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

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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:  • Davos 2026 Highlights | World Economic For...  [00:00:18 - 00:00:29]


#nikhilkamath Co-founder of Zerodha and Gruhas Host of 'WTF is' & 'People By WTF' Podcast


#YuvalNoahHarari @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


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