Important, Not Important

In Episode 89, Quinn & Brian discuss: Taking down the white guy who politically stabbed you (and the planet) in the back.Our guest is: Dr. Arati Kreibich. She gave us a call a couple weeks back to explain that she’s a freshman Councilmember in Glen Rock, a proud immigrant, a neuroscientist, a mother, and a grassroots organizer who is now running for Congress in New Jersey’s 5th Congressional District, because I GUESS THAT’S WHAT IT’S COME TO.In the last congressional election, Dr. Kreibich campaigned (a lot) for the current representative, Josh Gottheimer. She saw Josh as an opportunity for the district to move forward, but she’s been disillusioned and disappointed by the decisions he’s made in the name of “bipartisanship.” So, instead of backing another rich white man who doesn’t actually care, Dr. Kreibich decided to take Gottheimer down herself. WE'RE IN.Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.comNew here? Get started with our fan favorite episode

In Episode 88, Quinn & Brian ask: You voted for clean energy… so why hasn’t it become a thing yet?Our guest is: Dr. Leah Stokes, author of the new book Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States She’s like Captain Planet if Captain Planet was a powerful woman with a Ph.D. in kicking polluters’ asses AND public policy.At the end of this episode, you’ll know exactly why your state is still building or spewing fossil fuels and how you can help burn it all down. The energy system in our country is functioning exactly as it was designed — poorly and toxically — but we do have the ability to reclaim our air, reclaim our water, and reclaim our health if we start working together now.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:“The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir” by Samantha Powerhttps:

In Episode 87, Quinn & Brian ask: What, exactly, are we putting on our bodies (and why aren’t more people asking questions about it)?Our guest is: Gregg Renfrew. Gregg is a serial entrepreneur who most recently founded Beautycounter to increase transparency and safety in the personal care industry. She also actively lobbies for regulation in the cosmetics industry to limit the number of harmful chemicals included in products sold in America because, you know, less poison in and on our bodies is a good thing — a good thing that many other companies in the beauty industry fight vehemently against.There are complicated ingredients in our cosmetics, moisturizers… well, pretty much everything we’re sold to put on our body to make it look or feel better. And these ingredients are increasingly obscured by labeling trickery, like the deceptive word “fragrance” that can hide dozens of potentially dangerous chemicals — and, holy hell, after what we learned in this episode, we are so on board with getting to th

In this special episode, Quinn (with some help from our friends at the CDC and elsewhere) talks you through everything you need to know about the coronavirus, what you can do to prepare, and — maybe most importantly — what you can’t. Want to read or print or share with friends? The matching blog post is here: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/blog/2020/3/2/how-to-survive-the-coronavirus-with-your-sanity-intact.

In Episode 86, Quinn & Brian ask: What can we do to support the black farmers who have the ancient answers to rebuilding our soil, farms, and food system?Our guest is: Leah Penniman, Co-Director and Farm Manager of Soul Fire Farm, a farm dedicated to ending racism and injustice in the food system. Leah is also the author of “Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land.”In many ways, Soul Fire Farm represents a new start for American agriculture — a new start built on some very old roots, carrying on the legacy and wisdom of sustainable African farming traditions. We all benefit from the incredible work that Li and the others at Soul Fire Farm are doing, and this is a piece of historical and ecological education that everyone in the US, in particular, should be aware of.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: https

In Episode 85, Quinn asks: Is there a blueprint for fighting food waste in your city?Our guest is: Rick Nahmias. As Founder and Executive Director of Food Forward, Rick has spent more than a decade harvesting the bounty of LA’s fresh fruit and vegetables and getting them to the organizations feeding the many, many, many people in Southern California who cannot otherwise afford it.When you realize just how much food goes to waste in the United States, it’s a little sickening. And when you then consider how many people go hungry every day in the United States, it’s more than a little disheartening. But the bright side — and, yes, we know that we wouldn’t need to talk about the bright side of every topic if we didn’t exclusively talk about how our world is going to hell — is that, wherever you might live, you can help get food out of the landfill and onto the plates of people who need it.Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.comNew here? Get started with

We’re back! In Episode 84, Quinn & Brian ask: Is the USA responsible for climate refugees (and then turning them away)?Our guest is: Jessica Cisneros, a 26-year-old immigration and human rights attorney and proud Mexican-American woman running for Congress in Texas’ 28th district to fight for working families.Jessica’s opponent and the district’s incumbent is Henry Cuellar, “an anti-choice, anti-labor, pro-NRA Democrat who voted with Donald Trump and the Republicans almost 70% of the time last Congress,” according to Jessica’s campaign website. Rick Perry also appointed him to Texas Secretary of State, so that’s a big red flag. On top of all that, Cuellar is one of the top congressional recipients from the oil and gas industry and — surprise, surprise — he has voted for rolling back environmental regulations. Funny how that works.But here’s the thing: those choices don’t just affect voters in Texas’ 28th district. They affect generations of people in Texas, as well as people from other areas of the w

This is a special preview of our new weekly audio newsletter. It's all the most vital science news you missed, with action steps you can take to fight back, delivered in five minutes and read by Brian. After this week, it's a premium-only product, so if you find it valuable, go to importantnotimportant.com/shitgiver to subscribe! This week: the EU lost their meat pies to Boris but gained a hell of a lot of clean energy; energy emissions are flat worldwide but flat isn't enough; be damn glad you're not stuck on a cruise ship with the coronavirus; we CRISPR'd the first cancer patients; can we trust BP oil?; Democrats are campaigning on fixing our soil Find links from this newsletter and more at importantnotimportant.com/newsletter Got feedback? Email us at funtalk@importantnotimportant.com Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp Important, Not Important is produced by Crate Media

We’re very excited to announce the launch of our new premium podcast feed — The Shit-Giver Edition! Our main feed (this one) will always be free, and will always host the latest in our award-nominated "save the world" conversations, with ads read by us to help pay the bills. Our mission remains to reach the greatest audience and affect as much change as two guys and a rescue dog possibly can. But for those of you that don't want ads, or love Fun Talks, or just want to support our hard work -- you can now go premium! In exchange for supporting the show with $5 a month or $49 a year (a 17% discount!), you'll get:  Exclusive access to *ad-free* versions of the main "save the world" shows All of our *Fun Talk* episodes A *brand-new* audio version of our weekly newsletter. That’s all of the news you missed, read in the sultry voice of Brian Colbert Kennedy, delivered to your favorite podcasting app every Friday. Plus, you’ll get a *discount on merchandise* in our store! So head on over to http://importa

In Episode 83, Quinn & Brian discuss: Blue carbon, the patriarchy, and how one of those two things has ruined the other (we’ll give you three guesses).Our guests are Dr. Sarah Myhre and Priya Shukla. Dr. Myhre is a leading voice in the fields of climate science, science communication, and public advocacy, as well as a Fellow with Project Drawdown and the Executive Director of the Rowan Institute. Priya is a PhD Student (AKA an almost-doctor) at UC Davis studying how climate change affects shellfish aquaculture operations within the coastal ocean, as well as a board member at The Rowan Institute and a Forbes contributor writing about ocean science.Blue Carbon is not an upcoming sequel to the highly-underrated Deep Blue Sea or a spinoff of the Netflix show Altered Carbon. Rather, it’s our best chance of sucking carbon right out of the air, if the man doesn’t keep trying to keep it down. These two more or less cut us out of the conversation — as it should be when we’re talking to two people who actually

We’re interrupting your normally scheduled programming with a Special Election Report! So, today, Quinn & Brian ask: Will You Help Us Flip Virginia? Our guest is Dr. Ghazala Hashmi, an immigrant, educator, and mother who is running in the general election for Virginia State Senate District 10 on November 5, 2019 — just seven days after this episode airs! That means there are just seven days left to flip Virginia and make it blue. This is a special episode for us, and not only because we think Brian’s U.S. electoral map Halloween costume looks much better on him in blue (we’re thinking long-term here). Virginia is also Quinn’s home state and we have an opportunity to guide it towards a significantly more kick-ass future with women like Ghazala at the helm! So, if you don’t do it for the future of our nation and world, will you at least do something for Quinn? Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message! Support Dr. Hashmi: Donate to Dr. Hashmi RIGHT NOW: secure.actblue.com/d

In Episode 82, Quinn & Brian discuss: How to fix our somewhat pressing land reconfiguration issues -- from 30,000 feet down to the soil under your feet.Our guest is Dr. Iara Lacher, a land use ecologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. She is also the co-runner of a small nursery out of northwestern Virginia called Seven Bends Nursery. The work she does is based around sustainable planning and living, where they conduct the science to provide information for use in planning, land use, and conservation. She also wants to, through the nursery, provide these materials on a smaller scale to homeowners.We have a lot of work to do to combat climate change. We need to drastically rebuild our land use from top to bottom, reforesting the world — and before we can even start doing that, we have to stop deforestation. There is no one solution that’s going to solve it all, but we need a diverse portfolio of planning for our ecological future.Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us

In Episode 81, Quinn & Brian discuss: Legalizing the weed of the sea.Our guests are Bren Smith and Tom Ford, two fine, clean-living gentleman who are out on the water, every day, trying to change the way that we eat and use the ocean to our benefit — and, more importantly, to the ocean’s benefit (which seems obvious to us, but apparently is not).Bren started the Thimble Island Ocean Farm, a farm dedicated to restorative ocean farming, and is the Executive Director and co-founder of GreenWave, a nonprofit supporting a new generation of ocean farmers feeding the planet and building a blue-green economy in the era of climate change. Tom Ford is Executive Director of The Bay Foundation, Director of the Santa Monica Bay National Estuary Program, and Co-Director of the Coastal Research Institute at Loyola Marymount University — all of which adds up to him being a super smart guy with a lot of ideas about how we can improve both the ocean and our lives, and as we’ll learn today, some of them are surprisingly che

In Episode 80, Quinn & Brian discuss Quinn’s wife’s least favorite thing: Mosquitoes!Our guest is Dr. Natalie Kofler, a trained scientist and the founding director of Editing Nature at Yale University, a global initiative to steer responsible development and deployment of environmental genetic technologies. Dr. Kofler’s work navigates the technical, ecological, and ethical complexity of gene editing applications designed to impact wild species, such as CRISPR-edited mosquitoes to prevent malaria transmission.Dr. Kofler shares a deep level of technical understanding, paired with a heaping helping of compassion and nuance that is really something to behold. We are so happy she’s one of the people leading us into the future, and leading by a much-needed example.Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!Trump’s Book Club: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer: https://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/3R5XF4WMZE0TV/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_ws_2Gr8Ab6RS5WF3Links: Have feedback or q

In Episode 79, Quinn & Brian are back to discuss: Optimism in the air (wait... that doesn’t sound like us). Our guest is Beth Gardiner, an environmental journalist and the author of Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution. We talk about why Beth was driven to write Choked, how we got to the sad state that we’re in on this planet right now, and how we’re actually getting out of it. It’s not improving everywhere, and it could definitely be improving faster, but this is one area where you can actually see and feel change happening. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message! Trump’s Book Club: “Field Notes from a Catastrophe” by Elizabeth Kolbert: https://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/3R5XF4WMZE0TV/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_ws_2Gr8Ab6RS5WF3 Links: Have feedback or questions? Send a message to funtalk@importantnotimportant.com Leave us a voice message: anchor.fm/important-not-important/message Read “Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution:” www.amazo

In Episode 78, Quinn & Brian discuss: Planning for chaos. Our guest is Bina Venkataraman, author of the upcoming book The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age and a teacher in the program on Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. Fair warning, so you don’t get upset like Brian did: this is not a real telescope. But you should still be excited, like Brian is now, because Bina is awesome and her book sounds fantastic. As you can probably tell from the title of Bina’s book, this is actually a pretty positive episode! Of course, because we can’t let the silver lining distract you from the thundering cumulonimbus above our heads for too long, we will remind you that a book like this is only necessary because we’re pretty much one Instagram filter away from it being Mad Max out there. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message! Trump’s Book Club: The Lorax by Dr. Seuss: https://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/3R5XF4WMZE0TV/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep

In Episode 62, Quinn & Brian asked: Where does Ebola go from here?Our guest is Karin Huster, a Field Coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, where she is currently bouncing between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique. She spent a decade in the trauma ICU before flinging herself head first into humanitarian efforts across the globe. She’s sorta the Forest Gump of humanitarian field nurses; if there’s a health-related outbreak, or a storm-related outbreak that turns into a health-related outbreak, she’s there – and she’s inspiring as hell!The latest Ebola outbreak started in the Democratic Republic of Congo in August 2018, which is the worst on record for the DRC and the second largest Ebola outbreak in recorded history. Ebola is a beast of a disease, the kind of thing Hollywood uses as a go-to when they need a horrible disease outbreak. However, we do actually have some experimental drugs for treatment and a promising vaccine, thanks to recent medical advancements, but they don’t seem to be doi

In Episode 77, Quinn & Brian discuss: How Colorado can fix this wholllllle thing with one little election.Our guest is Mike Johnston, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Colorado and the first in our series of conversations about the 2020 elections.The 2020 Senate elections are going to be really important because flipping the Senate is one of the only protections we might have from another four years of a Republican President – or, if we want to think a little more optimistically, it will allow a new President to make more significant and impactful changes to policies that affect everyone, everywhere.Colorado is the state where we're most likely to flip a seat, so it’s really going to set the tone for the rest of the 2020 elections.And we like what Mike has done with his political career so far. As a State Senator, he passed major legislation that opened the doors of college to undocumented students, invested in renewable energy, and won a fight with the NRA to pass common sense gun safety. A

In Episode 76, Quinn & Brian discuss: What you don’t see (any more) when you snorkel.Our guest is Dr. Kim Cobb, a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology who specializes in climate change, specifically how the extremes of climate change are changing in the ocean due to anthropogenic greenhouse gasses. She describes herself as 40% Climate Scientist, 40% Mom, and 20% Indiana Jones, somehow managing to balance research in remote areas of the world with raising four children. So she’s definitely badass, probably super human.Dr. Cobb, like some of our other guests who are researching the future of climate change impacts, is doing so with increasing urgency and desperation in a valiant effort to help us avoid the worst effects of climate change. As science and Dr. Cobb’s body of work are actively attacked by politicians, policy makers, and the public, she and her colleagues are being forced to stand up and scream that we need different policies, now, to k

In Episode 50, Quinn & Brian discussed: How D.C. and LA are dealing with urban heat issues.  Our guests are Yesim Sayin Taylor and Molly Peterson. Yesim is the founding Executive Director of the D.C. Policy Center and Molly is a renowned reporter focusing on the environment and climate change (and our first returning guest!).We all remember when Nelly said, “It’s getting hot in herre,” but not a lot of people remember the whole verse: “It’s getting hot in herre, so take off all your clothes / all of the poor minorities in America are suffering and dying before everybody else / Uh, uh, uh, let it hang all out.” But it’s a shame, really, because if we’d just paid more attention to Nelly’s important message back in 2002, maybe we wouldn’t be facing this problem today.Trump’s Book Club: The Old Man Who Read Love Stories by Luis Sepúlveda Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason StearnsLinks: Learn more at https://www.dcpolicycenter.org Yesim on