Important, Not Important

This week: You’ve never had a better opportunity to improve one person’s life than you do right now.I would argue, in fact, that there’s never been a better time to improve one person’s life than there is today.Sounds crazy, right, considering all the destructive nonsense?Here's What You Can Do:Donate to Matriarch to help progressive working women run for office and win.Volunteer with your local Surfrider chapter to protect your waterways and reduce plastic pollution.Get educated about how you can start working on climate solutions by finding a climate job with Climate People.

One of the ways this Trump administration is different from the last is, relatively at least, how much more unconstitutional, how much more organized and comprehensive the attacks on our institutions, particularly the scaffolding we built for ourselves the most precious parts of of our societies: immigration, agriculture, the VA, NIH, the CDC, the NSF and humanitarian work around the globe.Do some of these need reform? Of course, they do. Is this the way to do it? No, it is not. These institutions, the ones we built over the last century that, again, however imperfect, baseline keep us fed and safe and on the other hand, help advance remarkable scientific progress.They're at more risk than ever. Every single day. To combat this onslaught, we need groups who are actually prepared to fight back. My guest today is Dr. Gretchen Goldman. Dr. Goldman is the President of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Previously, she served almost two years in the Biden-Harris White House as the Assistant Director for Envir

We didn't always call our work science for people who give a shit. But ever since we did, we've welcomed at least two types of people to our flock. The first is people who are deeply invested in science, but are unsure how to tie it into measurable action on the human level. And the second is people already fighting for a healthier, more equitable society, but who are curious about the evolving science behind our complex systems.They all want to know a version of the most important question, what can I do? It's a big question right now. And today, after almost 200 conversations and on this, our newly rebranded show, we're going to confront that question as some of our most vital human and humane systems are being put in the shredder.My guest today is Dr. Ticora Jones. Dr. Jones has spent the last two years leading the efforts to expand the vision for science in the science office at the NRDC, to support the scientific and evidence based nucleus for organizational strategy and advocacy.Before joining the NRDC,

What can we do about land power? It's the most important question and my guest today is Mike Albertus. Mike is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. He's the author of the new book, Land Power. Who has it? Who doesn't? And how that determines the fate of societies. In the book, Mike examines how land became power, how it shapes power today still, and how who holds that power determines the fundamental social problems that societies grapple with. Mike studies how countries allocate opportunity and well-being among their citizens and the consequences this has for society, why some countries are democratic and others are not, and why some societies fall into civil conflict.-----------Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.comNew here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.-----------INI Book Club:Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William FinneganCaste and The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel

This week: Not. Right. Now.I hope you enjoy our new show. It’s super, super informal, and fun, and full of profanity, and personal, and — I hope — something you or a parent in your life can identify with, and maybe get some relief from.It’s intentionally and decidedly NOT an advice show. It is a once-a-week parasocial commiseration session about trying to raise kids and continue to be a human and maybe even a partner amid…all of this.Listen to Not Right Now here https://www.notrightnow.show/Read Claire's intro to Not Right Now in her Evil Witches newsletter here https://www.evilwitches.com/p/out-now-a-witchy-project-in-pod-formGet more:Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.comSupport our work and become a Member at importantnotimportant.com/upgradeGet our merchGot feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.comFollow us on Twitter at @importantnotimpFollow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportantSubscribe to our YouTube channelFollow Quinn: on Twit

Please enjoy the debut episode from our new show, Not Right Now. Every week, Claire (Evil Witches) and Quinn (Important, Not Important) dive into the chaotic reality of raising tiny humans in these wild times. From behavioral reflection forms and schoolyard diplomacy to the eternal question of "how many water bottles does one child need?", we explore the messy, hilarious, and occasionally terrifying truth about modern parenting. Plus: why every parent should have friends who don't make you add "...but of course I love them!" to your rants, the special anxiety of raising boys who won't become supervillains, and the paradox of counting down to bedtime while simultaneously scrolling through baby photos. A conversation for parents who know that both dreading dinner and cherishing every moment can be true at the same time. A new show from Important, Not Important.-----------Have feedback or questions? Send a message to questions@notrightnow.showGet all of our episodes at https://www.notrightnow.show/--------

Not Right Now is a podcast for parents navigating the impossible task of raising kids while *gestures wildly at everything*. Join Quinn Emmett (Important, Not Important) and Claire Zulkey (Evil Witches) for honest conversations about parenting in an era of climate change, artificial intelligence, social media anxiety, all while trying to get your kid to just please put on their shoes. From discussing how to talk to kids about the news without traumatizing them (or yourself), to debating the right age for a phone, to admitting that sometimes the best parenting happens when you're hiding in the pantry eating handfuls of trail mix for dinner- Quinn and Claire bring humor, empathy, and real talk to the wild adventure of raising tiny humans in these chaotic times. Because being a good parent doesn't mean having all the answers - it means figuring it out together, one "not right now" at a time.Join us every week, wherever you get your podcasts.-----------Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to qu

This week: I’m not religious. But I did (barely) successfully major in religious studies.For better and often for worse, the history of faith and organized religion has been the backbone of human history, political science, culture, wars, sexual ethics, and more.Subtle or not, religion and faith are most often the answer to why people do what they do, and to how we got here, even now as the west barrels towards majority secularism.Here's What You Can Do:Donate to the Climate Justice Alliance to amplify grassroots leadership working towards a Just Transition.

This week: You're wasting your talent on bullshit while the world burns.You — yes, you — can actually use your very unique set of skills for good. Even and especially at scale, even — yes — right now.Here's What You Can Do:Donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to help get Zuckerberg’s grubby little paws off of your data.Volunteer with Tech Shift and start creating technology that actually contributes to the betterment of humanity.

We (Quinn) has been avoiding this question for quite a while. I even wrote a few thousand words about it a couple months ago and didn't publish it because it was a bit of a downer. But that's kind of malpractice in a way because we promised we don't shy away from the hard stuff even if the goal is to help you understand what you can do about it. Just like there's never really an optimal time in your life to get married, or have a baby, or get arrested, there's never a good time to talk about bird flu, which means it's always the right time to talk about bird flu, and especially when you've got the best of the best on the line.What can I do about bird flu? That's today's big question and my returning guest is the wonderful Dr. Nahid Bhadelia. Dr. Bhadelia is the founding director of the BU Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. She's a board certified infectious diseases physician and an associate professor at the BU School of Medicine.She served as the Senior Policy Advisor for Global COVID 19 Response for t

This week: Be prepared — because these fires that are still burning are only the beginning. Start somewhere, start right in front of you, do what you can.Here's What You Can Do:LA isn’t the only place suffering this week, but it was home for a long time, so here’s vetted ways you can contribute right now, from near or afar.Get more:Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.comSupport our work and become a Member at importantnotimportant.com/upgradeGet our merchGot feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.comFollow us on Twitter at @importantnotimpFollow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportantSubscribe to our YouTube channelFollow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmettProduced by Willow BeckIntro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.comTake a nap you deserve itAdvertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors Mentioned in this episode:Vote For Us

This week: It’s been a minute. Thanks for your patience. Please check out my 2025 preview, and if you’d be so kind, share it widely.Here's What You Can Do:Donate to Everytown to support their efforts to end gun violence, community by community.Volunteer with Communities Responding to Extreme Weather (CREW) to build the supports your community needs to respond to climate impacts.Get educated about how you can run for a local office and make a huge, direct impact on peoples lives using Run For Something’s Local Office Guide. 2025 is your year, let’s go.Be heard about incentivizing heat pump installations and bring our Heat Pump Targets script to your local government meetings.Invest in affordable housing by becoming an investor with Enterprise, a non-profit working to increase housing supply and build community resilience.Get more:Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.comSupport our work and become a Member at importan

What's the missing link in local journalism? That's today's big question, and my guest is Lyndsey Gilpin. Lyndsey is the Senior Manager of Community Engagement at Grist. Lyndsey was the founder and executive editor at Southerly, a nonprofit media organization that equipped people who face environmental injustices and are at most at risk of climate change effects with journalism and resources on natural disasters, pollution, food, energy, and more.It was very groundbreaking, and now she's brought that to Grist. Lyndsey was recently a John S. Knight Community Impact Fellow at Stanford University, focusing on information access in rural southern communities of color, where she is from, based in Louisville. And in an age of mass dis and misinformation it's more important than ever that we not only fund journalism and obviously read it, but local journalism and journalists and publishers, editors, photographers, documenters, and more that are of the communities they are based in, who have and continue to build tru

This week: This entire (short!) episode is a call to action. It's time to do this thing...do the thing, but also take care of yourselves and your loved ones these next couple weeks. It's a lot right now.Here's What You Can Do:Donate to the groups that are on the ground every day organizing and fighting for a better, stronger democracy (go)Volunteer for democracy by picking up the phone and knocking on doors with the people who have mobilizing voters down to a science. Time’s ticking but it’s not too late (go)Learn about ways you can become a more active citizen (like running for a local office!) (go)Be heard about the issues you care about the most, like reproductive rights or clean energy, and find candidates in your district that support those causes.Invest in companies that are scaling climate solutions so we still have a planet where the privilege to vote is possible.Get more:Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.comSupport our work

Is multisolving the future? Is it today? Should we do more? That's all today's big question and my guest is Dr. Elizabeth Sawin. Dr. Sawin is the Founder and Director of the Multisolving Institute, which is convenient for our conversation. She's an expert on solutions that address climate change while also improving health, well being, and economic vitality. She developed multisolving to describe such win win win solutions. Beth writes and speaks about multisolving, climate change, and leadership in complex systems for both national and international audiences. Since 2014, Beth has participated in the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, a continuing dialogue on issues of climate change and sustainability among a select group of humanities scholars, writers, artists, and climate scientists.Beth is a biologist with a Ph.D. From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M. I. T. She co-founded Climate Interactive in 2010 and served as Climate Interactive's co-director from 2010 until 2022. Beth’s work has i

How do we make it easier for more Americans to reliably put food (in particular, hot food) on the table? That's today’s big question, and my guest is Salaam Bhatti. Salaam is the SNAP Director at the Food Research and Action Center, a 501c3 that uses advocacy and strategic partnerships to improve the health and well being of people struggling against poverty related hunger in the United States.Before joining the Food Research and Action Center, Salam was the Public Benefits Attorney and Deputy Director of the Virginia Poverty Law Center where he specialized in public benefits law. Salaam also served as the director of Virginia Hunger Solutions, where he supported the initiative's mission of eradicating hunger and enhancing the nutrition, health, and overall well being of children and families living in poverty throughout this great commonwealth.-----------Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.comNew here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcas

We first ran this episode in May 2023, but following back-to-back hurricanes in Florida this month, it remains as relevant as ever.You've got insurance, right? Are you sure?That's today's big question, and my guest is Washington Post reporter Brianna Sacks.Brianna's an extreme weather and disaster reporter for the Post, where she explores how climate change is transforming the United States through violent storms, intense heat, widespread wildfires, and other forms of extreme weather.Brianna deploys to disaster zones, which are sometimes very close to home, and does enterprise reporting on the preparations for responses to and the aftermaths of catastrophic events.We're having this conversation today because last month Brianna revealed how insurers have slashed Hurricane Ian payouts far below damage estimates, often up to 80%.I cannot emphasize enough that the future includes an insurance landscape that is among the most important in our very brittle economy and society.It underp

There’s no word for “conservation” in many Indigenous languages.Some come close, but mean something more like “taking care of” or “looking after.”And that’s probably because the very idea of conservation, to “prevention the wasteful use of a resource”, would have been, and continue to be, foreign to many of North America’s Indigenous peoples, who lived in an entirely different, co-dependent relationship with nature.That is to say, to have had a relationship at all.A relationship with the very same nature of which we’re inextricably part of, of which we rely on for clean air, food, and water – or it’s game over.And now, if we’re not facing game over, we’re certainly up against the final boss.We live on stolen lands that were tended for thousands of years by Indigenous and Native peoples have been dried out by mostly white settlers in what seems like the blink of an eye.Land now covered in cities, in suburbs, in industrialized agriculture, desperately and even controversially conserved as national and state par

This week: You’d think that -- considering we just spent two years building our new What Can I Do? app -- that I’d have a really good answer for why we were doing it in the first place.But I didn’t. Not until about a week ago.I knew, of course, the practical reasons why it needed to exist, and I had a good idea of what I wanted it to look and feel like.I knew it was the natural evolution and a significant missing piece of our work.But I had never really interrogated myself to understand why I was so hell-bent on building an app -- a tool -- that gathered all the action steps we’d researched over the years, and made them accessible to anyone across the world, anytime they wanted or needed them.Get more:Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.comSupport our work and become a Member at importantnotimportant.com/upgradeGet our merchGot feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.comFollow us on Twitter at @importantnotimpFollow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@im

It’s another big day in a very big month for us.Our extremely tiny team has been busting our asses for almost two years to bring you something fucking extraordinary, something I’m just so proud of, and now it's here:Our new app: "What Can I Do?" A one stop shop for taking action on the issues you give a shit about.Why?Because the world won't unf**k itself.Get it here: https://www.whatcanido.earth/Get more:Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.comSupport our work and become a Member at importantnotimportant.com/upgradeGet our merchGot feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.comFollow us on Twitter at @importantnotimpFollow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportantSubscribe to our YouTube channelFollow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmettProduced by Willow BeckIntro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.comTake a nap you deserve itAdvertise with us: importantnotim