#2549 - Jared Diamond

“There were cell phones before iPhones and Steve Jobs. There was, I think, the Korean Samsung. I had a Motorola StarTack back in the day. I have a cell phone that my wife and son forced me to get, and I use it to do my email, and that's all that I use it for. You don't get on TikTok? Do any dances? Nothing? No, no. Nothing? No memes?”

“Steve Jobs didn't do it that way. My iPhone has one, two, I think it's got four buttons. Last night, I discovered an essential button. I didn't realize that on the left side, the most recent conversation that I had with my iPhone, the sound quality was very poor.”

“sound quality was very poor. And I knew from Marie having showed me before that somewhere on that iPhone there's a volume control device, but I didn't know what it was. But yesterday I saw that on the left side there were two things.”

“Possibly, but I recall. Certainly with my iPhone. Marie did explain to me when she forced me to get the iPhone. She showed me that of these four buttons, two, these lengthy things on the left, are volume controls.”

“And once I've cleaned up the draft, then I dictate it into my iPhone, my three or four button iPhone, and my secretary cleans it up.”

“iPhone. I don't know if you've discovered this, but at the bottom of my iPhone, there's an icon, which looks like a microphone. That icon, when I press that icon, it allows me to dictate in other languages.”

“So the languages that I'm active in today are Italian and German. I do my correspondence on my iPhone in Italian and German because of this little device. Now this little, when my wife forced me to get the iPhone, there were a few buttons at the bottom that I didn't know about.”

“So I learned, and I do my correspondence in German and Italian now, never by hand. I always do it on the iPhone. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. With AI now, they have, I think Google was the first to do this. I think Samsung phones definitely had this, where you could have someone speak to you and it would translate their words in real time.”

“Very nice to meet you, sir. It's a pleasure. Great pleasure to meet you. I really enjoyed Guns, Germs, and Steel, and I just got into this yesterday. And today, I started reading your new book. Awesome. Awesome so far.”

“And that is that. People often ask me, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel neglects individual people. It's about things that happened over the last 10,000 years. And Guns, Germs, and Steel, the different outcomes of societies and different continents has nothing to do with any individual.”

“How do you reconcile Guns, Germs, and Steel with leaders? And my first response would be to say that Guns, Germs, and Steel is about entire continents for 10,000 years, where one person doesn't make a difference, whereas my book about leaders is about individuals in the short term.”

“Well, I think Guns, Germs, and Steel highlighted all the factors that have to be in place for these types of changes to take place. It's not mutually exclusive that leaders aren't important as well.”

“An example is. So my books get translated into lots of languages. The Guns, Germs, and Steel has been translated into 45 languages. And one thing that I can see, I see how, because I've got all the, I see how thick are the editions.”

“Over the years, Collapse, you know, Guns, Germs, and Steel. You've really done an amazing job of relaying these incredibly complex and impactful moments in society and in history and made it very entertaining and very consumable.”

“whereas Christianity did. The Paul thing is very interesting, because the more I read about the Bible and the construction of it, the more it just gives you pause. Like, Paul was really kind of the creator of Christianity, because he never met Jesus.”

“Well, which brings us back to religious texts, which is, I mean, the Bible, the Old Testament, there's versions of it in Aramaic and the Dead Sea Scrolls and some of the books.”

“This is Behold. 0.7 millimeter pencil. It has one device. I advance it and the lead advances. My books, I write my books by hand.”

“Over the years, Collapse, you know, Guns, Germs, and Steel. You've really done an amazing job of relaying these incredibly complex and impactful moments in society and in history and made it very entertaining and very consumable.”

“He had no experience of sleeping in the bed. He rolled out of the bed at night, so he didn't like sleeping in the bed. But then I offered them ice cream and one of them rejected the ice cream. He said, it's cold, it hurts my mouth. Well, you and I are accustomed to eating ice cream.”

“but there were other conditions. There were other candidates besides Christ. The New Testament talks about six messiahs who variously got killed by the Romans. Of the six candidates, Christ was the most successful. But Christ also, to found a religion, you have to be charismatic, number one.”

“I think Samsung phones definitely had this, where you could have someone speak to you and it would translate their words in real time. So you could have a real, honest conversation with someone in another language.”

“because of the words and the grammar. For example, the Iliad, Homer's Iliad, the English text of the Iliad, we'll begin by saying something like, I sing of the wrath of Achilles, the terrible wrath that destroyed so many Greeks.”

“You will type it. Oh, yeah. Okay, so you will. You're not averse to using a typewriter or a keyboard. No. When I was about eight years old, I had chickenpox, and I stayed home from I had to stay home from school for two weeks.”