Sapiens

"There were humans long before there was history," writes Yuval Noah Harari. Still just in his thirties, Professor Harari's book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is an international best-seller. IDEAS host Paul Kennedy in conversation with Yuval Noah Harari, winner of the Polansky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the Humanistic Disciplines.

** This episode originally aired on January 12, 2015.

"We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles. We are more powerful than ever before but with little idea what to do with all that power. We are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement yet never finding satisfaction. Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?" – Yuval Noah Harari

• ​Yuval Noah Harari  teaches history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
   
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is published by McLelland & Stewart.