Jared Diamond
American geographer, historian and author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings"
Jared Diamond (American geographer, historian and author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings") has appeared as a guest on 1 episode in TMT. Topics they speak about most include Leadership in history, Botswana, Endocannibalism among the Fore people.
In their words
Positions and remarks grouped by topic, each with the exact quote and where it was said.
Leadership in history
Diamond predicts that stock markets would have emerged regardless of any individual, calling them as logical as the internet.
“My guess is that if we didn't have—if stock markets hadn't developed, stock markets would have developed”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 36:26
Diamond says religion is the only domain where he can identify an individual whose influence persisted for 2,000 years.
“whereas I can't think of a politician or a business person who has had an effect 2,000 years later”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 25:42
Diamond argues that leaders matter chiefly when they are at the right time and place, though some recognize it and some do not.
“A leader has to be at the right time and place”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 6:18
Diamond says his lifelong question of whether individuals change history arose from growing up during World War II and living in Chile before Pinochet.
“And so there's been throughout my life this question, do bad as well as good people make a difference?”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 1:45
Botswana
Diamond says Khama nationalized all underground resources so diamonds found on his own tribe's land benefited the whole nation.
“Soretse Kama proclaimed that all underground resources in Botswana, wherever they are, are the property of the Botswana nation, not of the individual tribe”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 2:22:17
Diamond argues Seretse Khama was uniquely positioned to abolish the power of Botswana's chiefs because he was himself the most powerful chief.
“he was the only person in Botswana who could have abolished the power of the chiefs because he was the most powerful chief”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 2:23:04
Endocannibalism among the Fore people
Diamond describes Fore initiation in which boys moved into the men's house at six and had homosexual relationships with adult men before abruptly being married to girls.
“when the boy reached the age of six, he then moved into the men's house where he developed a homosexual relationship with the adult men”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 2:13:20
Diamond recounts that a Fore worker left his expedition camp because he was obligated to eat the forearm of his deceased prospective son-in-law.
“There's no way that he would fail to eat the forearm of his prospective son-in-law any more than you or I would throw our mother's body into the ditch”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 1:54:30
Kuru (disease)
Diamond notes the last Fore funeral feast was in 1959 and the last Kuru death in 2009, implying a 50-year latency.
“The last death due to Kuru was in 2009. The last funeral feast was 1959”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 2:07:32
Diamond says Kuru likely originated from a single spontaneous Creutzfeldt-Jakob case around 1910 that spread through endocannibalism, especially to babies handling brain tissue.
“it's all thought to have arisen with... one foray person who had Kreutzfeldt-Jakob and died of it in around 1910, but was then eaten by others”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 2:02:05
Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings
Diamond says he writes his books by hand in pencil and finds his typed prose wordier than his handwritten prose.
“When I type it, I notice that my style is more wordy, whereas if I write it down, my style is more simplified and compressed”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 48:40
Diamond says he is a lifelong technophobe who chose to study the gallbladder because it required no technical apparatus.
“I made my reputation as a physiologist with a gallbladder precisely because I could not build the ham radio”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 42:05
Amazon (company)
Diamond argues Bezos's distinctive contribution was prioritizing customer satisfaction over investor returns.
“He prioritized customer satisfaction. So he developed something that would have happened, that did happen before and did happen afterwards, but he did it in a distinctive way”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 34:45
Diamond says Bezos always intended to build an everything store and chose books as a starting point because they are uniform and centrally warehoused.
“It was his goal – explicitly his goal in life was to set up an everything store. But he recognized that an everything store has to start out with something”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 32:03
Origins of Christianity
Diamond argues Christians outbred and outlived pagans in the Roman Empire because of their treatment of women, children and the sick.
“when you look at tombstones from the first couple of centuries of the Roman Empire, Christians lived longer and they were less likely to die than were pagans”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 20:14
Diamond argues Jesus's universal message distinguished him from rival messiahs but that Paul's organizing ability was essential.
“So of the candidate messiahs then, Jesus had a particularly good message, but it took, a good message isn't enough, it took St. Paul as the organizer”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 13:37
Pidgin and creole languages
Diamond says children of pidgin-speaking parents spontaneously transformed pidgin into a full creole language with grammar and tenses within a decade.
“the children themselves, within a decade, modified spontaneously, not consciously, modified pidgin to become a full language with a grammar and tenses and future tense and prepositions”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 1:46:07
Late Bronze Age collapse
Diamond says the loss of Greek Linear B writing was due to the broader Bronze Age collapse rather than the Trojan War, and its cause remains unknown.
“But there was a much broader collapse of Bronze Age civilization in the whole Eastern Mediterranean, and we don't know why”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 1:23:55
History of writing systems
Diamond identifies cuneiform, Mesoamerican writing and Chinese writing as at least three independent inventions of writing.
“which would mean that we have three independent inventions of writing. the Cuneiform and the Fertile Crescent, Mexican writing, and then Chinese writing”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 1:21:51
Hangul
Diamond calls Korean the best writing system in the world because grouping letters into syllable blocks lets Koreans read faster than anyone.
“Koreans can read faster than anybody else in the world because of this wonderful writing system”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 1:14:44
Translation and linguistic loss
Diamond argues perfect translation between languages is impossible, using the Greek logos and Italian's two words for love as examples.
“We attempt to come up with an approximation, but we know that you cannot translate perfectly from one language into another language”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 1:05:37
Islam and the spread of religion
Diamond argues Islam's spread was driven by organization, motivation and military spirit rather than theological beliefs.
“I would not argue that the theological beliefs of Islam were decisive in the spread of Islam”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 22:50
Mormonism
Diamond argues Mormonism spread because of charisma and Brigham Young's organization rather than Joseph Smith's theology.
“the Mormon religion, I would say, has spread not because of Joseph Smith's theology, but because he was charismatic and because Brigham Young then was an outstanding leader”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 16:50
Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire
Diamond cites tree-ring research showing the Mongolian steppe's wettest decade in 2,000 years coincided with Genghis Khan's birth, providing grass for livestock and horses.
“students of tree rings have figured out that on the Mongolian steppe, the wettest time in the last 2,000 years was the decade of Genghis Khan's birth”
The Joe Rogan Experience: #2549 - Jared Diamond (Sep 3, 2026) · Listen from 6:22
Appearances
#2549 - Jared DiamondThe Joe Rogan Experience · Sep 3, 2026 · 2 h 34 min
Jared Diamond talks with Joe Rogan about leadership, the rise of world religions, the origins of writing, language, and cannibalism and Kuru in New Guinea.
Discussed in
#2553 - Andrew HubermanThe Joe Rogan Experience · Sep 14, 2026 · 2 h 46 min
Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman talks with Joe Rogan about his new book, psychedelic therapy, stress, neuroplasticity, peptides and medical gatekeeping.
Often appears with
- Joe Rogan · 1 shared episode