Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, a writer, and a popular 'public intellectual'. He rose to fame with Sapiens (2014), his popular science book that sought to outline a 'History of Humankind' and followed this up with a more future-focused sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016). More recently, he's been converting his insights into a format targeted at younger people with Unstoppable Us: How Humans Took Over the World (2022). In general, Harari is a go-to public intellectual for people looking for big ideas, thoughts on global events, and how we might avoid catastrophe. He has been a consistent figure on the interview and public lecture circuit and, with his secular message, seems an ideal candidate for Gurometeratical analysis.
Harari also has some alter egos. He is a high-ranking villain in the globalist pantheon for InfoWars-style conspiracy theorists, with plans that involve us all eating bugs and uploading our consciousness to the Matrix. Alternatively, for (some) historians and philosophers, he is a shallow pretender, peddling inaccurate summaries of complex histories and tricky philosophical insights. For others, he is a neoliberal avatar offering apologetics for exploitative capitalist and multinational bodies.
So, who is right? Is he a bug-obsessed villain plotting to steal our precious human souls or a mild-mannered academic promoting the values of meditation, historical research, and moderation?
Join Matt and Chris in this episode to find out and learn other important things, such as what vampires should spend their time doing, whether money is 'real', and how to respond respectfully to critical feedback.
Links
Interview with Renée DiResta: Online Ecosystems, Disinformation, & Censorship Debates
Christopher Hitchens: Rhetoric, Religion, and Ramadan
Interview with Matt Johnson on Christopher Hitchens
Oprah Winfrey: Self Actualising Your Destiny
"Mini" Decoding of Matthew Goodwin & Interview with Paul Bloom
Interview with Travis View: QANon & Modern Conspiracies
Interview with Worobey, Andersen & Holmes: The Lab Leak
Dave Rubin: A Pointless Partisan Pundit
Bill Maher: A boozy, stoned, liberal take on classic anti-vax tropes
Daniel Dennett: It's Evolution Baby
"Mini" Decoding of Konstantin Kisin's Oxford Union speech
Interview with Coffeezilla on Cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and modern scammers
Elon Musk: The Techno Shaman
Gurus Christmas Special with Helen Lewis
Guru Right to Reply with Jamie Wheal
Interview with Manvir Singh on Gurus & Shamans
Robin DiAngelo: Matt and Chris struggle with their fragility
Interview with Konstantin Kisin from Triggernometry on Heterodoxy, Biases, and the Media
Peterson, Murray & Pageau: Transcendent Tableware
Interview with Neil Levy on Intellectual Virtue Signalling
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