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Dr. Jared Diamond, discussing his book Prophets, Coaches, and Kings, argues that there is no single personality type that makes a great leader; charisma is just one of about 37 ways to be effective, and leadership outcomes depend heavily on circumstances, followers, and luck. He uses natural-experiment methods to examine leaders in politics, religion, business, and sport, and reflects on his own varied career and the value of pursuing what you enjoy.
- Diamond says the common idea that leaders must be charismatic is wrong, since some effective leaders like Stalin and Pinochet were uncharismatic, and there are about 37 ways to be an effective leader.
- He argues Hitler likely made a real difference, pointing to his unique industrial-scale antisemitism and skill at deception, and notes near misses in 1930 car accident and 1944 bomb plot.
- Diamond uses natural experiments rather than traditional biographies, because the same historical facts can lead different historians to opposite conclusions about leaders.
- Of 22 major postwar political leaders he studied, only Nelson Mandela and Lee Kuan Yew stepped down voluntarily.
- Diamond argues that in sports and business, around 70% of outcome variance is not due to the coach or CEO, so firing leaders often yields a better successor by chance; John Wooden is an exception whose basketball was a philosophy of life.
- He says followers matter as much as leaders, as with Jim Jones's Peoples Temple, which drew predominantly poor, older, and less-educated followers.
- Diamond's own advice is to pursue what you enjoy and are good at, and to do work that benefits the world, even if others insist otherwise.
- He emphasizes his lifelong habit of list-making and his interest in birds, which he says are easiest to observe and most informative for understanding ecology and evolution.
- 0:00Debunking Leadership Personality Myths
- 0:46Introducing Dr. Jared Diamond
- 3:47Prophets, Coaches, and Kings Defined
- 4:19Hitler and Near-Miss History
- 9:35Natural Experiments Versus Biography
- 11:50Truman and Unlikely Leaders
- 16:48Charisma and Introspection Myths
- 25:36Religious Leaders and Jesus
- 35:34Cult Leaders and Followers
- 50:00Learning Languages and Diverse Interests
- 58:27Birds, Lists, and Career Shifts
- 1:20:14Time, Priorities, and Legacy
- 1:27:15Population Bomb and Sports Leadership
- 1:40:44Tech Leaders and Philosophy of Life
- 1:49:59Advice and Closing Thoughts
Debunking Leadership Personality Myths
0:00People 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 Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile, totally uncharismatic. There are about 37 ways to be an effective leader, of which um charisma is is one.
0:23And any question that you or anybody else would ask about how can we [snorts] generalize about leaders' persona 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.
Introducing Dr. Jared Diamond
0:50>> [music] >> I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Jared Diamond. Dr. Jared Diamond is a professor emeritus 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.
1:11He'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.
1:32We 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.
1:55We 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
2:22writer. So, what follows is 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.
2:43In 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 profits and
3:13prophets 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.
Prophets, Coaches, and Kings Defined
3:47I use the word prophets to refer to religious leaders because it makes for catchy prophets, prophets, coach, coaches and kings. Uh 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.
4:12And 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.
Hitler and Near-Miss History
4:35>> 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 orphaned, 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.
4:55It was a famous cover of Life magazine, two American soldiers dead face down on Buna Gona 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 of my family of course disappeared in the Holocaust. I married into a Polish family.
5:15My wife's parents came to the US in 1948. My wife's mother had survived Auschwitz. Various members of my wife wife's 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 were leaders, non-political leaders, who >> [snorts] >> shaped my life most mostly for the good.
5:41There was a chairman of the Cambridge physiology department. I left a rubber hose pump water pump running all night to dry out radioactive isotope. The pump broke. It flooded my lab. It flooded the lab below my lab. That was not a good choice of lab to flood. It was the lab Lord Adrian, who was the father-in-law of my thesis advisor, and who was the master of my college.
6:07The next morning, the chair of the physiology department, Sir Brian Matthews, called me in. 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 the So, there was there was a leader who could have ended my career, but didn't.
6:26There are other leaders who've done decisively good things um for my for my career. There are a few people who failed to do anything, but they have not been leaders 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 Maurice's family still be alive?
6:50>> 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, 3 years before Hitler became chancellor, when his limousine, driven by a chauffeur, was driving into an intersection in Germany.
7:18Hitler 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's chauffeur and the truck driver either braked or accelerated ultimately, and the truck hit Hitler's car face-on, pushed it up against the curb, and was about to ride up over the car crushing Hitler.
7:44It 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 Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer who became disillusioned, um attempted to kill Hitler.
8:12He um he brought a um [snorts] a small suitcase with with a bomb into the con- conference room at Wolf's Lair. He 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.
8:46The 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 for 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.
9:17>> 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 biogra- [snorts] is to write a biography. There are many people who have written biographies of Hitler.
Natural Experiments Versus Biography
9:39Most biographers of Hitler conclude that Hitler was unique in several respects. He was the most charismatic orator, unfortunately, of the 20th century. He was anti-Semitic. There were plenty of anti-Semites in Europe, not just in Germany, but in Poland, but Hitler all those other anti-Semites killed Jews one by one.
10:03Hitler was the only one who got the idea of doing it on an industrial scale. Without Hitler, there probably would not 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.
10:28He 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.
10:49Most 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 A.J.P. Taylor wrote a biography of Hitler Hitler using the same facts. And with the same facts, A.J.P. 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.
11:25So, 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?
Truman and Unlikely Leaders
11:55>> There are many many candidates for that. One candidate The first Having been born in 1937, um I grew up under Roosevelt, but the first American president in in whom I became interested, cuz I was by then 8 years Harry Truman. The most unlikely significant American president. He was selected as Roosevelt's third or fourth vice vice president for trivial political reasons.
12:22He He was a senator from Missouri, undistinguished. He had He had become senator through dishonest shenanigans. 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.
12:49At the time, Truman was widely despised. I remember my own view of Truman. He, I, and others looked down on Truman, but in retrospect, we realized 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.
13:21And 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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16:43We have to be careful about painting with too broad a brush, but 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 in introspection.
Charisma and Introspection Myths
17:02I 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 commonest generation the generalization is that leaders have to be charismatic.
17:24Nonsense. Some leaders are charismatic. Stalin Augusto Pinochet the dictator of Chile totally uncharismatic. There are about 37 ways to be an effective leader of which um charisma is is one and any question that you or anybody else would ask about how can we generalize about leaders personality? There are some generalizations about leaders but not personality generalizations because there are different ways to be a effective leader.
17:55>> 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.
18:30You'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 and on and on. So in this exploration of leadership how do you go from being being able to explain each circumstance to some taxonomy that allows you to be satisfied?
18:57And I mean I'll 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?
19:13What level of understanding and consistency of ideas is satisfying? >> The broad 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.
19:38Jared, your book Guns, Germs, and 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 the role of individuals? And my answer to that is is no. Guns, Germs, and Steel um is about patterns of history on the continents over the last 10,000 years.
20:03And 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 jump-starting 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.
20:29And so in Guns, Germs, and Steel, 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, Germs, and Steel was not at all about I haven't changed my mind.
20:48It's that I'm looking at completely different sorts of questions now in Prophets and Profits, Coaches, and Kings compared to Guns, Germs, and Steel. >> Is it a leap to say that um Prophets and Profits, 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?
21:13>> 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 from 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.
21:40But then, once I launch into politics and once I launch into the 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?
22:13And I mean, science, which I am a scientist. Art, music, I am a musician. Military history, I'm very interested in military history. Social [snorts] 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.
22:35>> You've mentioned this story about flooding the laboratory with I should point out, I heard you say radioactive isotope 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.
22:57Well, I got 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.
23:17Robert Oppenheimer mentioned that that Oppenheimer 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.
23:55But 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 again with a uh 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.
24:16So, 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 physiology at UCLA medical school doing laboratory experiments. And so I had graduate students and postdocs. And quite a few of the graduate student postdocs screwed up.
24:40They made They made big big mistakes. I remember my my second graduate student my uh he 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.
25:02But again, I 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. >> 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.
25:32So, 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.
Religious Leaders and Jesus
25:58Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Mormon religion, Ann Lee, the founder of Shakers, Jim Jones, the founder of uh 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.
26:29The 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.
26:56Jesus 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. 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.
27:16The 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 launch the European conquest of the world spreading the European religion. But the European religion was Christianity.
27:41Why? 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.
28:03He 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 adherents. >> 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
28:37necessary 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 the world religion founded by Jesus and not by the leader of the Essenes?
29:00Well, 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.
29:26Of 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. In [snorts] some cases, the organizer and charismatic founder are the same person.
29:46Muhammad was a great organizer and also charismatic. The Mahdi of the Sudan was a brilliant organizer and brilliant general. Also a brilliant religious leader. Jesus died too early. He was not the or- the organizer was St. Paul. St. Paul was a great organizer. Just as with the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith was the charismatic founder of the Mormon religion.
30:12Even in his lifetime, he had his weaknesses as an organizer. He was He was He was then then lynched. The organizer was Brigham Young, who was a great organizer. So, your your question, why Jesus? Um universal message. And he had the good fortune that he was then followed by a great organizer, St. Paul.
30:32And he was in the right place, the Western Roman Empire, at the perfect time. >> And Columbus obviously was able to propagate his ideas far, 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 often times it sounds like it there's someone else or other people who can help organize the message.
31:01We see this in science quite often especially in the biological sciences pairs of well your adviser Hodgkin Huxley won the Nobel Prize they're famous for describing the biophysics of the action potential. Hubel and Wiesel won the Nobel Prize. It's very common that there's this pairing and it and having known David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel a bit Torsten is still alive.
31:25There's often a personality uh complementarity there too. One tends to be a little bit more outspoken and one a little bit more you know Watson and Crick. I'm sure there's as many examples that don't fit but in thinking about leaders not just religious leaders can we make any kind of generalization about pairings two very complementary people that are specially effective in getting escape velocity on their on their leadership their message.
31:59>> I don't think so when we get in the case of religion it's not just pairings but it's off it's often triplets namely to launch a religion you 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 themselves have have had to have have generals um for example the Mahdi Muhammad was an outstanding general as well as
32:43organizer and charismatic. The Mahdi 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 Sudanese tribesmen with just sticks to wipe out a British-Egyptian army of 7,000 with machine guns. Great general, great organizer, charismatic.
33:11But in in other spheres, in science, there are scientists who are large-scale organizers. My thesis advisor, Alan Hodgkin. Alan Hodgkin didn't Great scientist. He did not organize 50 people into a lab lab group. Alan Hodgkin's his strategy was to have one PhD student at a time. Well, I was his PhD student.
33:33For 3 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 are also outstanding organizers. Gerald Edelman, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on figuring out how antibodies operated. Gerald Edelman had, I believe, something like 50 postdocs.
33:58And a friend of mine made a discovery that so-called Bence Jones proteins in in the kidney. A discovery that was crucial to figuring out how antibodies operate. But my friend operated alone. He did not have 50 postdocs. And so, when my friend made the tactical mistake of giving a lecture about his discovery of Bence Jones proteins before he had published, Gerald Edelman was in the audience and and I'm told then immediately told his lab switch everything.
34:37And his 50 postdocs went in there and they figured out how antibodies operated. Gerald Edelman got the Nobel Prize and my friend did not get the Nobel Prize, but Gerald Edelman was a very effective organizer and fundraiser. >> And big personality. >> Yes. Yes. I'm I met him on two occasions. Yes, he was a big personality.
34:59>> He ventured into neuroscience after immunology and yeah, big ideas. Big lab, big ideas. So there just as many exceptions to the to the statements I'm making I'm I'm realizing as there are things that that meet it. I was surprised that you mentioned Jim Jones. And most people perhaps have heard of the Jonestown massacre.
35:23The top contour of that in my mind is bunch of people left the country to follow this cult leader and drank poison and it was mass suicide. When I [snorts] 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.
Cult Leaders and Followers
35:46David Koresh and the Branch Davidians was you know, in my mind the burned down the the the structure killed everybody inside. And when I hear Koresh'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
36:22leaders 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.
36:42On one hand there's the leader and on 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.
37:06There 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 Guyana and the colony ended in the largest mass suicide in American history.
37:31900 931 people drank punch poisoned 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 he founded in Indianapolis. The people who followed him were not a random assortment of people.
38:08Um they were predominantly poor people, predominantly older 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 a really an interesting point that you raised, but it also required people who were disposed to be to be followers.
38:34>> I didn't realize he led the desegregation of Indianapolis. >> 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.
39:01But this 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.
39:19In the case of Winston Churchill or Franklin Delano 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.
39:44In that case, one cannot look to the pathology or the strange qualities of their their followers as one can in the case of Jim Jones. >> I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. I'm excited to share that AG1 has just launched their newest formulation, AG1 Pro. AG1 Pro takes the clinically backed AG1 formula, which is a blend of vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and adaptogens, and adds three important new ingredients: creatine monohydrate, calcium HMB, and zinc carnosine.
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40:51AG1 is giving away a free bottle of omega-3 coenzyme Q10 with your first subscription. Again, go to drinkag1.com/huberman to get a free bottle of omega-3 coenzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription. I realize it's possible to divide leaders or people or animals or anything into different categories depending on where one decides to 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
41:29or 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?
41:58And I suppose we could apply this to just pretty much anyone we've discussed or anyone else. Is it is it an informative dividing line? >> Jim Jones certainly did not did not know a God, and did not did not claim to be be superior to God is another are there traits shared by leaders and I mentioned that that there are different ways to be an effective leader.
42:21Charisma to do to do to do 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 the these 22 leaders? The 22 the obvious obvious candidate.
42:54You can argue about them but I could Stalin and Anwar Sadat Mussolini Hitler etc. etc. I asked myself are there any qualities shared by all 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-apartheid leader of of South Africa.
43:19He was I think in his 80s and he retired voluntarily as Prime Minister. Um then Lee Kuan Yew 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.
43:45All other major leaders were either assassinated Anwar Sadat 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.
44:23Only 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.
44:47I 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? >> Yes. >> 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?
45:05>> When 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?
45:24Is it fun for you or do you and or do you enjoy the challenge as part of the 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 years. I loved it. Um we had the alternative of studying electives, either Greek or biology.
45:47I figured I'm going to be doing biology for the rest of my life. I will now take So, I I I spent 3 years learning Greek. I can still recite the beginning of the main and eight of the play at all. I can learn then um in college um I learned German just before my mother helped me with that just before entering college.
46:10In 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-Indo-European, 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 Finns spoke English.
46:39In order to hitchhike, I had to start learning Finnish. And I ended up in a national park in northern Finland um 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.
47:06They picked up a cup. The word for Finnish word for cup was kuppi. And then Finnish, instead of having prepositions, it has postpositions, cases. So when you want to say the cup is on the table, kuppi pöydällä. When you want to say I'm putting the cup onto the table, pöydälle. When you take the cup off the pöydältä.
47:28So these four Finnish soldiers, they demonstrated for me by putting on to and off of them. 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, so I saw them for the first time in a year, and I was seriously considering dropping out of science and becoming a simultaneous translator.
47:55I was going to go to Switzerland to become a translator. Fortunately my my father he was he was gently said maybe it's a maybe it's a bit early to draw I know you science is frustrating for you now but you've been doing it for only a year. Why don't you give yourself another 6 months and after 6 months if the experiments aren't going well you can be a translator.
48:17But I I loved learning finish and then when I went to New Guinea New Guinea has a thousand languages. The first New Guinea people that I work with were the Fore tribe famous for kuru laughing sickness first prion disease. And at that time there was a New Guinea trade language is New Guinea trade language called Tok Pisin.
48:39So I was able to communicate with Tok Pisin but I just loved learning Fore. from from from a couple of Fores and I I remember asking my Fore informant I was trying to figure out the word for we. I'd already learned the word for I nage. So I asked my my Fore informant in Tok Pisin um I nage so we all the same one of them mepela and he said then he gave me word for for we.
49:16And then I was like oh we and he said no nage kasike It turns out that Fore has a dual English is singular and plural I and we. But among European languages Slovenian and ancient Greek have a dual 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.
49:48But if there were third person here it would be a different pronoun and four it be classic One of the ways I just loved learning language. I've always loved languages. That's >> It seems you love the puzzle of it. You love the application of it given that once you learn Italian, you still um have these conversations in Italian for a couple hours a week.
Learning Languages and Diverse Interests
50:06Once again, I'm struck by how 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 informational diversity within a category like language or leaders.
50:31Most 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 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.
50:52I teach neuroanatomy. So, you can lump or you can split. You can say brain or we can start dividing 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.
51:13Your 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."
51:32>> 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 3 years old. And so so, I began keeping a notebook. I still got my 3-year-old notebook 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.
51:56I was a lister. This is embarrassing, but I listed the numbers of street cars on the Boston street car system. I don't know the number 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 a membrane biologist. And among my contributions to membrane biology, I did the largest study ever carried out of the permeability of biological membranes to uncharged molecules, non-electrolytes.
52:29I and and my my first post-doctoral student, we measured the permeability of rabbit gallbladder to 210 non-elect- 210 non-electrolytes. They're all organic chemicals. And there's lots of detail there. There were branched non-electrolytes, there were non-branched non-electrolytes, and there were ones with oxygen groups, and there were ones with with sulfur groups.
52:56So, there's lots of detail. I loved the project with these 200 non-electrolytes. Then when I went to New Guinea to start to study birds, I've been studying New Guinea birds since since 1964. >> [snorts] >> New Guinea has about 600 bird species. I've encountered and gotten into to know most of them. When I'm falling asleep at night, often I'll recite to myself lists of New Guinea birds.
53:26Sometimes I'll recite them by their foreign names, the Mambisaina, the Passerkekeya, the Ken Mamitoto, the Zwannotava. Sometimes I'll recite them by their by their Latin names, Sericornis papuensis, Sericornis perspicillatus, Sericornis nouhuysi. I just love making this. But one one of my teachers, one of my influ- influential teach- Ernst Mayr, the great evolutionary biologist, Ernst Mayr loved making lists.
53:51And he and I spent 30 years preparing a book together on the birds of northern Melanesia, the islands east of New Guinea. Ernst and I were very compatible. Both of us loved making lists. Whenever a question would come up, Ernst Ernst would say, "Let's make a list." And he would make a list and I would make a list.
54:09And then we would go over that list, list of all the mountain birds of of northern Melanesia. What generalizations are there about the mountain bird? Are there 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 Feynman talked about how to look out at the world.
54:33He 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 will 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.
54:58Like in neuroscience, for instance, we the first name in retinogeniculate, it tells you what the origin structure and 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 when you're falling asleep, are you also able to call to mind the functional distinctions between these?
55:22Is 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 reside at night. Sericornis noyesi. Sericornis noyesi the large large large scrub wren.
55:44What about it? Well, it's the larger of two birds in an altitudinal sequence. It's the larger of two coexisting species which are very similar, so similar that this and the possum and the shami and the mama saying I couldn't tell them apart until the New Guineans explained to me the differences in in their behavior.
56:07So, there's a lot of information that's associated with the name and in addition the name itself has a Sericornis. Sericornis means that that bird belongs to the genus Sericornis and in the genus Sericornis is also Sericornis virgatus which is the low elevation equivalent of Sericornis noyesi but there's also Sericornis perspicillatus which is the small bodied um scrub wren that shares the same altitudinal range as noyesi.
56:37So, there's information that goes along with the name. >> 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 for five or 10 years at a time. Then there are people that try and throw their arms around enormous batches of information.
56:53Clearly you're in the latter category and so once again I'll ask is was this always your tendency? You wanted to know all the information? >> Basically yes. I mean 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.
57:13My secondary school, although I expected to go into science, my secondary school had great history teacher, better 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.
57:37In 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.
57:55Um I seriously considered making another career in pre-Columbian ceramics. I seriously considered becoming a conductor of an orchestra. I didn't have the insights into pre-Columbian ceramics. Um To be a conductor, you have to be able to ignore time lags, and I couldn't ignore time lags. But um I I had been a become a bird watcher at age seven.
58:22And 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. Well, I New Guinea's the wildest place in the world.
Birds, Lists, and Career Shifts
58:50Um but New Guinea also has the most wonderful birds. And so I developed a second career in birds. And then [clears throat] I developed a third career in history and geography. So I've had three careers. My my career in laboratory physiology eventually closed down in the year 2002. Why? When my When our twin sons, my wife and I have twin sons, they were born in 1987.
59:16When 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. 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.
59:44I'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 long paper on the birds of the Wandammen Mountains of Indonesian New Guinea.
1:00:08Next year I I want to do a paper on the birds of the Bewani Mountains of Indonesian New Guinea. And because I'm 89 years old, 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 synthesize synthesize my work on New Guinea birds by looking at bird distribution on the 10 isolated mountain ranges of New Guinea.
1:00:33What generalizations can I recognize about the birds that are good colonists? So, that's what [snorts] I want to do for this 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.
1:00:52Much 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 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, "Uh you know, I'm my twins are arriving and you know, maybe I'll switch fields."
1:01:17But there's a spouse there who's probably thinking, "Uh uh do you have tenure? How are we going to pay the bills? So I imagine there was likely support or maybe you were just very defiant and you just follow your curiosity. >> There were the the the career issues and there were the issues of interest.
1:01:35The issues of interest were that ever since I was 3 years old I've been interested in lots of stuff and I realized in retrospect that that among among among my life crises one of my life crises was after I got my PhD realizing with horror that I was expected to one thing for the rest of my life but that was not me.
1:02:00And it took some effort to carve out a second career in birds. I had a post doctoral fellowship. Most post doctoral fellowships bind you to do one thing. I was in the biophysics lab of the Harvard Medical School but I I was fortunate that my post doctoral fellowship was with the Harvard Society called the Society of Fellows.
1:02:20I was a junior fellow at Harvard. And as a junior fellow I had freedom. I could I could tell the boss of my biophysics laboratory I'm going to New Guinea for 3 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 biophysics lab but I was doing good work in biophysics and so he was he was willing to tolerate my um going off to New Guinea for three for
1:02:52three months. Then when I moved to UCLA the crucial piece of my negotiation with moving to UCLA where I was off offered a professorship associate professorship in the the physiology department. Um [snorts] the dean of UCLA was the longest serving medical school dean in the United Sherman Mellinkoff wonderful person.
1:03:14He was offering me a job in the physio. I told him, "Yes, but I'm interested in New Guinea birds, and you got to understand that I intend to um 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?"
1:03:42Most medical school deans would have said, "Get the hell out of here." Sure Melnick off 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 made it possible for me. I'm then fortunate that I had a dean who permitted As for As for my my wife, Marie Marie had no problems what whatsoever with it.
1:04:11When I met Marie, I was already working in New Guinea. In fact, the development of our relationship a crucial 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 Guinea. I got nearly killed in New Guinea repeatedly, and and Marie had to be willing to to tolerate that.
1:04:31Um 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 three months." It was that that that I realized Jared, you're not going to go there for three months anymore.
1:04:46And 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.
1:05:16Most people 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 where there's um all sorts of diseases, where there's uh political and social unrest.
1:05:41Like, there are 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? Uh where where is that landed with you? >> To work in New Guinea, it's a it's an it's a necessary evil. Um it's not until I went to New Guinea, um I uh when I was in Peru, the the previ- the year before I went to New Guinea, my friend and I went to Peru, spent a summer in Peru.
1:06:12We did mountain climbing. Um we did a first ascent of a 17,000-ft peak. Being at high altitudes, going straight up from sea level to 10,000 ft, and then 3 days later going to 6- 16, it is miserable. So, you 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.
1:06:39Um 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 ended up with malaria. Climbing mountains in in New Guinea.
1:07:05Being in New Guinea is is physically miserable most of most of the time. Occasionally, like like maybe once in 3 months, I can sit down at a 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 Guineans >> [snorts] >> who have their own ideas about what to do in life.
1:07:32Being in New Guinea is is it's uncomfortable, but it's fascinating. The fascination of the birds, of figuring out what's the difference between the Mobisain and the Pasgikihabi. >> Let's talk about birds. Um the only other two birders I know from science are Jim Watson, >> Mhm. >> um was started off as a birder ornithologist of some sort anyway, decided to solve the co-solve the structure of DNA, so he went a different way.
1:08:03Um and then the late also late Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered the quark. As a I think a two Nobel winner, maybe one or 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 an a kind of obsession with going after these big >> Mhm.
1:08:28>> questions. Like entire societies, leadership, um the structure of DNA, Gell-Mann you know, you know, uh elementary particles and and and and all the rest. But birds, of which I know some, certainly not as much as you, there's this tremendic 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-capped chickadee and you got this one and you got that one."
1:08:56And what information, what enrichment is to be gleaned from observing them? I'm not being disparaging of it. I myself love birds. 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.
1:09:15So, 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 inform one of ours about everything. Birds Birds are the They're the easiest of all animals to observe and to understand.
1:09:46Birds operate by the same senses 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.
1:10:10You catch them in traps. [laughter] 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 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
1:10:52species in an uninterrupted mountain range, biogeography, the distribution of plants and animals around the world began especially with the distribution of birds and then mammals, mammals and other things. The animals easiest to observe are are birds. So So when you say, "What can we learn about birds?"
1:11:14Uh an honest answer is 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 language evolution from birds, but um does the name Peter Marler um ring any bells?
1:11:37Yeah. He was at Davis when when I was a graduate student and I One of the most interesting observations, in my opinion, that he made was that the same uh 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 Marin Headlands versus elsewhere.
1:11:58And that there was some innate relationship to uh the species. Like you could swap the young and they could learn the other location's song, but that they would always learn their location's 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 Marler studies.
1:12:18If 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?
1:12:41Um it's been assumed that bird songs of of males are territorial to stake out territories. But in recent years we've learned that there's really detailed information in bird calls. For example, birds that gather in flocks like chickadees and titmice, if they see a hawk, there's a call note. Just a small a simple call note when the when the birds see the hawk, they'll give that call note and birds then 200 ft away will hear that call note and they'll know that the hawk is there before the hawk can fly
1:13:25those 200 ft. So, there's a lot of information in bird songs. That then has inspired similar studies in in especially in monkeys. Um there was a husband and wife couple um Seyfarth and Cheney who were at UCLA, moved to Pennsylvania. They did wonderful studies on vervet monkeys. Vervet monkeys make grunts.
1:13:48And Seyfarth 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 propped themselves up and they they realized that that the different grunts um functioned as words.
1:14:12There's a grunt that means eagle and when a monkey vervet monkey comes up with a grunt for eagle the monkeys look up and there's another grunt grunt that means python. When vervets hear pi- they look down in the grass. There's another grunt that means leopard. When they hear a leopard, they s- scramble up a a tree.
1:14:37So, this is example of the information conveyed by sounds first in birds and then in in monkeys. >> I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Function. Function provides over 160 advanced lab tests to give you a clear snapshot of your bodily health. This snapshot gives you insights into your heart health, your hormone health, autoimmune function, nutrient levels, and much more.
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1:16:16To learn more, visit functionhealth.com/huberman and use the code Huberman for a $50 credit towards your membership. Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman. The layers of sophistication in different animals, I think, is is really underappreciated. I mean, even for somebody like me who's a biologist, you know, it's always pleasantly surprising how sophisticated these other species are.
1:16:41Even if the stuff is hardwired, it's it's wild. In fairness to your earlier example where somebody forgave you for a mistake in the laboratory and you passed on or you said you were already rather forgiving, propagated that forward. When one of your graduate students or postdocs would walk in and say, "Listen, I realize we work on X, but I want to go work on this other thing."
1:17:04Were you tolerant, amused? You because the survival of a laboratory and a research program also depends on people 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 adventurousness you tolerated in your scientific offspring.
1:17:25>> My postdocs 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 me. Had to be a project [snorts] that interested me because I worked hard to find the funds and I I could take only two or three students at a time.
1:17:50A student would be with me for three or four years. Big investment on my part. I would make that investment only only if it made sense for me. On only one occasion did a student tell me that he wanted to have his own project. There was a wonderful Argentinian student um who one day came to me and said he had asked round in the physiology department and he had he had learned he'd been told that for postdocs um it was the the norm in the department, he alleged, was that the postdoc would
1:18:27spend half his time working on a project of his advisor and half the time half the time working on his own project. Now, that was untrue. But he he had found another post doc of whom that was true. He was a He was an interesting guy, fellow. And I was taken back. They were okay, you can do your your own He did a a project of his own as well as the project with me.
1:18:53But, 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, the student can learn from me if it's something that I know about.
1:19:16The 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, almost a compulsion to follow them and solve certain things about those for yourself.
1:19:33Before we started recording today, we were having a quick conversation about one's preference or lack of preference for certain pets, for certain things in the world. And we don't have to go into it. It wasn't contentious. 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, to you are in your life are a diversion.
1:20:03Like you're just not interested in them. And I think that fits beautifully with being interested in many other things. So, this is a somewhat strange question 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.
Time, Priorities, and Legacy
1:20:27But, 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 invest my life energy in those things.
1:20:55Clear. Period. End of story. And it's very refreshing, in fact, because I um and it runs counter current 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.
1:21:12Has 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.
1:21:40Life 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. But when I when I was 81 years old, I wasn't counting what I could do.
1:22:00Um 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 in New Guinea has 10 outline mountain ranges. I did the first ascents and the first morphological explorations of several of them and most detailed explorations of the rest.
1:22:34If I don't write that up, that knowledge will die with me. Because 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 some bird bird species are on all 10 mountain ranges and other birds are on only one mountain range.
1:22:53I'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. I'm I'm I'm musical. I particularly love the music of Bach. I'm I I sang I sang in Boston Handel and Haydn Society. I sang in in Cambridge's Cambridge, England's um musical society.
1:23:17I Benjamin Britten came and did the premiere of his Cantata Academica when I was singing in the Cambridge Chorus. So I I've been interested and I've sung in the composer Johann Sebastian Bach whom I particularly love. He wrote 210 church cantatas. I sang in about 20 of them and I've been telling myself sooner or I want to get to know all of those cantatas.
1:23:40A year ago August and the time has come. Time ahead of me is finite. Better start on the cantatas now and so I started on the cantatas at the rate of about about one a week. Last night I re-listened to cantatas 61 and 62. Next will come cantata 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 Bach cantatas, but that's something that I would like to do.
1:24:07But 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. >> Were 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 would perhaps permitted yourself to do earlier.
1:24:32>> My first thought is is no by by and large I've done done the things that I've enjoyed doing. Now 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.
1:24:55I have a pathological tolerance for manipulating numbers so I don't object doing income taxes much as most other people would do it. Income tax has to be done and takes a lot of my lot of my time. What else do I do? My father washed the dishes. Oh, I wash the dishes together with my wife. Marie does the gardening.
1:25:19I 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 of 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.
1:25:44I don't mind doing doing income tax and I'd rather spend the time doing birds but it's 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 Ehrlich um and his wife Sandra Kahn is still on the faculty at Stanford.
1:26:10Uh Paul wrote of course The Population Bomb. Um the book uh Paul and Sandra wrote the book Jaws with I think had a forward by you and maybe an introduction from Bob Sapolsky about um mouth breathing being detrimental to facial structure development and as well as health perhaps and they called it an epidemic.
1:26:34There'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 would it argued that we're we're going to be badly overpopulated by time we reach now and that that was dangerous.
1:26:59Some 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 issues with population growth and environmental impact. This isn't an area that I have any expertise but what do you think are some of the places where he was oh so correct because he was an incredibly smart and in many ways prescient on some of these topics.
Population Bomb and Sports Leadership
1:27:23>> He was certainly correct that that the biggest threats that humans face today of course they include nuclear risk of exterminating ourselves. 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 Towers attack.
1:27:50It's in a globalized world it's dangerous to have inequality and then the the third the third risk is of course the the risk of running out of resources destroying our resources which we are doing at a at a rapid rate. Why are we in the process of over exploiting our resources? Because the world population has increased.
1:28:13There are now what? 9 billion people. 10,000 years ago there were probably 1 million people. 1 million people on Earth and now we've got 9 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.
1:28:38But like 4 billion of the world's people depend upon fish, seafood for their protein. We are depleting the world's forests. We are depleting the world's topsoil. Paul and his wife Anne, the book The Population Bomb, called attention to the to the danger of population growth. >> [snorts] >> And one can now add to population growth multiplied by consumption per person.
1:29:07Paul predicted big dangers within the next few decades. He predicted widespread starvation. If you look at his Wikipedia entry, um [snorts] so here's he'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.
1:29:34Well, out of the 9 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.
1:29:59Even 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 Ehrlich for getting it wrong, no. He got it got it right, but he got it right in a broader sense than the idiots who attacked him are willing to admit.
1:30:26>> 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.
1:30:44We talked about political leaders. We talked about religious leaders and a bit about cults, sports. Hm. Are you into sports? >> Am I into sport? 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.
1:31:05I 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 in lunch in the refrigerator and my shoes on the floor, I put my running shoes in the refrigerator.
1:31:32My lunch lunch was on the floor. So, I I still work out several days a week. Being physically active is a big part of my life. I get sat- 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.
1:32:01In 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 a have had very long successful careers and are still going strong, all are very physically active and have been for a long time.
1:32:31All of them. And the ones who aren't are mostly dead, if I'm honest. >> The great Harvard organic chemist um Woodward RB 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 chemistry. And of course he died at an early age.
1:32:52>> 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 the much of their research on sports outcomes.
1:33:25In fact, I would say that that much or maybe even 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.
1:33:51Businesses may not publish their results or they do publish them every 5 years, so that 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.
1:34:15The players are well known. Sports is on television. The result is that the methods that business school professors have developed for analyzing CEOs and analyzing the business world um are often developed in sports and they're they're debugged in sports. Um for example, in the business world, one of the main questions is is of course uh how much bus- how much of business success is due to the CEO?
1:34:47Uh this is a loudly dis- CEOs say, "I'm responsible for the success, therefore you ought to pay me billions of dollars because my my company our company makes a hundred billion dollars, but because I'm responsible for that hundred billion dollar profit, you can pay me ten billion dollars." Is that true?
1:35:07It'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 variance in sports success is due to the coach. About another 30% is due to players. And about another 30% is due to the institutions.
1:35:35That's in sports. In the business world, it turns out that this similarly um CEOs account for about 30% of ANOVA. And the individual company accounts for another Procter & Gamble, very well-run company. It's been well well-run 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.
1:36:07Whereas departments of water and power tend to be unprofitable. Why? Because they're tightly regulated by by governments. So, and over 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 returns.
1:36:37So, 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 dice and you get a one and so you say to the person who threw the dice, "You're a lousy dice thrower.
1:37:06You got one. I'm firing you." For statistical reasons, the chances are five out of six that the next dice thrower will do better than one could be because they're two, three, four, five five, 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.
1:37:29Um 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 million million dollars. Similarly, when you fire the CEO, the next CEO is likely to do better for random reasons.
1:37:58As as with with dice throwing, that illustrates why business school professors have gotten lots of their insights by analyzing sports. >> How important is a a coach's philosophy uh 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?
1:38:23>> 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, uh UCLA basketball team won what, nine national championships and including seven in a row. No other college has won more than two national championships in a row.
1:38:45Why 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 5 in shorter than than Duke's players, he got his players to jump higher than than the Duke players. Um he was a master of detail. He cared about what socks that they wore because the socks that they wore affected, you know, [laughter] how how they jumped and how how they played.
1:39:10Uh 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 about John Wooden was was that for him, basketball was not a sport. Basketball was a philosophy of life.
1:39:30And John Wooden's great players, Bill Walton and Hal Sendor, they said, "Coach Wooden, I've learned 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. Basketball Basketball was a model for life. That's unusual among coaches.
1:39:53Bill Belichick, I've never heard anyone say that say that Bill Belichick 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 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.
1:40:21Yeah, you 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 had. >> Is there an analog inside of the Well, nowadays it seems it's tech CEOs and entrepreneurs and we have these looming larger-than-life figures that having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area, you know, it was Hewlett and Packard when I was a kid and and then Steve Jobs, obviously.
Tech Leaders and Philosophy of Life
1:40:52And Bill Gates in Seattle and then now we have Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario at Anthropic is sort of quickly emerging as another one of these big figures, but I probably missed a few out there, but those sort of the the big, whether they like it or not, celebrity technologists that people look at and to for like where where where is humanity going?
1:41:16Politics 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 friendliness to them or something even if it was an Apple. So, it seemed there was a something philosophical, even slightly mystical there.
1:41:36How do you look at these technology leaders and um what do you see? What do you think? >> Bill Gates, I've met him and I've had several lengthy conversation and I like him. I'm good experience in my conversation with him. Um there are people who've met him under other circumstances who have different views of him.
1:41:56Elon 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 Yvon Chouinard of of Patagonia. For him, as with John Wooden, Patagonia is a model for life.
1:42:23He 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 cotton because he didn't want he didn't want to overdevelop cotton agriculture. He is or was a full person, not not just not just a leading business person.
1:42:51He did the first ascent of the the um the most difficult face face in Yosemite. 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 Bezos have a philosophy of life? Do Does Mark Zuckerberg have a philosophy of life?
1:43:20I'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 100 products, he said we should produce four products.
1:43:46And [snorts] the product 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 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.
1:44:13So, Steve Jobs' devices don't have 47, but he he had a philosophy certainly of products. I don't know whether he had a la- 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.
1:44:39>> So, we got political leaders, business leaders, sports leaders, and religious. Those are the four category four categories. >> And business and sport seem to kind of interdigitate 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 have also studied success in politics.
1:45:11So, perhaps the the best single paper that I know on developing new methods for for studying the success of of leaders looks at leaders in politics, looks at leaders in business and leaders in sport, 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.
1:45:46Why? 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 peacetime, because in wartime democratic leaders are are given more power. Um so, the business school professors have also applied their methods to to um politics as well.
1:46:15>> 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 uh almost compulsion to go in a certain direction, but you're you're structured
1:46:50in 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.
1:47:08A friend of mine, the great biologist Tom Lovejoy, now unfortunately dead. Um Tom told me 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.
1:47:29What 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. L- literally. So many people say, "You got to You got to live your life this way.
1:47:52You got to iron your shirts." W- When I was a graduate, I didn't iron my shirts. I'm >> [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.
1:48:10And whether my This shirt is ironed, but whether my shirts are ironed 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 systems in Indonesia and Guinea, designing the principles for national parks in general.
1:48:35I'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 are 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
1:49:03the downbeat not when the players are playing, but because of the speed of sound, you got to give the downbeat 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 UCLA invited me to conduct there they were 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 really loved doing it.
1:49:33So, but I've ended up doing the doing the things that I'm good at. Doing things that I love doing. Doing things that are important to the world good for the world. >> I agree on all all fronts. It's not that you need my agreement. I said there were two questions you answered the second [clears throat] question in the process of answering the first question.
1:49:49So, 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. 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 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
Advice and Closing Thoughts
1:50:23you'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 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.
1:50:43I really appreciate your time and coming here today and hopefully we'll do it again. >> Thank you. I've enjoyed a lot I'm talking with you. You know for you know yourself for for writing books um one one does interviews and podcasts and interviewers differ. They're not all the same. Some interviewers um better prepared than other interviewers.
1:51:08Some interviewers know more about the subject than other interviewers. 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. >> Well, thank you. The pleasure was mine, and we'll do it again. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr.
1:51:24Jared Diamond. To learn more about his work and his recent book, Prophets, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings, please see the links in the show note caption. If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple.
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1:53:01Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Jared Diamond. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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