Why did Europeans conquer the Americas instead of the other way around? In this episode, we dig into Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Diamond sets out to answer Yali’s famous question: why do some societies have so much “cargo” while others don’t? His answer boils down to one word: geography.

We trace the story from the collision at Cajamarca, 168 Spaniards defeating tens of thousands of Inca warriors — back through the domestication of wheat, barley, and horses, the east–west axis of Eurasia, and the germs bred in crowded farming societies. Along the way, we wrestle with Diamond’s strengths, poke holes in some of his oversimplifications, and connect the dots to later works like Sapiens, Against the Grain, and The Secret of Our Success.

If you’ve ever wanted the big-picture story of how environment, food, animals, and disease shaped human history — this is it.