The book that made you laugh?

There weren't many funny...

There were
a couple of books by

Israeli satirist Ephraim Kishon.

We had two or three of his books
and I also read and reread them

quite a number...
And they were funny,

but probably they had a...
not as much

as impact as the mythology
and the history.

So for many people,
it's you either like science

or you like the storytelling.

So with you, it was very early

that you seemed
to want to connect these things.

So let me first understand,
why was mythology so important

for you as a kid?

It was instinctive. It was just
trying to understand the world.

And the way that humans
try to understand the world

at first was mythology.

I mean, this is the way
that people thousands of years ago

tried to understand
why the things are as they are,

the mysteries of the universe,

of the human body,
of the human mind.

So, mythology was
the main vehicle.

And humans are storytelling animals.

We think in stories,

so that they come
more easily to us.

It's much... When you reach,
say, the 21st century

and you read the latest books
about, say, quantum mechanics

that are trying to explain to you

how the universe works
on a physical level,

or you read books in cell biology

and genetics,

this is... this is so complicated.

I mean, our brains are really not

really evolved or adapted

to thinking in those terms.
This is why you need

to kind of spend
years and years in university

and rely on complex
mathematical equations.

And even then it's like...

It's at a distance.

It's extremely difficult
to actually internalise

what this means

because it's not the way
that our minds function.

That's something that you like
to stress, that it's more complex

than many people
would like to have it.

Much more complex than mythology.
I mean, you know, the basic...

When I think about science
and I think about mythology,

what strikes me is science
is far, far more imaginative,

far more wild,
far more surprising

than any mythology
that humans ever managed to create.

Most human mythology
is taking the basic,

you know, dramas
from our personal lives

and just kind of inflating them.

So, you know, the gods,
like in Greek mythology,

they're basically
a squabbling family.

And the type of arguments
that, as a kid,

maybe you hear
between your father and mother,

so you read it in the mythology,
this is Zeus and Hera.

Or the way that they fight

or punish the children.

And, you know,

this goes
even to the deepest layers

of later, say,
Jewish and Christian mythology

that...

The entire kind of...

Jewish identity

is saying that
we are fathers' favourite children.

That's it.

Which is the type of thing that in
every family, kids would squabble.

Father loves me more
than he loves you.

And you find entire nations
that build their identity

around this story.

Or you think about
how Christian theologians

explain what hell is.

So you know, on one level
they will say, OK, demons

roast you alive

in burning sulphur and fire
for millions of years.

But then on a deeper level,
they will say hell

is being cut off, disconnected

from God.

Which is the deepest fear
of every child

and actually
of every mammal offspring -

to lose touch with the parents.

Because if an offspring
of a mammal,

a human being or a chimpanzee
or a porcupine or a dolphin

loses connection

with their mother
or with their parents, they die.

There is nobody to provide food.

There is nobody
to take care of them.

So you know, you can think

of the whole of this
kind of Christian theology -

basically the idea
of a lost child

crying for their parents.

And so in this sense,
I mean, mythology is very deep

emotionally.

But in terms of
understanding the universe,

there is something
very shallow about it,

because it simply takes them,

I would say the biological dramas

that have been scripted
by evolution,

about the life
of children and families

and friendships

and just kind of inflates it

to think this is... the whole
universe works like my family.

The whole universe
works like our village.

And things like quantum
mechanics say, "No, they don't".

I mean,
a certain part of the universe,

like the...
again, the biological lives

of mammals,
they work that way.

But most of the universe doesn't,

even if you just move from
mammals like this rabbit here...

Yeah, it's really...

It doesn't move anymore.

For the mammals,

simply you take a small step
to the reptiles.

It's already
a completely different story.

Like, you think about,
I don't know, turtles.

So you have this kind of image

of the turtle mother

coming from the sea,

she digs a hole in the sand,

she lays there eggs, I don't know,
like 40 or 50 eggs,

she covers the hole,

and then she goes back to sea
and that's it.

This is what Freud
would have to deal with

if he was treating turtles.

Because there is no longer
any connection afterwards

between...
The mother has done her bit.

She's not a mammal,
so she doesn't suckle the young,

she doesn't protect them, nothing.

She is in the sea doing her things,
forgot about it,

and then a couple of weeks later,

the young turtles,
the baby turtles, come out.

And they go out to the sea,

and then all these birds and fish
come and eat them,

and maybe out of the 50 turtles,
maybe two or three survive,

and they will be
the next generation.

They have never
any connection with their,

certainly not with their father,
and also not with their mother.

So what would turtle mythology
be like?

Like, this whole fear
of Christian theology -

maybe I'm cut off for my father -

it makes no sense to turtles.

And this Jewish obsession - Father
loves us more than anybody else -

it makes no sense to turtles.

Turtle parents don't love
their children at all. For us,

our, like, the deepest core

of our psychology -

and you still have wars,

like the wars raging right now
in my country,

the war between Israelis
and Palestinians - it's still fueled

by this biological,
mythological drama

that we are God's
favourite children - both sides.

But isn't that which humans
claim makes them so special,

the fact that
they can invent a story,

the fact that
they can connect differently

and imagine differently...

So yeah, what's different
in us from rabbits and

probably even elephants
and chimpanzees

is that we, with language,

we can create stories.

But... and we have
incredible imagination,

but the thing is that
the basic scripts...

- Of the imaginations are the same.
- Of our stories,

of our imagination,
are still constrained

by our mammalian biology.

So you have
these incredibly complex

mythologies and poems

and movies and TV series,

but when you look at
what is the actual plot,

the actual plot

is taken from biology.

It's taken... It's something
that in essence, even the rabbits

will understand.

- So whether...
- I'm not sure.

Whether it's Christian theology,

whether it's, you know,
the plays of Shakespeare,

whether it's, I don't know,
like, TV series like Succession...

- Have you watched Succession?
- I don't watch series

because I feel like
I've seen them all,

- you know...
- Yeah,

because it's actually like
there are ten plots

- that evolution scripted...
- Right, I agree.

And we kind of just retell
the same plots again and again

in incredible variations,

but they are the same basic plots.

I agree.

And science works outside

these plots.
I mean, quantum mechanics

is not a biological drama.

It's so different

from anything
in our kind of experience

as children, as family members,

as members of a community.

But again,
with the help of mathematics

and with the help of computers,

we can somehow approach it.

And so much of the world

is built on top of these

scientific theories and models.

But, you know, psychologically

and also politically,
they leave us completely cold.

It's very hard to inspire people

to do anything

by telling them E=mc2

or by showing them the equations
of quantum mechanics.

Yeah, because they do need
for action, they do still need

the activation
of the biological drama.

- That's what you say, yeah.
- Yes.

And for good or for bad, it can,
you know, it can lead to

acts of charity and compassion
and incredible bravery,

and it can lead
to wars and persecution.

And you know, almost
all persecutions in the world,

whether of ethnic minorities,

whether of gay people,
whether of anybody,

it's basically taking
the disgust mechanism,

which, again, evolution provided
all mammals, including rabbits,

with a disgust mechanism
because you know,

especially children,
we like to explore the world

and we explore the world a lot
with our mouth.

We try to eat different things.

And if we eat something poisonous
or a source of pollution,

that could make us sick,
we could die.

So evolution equipped us
with a disgust mechanism.

This disgust mechanism
is quite flexible.

So often,
parents need to teach children

what to be disgusted from,

like that faeces

or, or somebody vomited or things
like that. "Oh, this is disgusting".

Before we go into the books you
brought, I want to know one thing.

You must have been seven or 11

when you read
those mythological stories

and you didn't know anything. You
weren't the smart man you are today.

So you were a kid
finding out first the...

What was it back then
that moved your energy

into fascination of mythology?

What was the feeling
you could connect with?

Again, it's... I think it's

the kind of yearning to understand
how the world works.

So the myth
did give you a feeling

that you are getting deeper
into knowledge about the world.

Yes, you know, it's a question
whether it's...

whether it's misleading

or whether it really
gives you insight into at least...

how part of the universe works.

But of course, myth is also
very dangerous. It's very tempting,

but it's very dangerous,

as I mentioned earlier,
I mean, people fight entire wars

and kill millions of people
just because of mythology.

So it's an extremely

powerful but dangerous thing.

Did you feel that back then?
That it's dangerous also?

At the age seven or eight,

I was just fascinated
by the stories.

I mean, you don't...

you don't understand how
it really kind of shapes your mind

decades to the future,

these fairy tales
and legends and mythologies.

And you obviously
don't understand

the kind of
dangerous political

and social constructs

that are built on top
of these mythologies.

You often then spend
your entire life

basically unlearning

these fairy tales and myths

that you've heard
as a young child.

I mean,
they are incredibly powerful.

Fear-creating also.

This is how you then
look at the world

when you're 20, when you're 40,
when you're 16.

And if you're fed

the wrong stories,
the wrong mythologies,

then 50 years later,
you're Putin.

This can lead to the death

and misery of millions of people.

It all starts in the mind.

Very few wars in history
were about

objective things
or problems in the world.

People think

that people fight
for the same reason that

rabbits and turtles
and chimpanzees fight,

that we fight over food
and we fight over territory.

And this is almost never the case.

We are...
Over the last few thousand years,

we have become
so powerful as a species

that it's not difficult

to provide
our basic biological needs.

We don't really need to fight
over territory

and we don't really need to fight
over food or resources.

Again, if I look at my country,

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
it's not about land.

There is enough land between
the Mediterranean and Jordan

to build the houses
and schools for everybody.

It's definitely not about food.
There is enough food.

There is enough water.
There is enough energy.

There is all the objective
resources, there is enough.

But in the mind of people,

they believe in fantasies,

in mythologies, in stories

that are incompatible.

And again,
they say, both sides say,

"God gave us this whole place,

we cannot compromise
on God's love.

We cannot compromise
on God's gift.

I mean, if it was up to us,

no problem, we can give you half,

but God gave it.

We can't overrule what God said".

But is there also a dilemma

in your own
work, research, thinking,

that on the one hand,
you see the mythology as a

critical energy, let's say,

in our collective consciousness,

but on the other hand,
you also say that

most people do not react
to the facts and science?

The big problem of science

is science is not
a very good storyteller,

but humans are motivated to action

by the stories, not by the facts.

What are the main issues

that concern voters
in the United States,

in Europe,
in other parts of the world?

So, immigration is one
of the top issues everywhere,

whereas climate change,
many people just deny it.

The attraction of immigration

is it's...
Again, it's a biological drama.

The drama that
we live in one tribe

and suddenly somebody comes
from another tribe to our territory.

This is something
that is familiar

to chimpanzees

and to wolves and to rabbits.

"Oh, there is these
strange rabbits coming here.

They will take our grass".

They understand it.
It's very, very deep.

But though,
on the level of myth,

the extinction of mankind
through natural disaster

has also been
a biological drama

at display in the Bible,
you know?

So I wonder why
with immigrants it works

and with natural disaster
it doesn't.

Because in the Bible,

the process that happens

is that humans sin

and then God punishes them
for their sin

by unleashing a flood.

And you would see that a lot of the
conversation around climate change,

it goes to that story of guilt,

that people feel guilty.

"Oh, I did this and therefore
the world is collapsing".

And it's much more difficult

to go beyond
this kind of biblical narrative

of sin and punishment

and forget about this.

Understand the mechanisms,

again, the ecological mechanisms

and the physical mechanisms
that we are dealing with,

which are not really

these sin-punishment mechanisms,

with God as the intervening actor.

Though much of the rhetoric
of climate activists

is within the sin mechanism.

Exactly.

Because this is...
They reach out for a story

and this is the closest story
they can find.

Again, it's parent... it goes back
to children and parents.

"We are bad children.

We did something wrong.
Father is punishing us".

So this is something
that people can easily understand.

"I took too many flights

last year.
I'm a bad boy.

God will punish us
with climate change".

This is something that people
kind of instinctively connect to.

And then they dislike it

because they're guilty
and they don't want to feel guilty.

It's not that they don't want
to feel guilty because

guilt is powerful.

You know, Christianity
has become the most successful

religion in history,

and it's built on guilt.

So, guilt is not
something kind of...

And people, in a way,

they "like" to feel guilty.

But if we really want to deal
with climate change,

then thinking about it

in terms of personal guilt

is the wrong way.
We need to understand,

again, the systems at work.

And the main problem is not

with the decisions
of individual people.

It's the way
that the economy is built,

it's the way that
the political system is built.

I mean, the action needs to come
from corporations and governments,

which are bureaucratic entities.

This is the organising principle.

We have no mythologies
about bureaucracy.

This is something
that most people don't understand,

how bureaucracies work.

So you have some artists -

like, Kafka is the most famous,
but he's not the only one -

who tried to explain to people

this new reality of:

The world works on the basis
of bureaucratic systems.

But again,
psychologically and mythologically,

it's very difficult

because, you know,
bureaucracies is our documents

and protocols and forms
and lists.

It doesn't work on stories.

And to understand, like,
when was the last time

you saw a movie or read a novel
about the budget?

Not about somebody who works

in the budget department,
about the budget, like as the hero.

Like you try to understand
Germany in 2024,

you try to understand
climate change.

How does the budget works?

From one perspective,

this is one of the most
important things about our life.

But nobody writes about it.

There are no television shows.
It's boring.

How would you say
bureaucracy affects

the human being today?
Or the fact... if you say that...

How long do you have to wait
for a doctor's appointment?

This is sometimes
a life and death question,

and this is determined
by bureaucratic

principles.

Now again,
people could understand it

if they translate it into
some kind of sin and punishment

narrative or some kind of
child-parent narrative,

but this is not
how bureaucracy works.

And we need
a completely different set

of stories

to understand bureaucracy.

Again, people like Kafka

began to try

and formulate these stories,

- but for every...
- I think he didn't just begin,

I think he captured
a deep aspect of it.

Just in terms of numbers,

for every Kafka novel...

- You will be back...
- ... how many

- ... with 1000 non-Kafka-novels...
- ... books are there about two boys

- fighting over a girl?
- But you don't need 100 Mona Lisas

to have the knowledge
of a Mona Lisa,

you know? I mean,
one Kafka is enough, I think.

You might be right intellectually,

but I feel challenged
by the danger you see in stories,

but I completely can follow
your argument.

Though I mostly see
the liberating part that stories

- also can have.
- It depends on what the story is.

The key point is
stories are incredibly powerful.

And like every powerful thing,

you can use them well

and you can use them
for evil purposes.

So you think a...

a debate that is not taking place
is actually thinking about

the bureaucratic

and the...
and the structural,

I mean, like United Nations
and all the structures we have

- to solve the problem.
- Yeah.

We don't understand
the structures. I mean,

this is one of the reasons you have
all these conspiracy theories

that people believe, that, "Oh you
have a small group of billionaires

controlling everything
and starting wars and epidemics",

because this is something
that we can understand.

This goes back to the mythology.

This goes back to all the parents,

they do everything.

It's like thinking that the world
has, like, a small number of parents

and maybe they are bad parents

and they are punishing us
and they are doing bad things.

It's easy to understand
these conspiracy theories.

It's much, much more difficult
to understand the reality.

There is no small group of people

who understand
and control everything.

There is this huge,
sprawling bureaucratic system

which is not evil.

It's doing what it's doing.

But if we want to make
a significant change in the world

like deal with climate change,

we need to work with
and through the bureaucracy.

If we get stuck
in these simplistic

mythological narratives...

I completely agree with you,
and I'm glad you bring this up.

But last thing
you have to tell me, the book

you read between 15 and 18.

The books - and not scientific.

Ah, OK, let me think.

I mostly read scientific books.

- I was afraid so.
- I mean, yeah.

They forced us to read

all kinds of, you know, novels

in school,

but I really discovered novels

and began to really love them
only afterwards.

As long as they kind of forced us,

"You have to read this, you have to
read Dostoyevsky because it's in the

matriculation exam".

So it was a kind of,
"Ugh, I have to read this".

Afterwards, when it was over,
I reread it and really loved it.

But...

Between 15 and 18,
I almost only read history.

- History.
- Yeah.

And when you learnt to love novels
later, which one did you love?

So I revisited some of the works

that...

we read in school, but

I really loved, again...

Tolstoy's War and Peace.

- Which is very biological drama.
- Which is also history, yeah,

but it's, it's also history.

I need to kind of rekindle
my memory for novels.

Did you read a woman's novel?

I read Ursula Le Guin's,

you know, science fiction, fantasy

novels, and I also read...

What was her name? I don't
remember the name of the author,

but she wrote...

the...

Two, again, historical novels.

The Persian Boy and...

something about Alexander the Great,

but it focused on the love affair

between Alexander

and a Persian youth

who was previously
the lover of Darius,

the Persian king.

And this was
one of the first kind of...

Before I came out,
before I realised that I was gay,

this was one of the first
kind of novels

about gay relationships
that I read.

And did the reading had anything

to do with the fact
that you came out? No?

Not immediately. It was not like
an immediate cause and effect,

but I do remember
that I was very kind of

particularly interested

in that story.

And I guess it kind of
percolated inside there

and was...

important, instrumental

in later kind of

coming out to myself.

So reading

about a love affair
that's so long ago,

did this help you
to understand present things better?

Like for you, is it better
to understand things when they

are set in the distance?

It puts the present in perspective

and...

For me,
it's not such a long time ago.

I mean, it's only

just a little bit
over 2000 years ago.

If you think about the span

of human existence,

which is hundreds
of thousands of years,

and the span of the cosmos,

which is like 13 billion years,

so 2000 years is yesterday.

And...

One of my kind of...

My basic feeling about history

is that it's all present in a way.

Nobody reads history
or cares about history

because of the past.

Like, all the people in the past
are gone. They are dead.

We can't change anything
that happened back then,

and they don't care
what we think about them.

Like, Alexander the Great
doesn't care

if you think he was great
or he was not so great or whatever.

The past is important because of
what it tells us about the present.

And the only,

you know, the only thing that
separates us from the past is time.

Do you understand what trickled down
when you read this book about

your own coming out?

In a way, it expands

your reality

or your understanding
of what could be

in the universe.

Like, if you grow up

and you only see
heterosexual couples around you,

so you don't even imagine that

maybe two boys
or two men can be a couple.

And then you read the story

and it expands your universe.

You understand, "Oh, these things,
these kinds of relationships,

they can also be in reality".

Like, the laws of physics

and the laws of biology

don't forbid

the existence of these things.

Maybe human laws,

maybe religion, maybe the state

tries to forbid it,

but states and religions forbid

only things
that can actually exist.

Nobody bothers to issue a law

forbidding people to run faster
than the speed of light

because it's simply impossible.
What's the point?

They only issue law to forbid things

that are actually
part of reality potentially.

I'm very reconciled
that your scientist's brain

has one story
that is not destructive

in your own readers' biographies.

Even the mythological stories
I've read, they are not destructive.

Again, what I'm saying is that
they are very powerful,

so we have to be
very careful about them.

It's interesting because now
everybody says we have to fact check

and give the statistics,

and you actually always say that

in a way we should be able
to put it into a story

- to transmit it.
- Yes. A good story for me

relies on facts,
doesn't ignore them.

But the thing
if you only fact check,

if you only give the statistic,
it never works.

Because the only thing
that can replace one story

is another story.

If you think about a story like,
I don't know, a balloon,

and people think, OK,
I'll take this fact checking needle

and I stick holes in it and it
will explode. It never explodes.

If you only poke holes in the
balloon, you can poke 1000 holes,

it's still there, no problem.

The only thing that replaces
one balloon is another balloon.

If you tell a different story,
a more interesting story,

a story that
helps people better, then

you don't need to poke any holes
in the other story.

It will just disappear.

We have talked
about stories and

we have asked you to bring books,
but since you brought

books on science,
I really want to understand

your concept of stories since

I believe that
part of the success of your books

is that you do manage to

sort of narrate science,
as paradox as it sounds.

What I try to do is to bridge

the kind of facts and theories

and models of science

that are often...
don't come in the shape of a story

and shape them into a story

that will be accessible to people

without kind of betraying

the scientific values

of truth and factuality
and so forth.

And these are some of the books
that inspired me on the way.

Which one
do you want to start with?

Let's start with Chimpanzee Politics
because we talked about it already.

This book that was written,
I think, in the year

that I was born, in 1976,
by Franz De Waal,

who...

was one of maybe the greatest
primatologist of our age.

And it tells the story

of a single chimpanzee band,

about 20 chimpanzees,

living in a zoo

in the Netherlands, in Arnhem,

and their relationships
and their politics.

And...

Basically everything
we talked about is based partly

on what I discovered in this book,

that human politics is
much like chimpanzee politics

and that

these biological dramas

that now are controlling

entire nations and launching wars

and so forth, they are
the same biological dramas

that you find in the struggles

in the relationships
of a small group of chimpanzees.

And it also relates
to what we just discussed,

for instance, about sexuality

and what is permissible
and what is forbidden.

For me...

Not Frans de Waal, and of course,

below Frans de Waal,
you always find Charles Darwin.

Darwin is the kind of prophet

of sexual liberation.

That if I think about

the liberation of gay people,
of LGBTQ people,

then if you dig underneath,
you eventually find Darwin.

Because for...
At least in the West,

for centuries upon centuries,

gay people were persecuted
and oppressed

because of this mythological idea

about sex,

that sex was created by God

for the purpose of procreation.

And if you use sex
for anything else,

you're sinning against
the purpose of the thing,

so you must be punished.

And then Darwin came

and Darwin said, in biology,
there are no purposes.

Nothing has any purpose in biology.

In biology, there are only causes.

I can explain

what was the causal chain of events

that led to the creation,

to the evolution, not creation,
to the evolution

of sexual organs

and sexual feelings in animals

and mammals and humans,

but they were not created
for a particular purpose.

This is true of everything
in biology.

Like, we have fingers,
not in order

to type on computers
or to play the piano

or to climb trees.

Fingers evolved

through evolution.

When humans climbed trees

and when humans picked fruits
or ancient apes did it,

so those that had...

better fingers survived

and left these
kind of better fingers

for their offspring.

And similarly,
if you think about wings,

why do birds have wings?

Wings were not created
so that birds could fly.

Originally,
reptiles evolved feathers

in order to warm themselves.

But once something exists,

it can be used

for all the things
that you can use it for.

So some reptiles,
when they were escaping predators,

they jumped,
and these feathers helped them

to jump further
and they survived.

And generation by generation,
this became wings.

So it would be ridiculous

to kind of blame birds.
"Why are you using your wings

in order to fly?

They were originally meant
only to warm you.

If you fly with them,

this is against the purpose
for which they were created".

This is ridiculous

And it's the same with sex.

It evolved
in the context of procreation.

But among mammals,

among chimpanzees
and among rabbits and among humans,

new usages evolved over time.

The vast majority of sex

today, not just among humans,

also among chimpanzees,
it's not about procreation.

People use it
to establish intimate bonds

between themselves.

And to say to people,
"No, that's wrong.

You should not use sex

to establish intimacy.
It's only from procreation",

this is ridiculous. It's like
telling birds, "Don't fly".

And this is, I think, the kind of

deepest layer

of the liberation

of women, of LGBTQ people,

the, again,
Darwinian understanding

that what things don't have
kind of a purpose

set from above,

they...

Whatever exists...

is, by definition,
in line with the laws of nature.

The idea that you can act,
you can do something

that violates the laws of nature,
this is simply ridiculous.

What violates the laws of nature
doesn't exist.

Whatever exists,

by definition, it's in line
with the laws of nature.

The laws of a country -
that's different.

Like, a country can say
you cannot drive more than...

But you mean the laws of nature
have no moral.

You mean
total free of morals, right?

- It's just the fact that it exists.
- Yes.

Of course, not everything
that exists is good.

People murder
and this is part of reality

and this is bad.

But then you have to give
an explanation.

If you want to forbid something,

you cannot say,

"I forbid it because
it's against the laws of nature".

There is no such thing.

You need to provide an explanation.

So with murder,
we know the explanation.

Murder is bad because
it causes tremendous suffering,

not just to the person you murder,

but to everybody around them,
their family, their friends.

So it's bad because
it causes suffering.

Now if two men love each other,

how does it cause anybody to suffer?

If you think you want to forbid it,

you need to come up
with a better argument

than, "Oh, it's against
the laws of nature".

And Yuval, may I come back to when
you talked about the turtles first

and that the mother disappears,
and when you read the book,

and then you mentioned Freud.

So how do you look
at psychoanalytics

as an explanation tool

- for these things?
- It's a very powerful tool.

It's, again, exploring

the mythological
and the psychological

mechanisms

that shape and motivate humans.

And if you try
to take psychoanalysis

and understand turtles,
it will not work.

If you try to understand atoms

and subatomic particles,
it will not work.

But with humans, it works.

And to some extent,
it will also work with chimpanzees.

And there's also

women that are famous
with the research on chimpanzees

- like Jane Goodall.
- Yeah.

Was she important for you?

I've read her books also.

And also, you know,
the amazing thing about

her work

is...

you know, the brilliance
of the simplicity,

that you had
all these people in universities,

in Oxford and Harvard arguing

about what apes
do and don't do,

and she said,
"I'll just go and look".

And you know, she started
in such a simple way.

Said just, "I'll just go and live

with the chimpanzees
and look at them

and see how they behave".

Not in laboratories, not in zoos,

but directly.

And she also...
One of

the revolutions that she did
in the study of animals

was treat them as individuals

with, really, a psychology

and a personality.
She started to give them names.

Whereas previously,
it was kind of common

in most of the research

on apes and other animals to use,

you know, numbers.

And it was a big thing

to kind of treat other animals

as persons

because this was humanising them.

Like, we kind of take our own
human emotions and whatever

and kind of impose them
on the animals.

And...

She was one of the people
who kind of reverse it. No,

I mean, the assumption
that emotions, for instance,

are a uniquely human thing,

it goes against
everything that Darwin taught us.

The basic assumption is that
it's much more widespread

in the animal kingdom

than just a unique
human phenomenon.

And she was
one of the first scientists

who began to treat other animals

as persons with emotions,
with a psychological life,

and she would give them names

and write about them
in scientific papers

with their names
and not with numbers.

And today this is like a...

common fact
that every animal researcher

that studies apes or whatever

takes for granted,

that yes, other animals
also have emotions

and have psychological needs.

And no two chimpanzees

are exactly the same and so forth.

Now that we are at the individual,

there's one book
I really want to know about,

and that is a book
that talks about the self

and the way identity

shapes, or a person shapes
its identity.

When did you read this book,
and what did you learn from it?

I think I've read
Sources of the Self

by Charles Taylor
in my early twenties.

And it's more

coming from
the direction of philosophy

and the history of philosophy

and does a brilliant job

in showing how

our most basic understanding
of ourselves...

it has a history behind it.

It's not the way

that people in every age,
in every culture,

understood themselves.

It's the outcome of 2000 years,

you know, of Greek philosophy
and Christian theology

and modern philosophy
and modern art

that resulted

in the very kind of unique way

that Western, modern people

understand "what am I".

And...

And this is
one of the most fascinating things

in life, also in science,

that you take something

which seems
to be extremely kind of solid

and self-evident,

and when you look closer,

you see that there is actually
an entire universe

of change inside it

that...
It's not obvious at all,

and it's not permanent at all.

That, you know, in...

For a lot of people
in the modern West,

like, the whole of the universe

is constantly changing.

But there is something inside us,

which is the basic atom

of, say, our mental life,
which doesn't change.

This is the basic unit

of the mental universe.

And the same way that physicists

looked inside the atom

and realised, actually,
this is not solid at all,

there are lots of changes
within this tiny thing,

so also philosophers

like Charles Taylor, psychologists
and others, they looked

into this kind of
mental atom of the self

and realised,
like the physical atom,

it's not solid at all.

It's...

contains not just multitude

of subparticles,

but they are constantly moving
and interacting and changing.

That was something that
both helped you understand,

like, the human nature

of mankind or human beings,

but did it help you understand
something about yourself?

Yes, that... And what I define

as myself,

itself needs
a lot more exploration.

That... you think you know
yourself but you don't.

Not just,

you know, the kind of
individual events of your life.

You're very understanding
of what is a self

is far from self-evident.

And it is itself
the product of a lot of

stories and mythologies
which are not necessarily true.

So the last book
that we can only touch for

a few thoughts but maybe
tell us why it's important,

Jared Diamond.

It's a work of big history

kind of covering
thousands of years

of human history

and trying to understand
the kind of basic

processes.
What shapes history?

And for me, the book was

extremely important in my life,
in my career,

not just for its kind of
particular insights,

but more for its shape.

That it showed me
that you can write such books,

and which was then
the basis for my work,

that you can actually write
a science book,

not a mythological book,
but a science book

based on the latest

findings
and archaeological excavations

and genetic evidence
and economic models

and tell the story
of thousands of years of history.

You don't need to just focus

on very, very small

events or incidents or places.

You can really tell big stories,

which will still be scientific

and not just mythological.

So this was the book
where you learnt

you can sort of merge the reader

that you were between 7 and 11,
the myth

and the signs and you learnt.

I can merge this
and make it one bigger book and

sort of get rid of the dilemma
that you have with the myth

- and connect it to facts.
- Exactly, that...

this kind of false dilemma,

that I like the shape

of the mythological stories,

but I also like the factuality,

the accuracy of history
and of science,

and I have to choose.

So Jared Diamond in a way said,
no, you don't have to choose.

You can try and combine,
you can integrate,

which is of course very difficult,

but not impossible.

And you have to, you know,
you have to kind of

make compromises

like in every relationship,
in every integration,

you need to make compromises.

So also in this compromise between

myth and science,
it won't be perfect.

You will have to make compromises,
but it's worth it.

In your writing and reading,

but mostly your writing,
if you would not have

the story and the myth,
what would you lack?

The interest.

The...
What many of

the kind of
purely scientific texts lack

is that people don't connect
to them.

And they don't inspire people.

And again, we have to work
with humans as they are.

We can't say,
"Well, humans are faulty

and we will just stay

with the facts and the statistics
and the mathematics

and give humans up". No.

What I'm doing in my books,

it's not negating

the other types

of research in science.

I don't say that
all scientists now should

write these big narratives.

Without the very specialised

researchers,

you know,
somebody who works for 10 years

on just excavating
a single archaeological site

and kind of
very detailed lists and catalogues

of every bone
and every piece of tool

that they found there,

without this type
of extremely difficult work,

I would not be able to do my work.

My work is just to build a bridge

between these kinds
of scientific studies

and try to convey

their insights, their discoveries

to the general public

in a way that anybody
can relate to and find interesting.

You do succeed,

you do inspire people.
Who is a person that inspired you?

One person.

As a scholar, both Jared Diamond
and Frans de Waal were

two of, like,
the biggest intellectual

or scholarly inspirations for me.

And exactly for this ability,

for building this bridge.

Because I remember
the experience of myself,

like, reading Chimpanzee Politics

and

being so interested

and, you know,
laughing at some of the...

characters

and interactions that he described
and feeling sad

for some of the other,
and really getting kind of connected

to the politics
of this group of chimpanzees.

And...

there's so many other previous
studies written about chimpanzees,

but in these very cold, scientific,

like, you don't have names,
you have numbers.

And you don't talk
about the emotions,

you just have these statistics

about how many times they met
and how many times they fought.

And it would not have had
the same effect.

Yuval, that is it.

Thank you very much
for sharing your books,

the people that inspired you,
your thoughts and

the dilemma that I was able
to explore a little bit with you.

Thanks a lot
for coming to the show.

Thank you.