Podcast: People I (Mostly) Admire
Episode: Jared Diamond on the Downfall of Civilizations — and His Optimism for Ours | Episode 55
Here’s a list of all the books mentioned in this episode, complete with an Amazon buy link and quotes from the episode.
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Buy on Amazon"My guest today, Jared Diamond, has written some of the best-selling popular science books of all time, including "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse.""
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Buy on Amazon"So many listeners know your books like "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse," which are massive bestsellers."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"After "Freakonomics" came out and we had some success in terms of publishing, there was a historian that I knew, and I was at a seminar he was at, and clearly within my earshot, he grumbled that he would never want a wide audience to read his scholarship, with clearly a reference to the fact that I had somehow degraded myself by writing for a popular audience with "Freakonomics.""
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Buy on Amazon"I think I've read all your books, and my single favorite passage is when you write about the Norse Greenland settlement, and I found that part of your book in "Collapse" so remarkable because the mistakes that the settlers in North Greenland made were so preposterous, but somehow they were incredibly familiar as well."