hello i'm joe harvard in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture best selling author and scientist dr jared diamond joins me for the first half hour in 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 succeed or fail and 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 and now city in a disappointing nine point two percent so it's just just the end initial

republicans need for their debt limit hostage negotiations. for tonight's conversations of great minds i'm joined by dr jura diamant a renowned scientist bestselling author who's books of change the way we all think about human history is 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 dr. how are you i am i am well thank you i hope the same is true of you. brilliant really if i

could take you you brilliantly merge science and culture in a way that the average person can understand reading your reading or writing what stimulated your earliest interest in these areas. preps the different interests of my parents my mother was a pianist she was also a great linguist and a teacher and i got my love of writing from her my father was a physician and a experimenter so i got my love of 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 of kins to show the changes in battle and so i became interested early in science in the one hand and in writing in history in the humanities on the other hand it's an extraordinary synthesis of 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 there how 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 my book i wish its title had been was sex is on the title is actually is sex for an ok because of 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 crockery ation we really don't know what our dogs have in mind when they are doing that but they are all animals whose behavior indicates clearly that. it's not at the top of their minds there was a paper about twenty years ago entitled prostitution in hummingbird's 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 and thus to protect themselves against the risk the male will then six months later to get babies because remember i had sex with that female six months ago so yes clearly vervet monkey isn't hummingbirds have sex without any intention of proclamation 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. if i just use that as the interpretation to them yes again if you if you ask your dog why your dog is having sex and if your dog could speak your dog

would undoubtedly say you jerk but simple it's because that's throwing thought thought and if you in the thought of something good a natural selection then presumably the reason that six of all the natural selection to be thrown is that sex is on the strong selection it's what enables an animal to pass on its genes if sex did not feel like thrown we 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 you know 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 actually by the way not in all humans as. you know 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 the vast majority of all human societies most of the tarring have sex in private not half of the suspect but that's more than cultural because if it were just cultural one might expect that there would be this and that society we sense would be routinely in public they're all or however these 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 concert or a chip in which a male particularly an alpha male will go off with a female in heat for several days and they hang out in private and they'll 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 chimpanzee where you put right out in front the theme that how the human

species changed within a 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 they are on fortunately even though i know 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 in their species that do have wars lions and chimpanzees and hyenas in effect have wars that say roups attack and kill other 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 carnivores species with the equipment for killing each other and in species that occur in groups of different saw uses so the large group can safely attack a small group and expect to wipe out a small group that's the best sense i can make of water lions chimps humans and hyenas have wars graine deer 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 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 julian theories that are out there one being that they were not warlike people and that we basically wiped them out. i do have opinions about neanderthals just as i have opinions about lots of other things as funny and because being peaceful people

that's clearly not the case here are groups of the end with all skeletons say of the a dozen the end of the walls with the scoles pasty in closely related neanderthals thrown into a mass burial clearly killed guy. individuals presumably neanderthals so no neanderthals surely were not peaceful that's why neanderthals started 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 it's all territory and i would bet ten to one maybe i would bet one hundred to one that neanderthals disappeared as a result of modern humans maybe modern humans killing neanderthals taking advantage of advanced truths and spears and maybe even bows and arrows who are modern humans

just competing at the end of the wars haven't we recently discovered that there is some fragment of neanderthal d.n.a. and in some humans. that's true and that's one reason why it's so wonderful to be living today when we're 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 the and the falls with modern humans are encountered neanderthals did they or didn't they have sex then so these of d.n.a. about a year ago of neanderthal d.n.a. which we couldn't measure at all a decade ago there's now d.n.a. from enough neanderthals to make clear that modern humans shear something like the raw of something like three percent of the d.n.a. from the befalls 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 counted neanderthals probably some ways in the middle east and when they were just few

modern humans and lots of the end of the worlds in desperation those modern humans had sex with the falls until they were enough modern humans and they could have sex with modern humans as they wanted and then killed off in the end of course that's the best sense that i can make of this finding good all modern humans except africans have three percent b. and four d.n.a. that's fascinating your next book in the series that we're talking here is wrote it 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 can you give us some examples where guns germs and steel have changed human societies of the world. an example is that you annoy now conversing in the english language in north america in territory that was. thought hundred eighteen years ago solely by native americans so wall.

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 wide history turned out that way the answer is simple it's guns germs and steel the title my book europeans developed guns and steel and they evolved nasty germs before native americans could do so and guns germs and steel are what enabled europeans to conquer native americans and aboriginal australians and sub-saharan africans them to separate our wonders was it in your book that i that i it's been some years that i read that one. first was marching across south america parts of south and central america to conquer 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 a pack of the ass tech capital of. cortez was thrown out in two thirds of his men who killed me retreated to the coast and looked like maybe was about to be finished but at that moment he arrived a ship from cuba with a slave who had smallpox and smallpox spread to the campfire kill half of the aztecs including the current aztec emperor and he had sex with. this mysterious disease that killed asterix and scarcely. small talk's also played a role in the conquest of the inc empire he fought for sorrow a rod in the homeland of peru and ecuador within the decade before that small talk

spread over land from the aztecs into south america and again kill something like half meters including the next to last link have growth who saw it along with his ear and the result was it was no designated ear it was an outbreak of civil war between two of the sons up at last. and the sorrow arrived in the middle of the civil war which with back you fellows actually belly and intuition exploited in order to conquer the extraordinary we're speaking with bestselling author and scientist dr jared diamond will be back with more after this short break.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid museum right here. i think. funny well. whenever the government says this is keep you safe get ready because 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 gave your asians. an 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 at european shona. they were examples all around the world on the one hand of europeans defeating european peoples but there were also examples of non european peoples defeating european peoples for example fall is that that. most of the people saw their couture 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 belonged to the course on people and then two thousand eight hundred years ago farmers black farmers speaking bantu languages would be crops and livestock and still you weapons move south of the equator and overran pygmies and close on people in all your years superbad to follow me to the point we are today most subject which were left with the 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 it's happened with people other than europeans the book here is that's my

favorite is the most recent collapse our societies choose to fail or succeed you identify why societies collapse or succeed let's start with an example of collapse. let's start with two examples one which all dismissed in a sentence the collapse of the roman empire the western roman empire which i want to talk more about because we're still arguing about why the western roman empire collapsed my second i if i may i always slabs is. me it always seemed to me that the roman empire didn't collapse as simply more if 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 declines in power and to the point it was taken over by dramatic barbarians and rome the west roman empire suffered a drastic decline in political complexity so it's true that the western roman

empire not everybody go right but the it was a decrease in political and economic complexity which one could call a collapse ok and i am sorry ed or up to you in mid sentence you were you were heading 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 scrapple land in the world an island twenty three hundred miles west of the coast of chile and near absolutely nothing easter island is famous for its dry can tick stone statues when up to eighty tons erected by polynesians and then gradually all of those statues were eventually pulled down and broken by the descendants of the very polynesians who were wrecked with them it's now clear that east reuland underwent the struggles saudi underwent a dramatic collapse that's a huge increase in political complexity and also population numbers as

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

one of the theories for the for the west 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 maybe the real reason was those barbarians and yes the romans charge somebody a forest but been in charge in 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 drugs in case a simple because they were no enemies east riled was so isolated and easter island couldn't be conquered or invaded by anyone else these rioters could only do it to themselves you in your total choose to fail or succeed in how do as a society make a choice. societies are always making choices in democracies we make choices at 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're 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 now i 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 disagree 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 could collapse consume many forms the worst form is that everybody dies out and gets killed the more usual thing is that people left the law if there were fewer of them but political and economic complexity has decreased for example the soviet union there are still lost the russians were a lot but the population of russia may even be less than it was at the top of the collapse of the soviet union and political complexity has certainly decreased well i'm curious taking that to the next step in the united states were seen 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 where at that point we had thousands of small newspapers and thousands of individually owned 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 that 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 objects anomic units which are larger and if anything more complicated that isn't necessarily going to lead the society to collapse the assembly of our steel industry and i thought arms into larger units of what could lead the united states who are 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 are you new and i think every thinking person is concerned about the future of the united states today what night a collapse look like if it were to happen to american society what might a collapse look like of it happened to american society we can think of a variety of scenarios beginning with the worst and going to gentle ones 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 the law it 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 receipts today on the island of haiti and somalia gradually spreading somalia now does not have a functioning state government haiti has a moderately 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 would be living under more world conditions without state government that would be a gentle 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 by mental damage it's possible that we will take our problems seriously and we will solve them we know how to solve them 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 its 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 you changed 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 show up on the front page of the newspaper because that doesn't make it nice to say this disaster didn't happen monthlong some things that are going well that 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 as one example wal-mart has committed itself to acquiring it 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 there were lots of americans most americans at least aware of climate change and crops a majority of americans to climate change seriously even though there were lots of very vocal ones like vocal minority that still dispute climate change so there are things that give me hope need store the obvious things that make me wonder that i share your perspective i'm curious that we have a just just a minute or so left what do you find the most fascinating right now. gosh there are so many things that are fascinating right now. my wife and children the united states of languages the future of human society per my next book is about a series of things that are foreign most fascinating my next book is about traditional societies tribal societies like those of my uni friends who raise children

differently from us in the united states then they all people differently from us in the united states and the religions are different from us in the united states in the first world in europe and japan and i'm 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 widened in the first world society i am very much looking for as they work dr jared diamond thanks so much for being with us today you're welcome thank you to watch your this conversation again as well as other conversations with the great minds you can go to our website conversations with great minds that can.