People regularly look for personal
generalizations, personality
generalizations about leaders. Perhaps
the commonest generalization is that
leaders have to be charismatic.
Nonsense. Some leaders are charismatic.
Stalin, Agusto Pinese, the dictator of
Chile, totally uncarismatic. There are
about 37 ways to be an effective leader
of which charisma is is one. And any
question that you or anybody else would
ask about how can we [snorts] generalize
about leaders personal there are some
generalizations about leaders but not
personality generalizations because
there are different ways to be a
effective leader.
>> Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast
where we discuss science [music] and
science-based tools for everyday life.
>> [music]
>> I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and opthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine. My guest
today is Dr. Jared Diamond. Dr. Jared
Diamond is a professor ameritus at
University of California, Los Angeles.
He's done research in biology,
anthropology, and frankly in so many
areas that there really isn't an
appropriate title for him. He's also a
renowned author of books such as Guns,
Germs, and Steel for which he was
awarded a Pulitzer Prize. He has also
been awarded the National Medal of
Science and a MacArthur Genius Award.
Today we discuss topics related to
Jared's most recent book which is about
leaders and leadership. It is entitled
Prophets, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings.
We discuss political leaders, religious
leaders, leaders in business and in
sports. Today you're going to hear a lot
of myths dispelled, including the common
myth that charisma is requisite for
successful leadership. And we discuss a
lot of incredible biology. For instance,
why observing birds, yes, birds, because
of their reliance on sight and sound,
makes them one of the best windows into
understanding human behavior and human
nature. We also discuss Jared himself
because, as you'll soon see, he is an
incredible and very unusual human being.
We discuss his obsessive curiosity
that's been there since childhood and
how it's migrated from topic to topic,
book to book, paper to paper, and what
his process is for taking hard questions
into the laboratory and going out into
the wild literally to observe things in
their natural state and then bring back
all of that knowledge in a form that is
unlike any other scientist or writer.
So, what follows is a discussion with an
absolute luminary of science and public
education. and it's one that I'm certain
will inform, enchant, and inspire you.
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize
that this podcast is separate from my
teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is, however, part of my desire and
effort to bring zero cost to consumer
information about science and science
related tools to the general public. In
keeping with that theme, today's episode
does include sponsors. And now for my
discussion with Dr. Jared Diamond. Dr.
Jared Diamond, welcome.
>> It's a pleasure to be with you.
>> Delighted to have you here. I'm such a
fan of your books. Guns, Germs, and
Steel was the first one I read. And I'm
going to resist the temptation to ask
about the topics in each of all of your
books and mainly focus on your book,
which is prophets, phonetically the
same, but prophets as in making prophets
and prophets as in who become prophets
and what they are. Coaches and kings.
When do leaders matter? I think now more
than ever people are thinking about
modern leadership and themes of past in
leadership. First I would like to know
what is a prophet? P R O P H E T.
>> Prophet means for [snorts] my purposes
religious leaders because my book about
leadership looks at leadership in four
spheres. The political sphere, the
business sphere,
sports
and finally religion. I use the word
prophets to refer to religious leaders
because it makes for catch prophets,
prophets, coach, co coaches, and kings.
U I don't care about whether whether
they prophesy the future. It was simply
my my word for religious leaders.
>> Let's talk about leadership in each of
those categories and people that stand
out to you as the lightest and darkest
in each of those categories. And we can
go into the middle of the continuum if
you want as well. But your book starts
off talking about Hitler, which for the
vast majority of people alive is
considered one of the darkest leaders uh
ever. Tell us about Hitler and what you
learned about him that perhaps can
inform how we think about leadership
more generally.
>> I was born in 1937, which meant that I
grew up in World War II. Growing up in
the United, I was not bombed. I was not
often but every day of my life that I
can remember was formed by the war. My
first memory, the first data thing that
I can remember was the first photo that
the US Army released of dead American
soldiers. It was a famous cover of life
magazine. Two American soldiers dead
face down on Bunangona Beach in New
Guinea. So I grew up in the shadow of
Hitler. My family is from Eastern
Europe, Jewish from Eastern Europe. The
last my family of course disappeared in
the Holocaust. I married into a Polish
family. My wife's parents came to the US
in 1948. My wife's mother had survived
Achvitz. Various members of my wife wife
family did did not did not survive. And
so my life and Marie's life have been
formed under the under the the shadow of
Hitler. On top of that, then there are
leaders, non-political leaders who've
[snorts] shaped my life mostly for the
good. There was a chairman of the
Cambridge physiology department. I left
a rubber hose pump, water pump running
all night to dry out radioactive
isotopes. The pump broke. It flooded my
lab. It flooded the lab below my lab.
That was not a good choice of a lab to
flood. It was the lab Lord Adrien who
was the father-in-law of my thesis
advisor and who was the master of my
college. The next morning the chair of
the physiology department Brian Matthews
called me and I thought I was going to
be expelled. Instead he said you know
that was sloppy. Don't don't do that
again. And and that was that. So there
was there was a leader who could have
ended my career but didn't. There are
other leaders who've done decisively
good things um for my for my career.
There are few people who failed to do
anything but they have not been leaders
who did me. Those are the reasons for my
personal interest in leaders starting
with the the question of Hitler. If
there had not been Hitler, would my
family in Eastern Europe and would
Marie's family still be alive?
>> How close were we to there not being an
adult Hitler? There were two two famous
near endings of Hitler's life. My book
begins the first paragraph of my book is
about a car accident in 1930
years before Hitler became chancellor
when his limousine driven by a chauffeur
was driving into an intersection in
Germany. Uh Hitler was in the drive in
the passenger seat, the right right hand
seat, and a big truck came into the
intersection at right angles with
Hitler's sedan. Um, both Hitler
chauffeur and the truck driver either
break or accelerated ultimately and the
truck hit Hitler's car face on
pushed up against the curve and was
about to ride up over the car crushing
Hitler and it came to a stop just before
that. Hitler was was injured but he was
not killed. If he had died in 1930,
would there have been World War II and
would there have been a a Holocaust? And
then then the the other famous almost
was that
in 1944,
next to last year of the war, Count
Klaus Funstenberg, a German army officer
who became disillusioned um attempted to
kill Hitler. He um he brought a [snorts]
um a small suitcase
with with a bomb into the
conference room at Wolf's lair. He sat
down next to Hitler, put the suitcase
which he had he had primed the bomb. He
put the suitcase just under Hitler's
foot and
the bomb went off. But just before the
bomb went off, Hitler leaned forward.
The result was that four other people in
the room got killed. Um Hitler's eardrum
was blown out. Hitler was seriously
wounded, but he was not killed. But if
Hitler had not leaned for that was 1944,
um would various members of my wife's
family have survived. So, so those are
reasons how how close it came to Hitler
not becoming chancellor and how close it
came to World War II ending in 1944,
World War II in Europe ending in 1944.
>> Was there anyone else that could have
accomplished what Hitler accomplished?
>> Historians argue about that. This
illustrates the the difficulties in
figuring out whether leaders make a
difference. The traditional method of
historians and biog [snorts] is to write
a biography. There are many people
who've written biographies of Hitler.
Most biographers of Hitler conclude that
Hitler was unique in several respects.
He was the most charismatic ortor
unfortunately of the 20th century. He
was anti-Semitic. There were plenty of
anti-semmites in Europe, not just in
Germany, but in Poland. But Hitler, all
those other anti anti-semites
killed Jews one by one. Hitler was the
only one who got the idea of doing it on
an industrial scale. Without Hitler,
there probably would would not have been
a holocaust. He was also
brilliant at deceiving people, deceiving
famously Neville Chamberlain at Munich,
but he also deceived German politicians.
He deceived German business leaders. He
deceived German generals. He deceived
his fellow Nazis. He was just brilliant
at deceiving people. So those are the
arguments for thinking that he may he
made a difference that without world
without Hitler there might not have been
a World War II and there would not have
been a been a Holocaust. Most historians
tend to believe that
leaders don't make a difference. But in
the case of Hitler, most historians
would argue that Hitler did make a
difference. The famous British historian
AJP Taylor wrote a biography at Hitler
using the same facts. And with the same
facts, AGP Taylor came to the conclusion
that Hitler was a normal German
politician pursuing the goals of other
German politicians, which is true, but
that there wouldn't have been any
difference if Hitler had not been a
leader. So those are the arguments about
but that illustrates the weakness of the
traditional biographic method. One's
limited by the facts, but
different people come to different
conclusions with the same facts. That's
why my book uses a different method, the
method of natural experiments.
>> Who in your mind is the most unlikely
leader that became a spectacularly
successful leader either toward positive
or destructive ends?
>> There are many many candidates for that.
one candidate, the the first having been
born in 1937, um I grew up under
Roosevelt, but the first American
president in in whom I became interested
because I was by then ath Harry Truman,
the most unlikely
significant American president. He was
selected as Roosevelt's third or fourth
vi vice president for trivial political
reasons. He he was a senator from
Missouri, undistinguished. He had be he
had become senator through dishonest
shenanigans. Um he was so insignificant
that Roosevelt never met with him once
Truman became
vice president. And when Roosevelt died,
Truman was totally un Truman didn't know
about the atomic bomb. And yet the first
decision that he had to make was whether
to drop the atomic bombs. At the time
Truman was widely despised. I remember
my own view of Truman. He, I, and others
looked down on Trum, but in retrospect,
we realize that Truman was courageous.
Um, he didn't care whether people hated
him. Um, he made courageous decisions,
the Berlin Airlift,
the development of the the hydrogen
bomb, the Korean War, which people hated
him for, firing General MacArthur, which
people hated him for. And so when Truman
stepped down, he was widely loathed, but
in retrospect, um, gradually he's become
appreciated as not equal to Roosevelt
and Lincoln, but the second tier, a
courageous American president who took
decisions and didn't care that he was
going to be loathed because of the
decision, his decisions.
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space, there's been a lot of discussion
about the disservice that introspection
[clears throat] can do for people who
are trying to build big things, be
leaders, be entrepreneurs. We have to be
careful about painting with too broad a
brush. But I in researching different
leaders, both dark and light, is there a
theme of powerful leaders being able to
just step into the next decision without
too much thought about the past or how
they're going to be perceived? That's
one form of introspection. I realize
there are others, but is there a
correlation there?
>> I would say no. And and this illustrates
a broad broad point. People um regularly
look for personal generalizations,
personality generalizations about
leaders. Perhaps the communist
generation generalization is that
leaders have to be charismatic.
Nonsense. Some leaders are charismatic.
Stalin
Agusto pinch the dictator of Chile
totally uncarismatic. There are about 37
ways to be an effective leader of which
charisma is is one. And any question
that you or anybody else would ask about
how can we generalize about leaders
person there's some generalizations
about leaders but not personality
generalizations because there are
different ways to be a effective leader.
I'm getting the sense that in your
understanding of leaders and leadership
based on what you just said that it's
this weird confluence of circumstances
who's not available to lead better
perhaps charisma or lack of charisma a
weird constellation of things that give
rise to history and what we're
experiencing now. And so for me, and
perhaps I'm wrong about this, that
contrasts a bit with my understanding of
you based on your prior books, which is
that you're trying to find thematic
regularities. You're trying to put
structure on things that at the face of
them are very complex, like how did we
get here, how did cultures evolve, etc.,
and on and on. So
in this exploration of leadership, how
do you go from think being able to
explain each circumstance
to some taxonomy that allows you to be
satisfied? And I'm going to set up a
parallel with something that we're going
to look at later, which is bird
watching. I mean, every bird is
different, but every bird belongs to a
particular category and has particular
features. And in many ways I'm thinking
about leaders and leadership the same
way. What is satisfying to you? What
level of understanding and consistency
of ideas is satisfying?
>> There are generalizations
um that I came to in writing writing
about leaders. But I would say just just
as background um people often ask me um
Jared your book about leaders now seems
to be the opposite of guns, germs, and
steel. Huh? Jared, your book comes
journey steel was about big patterns.
There was nothing about individuals.
Instead, it was about domestication and
the shapes of continents. Does that mean
that you've changed your mind and you
now recognize a role of individuals? And
my answer to that is is no. Guns,
German, and steel um is about patterns
of history on the continents
over the last 10,000 years. And over the
last 10,000 years on whole continents, I
can't think of any individual who's
who's made a difference. There was no
individual who was responsible for the
fertile crescent jumpstarting quote
civilization. The fertile crescent jump
started civilization. Why? Because the
fertile crescent was where the most
productive wild plants, peas, wheat,
barley, the most productive wild animal,
cow, sheep, goat, pig, horse lived. And
so in guns shroom seal there's nothing
nothing at all about individuals whereas
my book about leadership is about what
people have done during my lifetime
usually on local scales and so it is
about individuals whereas guns steel was
not at all about I haven't changed my
mind it's that I'm looking at completely
different sorts of questions now in
prophets prophets coaches and kings
compared to guns of steel
>> is it a leap to say that um Prophets,
Prophets, Coaches, and Kings is a in
some ways is a uh autobiography of where
your your of the things that impacted
your life along the way.
>> In motivation, yes. In content, no. in
motivation.
Yes, the role of Hitler in in my
family's life and my wife's life, but
the content of the book is
all divorced for me. In the
introduction, I think I do mention
that Sir Brian Matthews saved as a
leader of the Cambridge physiology
department saved my career in
physiology. But then once I launch into
politics and once I launch into into the
business world and once I launch into
the sports world and and religion um no
it's all it's all stuff I haven't
contributed to to any of those four
areas. Now in the epilogue of the book I
I do ask what are the areas um other
areas that are waiting for exploration
by the method of natural experiments and
I mean science which I am a scientist
art and music I am a musician military
history I'm very interested in military
history [snorts] social unrest I'm
hoping that in the future people will
apply these questions of leadership to
things that involve me personally
particularly music and and science, but
that's for the future.
>> You mentioned this story about flooding
the laboratory with I should point out I
heard you say radioactive isotope uh
water. What is your takeaway from uh
that particular professor's response?
And has it made you more forgiving of
other people's mistakes?
>> I've not been one to jump on other
people for their mistakes. Well, I've
made plenty of mistakes. I've had very
close calls myself. I've done things
that could have ended my career on the
spot, such as that that there were other
things that could have ended my career
on the spot. So, I'm not inclined to
blame other people for their mistakes. I
recall a biography of J. Robert
Oenheimer mentioned that that Oenheimer
he committed theft and he could easily
have been
fired and his career might have been
ended but the theft was overlooked and
so he went on to develop develop his
career. It's interesting how when we are
very low on a hierarchical
uh ladder
uh like in academia in its traditional
days anyway that um people hold
tremendous power obviously to to impact
us and whether we move forward or not
but it's it's always reassuring when um
something like the forgiveness of this
uh professor if people can hear that
because I think a lot of people
associate powerful leadership with uh
here I'm generalizing ing again with a u
sort of a a lack of tolerance for um
imperfection, lack of tolerance for
things that could threaten the the whole
department in this case. So it's a it's
a very sweet story on the one hand, but
I imagine it didn't happen a second
time. There's also that, right? For 36
years I was professor of physiology at
UCLA medical school doing laboratory
experiments and so I had graduate
students and postocs and quite a few of
the graduate student postocs screwed up.
They made they made big mistakes. I
remember my my second graduate student
my he my department wanted to expel him
because he didn't do well on an exam. I
convinced my department to let him stay
and he turned out to be a outstanding
researcher. couple of others of my
students had close calls but again I'm
reminded
how close I came myself um to
being having my career ended
and people forgave me and my career
developed very well
>> yeah I would say so
>> since I was forgiven it behooves me to
to forgive my students
>> I love it and I'm sure many people
appreciate that uh it's a very different
picture of uh academia than I think most
people get. So thank thank you for that.
Religious leaders [snorts] who in your
mind stood out as important enough to
feature prominently in the book.
>> In the book I have two chapters on
religious leaders. Um the first chapter
looks at three religious leaders in the
19th century United States because we
got lots of detailed information about
them. Joseph Smith, the founder of the
Mormon Mormon religion.
Anne Lee, the founder of Shakers.
Jim Jones, the founder of of Jonestown.
So, we have a lot of information about
them. The second chapter on religion
looks at Jesus. We have
minimal information about Jesus. We have
no contemporary information whatsoever
about him. The first information that we
have about him is the letters of St.
Paul and the gospel according to St.
Mark both of which follow his death by
about 20 years. So there's no
contemporary information about him with
Jesus. Did Jesus make a difference?
Well, if you read the the New Testament
talks about names six other messiahs.
Jesus was not the only Messiah. There
were there were lots of people then who
said, "I'm the Messiah." And six of them
are named in the in the New Testament. A
couple of them were killed by the
Romans. John the Baptist had his head
cut off. Um Jesus was was killed. But
this was the Western Roman Empire,
the most powerful political entity of
Western Eurasia. just the right place to
to found a major religion. Jesus, of
course, could not foresee that. 1,467
years after his death, Columbus would
sail the ocean blue and launched the
European conquest of the world,
spreading the European religion. But the
European religion was Christianity. Why?
Because Christianity was the religion of
the Western Roman Empire, the most
powerful entity at the time. So if Jesus
[snorts] had been with the same same
properties in the Sudan, we wouldn't
know about Jesus. If Jesus had been a
religious leader in Western Europe
100 BC, we wouldn't know about him. He
was the right place and and right time.
>> He definitely has the highest H index of
any uh religious leader.
>> The right place in the right time. And I
believe that Christianity is today the
world religion with the largest number
of adherence.
>> I know you um try not to generalize but
is there anything specific about Jesus
the person that we do know with almost
certainty or with certainty that spoke
to his effectiveness or was it you said
right place wrong uh right time but that
seems uh necessary but not sufficient.
>> Right. There there were other people at
the right place in the right time. There
were those six other prophets mentioned
in the New Testament and
they were the Essenes of the Dead Sea
Scrolls. Why was a world religion
founded by
Jesus and not by the leader of the
Essenes? Well, there are a couple of
things. One, Jesus's message and
personal qualities. He had a universal
message for all people. It was not just
a message for the Essenes and was not
just a message for for Jews. Yes, Jesus
was Jewish, but his message was not
addressed to just the Jews. It was a
universal message of those religious
leaders of the Roman Empire at that
time. That was a big thing in his favor.
And another thing in his in his favor
was that a religion needs not only a
charismatic founder but it also needs an
organizer. [snorts] In some cases the
organizer and the charismatic founder of
the same person. Muhammad was a great
organizer and also charismatic. The Madi
of the Sudan was a brilliant organizer
and brilliant general. Also a brilliant
religious leader. Jesus died too early.
uh he was not the or the organizer was
St. Paul but St. Paul was a great
organizer just as with the Mormon
religion. Joseph Smith was the
charismatic founder of the Roman
religion even in his lifetime he had his
weaknesses as an organizer and he was he
was he was then then lynched the
organizer was Brigham Young who was a
great organizer. So you your question
why Jesus um universal message and he
had the good fortune that he was then
followed by a great organizer St. Paul
and he was in the right place the
western Roman Empire at the perfect time
>> and Columbus obviously was able to
propagate his ideas far uh as you
pointed out with the desire to still
avoid generalizations. What the picture
I'm getting is that you need uh a
leader. You need an organizer. Sometimes
the leader is the organizer, but oftent
times it sounds like it there's someone
else or other people who can help
organize the message. We see this in
science
>> quite often, especially in the
biological sciences, pairs of um well uh
your advisor Hodkin Huxley won the Nobel
Prize. They're famous for describing the
biohysics of the action potential. Hubal
Weasel won the Nobel Prize. It's very
common that there's this pairing and it
and having known David Hub and Torson
Weasel a bit, Torson is still alive.
There's often a personality uh
complimentarity there too. One tends to
be a little bit more outspoken, one a
little bit more uh you know, Watson and
Crick. I'm sure there just as many
examples that don't fit. Uh but in
thinking about leaders, not just
religious leaders, can we um make any
kind of generalization about um pairings
uh two very um complimentary people that
are especially effective in getting
escape velocity on their on their
leadership, their message?
>> I don't think so. In the in the case of
religion um it's not just pairings but
it's of it's often triplets namely to
launch a religion
you need charismatic founder you need an
organizer but generally always when you
found a new religion there is push back
from existing religions and often that
push back is is violent so that that
often new religions have had to
defend themsel have have had to have
have um generals. Um for example, the
Mai Muhammad
was an outstanding general as well as
organizer and charismatic. The Madi of
the Sudan um who established an empire
in East Africa towards the end of the
19th century. Great general. He led
hundreds or thousands of Sudin tribes
with just
sticks to wipe out a British Egyptian
army of 7,000 with machine guns, a great
general, great organizer, charismatic.
But in in other spheres in science,
there are scientists who are large-scale
organizers. My thesis was Alan Hodkin.
Alan Hodkin didn't great scientist um he
did not organize 50 people into a lab
lab group. Alan Hodkin his strategy was
to have one PhD student at a time. Well
I was his PhD student for three years.
He did not have another PhD student. He
did become master of Trinity College and
he was an effective master of Trinity
College. But there are scientists who
also outstanding organizers. Gerald
Adelman who won a Nobel Prize for his
work on figuring out how antibodies
operated. Gerald Adelman had I believe
something like 50 postocs and a friend
of mine made a discovery that so-called
Ben Jones proteins in in the kidney. A
discovery that was crucial to figuring
out how antibodies operate. Uh but my
friend operated alone. He did not have
50 posttocks. And so when my friend made
the tactical mistake of giving a lecture
about his discovery of Ben Jones
proteins before he had published, Gerald
Adelman was in the audience and and I'm
told then immediately told his lab,
"Switch everything." And his 50 postocs
went in there and they figured out how
antibodies operated. Gerald Adelman got
the Nobel Prize. My friend did not get
the Nobel Prize, but Gerald Adelman was
a very effective organizer and
fundraiser
>> and big personality.
>> Yes. Yes. I I met him on two occasions.
Yes. He was a big personality.
>> Yeah. He ventured into neuroscience
after immunology. Uh and uh yeah, big
ideas. Um big lab, big ideas.
So, there are just as many u exceptions
uh to the to the statements I'm making,
I'm I'm realizing, as there are um
things that that meet it. I was
surprised that you mentioned Jim Jones.
Um and most people perhaps have heard of
the Jonestown massacre. The top contour
of that in my mind is bunch of people uh
left the country to follow this cult
leader and drank poison and it was mass
suicide. When [snorts] I hear about
cults and I hear about cult leaders, for
some reason I default to thinking more
about how impressionable
the cult followers were rather than how
persuasive the cult leader was. David
Caresh and the branch devidians was, you
know, in my mind the burned down the the
the structure killed everybody inside.
And when I hear Caresh's lectures, they
they have no impact in persuading me of
anything except that he was nuts. When
you think about an effective cult
leader,
I think most people perhaps default to
that they're preying on the vulnerable.
But is there a a world where those
effective cult leaders could have done
something else in the context of regular
society and been effective leaders? Or
is it there's something about the
pairing the dysfunctional pairing of the
>> person prone to be a cult follower and
the cult leader?
>> Interesting question. A leader
needs personal characteristics that will
enable her or him to lead. They may be
charisma. They may be being able to
terrify people. They may be able to
persuade people. On the one hand,
there's the leader and the other hand
there are the the followers. Not
everybody is a is a follower. There
there are some some people who are prone
prone to follow charismatic people and
there are other people lots of people
who are not going to follow even most
charismatic people Hitler.
They were the Germans who followed
Hitler
were persuaded by Hitler but the Nazis
never got a majority in an election. The
majority of Germans um were not
persuaded by by Hitler. Jim Jones of of
Jonestown, notorious for founding a
colony in Guana. And the colony ended in
the largest mass suicide in American
history. 900 931 people drank, punch,
poison with with cyanide. But Jim Jones,
he can't be written off as a as a crazy.
uh he he led
the desegregation of Indianapolis.
He he attracted
people by
the noble ideals of
the church that he founded in
Indianapolis.
The people who followed him were not a
random assortment of people.
They were predominantly poor people,
predominantly old people. A lot of them
were were African-Americans.
They tended not to be highly educated
people. The people's temple, as it was
called, required the charismatic leader.
Um, this is really an interesting point
that you raised, but it also required
people who were disposed to be to be
followers.
>> I didn't realize he led the
desegregation of Minneapolis. if he had
died before he moved from Indianapolis
to San Francisco. If he had died in his
first couple of years in San Francisco,
um he was appointed one of the housing
commissioners for San Francisco. He
attracted many idealistic people in San
Francisco, but he was gradually getting
more and more crazy. But this illust
illustrates the the point that you make
which is an interesting point that one
has to inquire not just about leaders
but also about followers. Who is
disposed to to follow? Uh in the case of
the Nazis, yes, it was clear that there
were Germans who were disposed to follow
to follow Hitler. In the case of Winston
Churchill or Franklin Delano or
Roosevelt, um my parents voted three
times for Roosevelt and once they voted
against Rose, my parents and other
Roosevelt were not crazy sick sick
people. And Winston Churchill, the
people who who voted for Winston
Churchill were not were not crazy crazy
sick sick people. In that case, one
cannot look to the pathology or the
strange qualities of their their
followers as one can in the case of Jim
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subscription. I realize it's possible to
divide leaders or people or animals or
anything into different categories
depending on where one decides to um
slice the line, but [snorts] can
anything informative be said about
powerful leaders who
declare that they are not at the top of
the hierarchy that they obey God of a or
a particular God versus that they are at
the at the top of the pyramid? We'll
leave Jesus out of this because that's
an obvious one. But in the case of like
a Jim Jones, you said he had a church.
Um did he still talk about the existence
of God? Did he try to leverage God um to
make people convinced that he was humble
to God or is or was he saying that he
was really the apex of of power and
understanding?
And I suppose we could apply this to
just pretty much anyone we've discussed
or anyone else. Is this is this a an
informative dividing line?
>> Jim Jones certainly did not did not deny
God and did not did not claim to be be
superior to God. Here's another
trait shared by leaders and I mentioned
that that there are different ways to be
an effective leader. charisma.
Um, in I think it was the third chapter
of my book, I have a table in which I
pulled together
22 outstanding political leaders um of
the period from World War II onwards.
And I asked myself, what generalizations
can we reach about these 22 leaders?
the 22 the obvious obvious candidate you
can argue about them but I include
Stalin and Sadat
Mussolini Hitler etc etc I asked myself
are there any quality shared by all of
these leaders and the surprise for me
was that of these 22 leaders there were
only two who stepped down voluntarily
Nelson Mandela the founding
post-aparttheide leader of of South
Africa He was I think in his 80s and he
retired voluntarily as prime minister.
Um then Lieuan Yu the founder of
independent Singapore um served as prime
minister might be as long as 30 might be
as long as 40 years but he stepped down
voluntarily. But of the other 20 those
were the only two out of 22 who stepped
down voluntarily. All other major
leaders
were either assassinated and Wasadat or
committed suicide Hitler or they were
voted out of office Winston Churchill or
they were thrown out by a coup
which means that in in politics once
once you've become a powerful leader and
you've come to the conclusion that you
are
an effective powerful leader. You are
very unlikely to step down voluntarily.
Only two out of 22 did it. So that's a
generalization that I had not
anticipated.
>> Yeah, I suppose it's a lifestyle hit
too. Uh nobody wants to go backwards in
terms of uh their comforts. Uh but I am
surprised that some people have the
vigor to continue to um occupy these
very high demand spots despite aging and
>> fatiguing. I mean you clearly don't slow
but the uh uh you know but uh we'll talk
about the fact that you're teaching
yourself Italian now. Is that right? Are
you teaching yourself a new language?
Did I hear that correctly?
>> I learned Italian. Italian was my the
last of my 13 languages. I learned
Italian
>> just 13. Yeah. when I when I was 61
years old. I read Italian every day. All
my leisure reading is in Italian. I
don't do leisure reading in English. I
read Italian every day. And once a week
I have a 2-hour Italian conversation
with my Italian professor who's a
professor at USC. What inspired you to
learn 13 languages? Is it fun for you or
do you andor do you enjoy the challenge
as part of the uh enticement of learning
another language?
>> My mother was a talented linguist. I
just love learning languages. In my
school required us to to study Latin for
five five year. I loved it. Um we had
the alternative of studying electives
either Greek or biology. I figured I'm
going to be doing biology for the rest
of my life. I will now take so I I spent
three years learning Greek. I can still
recite the beginning of the main
then um in college um I learned German
just before my mother helped me with
that just before entering college in
college this was the time of Sputnik so
I learned Russian I learned Spanish and
then my first summer after college I
spent the summer in Finland the Finnish
language is a non-indouropean it's a
really difficult language. When I went
to Finland, I did not have a Finnish
grammar, but I was hitchhiking around in
Finland. Um, and at that time in
Finland, summer of 1959,
very few Fins spoke English. In order to
hitchhike, I had to start learning
Finnish. And I ended up in a national
park in northern Finland where I I hiked
into a hut that was being looked after
by four Finnish soldiers. The four
Finnish soldiers didn't speak any
language except Finnish.
And I'm with them for several days. They
teach me Finnish by demonstrating
things. Um um cup. They picked up a cup.
The word Finnish word for cup was ki.
And then finish instead of having
prepositions, it has postpositions
cases. So when you want to say the cup
is on the table.
when you want to say I'm putting the cup
onto the table pa
when you take the cup off the pa. So
these four Finnish soldiers they
demonstrated for me by putting cups onto
and off of I just loved it and I
seriously considered dropping out of
science. Um I met my after I'd been to
Finland I met my my parents in Paris.
They came to Europe sort of for the
first time in a year and I was
seriously considering dropping out of
science and becoming a simultaneous
translate. I was going to go to
Switzerland to become a translator.
Fortunately, my my father, he was he
gently said, "Maybe it's a maybe it's a
bit early to drop. I know your science
is frustrating for you now, but you've
been doing it for only a year. Why don't
you give yourself another six months?
And after 6 months, if the experiments
aren't going well, you can be a
translator. But I I loved learning
Finnish. And then when I went to New
Guinea, New Guinea has a thousand
languages. The first New Guinea people
that I work with were a foray tribe
famous for kuru laughing sickness um
first prian disease. And um at that time
there was a New Guinea trade languin
trade called talk vision. So I commun
was able to communicate with talk vision
but I just loved learning foray from
from from a couple of forays and um and
I I remember um asking my for informant
I was trying to figure out the word for
for we um I'd already learned the word
for I nag and so I asked my my foray
informant in talk vision um
I nag So we all the same one meella and
he said then he gave me a word for for
we and then I respond oh we no nag
kasik. It turns out that that foray has
a duel. English is singular and plural I
and we. But
among European like Slovenian and
ancient Greek have a duel, namely
separate pronouns for two of us and
three of us. So for example, um if if
I'm I'm talking the two of us, we do
this. But if there were a third person
here, it would be a different pronoun
and for beyond
ways, I just loved learning languages.
I've always loved languages.
>> It seems you love the puzzle of it. you
love the application of it given that
once you learned Italian, you still um
have these conversations in Italian for
a couple hours a week. Once again, I'm
I'm struck by how that despite the
tremendous variation in the different
languages, for instance, um that there's
something about I'm not trying to play
psychologist here, but there's something
about your mind where you it seems
you're very comfortable with immense
amount of informationational diversity
within a category like language or
leaders.
Most people come in and they try and
simplify to clarify but you have this uh
it seems your mind goes to let's find
the widest range of variation possible
and from that we're going to extract
some deeper understanding. It's I this
may occur to you but it's a highly
unusual way of doing things. I mean in
biology we have lumpers and splitters as
we say. I teach neuro anatomy so you can
lump or you can split. You can say brain
or we can start dividing it and you can
divide everything right down to the
subdivisions of the mitochondria if you
want. Right? So you have to pick your
your level of analysis.
But we tend to put frameworks
nomenclatures and try and name genes in
ways that we can think about other genes
that are similar. Your mind works in a
very different way. And what I'd like to
know is has it always been that way?
Have you looked at the taxonomy of of
stuff in the world and said that's
crazy. Why do they organize it that way?
Maybe we should look at it uh through
the the most detailed lens and from that
extract clarity.
>> I've been that way only since age three.
My mother who was a teacher and loved
teaching, mom taught me to read when I
was three years old. And so so I began
keeping a notebook. I've still got my
three-year-old in my notebook. I made
lists. I made lists of the names of
rivers, the names of animals, the names
of animals of the Rocky Mountains, the
names of birds of Europe. I was a
listister. This is embarrassing, but I
listed the numbers of street cars on the
Boston street car system. I long listed
the numbers of street. I love making
lists and I've got a lot of mileage in
in biology out of making lists. After my
PhD,
I I was membrane biologist and among my
contributions to membrane biology, I did
the largest study ever carried out of
the permeability of biological membrane
to uncharged molecules, non-elerolytes,
I and my my first post-doal student, we
measured the permeability of rabbit
gallbladder to 210 non 210
non-elerolytes.
They're all organic chemicals and
there's lots of detail there. There are
branch non electrolyte, there are
non-branch non-elerolytes and there are
ones with oxygen groups and there are
ones with
with sulfur groups. So there's lots of
detail. Um I love the project with those
200 non-electral. Then when I went to
New Guinea to start to study birds, um
I've been studying New Guinea birds
since since 1964.
>> [snorts]
>> New Guinea has about 600 bird species.
I've encountered and gotten to know most
of them. Um, when I'm falling asleep at
night, often I'll recite to myself list
New Guinea birds. Sometimes I'll recite
them by their foray names, the Mabisena,
the Pasaki, the Ken Mame Toto, the
Swanadaba. Sometimes I'll recite them by
their by their Latin names. Sarahornis
Papois, Sarakornis Perspicoladus,
Sarakornis Noi, I just love making
lists. But one one of my teachers, one
of my influ influential teach Erns
Meyer, the great evolutionary biologist.
Erns Meyer loved making lists and he and
I spent 30 years preparing a book
together on the birds of Northern
Melanesia, the islands east of New
Guinea. Erns and I were very compatible.
Both of us loved making lists. Whenever
a question would come up, Erns Erns
would say, "Let's make a list." And he
would make a list and I would make a
list. And then we would go over that
list, the list of all the mountain birds
of of um northern Melanesia. What
generalizations are there about the
mountain? Are there's a lot of
scientific mileage that I've gotten from
making lists, which I've done ever since
I was 3 years old. It's the exact
opposite
way that Richard Fineman talked about
how to look out at the world. He
actually used the very example of if you
see a bird in the woods and somebody
says that's like a whatever whatever
thrush. He said knowing the name doesn't
help you understand it. But I'll say
based on spending a lot of time thinking
about the names of and the connectivity
of different brain structures often
there's a a way of naming things in a
field that actually tells you a lot
about the functionality. Like in
neuroscience for instance we the first
name in retino geniculate. It tells you
what the origin structure and the
recipient structure are. So like the
names actually matter.
>> They tell you a lot more than just this
is different than that. So, as you made
these lists and as you recite these
lists um when you're falling asleep, are
you also able to call to mind the
functional distinctions between these?
Is that simply the way that you batch
information or is it that the lists and
the names are are have their own unique
value that's independent from that?
>> The names are the the anchor for a lot
of information. When I recite at night,
Sarakonus noi Craakonus noi the large
large large scrub ren. What about it?
Well, it's the larger of two birds in an
altitudinal sequence. Um, it's the
larger of two coexisting species which
are very similar. So similar that this
the pasakiabi and the mabis I couldn't
tell them apart until New Guineians
explained to me the differences in in
their behavior. So there's a lot of
information that's associated with the
name. In addition, the name itself has a
Sarahornus. Sarah means that that bird
belongs to the genus Sarakornus. And in
the genus Craicornus is also um Sarah um
Sarakornus Vatus,
which is the low elevation equivalent of
Sarakornus noi. But there's also
serornus perspicoladus which is the
smallbodied
um scrub that shares the same altitudal
ranges. So there's information that goes
along with
>> I mean in the world of science you and I
both know there are people who pick one
thing and they just drill there
sometimes for an entire career or for
five or 10 years at a time and then
there are people that try and throw
their arms around enormous batches of
information. Clearly you're in the
latter category. And so once again I'll
ask is was this uh always your tendency?
You wanted to know all the information?
>> Basically yes. Meaning I've always been
interested in in lots of things. I was
fortunate to go to a secondary school
that gave me options to to study lots of
things. My secondary school although I
expected to go into science. My
secondary school had great history
teacher better than all the history
teachers I had had at Harvard College.
wonderful Latin Latin Greek teacher.
Then once I got my PhD in physiology in
Cambridge, England, and returned to the
United States, having gotten my PhD in
salt and water transport by the
gallbladder. In retrospect, I didn't
know what I was doing at the time, but
in retrospect, I realized that I was now
understanding with horror that I was
expected to devote myself to the
gallbladder for the rest of my life. But
that just went against everything that I
had done from age three onwards. And so
I shopped around for another career. Um
I seriously considered making another
career in pre-Colombian ceramics. I
seriously considered becoming a
conductor of an orchestra. I didn't have
the insights into pre-Colombian
ceramics. Um to be a conductor you have
to be able to ignore time lags. And I
could ignore time lags. But um I I had
been a become a bird watcher at age
seven. And
when I came back to Boston after my
getting my PhD in my
first summer, I and a college classmate,
the college classmate who was a great
bird watcher, we spent the summer in
Peru. What do you do in Peru? We climb
mountains. We watch birds. The next next
summer we went together to New Guinea.
Why? New Guinea is the wildest place in
the world. Um but New Guinea also has
the most wonderful birds. And so I
developed a second career in birds
and [clears throat] then I developed a
third career in history and geography.
So I've had three careers. My my career
in laboratory physiology I eventually
closed down in the year 2002. Why? When
my twi when our twin sons, my wife and I
have twin sons, they were born in 1987.
When our twin sons were born, I realized
the future of Max and Joshua is not
going to depend upon gallbladders. It's
going to depend upon history and geog
geography. And so, so gradually I began
spending more of my time in history,
geography. I was less interested in
gallbladders and finally with great
difficulty um I got UCLA to transfer me
from being professor of gallbladder
physiology in the medical school to
being professor of geography in the
college I've still kept up the the two
careers in history and geography at the
same time as as I was writing writing my
book on on leaders at the same time I've
also been writing papers on my work on
New Guinea birds I think a week ago
Friday I completed a p long paper on the
birds of the one diamond mountains of
Indonesian New Guinea.
Next year I want I want to do a paper on
the birds of the Bani Mountains of
Indonesian New Guinea. And because I'm
89 years old and I have to figure what
do I my remaining time is finite. What
am I going to do with my remaining time?
One of the things that I want to do with
my remaining time is to synthesize my
work on New Guinea birds by looking at
bird distribution on the 10 isolated
mountain ranges of New Guinea. What
generalizations can I recognize about
the birds that are good colonists? So
that's what [snorts] I want to do for
next the remaining 10 years of my life.
I have to say that despite having
colleagues who have a lot of interests,
uh it's very rare to encounter somebody
who's been successful in several
different domains of serious, you know,
scientific exploration, much less
writing books about them as well. And
did you at some point give yourself
permission to move fields? It's not
common, as we know, in science for
people to do that. And if people do it,
they tend to do it um somewhat
cryptically and then or and gradually.
And maybe this is also not to pry into
your personal life, but uh it's one
thing to decide, well, you know, I'm my
twins are arriving and you know, maybe
I'll switch fields, but there's a spouse
there who's probably thinking, uh uh do
you have tenure? Uh how are we going to
pay the bills? Um so I imagine um there
was likely support or maybe you're just
very defiant and you just follow your
curiosity.
>> They were the the the
career issues and they were the issues
of interest. The issues of interest were
that ever since I was three years old,
I've been interested in lots of stuff.
And I realized in retrospect that that
among among among my life crisis,
one of my life crises was after I got my
PhD realizing with horror that I was
expected to do one thing for the rest of
my life, but that was not me. And it
took some effort to carve out a second
career in birds. I had a post-doal
fellowship. Most postdoal fellowships
bind you to do one thing. I was in the
biohysics lab of the Harvard medical
school. But I I was fortunate that my
postdoal fellowship was with the Harvard
society called the society of fellows. I
was a junior fellow at Harvard. And as a
junior fellow, I had freedom. I could I
could tell the boss of my biohysics
laboratory,
I'm going to New Guinea for three months
this summer to study New Guinea birds. I
didn't ask his permission. I just said,
I'm doing it. Now, he could have fired
me and he could have said, well, if you
want to do that, get out of biohysics
lab, but I was doing good work in
biohysics. And so, he was he was willing
to tolerate my um going off to New
Guinea for three for three months. Then
when I moved to UCLA, the crucial piece
of my negotiation with moving to UCLA
where I was off off offered a um
professorship,
associate professorship in the the
physiology department. Um [snorts] the
dean of UCLA was the longest serving
medical school dean in the Sherm
Melanchov. Wonderful person. He was
offering me a job in the phys. I told
Sherm, "Yes, but I'm interested in New
Guinea birds, and you got to understand
that I intend to the last several years,
I've spent three three months every
summer working on New Guinea birds, and
I want to continue my work on New Guinea
birds, and if I accept your position,
will you tolerate my continuing to work
on New Guinea birds?" Most medical
school deans would have said, "Get the
hell out of here." Sher Melanchov said,
"Jared,
UCLA Medical School is interested in New
Guinea birds. I'm going to give you
$5,000 every year to spend studying New
Guinea birds." And so, so he tolerated
it and he made it possible for me. I'm
then fortunate that I had a dean who
permitted it. Um, as for as for my my
wife Marie, Marie had no problems
whatsoever with it because when I met
Marie, I was already working in New
Guinea. In fact, the development of our
relationship, a crucial a crucial issue
in our relationship was that Jared was
going off to New Guinea for every three
months. And Marie knew what happened in
New I got nearly killed in New Guinea
repeatedly. And and so Marie had to be
willing to to tolerate that. Um by the
time that our our kids were born, I had
a very secure position in medical
school. I was going to New Guinea. When
our kids were born, it was not that
Marie told me Jared don't go there for 3
months. It was that that that I realized
Jared, you're not going to go there for
3 months anymore. And so when the kids
were born, I reduced my time in New
Guinea to one month at a time. And my
last New Guinea trip was 2019.
>> Yeah. It raises a very interesting um
feature of adventurous living,
>> much less researching and and living,
you know, uh immersed in a in a
different culture, a different
ecosystem, which is that can be hard on
the body to go places that you're not
familiar with, eating food you're not
familiar with. Most people would think,
oh, what are you talking about? You
know, you can get a cheeseburger from
McDonald's anywhere in the world now.
And perhaps that's true, but um have you
always um been willing to put your
physical comfort uh on the line in order
to learn? It's I mean learning languages
is hard. Um putting yourself into a a
jungle environment to where there's um
all sorts of diseases where there's
political and social unrest like there's
a lot of variables when you get out
there. Um and so then you become an
intellectual explorer but truly in the
wild. Um, was that something that was
fun, a necessary evil? Where where has
that landed with you
>> to work in New Guinea? It's a it's a
it's a ne necessary evil. Um, it's not
until I went to New Guinea. Um, I uh
when I was in Peru the the pre the year
before I went to New Guinea, my friend
and I went to Peru, spent a summer in
Peru, we did mountain climbing. Um, we
did a first descent of a 17,000 foot
peak. Being at high altitudes,
going straight up from sea level to
10,000 feet and then three days later
going to six 16th is miserable. So, yes,
I I experienced physical misery in Peru.
In New Guinea, to do anything in New
Guinea,
there's lots of physical physical memory
misery. The food is sweet potatoes and
rice, three meals a day. Being in the
jungle, I'm getting bitten by scrub
mites. My first year in New Guinea, I
ended up with dysentery, which the
doctors at Harvard couldn't cure. It
remained with me for a year. My third
year in New Guinea and ended up with
malaria. Climbing mountains in in New
Guinea. Being in New Guinea is is
physically miserable most of most of the
time. occasionally
like like maybe once or three months I
can sit down
at campsite and look out and and and at
another and say my god that's beautiful
but the rest of the time I'm physically
miserable and I'm having to deal with
new guineians [snorts] who have their
own ideas about what to do in life being
in New Guinea is it's it's uncomfortable
but it's fascinating the fascination of
the birds of figuring out what's the
difference between the mobane and the
posiab.
>> Let's talk about birds. Um the only
other two birders uh I know from science
are Jim Watson
>> um was started off as a
>> burer ornithologist of some sort anyway
decided to solve the co-solve the
structure of uh DNA. So he went a
different way. Um and then the late also
late Murray Gilman who discovered the
quark as a I think a two Nobel winner
maybe one anyway smart guy um who was
obsessed with birds and bird taxonomy
and bird watching. It's interesting that
all three of you
have, it seems, a kind of obsession with
going after these big
>> questions like entire societies,
leadership, um the structure of DNA,
Galman, you know, you know, uh
elementary particles and and and all the
rest, but birds of which I know some,
certainly not as much as you, there's
this tremendous diversity
>> and Um, unless one is really into
birding, it's easy from the outside to
say like, "Yeah, okay. So, you've got
the black cap chickity and you got this
one and you got that one." And what
information, what enrichment is to be
gleaned from observing them? I'm I'm not
being disparaging of it. I myself love
birds. Uh, in fact, I had the weird and
unique opportunity to talk birds with
Murray many years ago at a physics
meeting. But my knowledge of birds is
like very very superficial compared to
yours obviously. So what is it about
knowing all these nomenclatures and
details about how they move and seeing
them in the wild that what does it
inform you about and what does it
celebrate in you?
>> What does it inform us about inform me
about? Birds inform informologists
about everything. Earth. Birds are the
they're the easiest of all animals to
observe and to understand. Birds operate
by the same senses that that you and I
do. Birds operate by sight and by sound.
We humans operate by sight and sound.
Whereas mammals operate especially by
smell. One can't rat watch. Yes, you can
watch antelopes, but you don't go around
watching rats. If you want to understand
rats, you have to have a good sense of
smell. You c catch them in [laughter]
trap. But birds you can watch. And so
most of what we know about ecology and
evolutionary biology and biogeography
and behavior
has been learned first on birds and has
been learned in most detail about birds
and then that knowledge we can learn
apply to to other animals. So the things
that that I've written about birds, um,
lots about ecology, lots about
how birds divide ecological niches, lots
about evolution, how bird species evolve
in New Guinea, how do you get new
species in an un uninterrupted mountain
range, biogeography,
the distribution of plants and animals
around the world began especially with
the distribution of birds. birds and
then mammals, mammals and other things.
The animals easiest to observe are are
birds. So, so when you say what could we
learn about birds, an uh honest answer,
we can learn everything about birds and
everything in the biological world is
easier to learn from birds than about
other animals.
>> Perfectly acceptable answer. Um the bird
many birds um sing, some speak. I don't
know if you're interested in the the
language evolution from birds, but um
does the name Peter Marlor um anything?
Yeah. Yeah. He was at Davis when when I
was a graduate student and
one of the most interesting observations
in my opinion that he made was that the
same species of bird would have a
different song if they were raised at
the Marin Headlands versus by the
naturally raised by their bird parents
at the marine headlands versus
elsewhere. and that there was some
innate relationship to uh the species
like you could swap the young and they
could learn the other location song but
that they would always learn their
location song best and I feel like if
ever there was a set of scientific
findings that kind of converges a number
of your interests in language and
location and migration it's those Peter
Marlor studies if you met what did you
guys talk about and um what do you think
is uh perhaps interesting about bird
song and bird language that can tell us
about us
>> everything everything bird song um it's
a communication what are birds trying to
communicate so so birds are singing why
are they singing what information are
they conveying in the bird bird song um
it's been assumed that bird songs are of
males are territorial to stake out
territories but in recent years we've
learned that there's really detailed
information in erd calls. For example,
herds that gather in flocks like
chickades and tit mice, if they see a
hawk, there's a call note, a small
a simple call note. When the when the
birds see the hawk, they'll give that
call note and birds then 200 feet away
will hear that call note and they'll
know that the hawk is there before the
hawk can fly those 200 feet. So there's
a lot of information in bird songs that
then has inspired um similar studies in
in especially in monkeys. There was a
husband and wife couples um Safe Off and
and Cheney um who were at UCLA and moved
to Pennsylvania. Um they did wonderful
studies on vervet monkeys. Vervet
monkeys make grunts. And Scyif and
Cheney thought
some of these grunts sound a little
different. And so they started recording
the grunts and playing the grunts. And
they noticed some grunts the monkeys
looked up and some grunts the monkeys
looked down and some grunts the monkeys
prop themselves up. And they they
realized that that the different grunts
um function as words. There's a grunt
that means eagle and when a monkey
perfect monkey comes up with a grunt for
eagle the monkeys look up. And there's
another grunt grunt that means python.
When verts hear by, they look down in
the grass. There's another grunt that
means leopard. When they hear leopard,
they scramble up a tree. So this is
example of the information conveyed by
sounds first in birds and then in in
monkeys.
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>> The layers of sophistication and
different animals, I think, is is really
underappreciated. I mean, even for
somebody like me as a biologist, you
know, it's always pleasantly surprising
how sophisticated these other species
are. Even if this stuff is hardwired,
it's it's wild. In fairness to your
earlier uh example where somebody uh
forgave you for a mistake in the
laboratory and you uh passed on or you
said you were already rather forgiving
propagated that forward. When one of
your graduate students or postocs would
walk in and say listen I realize we work
on X but I want to go work on this other
thing. Were you tolerant amused? because
the survival of a laboratory in a
research program also depends on people
um hopping on board the main thrust of
questions. I'm just curious. I'm not
holding your feet to the fire. I'm just
wondering how much um adventurousness
you tolerated in your scientific
offspring.
>> My postocs and graduate students when
they were working with me, I negotiated
with them to make sure that they would
do a project that interested me and
interested them.
It had to be a project that interested
had to be a [snorts] project that
interested me because I worked hard to
find the funds and
I I could take only two or three
students at a time. A student would be
with me for three or four years. Big
investment on my part. I would make that
invest only only if it made sense for
me. Only one occasion did a student tell
me that he wanted to have his own
project. Uh there was a a wonderful
Argentinian student um who one day came
to me and said he had asked around in
the physiology department and he had he
had learned he had been told that for
posttos
um it was the the norm in the department
he alleged was that the posttock would
spend half his time working on a project
of his advisor and half a time half the
time working on his own project. Now
that was untrue. Uh but he he had found
another posttock of whom that was true
and he he was a he was an interesting
night and I was taken back. Okay, you
can do your your own and he he did a a a
project of his own as well as the
project with me. Uh but that's that's
the only the only time that I've had a
student do a project that did not
interest me. Otherwise, the projects
have always been projects that
interested both both me and the student.
And that's good for the student because
for the student for the student to get
my full attention and to learn from me.
Um the student can learn from me if it's
something that I know about. The student
cannot learn from me if it's something
that I don't know anything about.
>> It's clear because you've told us and
your career demonstrates this that you
have have had and maintain a lot of
interests, deep interests and deep
curiosity. uh almost a compulsion to
follow them and solve certain things
about those for yourself. Before we
started recording today, we were having
a quick conversation about uh one's
preference or lack of preference for
certain pets, for certain uh things in
the world. And we don't have to go into
it. Um it wasn't contentious. Um but
what I was so struck by, positively
struck by is how clear you were. I think
we had met about 20 seconds prior about
the fact that some pets, some things,
some topics um to you are in your life
are a diversion like you're just not
interested in them. And I think um that
fits beautifully with being interested
in many other things. So, this is a
somewhat strange question I'm about to
ask, but
do you think about time? Like, how much
time do I have in life to do this? And
did you always think that way? As
somebody who just turned 51, I think
about this more and more. But the
beautiful thing about an academic career
is you sort of know, okay, I've got four
to six years for this thesis. Boom. And
then there is an opportunity to pivot
slightly or or or a lot. But life is
somewhat different, right? But it's
clear to me that you were saying that's
all fine and good for other people, but
I don't want to be bothered investy in
those things.
Clear. Period. End of story. And it's
very refreshing in fact because I um and
it runs counterurren to this idea that
you're interested in everything. You're
not interested in everything, if I may.
You're very interested in a lot of
things. And that provides a really nice
razor to separate out all the things
that you're just not going to be
bothered by.
>> Has this always been a feature of you?
>> Absolutely not. And and to give you a
preview of coming events of what's
what's ahead of you, when I turned 80,
80 was not a shock to me. 81 was more of
a shock because 81 meant that I was
firmly embedded in the 80s. But even
though I knew perfectly well the the
numbers for life expectancy
um life expectancy of an American man at
birth is something like 78. Life
expectancy of an American man who's
reached the age of 70 this is not so
widely known. When you reach the age of
70 your life expectancy is not 78. Your
life expectancy is 93 because a lot of
the risk is behind you. And I knew that
perfectly well. when I when I was 81
years old, I wasn't counting what I
could do. Um, but in the last couple of
years, since I'm since I'm now 89, I'm
very conscious of time left and what I
want to do in the time left. Couple of
specific things that I want to do in the
time left are to
synthesize
my understanding.
New Giddi has 10 outline mountain
ranges. I did the first descents and the
first ornithological explorations of
several of them, the most detailed
explorations of the rest. If I don't
write that up, that knowledge will die
with me because the those mountain
ranges are difficult to get into. And I
want to do a a synthesis
looking at those 10 mountain ranges to
understand what is it that makes a
species a good colonist? Why are some
bird bird species on all 10 mountain
ranges and other birds on only one
mountain range? I've got that unique
data set and I want to I want to write
that up while I'm still alive. Another
thing that that I've been thinking for
quite a while. Um I musical I
particularly love the music of Bach. Um
I I sang I sang in Boston's Henel and
Heiden Society. I sang in in Cambridge's
Cambridge England's um musical society.
I s Ben Benjamin Britain came and did
the premiere of Canada academica when I
was singing in the Cambridge chorus. So
I've been interested and I've sung in
the composer Yoan Sebastian Bach whom I
particularly love. He wrote 210 church.
I sang in about 20 of them and I've been
telling myself sooner I I want to get to
know all of those a year ago August that
the time has come. The time ahead of me
is finite. better start on the Katadas
now. And so I start on the Katadas the
rate about about one a week. Last night
I relistened to Canada 61 and 62. Next
will come Canada 63. Um at the rate I'm
going it will take me maybe three or
four years to to get to know all of the
Bachard. But that's something that I
would like to do. But I'm very conscious
now of the the amount of time left.
and and I've had that consciousness only
in the past few years.
>> Are there any things that you used to do
out of obligate feelings of obligation
that you no longer do that allow you
more time for the things and the the
people that are important to you and
that you wish you had perhaps
>> permitted yourself to do earlier?
>> My first thought is is no. By by and
large, I've done done the things that
I've enjoyed doing. Yeah, of course
there there are things
there are things that are not pleasure
that have to be done in life. Sure. I
spend lots of time probably I spend
at least a month maybe two months of the
year on our income tax returns which are
complicated. I have a pathological
tolerance for manipulating numbers. So I
I don't object to doing income tax as
much as most other people would do it.
income tax has to be done and takes a
lot of my a lot of my time. What else do
I do? My father washed the dishes. I
wash the dishes together with my wife.
Marie
does the gardening. I have no interest
in gardening. Marie does the gardening.
Um Marie does does the shopping.
Um, I excuse myself by and Marie Marie
knows that I spend
the equivalent a couple months of the
year on income tax and I take care of
the insurance and I do much of the
organization of travel. I don't mind
dealing with insurance. I don't mind
doing doing income tax and I'd rather
spend the time doing birds, but it's not
something that I greatly object to. I
would never ask someone uh to come here
and uh speak for somebody else, but uh I
was um gratified to learn that you're
you were uh close friends with my
colleague Paul Erlick. Um and his wife
Sandra Khan is still on the faculty at
Stanford. Uh Paul wrote of course the
population bomb. Um the book Paul and
Sandre wrote the book Jaws
>> with I think had a forward by you and
maybe an introduction from Bob Sapolski
about um
>> mouth breathing being detrimental to um
facial structure development and as well
as health perhaps and uh they called it
an epidemic. Uh there's some interest in
in nasal breathing and apnea and so
forth. Paul was delightful person as you
know. You knew him much better than I
did. But he got some things right and
some people would argue he got certain
things wrong. Like the population bomb.
My understanding was that it it argued
that we're we're going to be badly
overpopulated by time we reach now and
that that was dangerous. Some people
would argue that birth rates are going
down. The replacement problem is more of
an issue. But was he correct about some
of the uh issues with population growth
and environmental impact? This isn't an
area that I have any expertise, but uh
what do you think are some of the places
where he was oh so correct because he
was an incredibly smart and in in many
ways preient um on some of these topics?
He was certainly correct that that the
biggest threats that humans face today,
of course, they include the nuclear risk
of exterminating ourselves. Um, I'd say
the three biggest risks we face are the
nuclear risk, the consequences of
inequality in our globalized world. Now,
anybody anywhere is affected by anybody
anywhere else, and that's an invitation
to the world trade. Since in the
globalized world it's dangerous to have
inequality. And then the third the third
risk is of course the the risk of
running out of resources dro destroying
our resources which we are doing at a at
a rapid rate. Why are we in the process
of overexloiting our resources? Because
the world population has increased.
There are now what 9 billion people.
10,000 years ago there were probably 1
million people. 1 million people on
Earth. And now we got nine billion. But
what counts is not just the number of
people but the consumption rate per
person. Consumption rate per person in
the first world has has gone up. And the
result is that we are depleting
fisheries. But like 4 billion of the
world's people depend upon fish, seafood
for their protein. We're depleting the
world's forests. We're depleting the
world's top soil.
Paul and his wife Anne, the book the
population bomb calls attention to the
to the danger of population growth
[snorts]
and one can now add to population growth
multiplied by consumption per person.
Paul predicted big dangers within the
next few decades. He predicted
widespread starvation. If you look at
his Wikipedia entry, [snorts] um, so
here's here's one of the world's great
modern scientists and his the goddamn
Wikipedia. His Wikipedia entry instead
harps on his book, The Population Bomb,
and says it didn't prove correct. Well,
out of the nine billion people in the
world today, um, how many of them are
underfed and starving, are they starving
to death? No, they're not starving to
death quickly, but they've got short
lifespans and they're having mis
miserable lifespans because
um, a small fraction of the world's
people have first world lifestyle. Even
in the United States,
the polarization in the United States
between the people who have enough and
the people who don't have enough is
growing. So to to blame Paul Erlick for
getting it wrong, no, he he got it got
it right, but he got it right in a
broader sense than the idiots who attack
him are willing to admit.
>> Happy to hear you say this. uh long been
a fan of his work and him and I agree
and Jaws is a wonderful book as and I
think the population bomb still has
great there's real value in reading it
even if the specific statements as you
pointed out held up differently it it's
still a a really important work we
talked about political leaders we talked
about religious leaders and a bit about
cults sports
>> are you into sports
>> am I into or um I well I I work out.
>> Yeah, you look very healthy. Is that an
important part of your intellectual
rigor as well?
>> I've always been physically active. I
began weightlifting in college. Um I ran
for years. The day that my wife was was
in labor, was about to deliver our
twins, I was I was going running and I
was so excited that she was about to
deliver twins that that instead of
putting my lunch and lunch in the
refrigerator and my shoes on the floor,
I put my running shoes in the
refrigerator, my lunch on the floor. So,
I I still work out several days a week.
Being physically active is a big part of
my my life. I get satisfaction out of
it.
>> And I think for somebody to do physical
exercise nowadays with the intention of
of um building and preserving both their
mind and body is is pretty common. But
when you were in college, if I
extrapolate, uh that wasn't really
talked about. In fact, the separation of
intellectual and and athletic endeavors
was kind of a theme. It was like people
played sports, right? But working out
was was sort of the stuff of of like
military jocks and bodybuilders and
running less so, right? But I find that
all the
>> scientists that I know that have have
had very long successful careers and are
still going strong, all are very
physically active and have been for a
long time.
>> All of them. And the ones who aren't are
mostly dead if I'm honest. the great
Harvard organic chemist um Woodward Aby
Woodward who won two Nobel prizes.
Woodward did not do any physical
exercise whatsoever. He didn't want to
spend any time doing anything except
organic chemist and of course he died in
an early age
>> in the lab presumably I think in bed.
>> Okay. Well, better than in one's office
or or lab. So along those lines,
[laughter]
um, athletics and sports, um, which
sport are you into spectator sports? Um,
and what led you to explore leaders in
sport?
>> I explored leaders in sports for the
same reason that that business school
professors do a lot of their re much of
their research on
sports outcomes. In fact, I would say
that that much or maybe even most of the
research on sports outcomes is done by
business school professors. The the
reason being that that business school
professors are of course interested in
business outcomes, but business
outcomes, they're they're hard to
measure. Um CEOs
tend to be secretive. Businesses
may not publish their results or they do
publish them every five years. So the
the data for the business world is
limited. But in sports
games are played every week or a couple
of times a week. The results of the
games are announced. The coach is there
on the sidelines usually jumping up and
down screaming. The players are well
known. Sports is on television. The
result is that the methods that business
school professors have developed for
analyzing CEOs and for analyzing the
business world um are often developed in
sports and they they're debugged in
sports. Um for example, in the business
world, one of the main questions is is
of course uh how much bis how much of
business success is due to the CEO?
And this is a loudly dis CEO say I'm
responsible for the success and
therefore you ought to pay me billions
of dollars because my my company our
company makes hundred billion but
because I'm responsible for that hundred
billion dollar profit you can pay me $10
billion. Is that true? It's complicated
to figure out. There are a couple of
methods. One involves doing what's
called ANOVA analysis of variance.
Analysis of variance applied to sports
uh shows that roughly 15 to 30% of the
variance in sport success is due to the
coach about another 30% is due to
players and about another 30% is due to
the institutions that's in sports. In
the business world, it turns out that
that similarly um CEOs account for about
30% of ANOVA
and the individual company accounts for
another Proctor and Gamble very well-run
company. It's been well wellrun for 150
years. Another 30% is due to the
industry. Perfume companies and computer
companies and teenage t-shirt companies
tend to be very profitable.
Whereas
departments of water and power tend to
be unprofitable. Why? Because they're
tightly regulated by by governments. So
NOVA
um gets applied to
the sports world and also to the
business world. But in addition, coaches
frequently get fired if they have a
losing season and CEOs get fired if the
company has a poor year low return.
So if you fire a CEO because of a losing
season,
the next year,
usually the new CEO has a better season.
Why? Because 70% of the variance in
sports outcomes is due to factors that
are random with respect to the CEO. If
you're throwing a throwing dice um and
you throw a dice and you get a one
and so you say to the person through the
dice, you're a lousy dice thrower. You
got one. I'm firing you.
For statistical reasons, the chances of
five out of six that the next dice
thrower will do better than one could be
there. 2 3 4 5 six. In the sports world,
when you fire a coach, usually the new
coach has a better record. Why? Because
of all the random factors. Um, my
university, UCLA, our athletic
department is now $150 million in debt.
Why? Because we we fired all of our
basketball coaches since John Wooden.
Um,
and when we fire them, we have to buy
out their contract. So, buy out their
contract. 5 million, 10 million, 15 mill
million dollars. Simply when you fire a
CEO, the next CEO is likely to do better
for van random reasons as as with with
dice throwing. That illustrates why
business school professors have gotten
lots of their insights by analyzing
sports.
>> How important is a uh a coach's
philosophy
and by extension a CEO's philosophy on
like why we are doing this? We we hear
so much about this like that the why
behind things is so important but it is
that actually the case?
>> Yes, but rarely. So so John Wooden is is
um usually regarded as the greatest
coach in the history of American sports
and in any sport. Um under John Wooden
UCLA basketball team won what? Nine
national championships and including
seven in a row. No other college has won
more than two national championship in a
row. Why was John Wooden so successful?
There were many reasons that he was
successful. He got his players in peak
physical condition. Although his players
might be five inches shorter than than
Duke players, he got his players to jump
higher than than the Duke players. Um he
was a master of detail. Uh he cared
about what socks that they wore because
the socks that they wore affected, you
[laughter] know, how how they jumped and
how how they played. uh he paid a lot of
attention to getting his players to
train not just in groups of five which
they'll be on the court but in groups of
seven so that he could substitute but
perhaps the most important thing about
John Wooden was was that for him
basketball was not a sport basketball
was a philosophy of life and John
Wooden's great players Bill Walton and
Alendor they said coach Wooden I learn
more from coach Wooden than from any
human other than my parents. But what I
learned from him was about life, not
about playing basketball. That
basketball, basketball is a model for
life. That's unusual among coaches. Bill
Bellichic. I've never heard anyone say
that say that Bill Bichic is a model for
life. And what Bobby Knight, nobody says
that Bobby Knight was a model model for
philosophy of life. So why is it that
John Wooden was so successful? Partly he
was a master of detail, but also because
he regarded basketball as a form of
living life. And that's something that
you can't fake. Yeah, you you can fake
and you can learn how to how to [snorts]
train your players to jump higher, but
you can't fake a philosophy of life as
John Wooden did. Is there um an analog
inside of the well nowadays it seems
it's tech CEOs and entrepreneurs. I
mean, we have these looming larger
than-l life figures that having grown up
in the San Francisco Bay area, you know,
it was Hulet and Packard when I was a
kid and and then Steve Jobs obviously
and Bill Gates
>> up in Seattle and then now we have Mark
Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Alman, Daario
at Anthropic is sort of quickly emerging
as another one of these big figures, but
I probably missed a few out there, but
those are sort of the the big whether
they like it or not, celebrity techn
technologists that people look at and to
for like where where where is humanity
going. Politics aside, the Steve Jobs
would clearly had a philosophy of
creating beautiful things and design and
technology being fused in a way that was
you know highly accessible that objects
had a friendliness to them or something
even if it was an apple. So it seemed
there was a something philosophical even
slightly mystical there. How do you look
at these technology leaders and um what
do you see? What do you think?
>> Bill Gates I've met and I have had
several lengthy conversations and I like
him. Good experience my conversation
with him. Um there are people who've met
him under other circumstances who have
different views of him. Elon Musk I met
once. Jeff Bezos.
>> Oh yeah. So forgive me. I should have
mentioned Bezos.
>> Yeah. Jeff Bezos. Bezos I I met met
once. Um, of the leaders in the in the
business world, I don't know that many
of them. The one that I admire as a
person is Shinard of of Patagonia. For
him, as with John Wooden, Patagonia is a
model for life. He emphasized having his
staff have have time off. He emphasized
Patagonia being sustainable. he had the
opportunity to acquire more cotton,
produce more more product. No, he chose
not to acquire more cot because he
didn't want he didn't want to
overdevelop cotton agriculture. He is or
was a a full person, not not just not
just a leading business person. He did
the first ascent of the the
most difficult face in Yoseite. He was a
top rank mountaineer. I know him. Um, I
wrote the preface for his autobiography.
Um, he has a philosophy of life. Do any
other of the big names? Does Jeff Bezes
have a philosophy of life? Does Mark
Zuckerberg have a philosophy of life?
I'm not aware of these big names having
a philosophy of life that goes beyond
their business. Now, Steve Jobs
certainly had a philosophy of life as
regards business. When he came back to
Apple after he'd been fired the first
time and Apple was in difficulty, he was
brought back the second time. His
philosophy was that
Apple he reduced instead of Apple
producing a 100 products he said we
should produce four products and
[snorts]
the products should look nice and they
should be attractive and they should
should be
easy easy to handle. They should not be
like the remote for my wife's and my TV
to to watch the World Soccer Cup. Our
remote has what 47 buttons and we had to
call up our sons each time to to tell us
how to operate the remote. So Steve
Jobs's devices don't have 47, but he he
had a philosophy certainly of products.
I don't know whether he had a law larger
philosophy of of of life as John Wooden
certainly did.
>> So we talked about political leaders,
religious leaders, sports. You said
there's a fourth category that you cover
in your book.
>> So we got political leaders, business
leaders,
>> sports leaders, and religious. Those are
the four category. The four categories
>> and business and sport seem to kind of
uh interjigitate a bit, right? It sounds
like
>> the connection between business studies
and sports studies has been especially
tight. But it's also the case that the
the business school professors who've
studied sports um
have also studied
um success in politics. So perhaps the
the best single paper that I know on
developing new methods for for studying
the success of of leadersh
and leaders in but it also looks at
leaders in politics and the conclusions
that it comes to are that prime
ministers
make more of a difference than do
governors
of states. and governors make more of a
difference than do mayors. Why? Because
prime ministers have more power. Also,
dictators make more of a difference than
do democratic leaders. Democratic
leaders in wartime make more of a
difference than do democratic leaders in
peace time because in wartime democratic
leaders are are give given more power.
Um so the business school professors
have also applied their methods to to um
politics as well.
>> Many people are interested in many
things and they have a genuine
excitement
and they reverberate on the idea of
pursuing music or singing or an
instrument or a topic of study or a
sport. um
what would you tell those people because
we've all heard the just do it mantra
and that's great but um again I'm not a
psychologist but it seems that within
you there is or perhaps has always been
this almost compulsion to go in a
certain direction but you're you're
structured in how you go about that you
you didn't just try to do everything at
once and you you clearly succeeded in
each of these domains I'm sure there
were challenges along the way. But what
what would you if anything would you
like to pass along to people of any age?
>> I would begin by saying do what you
enjoy, but it's got to be broader than
that. A friend of mine, the great
biologist Tom Lovejoy, now unfortunately
dead. Um Tom told me when when he was a
teenager, Tom asked his father, "Daddy,
what should I do for a career?" And his
father said, "Do something that you're
good at. Do something that you enjoy. do
something that makes a difference in the
world. What advice would I give people?
Perhaps the main advice because it's
what most people do not do is
make sure that you do something that you
enjoy. And if people tell you no, you
got to do this, this, this, tell them to
go to hell.
Literally, so many people say you got to
you got to live your life this way. You
got to iron your shirts. When I was a
gradu, I didn't iron my shirts. Um,
[snorts]
you know, someone who irons my shirts,
but but as far as I'm concerned, I if
anyone tells me, Jared, spend your time
ironing your shirts, go to hell. There
there are other things that I want to do
with my time. And whether my this shirt
is iron, but whether my shirts are iron
or not doesn't make much difference to
life. What does make a difference is am
I doing something that I enjoy? Am I
doing something that I'm good at? Yep.
Am I doing something that's that's good
for the world? Yeah. I've spent a lot of
time designing national the national
park system for Indonesian New Guinea,
designing the principles for national
parks in general. I've written I've
written books a lot about the big risks
facing the world. So, I've devoted a lot
of my life to trying to convince people
to to live better lives and not to not
to mess up the world. I've done things
that I I enjoy. I've done things that
that I'm good at. There were some things
that I wanted to do, but I discovered
that I was not not I I would have loved
to be a conductor of orchestras, but to
conduct an orchestra, you see the
players out there and you got to give
the down beat, not when the players are
playing, but because of the speed of
sound, you got to give the down beat
ahead. I could not block out the sound
of the the plane. I could not do the
downbeat before the players play. And I
tried conducting an or UCLA invited me
to conduct the or and I conducted the
orchestra once and because I cannot
anticipate the downbeat I gave up my
desire to be a to conduct an orchestra
although I would have loved doing it. So
but I've ended up doing doing the things
that I'm good at doing things that I
love doing things that are important for
the world good for the world.
>> I agree on all all fronts. Not that you
need my agreement. Uh I said there were
two questions. you answered the
[clears throat] second question in the
process of answering the first question.
So, uh I just want to conclude by saying
thank you for taking time out of your
>> busy schedule to come share with us and
educate us. Um I'm super excited about
prophets, prophets, coaches, and kings.
When do leaders matter? Today's
conversation only makes me more excited
about it. I will say that your your
father despite his encouragement to uh
you to continue and become a biologist
and not a translator with all due
respect he partially failed because for
me and for millions of other people
you've become a translator of ideas that
we would have never encountered or
considered and it's inspired a ton of
curiosity and learning in me through
your books and um today's just another
extension of that and I'm sure this next
book will just continue that. So, thank
you for not obeying his request and at
the same time obeying his request. I
really appreciate your time and coming
here today and hopefully we'll do it
again.
>> Thank you. I've enjoyed a lot um talking
with you, you know, for you you know
yourself for for writing book um when
one does interviews and podcasts and
interviewers differ. They're not all the
same. Some interviewers are um better
prepared than other interviewers. Some
interviewers know more about the subject
than other interviews. It's a real
pleasure to do a conversation with you.
You're a It's a pleasure for me to be
interviewed by you.
>> Thank you. The pleasure was mine and
we'll do it again. Thank you for joining
me for today's discussion with Dr. Jared
Diamond. To learn more about his work
and his recent book, Prophets, Prophets,
Coaches, and Kings, please see the links
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