Jared Diamond on Whether Leaders Make History

Podcast: The Good Fight · New America

Opublikowano: 2026-09-05

Yascha Mounk and Jared Diamond discuss the age-old question of structure versus agency—and when individual leaders truly change the course of events. Jared Diamond is a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Third Chimpanzee, and Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Make a Difference? In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jared Diamond discuss how to measure the true impact of individual leaders, why the institutional environment determines how much difference a leader can make, and whether societies are better served by systems that cons...