Today’s guest is Katja Diehl. She is an author, podcaster and traffic turnaround activist. Diehl studied literature, media and sociology at the University of Osnabrück. Later she worked as an editor at the German Press Agency. She then switched to corporate communications with a traineeship at the German Federal Foundation for the Environment in Osnabrück.
The further professional career took her in managerial positions at Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, Stadtwerke Osnabrück and NordWestBahn. During this time, Diehl gained a lot of expertise in mobility and logistics, which she has been using since 2017 as a consultant for the mobility transition. Among other things, she is an advisor to the Austrian Minister for Climate Protection Leonore Gewessler and the Baden-Württemberg Minister of Transport Winfried Herrmann.
How the mobility of the future should look like
Last year, Diehl published a book entitled “Autocorrection – Mobility for a world worth living in”. In it she deals with what the future of mobility could look like. In their imagination, people can drive a car if they want to, but they no longer have to – because there are attractive alternatives.
Here you will find an overview of our three podcast formats: the weekly news podcast “Weekly” and the monthly podcasts “Unscripted” and “Deep Dive”.
Diehl presents her theses very directly and self-confidently, for example in February of this year on the Anne Will talk show. She was then confronted with open hostility online. Various death threats, shitstorms from the right and from the left – in March Diehl went through hell.
In talking to her, it was important to me to better understand her ideas and where they come from. She explains that she is by no means a “car hater” and what her vision of an inclusive, socially and climate-friendly mobility turnaround looks like. We talked about what exactly she experienced after the Anne Will show. She is very open about her experiences. That was important to me to show how difficult it is in this country to aggressively represent such positions regarding the mobility turnaround in public – especially as a woman.
More on that in the whole episode – as an audio stream (RSS-Feed):
Unscripted appears on the MIT Technology Review podcast feed and is one of the three podcast formats of the science and technology magazine. In “Deep Dive” the editors deepen a topic from the magazine once a month. The monthly interview format “Unscripted” focuses on exciting personalities from science, technology and society. The “Weekly” format completes the offer. You can find an overview of the podcasts here.
(lca)
