UCLA Professor of Geography Jared Diamond, author of the the Pulitzer Prize winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel, along with The Third Chimpanzee, Collapse, and The World Until Yesterday, considers the risks and mistakes that people and nations make. Based on his extensive research on and experience with the human condition Dr. Diamond considers the future based on what we know about the past — historically and personally.
Jared Diamond began his scientific career in physiology and expanded into evolutionary biology and biogeography. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical society. Among his many awards are the National Medal of Science, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, Japan’s Cosmo Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and the Lewis Thomas Prize Honoring the Scientist as Poet. He has published more than 600 articles and his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
This lecture was recorded on May 30, 2015 at a conference called “In the Year 2525: Big Science, Big History, and the Far Future of Humanity” (May 29–31, 2015) as part of the Distinguished Science Lecture Series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society in California (1992–2015).
