How to live a good life in difficult times: Yuval Noah Harari, Rory Stewart and Maria Ressa in conversation; The Guardian, October 4, 2025

Interview by Alex Clark , The Guardian; How to live a good life in difficult times: Yuval Noah Harari, Rory Stewart and Maria Ressa in conversation

[Kip Currier: One of the most insightful, nuanced, enlightening pieces I've read amongst thousands this year. I've followed and admired the work and wisdom of Maria Ressa and Yuval Noah Harari but wasn't familiar with UK academic and politician Rory Stewart who makes interesting contributions to this joint interview. They all individually and collectively identify in clear-eyed fashion what's going on in the world today, what the stakes are, and what each of us can do to try to make some kind of positive difference.

I shared this article with others in my network and encourage you to do the same, so these beneficial, thought-provoking perspectives can be read by as many as possible.]

[Excerpt]

"What happens when an internationally bestselling historian, a Nobel peace prize-winning journalist and a former politician get together to discuss the state of the world, and where we’re heading? Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli medieval and military historian best known for his panoramic surveys of human history, including Sapiens, Homo Deus and, most recently, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Maria Ressa, joint winner of the Nobel peace prize, is a Filipino and American journalist who co-founded the news website Rappler. And Rory Stewart is a British academic and former Conservative MP, writer and co-host of The Rest Is Politics podcast. Their conversation ranged over the rise of AI, the crisis in democracy and the prospect of a Trump-Putin wedding, but began by considering a question central to all of their work: how to live a good life in an increasingly fragmented and fragile world?...

YNH I think that more people need to realise that we have to do the hard work ourselves. There is a tendency to assume that we can rely on reality to do the job for us. That if there are people who talk nonsense, who support illogical policies, who ignore the facts, sooner or later, reality will wreak vengeance on them. And this is not the way that history works.

So if you want the truth, and you want reality to win, each of us has to do some of the hard work ourselves: choose one thing and focus on that and hope that other people will also do their share. That way we avoid the extremes of despair."