Summary
Science polymath and celebrated author, Jared Diamond has tackled some of the big questions about humanity: what is it that makes us uniquely human not just a third species of chimpanzee; and why do some societies thrive and others struggle to survive, or collapse?
Jim Al-Khalili talks to Jared Diamond about how his passion for the birds of Papua New Guinea overtook his medical interest in the gall bladder, and led him to undertake a scientific study of global history.
Once a Professor of Physiology, he became increasingly fascinated by the birds of Papua New Guinea.
Now Professor of Geography at University of California in LA, he stresses the vital importance of the environment in determining the success or otherwise of a society. He argues first that it was settled agriculture that enabled the white man to develop guns, germs and steel and later that abuse of the environment is often responsible for their collapse. But can the history of humanity really be understood in much the same way as we might seek to explain the success or otherwise of a particular species of bird?
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. Thank you for |
| 0:31.2 | downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:33.0 | The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, |
| 0:37.0 | go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts. |
| 0:40.0 | I'm Professor Jim Alkulele and today in Discovery from the BBC I'm talking to |
| 0:49.0 | Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize winning author and Professor of of geography at the University of California in Los Angeles. |
| 0:56.0 | For most of us scientists, myself included, the search for ultimate explanations leads us to define our questions ever more precisely, to zoom in |
| 1:05.8 | on something and study it at a level of detail that non-scientists can find bewildering. |
| 1:11.6 | But for Jared Diamond, constantly asking why has taken him in the opposite direction, |
| 1:16.5 | asking ever bigger questions and seeking easy to understand answers. He started his life |
| 1:22.3 | scientific studying the precise mechanism by which our |
| 1:25.4 | gallbladders absorb salt, but Mid-Kuria started asking a much bigger question. |
| 1:31.9 | When and how did we become uniquely human, not just another |
| 1:35.8 | species of chimpanzee, what causes some societies to thrive and others to fail, and |
| 1:41.1 | most recently what can developed countries learn from |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.