A Beautiful Mind

One of the most important voices of our generation, professor and bestselling author YUVAL NOAH HARARI tells SHAHNAZ SIGANPORIA his most difficult truths and how Vipassana shaped his success story

- Shahnaz Siganporia

His book Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind has sold over 10 million copies, been translated into 50 languages, and has been recommended by Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Recently, he delivered the Penguin Annual Lecture in Mumbai, which was prefixed by serpentine queues, a nasty traffic jam and an audience spilling over by the hoards into the lawn adjoining the venue. This kind of overwhelming popularity, where an academic is elevated to cult fanfare usually reserved for reality stars and red-carpet royalty, comes with its share of question marks—Hipster intellectual? Silicon Valley’s latest fad? Or is it cringe-worthy platitudinal prose contextualising the human race in some self-helpy way? But Professor Yuval Noah Harari—the Israeli meditation-loving vegan historian and bestselling author—is none of the above. Through his books and talks, he boldly takes on the big questions and seamlessly brings together history, philosophy, science and a clarity of thought that is profound in our over-cluttered post-truth, fake news, big-data age. Plus, for an academic, his work rarely gets caught up in semantics. Instead, he’s an engrossing storyteller weaving tales packed with fact and anecdote, making complex philosophical thought accessible, sincere and exciting. Currently touring with his most recent publication, 21 Lessons For The 21st Century, Harari takes time out from his schedule and continues his philosophical mavericking over email. Excerpts from the interview:

SHAHNAZ SIGANPORIA: You’ve managed to straddle that very difficult space of being a ‘popular intellectual’—two words that don’t often go together. How do you understand this space?