Joan Diamond: "From Kool-aid to Lemonade"

Episode 28
July 20, 2022

(Conversation Recorded on June 30, 2022)

On this episode we meet with Executive Director of Stanford University’s Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere, Joan Diamond.

Diamond helps us imagine the future in an uncertain time. How can we create robust strategies to help us plan? How can we avoid thinking only of worst-case scenarios?

Further, Diamond offers suggestions for how people can handle their hopelessness and rage following recent Supreme Court rulings. What options exist for people to change systems?

About Joan Diamond

Joan Diamond has executive background in private and nonprofit sectors, including Fortune 500 energy enterprises including executive VP of Hawaiian Electric Company, vice president and corporate secretary of a Silicon Valley telecommunications company, and COO of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability. She is the Executive Director of Stanford University’s Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) and of the Crans Foresight Analysis Nexus (FAN).

Show Notes

PDF Transcript

00:45 - Joan’s info

05:00 - Post WW2 life - trauma, women’s lives, social movements, ideologies

07:15 - Humans are inclined towards certainty

10:22 - Mental benefits of strong social ties

10:40 - Is the western world more attached to certainty than other cultures?

11:52 - Schooling during the Cold War Era - Mental effects

13:35 - Joan’s scenario workshops on Nuclear Risk 

15:33 - Chernobyl, Nuclear missile silos

18:01 - Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere

19:02 - Louise Penny and her latest book: Madness of Crowds

22:30 - Uneven distribution of collapse

23:28 - Matrices and future/uncertainty planning

25:30 - Money and energy

25:48 - Energy Blindness

26:08 - Doomerism

27:19 - Fukushima

30:20 - The non-profit industry and research has to compete for the same dollars

32:11 - Systems thinking

33:38 - Wicked Problems

34:23 - Paul Ehrlich info + TGS Episode

35:30 - Problems with specialization in academia

36:50 - How debt and technology bought us time

37:56 - How universities have become corporations

39:08 - Are women fundamentally more hopeful?

39:55 - Are women more action oriented?

41:40 - Recent SCOTUS decisions

47:38 - Fake News

48:29 - Human biases and the challenges they present

52:45 - Why are we so scared to be perceived as intrusive and talk to strangers

56:15 - When rationalizing is a form of denial and exceptionalism

1:01:34 - Energy/Ecology/Finance limits to growth

1:02:50 - How the battle against smoking was won by kids

1:03:20 - Low money/energy ways to have fun with kids

1:04:00 - Curriculum teaching about collapse

1:05:52 - The risk of apathy

1:13:10 - Jamie Wheal TGS Episode

1:16:52 - Macron comment to Biden that Saudi Arabia and UAE can’t pump more oil


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Josh Farley: "Money, Money, Money”

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Joe Tainter: “Surplus, Complexity, and Simplification”