What Makes Great Leaders & How to Live an Extraordinary Life | Dr. Jared Diamond

1. 0:00 – 2:51

   Jared Diamond

   1. JDDr. Jared Diamond0:00

      People regularly look for personal generalizations, personality generalizations about leaders. Perhaps the communist 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. And any question that you or anybody else would ask about how can we generalize about leaders' persona, there are some generalizations about leaders, but not personality generalizations, because there are different ways to be a effective leader.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman0:42

      [on-hold music] Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. 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. He's also a renowned author of books such as Guns, Germs, and Steel, for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. He has also been awarded the National Medal of Science and a MacArthur Genius Award. Today, we discuss topics related to Jared's most recent book, which is about leaders and leadership. It is entitled Prophets, Profits, Coaches, and Kings. We discuss political leaders, religious leaders, leaders in business, and in sports. Today, you're going to hear a lot of myths dispelled, including the common myth that charisma is requisite for successful leadership, and we discuss a lot of incredible biology. For instance, why observing birds, yes, birds, because of their reliance on sight and sound, makes them one of the best windows into understanding human behavior and human nature. We also discuss Jared himself, because as you'll soon see, he is an incredible and very unusual human being. We discuss his obsessive curiosity that's been there since childhood and how it's migrated from topic to topic, book to book, paper to paper, and what his process is for taking hard questions into the laboratory and going out into the wild, literally, to observe things in their natural state and then bring back all of that knowledge in a form that is unlike any other scientist or writer. So what follows is a discussion with an absolute luminary of science and public education, and it's one that I'm certain will inform, enchant, and inspire you. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Jared Diamond.

2. 2:51 – 9:17

   Leadership, Prophets; Hitler, WWII

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:51

      Dr. Jared Diamond, welcome.

   2. JDDr. Jared Diamond2:53

      It's a pleasure to be with you.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman2:55

      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 profits as in making profits and prophets as in who become prophets and what they are, Coaches, and Kings: When Do Leaders Matter? I think now more than ever, people are thinking about modern leadership and themes of past in leadership. First, I would like to know, what is a prophet? P-R-O-P-H-E-T.

   4. JDDr. Jared Diamond3:32

      Prophet means, for my purposes, religious leaders, because my book about leadership looks at leadership in four spheres, the political sphere, the business sphere, sports, and finally, religion. I use the word prophets to refer to religious leaders because it makes for catchy Prophets, Profits, Coaches, and Kings. Um, I don't care about whether, whether they prophesy the future. It was simply my, my word for religious leaders.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman4:05

      Let's talk about leadership in each of those categories and people that stand out to you as the lightest and darkest in each of those categories, and we can go into the middle of the continuum if you want as well. But your book starts off talking about Hitler-

   6. JDDr. Jared Diamond4:20

      Mm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman4:21

      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.

   8. JDDr. Jared Diamond4:35

      I was born in 1937, which meant that I grew up in World War II. Growing up in the United S- 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 dated thing that I can remember, was the first photo that the US Army released of dead American soldiers. It was a famous cover of Life Magazine, two American soldiers dead face down on Buna Gona Beach in New Guinea. So, uh, 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. My 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 had been formed under the, under the sh- the shadow of Hitler. On top of that, then there are leaders, non-political leaders who've shaped my life, most- mostly for the good. There was a chairman of the Cambridge Physiology Department. I left a rubber hose pump, water pump running all night to dry out radioactive isotopes. The pump broke. It flooded my lab. It flooded the lab below my lab. That was not a good choice of lab to flood. It was the lab of Lord Adrian, who was the father-in-law of my thesis advisor and who was the master of my college. The next morning, the chair of the physiology department, Sir Brian Matthews, called me, and I thought I was going to be expelled. Instead, he said, "You know, that was sloppy. Don't, don't do that again." And, and that was the-- So there was, there was a leader who could have ended my career, but didn't. There are other leaders who've done decisively good things, um, for my, for my career. There are a few people who failed to do anything, but they have, have not been leaders who did me. Those are the reasons for my personal interest in leaders, starting with the, the question of Hitler. If there had not been Hitler, would my family in Eastern Europe and would Marie's family still be alive?

   9. AHAndrew Huberman6:50

      How close were we to there not being an adult Hitler?

   10. JDDr. Jared Diamond6:55

       There were two, two famous near endings of Hitler's life. My book begins, the first paragraph of my book, uh, is about a car accident in 1930, three years before Hitler became chancellor, when his limousine, driven by a chauffeur, was driving into an intersection in Germany. Hitler was in the drive- in the passenger seat, the right, right-hand seat, and a big truck came into the intersection at right angles with Hitler's sedan. Um, both Hitler's chauffeur and the truck driver either braked or accelerated alternately, 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. It came to a stop just before that. Hitler was, was injured, but he was not killed. If he had died in 1930, would there have been World War II, and would there have been a, a Holocaust? And then, then the, the other famous almost was that in 1944, next to last year of the war, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer who became disillusioned, um, attempted to kill Hitler. He, um, he brought a, um, a, a small suitcase with, with a bomb into the c-conference room at Wolf's Lair. He sat down next to Hitler, put the suitcase, which he had, he had primed the bomb. He put the suitcase just under Hitler's foot, and the bomb went off. But just before the bomb went off, Hitler leaned forward. The result was that four other people in the room got killed. Um, Hitler's eardrum was blown out. Hitler was seriously wounded, but he was not killed. But if Hitler had not leaned for-- That was 1944. Um, would various members of my wife's family have survived? So, so those are reasons 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.

3. 9:17 – 11:45

   Hitler, Leadership, Deception

   1. AHAndrew Huberman9:17

      Was there anyone else that could have accomplished what Hitler accomplished?

   2. JDDr. Jared Diamond9:22

      Historians argue about that. This illustrates the, the difficulties in figuring out whether leaders make a difference. The traditional method of historians and biogra- is to write a biography. There are many people who've written biographies of Hitler. Most biographers of Hitler conclude that Hitler was unique in several respects. He was the most charismatic 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 an- anti-Semites killed Jews one by one. Hitler was the only one who got the idea of doing it on an industrial scale. Without Hitler, there probably would, uh, would not have been a Holocaust. He was also brilliant at deceiving people, deceiving famously Neville Chamberlain at Munich, but he also deceived German politicians. He deceived German business leaders. He deceived German generals. He deceived his fellow Nazis. He was just brilliant at deceiving people. So those are the arguments for thinking that he made, he made a difference, that without World War, without Hitler, there might not have been a World War II, and there would not have been a, been a Holocaust. Most historians tend to believe that leaders don't make a difference. But in the case of Hitler, most historians would argue that Hitler did make a difference. The famous British historian, 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 was true, but that there wouldn't have been any difference if Hitler had not been a leader. So those are the arguments about Hitler, but that illustrates the weakness of the traditional biographic method. One's limited by the facts, but different people come to different con- conclusions with the same facts. That's why my book uses a different method, the method of natural experiments.

4. 11:45 – 13:45

   Unlikely Leader: Harry Truman

   1. AHAndrew Huberman11:45

      Who in your mind is the most unlikely leader that became a spectacularly successful leader, either toward positive or destructive ends?

   2. JDDr. Jared Diamond11:55

      There are many, many candidates for that. One candidate, the, the first, having been born in 1937, um, I grew up under Roosevelt, but the first American president in, in whom I became interested, because I was by then 18, Harry Truman The most unlikely significant American president. He was selected as Roosevelt's third or fourth vi-vice president for trivial political reasons. He, he was a senator from Missouri, undistinguished. He had be- he had become senator through dishonest shenanigans. Um, he was so insignificant that Roosevelt never met with him once Truman became vice president. And when Roosevelt died, Truman was totally un-- Truman didn't know about the atomic bomb, and yet the first decision that he had to make was whether to drop the atomic bombs. At the time, Truman was widely despised. Uh, 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. And so when Truman stepped down, he was widely loathed. But in retrospect, um, gradually he's become appreciated as not equal to Roosevelt and Lincoln, but the second tier Amer- a courageous American president who took decisions and didn't care that he was gonna be loathed because of the decision, his decisions.

5. 13:45 – 16:28

   Sponsors: Rorra & Eight Sleep

   1. AHAndrew Huberman13:45

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6. 16:28 – 22:35

   Leaders, Introspection, Charisma; Individuals, History Patterns

   1. AHAndrew Huberman16:28

      These days, uh, at least in the tech sector and entrepreneurial space, there's been a lot of discussion about the disservice that introspection can do for people who are trying to build big things, be leaders, be entrepreneurs. We have to be careful about painting with too broad a brush, but i-in researching different leaders, both dark and light, is there a theme of powerful leaders being able to just step into the next decision without too much thought about the past or how they're going to be perceived? That's one form of in-introspection. I realize there are others, but is there a correlation there?

   2. JDDr. Jared Diamond17:06

      I would say no, and, and this illustrates a broad, broad point. People, um, regularly look for personal generalizations, personality generalizations about leaders. Perhaps the communist generation, the 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 thirty-seven 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' persona, there are some generalizations about leaders, but not personality generalizations, because there are different ways to be a effective leader.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman17:55

      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, a weird constellation of things that give rise to history and what we're experiencing now. And so For me, and perhaps I'm wrong about this, that contrasts a bit with my understanding of you based on your prior books, which is that you're trying to find thematic regularities. You're trying to put structure on things that at the face of them are very complex, like how did we get here, how did cultures evolve, et cetera, and, and on and on. So in this exploration of leadership, how do you go from think- being able to explain each circumstance to some taxonomy that allows you to be satisfied? And I'm gonna set up a parallel with something that we're going to look at later, which is bird watching.

   4. JDDr. Jared Diamond19:03

      Oh.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman19:03

      I mean, every bird is different, but every bird belongs to a particular category and has particular features, and in many ways, I'm thinking about leaders and leadership the same way. What is satisfying to you? What level of understanding and consistency of ideas is satisfying?

   6. JDDr. Jared Diamond19:19

      There are generalizations, um, that I came to in writing, writing about leaders. But I would say just, just as background, um, people often ask me, um, "Jared, your book about leaders now seems to be the opposite of Guns, Germs, and Steel."

   7. AHAndrew Huberman19:38

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   8. JDDr. Jared Diamond19:38

      "Jared, 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, about patterns of history on the continents over the last 10,000 years, and over the last 10,000 years on whole continents, I can't think of any individual who's, who's made a difference. There was no individual who was responsible for the Fertile Crescent 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. And 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. It's that I'm looking at completely different sorts of questions now in Prophets, Profits, Coaches, and Kings compared to Guns, Germs, and Steel.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman20:58

      Is it a leap to say that, um, Prophets, 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?

   10. JDDr. Jared Diamond21:13

       In motivation, yes. In content, no. In motivation, yes, the ro-role of Hitler in, in my family's life and m-my wife's life, but the content of the book is all divorced from me. In the introduction, I think I do mention that, uh, Sir Brian Matthews saved, as a leader of the Cambridge Physiology Department, saved my career in physiology. But then once I launch into politics and once I launch into, into the business world and once I launch into the sports world and, and religion, um, no, it's all, it's all stuff. I haven't contributed, uh, to, to any of those four areas. Now, in the epilogue of the book, I, I do ask what are the areas, um, other areas that are waiting for exploration by the method of natural experiments. And I meant science, which I am a scientist. Art and music, I am a musician. Military history, yeah, I'm very interested in military history. Social unrest. I'm hoping that in the future, uh, people will apply these questions of leadership to things that involve me personally, particularly music and, and science, but that's for the future.

7. 22:35 – 25:36

   Leaders & Addressing Mistakes, Forgiveness

   1. AHAndrew Huberman22:35

      You've mentioned this story about flooding the laboratory with, I should point out, I heard you say radioactive isotope, uh, water. What is your takeaway from, uh, that particular professor's response, and has it made you more forgiving of other people's mistakes?

   2. JDDr. Jared Diamond22:53

      I've not been one to jump on other people for their mistakes. Well, I, I've made plenty of mistakes. I've had very close calls myself. I, I've done things that could have ended my career on the spot, such as that, that... There were other things that could have e-ended my career on the spot. So I'm not inclined to blame other people for their mistakes. I recall a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, um, 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.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman23:37

      It's interesting how when we are very low on a hierarchical, uh, ladder, [chuckles] uh, like in academia i-in its traditional-

   4. JDDr. Jared Diamond23:47

      Mm

   5. AHAndrew Huberman23:47

      ... days anyway, that, um, people hold tremendous power-

   6. JDDr. Jared Diamond23:52

      Mm

   7. AHAndrew Huberman23:52

      ... obviously to, to impact us and whether we move forward or not. But it's, it's always reassuring when, um, something like the forgiveness of this-

   8. JDDr. Jared Diamond24:00

      Mm

   9. AHAndrew Huberman24:00

      ... 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, um, sort of a, a lack of tolerance for, um, imperfection, lack of tolerance for things that could threaten the, the whole department in this case. So it's a, it's a very sweet story-

   10. JDDr. Jared Diamond24:20

       Mm

   11. AHAndrew Huberman24:20

       ... on the one hand, but I imagine it didn't happen a second time. There's also that, right?

   12. JDDr. Jared Diamond24:25

       For 36 years I was professor of 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. They made, they made big mis-big mistakes. I remember my, my second graduate student, my-- 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 an outstanding researcher. Couple of others of my students had close calls, but 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.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman25:20

       Yeah, I would say so.

   14. JDDr. Jared Diamond25:21

       S-since I was forgiven, it behooves me to, to forgive my students.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman25:27

       I love it, and I'm sure many people appreciate that. Uh, it's a very different picture of, uh, academia than I think most people get, so thank, thank you for that.

8. 25:36 – 30:42

   Religious Leaders, Jesus & Leadership, Organizers

   1. AHAndrew Huberman25:36

      Religious leaders, who in your mind stood out as important enough to feature prominently in the book?

   2. JDDr. Jared Diamond25:44

      In the book, I have two chapters on religious leaders. Um, the first chapter looks at three religious leaders in the 19th century United States because we got lots of detailed information about them. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon, Mormon religion, Anne Lee, the founder of Shakers, Jim Jones, the founder of, of Jonestown, so we have a lot of information about them. The second chapter on religion looks at Jesus. We have minimal information about Jesus. We have no contemporary information whatsoever about him. The first information that we have about him is the letters of St. Paul and the Gospel according to St. Mark, uh, both of which follow his death by about twenty years, so there's no contemporary information about him. With Jesus, did Jesus make a difference? Well, if you read the, the New Testament, uh, talks about names, six other Messiahs. Jesus was not the only Messiah. There were, there were lots of people then who s-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, the most powerful political entity of Western Eurasia, just the right place to, to found a major religion. Jesus, of course, could not foresee that one thousand four hundred and sixty-seven 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. Why? Because Christianity was the religion of the Western Roman Empire, the most powerful entity at the time. So if Jesus had been with the same, same properties in the Sudan, we wouldn't know about Jesus. If Jesus had been a religious leader in Western Europe, 100 BC, we wouldn't know about him. He was the right place and, and right time.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman28:08

      He definitely has the highest H-index of any, uh, religious leader.

   4. JDDr. Jared Diamond28:13

      The right place and the right time, and I believe that Christianity is today the world religion with the largest number of adherents.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman28:21

      I know you, um, try not to generalize, but is there anything specific about Jesus, the person that we do know with almost certainty or with certainty that spoke to his effectiveness? Or was it, you said, "Right place, wrong, uh, right time," but that seems, uh, necessary but not sufficient.

   6. JDDr. Jared Diamond28:39

      Right. There, there were other people at the right place and the right time. There were those six other prophets mentioned in the New Testament, and there were the Essenes of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Why was a world religion founded by Jesus and not by the leader of the Essenes? Well, there are a couple of things. One, Jesus's message and personal qualities. He had a universal message for all people. It was not just a message for the Essenes, and it was not just a message for, for Jews. Yes, Jesus was Jewish, but his message was not addressed to just the Jews. It was a universal message. Of those religious leaders of the Roman Empire at that time, that was a big thing in his favor. And another thing in his, in his favor, uh, was that a religion needs not only a charismatic founder, but it also needs an organizer. In some cases, the organizer and the charismatic founder are the same person. Mohammed was a great organizer and also charismatic. The Mahdi of the Sudan was a brilliant organizer and brilliant general, um, also a brilliant religious leader. Jesus died too early. Uh, he was not the org- 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. Even in his lifetime, he had his weaknesses as an organizer, and he was k- 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. And he was in the right place, the Western Roman Empire, at the perfect time.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman30:36

      And Columbus obviously was able to propagate his ideas far, uh, as

9. 30:42 – 35:18

   Leader Partnerships, Science, Religion

   1. AHAndrew Huberman30:42

      you pointed out, with the desire to still avoid generalizations.

   2. JDDr. Jared Diamond30:46

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman30:46

      What the picture I'm getting is that you need, uh, a leader, you need an organizer. Sometimes the leader is the organizer, but oftentimes it sounds like it, there's someone else or other people who can help organize the message. We see this in science-

   4. JDDr. Jared Diamond31:02

      Mm.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman31:03

      -quite often, especially in the biological sciences, pairs of, um... Well, uh, your advisor, 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, uh, Torsten's still alive. There's often a personality, uh, complementarity there, too. One tends to be a little bit more outspoken, one a little bit more, uh, you know, Watson and Crick. I'm sure there are just as many examples that don't fit. Uh, but in thinking about leaders, not just religious leaders, can we, um, make any kind of generalization about, um, pairings, uh, two very, um, complementary people that are especially effective in getting escape velocity on their, on their leadership, their message?

   6. JDDr. Jared Diamond31:59

      I don't think so. In the ca- in the case of religion, um, it's not just pairings, but it's of- it's, it's, it's often triplets. Namely, to launch a religion, you, uh, you need charismatic founder, you need an organizer. But generally, always when you found a new religion, there is pushback from existing religions, and often that pushback is, is violent, so that, that often new religions have had to defend themselves, have, have had to have, have, um, generals. Um, for example, the Mahdi Muhammad was an outstanding general as well as organizer and charismatic. The Mahdi of the Sudan, uh, who established an empire in East Africa towards the end of the 19th century, great general. He led hundreds or thousands of Sudanese tribes with just sticks to wipe out a British Egyptian army of seven thousand with machine guns. A great general, great organizer, charismatic. But in, in other spheres, in science, there are scientists who are large scale organizers. Uh, my thesis was Alan Hodgkin. Alan Hodgkin did-- Great scientist. Um, he did not organize 50 people into a lab, lab group. Alan Hodgkin, his strategy was to have one PhD student at a time. While I was his PhD student for three years, he did not have another PhD student. He did become Master of Trinity College, and he was an effective Master of Trinity College. But there are scientists who 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, and a friend of mine made a discovery that so-called Bence-Jones proteins in, in the kidney, a, a discovery that was crucial to figuring out how antibodies operate. Uh, 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 ev- a- and I'm told then immediately told his lab, "Switch everything," and his 50 postdocs went in there, and they figured out how ant- 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.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman34:51

      And big personality.

   8. JDDr. Jared Diamond34:53

      Yes, yes. I, I met him on two occasions. Yes, he was a big personality.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman34:59

      Yeah, he ventured into neuroscience after immunology, uh, and, uh, yeah, big ideas. Um, big lab, big ideas.

   10. JDDr. Jared Diamond35:08

       Mm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman35:08

       So there are just as many, uh, exceptions, uh, to the, to the statements I'm making, I'm, I'm realizing, as there are, um, things that, that meet it. I was surprised

10. 35:18 – 39:53

    Jim Jones, Effective Cult Leaders; Followers

    1. AHAndrew Huberman35:18

       that you mentioned Jim Jones, um, and-

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond35:20

       Mm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman35:20

       -most people perhaps have heard of the Jonestown Massacre. Uh, the top contour of that in my mind is a bunch of people, uh, left the country to follow this cult leader and drank poison, and it was mass suicide. When I hear about cults and I hear about cult leaders, for some reason, I default to thinking more about how impressionable the cult followers were rather than how persuasive the cult leader was. David Koresh and the Branch Davidians was-

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond35:51

       Mm.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman35:51

       -you know, in my mind, the, burned down the, the, the structure, killed everybody inside. And when I hear Koresh's lectures, they, they, they have no impact in persuading me of anything except that he was nuts.

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond36:03

       [chuckles]

    7. AHAndrew Huberman36:04

       When you think about an effective cult leader, I think most people perhaps default to that they're preying on the vulnerable. But is there a, a world where those effective cult leaders could have done something else in the context of regular society and been effective leaders, or is it there's something about the pairing, the dysfunctional pairing of the person prone to be a cult follower and the cult leader?

    8. JDDr. Jared Diamond36:30

       Interesting question. A leader needs personal characteristics that will enable her or him to lead. They may be charisma, they may be being able to terrify people, they may be able to persuade people. On 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 so- 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 the most charismatic people. Hitler. They were the Germans who followed Hitler, were persuaded by Hitler, but the Nazis never got a majority in an election. The mar- 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. Nine hundred, nine hundred and thirty-one 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 that he founded in Indianapolis. The people who followed him were not a random assortment of people. Um, 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 raise, but it also required people who were disposed to be, to be followers.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman38:34

       I didn't realize he led the desegregation of Indianapolis.

    10. JDDr. Jared Diamond38:38

        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 m- many idealistic people in San Francisco, but he was gradually getting more and more crazy. But this illus- illustrates the, the point that you make, which is an interesting point, that one has to inquire not just about leaders, but also about followers, who is disposed to, to follow. Uh, in the case of the Nazis, yes, it was clear that there were Germans who were disposed to follow, to follow Hitler. In the case of Winston Churchill or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, um, my parents voted three times for Roosevelt, and once they voted against Roosevelt. My parents and other Roosevelt were not crazy, sick, sick people. And Winston Churchill, the people who v- who voted for Winston Churchill were not, were not crazy, crazy, sick, sick people. In that case, one cannot look to the pathology or the strange qualities of their, their followers, as one can in the case of Jim Jones.

11. 39:53 – 41:06

    Sponsor: AG1

    1. AHAndrew Huberman39:53

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12. 41:06 – 44:29

    Leaders & Clinging to Power

    1. AHAndrew Huberman41:07

       I realize it's possible to divide leaders or people or animals or anything into different categories depending on where one, uh, decides to, um, slice the line, but 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-

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond41:28

       Mm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman41:29

       or a particular God versus that they are at the, at the top of the pyramid? We'll leave Jesus out of this-

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond41:35

       Mm.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman41:35

       because that, that's an obvious one. But in the case of, like, uh, 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? Uh, and I suppose we could apply this to just pretty much anyone we've discussed or anyone else. Is, is this a, a, an informative dividing line?

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond42:05

       Jim Jones certainly did not, did not deny God and did not, did not claim to be, be superior to God. Here's another one. Are there traits shared by leaders? And I mentioned that, that there are different ways to be an effective leader, charisma, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Um, in, I think it was the third chapter of my book, I have a table in which I pull together 22 outstanding political leaders, um, of the period from World War II onwards. And I asked myself, "What generalizations can we reach about th-these 22 leaders?" The 22 le- the, the obvious, obvious candidate, you can argue about them, but I include, uh, Stalin, Anwar Sadat, Mussolini, Hitler, et cetera, et cetera. I asked myself, "Are there any qualities shared by all of these leaders?" And the surprise for me was that of these 22 leaders, there were only two who stepped down voluntarily. Nelson Mandela, the founding post-apartheid leader of, of South Africa, he 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. All 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. Only two out of 22 did it. So that's a generalization that I had not anticipated.

13. 44:29 – 49:59

    Learning Languages

    1. AHAndrew Huberman44:29

       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-

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond44:47

       Mm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman44:47

       Fatiguing. I mean, you clearly don't slow, but the, uh, uh, you know, but, uh, we'll talk about the fact that you're teaching yourself Italian now. Is that right?

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond44:57

       Yes.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman44:57

       Are you teaching yourself a new language? Did I hear that correctly?

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond45:00

       I learned Italian. Italian was my, the last of my 13 languages. I learned Italian-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman45:04

       Just 13. Yeah

    8. JDDr. Jared Diamond45:05

       ... when I, when I was 61 years old. I read Italian every day. All my leisure reading is in Italian. I don't do leisure reading in English. I read Italian every day, and once a week, I have a two-hour Italian conversation with my Italian professor, who's a professor at USC.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman45:22

       What inspired you to learn 13 languages? Is it fun for you, or do you, a-and/or do you enjoy the challenge as part of the, uh, enticement of learning another language?

    10. JDDr. Jared Diamond45:32

        My mother was a talented linguist. I just love learning languages, and my school required us to, to study Latin for fi- five y- I loved it. Um, we had the alternative of studying electives, either Greek or biology. I figured I'm gonna be doing biology for the rest of my life. I will now take-- So I, I, I spent three years learning G-Greek. I can still recite the beginning of the [speaking Greek] . [laughs] Then, um, in college, um, I learned German just before, my mother helped me with that, just before s- entering college. In college, this was the time of Sputnik, so I learned Russian, I learned Spanish, and then my first summer after college, I spent the summer in Finland. The Finnish language is a non-Indo-European lang- 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. In 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 ex-except Finnish, and I'm with them for several days. They teach me Finnish by demonstrating things. Um, um, cup. They picked up a cup, and 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," pöydällese. When you take the c-cup off the, pöydällestä. So these four Finnish soldiers, they demonstrated for me by putting cups onto and off of. I just loved it, and I seriously considered dropping out of science. Um, uh, I met my-- After I'd been to Finland, I met my, my parents in Paris. They came to Europe, saw them for the first time in a year, and I was w- seriously considering dropping out of science and becoming a simultaneous translate. I was gonna go to Switzerland to become a translator. Fortunately, my, my father, he was, he gently said, "Maybe it's a, maybe it's a bit early to drop. I know your science is frustrating for you now, but you've been doing it for only a year. Why don't you give yourself another six months, and after six months, if the experiments aren't going well, you can be a translator." But I, I loved learning Finnish, and then when I went to New Guinea, New Guinea has 1,000 languages. The first New Guinea people that I worked with were the Fore tribe, uh, famous for kuru laughing sickness, uh, first pr-prion disease. And, um, at that time There was a New Guinea trade la- is a New Guinea trade la called Talk Pidgin, so I commun- was able to communicate with Talk Pidgin. But I just loved learning Fore from, from, from, from a couple of Fore's. And, um, and I re- I remember, um, a-asking my Fore informant, uh, I, I was trying to figure out the word for, for "we." Um, I'd already learned the word for "I," nage. And so I asked my, my Fore informant i-in Talk Pidgin, um, "The, the I nage, so we all the same one, mipela." And he said, th-then he gave me word for, for "we," and then I respond, "Oh, we?" And he said, "No. Nage. Kasigei." It turns out that, that Fore has a dual. English is singular and plural, I and we, but among European la- Slovenian and ancient Greek have a dual, namely separate pronouns for two of us and three of us. So f-for example, um, if, i-if I'm, I'm talking to the two of us, we do this. But if there were a third person here, it would be a different pronoun. In Fore it would be kasi. Long ways, I just loved learning languages. I've always loved languages.

14. 49:59 – 56:41

    Taxonomy, Lists & Names, Studying Birds

    1. AHAndrew Huberman49:59

       It seems you love the puzzle of it. You love the application of it-

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond50:02

       Mm-hmm

    3. AHAndrew Huberman50:02

       ... given that once you learned Italian, you still, um, have these conversations-

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond50:06

       Mm-hmm

    5. AHAndrew Huberman50:06

       ... in Italian for a couple hours a week. Once again, I'm, I'm struck by how th- 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're, it seems you're very comfortable with immense amount of informational diversity within a category-

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond50:29

       Mm-hmm

    7. AHAndrew Huberman50:29

       ... like language or leaders. Most people come in and they try and simplify to clarify, but you have this, uh, it seems your mind goes to, "Let's find a- the widest range of variation possible, and from that we're going to extract some deeper understanding." It's, uh, this may occur to you, but it's a highly unusual way of doing things. I mean, in biology, we have lumpers and splitters, as we say. I teach neuroanatomy, so-

    8. JDDr. Jared Diamond50:53

       Hmm

    9. AHAndrew Huberman50:53

       ... 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?

    10. JDDr. Jared Diamond51:01

        Yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman51:01

        So you have to pick your, your level of analysis.

    12. JDDr. Jared Diamond51:05

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman51:05

        But we tend to put frameworks, nomenclatures, and try and name genes in ways that we can think about other genes that are similar. Your mind works in a very different way, and what I'd like to know is, has it always been that way? Have you looked at the taxonomy of, of stuff in the world and said, "That's crazy. Why do they organize it that way? Maybe we should look at it, uh, through the, the most detailed lens, and from that extract clarity"?

    14. JDDr. Jared Diamond51:32

        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 three years old. And so, so I began keeping a notebook. Uh, I've still got my three-year-old notebook. In my notebook, uh, I made lists. I made lists of the names of rivers, the names of animals, the names of animals of the Rocky Mountains, the names of birds of Europe. I was a lister. This is embarrassing, but I listed the numbers of streetcars on the Boston streetcar system. I had long lists of the numbers of str- I love making lists. Uh, and I've got a lot of mileage i-in, in biology out of making lists. After my PhD, uh, um, I b- I was membrane biologist, and among my contributions to membrane biology, I did the largest study ever carried out of the permeability of biological membrane to uncharged mo-molecules, non-electrolytes. I and, uh, a- and my, my first, um, postdoctoral student, we measured the permeability of rabbit gallbladder to two hundred and ten non-elec- two hundred and ten 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 w-with sulfur groups. So there's lots of detail. Um, I loved the project with those non-electrolytes. Then when I went to New Guinea to start to s- study birds, um, I've been studying New Guinea birds since, since 1964. New Guinea has about six hundred bird species. I've encountered and gotten to, to know most of them. Um, when I'm falling asleep at night, uh, often I'll recite to myself lists of New, New Guinea birds. Sometimes I'll recite them by their Fore names, the mapisena, the pasikegiami, the kenmamitoto, the isuanatava. Sometimes I'll recite them by their, by their Latin names, Sericornis papuensis, Sericornis perspicillatus, Sericornis nuhis. I just love making lists. But one, one of my teachers, one of my influ-influential teachers, Ernst Mayr, the great evolutionary biologist, Ernst Mayr loved making lists. And he and I spent 30 years preparing a book together on the birds of northern Melanesia, the islands east of New Guinea. 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 li- and then we would go over that list, list of all the mountain birds of, of, um, uh, 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 three years old.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman54:28

        It's the exact opposite way that Richard Feynman talked about how to look out at the world. He actually used the very example of if you see a bird in the woods and somebody says, "That's like a whatever, whatever thrush," he said, "Knowing the name doesn't help you understand it, but I'll say, based on spending a lot of time thinking about the names of and the connectivity of different brain structures, often there's a, a way of naming things in a field that actually tells you a lot about the functionality. Like in neuroscience, for instance, we-- the first name in 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-

    16. JDDr. Jared Diamond55:17

        Mm-hmm.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman55:17

        -um, when you're falling asleep, are you also able to call to mind the functional distinctions between these? Is that simply the way that you batch information, or is it that the lists and the names are, are-- have their own unique value that's independent from that?

    18. JDDr. Jared Diamond55:33

        The names are [clears throat] the, the anchor for a lot of information. When I recite at night, Sericornis noatus, Sericornis noatus, um, uh, the lar-large, large scrub wren. What about it? Well, it's the larger of two birds in an altitudinal sequence. Um, it's the larger of two coexisting species which are very similar, so similar that the S-- the Pasciakii and the Mabesaena, I couldn't tell them apart until New Guineans explained to me the differences in, in their behavior. Uh, so there's a lot of information that's associated with the name. In addition, the name itself has it, Sericornis. Sericorn- it, it means that that bird belongs to the genus Sericornis. And in the genus Sericornis, there's also, um, Seri-um, Sericornis virgatus-

    19. AHAndrew Huberman56:24

        Mm-hmm.

    20. JDDr. Jared Diamond56:24

        -which is the low elevation equivalent of Sericornis noatus. But there's also Sericornis perspicillatus, which is the small-bodied s-um, scrub wren that shares the same altitudinal range as noatus. So there's information that goes along with the name.

15. 56:41 – 1:04:55

    Curiosity, New Guinea Birds, Success & Support Across Different Careers

    1. AHAndrew Huberman56:41

       I mean, in the world of science, you and I both know there are people who pick one thing, and they just drill there, sometimes for an entire career or for five or 10 years at a time. And then there are people that try and throw their arms around enormous batches of information. Clearly, you're in the latter category. And so once again, I'll ask, is, was this, uh, always your tendency? You wanted to know all the information?

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond57:03

       Basically, yes. Meaning I've always been interested in, in lots of things. I was fortunate to go to a secondary school that gave me options to, to study lots of things. My secondary sc-- although I expected to go into science, my secondary school had a great history teacher, better, better than all the history teachers I had, had at Harvard College. Wonderful Latin, Latin and Greek teacher. Then once I got my PhD in physiology in Cambridge, England, and returned to the United States, having gotten my PhD in salt and water transport by the gallbladder. In retrospect, I didn't know what I was doing at the time, but i-in retrospect, I realized that I was now understanding with horror that I was expected to devote myself to the gallbladder for the rest of my life. But that just went against everything that I had done from age three onwards. And so I shopped around for another career. Um, I seriously considered making another career in pre-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 bir- become a bird watcher at age seven, and when I came back to Boston after my getting my PhD, in my first summer, I and a college classmate, the college classmate who was a great bird watcher, we spent the summer in Peru. What do you do in Peru? We climb mountains. We watch birds. The next, next summer, we went together to New Guinea. Why? New Guinea's the wildest place in the world. Um, but New Guinea also has the most wonderful birds. And so I developed a second career in birds, and then I developed a third career in history and geography. So I've had three careers. My, my career in laboratory physiology, I eventually closed down in the year two thousand and two. Why? Because when my tw- when our twin sons, my wife and I have twin sons, they were born in nineteen eighty-seven. When our twin sons were born, I realized the future of Max and Joshua is not gonna depend upon gallbladders. It's gonna depend upon history and geog-geography. And so, so gradually, I began spending more of my time in history and geography. I was less interested in gallbladders. And finally, with great difficulty, um, I got UCLA to transfer me from being professor of gallbladder physiology in the medical school to being professor of geography in the college. I've still kept up the, the two careers in history and geography. At the same time as, as I was writing, writing my book on, on leaders, at the same time, I've also been writing papers on my work on New Guinea birds. I think a week ago Friday, I completed a pa-- long paper on the birds of the Wandamen Mountains of Indonesian New Guinea. Next year, I wa- I want to do a paper on the birds of the, the Wahine 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 gonna do with my remaining time? One of the things that I wanna do with my remaining time is to synthesize my work on New Guinea birds by looking at bird distribution on the 10 isolated mountain ranges of New Guinea. What generalizations can I recognize about the birds that are good colonists? So that's what I want to do for next-- the remaining 10 years of my life.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:42

       I have to say that despite having colleagues who have a lot of interests, uh, it's very rare to encounter somebody who's been successful in several different domains of serious You know, scientific exploration, much less writing books about them as well, and did you at some point give yourself permission to move fields? It's not common, as we know, in, in science for people to do that, and if people do it, they tend to do it, um, somewhat cryptically and then-- or gr- and gradually. And maybe this is also, not to pry into your personal life, but, uh, it's one thing to decide, "Well, you know, I'm-- my twins are arriving, and, you know, maybe I'll switch fields." But there's a spouse there who's probably thinking, "Uh, uh, do you have tenure? Uh, how are we gonna pay the bills?" Um, so I imagine, um, there was likely support, or maybe you're just, uh, very defiant and you just follow your curiosity.

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:01:31

       There were the, the, the career issues, and there were the issues of interest. The issues of interest, uh, were that ever since I was three years old, I've been interested in lots of stuff. And I realize in retrospect that, that among, among, among my life crises, uh, o-one of my life crises was after I got my PhD, realizing with horror that I was expected to do one thing for the rest of my life, but that was not me. And it took some effort to carve out a second career in birds. I had a postdoctoral fellowship. Most postdoc-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 postdoctorate fellowship was with a Harvard society called the Society of Fellows. I was a junior fellow at Harvard, and as a junior fellow, I had freedom. I could, I could tell the boss of my biophysics laboratory, "I'm going to New Guinea for three months this summer to study New Guinea birds." I didn't ask his permission. I just said, "I'm doing it." Now, he could have fired me, and he could have said, "Well, if you want to do that, get out of the 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 th- three months. Then when I moved to UCLA, the crucial piece of my negotiation with moving to UCLA, where I was off-offered a, um, professorship, y- uh, associate professorship in the, the physiology department, um, the dean of UCLA was the longest-serving medical school dean in the United-- Sherm Melnickoff, wonderful person. He was offering me a job in the physio-- I told Sherm, "Yes, but I'm interested in New Guinea birds, and you gotta understand that I intend to-- I'm-- the last several years, I've spent three m- three months every summer working on New Guinea birds, and I want to continue my work on New Guinea birds, and if I accept your position, will you tolerate my continuing to work on New Guinea birds?" Most medical school deans would have said, "Get the hell out of here." Sherm Melnickoff said, "Jared, UCLA Medical School is interested in New Guinea birds. I'm gonna give you five thousand dollars every year to spend studying New Guinea birds." And so, so he tolerated it, and he made it possible for me. I'm then fortunate that I had a dean who permitted it. Um, as for, as for my, my wife, Marie, Marie had no problems what-whatsoever with it, 'cause when I met Marie, I was already w-working in New Guinea. In fact, in the dev-development of our relationship, a crucial d- a crucial issue in our, our relationship was that Jared was going off to New Guinea for every three months, and Marie knew what happened in New Guine-- I got nearly killed in New Guinea repeatedly, and, and so Marie had to be willing to, to tolerate that. Um, by the time that our, our kids were born, I had a very secure position in medical school. I was going to New Guinea. When our kids were born, it was not that Marie told me, "Jared, don't go there for three months." It was that, that I realized, "Jared, you're not gonna go there for three months anymore." And so when the kids were born, I reduced my time in New Guinea to one month at a time, and my last New Guinea trip was two thousand and nineteen.

16. 1:04:55 – 1:07:44

    Travel, Intellectual Explorer

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:55

       Yeah, it raises a very interesting, um, feature of adventurous living-

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:05:02

       Mm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:02

       Much less researching and, and living, you know, uh, immersed in a, in a different culture, a different ecosystem, which is that it can be hard on the body to go places that you're not familiar with, eating food you're not familiar with. Most people would think, "Oh, what are you talking about?" You know, you can get a cheeseburger from McDonald's anywhere in the world now, and perhaps that's true. But, um, have you always, um, been willing to put your physical comfort, uh, on the line in order to learn? It's-- I mean, learning languages is hard. Um, putting yourself into a, a jungle environment to-- where there's, um, all sorts of diseases, where there's, uh, political and social unrest. Like, there are a lot of variables-

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:05:44

       Mm.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:44

       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 has that landed with you?

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:05:55

       To work in New Guinea, it's a, it's a ne-necessary evil. Um, it's not-- Until I went to New Guinea, um, I-- Ah, when I was in Peru, the, the prev- the year before I went to New Guinea, my friend and I went to Peru, spent a summer in Peru. We did mountain climbing. Um, we did a first ascent of a seventeen-thousand-foot peak. Being at high altitudes, going straight up from sea level to ten thousand feet, and then three days later going to six- sixteen [clears throat] is miserable. So y-yes, I ex- I experienced physical misery in Peru. In New Guinea, to do anything in New Guinea, there's lots of physical, physical memory-- misery. Um, the food is sweet potatoes and rice th-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, end, ended up with malaria, climbing mountains in, in New Guinea. Being in New Guinea is, is physically miserable most of, most of the time. Occasionally, like, like maybe once in three months, I can s- sit down at campside 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 who have their own ideas about what to do in life. Being 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 mobusane and the poskikiabi.

17. 1:07:44 – 1:14:50

    Birds, Vision & Sound, Ecology; Bird Song, Monkeys

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:44

       Let's talk about birds.

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:07:45

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:45

       Um, the only other two birders, uh, I know from science are Jim Watson-

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:07:52

       Mm-hmm

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:52

       ... um, was-- started off as a birder, ornithologist of some sort anyway-

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:07:58

       Yeah

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:58

       ... decided to solve the str- co-solve the structure of, uh, DNA-

    8. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:08:02

       Mm-hmm

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:02

       ... so he went a different way. Um, and then the late, also late Murray Gell-Mann-

    10. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:08:08

        Mm

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:08

        ... who discovered the quark, as a, I think a two Nobel winner, maybe one No- anyway, smart guy, um, who was obsessed with birds and bird taxonomy-

    12. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:08:17

        Mm

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:17

        ... and bird watching. It's interesting that all three of you have, it, it seems, a, an, a kind of obsession with going after these big-

    14. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:08:28

        Mm

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:28

        ... questions, [chuckles] like entire societies, leadership, um, the structure of DNA, Gell-Mann, let 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, as you, there's this tremendic- tremendous diversity.

    16. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:08:46

        Mm.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:47

        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," and what information, what enrichment is to be gleaned from observing them? I'm, I'm not being disparaging of it.

    18. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:09:03

        Yeah. [laughs]

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:03

        I myself love birds. Uh, in fact, I had the weird and unique opportunity to talk birds with Murray many years ago at a physics meeting. But my knowledge of birds is, like, very, very superficial compared to yours, obviously. So what is it about knowing all these nomenclatures and details about how they move and seeing them in the wild that, what does it inform you about, and what does it celebrate in you?

    20. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:09:29

        What does it in-inform us about, inform me about? Birds inform, inform ornithologists about everything. Bird, birds are the, th- they're the easiest of all animals to observe and to understand. Birds operate by the same senses that, that you and I do. Birds operate by sight and by sound. We humans operate by sight and sound, whereas mammals operate especially by smell. One can't rat watch. Yes, you can watch antelopes, but y- you don't go around watching rats. If you want to understand rats, you have to have a good sense of smell. You ca- catch them in trap. But birds you can watch. And so most of what we know about ecology and evolutionary biology and biogeography and behavior has been learned first on birds and has been learned in most detail about birds, and then that knowledge we can lear- apply to, to other animals. So the things that, that I've written about birds, um, uh, lots about ecology, lots about how birds divide ecological niches, lots about evolution, how bird species evolve in New Guinea, how do you get new species in an undr- 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 could we learn about birds?" Uh, uh, an, uh, honest answer, we can learn everything about birds, and everything in the biological world is easier to learn from birds than about other animals.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:24

        Perfectly acceptable answer. Um, the bird, many birds, um, sing, some speak. I don't know if you're interested in the, the l- language evolution from birds, but, um-

    22. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:11:35

        Mm

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:35

        ... does the name Peter Marler, um-

    24. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:11:37

        Oh, yeah

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:37

        ... mean anything? Yeah, y- uh, he was at Davis when, when I was a graduate student, and I, uh, I-- one of the most interesting observations, i-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 i-- by their-- na-naturally raised, uh, by their bird parents at the Marin Hea- Headlands versus elsewhere, and that there was some innate relationship to, uh, the species. Like, you could swap the young, and they could learn the other location's song, but that they would always learn their location's song best.

    26. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:12:10

        Mm-hmm.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:10

        And I feel like if ever there was a set of scientific fi-findings that kind of converges a number of your interests in language and location and migration-

    28. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:12:18

        Yeah

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:18

        ... it's those Peter Marler studies. If you met, did-- 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?

    30. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:12:28

        Everything. Uh, um, everything. Bird song, um, it's a communication. What are birds trying to communicate? So, so birds are singing. Why are they singing? W-What information are they conveying in the bird s- bird's song? Um, it's been assumed that bird songs are, of males are territorial to stake out territories, but in recent years, uh, 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 psst, psst, psst, a simple call note. When the, when the birds see the hawk, they'll give that call note, and birds then two hundred feet away will hear that call note, and they'll know that the hawk is there before the hawk can fly those two hundred feet. So there's a lot of information in bird songs. That then has inspired, um, similar studies in, in ma-- especially in monkeys. Um, there was a husband and wife couple, um, Seyfarth and, and Cheney, um, who were at UCLA and moved to Pennsylvania. Um, they did wonderful studies on vervet monkeys. Vervet monkeys make grunts. And 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, function as words. There's a grunt that means eagle, and when a monkey co-- 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 python, they look down in the grass. There's another grunt that means leopard. When they hear leopard, they scramble up a tree. So this is example of, uh, the information conveyed by sounds, first in birds and then in, in monkeys.

18. 1:14:50 – 1:16:27

    Sponsor: Function

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:50

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19. 1:16:27 – 1:25:54

    Academic Leadership; Time & His Remaining Projects

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:28

       The layers of sophistication in different animals, I think, is, is really underappreciated. I mean, even for somebody like me as a biologist, you know, it's always pleasantly surprising how sophisticated these other species are. Even if this stuff is hardwired, it's, it's wild. In fairness to your earlier, uh, example where somebody, uh, forgave you for a mistake in the laboratory and you, uh, passed on or you said you were already rather forgiving, propagated that forward. When one of your graduate students or postdocs would walk in and say, "Listen, I realize we work on X, but I want to go work on this other thing," were you tolerant, amused? Because the survival of a laboratory and a research program also depends on people, um, hopping on board the main thrust of questions. I'm just curious. I'm not holding your feet to the fire. I'm just wondering how much, um, adventurousness you tolerated in your scientific offspring.

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:17:25

       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-- had to be a project that interested me because I worked hard to find the funds, and I, I could take only two or three students at a time. Um, a student would be with me for three or four years. Big investment on my part. I would make that invest only, only if it made sense for me. On, on only one occasion did a student tell me that he wanted to have his own project. Uh, there was a, a wonderful Argentinian student, um, who one day came to me and said he had asked around in the physiology department, and he had, he had learned, he had been told that for postdocs, um, it was ex-- the, the norm in the department, he alleged, was that the postdoc would spend half his time working on a project of his advisor and half a time, half the time working on his own project. Now, that was untrue. Uh, but he, he had found another postdoc of whom that was true. Uh, and he, he was a, he was an interesting [chuckles] nice fellow, and I was taken aback. "Okay, you can do your, your own--" And he, he did a, a, a project of his own as well as the project with me. Uh, but that's, that's the only, the only time that I've had a student do a project that did not interest me. Otherwise, the projects have always been projects that interested both, both me and the student. And that's good for the student because for the student, for the student to get my full attention and to learn from me, um, the student can learn from me if it's something that I know about. The student cannot learn from me if it's something that I don't know anything about.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:20

       It's clear because you've told us, and your career demonstrates this, that you have, have had and maintain a lot of interests, de- deep interests and deep curiosity, uh, almost a compulsion to follow them and solve certain things about those for yourself. Uh, before we started recording today, we were having a quick conversation about, uh, one's preference or lack of preference for certain pets, for certain, uh, things in the world, and, uh, we don't have to go into it. Um, it wasn't contentious. Um, but what I was p- so struck by, positively struck by, is how clear you were, w- I think we had met about 20 seconds prior-

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:19:55

       Right

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:55

       ... about the fact that some pets, some things, some topics, um, to you are, in your life, are a diversion.

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:20:05

       Hmm.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:05

       Like, you're just not interested in them. And I think, um, that fits beautifully with being interested in many other things. So this is a somewhat strange question that I'm about to ask, but do you think about time? Like, how much time do I have in life to do this, and did you always think that way? Uh, as somebody who just turned 51, I think about this more and more. But the beautiful thing about an academic career is you sort of know, "Okay, I've got four to six years for this thesis."

    8. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:20:35

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:35

       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." Clear, period, end of story.

    10. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:20:57

        Hmm.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:57

        And it's very refreshing, in fact, because I, um, and it runs countercurrent to this idea that you're interested in everything. You're not interested in everything, if I may.

    12. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:21:05

        Mm-hmm.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:05

        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 gonna be bothered by.

    14. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:21:13

        Mm-hmm.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:13

        Has this always been a feature of you?

    16. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:21:15

        Absolutely not, and, and to give you a preview of coming events of what's a- what's ahead of you, when I turned 80, 80 was not a shock to me. Eighty-one was more of a shock because 81 meant that I was firmly embedded in the 80s. But e- even though I knew perfectly well the, the numbers for life expectancy, um, life expectancy of an American man at birth is something like 78. Life expectancy of an American man who's reached the age of 70, this is not so widely known, when you've reached 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. Um, but in the last couple of years, since I'm, since I'm now 89, I'm very conscious of time left and what I wanna do in the time left. Couple of specific things that I wanna do in the time left are to synthesize my understanding of New Gu- New Guinea has 10 outline mountain ranges. I did the first ascents and the first ornithological explorations of several of them and most detailed explorations of the rest. W- if I don't write that up, that knowledge will die with me because the, those mountain ranges are difficult to get into, and I want to do a, a synthesis l- looking at those 10 mountain ranges to understand what is it that makes a species a good colonist, why some bird, bird species on all 10 mountain ranges and other birds are on only one mountain range. I've got that unique data set, and I wanna, I wanna write that up while I'm still alive. Another thing that, that I've been thinking for quite a while, um, I, I'm musical. I particularly love the music of Bach. Um, I, I sang, I sang in Boston's Handel and Haydn Society. I sang in, in Cambridge's, Cambridge, England's, um, Musical Society. I s- Benjamin Britten came and did the premiere of his Cantata Academica when I was singing in the Cambridge Chorus. So I've, I've, uh, I've been interested, and I've s- 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 later I w- I want to get to know all of those cantatas. A year ago August, I've-- The time has come. The time ahead of me is finite. Better start on the cantatas now. And so I start on the cantatas at the rate of about, about one a week. Um, last night I re-listened to Cantata 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 cantata, but that's something that I would like to do. But I'm very conscious now of the, the amount of time left, and, and I've had that consciousness only in the past few years.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:24:17

        Are there any things that you used to do out of obligat- feelings of obligation that you no longer do that allow you more time for the things and the, the people that are important to you and that you wish you had perhaps permitted yourself to do earlier?

    18. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:24:32

        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, th- there are things that are not pleasure, that have to be done in life.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:24:45

        Sure.

    20. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:24:46

        I spend lots of time, probably I spend at least a month, maybe two months of the year on our income tax returns, which are complicated. I have a pathological tolerance for manipulating numbers, so I, I don't object to doing income tax as much as most other people would do it. Income tax has to be done and takes a lot of my, lot of my time. What else do I do? My father washed the dishes. I wash the dishes together with my wife. Marie does the gardening. I have no interest in gardening. Marie does the gardening. Um, Marie does, does the shopping. Um, I excuse myself by-- And M- 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, and I 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.

20. 1:25:54 – 1:30:46

    Humanity Risks, Population Bomb

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:25:54

       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 Connor, still on the faculty at Stanford. Uh, Paul wrote, of course, The Population Bomb.

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:26:14

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:26:14

       Um, the book, uh, Paul and Sandra wrote the book Jaws-

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:26:19

       Mm.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:26:19

       ... with, I think it had a forward by you and maybe an introduction from-

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:26:23

       Yeah

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:26:23

       ... Bob Sapolsky-

    8. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:26:24

       Mm-hmm

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:26:24

       ... about, um, mouth breathing being detrimental to, um, facial structure development and as well as health perhaps.

    10. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:26:32

        Mm.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:26:33

        And, uh, they called it an epidemic. Uh, there's some interest in, in nasal breathing and apnea and so forth. Paul was a delightful person, as you know. You knew him much better than I did.

    12. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:26:43

        Mm.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:26:43

        But he got some things right, and some people would argue he got certain things wrong. Like the, the population bomb, my understanding was that it would, it argued that we're, we're gonna be badly overpopulated by the time we reach now, and that that was dangerous. Some people would argue that birth rates are going down. The replacement problem is more of an issue. But was he correct about some of the, uh, issues with population growth and environmental impact? This isn't an area-

    14. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:27:11

        Right

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:27:11

        ... that I have any expertise, but, uh, what do you think are some of the places where he was oh-so correct? Because he was an incredibly smart and in, in many ways prescient, um, on some of these topics.

    16. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:27:23

        He was certainly correct that, that the m- biggest threats that humans face today, of course, they include the nuclear risk of exterminating ourselves. Um, I'd say the three biggest risks we face are the nuclear risk, the consequences of inequality in our globalized world. Now anybody anywhere is affected by anybody anywheres else, and that's an invitation to the World Trade towers attack. It's in, in a globalized world, it's dangerous to have inequality. And then the th- the third, the third risk is, of course, the, the risk of running out of resources, destr- 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. There are now, what, nine billion people. Ten thousand years ago, there were probably one million people. One million people on Earth, and now we got nine billion. But what counts is not just the number of people, but the consumption rate per person. The consumption rate per person in the first world has, has gone up, and the result is that we are depleting fisheries, but like four billion of the world's people depend upon fish, seafood for their protein. We're depleting the world's forests. We're depleting the world's topsoil. Paul and his wife, Anne, the book The Population Bomb, called attention to the, to the danger of population growth, and one can now add to population growth multiplied by consumption per person. Paul predicted big dangers within the next few decades. He predicted widespread starvation. If you look at his Wikipedia entry, um, so here's, here's one of the world's great modern scientists, and his to goddamn Wikipedia, his Wikipedia entry instead harps on his book, The Population Bomb, and says it didn't prove correct. Well, out of the nine billion people in the world today, um, how many of them are underfed and starving? Are they starving to death? No, they're not starving to death quickly, but they've got short lifespans, and they're having mis- miserable lifespans because, um, a small fraction of the world's people, um, have first world lifestyle. Even in the United States, th- 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, he got it, got it right, but he got it right in a broader sense than the idiots who attack him are willing to admit.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:26

        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-- A- and I think The Population Bomb still has great-- There's real value in reading it, even if the specific statements, as you s- pointed out, held up differently. It, it's still a, a really important work.

21. 1:30:46 – 1:38:08

    Physical Activity; Sports Leaders

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:46

       We talked about political leaders. We talked about religious leaders and a bit about cults. Sports.

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:30:54

       Hmm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:55

       Are you into sports?

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:30:56

       Am I into sport? Um, I, I Well, I, I, I work out.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:01

       Yeah, you look very healthy. Is that an important part of your intellectual rigor as well?

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:31:05

       I've always been physically active. I began weightlifting in college. Um, I ran for years. The day that my wife was, was in labor and was about to deliver our twins, um, 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 and my, my lun-lunch on the floor. So I, I still work out s-several days a week. Being physically active is a, a, a big part of my, my life. I, I get sat-satisfaction out of it.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:44

       And I think for somebody to do physical exercise nowadays with the intention of, of, um, building and preserving both their mind and body-

    8. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:31:53

       Hmm

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:53

       ... is, is pretty common. But-

    10. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:31:55

        Hmm

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:55

        ... when you were in college, if I extrapolate, uh, that wasn't really talked about. In fact, the separation of intellectual and, and athletic endeavors was kind of a theme. It was like people played sports, right? But working out-

    12. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:32:10

        Hmm

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:32:11

        ... was, was sort of the stuff of, of like military jocks and bodybuilders and running less so, right?

    14. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:32:17

        Hmm.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:32:17

        But I find that all the scientists that I know that have, have had very long, successful careers and are still going strong, all are very physically active and have been for a long time.

    16. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:32:31

        Hmm.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:32:31

        All of them. And the ones who aren't are mostly dead, if I'm honest.

    18. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:32:35

        Right. The great Harvard organic chemist, um, uh, Woodward, R-R.B. 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. And-

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:32:52

        In the lab, presumably.

    20. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:32:53

        I think in bed.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:32:54

        Okay. Well-

    22. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:32:55

        Hmm

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:32:55

        ... better than in one's office or, or lab. So along those lines [laughs] um, athletics and sports. Um, which sport do-- Are you into spectator sports? Um, and w-what led you to explore leaders in, in sport?

    24. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:33:14

        I explored leaders in sports for the same reason that, that business school professors do a lot of their re- much of their research on sports outcomes. In fact, I would say that, that much or maybe even most of the research on sports outcomes is done by business school professors. Uh, the, the re-reason being that, that business school professors are, of course, interested in business outcomes. But business outcomes, they're, they're hard to measure. Um, CEOs tend to be secretive. Businesses m-may not publish their results, or they do publish them every five 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. The players are well-known. Sports is on television. The result is that the methods that business school professors have developed for analyzing CEOs and for analyzing the business world, um, are often developed in sports, and they'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- uh, how much of business success is due to the CEO? And this is a loudly dis- CEOs say, "I'm responsible for the success, and therefore you ought to pay me billions of dollars because my, my company, our company makes $100 billion. But because I'm responsible for that $100 billion profit, you can pay me $10 billion." Is that true? It's complicated to figure out. There are a couple of methods. One involves doing what's called ANOVA, analysis of variance. Analysis of variance applied to sports, uh, shows that roughly 15% to 30% of the variance in sports success is due to the coach, about another 30% is due to players, and about another 30% is due to the institutions. That's in sports. In the business world, it turns out that, that similarly, um, CEOs account for about 30% of ANOVA, and the individual company accounts for another-- Procter & Gamble, very well-run company, 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, whereas departments of water and power tend to be unprofitable. Why? Because they're tightly regulated by, by governments. So ANOVA, 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. So if you fire a CEO because of a losing season, the next year, usually the new CEO has a better season. Why? Because 70% of the variance in sports outcome is due to factors that are random with respect to the CEO. If you're throwing a di- 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. You got one. I- I'm firing you." For statistical reasons, the chance is a five out of six that the next dice thrower will do better than one because there's two, three, four, 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 fa- factors. Um, my university, UCLA, our athletic department is now $150 million in debt. Why? Because we fi- we fired all of our basketball coaches since John Wooden. Um, a- a- and when we fire them, we have to buy out their contract. So buy out their contract, five million, 10 million, $15 million. Similarly, when you fire a CEO, the next CEO is likely to do better for van random reasons, um, as, as with, with dice throwing. That illustrates why business school professors have gotten lots of their insights by analyzing sports.

22. 1:38:08 – 1:44:31

    Coaching Philosophy, John Wooden; Business Leaders, Yvon Chouinard

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:38:08

       How important is a, uh, 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?

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:38:23

       Y- yes, but rarely. So, so John Wooden was, 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, um, including seven in a row. No other college has won more than two national champions in a row. Why was John Wooden so successful? There are many reasons that he was successful. He got his players in peak physical condition. Although his players might be five inches shorter than, than Duke's players, uh, he got his players to jump higher than the, than the Duke players. Um, he was a master of detail. Uh, he cared about what socks that they wore because the socks that they wore affected, you know, h- h- how, how they jumped and how, how they played. Uh, he paid a lot 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. And John Wooden's great players, Bill Walton and Alcindor, 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, that basketball, basketball was a model for life." That's unusual among coaches. Bill 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 that John Wooden was so successful? Partly he was a master of detail, but also because he regarded basketball as a form of living life, and that's something that you can't fake. Uh, yeah, y- you, you can fake and you can learn how to, how to train your players to jump higher, but you can't fake a philosophy of life as John Wooden did.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:40:33

       Is there, um, an analog inside of the... Well, nowadays it seems it's tech CEOs and entrepreneurs. I mean, we have these looming larger than 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, and Bill Gates up 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 are sort of the, the big, whether they like it or not, celebrity technologists that people look at and to for, like, where, where w- where is humanity going-

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:41:15

       Mm-hmm

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:41:15

       ... uh, politics aside. Steve Jobs would-- clearly had a philosophy of creating beautiful things and design and technology being fused in a way that was high, you know, highly accessible, that objects had a friendliness to them or something, even if it was an Apple. So it seemed there was, uh, something philosophical, even slightly mystical there. How do you look at these technology leaders and, um, what do you see? What do you think?

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:41:43

       Bill Gates, I've met him. I've had s- several lengthy co- conversations with, a- and I like him. Um, good experience, my conversation, uh, with him. Um, there are people who've met him under other circumstances who have different views of him. Elon Musk, I met once. Jeff Bezos.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:42:00

       Oh, yeah. So forgive me, I should have mentioned Bezos.

    8. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:42:02

       Yeah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:42:02

       Yeah.

    10. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:42:02

        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 Chouinard of, of Patagonia. For him, as with John Wooden, Patagonia is a model for life. He emphasized having his staff have, have time off. He emphasized Patagonia being sustainable. He had the opportunity to acquire more cotton, produce more, more product. No, he chose not to acquire more cotton because he didn't want, he didn't want to overdevelop cotton agriculture. He is or was a, a full person, not, not just, not just a leading businessperson. He did the first ascent of, uh, the, um, 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? Does Mark Zuckerberg have a philosophy of life? I'm not aware of these big names having a philosophy of life that goes beyond their business. Now, Steve Jobs certainly had a philosophy of life as regards business. When he came back to Apple after he'd been fired the first time and Apple was in difficulty, he was brought back the second time, um, his philosophy w-was that, that Apple, he reduced, instead of Apple producing 100 products, he said, "We should produce four products, and the products should look nice, and they should be attractive, and they sh-should be easy to, easy to handle. They should not be like the remote for my wife's and my TV, uh, to, to watch the World Soccer Cup." Our remote has, what, 47 buttons, and we had to call up our sons each time to, to tell us how to o-operate the remote. So Steve Jobs' devices d-don't have 47, but he, he had a philosophy certainly of products. I don't know whether he had a lo-larger philosophy of, of, of life a-as John Wooden certainly did.

23. 1:44:31 – 1:51:22

    Great Leadership; Advice for Others

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:31

       So we talked about political leaders, religious leaders, sports. You said there's a fourth category that you cover in your book.

    2. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:44:40

       S-So we got political leaders, business leaders-

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:43

       Hmm

    4. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:44:43

       ... sports leaders, and religious. Those are the four category, the f-four categories.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:47

       And business and sport seem to kind of, uh, interdigitate a bit, right, it sounds like.

    6. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:44:53

       The connection between business studies and sports studies has been especially tight, but it's also the case that the, the business school professors who've studied sports, um, have also studied, um, success in politics. So perhaps the, the best single paper that I know on developing new methods for, for studying the success of, of leaders looks at leaders in politics, looks at leaders in business and leaders in s- but it also looks at leaders in politics, and the conclusions that it comes to are that prime ministers make more of a difference than do governors of states, and governors make more of a difference than do mayors. Why? Because prime ministers have more power. Also, dictators make more of a difference than do democratic leaders. Democratic leaders in wartime make more of a difference than do democratic leaders in peacetime because in wartime, democratic leaders are, are, are give-given more power. Um, so the business school professors have also applied their methods to, to, um, politics as well.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:46:15

       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.

    8. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:46:38

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:46:38

       But, um, again, I'm not a psychologist, but it seems that within you, there is or perhaps has always been this almost compulsion to go in a certain direction, but you're, you're structured in how you go about that. You, you didn't just try to do everything at once, and you, you clearly succeeded in each of these domains. Uh, 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?

    10. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:47:05

        I would begin by saying, "Do what you enjoy," but it's got to be broader than that. A friend of mine, the great biologist To-Tom Lovejoy, now unfortunately dead, um, To-Tom told me when, when, when he was a teenager, Tom asked his father, "Daddy, what should I do for a career?" And his father said, "Do something that you're good at. Do something that you enjoy. Do something that makes a difference in the world." What advice would I give people? Perhaps the main advice, because it's what most people do not do, is make sure that you do something that you enjoy, and if people tell you, "No, you gotta do this, this, this," tell them to go to hell. L- L- Literally. So many people say, "You got to, you got to live your life this way. You gotta iron your shirts." When, when I was a grad, I didn't iron my shirts. Um, now someone who irons my shirts, but, but as far as I'm concerned, I, uh, if anyone tells me, "Jared, spend your time ironing your shirts," go to hell. There, there are other things that I wanna do with my time, and whether my sh- 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 s-something that I enjoy? Am I doing something that I'm good at? Yep. Am I doing something that's, that's good for the world? Yeah, I've spent a lot of time designing national, the national park system for Indonesia and New Guinea, designing the principles for national parks in general. I've wr- I've written books a lo- a- 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 the 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 an orchestra. UCLA invited me to conduct the, the orc- and I conducted the orchestra once, and because I cannot anticipate the downbeat, I gave up my desire to be a, to conduct an orchestra, although I would, would've loved doing that. So, 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 for the world, good for the world.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:49:43

        I agree on all, all fronts, not that you need my agreement. Uh, I said there were two questions.

    12. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:49:48

        Mm.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:49:48

        You answered the second question in the process of answering the first question. So, uh, I just wanna conclude by saying thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come share with us and educate us. Um, I'm super excited about Prophets, Profits, Coaches, and Kings: When Do Leaders Matter? Today's conversation only makes me more excited about it. I will say that your, your father, despite his encouragement to, uh, you to continue and become a biologist and not a translator, with all due respect, he partially failed because for me and for millions of other people, you've become a translator of ideas that we would have never encountered or, or considered, and it's inspired a ton of curiosity and learning in me through your books, and, um, today's just a, another extension of that, and I'm sure th- this next book will just continue that. So thank you for not obeying his request-

    14. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:50:42

        Mm

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:50:42

        ... and at the same time obeying his request. I really appreciate your time in coming here today, and hopefully we'll do it again.

    16. JDDr. Jared Diamond1:50:48

        Thank you. I've enjoyed it a lot, um, talking with you. You know, for, uh, you, you know yourself. For, for writing book, um, one, one does interviews and podcasts, and interviewers differ. They're not all the same. Like, some interviewers are, um, better prepared than other interviewers. Some 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.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:51:19

        Well, thank you. The pleasure was mine, and we'll do it

24. 1:51:22 – 1:53:19

    Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:51:22

       again. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Jared Diamond. To learn more about his work and his recent book, Prophets, Profits, 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. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab Podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am hubermanlab on all social media platforms, so that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab Podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab Podcast. Again, it's hubermanlab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network Newsletter, the Neural Network Newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one- to three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the Menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to Newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank 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. [outro music]

Episode duration: 1:53:20