Jared Diamond

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Presenter0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:42

My castaway this week is the academic and author Jared Diamond. By day, he is the professor of geography at the University of California, but to describe him as versatile would be an understatement. He is a true polymath, whose expertise and interests go beyond geography and history to encompass a dazzling array of ologies, ornithology, physiology, ecology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology. As well as being a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation's Genius Grant, he is a best-selling science author, equally renowned for his engaging, lucid prose and his pioneering theories about the biggest questions in human history. Why do cultures develop as they do? Why do civilizations collapse? How should societies react in moments of existential crisis? This big picture thinking might be down to his skills as a linguist and a passion for travel. He's studied 12 languages and has been a regular visitor to New Guinea for over 50 years.

Presenter1:41

He says, I found that the more things you're interested in and the more you learn, the richer the framework into which you can fit any new thing. So synthesis, if you do it at all, gets professionally easier with time. It's no surprise that older people can do better at synthesis because they've been learning their entire lives. Jared Diamond, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Jared Diamond2:01

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Presenter2:03

For you, having such a wide ranging field of study must increase the opportunities for intellectual synthesis. How does studying so many different subjects benefit your own outlook?

Jared Diamond2:14

It's interesting, and it enables me to ask and answer questions that I wouldn't be able to ask or answer otherwise. To take an example, I'm studying birds. Among birdwatchers, I rate as very good for recognizing bird songs, but that's because I'm a musician and I know the language, the framework for discussing crescendos, decrescendos, halftone, rising, falling. Birdwatchers who are not musicians don't have the descriptions and can't encode the songs as well.

Presenter2:47

And from a very practical point of view, how on earth do you fit all of your interests in? I mean, you must be very good at structuring your time and prioritizing.

Jared Diamond2:56

Different things go on every day. Often when I get up in the morning, I begin with a bird walk. I read the newspaper in the morning, and that's it. My wife listens to the radio in the late afternoon, and so she's depressed in the evening. I'm depressed just in the morning. And if I'm working up some chamber music to play, I'll practice piano for an hour during the day, and then I'll work on my books, or unfortunately do emails also.

Presenter3:21

When do you take your bird walk? I think Radio Force bird watchers are going to want to know.

Jared Diamond3:25

In front of my house, I have the fortune to live in a dead end canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains. Much of the original vegetation is there. A reservoir with water birds is at the head. And so my bird list for my street is one hundred sixty eight species, which is pretty good for an urban area.

Presenter3:41

That's not too bad at all. We are about to hear your music. You're sharing your music with us today. As you mentioned, you're also a musician yourself. What role does music play in your life?

Jared Diamond3:51

A big role in my life. I started to learn piano when I was six. I sang in my teens. I learned viola when I was 22. Nowadays, I do lots of chamber music playing on the piano. I listen to music. For me, it would have been impossible to marry someone who didn't share my musical interests.

Presenter4:11

Well, we're starting with some bark today. Tell me about your first disc and why you've chosen it.

Jared Diamond4:16

This is a Bach cantata. This glorious movement Marie and I used as a wedding processional. It's a masterpiece of setting music to text. The German words Heil, Kraft, Macht, Reich, they sound imperialistic. So when we were married with a rabbi who heard this text, Nund ist das Heil und die Kraft und das Reich, the rabbi asked, couldn't you play it backwards so we don't have to hear those words? Nun ist das Heil und die.

Speaker 35:02

And so I

Presenter5:50

Bas Cantata 50, nun is dasheil, performed by the Taverna Players conducted by Andrew Parrott. Jared Diamond in 1997 Guns, Germs and Steel won the Pulitzer Prize, and it sought to explore why Westerners conquered the Americas, Africa and Australia instead of the other way round. And for you, the answers were to be found in geography and in agriculture. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Jared Diamond6:14

To set the background, the biggest fact of world history and geography is the dominance of Europeans in the modern world, that Europeans have expanded over the world. It wasn't Aboriginal Australians, it wasn't Native Americans, it wasn't Africans, it wasn't Chinese. Why did Europeans expand over the world? And when I pose that question to people, a typical answer that I would get from professors of biochemistry, from educated people is, well, I hate to say this, I know this isn't nice, but why did Europeans... Because Europeans are smarter and they have higher IQ and they have the Judeo-Christian work ethic, although there's no evidence for Europeans actually having a higher IQ. But because historians have not answered this biggest question of history, people are always going to fall back on racist explanations. In Gunns, German, and Steel, I came to grips with the real reasons why dominance arose from Eurasia, and it had nothing to do with people. It had to do with the wild plant and animal species available for domestication, of which there were more species and more valuable species in the Fertile Crescent than anywhere else in the world for good environmental reasons. So the Fertile Crescent got the first agriculture, which meant the first, quote, civilization, the first riding, the first metal tools. All of that stuff spread from the Fertile Crescent to Europe, which is environmentally more robust than the Fertile Crescent. And so it was Europeans carrying that stuff, the ingredients of civilization from the Fertile Crescent, rather than Aboriginal Australians or Africans who ended up expanding around the world.

Presenter6:40

Education.

Presenter7:52

And some critics didn't like what they called the geographical determinism in this idea. They felt that although your arguments are a retort to this racist idea that the intelligence of human beings varies depending on when they come from, it also de-emphasizes the agency of colonizers and somehow absolves them of responsibility for their actions. How do you respond to those criticisms?

Jared Diamond8:14

A polite one-word response is nonsense, and a more detailed response is geographic determinism, as if that's a bad thing. Geography has big influences. Try standing at the North Pole in January in a T-shirt and shorts, and you will discover geographic determinism. On the other hand, the differences between North and South Korea today have nothing to do with geography. They have to do with short-term political history. Geography has big effects on some things, and culture and genetics have big effects on other things. What this goes back to is the discomfort that some academics feel in suggesting that there's any limit to humans' abilities, as if the human spirit should be able to triumph over everything. Well, again, try standing on the North Pole in a T-shirt in the winter and see where the human spirit can get you.

Presenter9:06

It's time to go to the music, Gerard Diamond. Tell me about your second disc. Why have you chosen this?

Jared Diamond9:11

Oh, this Schumann piano quintet. It's the most joyous movement in the minor key that I know. It's a piece that I play. I can't play it as fast as the Beaux-Arts trio, the recording that we're going to hear now, partly because I'm not as good as Monacha Pressler, and also because if you take it more slowly you can hear more detail. But it's a glorious, joyous piece of music of Schumann at his manic best.

Presenter10:33

Part of Schumann's piano quintet in E-flat major, performed by the Boza trio with Samuel Rhodes on viola and Dolph Bettelheim on violin. Jarrett Diamond, you've been professor of geography at the University of California since 2002, but your interest in the subject began when you were a very small boy, I think around 1941, when you would have been staring at your bedroom wall. What was there?

Jared Diamond10:57

You're right. I was born in 1937. Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attack on the U.S., was December 7, 1941. And so my father was a doctor, and so he's told don't serve, stay and teach medical students. And Dad stayed home during the war. But every day Dad pinned up on the wall of the bedroom a map of the Pacific Theater and a map of the European theater. And each day Dad would shift the pins to show the shift in the battle lines. So I grew up with geography in my face. Now I'm a professional geographer.

Presenter11:29

Your own intellectual synthesis seems to reflect your parents. Tell me a little bit more about them. What kind of parents were they?

Jared Diamond11:35

Mum began piano early, debuted as a professional pianist. In the days of silent films, in the 1920s, mum improvised for silent films. In college, she studied modern languages, then she became a teacher. And it was mum who helped me learn German, mum who helped me pass Latin. I've loved languages ever since. At age 62, I began learning my last language, my 13th language, Italian. I love it. I read it every day, but it takes so much time, I'm not going to learn another language. So that was from mum, from dad. Dad was a physician, a scientist, and it's from dad that came my love of science. And there are immigrants on both sides. Dad's family came over after the Kishinev pogrom of 1904. Mum's family came over in 1888.

Presenter11:50

And

Speaker 211:59

Uh

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And

Presenter12:26

You were obviously bright. Do you remember what it feel felt like from the inside out to be such a a bright child? Were you hungry to learn?

Jared Diamond12:34

I didn't feel consciously anything about being bright or hungry to learn. Mom started me to read when I was three years old, and the first book that I read was an English children's book called Kings and Things, written in 1938 through the framework of Kings. I still have that book. And I was interested in lots of stuff, and I kept notebooks. Notebooks of rivers of the world, birds, lists of things. I listered the numbers of trams on the Boston tram line. I loved making lists. That predisposed me to be a birdwatcher, because birdwatchers also make lists.

Presenter12:52

And

Presenter13:11

Time to go to the music. What's your third disc and why have you chosen it?

Jared Diamond13:14

This one, Das Vandern, I had a great German teacher in my first year of college. My love of German and the German language comes especially from him, and he introduced me to German Lieder, German songs. This song, Das Vandern, is the first song of Schubert's song cycled the Schüne Müllern. This one happens to be performed by Dietrich Fischer Dieskau. I was fortunate that I was living in the UK when Fischer Dieskau was still singing, and in Royal Festival Hall I heard Fischer Dieskau perform Schüne Müllern. This is the beginning of my lifelong love with German Lieder.

Presenter13:18

In

Jared Diamond13:51

Daswander, these two spellers missed Daswander.

Speaker 213:52

Are these cases?

Jared Diamond13:56

Basvanberg is kiss virus visitas van.

Jared Diamond14:02

Yeah.

Jared Diamond14:12

Yeah.

Speaker 314:19

Uh

Jared Diamond14:19

From that Sora, baby, you scared and for some fumbling youse and for some.

Speaker 314:20

What a holiday

Speaker 314:22

Yeah.

Speaker 314:26

Ah

Speaker 214:36

La sana slash

Jared Diamond14:47

The CVSI Nuclear Ostin.

Jared Diamond14:52

Cos see here Opting Red, Optin Red.

Presenter14:58

Das van der N from Schubert's Die Schoener Mullerin, performed by Dietrich Fischer Dieskau with Gerald Moore on piano. Jared Diamond, your potential was spotted early, particularly by a classics teacher of yours. I'm talking about Doc Elliott. What do you think he saw in you?

Jared Diamond15:15

Doc Eliot saw that I loved this stuff. So I had Latin for six years, I had Greek for three years, and in Greek we read classic Greek literature, but we weren't getting enough of it. And so I asked Doc Eliot, would you give me some extra classes where we could spend time reading more? So with Doc Eliot, I read Aristophanes, the Greek comic playwright. I read the Roman playwrights. I read Lucretius. I read a lot more with him than I would have just sitting in the classes alone.

Presenter15:46

That can't have been a request that came round often. Schoolboys asking for extra lessons.

Presenter15:51

Yeah.

Jared Diamond15:51

I love this stuff. And Doc Elliott said something that at the time it sounded hubristic. And figuring that I was going to go in science, I thought, I'll be doing this for the rest of my life. So at school, I won't take the science electives. I'll take the Greek elective and the history elective. And so Doc Elliott said to me, Jared, someday you're going to unify the sciences and the humanities. Grossly hubristic. And I would not say that I've unified the sciences and the humanities. But it is the case that I have broad interests and I'll be able to bring to bear on problems of history, knowledge of linguistics and genetics, other things than straight history. So I think Doc Elliott would be satisfied with the outcome.

Presenter15:57

The

Presenter16:07

The

Speaker 216:07

Uh

Presenter16:34

In nineteen fifty eight, after graduating from Harvard, you came to Cambridge to do a research based PhD entitled The Concentrating Activity of the Gallbladder. Was it the gallbladder alone that brought you to Europe, or were you here looking at other things as well?

Jared Diamond16:49

No, the gallbladder did not bring me to Europe. The gallbladder provided the excuse for me to stay here. I came because I had spent my life in Boston, close to my beloved parents, and I was ready for something else. So I came to Cambridge to do my PhD in physiology. At that time, if you were a graduate student, all that you had to do was to turn in a research thesis after several years. So with all this free time, I took advanced Russian classes. I supplemented my meagre income of £250 per year by translating Russian scientific journals into English for pay. I spent huge amounts of time playing chamber music. And while I was nominally doing gallbladder research, I was spending up to eight hours a day playing the organ with the goal of learning the complete organ works of Bach. I spent vacations in Finland and Germany and France. So Cambridge was wonderful.

Presenter17:42

Well, I'm glad to hear it. Let's go to the music, then. Tell me about your fourth disc.

Jared Diamond17:46

Bach's Orge Buchlein. I heard the piece in Clear College Chapel. It was love at first sight, and this piece was what induced me to learn to play the organ.

Presenter18:58

Bach's Jezu Meiner Freuder, played by Sir Andrew Davis. Jared Diamond, by nineteen sixty two you were back in the US pursuing a career in physiological research at Harvard, then as Professor of Physiology at UCLA Medical School. How did specializing suit you?

Jared Diamond19:16

It did not. Once I got back to Harvard, it dawned on me with increasing horror that having done my PhD thesis on gallbladder membrane transport, I was expected to do gallbladder membrane transport for the rest of my life. And that felt confining. So instead, a friend of mine and I went to Peru for adventure. At the end of a couple of months mountain climbing, we went to the Amazon basin. And in the Amazon, what's there to do except hang out with the Indians and watch birds? So we published a couple of papers. The next year we went to New Guinea, the island of New Guinea, because it has the world's most beautiful birds. And that, again, was love at first sight. I've been going back to New Guinea ever since then, for 55 years, studying birds.

Presenter19:39

Yeah.

Presenter20:01

And it was the bird life that had taken you to the island, but you learnt many, many other things there. How did it change your perspective spending time there?

Jared Diamond20:09

Oh, New Guinea has changed my outlook on life both in specific ways and in more general ways. In specific ways, my children were born just before my 50th birthday. I hadn't thought much about bringing up children in the U.S. And so when our children arrived, my model for bringing up children was New Guinea. I brought up children the way children are brought up in New Guinea, which is to allow them lots of freedom. New Guineans allow their kids more freedom than I would permit. I did not let my kids play with knives the way New Guinea kids do. But I did let my children make their choices early. And so at age three, my son Max made a choice. He saw a snake. He was love at first sight. He wanted snakes. All right, Marie and I got him a pet snake. We were careful. It wasn't poisonous. It wasn't an anaconda. It was a perfectly safe pet snake. And he eventually built up to 147 pet snakes and frogs and lizards in our house. Well, this is a kid who learned at age three to make his choices.

Presenter21:05

It's time for some more music. This is your fifth disc, Jared Diamond. Why have you chosen this piece for us?

Jared Diamond21:11

Boom.

Jared Diamond21:12

This is the Brahms into Metsu and A major. This is the piece with which I proposed to my wife. I knew that she liked this piece. So I stayed home from work that day. I spent all day practising. And when I played it for her at 10 p.m. that evening, I turned to her and said, Dr. Cohen, will you marry me? And she broke into tears and then she said yes. So this is the piece that won me a wife.

Presenter22:47

Part of the Intermezzo in A major from Brahms's Six Pieces for Piano, performed by Arthur Rubinstein.

Presenter22:54

Jared Diamond, you made headlines at home in the US in nineteen eighty one for your rediscovery of the long lost golden fronted bowerbird. You managed to capture its mating ritual on tape, but the recording never made it home with you. Why not?

Jared Diamond23:09

Oh, because of a of a boat accident which is the closest I came to getting killed in New Guinea. The golden fronted bowerbird were some specimens that turned up in a Paris hat shop in 1895, sent there by feather collectors, but unknown where they came from, presumably New Guinea, where other such bowerbirds came from. Expedition after expedition went out to find the bird without success until 1981 I was dropped by helicopter in an uninhabited mountain range, and there the fir when I walked into the forest, the first bird that I saw was the golden fronted bowerbird.

Presenter23:44

The boat accident must have been an absolutely terrifying experience. How do you look back on it now?

Jared Diamond23:49

The boat overturned due to a foolish crew. It got swamped with water. And it overturned a couple of miles off the coast of Indonesia, New Guinea, in high waves.

Jared Diamond24:01

And there then followed a surreal hour and a half when all of us on the boat cling to the inverted hull of the capsized boat. We knew our lives were at risk, but we could see the coast a few miles away. We knew, in fact, that if we were not picked up by sunset, we were not going to survive the night. We happened to be picked up at 15 minutes before sunset, and the the pickup itself was terrible in its own way because we were picked up by two tiny fishing canoes, one of which got swamped and the people in it drowned. We couldn't pick them up or we would have gotten swamped and drowned as well. So it's the closest I've come to getting killed in New Guinea. But I learned a lesson from it. I had gotten into the boat. The next day I ran into an American biologist, told him about what happened, and he said, I saw that boat too, and I didn't get on it because I recognized that those young men are trouble. And that was a big life lesson for me, namely to adopt an attitude of paranoia, to think of everything that can go wrong, because if something does go wrong, it's ultimately my fault. I was the one who got into that boat.

Presenter24:35

Yeah.

Presenter25:12

I think you call that idea constructive paranoia.

Jared Diamond25:14

Construct a paranoia. That's my philosophy of life. It drives crazy. My friends who've not been through similar circumstances, my kids, Max and Joshua, tease me about it because they know I insist on getting to the airport early. And my kids will say, Daddy, the plane is tomorrow at 5 o'clock. Why aren't you going to the airport now, the night before?

Presenter25:37

It's time for some more music. This is your sixth disc. Why have you chosen it?

Jared Diamond25:41

Finlandia by Jan Sebelius, the great Finnish composer. I spent my first summer while I was a graduate student in Finland. It was a wonderful summer. It was an intense summer where my Finnish hosts explained to me Finland's winter war against the Soviet Union. But this is a rare case of a piece of music that instantly captures the feeling of a country, this uncompromising minor chords. That's Finland in the winter, and gradually it gets lighter towards the summer with the midnight sun.

Presenter27:14

Part of Sebelius's Finlandia performed by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Essa Pekka Salonen.

Presenter27:21

Jared Diamond, in the early eighties you were dividing your time between physiology in the laboratory and ornithology in New Guinea. How did you come to change lanes and write your first book, The Third Chimpanzee?

Jared Diamond27:34

The precipitant to my first book was the birth of my twin sons, Max and Joshua. They're born in 1987. There's all this talk about what will happen to the world in 2050. Global warming by so-and-so many degrees, end of the tropical rainforest long before 2050. They'll be 63 years old. They'll be at the peak of their life. And somewhat with a jolt, I realized, I bethought myself, the future Max and Joshua is not going to depend upon gallbladders. It's going to depend upon particularly history and geography. And so that was the impetus to my beginning to write books for the general public on long-term patterns of history and geography and what makes them fascinating. And then in 2002, I closed down my physiology laboratory and switched full-time to the geography department at UCLA.

Presenter27:55

And

Presenter28:06

And so

Presenter28:25

And your focus on writing was helped along by being awarded the the MacArthur Genius Grant. How did you feel when you were first given it?

Jared Diamond28:33

You don't know that you nominated. So one day on the telephone, there was a guy who called up, and it was a long first sentence. I'm director of the fellowship program on the MacArthur Foundation, and I'm calling to tell you that you have been awarded a MacArthur grant, which will be for five years with this amount of money per year. There are no responsibilities, but there's a meeting each year which you're free to attend, but you don't have to attend.

Jared Diamond28:56

And you would think that I would be overjoyed.

Jared Diamond28:59

I'm an upbeat person. The next day I had the only depression in my adult life. For a week, I was depressed because the award conveyed to me, Jared, big things are expected of you. Think of what Doc Elliott said. But you've been spending your time on gallbladders. And yes, you're good at gallbladders. But you can do more than that. What are you going to do to justify this award that you just got? In the course of the first week, I gradually thought, I've got to do more than gallbladders. I'll put my time into history and geography, which is also what's going to make the difference for Max's and Joshua's world.

Presenter29:24

And

Presenter29:37

Let's hear some more music. This is your seventh disc, Gerard Diamond. Why have you chosen it?

Jared Diamond29:41

You will think that so much of my music is connected with my wife Marie. We've heard our wedding processional. We've heard our proposal piece. This now is our first date piece. And we had an intense, long conversation at the end of which we were emotionally exhausted. So I turned on some music. I had already played Chopin Preludes to her, because she's Polish. But now I turned on recordings. And I played for her the what we can hear, the last movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony. For intensity, there's nothing to match it. And then I put on the first movement of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. So our first date ended with 55 minutes of Mahler.

Speaker 329:56

Okay.

Presenter31:21

Part of the last movement of Mahler's Symphony Number Nine, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Klaus Tenschat.

Presenter31:29

Jared Diamond Collapse, published in 2005, gave examples of societies which contributed to their own downfalls, like the people of Easter Island, once numbering 15,000. They starved because of deforestation. Now, you don't have to be a polymath to wonder about parallels with our own society's environmental problems. Are we doing enough to tackle them?

Jared Diamond31:51

No, of course we're not doing enough to tackle them. We're doing something to tackle them. But the world is still on a non-sustainable course. By that I mean that we citizens of the world are using essential world resources, notably fish, trees, topsoil and fresh water. These resources that regenerate themselves for the most part and therefore in theory could go on forever. provided that you don't chop down trees faster than new trees grow up, or provided that you don't catch fish faster than adult fish breed baby fish. The fact is that we know how to manage world resources sustainably, and at the rate we're going, we will run out of essential world resources within the next several decades. Therefore, it's up for grabs, because if we're not on a sustainable course by 2050, we've lost our chance and we're over the cliff.

Presenter32:42

In your most recent book, Upheaval, How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change, you make the case for learning from history. Reflecting on your own life, I wonder what you've learned from your own personal history.

Jared Diamond32:54

Gosh, I've learned constructive paranoia. I've learned to think about everything that could go wrong. Now that I'm over 80, the major preventable risk of people over the age of 80 is falling. And so I am very careful. If you watch me walk downstairs, I'm going to hold the banister. I look on the sidewalk to see if there is an unevenness in the sidewalk. So that's an example of my constructive paranoia.

Presenter33:22

Given all your experiences, studies, and research, how optimistic are you about the future of our own civilization, I wonder?

Jared Diamond33:29

On the one hand, the world suffers serious problems, which we all know about. Climate change, non-sustainable resource use, inequality around the world, terrorism, and the nuclear risk. So, yes, we face big problems. That's the bad news. The good news is that the bad problems are all ones of our own making. We are at risk from things that we are doing ourselves and that we could choose to stop doing. We don't need new technology. We are making the mess with our current technology. We could stop making the mess with our current technology. So, it's completely within our power. It depends upon the political will.

Jared Diamond34:03

rather than any magic, whether we're going to solve our problems. And I'm cautiously optimistic because in addition to all the bad signs in the US and Britain, at least in the US, I see increasing signs that particularly young people are getting more concerned about our future and are making good choices. And what I tell young people is vote and tell all your friends to vote.

Presenter34:21

And

Presenter34:26

It's time for your last disc. It's your eighth Jarrod Diamond. Why have you chosen it?

Jared Diamond34:30

This one I choose because this is the piece of chamber music that I've been working on for the past year. It's Dvorak's Dumpty Trio, the last of his piano trios. It's gorgeous. The piano writing is clumsy. You think that the sound's great. But as you listen to it, remind yourself this pianist is suffering.

Presenter36:00

Part of the final movement of Dvaujac's piano trio, No. four, in E minor, performed by the Beaux Art Trio. Jared Diamond, given your extensive experience on New Guinea, I think you'll fare very well on our desert island as we are about to cast you away. What skills have you acquired that'll help you, do you think?

Jared Diamond36:17

Oh, every year and a half I go off to New Guinea. I deal with the discomfort and the ticks and the leeches and the mosquitoes. I'm content with sleeping on the floor. I put up with it for a month in order to be in the most beautiful place in the world. And then I come back home and get my health fixed up and enjoy a normal life for a year and a half.

Presenter36:40

We'll give you the complete works of Shakespeare, the Bible, and you can take another book of your own choosing. What would you like?

Jared Diamond36:46

Author Conan Doyle's Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, because I love it. It's great writing. The curious fact of the dog at night. Watson says The dog did nothing. Sherlock Holmes That was the curious fact. And it was the clue that the person who did the bad thing was known to the dog.

Presenter37:03

And what about a luxury item you can take something to cheer you up while you're on the island? What would you like?

Jared Diamond37:08

Six cases of Scharzhofberg Cabinet, the German wine from the Saare. Very light with earthy taste, like a miniature champagne. Yeah, I would take some cases of Scharzhofberg.

Presenter37:22

Excellent choice. And finally, which of these eight beautiful pieces of music would you choose to save if you could only have one?

Jared Diamond37:30

Oh, let's start with nun is das heil und die Kraft und das Reich und die Mahruppen, the Bach Cantado number fifty.

Presenter37:40

It's yours. Jared Diamond, thank you very much for sharing your Desert Island discs with us.

Jared Diamond37:44

And thank you for sharing this wonderful music with me.

Presenter37:57

I like the idea that Jared is happy on his island sipping his wine while listening to all that beautiful bird life. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. You'll find many more wonderful scientists and academics in the Desert Island Disc's back catalogue, including Professor Brian Cox, Sid Arthur Mukherjee, Athene Donald and Steven Pinker. In 2014, Kirstie Young interviewed writer and thinker Malcolm Gladwell. It's one of my favourite episodes. He not only writes but also gives talks. Kirstie asked him whether or not he liked performing.

Speaker 338:28

I suppose I do. You know, I'm not an extrovert, and so it's always a good idea.

Speaker 238:32

Yes, that's why I asked,'cause I think you seem like rather a private.

Speaker 338:35

Yeah, so I like the challenge of standing up in front of a group of people and being required to reach them is a really interesting problem to me.

Speaker 238:44

It appears to me when I've watched your talks, and I've only seen them online, I haven't seen you as part of a live audience, that you are almost daring people to be bored by you. You walk out and you don't hit them between the eyes with a big opener. You don't make them laugh immediately. You you come out and you amble around the stage and you might say, I'd like to talk to you about spaghetti sauce.

Speaker 339:02

Yeah. When you are giving a live performance, you have a certain grace period. I believe that by virtue of making the journey to wherever the event is taking place and buying the ticket, and people are like, All right, give me, I'll give you 15 minutes to prove your case. So I think you should take full advantage of that. It's much more fun.

Speaker 239:23

That takes a terrific amount of underlying confidence. Where does your confidence come from? Is it just i your belief in your own intellectual rigor and capability?

Speaker 339:31

Does it take confidence? Or I just sort of felt like I sort of felt I had nothing to lose. The only thing you have to lose is to be perceived as as uninteresting. What an audience wants is to be taken seriously. They're willing to

Speaker 339:48

put up with a lot if they have the sense that you have thought about

Speaker 339:53

what you're doing with them in some kind of considered way.

Speaker 239:56

Right.

Speaker 339:56

Once they get that sense from you, they will travel with you in many far and distant directions. What turns off an audience is the notion that you're giving them the same talk that you have given to you, you didn't even think about them when you were thinking about that morning what you wanted to say. As long as I communicate that notion that you are special to me, I'm giving you this talk for a reason, then you're fine.

Presenter40:19

The marvellous Malcolm Gladwell speaking to Kirstie. And of course you can find his programme on BBC Sands and on the Desert Island Disc's website. Next week, my guest is the Director General of the Royal Horticultural Society, Sue Biggs. I do hope you'll join us.

Presenter40:57

Is the daily grind getting you down? Fancy taking a break and going out into nature this summer? Then look for Go Wild in BBC Sounds, a place for some of the best nature programmes from Radio 4. Get some inspiration for your next adventure, no matter how big or small.

Presenter41:19

Just search for Go Wild in BBC Sounds and set out on your next adventure today.