The Most Important Question

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

Science
**The Most Important Question**

The most important question in today’s world of climate chaos, AI psychosis, and crumbling democracy is: what can I do? Your host, Quinn Emmett is completely unqualified to answer it, so he’s calling the people that already are.

If you’ve got the news, the analysis, the outrage, but still no plan — join us as we figure it out together with long-form conversations with amazing people working on the frontlines, and quick updates responding to today’s most important headlines, and what you can do about it, tonight.

220+ episodes. 110+ countries. A bunch of Webby and Signal Award nominations. Zero hot takes.

Latest Episodes:

Essay: How to Survive Feb 15, 2023

Show notes

This week:

There are a default group of problems that exist in our society because of the basic needs required to be a human.

They are:

Air
Water
Food
Sleep

These, our most primal needs, are more or less biologically inarguable, and the good news is, we understand them very well and have made enormous progress to ensure they are accessible to a greater percentage of humans than ever before.

There have been trade-offs along the way, of course, including plundering most of the solar system’s single habitable planet’s resources.

Without fulfilling our most basic requirements, we can’t truly move into the future, no matter how much one small but powerful group wants to skip ahead to electric planes or flying cars or extended life spans.

I want to get to the future as fast as anyone, but without equal access and enjoyment of these make-or-break requirements, there are simply no bootstraps to pull yourself up by, no ground to stand upon, much less to collectively reach higher.

Here's What You Can Do:

⚡ Understand the health impacts of what’s actually in your food, cosmetics, and cleaning products with the free Yuka app
⚡ Reduce food waste and take care of your grocery shopping with the Misfits Market
⚡ Interested in community solar? Plug your zip into Arcadia’s tool to find out how you can go clean and reduce your power bill
⚡ Want to invest in clean tech but don’t know where to start? Check out ImpactAssets and their donor-advised fund and put your cash to work saving the world

News Roundup

Health & Medicine

Is this why lung cancer doesn’t respond to immunotherapy?
The first federal gun crime report in 20 years dropped
New blood donation rules will loosen restrictions on gay and bisexual men
Prenatal exposure to air pollution is associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes at just 2 years of age

Climate

The US Treasury made more cars eligible for tax credits, and still, there’s nothing for e-bikes and other micro-mobility options
The Colorado River crisis is not going swimmingly as seven states just can’t agree on cuts
Europe’s fossil fuel use should plummet this year

Food & Water

CRISPR could help feed the world but boy genome editing in crops is a tad bit controversial
The FDA rolled out a plan to re-org the food side and not everyone is pleased
How road salt is poisoning Michigan’s water

Beep Boop

A new group called Health3PT is trying to address ransomware attacks along hospital supply chains
GPT is coming to…everything
The ACLU is suing the US intelligence community to try and further expose abuses of a warrantless surveillance program

COVID

Vaccine makers kept $1.4 billion in prepayments for canceled COVID shots for the world’s poor and I am losing my mind
VA Senator Tim Kaine, suffering from Long COVID, pushes for more research and treatments
A good piece on we need an air-quality revolution

Get more:

Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.com/newsletter
Got feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com
Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Get fun merch at importantnotimportant.com/store
Take a nap you deserve it

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors

Essay: "Why Do We Exist?" Feb 13, 2023

Show notes

This week:

For the next few weeks, I’m rewriting and sharing a selection of essays I wrote in 2020 and 2021, so about two hundred years ago. I think they’re more relevant than ever — I can’t wait to hear what you think.

This week: What would you say you do here? (Originally published July 2020, updated February 2023)

Why do we exist?

After a hundred years of progress, humanity faces stress tests unlike any we’ve faced before, and all at once.

The good news: Your company can help rewrite the future.

Here's What You Can Do:

⚡️ The death toll in Turkey and Syria continues to rise. Relief agencies are having a hell of a time, but you can donate to the Syrian American Medical Society, Doctors Without Borders, and World Central Kitchen.
⚡️ There’s never been a better time for educators to bring climate crisis solutions into the classroom, and no better tool than the All We Can Save Project.
⚡️ Renter? Landlord? Either way you can find out how to green your building with BlocPower.
⚡️ Clean up the air in your town with Mom’s Clean Air Force.
⚡️ Every boob is different, so help recruit more women to breast cancer studies with WISDOM.

News Roundup

Health & Medicine

Please read this David Brooks piece on friendship and depression
Sure, yes, electric cars can clean up the air, but please also way fewer cars
A quarter million US students haven’t returned to school since the early pandemic. Where the hell are they?
Workers fighting America’s overdose crisis need much more help
Yelp is coming for “crisis pregnancy centers” and the GOP is not pleased (this is exactly what I mean in the essay above)

Climate

Shell’s board of directors were sued for mismanaging climate risk
EU leaders are still unsure how to deal with the United States’ climate industrialization moves (which we’ve gotta get right)
NPR’s stunning multimedia piece on Senegal’s climate fight is worth a read
Paris is growing new mini-forests

Food & Water

Hot damn — bacteria really does eat plastic.
How to save food from the landfill with WhatsApp (?)
Yeah there’s lead in most dark chocolate, so what should you eat?

Beep Boop

AI is a lot right now. The invaluable Ted Chiang puts it all in perspective, and Charlie Warzel on the gold rush
Federal agencies only followed 40% of cybersecurity recommendations, the same percentage as my children’s chores
Legacy IT systems at London hospitals are not ready for global heating or even like a gentle breeze
What happens when you Google “grief”

COVID

Biden will end the COVID emergency declaration soon. Issac Saul on what it means.
The FDA’s recommendation for annual COVID shots — like the flu — got mixed reviews

Get more:

Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.com/newsletter
Got feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com
Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Get fun merch at importantnotimportant.com/store
Take a nap you deserve it

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

Become An Important Member

Best of: How To Innovate Jan 30, 2023

Show notes

How does innovation actually work?

That's today's big question, and my guest is Christopher Mims. Chris is a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, and I had him on the show in 2021 to understand how he asks big questions.

Chris is constantly asking questions about the most pressing technological and societal issues we face from robot trains to the future of batteries, brain implants, and whatever happens to land in between. And his thesis is this: every little bit counts. And innovation is more predictable than you think - or is it?

In this conversation, Chris and I explore the team dynamics of innovation, the "great man" question, the invisible force behind Moore's Law, and more.

The bad news: Nobody gets to save the world.

The good news: Everyone gets to save the world a little bit.

-----------

Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at importantnotimportant.com/podcast.

-----------

INI Book Club:

Life as We Made It by Beth Shapiro
Arriving Today by Christopher Mims
Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club

Links:

mims.club
Twitter: @mims

Subscribe to our newsletter at importantnotimportant.com
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ImportantNotImp
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Follow Quinn: twitter.com/quinnemmett
Edited by Anthony Luciani
Produced by Willow Beck
Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com

Find our more about our guests here: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/guest-stats

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

Become An Important Member

Essay: Insurance, for you and me Jan 27, 2023

Show notes

This week:

Everyone needs insurance. But what kind? And what does it mean to have it, or not?

Well, there’s actual insurance, which is a policy where you and an insurer contract with one another in case things go south with (usually) your home, your car, or your body.

That’s the layman’s technical explanation, but more colloquially, and for our purposes today, “insurance” can mean just having a buffer or a back up plan, or a “thing you might do to make sure a big decision (like buying a home, having a child, or just generally being a person) doesn’t go to hell in a hand basket.”

All of these decisions are usually the result of understanding that just by being alive you’re really putting yourself out there. While you believe in your choices, and the odds of actual calamity are (usually) reasonable, the costs of calamity can be devastating.

My friends: We are in a time of calamity. It’s time to get some insurance.

Here's What You Can Do:

⚡️Understand your home's flood and fire risk with Risk Factor
⚡️ Work for a local government? Get real-time flood forecasting with FloodMapp
⚡️ Wildfire season is around the corner -- get an outdoor monitor and check the map with PurpleAir
⚡️ Get ahead of COVID and more. Get your town's wastewater monitored with Biobot
⚡️ Over 60? Use your life experiences to organize for climate action with Third Act
⚡️ Find the best "green" bank near you with Bank.Green

News Roundup

Health & Medicine

Parents #1 concern for their kids: mental health
Teen's leukemia gains into remission after experimental gene-editing therapy
An ALS patient set a record for communicating via brain implant
Medicaid continuous enrollment is ending. That's bad.

Climate

$1.1 trillion was invested in climate tech of all kinds last year. That's the new floor
The UK will offer £600 million to industry to switch to green steel (Europe's going to need to throw way more money to catch up to the US)
1/3 of the Amazon is degraded, and Lula's just started fighting back

Food & Water

The FDA unveiled limits for lead in baby food, the same week the top food safety official publicly resigned
Minnesota is one step closer to requiring 100% clean electricity by 2040

Beep Boop

You'll never guess who's the world's biggest face recognition dealer
The BlackCat ransomware attack showed how vulnerable health care records are
Apparently the Xbox is woke now

COVID

Two new studies suggested the bivalent COVID vaccines are more effective against severe illness than the previous ones, please get them

Get more:

Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.com/newsletter
Got feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com
Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Get fun merch at importantnotimportant.com/store
Take a nap you deserve it

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

Become An Important Member

Best of: How Do We Rebuild Capitalism in a World on Fire? Jan 24, 2023

Show notes

How do we reimagine capitalism in a world on fire?

That's today's big question, and my guest is Rebecca Henderson, Harvard professor behind the wildly popular class "Reimagining Capitalism".

I had Rebecca on the show in 2020 to discuss her book of the same name and her research, which explores the degree to which the private sector can play a major role in building a more sustainable economy, focusing on the relationships between organizational purpose, innovation, productivity, and high-performance organizations.

What Rebecca discovered over the last decade or so of research is that focusing exclusively on shareholder profits is a pretty terrible way to run a company in the long run. And it could burn this whole thing down in the short, in the long term.

The silver lining is, as we try to present here all the time, of the four to five catastrophes happening in this country at any given moment, many also present unprecedented opportunities to build a better today and tomorrow for everyone.

Here's my 2020 conversation with Rebecca Henderson.

-----------

Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at importantnotimportant.com/podcast.

-----------

INI Book Club:

"Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist" by Kate Raworth
Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club

Links:

reimaginingcapitalism.org
“Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire”
Twitter: @RebeccaReCap
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rebecca-henderson-recap
Read Ed Yong’s “How the Pandemic Defeated America”

Subscribe to our newsletter at importantnotimportant.com
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ImportantNotImp
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Follow Quinn: twitter.com/quinnemmett
Edited by Anthony Luciani
Produced by Willow Beck
Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com

Find our more about our guests here: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/guest-stats

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

Become An Important Member

Essay: You Say You Want A Revolution Jan 23, 2023

Show notes

This week:

What does it mean when people say “revolution”?

For these purposes, which are pretty narrow and entirely of my own invention, I don’t mean some single moment in time, unless it was a bellwether for something bigger.

And I don’t mean the revolutions that have necessarily most directly impacted me. When I think “revolution” I imagine a building up of…something…that affected most people directly or indirectly, so that’s the threshold I’ll use here.

This list is in no way comprehensive, I’m a generalist bonehead who definitely missed some significant items. I am 40, though I feel like I’m 99, so anyways I’m going to use 1982 as my starting point. YMMV.

INI is about looking forward, to understanding where we are and where we might be going, so we can build a better today and tomorrow for everyone. But to do so, it’s helpful to look back a little bit to understand how we got here, what’s underway, and what might be brewing, for better or worse.

Because the more we have our eyes on these currents, the more we can strike at the root to influence them.

Here's What You Can Do:

⚡️ I love donating to DonorsChoose so much. Teachers need so much more support and should never have to front the cost of essential supplies. Buy some books or crayons or maps or even a 3D printer!
⚡️ Understand where your power is coming from, live, like right now, with Electricity Maps.
⚡️ From the southern border to Ukraine, East Africa, and Palestine, Doctors Without Borders provides medical humanitarian assistance to folks who need it the most. Setup a new monthly donate now.
⚡️ Volunteer to text or call with the Environmental Voter Project, an incredibly effective movement to identify millions of non-voting environmentalists and turns them into consistent voters

News Roundup

Health & Medicine

Genes from the mother shape a baby's microbiome
A bunch of states are suing companies over insulin prices
Clean air in schools could become New Mexico law

Climate

What the California drought map looks like after massive rains
A more sustainable way to grow crops under solar panels
Biden's Green Energy Bank starts to dole out billions

Food & Water

New York will ban forever chemicals from clothing by end of the year
98% of California's don't have flood insurance
What happens when the Great Salt Lake disappears?

Beep Boop

T-Mobile gave up 37 million customer accounts. Again.
US law enforcement agencies have access to 150 million bank transactions
Russia's increasingly going after Ukraine's mobile phone network

COVID

Can we stop Long COVID before it starts?

Get more:

Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.com/newsletter
Got feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com
Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp
Subscribe to our Youtube channel
Get fun merch at importantnotimportant.com/store
Take a nap you deserve it

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

Become An Important Member

Best of: How To Be A Better Ancestor Jan 17, 2023

Show notes

How can I be a better ancestor?

This question has haunted and inspired me since way back in 2019 when I first read the Optimist's Telescope. A beautiful, helpful, inspiring book by Bina Venkataraman. Then I had Bina on the show.

I think it's fair to say it reframed and focused my work and now all of our work here.

You simply cannot be a better ancestor by hoping shit gets better in posting black boxes on your Instagram stories. You have to do the work for today and tomorrow. If you want your descendants to consider you the cool, great-great uncle, you need to drive change today.

Bina is a journalist. She's an author and a science policy expert. She's the editor at large at the Boston Globe and a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. She's been an advisor to President Obama on everything from climate innovation to Ebola to public school science education.

I hope you enjoy this wonderful throwback conversation.

It is mid-Trump presidency. It is before COVID, before Biden, with old co-host Brian Colbert Kennedy, sharing the mic with me, where we dig into the influence Bina's family had on her perspective and her ideas for how you can value the future, how you can use the tools we have available to us now to both prevent further calamities and a build better future.

-----------

Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at importantnotimportant.com/podcast.

-----------

INI Book Club:

“The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss
Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club

Links:

Watch Bina’s TEDTalk: "The power to think ahead in a reckless age"
Read: "The Optimist's Telescope"
Twitter: @binajv

Subscribe to our newsletter at importantnotimportant.com
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ImportantNotImp
Subscribe to our Youtube channel
Follow Quinn: twitter.com/quinnemmett
Edited by Anthony Luciani
Produced by Willow Beck
Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com

Find our more about our guests here: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/guest-stats

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

Become An Important Member

Essay: What it all means Jan 13, 2023

Show notes

Across the front of our website, in big bold letters, is our calling card: “Science for people who give a shit.”

You may have seen it and immediately thought “That’s me!” or “You sir, are a child.”

Either reaction is well and great. We’re not for everybody.

You’re here, though, so let's assume you’re on board with the whole idea.

However you identified with that tagline, you may have also asked yourself what it means, in practice. And that’s a good question because while the mantra isn’t changing, I’m more focused than ever on putting it into practice for me, and you.

To Do Better Better requires trust in one another.

That we care, that we'll step up when it counts, that we won't pull the ladder up after us.

It requires a radical reorientation of our assumptions and expectations, to put into practice our values, to show up for one another -- together whenever we can, and when we're most alone -- to understand 1% better every day doesn't feel very different today -- if anything, it can feel like nowhere near enough -- but in three hundred and sixty-five days, much less by 2035 or 2050, at the rate of 1% a day, together, we can build something entirely new and fucking awesome.

That's compound action. That's what we're about. That's science for people who give a shit.

Here's What You Can Do:

Mutual aid is probably the most effective way to help the folks around you. Find a network near you here.
Want to take on one of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals? Google's offering cash prizes in their 2023 Solution Challenge. Build a team and get to work!
To understand the climate crisis, you have to understand our food systems. Nobody does a better job at that than Civil Eats. Subscribe today.

Get more:

Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.com/newsletter
Got feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com
Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp
Subscribe to our Youtube channel
Get fun merch at importantnotimportant.com/store
Take a nap you deserve it

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

Become An Important Member

Can Your Poop Predict The Next Pandemic? Dec 19, 2022

Show notes

We’re taking giving a shit quite literally this week!

Our guest is Newsha Ghaeli, the president and co-founder at Biobot Analytics. If you read our newsletter, you’ll have heard me go on and on about Biobot, whose mission is to transform wastewater infrastructure into public health observatories.

As an architect turned urban studies researcher, Newsha met her co-founder, Dr. Mariana Matus, at MIT almost a decade ago. Their work on the MIT Underworlds Project led to a dissertation, scientific publications, and coverage by dozens of local and national media outlets, and places in the DeltaV, DesignX, and Y Combinator accelerators.

Obviously, Biobot’s work couldn’t have come along at a better time.

Public health data in the US is fractured and difficult to aggregate, much less on the fly.

Three years into the pandemic, most COVID testing is done at home and unreported, and most states have stopped reporting the data they do get.

Building a baseline understanding of what’s quite literally floating around in our towns and cities will help us be better prepared when new threats like COVID, or old threats like polio come to town.

Like a weather report, wastewater data can make our day-to-day lives safer and less surprising when things go to shit.

-----------

Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at importantnotimportant.com/podcast.

-----------

INI Book Club:

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Dune by Frank Herbert
Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club

Links:

Check out Biobot's data
Get started with Biobot in your community
Keep up with Biobot and Newsha on Twitter

Subscribe to our newsletter at importantnotimportant.com
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ImportantNotImp
Subscribe to our Youtube channel
Follow Quinn: twitter.com/quinnemmett
Edited by Anthony Luciani
Produced by Willow Beck
Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com

Find our more about our guests here: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/guest-stats

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors

Why You Should Care About Soil Health Nov 28, 2022

Show notes

What’s one big change we can make that can make our food healthier, make farming more lucrative, draw down carbon in the atmosphere, and reduce climate emigration?

That’s today’s big question, and my guest is Sasankh Munukutla, another fellow in our series with the 776 Foundation.

Sasankh is the Co-Founder of Terradot, a satellite and AI-based gigaton-scale, soil-carbon sequestration verification system.

Sasankh originally hails from Singapore and grew up across countries as a third-culture kid and a future global citizen attending international schools. Before college, Sasankh took two gap years and served as a Commander in the Singapore Armed Forces. Once at Stanford, he completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science with distinction as a Terman Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi, and with the Stanford Award of Excellence.

So, you know.

As you’ll hear, Sasankh is deeply passionate and thoughtful about the intersection of technology and social impact. He’s worked in the refugee space, on accessibility, and is a major force for organizing in the tech for good space. Something we can all get behind.

Here’s the deal:

Globally, soil has the potential to sequester up to 1.85 gigatons of carbon per year but soil degradation threatens our ability to feed a growing population, and soil desertification will result in 135 million soil refugees by 2050. Fun!

That’s where Sasankh and Terradot come in.

For farmers, Terradot will incentivize adopting sustainable agricultural practices that sequester carbon, improve soil health, and enable participation in soil carbon credit markets.

On the other side, for carbon buyers, Terradot can eventually provide high-integrity carbon removal credits while allowing them to verify and monitor the permanence of carbon removal – an essential piece of the puzzle.

-----------

Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at importantnotimportant.com/podcast.

-----------

INI Book Club: