Charlie Rose with Tom Shales & Doc Severinsen; Jared Diamond

We begin with an appreciation of the late Johnny Carson with Tom Shales of The Washington Post and Carson's friend Doc Severinsen, The Tonight Show bandleader for 30 years. We'll also look back as David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Bette Midler, and Calvin Trillin remembered Mr. Carson over the years. We end with UCLA professor Jared Diamond. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. His new book is Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

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Jared Diamond segment

Diamond comes to talk about his new book 'Collapse'. Rose asks him about contemporary problems. He focuses on global problems, the environment, overpopulation. He says that Mankind is the biggest threat to the planet.
Diamond says the future is in our hands, and it is for us to decide now which way to go. He points to global threats, malaria, typhoid, AIDs and says twenty- five billion dollars would be enough to begin to act effectively to take on these major illnesses. He says Mankind has to think about long- term problems and that if we thought in those terms we would not be wasting our efforts on wars.
Diamond is not exciting, not dramatic, and seems not especially original in the way he formulates these things.
Rose is his usual informed and attentive self, but this may be one time he would not have lost too much had he fallen asleep ( As he sometimes looks he is about to)in the middle of the interview. December 25, 2007

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