hello i'm joe arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture the selling author and scientist dr jared diamond joins me for the first half hour of our conversations in the great minds will discuss his world famous books that shed light on how we as humans have evolved and how our societies see or feel. bad news for those who want to see the economy recover the job numbers are a dud weak job growth the unemployment rate crept up forty again now sitting at a disappointing nine point two percent so it's just just the ammunition republicans

need for their debt limit a hostage negotiation. for tonight's conversations and great minds i'm joined by dr jared diamond a renowned scientist bestselling author whose books have changed the way we all think about human history he's one dozens of awards for his work in his books including the third chimpanzee guns germs and steel and collapse our must reads if you want to understand how humans and cultures have evolved into what we are today currently he is a professor of geography and physiology u.c.l.a. jared diamond joins me now from our studios in los angeles welcome. how are you i am i am well thank you i hope the same is true of you you brilliantly flaky

you brilliantly merge science and culture in a way that the average person can understand is reading your reading or writing what stimulated your earliest interest in these areas. preps the different interests of my parents. was a pianist she was also a great linguist and a teacher and i got my look of writing from her my father was a physician and a experimenter so i got my local science from him but i began birdwatching when i was seven years old and then i grew up during world war two with maps of europe in the pacific on the wall on pins to show the changes in battle and so i became interested early and saw in some one hand and in writing in history in the humanities on the other hand it's an extraordinary synthesis and the breadth of your work is is remarkable your second book why sex is fun evolution of human

sexuality seems in some ways out of sync with the rest of your books in some ways it seems to fit in why do you why do you think that people care so much about sex and are we the only species to have sex with no intention of procreation and to pursue sex acts in private. first i have to correct you so that we don't oversell in my book i wish its title had been was sex is on the title is actually is sex for on a question mark because at the end of one hundred sixty seven pages i was not able to answer that question it's an intriguing unresolved question as for animals that have sex without intent to procreation we really don't know what our dogs have in mind when they are doing that part they are all animals whose behavior indicates clearly the. start of the top of their minds there was a paper about twenty years ago in titled prostitution in hummingbirds it turns out

that female hummingbirds that are already lain eggs will have sex with a male in order to gain access to nectar in the males territory and it's also the case that pervert monkeys that are already pregnant three months pregnant will have sex with a male although they can't be impregnated in the us to protect themselves against the risk of male within six months later to get babies because the male will remember i had sex with that female six months ago so yes clearly verbeke monkeys and hummingbirds have sex without any intention of provocation and it seems like. the logical the reason it's fun is because it produces offspring that there's that there's a biological imperative to produce offspring as would that be a piece of. the distance without the interpretation to yes again if you if you ask your dog or your dog is having sex and if your dog could speak your dog

a dog i would say you jerk a simple it's because some thought but thought and the feeling of freedom is something that evolves through natural selection and presumably the reason that sets of all the natural selection to be flown is that sex is on the strong selection that's what enables an animal to pass on its genes if sex did not feel like thrown you would have sex and a population which sex didn't feel like fun would die out within one generation well given the importance of this. and and across the animal kingdom is there is are there are examples of other species that look for privacy in their sexual activity or is that dimension of sexuality in humans and it's action by the way not in all humans as. you know it exhibitionism and what not but but is that is that dimension of sexuality in humans cultural or biological.

well one has to suspect that since their ass majority since all human societies most of the current have sex in private with half the suspect that's more than cultural because if it were just cultural one might expect that there would be this in that society where such would be routinely him in public the all or however there's at least one animal that has sex sometimes in private and it's not surprising we our closest relative the chimpanzee chimpanzees often have sex in public perhaps usually but there is a phenomenon in chimpanzees called a clan so what you have in which a male particularly an alpha male who go off with a female in heat for several days and they hang out in private and will have sex for several days so there's at least one example of an animal species our closest relative having sex in private sometimes it's interesting your first book is called the third sham chimpanzee where you put right out in front of him that how the

human species changed in the short time from just another species of big animals or mammals to a world conqueror how did we or did we after become conquerors and kill each other . we didn't have to become conquerors and we didn't have to kill each other eros some peaceful societies although there are unfortunately even by now already sweden and switzerland have not had wars for nearly two centuries and the united states and even western europe have gone for a long time without wars so wars are not something inevitable but they are a common phenomena in humans if you look at humans and if you look at other animal species he was species that don't have wars and there are species that do have wars lawyer and chimpanzees and hyenas in effect have wars that loops attack and kill all the groups but there are other species we are there are no reindeer don't have

war the best sense i can make of it is that wars or observed among social species particularly caught of war species with the equipment for killing each other and in species that occur in groups of different sizes so the group can safely attack a small group and expect to wipe out a small group that's the best sense i can make of what lions chimps humans and hyenas have wars reindeer and gorillas don't have wars i've read at least three of your books i don't believe that you've touched on this and i'm stepping out on a limb here but i'm curious if you've ever looked into or if you have any thoughts or opinions about neanderthals and why they vanished in europe and and the the julian theories that are out there one being that they were not were like people and that we basically wiped them out. i do have opinions about me and the polls just as i have opinions about lots of other things as from the end of those being

peaceful people that's clearly not the case the year groups of the end with all skeleton say to a dozen neanderthals with their scholes bashed in closely related neanderthals thrown into a mass burial clearly killed by. individuals presumably neanderthals so no neanderthals surely were not peaceful that's why neanderthals died out the best evidence we have is that they died out pretty quickly within maybe a thousand years of the rival of modern homo sapiens in the end i thought territory i would perhaps ten to one maybe i would bet a hundred to one that neanderthals disappeared as a result of modern humans maybe modern humans killing neanderthals taking advantage of advanced truth and spears maybe even bows and arrows who are modern humans just

competing the end with holes have only recently discovered that there is some fragment of neanderthal d.n.a. and in some humans. that's true and that that's one reason why it's so wonderful to be living today when we have discovering all these fascinating things there's been debate and speculation for a long time whether did they or didn't they that's to say when neanderthals when modern humans encountered neanderthals did they or didn't they have sex then studies of d.n.a. about a year ago of neanderthal d.n.a. which we couldn't measure at all a decade ago is now d.n.a. from enough neanderthals to make clear that modern humans shear something like the rod something like three percent of the d.n.a. from the end of thought that's true of all modern humans outside of africa and that indicates that the first modern humans that spread out of africa and the end of the worlds probably some ways of the middle east and when they were just few modern

humans and lots of neanderthals in desperation those modern humans had sex with the falls until they were not modern humans and they could have sex with a modern humans as they wanted and then killed off in the end of those that's the best sense that i can make of this finding the all modern humans except africans have three percent b. and four d.n.a. that's fascinating here in the next book in the series that we're talking here and it's wrote several years ago guns germs and steel was i i think your most popular book in that book you argue that the gaps in power and technology between different societies change the world and you give some examples where guns germs and steel have changed human societies of the world. an example is that you annoy the now conversing in the english language in north america in territory that was occupied thought hundred eighteen years ago solely by native americans so was.

oh you of european ancestry and you possibly of european ancestry sitting here on the formal land of native americans talking english and why is that not the case that. native americans are in europe and speaking as tech or language why does history turn out that way the answer is simple it's guns germs and steel the title my book europeans developed. steel and they evolved nasty germs before native americans could do so and guns germs steal what enabled europeans to conquer native americans and aboriginal australians and sub-saharan africans and pacific islanders was it in your book that i that i it's been some years that i read that one to zahra oh first was marching across south america parts of south south or central america to conquer into the aztecs of

the mayans when he finally showed up in the city of gold that most of the people there were dead from the flu that it had preceded him. that's close to it there were two. cases of what you're getting at one is that during cortez this conquest of the aztec empire in cortez of pack of the ass tech capital of tenet he. was thrown out and two thirds of his men were killed me retreated to the coast and looked like maybe was about me finish but at that moment he arrived to ship from cuba with a slave who had smallpox and smallpox spread to the aztec empire killed half of the aztecs including the current aztec emperor and the aztecs with more laws by this mysterious disease that killed our stomachs and scarcely killed spenders. smallpox also played a role in the conquest of the inc empire and four percent overall lived in the

homeland of peru and ecuador within the decade before that smallpox spread over land from the aztecs into south america again through something right half meat was including the next to last ink have grown who saw it along with his ear and the result was he was no designated ear there was an outbreak of civil war between two of the sun's up at last. and the sorrow arrived in the middle of the civil war which with baccy available got to belly and intuition he exploited in order to conquer the it's extraordinary we're speaking with bestselling author and scientist dr jared diamond we'll be back with more after this short break.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right. i think to be the one well. whenever the government says the keeping safe get ready to give them their freedom . going back to conversations with great minds i'm speaking with brilliant scientists best selling award winning author jared diamond whose books include guns germs and

steel and collapse how societies choose to fail or succeed welcome back dr doctor to dr diamond. in guns germs and steel we were just talking about this this dimension of guns germs and steel and how those things have. brought about the collapse of societies and that this triad you're asians. and advantage is there are there other examples of the same thing in other human societies around the world asian societies for example south american societies yet free os showing up or europeans show up. here examples all around the world on the one hand of europeans defeating european peoples but there are also moves non european peoples to feeding on european peoples for example of fawy is that.

most of the people of subject which were real africa today. african black farmers speaking bantu languages two thousand years ago that wasn't the case just as two thousand years ago everybody in north america was a native american two thousand years ago everybody in africa south of the equator was either a pygmy or belonging to the course some people and then two thousand eight hundred years ago farmers black thought i was speaking panther languages with crops and livestock and still you weapons move south of the equator and. pygmies encroached on people with all your ears suitable for bad conforming to the point we are today most subject with your allowance of band performance so that's one case of steel not guns but steel and the power went by farming there was a similar example in southeast asia of chinese farmers overrunning southeast asia so yes this happened with people other than europeans the bush years that's my

favorite is the most recent collapse societies choose to fail or succeed and you identify why societies collapse or succeed let's start with an example of collapse. let's start with two examples one which will dismiss in the sentence the collapse of the roman empire the western roman empire which i won't talk more about because we are still arguing about why the western roman empire collapsed second i if i may always slaps is. me it always seemed to me that the roman empire didn't collapse as simply more of itself into the catholic him either. one could put that spin on it but one would also have to say that the western roman empire gradually declined in power to the point it was taken over by dramatic barbarians. the western roman empire suffered a drastic decline in political complexity so it's true that the western roman

empire not everybody enjoyed thought it was a decrease in political and economic complexity which one could call a collapse ok and i am sorry to interrupt you and you are you are reading into it a second one. my second example is a famous romantic example is the polynesian society on easter island easter the most remote habitable scrap of land in the world and island twenty three hundred miles west of the coast of chile and near absolutely nothing easter island is famous for its dry can pick stone statues when up to eighty tons a record by polynesians and then gradually all of those statues were eventually pulled their own and broken by the descendants of the very polynesians who were wrecked with them it's now clear that east reuland underwent the struggles society underwent a dramatic collapse that's a huge increase in political complexity and also population numbers as

a result of the east raw it was inadvertently chopping down all the trees on the iraq war and that's not a wise thing to do if your society have to depend on wood as with easter islanders but lots of societies make mistakes and that happened to the struggle of those so we struggle society collapsed in an epidemic of civil war that was triggered by this ecological inadvertent ecological devastation couldn't you you suggest the possibly something like that happened with iran there was a massive before station in italy and which led to a currency crisis because it cost so much to smelt silver that it became more expensive than the value of the coinage it my recollection is it was but i don't remember the year i'm sorry but could it be that there's a commonality that has to do with resource depletion. yes it could indeed be in one

of the theories for the fall the western roman empire is that environmental factors played a big role in particular deforestation as you mention so that's one possibility but there were also those barbarians may be the real reason was those barbarians and yes the romans charcoal some of the forest have been in charge down the forest completely so in the case of the roman empire these stories complicated because there were other people enemies waiting at the borders these dryland cases simple because they were no enemies the struggle was so isolated that easter island couldn't be conquered or invaded by anyone else these struggles could only do it to themselves you in your child choose to fail or succeed how does a society make a choice. societies are always making choices in the mark receives we make choices that every election in a dictatorship the dictator makes choices but also the people make choices because they have the option and sometimes the resources to throw out and kill the dictator

so we are always making choices even though we may not necessarily be able to foresee the consequences of our choices in the united states we're making lots of choices today some of those choices may turn out to be good choices so maybe bad choices and if fifty years from now the choices turn out to be bad choices then my sons and their generation will look back at how we voted in two thousand and eleven two thousand and twelve and say my god how could my father's generation my mother's generation be so stupid as that as to have made those choices but the choices we face are complicated ones and there's legitimate grounds for disagreement as we have just agree now in the united states. if my recollection is correct and please correct me if i'm wrong one of the characteristics that you identified of a society in collapse is a decrease in the complexity of the society. if first of all is that is that is my

recollection. yes you are correct that collapse can assume many forms the worst form is that everybody dies out of gets killed the more usual form is that people left with maybe there were fewer of them brought political and economic complexity has decreased for example the soviet union there are still lost the russians over a large population of russia may even be less than the growth of the top of the collapse of the soviet union and political complexity has certainly decreased but i'm curious taking that to the next step in the united states we're seeing this enormous decrease in in economic and. political is the wrong word but let's say corporate complexity we have there's virtually no major industry left in the united states since the early he was eighty two when ronald reagan stopped in force in the sherman act at were at that point we had thousands of small newspapers and thousands of individual your own radio stations and

television stations across the country just to talk about media you know hundreds of steel plants that were all independently owned dozens of not dozens of carmakers but there were several several different and in each industry it seems like there's been a collapse of complexity down to the point of basically a few dueling monopolies or oligarchy is or oligopolies actually is is it possible that what i'm describing is a symptom of an incipient collapse in economic or political collapse in our society . it's possible but i personally would think probably not what you're describing is the assembly of small economic units into law and i'm a few notes which are larger and if anything more complicated that isn't necessarily going to lead this society to collapse the assembly of our steel industry and on and off fell into larger units of what could lend the united states

of the united states towards collapse is the decline in our economy but this isn't unique our economy declined during the one nine hundred thirty s. during the great depression and we eventually got out of the great depression so i would see where you can see whether the united states is going to collapse but many people including you and you and i think every thinking person is concerned about the future of the united states today what might a collapse look like if it were to happen to american society. what might a collapse look like if it happened to american society we can think of a variety of scenarios beginning with the worst and going to gentle it was the worst the worst scenario would be a nuclear war in which civilization was wiped out and most people were killed and the people left alive would be my friends in the highlands of new guinea who recently were using stone tools and can figure out how to use stone tools again so that would be a grass to collapse. a gentle

a collapse would be conditions such as those we see today on the island of haiti and somalia gradually spreading somalia now does not have a functioning state government haiti has a marginally functioning state government it's possible that those conditions of state collapse will spread gently around the world without a nuclear war and that fifty years from now we will have a world where most of us will be living under more world conditions without state government that would be a gentler form but i don't want to to end with this pessimistic note it's also possible that we will get our act together that we will a dent we know perfectly well what are the problems facing us now economic problems problems of climate change right mental damage it's possible that we will take our problems seriously and we will solve them we know how to solve or we need is the political will and fifty years from now we will be living in a sustainable world we're income differences around the world even doubt and we're

there's no motive for any country to support it's crazy terrorists and we'll have a world living in peace i hope that that's what's going to happen yeah you say you're still cautiously optimistic about our society. as that do you changed or is that where you're standing now and if so why. i'm still cautiously optimistic there are some things that are going well and there are some things that are going badly among the things that are going well which tend not to stick show up on the front page of the newspaper because it doesn't make it nice to say this disaster didn't happen among them some things that are going well but there are increasing number of corporations big businesses which see so many people love to hate there are so many big businesses that are taking their environmental problems seriously just was born example wal-mart has committed itself to acquiring its seafood from sustainably fish sources that's

a big step forward it's also the case that many of the big oil companies extremely careful with their environmental policies so that gives me hope and it's also the case in the united states two three years ago very few americans took climate change seriously and now lots of americans most americans at least are aware of climate change and perhaps the majority of americans take climate change seriously even though there were lots of very vocal ones i hope a vocal minority that still dispute climate change so there are things that give me hope needs to all the obvious things that make me wonder if i share your perspective i'm curious that we have just just a minute or so. what do you find the most fascinating right now. gosh there are so many things that are fascinating. my wife and children the united states languages the future of human society perves well my next book is about a series of things that i find most fascinating my next book is about traditional societies tribal societies like those are you good friends who raise children

differently from us in the united states and they treat all people differently from us in the united states and the religions of different from us in the united states in the first world in europe and japan but fascinated by why these differences from between traditional societies and modern society and what we can learn from these traditional societies in many ways some aspects of the way that they bring up children are infinitely superior to what we do in the united states and some ways in which they treat their old people are better than the tragedies that play out in the united states so i'm fascinated by these differences between traditional societies and modern american the first world society and very much looking for a bit of work dr jared diamond thanks so much for being with us tonight you're welcome thank you to watch i had this conversation again as well as other conversations with the great minds even though our website conversations with great minds dot com.