TEDTalks. Jared Diamond - Why Societies Collapse

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A globally renowned author and scholar, Jared Diamond takes an approach that goes beyond culture and into the impact it has on the environment. His best-selling and Pulitzer-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel looks at the reasons history turned out the way it did and why European societies conquered the rest of the world instead of the other way around. His latest book, Collapse, asks nearly the opposite: Why do some civilizations fail? In this engaging TEDTalk, Diamond examines the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island, and present-day Montana and discusses signs that collapse is near and how - if we see it in time - we can prevent it. "Diamond's distinction between social and biological survival is a critical one, because too often we blur the two," says Malcolm Gladwell.