367 | Jared Diamond on the Course of History and the Role of leaders
September 7, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readIt is March 1930, and a truck nearly kills Adolf Hitler. The truck driver brakes just in time, the car is shoved onto a curb, and Hitler survives to become Chancellor three years later. Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, opens his new book with this near-miss because it frames the question he has spent a career avoiding: Do individuals actually change the course of history, or are they swept along by forces beyond their control? His answer, developed across politics, business, sports, and religion, is not a simple yes or no. It is a careful argument about when leaders matter, and it hinges on a single word: discretion.
The Method: Natural Experiments and the CEO's Distraction
Diamond’s previous work argued that geography and environment—not the cleverness of individuals—explain why Eurasians conquered the Americas rather than the reverse. The Fertile Crescent had domesticable wheat and goats; New Guinea did not. That was a story about large, impersonal forces. But the new book, Prophets, Preachers, Coaches, and Kings, tackles the opposite end of the scale. To do so, Diamond borrows a tool from the sciences he left behind: the natural experiment. You cannot ethically kill a CEO to see what happens to a company, but you can observe what happens when a CEO’s child dies.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:56) **Sean Carroll Introduces the Great-Man Question** - Carroll frames the episode’s core puzzle: do individual leaders alter history, or do geography and environment determine outcomes regardless of who is in charge?
- 2 (07:18) **Jared Diamond Recounts the Origin of *Guns, Germs, and Steel*** - Diamond explains how his fieldwork in New Guinea forced him to reject racial explanations for global inequality and to look instead at environmental endowments.
- 3 (13:43) **Why Europe Beat the Fertile Crescent and China** - Diamond explains that while the Fertile Crescent had the initial advantage, its geographic disadvantages and the spread of its crops allowed Europe to eventually surpass it.
- 4 (23:29) **Geography Still Matters in the Modern World** - Diamond argues that geographic and environmental factors continue to shape economic outcomes, using Africa as his primary example.
- 5 (26:57) **The Academic Penalty for Going Interdisciplinary** - Diamond shares a personal story about the professional risks of stepping outside one’s field.
- 6 (30:55) **From Societal Collapse to the Role of Individuals** - Diamond explains the trajectory of his work, from *Collapse* (about societies) to his new book (about leaders), and why he finally felt ready to write about individuals.
- 7 (38:45) **The Natural Experiment Method for Studying Leaders** - Diamond introduces the core methodology of his book: using natural experiments to isolate the causal effect of leaders.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
The course of history is affected by many things, including the political and social situations of large groups of people, their biological and physical abilities, and their geographical and environmental contexts. Sometimes, it would seem, history -- or corporations, or religions, or sports teams -- can be affected by the actions of just a few influential persons. In his new book, Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings, Jared Diamond asks what effect leaders can have, and what it is that makes them successful (or not).
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Jared Diamond received a Ph.D. in physiology from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his awards are the U.S. National Medal of Science, the MacArthur Fellowship, and the Pulitzer Prize. His international bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel has sold over seven million copies.
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