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My guest Tonight is a historian, philosopher, and best selling author of Sapiens. His latest children's book is called Unstoppable Us Volume two, Why the World Is Unfair? Please welcome. You've out Noah Harari, all right, you are, Thanks for joining me. I've been, you know, watching your stuff for the last like over ten years, just before I came to America. Love it. You kind of specialize in dealing with the history of humanity and the rise and falls
of civilization. What made you think that was an appropriate topic for children? This is some very heavy stuff, man.
Yes, but you know you need to understand history to know even the most basic things about yourself. Like when I was a kid, I was I often woke up in the middle of the night afraid that the monster under the bed, which happens to a lot of children. Yes, and you call your mom, But you also want to know why is it happening?
Right?
And history actually holds the answer.
What is the answer?
Because this is really a memory from hundreds of thousands of years ago when humans lived in the savannah, and they're actually monsters, cheetahs, lions that came to eat kids in the moment.
So is that something you want kids to know? Yes, that these monsters were once real and they killed kids in their sleeve.
It's important to know that because you then understand your own emotions and feelings better. You know, you understand that I'm not crazy to be afraid of these things. Or for instance, you know, lots of kids, like adults, they wonder why do I like to eat so much stuff that isn't good for me? It's something wrong with my body? And again history holds the answer what is Because all those hundred thousands of years ago, it actually made sense.
If you walk along the savannah and you find something sweet, like sweet fruits, it makes sense to each as much of it as quickly as possible, because if you eat just one or two fruits and go away, by the time you come back, the baboons ate everything. So it makes sense under those conditions. Now today it doesn't make sense when you open the refrigerator and find a chocolate cake to all of it, but your body doesn't know.
Your body basically follows the program of evolution from all those years ago.
Yeah, it's programmed. So if you can't do it, there, stop it and you.
Can stop it.
But understanding yourself better is an important step.
Okay, well, having greater control of your life. Those are good examples. But I'm gonna call your book here. Yes, please, let's get to the chapter in the children's book called Diarrhea Days where I quote someone who got diarrhea couldn't keep down any food or water, and sometimes they died from it. Is this something you really want kids to know?
Yes, because you know it actually explains where most of the epidemics and infectious diseases came from. Hunter gatherers suffered from no epidemics. They lived in very small bands. If somebody had diarrhea, then immediately all the band moved to another place, and in any case only like a few people could get it. Okay, but once, once people switched to agriculture and we had the big agricultural revolution, then you have thousands of people stuck permanently in the town.
The first humans air low berries and share their pants and move on. And yes, how do you tell that to kids? Though? Like, what's your approach to telling you know? How do you even everything? Just told me? As an adult, I'm fascinated by or when you tell a kid are they you know, they're like, okay, give me more berries, you know what I mean? Like, how do they you know, how do they absorb the lesson you're trying to tell them?
I hope that it's written in such a way that even somebody who is eight or nine is fully capable of understanding it. It's actually more difficult to write for kids than for adults, I agree, because with adults, if you don't know something, you just use these complicated words and long sentences, and they think they don't understand you because they don't understand. With kids, you have to speak very simply.
Yeah, like sometimes we died from diarrhea.
Yeah.
See, So this is what I think. This is what I think. I think you wrote. You've written Sapiens before, which is a great book for adults, and I think that there's too many dumb people who couldn't understand what you're saying. So you wrote this not for kids. You wrote this for dumb adults. That's really what this is. This is a book. You took it that you put some pictures in it as an illustration of someone dying
from diarrhea. This isn't from here. This is for dumb adults, right, let's un explaination, ya right, and you want and like, you know, I feel like a lot of what you're telling us is the message of what history is trying to tell us now. I feel like that's what you're trying to decode right now, a lot of it. And I guess what is the message that history is trying to tell us?
Now? Many messages. I mean, one thing is to be aware of unintended consequences of what we do. Like again, the agricultural revolution. People thought it was a good idea, it brought about epidemics, so same lesson for the big revolutions of right now, like AI, the more important message is that the world in which we live have been created by humans, and therefore humans can change it if
something is unfair. It's not the laws of nature that created you know, our economy, our nations, our religions, they're all created by human beings, right.
And yeah, you see that that It sounds hopeful, But if you think about it, you're like, oh, no, humans did all this? What hold do we have? No? I know, but what do we have of changing things? I mean, how much? I guess what I'm saying is how much of this is inevitable, you know, like when you study history, you go, oh.
History is never terministic. I mean, like you think about the technology. Every technology can be used to create very different societies. You think about I don't know, North Korea and South Korea exactly the same technology, but the used electricity in a slightly different way. One place they produce kpo and just up north big hats and missiles.
So okay, am I supposed to just take that? Or okay, fine, Well.
On the most serious level, again, people have a lot of fears about technology what it will do to our politics. But again you think about South Korea in North Korea, so the same people, same history, same technology, and you have a liberal democracy on one side in a totalitarian regime on the other. So it's not a technology that is shaping our politics of our regimes. It is what we decide to do with the technology.
Sure, well you say that, you say that we are in charge of the technology in a way. Yeah, but you know, the kind of one of the thesis statements of your book is that we're all going to get replaced by technological being.
The wrong decisions. Again, it's it's not inevitable AI like electricity, like you know, the earliest I don't know writing when people invented writing. So you can do many things with the technology of writing. The you can write poetry, you can write taxes.
You can write, you can say, well you can write like a you can.
But again it's a choice of people. Actually, interestingly enough, the first person that we know his name, Yeah, he was not a conqueror. He was not a big prophet or king. He was a geek. He was an accountant. Like we have these stones and clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia with accounts of payments and receipts and salaries and stuff like that, signed by these ancient geeks, and they are the first people.
Okay, so you keep calling these people geeks, and I'm like, do you like them or you don't like them? I don't Are they good or they're bad?
They're good. I mean, Jesus said the geek would inherit the earth.
No, all right, So back on that topic, So you keep saying, you know, stories are the superpower of humans in a way, right, everything we kind of do if you think about it, from culture, the politics, even money.
Money. Money is the greatest story ever told. It's the only story everybody believes, and you know it's when you look at it, it has no value in itself. The value comes only from the stories we tell about it, as every cryptocurrency guru or bitcoin in though the ass No, it's all about the stories. There is nothing else. It's just a story.
Okay, So is it real? It's big cooin? You tell me investing big poins right now? I don't know. Is there a good thing or bad thing?
I think it's it's kind of a psychical thing. If enough people believe in it, then you can go to the supermarket and buy whatever you want. If people lose faith in the story, then it's worth nothing. And that's true of the bitcoin, it's true of the dollar and of every other currency. Is that people ever invented?
Okay? You see when you talk about these things, you're always very objective. You always be like, hey man, I'm just I'm just telling you how it is. I'm not what do you think? Do you think? You know? What makes you go for this? You know, because because when you talk about history, always like you know, the humans came out and then some of the eight berries, and you know, you maintain this kind of academic objectivity. But what there? What makes Yeah? But what actually do you go?
This ship? This is awful? What makes you go? Because you seem to be okay with everything? It's a tool. We don't know you go like AI, this is bad? Like what what makes you go? Now?
The question about every story, whether about money, AI, whatever, is whether it increases or decreases the suffering in the world.
See, this is a non answer. Just tell me what you hate, Tell me what you hate?
What I hate?
Yeah?
Okay, So okay, can we tell this right now? So you think that, uh you're openly atheists?
Yes?
Yes, So can you clarify right now that God is just made up? Okay? So God has made We had it here? Okay, can you send to the camera please. We need that.
Humans created God.
Okay, great, that we settled it. That's great. This guy, we solved it.
Again.
It should be emphasized just because human created it doesn't mean it's bad. It can also do good things.
Stop patting this, just it right, just go it sucks. We need more. See this is my this is my problem. I think we need more people with kind of objectivity, calmly discussing things. I don't think that's you know, is anything in what you've seen with humanity telling you that we can you know, pull ourselves out of you know, all these downslides in history.
Absolutely, I mean humans have enorm I mean all the problems we face, we also have the resources to deal with them, whether it's climate change, whether it's the rise of AI. We have the resources. What we usually lack is the motivation and the ability to cooperate within another. But I mean, you know, some people think that to solve the big problems, you always need to use violence, like you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. But when you look at history, it's it's absolutely not true.
You think, for instance, about the feminist revolution. After thousands of years of a huge injustice, feminism made a huge change in the social structure of humanity without starting any wars, without assassinating anybody, No Gilio thins in city square. So that's one of the hopeful examples of how people can just by changing the story also change the world. I mean, the idea that.
Stories the religion, the idea that.
The story is kind of fuel history. There is a positive promise there that, you know, if it's all about power, the only way to change power structures is with violence. But if it's really at least in part about the stories people believe, then potentially by talking with people and changing the stories which in which they believe, you can change the world.
Okay, that's very optimistic, but I'm not over so I mean one last question. What I really enjoyed by your work is that you like to tie kind of current modern behavior to like our evolutionary beginnings. For example, you know, like you said, we ran, We wake up in the middle of the night when we're kids because we ran from actual monsters children. So I just like to know why is it that whenever I pee, I shiver? Like, what was the evolutionary Maybe you.
Should ask a doctor. I'm not sure.
No, I'm asking you, mister expert.
I'm not an excerpt from everything.
The last thing I found very interesting is you said that, like, right now we have humans composing things and AI amplifying it. That's our current situation. You say, in the future, we're going to have AI composing things.
And what is the images you saw before of AI generating fake images? Yes, this is basically a kind of art, so it's still the first steps, right, but AI is still a baby. It's like you know, ten years since the start of the of the major Ai Revolution, so we haven't seen anything yet, and it is very likely between a couple of years of decades, much of art, many of the stories we believe in religion, will be increasingly created by this alien intelligence and not by human intelligence.
Okay, see that's bad. That's a bad thing. Well you just said that.
That's not a very dangerous thing.
Yes, absolutely, Okay, So are you going to say that? Can you at least say that's bad?
Yeah, that's bad.
Okay, I finally got to say something bad. Okay, I don't know. I guess I'm equal parts hopeful and pessial mystery about the future. I'm sorry, that's a good stance. Yeah, all right, thank you so much for speaking to me, untop about us Volumeteer as available now you've all Noah Harari, everybody, any award.
Winning journalists, podcast hosts, and author whose new book is called Selling the Dream The Billion dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans, please welcome. Jane Marie. I wrote a book. You wrote a book, Yes you did, and I tore right through it. It's a great read. It's fascinating.
Thank you.
It came out today. So I haven't heard any feedback. I don't know what anyone thinks of it.
Is this the first feedback that you're getting.
Much outside of the people that help me write it.
Well, it's a great book.
Thank you, how much we enjoyed it. This world is fascinating. You go deep into the world of MLMs. Yes, and people call them by many different names MLMs.
Network, marketing, direct marketing, direction.
Fare schemes.
I can't call them that.
You can't get you.
Can't call them that. But right here on the cover I.
Got a lot of help. I got a lot of help with the cover art.
Yes, what exactly is an MLM?
So a multiple marketing company is a business is strafed like this.
Lightly, but we can't call it a pyramid.
Yeah, there's a couple of people at the top.
Then they have their the upline, the top sellers who are supposed to recruit like usually five people each and then they're supposed to recruit five people and they're supposed to recruit five people infinitely. And the way the money flows is that each person who signs up pays like a fee at the beginning to sign up, and sometimes they have to pay for some products and stuff. But they're paying those fees in and then they fail pretty quickly usually, and then more people sign up.
So that's where the money comes from.
And isn't it something like.
Percent make no money or lose money. Only one percent make a dollar even?
And we laughed when we laughed, and you said in finished because infinitely, because you can't keep doing.
That thirteen levels and you surpassed the population of the earth, right, so.
Totally impossible.
MLMs specifically prey on women.
These tupperware parties, the sexy parties.
Are we going to hang out with our friends?
I want to make this about me for a second, but.
Why not? Now?
Yeah, well no, why not?
Man?
I would love to go to a nose trimmer party or a beef turkey for you?
First of all, MLMs for you, okay, yes it's a crypto or there's telecom companies. There are like lots of dude MLMs, but seventy five seventy five percent of people involved are women. And it's because the companies go after people who have some sort of economic precarity or like trouble, you know, moving up the ranks to.
Here's the there's the pay gap.
We're fighting against If someone called you today and was like, you could make another one thousand dollars a week just sitting in your house and talking to your girlfriends and selling makeup.
And now if that was true, I would be doing that. Yeah, yeah, where do I say?
Let me do it.
So you know, we all make less than men. We all take care of the home. We're all homemakers, we take care of the children.
We have, like we don't have, especially at the age, you know, middle age, we don't have that kind of movement in the economy that that other people get. And that's and it's not just women, because it's now becoming you know, immigrants or people, you know, anyone who is a population that has hard time getting really good, solid employment, which is everybody, right.
I also feel like they sucker women in with this promise of you know, you can you can achieve independence, you can be your own girl boss, and that's alluring girl boss.
Yeah. For I'm forty years old.
When I hear girls, I'm just like, yeah, boss, babes and fempire.
But it's true. My great grandma did avon and it did.
Help her feel like some agency in her life because she didn't have a career.
She got pregnant at like fourteen.
And had a bunch of kids and really didn't have like a job outside of that, and it felt good to get on stage or get a pin or get like a fancy jacket and be around people and be lauded. So I do think those things are really valuable. And I think the parties are really fun. They're actually super fun.
I don't know.
I did one in my house when I was like twenty. It was like a lingerie party and everyone came out and modeled their tell me.
Good lunch.
You touched on a little bit.
But besides just that you can make a thousand dollars a week, there are some psychological components that they recruit with.
Yes, to me, that's almost more powerful. Tell me a little bit about what they do.
So the recruitment is, you know, just things that appeal to all of us, like you can have time and money and freedom, and you don't have to have any qualifications, and the world is yours and we have a secret.
You know, we have a secret that they don't want you to know.
So yeah, So then they rely on these logical fallacies that we all kind of rely on in our lives, and one of them is honoring sunk costs. Like when you buy a lemon for a car and you get it worked on and worked on and worked on, there comes a point where you have to be like, I can't fix this car and I have to get rid of this car.
This is me at the black check table.
Okay, that's exactly a thousand dollars.
You might as well be a thousand. What am I going to do?
Walk away now?
Like, no, I'm gonna I'm when I'm an energy.
You got to stick out all this time?
And how much does it how much time does it take for you to lose a thousand dollars?
I bet and like small one dollar all night.
It's like the whole free I got a free I got a free martini.
But I've lost two thousand dollars at the table, right and then you've.
Lost two thousand dollars and I'm feeling the anxiety of even you just saying that, or I'm like, you can't walk away at two thousand. So that's what they rely on, is that they know we're all gonna do that. And there's a bunch more like the idea that it's a
truth that we feel losses much more than gains. We feel them and our bodies like as trauma and a gain is like okay, great, but a loss is like you know, and so we do everything we can to not realize the loss, to not experience the loss, so we stick with a plan that's not working for a really long time.
Is there.
Can the government like this help us? I mean, isn't this what the Federal Trade Commission is.
You would have to do?
Is there legislation that can be passed to correct this?
There's things are being worked on. But I will say just to give the FTC a bit of a break, their purview is so enormous. They are tiny. First of all, they're like the side of the smallest of MLM in terms of the people that are there and the money they get to use.
They're tiny.
And their job is and listen to that, especially after the pandemic and stuff, their job is false product claims, credit card card fraud, you know, fishing spam, every kind of fraud. Your grandma getting taken by somebody that she's never met over the phone. And when you put that up against MLMs where the people who are signed up are.
Like excited about it.
It's hard to put that first, although this is such a bigger.
Problem than those things in numbers. So they have a they have a tough task, and I don't blame them. You know, they're doing the best they can.
So technically MLMs are legal what.
I believe they are not, but.
They exist because I put I use this comparison all the time, like that's like being like, I'm a murderer because I'm in jail, and then I'm not a murderer because I'm not in jail. Right, that doesn't make any sense, but.
The les would be.
Repeated as such. So what can be done.
Is not stepping in. What can smart American people do?
You do need five other people to buy?
But but for real, what's our defense?
It really is talking about it, you know, that's the only thing we can do because the government doesn't have the capacity.
And that's understandable.
Because there are so many I talked to the FTC recently and one of the women I was talking to is like, it's a very target rich environment right now. And I thought she meant because I was asking her why don't we go after these companies? It's target rich environment? I thought she meant there's too many MLMs, and she knows.
She was talking about us.
She was like, this is the perfect environment for these companies to come after you like you.
We are all desperate.
We're all like wanting to realize the American dream and believe this is a meritocracy and believe this is a place where you work hard and you get rewarded for it and all that. You know, right, whatever, So talk about it and be aware to talk about it. Tell your friends, you know, they're they're fine pitching you some garbage hair product or whatever. You should be fine being like, you know what, this is not cool, and I think the tides turning.
Thank you very much for talking with us.
January.
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