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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.

“If you view the world from a moral perspective, you have no option but to address climate change in a timely fashion. The good news is that the moral imperative is backed-up by economics, technological advance and capital shifts.”
— Christiana Figueres Former UN Climate Change Executive Secretary & Global Climate Action Leader
“It was visionaries with a quest for achievement who made Apollo happen, and it seems to me that now? Our sense and spirit of adventure boils down to what we can afford, and not what we can learn or achieve by doing something.”
— Buzz Aldrin Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 11; Second Person to Walk on Moon
“There's a joke within Facebook that if you want to know which countries will have a genocide in the next couple of years, look at the ones that have Facebook free basics.”
— Tristan Harris Design ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology

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  1. 01 Business & Economics When Do Leaders Actually Matter? A Conversation with Jared Diamond on Discretion, Timing and the Hamlet Test 361 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 Could Machines Be Conscious? A Conversation with Dr Tom McClelland on Minds, Machines and the Hard Problem of Consciousness 135 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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