Official Trailer ✅: "Sapiens - A Human History at the Piano" feat. Sean Hickey, Composer

23 Feb 2026 · 2 min

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This content was created by The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. This content was uploaded by The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. This is a YouTube trailer titled "Official Trailer ✅: 'Sapiens - A Human History at the Piano' feat. Sean Hickey, Composer" (published Feb 23, 2026). The excerpt is a promotional preview in which an announcer (Speaker B) introduces American composer and record‑label executive Sean Hickey and his monumental solo‑piano cycle inspired by Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens. Speaker A (the composer) describes how Harari’s ideas and the piano as a “meta‑instrument” informed the work and touches on themes such as imagined orders, history, artificial intelligence, and what it means to remain human. The trailer invites viewers to the episode release on Feb 24 at 8:00 PM Eastern on YouTube and podcast platforms.

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I've been moved or influenced by a lot of things that I have seen or heard or read, so that my work over time has been, at least in its framework or as the initial inspiration, inspired by and guided by some bigger and broader concepts.
For our upcoming episode, I invited American composer and record label executive Sean Hickey to discuss his monumental piano cycle Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind for solo piano.
In, I believe, early 2018, I read the book of the same name by Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and brilliant writer and someone that I at least can draw a lot from in nearly everything that he's written. For me, I read it and I had no idea what was to come next, but I just felt that it was imperative for me that in some way I was going to fashion a piece of music out of the inspiration that I found in this book. When I really kind of embraced the idea of the piano as this sort of meta-instrument, and I imagine the piano as sort of a voyeur or witness to history at the birth of music.
From imagined orders to artificial intelligence, this conversation asks a timeless question: What does it mean to remain human?
I choose to live in a world where I think there are better days are ahead of us, and even if I have absolutely no influence on any of that, other than the fact that I can contribute to the world a modest piece of music, then I want to be the one to do that.
Join us tomorrow, Tuesday, February 24th at 8:00 PM Eastern time on our YouTube channel. The audio version will also drop at the same time on your favorite podcast platforms. See you tomorrow.