Thought Economics — Thought Economics — Interviews with the World's Greatest Thinkers

Editor’s pick Business & Economics

When Do Leaders Actually Matter? A Conversation with Jared Diamond on Discretion, Timing and the Hamlet Test

In this interview, I spoke to Professor Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, about when individual leaders genuinely change outcomes. We discussed discretion, timing, his Hamlet Test for irreplaceability, assassination as a…

Vikas Shah 24 min read

Read the interview

Latest interviews

Browse the archive →

Voices in the archive

Notable interviewees

See all interviewees

Entrepreneurs

Artists, Creatives, Sports & Entertainers

Thinkers

Nobel Prize Winners

World Leaders

From the archive

Three thousand moments. Three picked at random.

“The quantum universe is counter-intuitive, it's fuzzy, probabilistic, and suggests things that we would regard as fantastical and magical if we saw them on the everyday scale- yet it's the most powerful theory in science.”
— Jim Al-Khalili Theoretical physicist, author, and BBC science communicator known for public engagement
“MIT was one of the places where molecular biology was born, and I could participate in this enterprise with my own hands.”
— Mario Capecchi Nobel Prize Winner for Gene Targeting in Mice
“Imagine Martin Luther King walked into your foundation. Would he pass muster? He would not get a dime out of most contemporary foundations because he would say, 'honestly? This work will take years, people are going to die, I'm not sure how it will turn out.'”
— Abigail Disney Documentary Filmmaker & Philanthropist, Walt Disney's Great-Granddaughter

Browse all 3,000+ quotes

Browse the archive

By topic

All topics
  1. 01 Business & Economics Can Optimism Survive Bad News? Michelle Gielan on Resilient Optimism, Burnout and Becoming a Positive Deviant 362 interviews
  2. 02 Culture, Society, Sports & Arts The Crisis Diplomat: A Conversation with Ian Proud on the 2004 Tsunami, Institutional Failure and Living with Trauma 236 interviews
  3. 03 Politics & Policy From the Minefields of Kuwait to Sandhurst: A Conversation with Major General Arthur Denaro on War, Leadership and Peace 170 interviews
  4. 04 Science & Technology We Are Not Alone: A Conversation with Jonathan Caplan KC on the Evidence for UAPs, Non-Human Intelligence and Why It Was Never Disclosed 136 interviews
  5. 05 Health & Medicine The Continuum of Mind: A Conversation with Professor Michael Levin on Cognition, Bioelectricity and the Future of Being 74 interviews
  6. 06 Nobel Laureates Markets, Morals and the Road Ahead: A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Professor Alvin Roth 21 interviews

Stay with the ideas

A monthly letter from Thought Economics.

Long-form conversations with world-leading thinkers, delivered to your inbox. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.