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194. Jared Diamond (Historian) – Look inward, Nation

194. Jared Diamond (Historian) – Look inward, Nation

FromThink Again – a Big Think Podcast


194. Jared Diamond (Historian) – Look inward, Nation

FromThink Again – a Big Think Podcast

ratings:
Length:
48 minutes
Released:
May 11, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

Imagine yourself a German citizen the day after the end of World War II. Much of your city is bombed to ruins. A good part of the population is dead. The Nazi ideology that has dominated your nation for the past decade has been repudiated as definitively as Bambi in “Bambi Meets Godzilla”. Basically, it’s the end of the world. Now consider Berlin today. It’s the biggest economy in Europe. The center of the European Union. A progressive welfare state where the old racial and nationalist resentments have been reduced to fringe movements. Still disturbingly present, but by no means mainstream. How do you get here from there? And could the pendulum ever swing back again? This is the subject of Jared Diamond’s new book, UPHEAVAL. In it, the geographer, historian and author of GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL looks to human crisis counseling for a model of how nations deal with crises both acute and gradual. For Americans like myself, troubled in this historical moment by dreams of the late Roman Empire, its a refreshingly clear-eyed look at the many different ways these things can go. Surprise conversation starters in this episode: Timothy Snyder on partisan politicsLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
May 11, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

We surprise some of the world's brightest minds with ideas they're not at all prepared to discuss. With host Jason Gots and special guests Neil Gaiman, Alan Alda, Salman Rushdie, Mary-Louise Parker, Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Saul Williams, Henry Rollins, Bill Nye, George Takei, Maria Popova, and many more . . . You've got 10 minutes with Einstein. What do you talk about? Black holes? Time travel? Why not gambling? The Art of War? Contemporary parenting? Some of the best conversations happen when we're pushed outside of our comfort zones. So each week on Think Again, we surprise smart people you've probably heard of with hand-picked gems from Big Think's interview archives on every imaginable subject. The conversation could go anywhere. SINCE 2008, BIG THINK has captured on video the best ideas of the world’s leading thinkers and doers in every field, renowned experts including neurologist Oliver Sacks, physicist Stephen Hawking, behavioral psychologist Daniel Kahneman, authors Margaret Atwood and Marylinne Robinson, entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, painter Chuck Close, and philosopher Daniel Dennett.