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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

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Three thousand moments. Three picked at random.

“It absolutely never failed to amaze and lure me in. In fact, if I was at the window during the work day, I had to set a timer on my watch, because I would just get immersed in the view. It's like a transcendence; I just started doing meditation, and it's a little like that where you can just completely separate yourself and just be sucked into it.”
— Nicole Stott NASA Astronaut & ISS Expedition Crew Member
“The average pay, inflation adjusted, has dropped more than 40% – yet the Gretchen Morgenson's of the world want to write that it's going up and up… that's just wrong.”
— Prof. Steven Kaplan University of Chicago finance professor specializing in private equity and leveraged buyouts
“It’s this weird dichotomy of superintelligence and super stupidity, sort of mixed in one scenario.”
— Richard Socher

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  1. 01 Business & Economics A Conversation with Jesper Kouthoofd, Founder of Teenage Engineering, on Design, Play and Why Every Product Is an Illusion 363 interviews
  2. 02 Culture, Society, Sports & Arts A Conversation with Jesper Kouthoofd, Founder of Teenage Engineering, on Design, Play and Why Every Product Is an Illusion 237 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

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