Speaker 1Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. History, to me, has always been one of the most intimidating academic subjects, just because it's at the opposite end of physics in the simplification scale. If you think about how many things happened in any one historical period, literally the number of events that you could potentially write down and record, well, it's infinite, or it's essentially infinite. If you think about every single person doing everything that they're doing, history has to be a story of picking and choosing, certain things being important and certain things being unimportant. And it's more than just picking ones that sort of are popular or whatever. When we say what's important, what's unimportant, we're trying to be explanatory. We're trying to tell a story that makes sense of history. Why did this happen? What might we learn from this particular thing? happening at that particular point in time? And once you start doing that, once you start asking, like, why did this happen? Why did that happen? There's one obvious question that comes up over and over again, not yet completely settled, of course, which is the relative importance of individuals, right? The great man theory of history, or at least the idea that one plucky, charismatic, right place, right time, individual person can make choices that have a huge impact. The historical trajectory that goes from there, versus the idea that actually they don't. Like, maybe we tell stories of presidents and kings and generals and scientists and whatever, but really, even without those individuals, things would have happened almost exactly the same. It's very hard to tell, because we only have one historical record, right? We can't actually run the parallel universes and see what's going on. So one of the voices that you might sometimes hear in this debate about grand historical history is that there's this one person who's talking about the historical deterministic forces versus plucky individuals is today's guest, Jared Diamond, who's a professor at UCLA who, I'm not sure I'm going to get this right, I believe he started as a professor of physiology and then moved into geography. We talk a little bit in the podcast about what it means to be a big picture interdisciplinary scientist. And of course, he had a very famous book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, back in the '80s. So I'm going to go ahead and talk about that a little bit, because I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. Jared Diamond: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. story where individuals didn't make much of a difference in that big picture sweep. So he's written many books since then, but the new book is called Prophets, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings. When Do Leaders Matter? And there's some, I need to explain the title because you can't look at it. You can only hear me saying it. The two first words, prophets and prophets, are spelled P-R-O-F-I-T-S, as in money, P-R-O-P-H-E-T-S, as in religious leaders. And also the, When Do Leaders Matter? Subtitle, the word when is in parentheses. So it's also asking simultaneously, do leaders matter at all? So, you know, don't take the title incorrectly. It's not like a self-help book to be a good leader. It's asking the historical question, when do presidents and generals, but also CEOs and religious leaders, and for that matter, sports leaders like coaches, when do they matter? How much do they matter? How much is luck? How much is design? And all of that. So you'll be unsurprised to hear the answer is, it's complicated. Sometimes the answer is complicated. The leaders do matter, Diamond argues, but they don't always matter completely. And whether or not they're going to matter is going to depend a lot on the situation they're in. But that's okay. We love the complications here at the Mindscape Podcast. We're going to dig in and figure out what those complications are, figure out when these people matter and when they don't. So let's go. We'll be right back. And I'll put a link to the book, of course, in the show notes. But famously, you've written other books. And I wanted to kind of use your previous books just as an intro to get into the new one. So many of us have read Guns, Germs, and Steel, for example. That was a big hit. Could you tell us both, for those who haven't read it, what the basic idea of that book was? And then how do you think about it a certain number of years later?
Speaker 2Sure. Guns, Germs, and Steel is about the question, why are you and I now speaking English, you and I of evidently European background, while we are standing on the land of Native Americans? Why did it work that way? Why is it not the case that the Aztec Emperor Montezuma came to Europe and imposed a language on all of Europe, and the last Europeans are living somewhere up in the out? Why did history turn out? Why did history turn out that way? The reason that it's really the biggest question of history. The reason why it's a personal question for me is that I've worked in New Guinea studying birds and evolution and setting up national parks since 1964. And when I first went to New Guinea in 1964, New Guineans were known as so-called traditional people. That's the saying. Living by a lifestyle. Living by a lifestyle that humans had practiced for millions of years. New Guineans then did not have writing. They did not have metal tools. They had stone tools. They did not have state government. Why did it turn out that way? Why were New Guineans so-called, quote, primitive people? Although you wouldn't say that. And so I went out to New Guinea, naive. At that time, nobody understood why it did work that way. Why did it turn out that way? I went out expecting to find that New Guineans were different. And there was something about New Guineans that explained why no writing was stoned or metal tools. And it took me about one day to realize that it was literal. One day, New Guineans are every bit as smart, if anything, smarter and more curious than Europeans. And the reason why New Guinea did not develop writing, et cetera, had nothing to do with New Guineans' brains. There was some other explanation, but I didn't know the explanation. Historians didn't know the explanation. That question had been on my mind for decades. And that was the subject of my second book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, which it took me 34 years after I started to work in New Guinea to figure out the answer, which I think, with due respect, is the correct answer. And what's the answer? The answer is it has nothing to do with human brains, and it has everything to do with the environment. Different environments offer different things that are the basis of the human population growth and human reserve capacity, human excess food. We could feed people. We need to come full-blown legal. We could feed people. We need to come eat dentures and defeat business eat, figure out how to make marks to count sheep, and that developed the writing system. Just as an example, Australia, Aboriginal Australia, the only continent where in modern times there was no agriculture. Why? It's not that Aboriginal Australians, there's anything wrong with Aboriginal Australia. It's that to them, to this day, there is no Australian animal or plant that has been domesticated. European farmers coming to Australia have tried to domesticate kangaroos and it doesn't work because of kangaroo social system. So that's why Aboriginal Australians remained without writing or centralized government or metal tools. Whereas as the contrast case, the areas of the world with the most valuable wild plants and animals that were suitable for domestication, suitable for agriculture, which meant food surpluses, which meant food to feed proto-kings and proto-inventors, the richest place is the Fertile Crescent of Eastern Mediterranean, because that's where you have the wild ancestors of cow, sheep, goat, pig, horse, the five most valuable animals to this day. Cow, sheep, goat, pig, and horse, they were domesticated beginning 11,000 years ago. And the Fertile Crescent was also the area with the most valuable wild plants. Wheat, the three different wheats, and peas, and beans, and lentils. So the hunter-gatherers of the Fertile Crescent 11,000 years ago got a head start on agriculture. Close behind were China. A little further behind were Mexico, with great plants such as corn and tomatoes, but without big domesticable animals. The Andes, and then smaller areas of origins of agriculture were the Indian subcontinent and New Guinea, beloved New Guinea. There was sugar cane, and yams, and bananas, and then three parts of Africa. So a long-winded way of saying this. The reason that you and I are speaking English and not Nahuatl has everything to do with the wild plants and animals of the Fertile Crescent, which gave rise to Fertile Crescent civilization, which got carried into Europe and gave rise to European, quotes, civilization.
Speaker 1Well, I noticed, though, that the people of the Fertile Crescent do not rule the world right now.
Speaker 2That's right. There were things that happened. The Fertile Crescent had weak advantages. Those advantages were the domesticable plants and animals. Once those domesticable plants and animals spread, and they spread quickly, they spread to Europe, they spread eastwards, some of them, sheep and preats, spread to China. Once those advantages of the Fertile Crescent had spread out, the Fertile Crescent was left with no unique advantages. But apart from those domesticable plants and animals, the Fertile Crescent, even today, is not the greatest place. It's dry. It required irrigation. It's prone to salinization. And so the Fertile Crescent, once its advantages got spread with the rest of the world, Fertile Crescent did not have any of that and fell behind.
Speaker 1And I remember reading the book years ago and really enjoying it. The one, it generated a lot of controversy, as I'm sure you know. And I thought that, you know, some of it was interesting. Some of it was less salient. The one thing I never quite came to an understanding myself is, so if you compare, Europe, which sort of did win in some sense, this competition, versus places like India or China, it wasn't clear to me why, amongst those places that sort of all had all the advantages, why one came out ahead of time versus the others.
Speaker 2Europe initially had no advantages with regard to agriculture. The only thing significant domesticated in Europe, I believe that poppy, poppies were domesticated. You don't find a world civilization based on poppies, but Europe is immediately adjacent to the Fertile Crescent. So the Fertile Crescent plants and animals, already 8,000 BC, spread from Turkey into Greece, then spread quickly across Europe. Europe then had advantages on the question you raised, why Europe and why not India? Because Fertile Crescent stuff also spread to India, and some of it spread to China. Europe has geographic advantages that persist to this day. Europe fronts on the Atlantic Ocean. India does not front on the Atlantic Ocean. Europe has this huge inland, the world's biggest inland sea, the Mediterranean, which was a practice ground for shipbuilding and sailing. And so Europeans were prepared with the ships they developed. Once they started poking out into the Atlantic, on the other side of the Atlantic was the New World, and Europeans already in 1500 rounded the tip of Africa and came up to India. The part of the world that came closest to Europe in developing ships and going around the world was China. China had big fleets with bigger ships than Europe between 1400 and 1432. In 1432, China abolished it. Europe never did that. Why? Because China had one emperor. And that one emperor, the Chinese fleets, China had everything that it needed. The emperor eventually in 1432 said, "These expensive fleets, they're bringing us back white giraffes, but we don't need white giraffes. There's nothing. China has everything that we need." So the emperor abolished the fleets. Whereas in Europe, because Europe began for geographic reasons, because of its peninsulas and its islands and its rivers, it was abolished. And that was the first time that China abolished its big fleets. The first time that China abolished its big fleets, it was abolished its big fleets. The second time that China abolished its big fleets, it was abolished its big fleets. Europe never did that. Why? Because China had one emperor. And that was the first time that China abolished its big fleets. Because Europe began for geographic reasons, because of its peninsulas and its islands and its radially flowing rivers and its mountains. And Europe has always been fragmented politically. To this day, Europe is fragmented politically. But fragmentation, you might think that unity would be invented. No. Fragmentation means that there are different polities that are competing with each other. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. Europe is fragmented politically. But fragmentation, you might think that unity would be invented. No. Fragmentation means that there are different polities that are competing with each other. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. 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Speaker 2And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. And that's why Europe is fragmented politically. and the three countries of the south coast, almost all of them are richer than any of the countries in the middle, although the countries of the North Coast, like Egypt and now, they're not famous for great institutions and the most superb government, but they're in the temperate zone, where the rest of Africa is in the tropics. The tropics have geographic disadvantages. They have tropical diseases, notably malaria and yellow fever and others, sleeping sickness. The tropical soils have low productivity, compared to the high productivity of the soils of the temperate zone. So that's one serious disadvantage of geography in Africa today. The other disadvantage... Again, take that map of Africa and put the numbers for per capita income. What you'll see is that the inland countries of Africa, the countries that don't have any seacoast, almost all of them are poorer than almost any one of the countries with seacoasts. Why? Because if you've got a seacoast, transportation by sea is seven times cheaper per mile per kilogram than transportation over land. But all of the inland countries of Africa have to transport by railroad or truck or by airplane, but that's much more expensive. So does geography make any difference today? Yes. Geography is part of the reason why Africa is poor and why the inland countries are poorer. And why the tropical countries of Africa are poorer. Okay, very good. I do encourage all of the listeners out there who haven't read the book to read it. It's a fascinating view of the big scale history of the world. Actually, which makes me think, let me ask this slightly off-kilter question, because
Speaker 1we joked about, you know, not everyone agreed with the book when it came out, right? There's people who are going to disagree. And part of that is just, you're trying something so ambitious, and you're trying to get people to agree with it. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key.
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Why Mendel? On military history, do generals make a difference? So Tolstoy's War and Peace is virtually dedicated a theme that generals don't make a difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They give orders, but in the lines, they don't hear the orders. And then, of course, social protest. Did Mahatma Gandhi make a difference? Did Martin Luther King make a difference? So I look, in my current book, I look at leadership in these different spheres. And yes, there are common themes. And also, interestingly, the methods, the understanding of when where the sports coaches make a difference has been developed, especially by professors of business school, because similar questions arise in business and in sports. But sports is much better for looking at questions of leaders, because in sports, you see the results every week. In business, you either never see the results or you see them every five years. Sports are on the sidelines, bouncing up and down, whereas who knows what Bill Gates was doing.
Speaker 1I guess the reason why I thought in my mind to connect it to collapse was one of the formative podcast conversations I had many years ago when I started this was with Edward Watts, who is a historian of Rome. And he was talking about the fall of the Roman Republic and its replacement by the empire. And he placed a lot of emphasis on these two brothers, the Grocchi brothers. I don't know if you're familiar with their story. But I asked him, I said, why are you saying that these two people... mattered so much? Haven't we gotten beyond that? Don't we no longer believe in the great man theory of history? And his answer, which stuck with me was, I think that most of the time, if you're in a healthy system, the individual is not going to matter. But when the system is weak, an individual pushing one way or the other can make all the difference. Is that something that jibes with
Speaker 2your experience having written this book? That's an interesting formulation. The Grocchi brothers was my background. In school, my background was in classics. When I went to Harvard major in biochemistry for three years, I'm proud to say I won the classics prize for three years. So the Grocchi brothers, I don't have an opinion about. Augustus and Julius Caesar, I think we can make an argument for. But it's difficult to make a strong argument in the past, because we just don't have the richness of information we have. At present, in the politics section of my book, I discuss only politicians in the last, from 1940 onwards, because we have rich documentation from photographs and then from television. I cut off at 2000. I do not say anything about Angela Merkel or Donald Trump, because we can't pass judgment. The story is not finished. The politicians that I looked at were politicians from 1940 to 2000, where we have a rich database. And there, yes, one can tell biographies. In the case of the Grocchi brothers, yes, there are biographies of the Grocchi brothers. But who knows whether the biographies are biased and da, da, da, da, da. But in modern times, yes, we have the method of biography. But we have another powerful method, the method of natural experiments. I understand that your background includes physics. It does. And physicists do manipulative experiments. I, as a gallbladder physiologist, did manipulative experiments. I dipped my gallbladders in potassium solutions or sodium solutions. We could do manipulative experiments. But in politics, it's not possible. And if it were possible, it wouldn't be legal. It wouldn't be legal. It wouldn't be nice to do manipulative experiments. We could learn a lot about whether Hitler made a difference if we could have, say, 20 time machines and 20 worlds, and 10 of which Hitler died, and 9 of them, and 10 he didn't die. Or we could learn a lot today if we could experimentally kill half the leaders in the world. If that's not nice, we could do it. But the fact is that of the world's leaders, it's a significant fraction. They have either died natural deaths in office. Since World War II, there have been, I think, something like 85 leaders who died natural deaths, especially heart attack, cancer, drowning like Harold Holt, falling off a horse to deserve. But there are also leaders who have been assassinated. A significant number, I think 57 leaders, have been assassinated. And you can use those as natural experiments. You can compare what happened in countries where a leader died of a heart attack. Harold Holt: Or got assassinated. And you compare those with 200 countries where the leader did not die of a heart attack. That's what's called a natural experiment. Natural experiments are what I've had to use in New Guinea to study New Guinea birds. I'm not permitted to run around locally exterminating New Guinea birds. But I can compare mountains in New Guinea that happen to have the lower mouse babbler with mountains that happen to not have the lower mouse babbler. And I can look at the effect on the mountain mouse babbler to have or not to have the lower mouse babbler. Those are natural experiments. And that's the method, a relatively new method in social science. It's a powerful method with its own problems that has given the most insight into leaders in politics, business, sports, and even religion.
Speaker 1Trevor Burrus: What you say reminds me a lot of your UCLA colleague, Judea Pearl, who is a professor at the University of New Guinea. She's a professor at the University of New Guinea at the University of New Guinea. She's a professor at the University of New Guinea at the University of New Guinea. She was a former guest on the podcast, who really helped me understand how a lot of causal analysis can be hidden in the actual data. And you, in principle, have to do experiments to extract it. And in practice, in social sciences, you often have to rely on these happy parallelisms between different things happening that are sort of natural experiments, like you said.
Speaker 2Judea Pearl: Right. Let me give you an example. Trevor Burrus: Okay. Judea Pearl: Sure. Trevor Burrus: This is an example of a natural experiment. Judea Pearl: Sure. Trevor Burrus: This is in the business world, a standard question in the business world. Do CEOs, the heads of company, do they make a difference? They claim they do, and that's how they justify they're getting paid a million or a hundred million or a trillion dollars. But students of business have debated whether CEOs really make a difference. Judea Pearl: Yes, they do. Trevor Burrus: Okay. Judea Pearl: Well, there are a couple approaches to it. One is statistical analysis of variance. You can look what happens when a leader, when a business leader gets transferred, gets fired, and goes to another company. You can then see, you can look at the effect of leaders separately from the company, and you can do an analysis of variance to separate statistically the effect of leader, of the year, of the time. Judea Pearl: Okay. Trevor Burrus: Okay. Judea Pearl: Of the industry and of the particular company. That's one method. The other method is the natural experiment. In the business world, if we could experimentally kill leaders, well, that's not nice. If we could experimentally make them sick, that's also not nice, although it's not terrible. If we could experimentally make them sick, make them unhappy, distract them, how can we get them distracted? If we were an all-powerful experimenter, we could get CEOs distracted, by killing their only child, or killing their spouse. That gets them really distracted. Or we could kill their sibling. Psychologists will tell you that the death of a sibling isn't quite as bad, but it's the next worst thing to death of a spouse or child. Or we could kill their parent, less bad than killing their sibling. Or we could kill their parent and more. Well, again, it's not nice to... But it happens as a natural experiment. And the data are very good. In Denmark, Denmark has something like 78,000 companies. And the Danish government has public statistics on all those companies and their CEOs. In addition, in Denmark, if you go into a hospital, if you get hospitalized, or if you die in the hospital, it's part of public record. So business school professors in Denmark just punched in the keys, and they found out for the CEO of every one of those 78,000 companies in Denmark, whether the CEO's child, or only child, or spouse, or brother or sister died. And if so, the CEO gets very distracted, or less, or still less distracted. And it turns that when a close relative of a CEO dies, the company's profits take a hit for a year or two because the CEOs distract and CEOs do make a difference. The biggest hit is if an only child or a spouse dies. The next biggest hit, if a sibling dies. The lowest hit is if a parent dies. And if the mother-in-law dies, the only death in the family that improves the profits of the business is the death of mother-in-law, but it's not statistically significant. That's an example of a natural experiment. We can't go around killing relatives, but relatives die all over the place. And we can use that information, the effect on the company to see the effect of distraction of the CEO.
Speaker 1And what's nice about this is it's not just qualitative. You're going to be able to say, or at least you're going to aspire to say, how much of the success or failure of a company can be attributed to features of the leader.
Speaker 2That's right. For example, one detailed study by a social scientist, Alison McKay, I think was her name. She looked only at companies where a CEO was transferred from one company to another. And so, that was not the entire database, but part of the database. And what she concluded from those CEO transfers, if CEOs, if there are good CEOs and bad CEOs, a CEO transferred from one company to another may do well at both companies. And so, you can then sort it out. Her conclusion was that CEOs account for about 30% of the variation in profits, and that the industry, some industries are more profitable than other industries. For example, perfume manufacturing or teenage t-shirts, that's a profitable industry. Whereas public utilities, it's so tightly regulated, it's not a terribly profitable industry. So, Alison McKay found that 30% of the profits are due to the leader, something like 20% each are due to the industry and 20% to the individual company. Procter and Gamble has been a well-run company for 150 years. And even within its industry, soap, et cetera, industry, Procter and Gamble is a relatively profitable company. And then the effect of different years, yes, there are depressions, but on the average, the year accounts for only about 3% of the variation in profits. That was Alison's study. Based on CEOs who switch companies, if you relax that requirement for CEOs to switch companies, you have a larger database. And in that case, you end up with a lower effect of CEOs. You can prove that CEOs account for maybe 15%, and that the industry and the individual company account for somewhat more, 20%. But what we can say is that on the overall, the industry and the individual company account for somewhat more, 20%. But what we can say is that, on the overall, CEO and the individual company account for somewhat more, 20%. But what we can say is that, on the overall, CEO and the individual company account for somewhat more, 20%. But what we can say is that, on the overall, CEO and the individual company account for somewhat more, 20%. But what we can say is that, on the overall, CEO and the individual company account for somewhat more, 20%. But what we can say is that, CEO and industry and company have major effects of comparable size, and the smallest effect on the average is of the year. Naturally, in 1930, the depression- It was back here. Back here, from 2008 and 2002. But on the average, the year makes less of a difference than these other things.
Speaker 1So it's interesting you mentioned CEOs switching companies, because as you were speaking, I was thinking, how do you disentangle the impact of a competent CEO from the impact of a competent structure that chose a good CEO that would have been there anyway?
Speaker 2Let's think how to answer that. A competent structure that chooses a good CEO. I'm hard-pressed to think of a major company that has had an unblemished or even a pretty good CEO, but I can't think of a major company that has had an unblemished or even a pretty good CEO. I'm hard-pressed to think of a major company that has had an unblemished or even a pretty good CEO. I'm hard-pressed to think of a major company that has had an unblemished or even a pretty good CEO. I'm hard-pressed to think of a major company that has had an unblemished or even a pretty good CEO. That has had an unblemished or even a predominantly good CEO. I'm serious about that.
Speaker 1Yeah. No, I get it.
Speaker 2Time and time again. So I would say that's a very minor consideration.
Speaker 1Okay. Good to know. All right. This is super helpful. And so we're rolling up our sleeves and trying to get into this world. I always say at this point in the podcast, thank goodness I'm a physicist, because things are so much cleaner and easier to understand, and your data is much messier, but it's fascinating. So let's go back to the beginning of your book. At the beginning of your book, you tell us the story of a 1930 car crash that could have killed Hitler. And would that have made the world a different place? So we'll allow for spoilers here. What is the answer
Speaker 2to that? I have to say, and this may sound shameless, but I just received the day before yesterday, the bad ones in my book. I received two copies, and one of those copies was immediately sequestered by one of my sons, leaving me one copy. But last night before going to sleep, I just browsed the beginning of my book. Of course. And I had a lot of distance on it. It had been some time since I read it. And my book had its ups and downs. There was a time when I was discouraged and I was thinking of a bad book. So I have some distance. And when I read the book last night, that's good. First paragraph of the book is that on a date, I think in March of 1930, there was a car accident. Hitler was being driven by his chauffeur. Hitler was in the right passengers. Hitler's seat of his chauffeur-driven car going into an intersection. And by chance, at right angles to Hitler's car, came a big truck. The Hitler chauffeur and the truck driver ultimately braked and accelerated to avoid the crash. The truck nevertheless struck Hitler's car on the right side, the side with Hitler, and pushed it across the intersection up onto a barrier at the far side. And if the truck had been going a bit faster, it would have run over Hitler and Hitler would have died. In fact, the truck stopped just enough short. Hitler was somewhat wounded. He shouted to the people in the backseat, "Everybody okay?" But he survived. If Hitler had died in 1930, Hitler came to power in March 1933. If Hitler had died in 1930, I asked, "Would we still have the Holocaust and World War II that killed 50 million people?" Hitler was clearly a distinctively evil person who not only was anti-Semitic and killed a few Jews and pogroms, but he had industrial-scale killing of Jews and other people. Hitler was clearly a distinctively evil person who not only was anti-Semitic and killed a few Jews and pogroms, but he had industrial-scale killing of Jews and other people. Hitler was clearly a distinctively evil person who not only was anti-Semitic and killed a few Jews and pogroms, but he had industrial-scale killing of Jews and other people. Hitler was a mesmerizing speaker. Hitler was a genius at sizing and deceiving people. Hitler deceived Neville Chamberlain. He deceived so many foreign politicians. He deceived German generals and German business people. He deceived his fellow Nazis. He was a brilliant deceiver. And he was a wisp-taker. He was convinced that he was going to die early, and so he wanted to do things quickly, and so he took risks. Some of the risks paid off, like the march into the Rhineland in World War II. Some of the risks did not pay off: the decision not to evacuate Stalingrad and the decision to launch the Battle of the Bulge. So Hitler was a distinctive person. One can argue, therefore, that Hitler made a difference. But the other side of it is that Germany lost World War I, and the Treaty of Versailles imposed stringent conditions on Germany. The 1923 hyperinflation in Germany destroyed Germany's middle class, and it resulted from the occupation of the Ruhr by the victors of World War I. So one can say that any leader of Germany, after World War I, a prime objective would have been to undo the effects of World War I. Germany had Strasbourg, the foreign minister Strasbourg, sought to undo the effects of World War I peacefully. Hitler sought to undo the effects by war. What it means, then, is that it's a big question: did Hitler make a difference, or did Hitler not make a difference? Even historians disagree. Probably most historians view Hitler as uniquely evil, but a famous British historian, A.J.P. Fitt-Taylor, one of the most famous British historians, wrote a book in which, without discovering any significant new facts about Hitler, he retold the story of Hitler's life, And he said Hitler was a normal German politician with normal goals of undoing the effects of World War II. And he was a normal person. When Hitler fired his two top generals in 1937, he fired them because one of them was accused of homosexuality. And according to A.J.P. Taylor, Hitler was genuinely morally outraged that this general was homosexual. And so Hitler fired this general. Well, it's difficult for most people to imagine Hitler being genuinely outraged about anything. A.J.P. Taylor is a famous historian. Anyway, that's an open question. Did Hitler make a difference?
Speaker 1Okay, good. But it sounds like, you know, in the world of arguments we could make, we could make an argument that World War II would have happened even without Hitler. But maybe it would have been a very, very different war overall.
Speaker 2Right. And that people often ask me, Jared, can you summarize in one sentence the conclusion of your book? My first war, oh my God, summarize my 390-page book in one sentence. But there are some general lessons that one can come to from the book. I'm leading. Leaders sometimes make a difference. There are various ways in which they can make a difference. There are some leaders who are uniquely qualified to do some particular thing. And, in fact, my second chapter is about the founding president of Botswana, Tsaretsi Kama, who Botswana was for a while after independence the fastest growing economy in the world. Tsaretsi Kama, its founding president, was uniquely qualified. Why? Because Botswana on independence had only 21 university graduates. If you're founding president, it helps to be a university graduate. He was one of them. In addition, he had been educated in the United Kingdom. He had a British wife. So he straddled both worlds, the European world and the African world. He was the chief. He was the chief of the biggest tribe in Botswana, and so when he, upon independence, said, "Let's abolish the power of the chiefs," he was the only chief, as the strongest chief, who could get away with abolishing the power of the chiefs. And similarly, diamonds were found in Botswana on the land of his tribe. Any other tribe would have said, "Those diamonds are ours. They are not Botswana's." But Tsaretsi Kama, as the chief of the most powerful tribe, on whose land the diamonds were found, he could say, "Those diamonds are the property of Botswana, not of my chiefdom." So he was uniquely qualified to be a leader. So there are other leaders, a few leaders, not many, who are uniquely qualified to be leaders. There are other leaders who are not uniquely qualified but who do things in an indistinctive way. There are other leaders who are not uniquely qualified but who do things in an indistinctive way. There are other leaders who are not uniquely qualified but who do things in an indistinctive way. There are other leaders who are not uniquely qualified but who do things in an indistinctive way. There are other leaders who are not uniquely qualified but who do things in an indistinctive way. For example, if we turn back to the business world, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Bezos founded an everything store, Amazon, is Jeff Bezos the only person who could have founded an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store. But there were other leaders who founded other. Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store?
Speaker 1Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store?
Speaker 2Well, there are 350 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Well, there are 300 million Americans, and you can't make an argument that Jeff Bezos was uniquely qualified to found an everything store? Argentina probably would have won the penalty shootout. But the Argentine coach had not trained his players not to incur penalties. And so all the yellow cards without exception, all the yellow cards were Argentinos. Spain did not get a single yellow card. And when Mordor, the Argentine player, got the second yellow, that was a red card. Argentina went down from 11 to 10 players, and Spain was able to score. So that's an example yielding a non-obvious conclusion that at least in American football, the biggest effect of the coach is not in telling the quarterback to throw a forward pass, but instead is in training the players not to fumble and not to incur penalties. And that conclusion was reached not by sports analysts. It was reached by public policy business school professors. The reason is that the waterfall sports is so good that business school professors, test their methods by looking at sports outcomes.
Speaker 1Well, exactly. Sports is the most hyper data analyzed aspect of our lives, because it's both we collect all the data, but then we also publish it. It's in the newspapers every morning, right? And it's a wonderful playground for that. So my next question would be, since we can study the coaches so quantitatively, have we learned anything that translates to these other areas that you're talking about, politics? And business and so forth, from thinking about what makes a good coach?
Speaker 2Yes, yes, indeed. The methods used in the last 20 years to figure out whether CEOs make a difference were developed by, especially by business school professors who tested their methods on sports. And then, they applied those methods to the business world. So, for example, what I was just relating to you, that an American football coach has his or her biggest effect by teaching players not to incur penalties or not to fumble. The authors of that paper were two public policy, they were not sports analysts. They were public policy professors who developed methods, developed sophisticated statistical methods on sports. And they were not sports analysts. They were public policy professors who developed methods, developed sophisticated statistical methods on sports. And they were public policy professors who developed methods, developed sophisticated statistical methods on sports. And they were public policy professors who developed methods, developed sophisticated statistical methods on sports. And they were public policy professors who developed methods, developed sophisticated statistical methods on sports. And they were public policy professors who developed methods, developed sophisticated statistical methods on sports. And they were public policy professors who developed methods, developed sophisticated statistical methods on sports. And they for testing the effects of sports coaches, and then they applied those methods to testing the effects of CEOs and of politicians. And they found that those methods that worked for coaches also worked for politicians. For example, it turns out that within the United States, governors of states have more power, make more of a difference than do mayors of cities. Mayors of cities, they're severely constrained. In my city, Los Angeles, most Los Angeles, they don't even bother to vote. We have an election coming up, and the turnout of Los Angeles voters and mayor elections is only 20%. Why? Because we know that the mayor doesn't make that much, the mayor doesn't have that much power. But that insight, that quantitative insight, comes from business school professors who debug their methods on sports coaches.
Speaker 1I want to go back to the picture. Because I want to make sure that I get it clearly. The claim is not that the most important part of winning is having fewer penalties. It's that where coaches have the most leverage is in training their teams to have fewer penalties. That's right. The biggest difference between
Speaker 2coaches, naively, if you ask someone in sports, what's the difference between successful and not successful? Most people would say, well, it's in knowing when, how often to throw a forward pass. And it's true that a forward pass, an 85-yard touchdown with a forward, boy, that's really exciting. But what has a bigger, what a coach does that has bigger effect on the outcome of the game is by getting his players not to fumble and not to incur penalties.
Speaker 1That is very good. One point. And I guess, you know, we're near the hour mark of the podcast now. So finally, we can hit the fourth category right there in your title, which is the fun one, which is religion. Obviously, religion is part of the apotheosis of the charismatic leader, right? Like you can have a boring technocratic leader in a sports team or a business, but almost by definition, your religious leader is going to have some charisma there. So what are the similarities and differences, you think?
Speaker 2Starting with the differences, perhaps the biggest difference is the one that you just mentioned. For a religious leader, a religious leader has to have charisma. In the business world, or in the political world, it's often said that charisma is important. But sometimes yes, and sometimes no. Among, yes, Hitler was charismatic. Winston Churchill was charismatic. Augusto Pinochet of Chile was not, nobody would call him charismatic. So charisma is one way to get ahead in the political world. But there are other ways. You can instead terrify people. You can be good at guiding group discussions. You can, there are other ways to be in fact a political leader. But in the world of religion, you have to be charismatic. But someone who's charismatic, to be for a religion to be successful in the spread, spread around the world, you need more than charisma. You need to have good organization. And often, you need to have a good military organization, either offensive or defensive. Because religions, as they're developing, get attacked. And so, for example, the Mormons, the Mormons got attacked. Joseph Smith developed basically a Mormon army to defend the Mormons and to attack non-Mormons. In the case of early Christianity, when early Christianity arose as a Jewish sect, early Christianity was such a tiny group that there was no question of Jesus or St. Paul developing an army. It was centuries and centuries before Christianity developed an army. And yes, by 1500 onwards, Christian armies were important to the spread of Christianity, by killing or forcing non-Christians. But in the rise of Christianity, in the rise of Christianity, and in the case of Joseph Smith, a new religion requires three figures who may be incorporating the same person. Jesus was the charismatic person. Jesus was not a military leader. Jesus was not a great organizer. St. Paul was the great organizer. And much later, came Christian generals. In the case of the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith was the charismatic figure. But the great organizer was Brigham Young. So the difference between religion and the other spheres is that religion requires two separate sets of talent, charisma and organization. And often it requires a third set, namely military organization, whereas that's not true. In the business world, Jeff Bezos did not have an army that spread Amazon around the United
Speaker 1States. Let's hope not. Yeah, that would be bad. But okay, good. That actually reminds me of something I should have asked earlier. Are we even making sense when we talk about good leaders or bad leaders? Or should we put more emphasis on right place, right time kind of consideration? Like, does being a good leader, is that a universal thing? Or does it really depend on your match to the situation you find yourself in?
Speaker 2Yes. An able leader can be effective only at certain times and places. And so an interesting three-way division. There are leaders who are able to be effective only at certain times and places. There are leaders who were aware of the importance of time and place and looked for the right time and place and stepped forward only when they figured out that the time and place was right for them. Charles de Gaulle twice became president of France at the end of World War II, stepped down within two years because he figured that the time is not right to be president. But he remained visible. And at the time of the 1958 Algerian crisis, he remained visible. And at the time of the 1958 Algerian crisis, he remained visible. And at the time of the 1958 Algerian crisis, he remained visible. And at the time of the 1958 Algerian crisis, he remained visible. And at the time of the 1958 Algerian crisis, he remained visible. And at the time of the 1958 Algerian crisis, he remained visible. And at the time of the 1958 Algerian crisis, he remained visible. And at the time of the 1958 Algerian crisis, he saw my moment has come. He was conscious of this, and he made himself available. So there were some leaders who select their time. Bill Gates, prime example. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both saw the January, what is it, 1976 or 1978 cover of popular electronics magazine that reported on an Intel microchip that was much more powerful than anything previous. And until then, Bill Gates had told Paul Allen, the time is not right. And until then, Bill Gates had told Paul Allen, the time is not right. And until then, Bill Gates had told Paul Allen, the time is not right. And until then, Bill Gates had told Paul Allen, the time is not right. And until then, Bill Gates had told Paul Allen, the time is not right. And until then, Bill Gates had told Paul Allen, the time is not right. And until then, Bill Gates had told Paul Allen, the time is not right. electronics. He went to Paul Allen and said, now is the time. We got to act now because other people will do it. So first of all, you have leaders who recognize the time and place and choose it, choose it, make it. Secondly, you have leaders who recognize that the time and place is right, but there's nothing that they can do to engineer their stepping into the leadership. Winston Churchill, there was nothing. Winston Churchill did not provoke World War II by no means. But when Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister before him, upon the invasion of France, was under pressure to resign, Winston Churchill was called in first by Chamberlain and then by the king and offered the prime ministership. And Churchill, in his five-volume biography, World War II says, on that evening when I was offered the prime minister, I knew that this was the moment for which my entire life was a preparation. I couldn't bring it about, but this was the right time falling into my lap. And I knew that I would succeed. So there were leaders who select the time. There were leaders who cannot select the time, but the time is offered to them and they know it. And then the third case is leaders who happen to... to come step forward at the right time and place, although they have no idea that it was the right time and place. Genghis Khan, the greatest land conqueror in world history, the Mongol chief, chief, chief Genghis Khan. Why did Genghis Khan succeed in building the largest land empire that the world has ever known? In the last 10 years, dendrochronologists, students of tree rings, looking at tree rings in pine trees in Central Asia, found that the... the... the wettest time in Central Asia was the time that the... the wettest time in Central Asia in the last 2,000 years was around the time of Genghis's birth. But a wet time on the steps of Central Asia means lots of rain for sheep and goats, which is food for the Mongols, and lots of rain for horses, but every Mongol warrior needs 10 horses. So if Genghis had been born 20 years later, or if he had been born 200 miles to the south, we wouldn't know anything about Genghis Khan. And Genghis Khan didn't know that he had this good... similarly, Mark Zuckerberg... Mark Zuckerberg... it's not that Mark Zuckerberg chose the year of his birth and he chose to be a sophomore at Harvard in the year 2002. He happened to be... the year of his birth was given to him by his parents. And in 2002, he had tried... tried various startups at Harvard in his first year. In 2000, he tried another startup, which... which became... Facebook. But he had no idea that the timing was perfect. But in fact, there were social media before Mark Zuckerberg. They hadn't been successful, partly because of inadequate technology. Mark Zuckerberg happened to be born at the time of the right technological advances for... so he didn't know it. So in short, sorry. Some leaders pick their time and place. Some leaders can't pick it, but they know that it's the right time and place. And some like Mark Zuckerberg or Genghis Khan happen to be in the right time and place, but they have no idea that it's the right time and place.
Speaker 1So then for the final question, you know, you... your Pulitzer Prize winning book was about how geography and environment really governed a lot of... or has explanatory power for a lot of world history. And now you've really dug into the role of these individuals who are having outsized influence on the organizations they lead. So where do we strike the balance? Do you think that... do you think that as a society we still give too much credit to individual leaders? Or are the leaders actually making even more of a difference than we suspect behind the scenes?
Speaker 2This is why people who interview me regularly get frustrated. Of course, Gareth will give a clear answer. And my answer to you is sometimes it makes a difference, sometimes it doesn't. Of course. But in my book, I explain, you know, the magic word is discretion. Discretion not in the sense of being discreet and polite, but discretion in the sense of having the power to make decisions. In the business world, there are some CEOs who have the power to make decisions. CEOs of perfume companies or a friend of mine whom I spoke to on the phone an hour ago is the CEO of a company that makes teenage t-shirts. If you guess what's going to catch on with the teenagers, you will be very rich and successful, as my friend is. Whereas if you are the CEO of a railroad, once you have a railroad, it's the CEO of a public utility. You don't have much discretion. So in short, answering your question is leaders can make a difference, one, if they have discretion. And sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. Secondly, if they are uniquely qualified, Soretse Kama was uniquely qualified. Rachel Carson was uniquely qualified. Most leaders, one cannot argue that they're uniquely qualified. They may make a difference if they want to do something that the public does not want to do, but they are sufficiently persuasive that they get the public to do it. Franklin Roosevelt getting the U.S. to prepare for the World War II that the United States did not want. Charles deGaulle getting the French prepared to pull out of Algeria, which the French did not want. And still another difference is if you've got lots of good colleagues who want to do the same thing. Clement Attlee, the prime minister who followed Winston Churchill, he had very able colleagues. And if Clement Attlee had died in bed the next morning, one of his colleagues would have done the same thing. Whereas Soretse Kama or Rachel Carson, if she or he had died, they weren't colleagues. He was standing around ready to do the same thing. So those are examples that there are circumstances under which a leader can make a difference and the circumstances under which a leader doesn't make a difference. And there it is to frustrate you and anybody else who interests
Speaker 1me, but it's true, interviews me, but it's true. I love it. No, I think that sometimes we have to enjoy and appreciate the complexities of the world. That's not a bad lesson to have. So Jared Diamond, thanks very much for being on the Mindscape podcast. Thank you. It's been a real
Speaker 2pleasure to talk with you. Thank you.
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