You've Ana Harari, whose book SAPIENs a brief history of humankind, spans the entire city of human history on explores how little we really know about ourselves, and I began by asking him how the pandemic is changing our societies on democracies.

Well, it gives us many new choices.

It forces us actually to make many new choices.

I don't think it's predetermined.

I think it's it's it's after the decisions we make.

What is really happening is that history is accelerating, and that process is that usually take years.

Maybe decades are now taking just a couple of days.

If I look at my own university, they have been talking for 20 years about moving some courses online, and nothing happened now within one week they moved the entire university, all the courses online in one week, and when the crisis is over, it's not like we're going back to.

The place will restart it and it will be the same in so many different areas in the economy, in the political system.

So I can predict which off all these experiments will succeed and what the outcome will be three important thing is to make people realize in almost every field we have choices.

It's not predetermined.

I mean, what we can see all around the world is, um, the power's off the state, the powers of surveillance to track where people were going just being nodded through because we need to tackle this pandemic are things that would normally take months, perhaps years, of debates agonizing over human rights and privacy all just kind of going through on the nod.

How last thing do you think these things are?

That's the danger.

It could last long after this emergency because there is always a new emergency on the horizon, new surveillance technologies that are now deployed just to deal with this corner virus outbreak.

When it's over, some governments may say yes, but there is a second wave off Corona calming.

So we have to be prepared.

And there is Ebola, and there is also regular flu.

Why not protect people against that, too, with this new surveillance system, so the tendency would be to prolong it indefinitely, and in this way, the Corona virus epidemic could be a watershed event in the history of surveillance.

It's the moment when mass systems off surveillance are established, even in democracies that's so far rejected them.

And also it's the moment when surveillance goes really under the skin.

Governments are now no, not just interested in while we go and who we meet.

But even in what's happening inside our bodies, our body temperature or blood pressure, medical condition.

So that's really going a step further.

And what we need to realize is that it's not true that the only way to stop an epidemic is through some totalitarian surveillance and control from above.

We have a choice.

We can go the way off.

Totalitarian surveillance.

Oh, we can go the way off Empire ing citizens, giving them good scientific education, giving them reliable information, entrusting them to do the right thing.

If you think about washing hands with soap so you can place a camera in every toilet and punish people who don't wash their hands with soap.

All you can tell people educate people look, there are viruses and germs.

They cause disease.

If you wash your hands with soap, it kills or removes the viruses and you trust people to do the right thing.

Now which method is more efficient, we can judge.

But can we judge when there isn't really a control?

I mean, Andi, can we really trust?

You may be able to trust a majority, but when you're dealing with a virus, if a significant minority don't go along with voluntary measures, then the virus just continues to live.

I'm not against all supervision.

We certainly need guidance from above.

But I think we shouldn't fall into the trap, that thinking that policing an ignorant population is the only way to do it, it's it's really usually it's very inefficient.

If you have a majority or even a large minority off people who don't comply, it's going to be extremely difficult to force them to do it unless you really go full scale totalitarian.

And the thing is that in many of these cases, you can trust the population provided it's well educated and well informed.

The really big problem is that over the last few years, irresponsible politicians have undermined the trust off the public in science, in experts, in the information they receive from public authorities and for the media.

And now it's coming back to haunt us because in this moment of crisis.

We need this kind of trust, but what we're also seeing is something of a failure of international cooperation.

So where do you think this leaves the balance between populist leaders on globalization?

What we need now?

Global corporation More than ever before to exchange information.

Thio make sure that we produce enough equipment globally to deal with this.

Masks and testing kits and respiratory machines and so forth.

We need a global effort to improve and increase the production, and we need to distribute the equipment fairly.

It's not at the rich.

Countries will monopolize all the equipment.

We need the equipment to go to the countries that is most.

We can cooperate in many other ways by, for instance, sending medical help medical personnel from one country to another.

And, of course, we need cooperation on the economic level to have a global economic plan, especially again for the poorer countries.

Countries like the U.

S.

Germany, Britain, they will somehow muddle through.

But when this crisis hits Africa, South Asia, South America, unless we have a global economic plan, entire countries could collapse, and what we're seeing now is that there is no such cooperation again.

This is the price for the rise off xenophobic populism over the last few years, when we most need global cooperation.

You see that there is no global leadership.

United States, which served as the global leader during the Ebola epidemic, off 2014 enduring the 2008 financial crisis.

It's basically abdicated.

Its job is global.

Either it very clear to the world that the US is no longer leader of the world.

It cares basically just about itself.

It has no friends, only interests.

And even if the U.

S suddenly has a revelation and decides to reassume global leadership role, which is not happening yet, but maybe in the future the level off trust in the current U.

S.

Administration is so low that nobody would follow it.

Nobody would like to follow a leader whose motto is me first.

And what about democracy itself?

We're seeing democratic norms suspended, elections postponed.

All of this comes at a time when people have a pretty A lot of people have a pretty dim view of politics and politicians anyway.

So how sure can we be that when this is over, we will want to re establish those democratic norms again, it's a choice.

It's not predetermined.

On the one hand, this kind of crisis could accelerate processes off, democratic collapse and the rise off authoritarian strongman people panicking and economic crisis.

They feel threatened biologically by an epidemic and the year for a strong leader that can protect them so it can go in that direction.

Oh, it couldn't go in the exact opposite people realizing because of this crisis, the importance off having a national solidarity over the last few years.

What really led to the crisis of democracy is that, um, politicians is in many countries again.

The U.

S.

Is the best example have abandoned the idea off national solidarity and intentionally divided society into hostile camps.

Presenting themselves is the leaders off one camp and presenting the other camp not as legitimate rivals but as dangerous traitors.

And this was the ticket to power.

And in a normal situation, maybe you can run a country even like the U.

S.

With the support off just half the population.

But you can't do it in a crisis like this, it's present in the U.

S.

There is one camp that whatever the president says.

Even if he says that the sun rises in the west and set in the east, they'll believe it.

But then you have the other half.

But if he says one plus one equals two Earth self doubting it just because he said it.

And now he wants everybody to follow the same guidelines because to defeat this epidemic you can't have just 50% of the population.

You need 100%.