Yuval Noah Harari and Russell Brand on the future of work

In the inaugural Penguin Talk, in September 2018, Professor Yuval Noah Harari, author of the international bestseller Sapiens, joined comedian Russell Brand to explore some of the ideas in his latest Sunday Times bestseller, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Prof. Harari discussed the changes and decisions which will impact young people in the not-so-distant future, including the future of education and the job market.

Resources

Age: Key Stages 3 – 5

Subject: PSHE

Topic: The future of work

The following activities give KS3-5 students the opportunity to explore what the world of work might look like in the future and how they can best prepare for it. The following activities can be used as standalone activities, or used together with the starter and plenary to form a complete lesson (approx. 1 hour 30 mins in total).

Learning Objectives:

  1. What does it mean to “hack a human”?

  2. How will the job market change in the future?

  3. How can we prepare ourselves for the changing job market?

Activity one

Professor Yuval Noah Harari explains his thoughts on the future of work, including the fact that soon computers and algorithms will be able to 'hack' humans.

Activity two

Professor Yuval Noah Harari explains how being able to ‘hack’ humans may impact on work in the future, including how computers may take over the common jobs of today.

Activity three

Russell Brand and Yuval Noah Harari outline strategies for what we can do to prepare for an uncertain future work place.

The full Penguin Talk

Yuval Noah Harari

Prof Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford and now lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specialising in World History. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind has become an international phenomenon attracting a legion of fans from Bill Gates and Barack Obama to Chris Evans and Jarvis Cocker, and is published in over forty-five languages worldwide. It was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller and was in the Top Ten for over nine months in paperback. His follow-up to Sapiens, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow was also a Top Ten Bestseller and was described by the Guardian as 'even more readable, even more important, than his excellent Sapiens'. His most recent book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, was a Number One Bestseller and was described by Bill Gates as 'fascinating' and 'crucial'.

Yuval Noah Harari
Homo Deus

  • Homo Deus

  • **THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER**

    Sapiens showed us where we came from. In uncertain times, Homo Deus shows us where we're going.

    'Homo Deus will shock you. It will entertain you. It will make you think in ways you had not thought before' Daniel Kahneman, bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow

    Yuval Noah Harari envisions a near future in which we face a new set of challenges. Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century and beyond - from overcoming death to creating artificial life.

    It asks the fundamental questions: how can we protect this fragile world from our own destructive power? And what does our future hold?

  • Buy the book
Sapiens

  • Sapiens

  • **THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER**

    'Interesting and provocative... It gives you a sense of how briefly we've been on this Earth' Barack Obama

    What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? Yuval Noah Harari challenges everything we know about being human in the perfect read for these unprecedented times.

    Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it: us.

    In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we're going.

    'I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who's interested in the history and future of our species' Bill Gates


    **ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

  • Buy the book

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