Episode 11: Bill Diamond - The nexus of Silicon Valley and science

Show Notes: 

• The SETI Institute (1:15 and 6:10) 
• FDL program (NASA Frontier Development Lab) (4:30 and 36:00) 
• Jesuit thinking (5:00) 
• Brother Guy J. Consolmagno (6:20) 
• Take advantage of the breadth of knowledge available to you and cut across the boundaries of knowledge (7:30) 
• Early mentor, Ken Nill, and how he altered Bill’s trajectory (12:00) 
• Value of having both technical and managerial skills (14:10) 
• Create a ‘powerful combination of skills’ (14:20) 
• First mentor: high school physics teacher (17:15) 
• Signs to look for in mentor (17:40) 
• Being curiosity-driven (19:15) 
• LaserTron (22:20) 
• Bell Labs (23:00) 
• Have an understanding of all sides of the industry/business/problem (26:15) 
• Skills from industry most valuable to science (36:30) 
  • Organization of science 
    • Six areas of research that define SETI’s direction (38:40) 
    • SETI Science Council (39:00) 
  • Evaluating the research and targeting future research (43:00) 
• Drake equation (38:00) 
• Antidisciplinary and Joi Ito (40:15) 
• Science of Team Science (40:35) 
• Moneyball approach to science (41:25) 
• Bill’s practices (45:45) 
  • Be open minded (48:40) 
  • Do your homework to have meaningful conversations (49:10) 
• Taiji and Daoist philosophy (47:30) 
• Lightning Round (50:00) 
  • Books 
    • Childhood’s End
    • Three body problem
    • Snow Crash  
    • Galileo’s Daughter
  • What is making your heart sign? 
  • Carl Sagan’s ’star people'
    • SETI outreach
      • Workshop "Decoding alien intelligence” (58:00) 
        • Jesuit casuistry
    • Biggest mistakes: what NOT to do, not following instincts, and letting problems go on longer than they should have (1:00:00) 
• Find Bill online:  
  • SETI
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ series  
  • Bill’s playlist