In this conversation, part of a series of events marking the IWM’s 40th anniversary in 2022, Timothy Snyder and Yuval Noah Harari discussed what lessons we should take from the past four decades and what will determine the course of the years to come.
Topics included techno-optimism and -pessimism, the role of ideas in politics, the continuing relevance of history to geopolitics, the failure and the success of predictions from the past, the intellectual legacies of the late twentieth century, and the war in Ukraine and is possible consequences for coming decades.
Yuval Noah Harari is Professor at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of bestsellers Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Sapiens: A Graphic History, and the forthcoming Unstoppable Us - and has sold over 40 Million books worldwide. Harari writes regularly for publications such as The Guardian, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Economist - addressing current world affairs like COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine from a macro-historical perspective.
Timothy Snyder is the Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and IWM Permanent Fellow. His fifteen books, which include The Road to Unfreedom, On Tyranny, Bloodlands and Black Earth, have been translated into more than forty languages and have received a similar number of awards. He holds state orders and honorary doctorates and has appeared in documentaries, on network television, and in major films.
The conversation was moderated by IWM Permanent Fellow Ivan Krastev.
A recording of the livestream is available here:
