Important, Not Important

If you had all of the data in the world at your hands, what question would you ask first?That's today's big question, and my guest is Dr. Emma Pierson. Emma is an assistant professor of computer science at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, and a computer science field member at Cornell University with a secondary joint appointment as an assistant professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College. Sure. Why not? Emma has published a number of game-changing papers, and we talk about those today and how they all tie together. She's written for the New York Times, 538, The Atlantic, Washington Post, Wired, all my favorites, and has been named to the MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators under 35 list, and the Forbes 30 under 30 in Science list.Her team's work has helped unlock answers and solutions to some of our biggest, most lingering and also sometimes most urgent questions. Emma and her team work diligently to develop data science and machine learning methods to study

What if we just gave people money? That's today's big question and my guests are Caroline Teti and Michael Faye from GiveDirectly. This conversation from 2021, one of my all-time favorites is one of those conversations that can help you truly think outside the box and reconsider how to most effectively take a simple action that can have cascading effects.Caroline Teti or just Teti as she likes to be called, I swear, works on the ground in Kenya, Nairobi, where she is the Director of Recipients Advocacy for GiveDirectly's global operations, and the Director of Governmental and External Relations. Michael Faye is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of GiveDirectly.I think we can all understand that different people need different things on different days. We're talking about life essentials: clean air, clean and accessible water, healthy food, shelter, medicine. The needs can vary enormously among people and on a day-to-day basis.But one thing that unites us all in need is a need for agency over our own life

We're going to keeping re-running this 2020 episode until America stops sacrificing children.---Here we are, yet again. We first ran this episode with Fred Guttenberg, father of Parkland victim, Jaime Guttenberg in 2020 - and what has changed? More gun violence and more senseless deaths. It doesn't have to be this way.In Episode 98, Quinn & Brian discuss: common sense solutions to prevent gun deaths and destroy the gun lobby.Our guest is: Fred Guttenberg, a gun safety activist and political troublemaker.14-year-old Jaime Guttenberg was killed in her high school on February 14, 2018 in Parkland, FL. We usually like to make some jokes at this point, but not today. This is a loss that no person should have to experience — and it’s all the more painful for how utterly avoidable it is. Which side you choose to be on this issue should be as simple as answering this question: do you want to wake up and discover that one of your friends or loved ones has been shot? If the answer is no, then pay attentio

Where the hell did all of the electricians go? That's today's big question, and my guest is leading journalist Emily Pontecorvo. Until recently, Emily was an energy, environment, and climate reporter at Grist, one of our favorite publications. She's now moved on to the new climate newsroom Heatmap. Emily has covered the whole enchilada from green hydrogen subsidies to coal ash, scope three emissions, Fashion Week, airports, locusts, frequent flyers, college divestment movements, carbon removal, you name it. And so when Emily did a deep dive on the worker's subsidies and training schools behind America's electricians or lack thereof, I knew she was the perfect person to help me, and therefore you, understand where we go from here because we need a lot of electricians to electrify everything.It's complicated, it's systemic, and it's holding us back. We need to understand what the bottlenecks are when you can't find an electrician, how we can market to future electricians, then educate them, train them, and supp

This week: Fighting over ESG is stupid, risky, and bad business. Let’s move on.Plus: RSV vaccines, the E-BIKE Act, Skittles (?), deepfakes, allergies, and a new season of DRILLEDWhat We Can Do:⚡️ Submit your comment to keep Virginia in the very-successful — and very lucrative — RGGI ⚡️ Some folks need shelter. Some need water. Or food. The data says giving them agency — and straight cash — works better. Do that by donating to GiveDirectly. ⚡️ Health care is a universal human right. Setup a new monthly donation to the legendary Partners in Health to provide care first to those who need it most. ⚡️ You know what’s cool? A BILLION oysters. Plant them with the Billion Oyster Project and help clean up New York’s waters. ⚡️ There’s 1000 words about ESG investing below, so now’s a good time to find a bank that supports climate action AND your community with Bank for Good.News RoundupHealth & MedicineThe FDA recommends 2 RSV vaccines for older adults — a huge public health win We can learn a lot about how to erad

What if you got the chance to dive to the bottom of the ocean? Would you go? And what would you find there? That's today's big question and my returning guest, one of my all-time favorites, is Dr. Dawn Wright, better known the world over as Deep Sea Dawn. Dawn recently became the 27th person ever in history and the first Black person ever to dive into the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of Earth's ocean.Dawn is an elected member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering and the Chief Scientist at Esri, where she works with other scientists to map the ocean floor in 3D. As our oceans heat up and rise, as we try to reduce overfishing, and as our governments and companies race to mine minerals for our all-electric future, there has never been a more monumental and historic, and vitally important project than trying to understand our oceans.A lot has happened, since Dawn and I last spoke. It shouldn't be surprising then, that this conversation not only talked about the won

This week: What we know — and more importantly, what we don’t — about what AI is capable of, and how much change we’re capable of absorbing.Plus: the Willow Project, H-1B visas, blueberries, honeybee vaccines, climate disclosure rules, next-gen bed nets, and health insurance in North CarolinaHere's What You Can Do:⚡️ Just a few bucks buys some life-saving bed nets with Against Malaria, maybe the most effective NGO on the planet ⚡️ The only thing dumber than cancer is rare cancers. Good news: you can help fund research against them (and work up a sweat at the same time) with our friends at Cycle for Survival⚡️ This is the best electric vehicle you can buy ⚡️ Get educated and follow the Black Maternal Health Caucus on Twitter ⚡️ Understand your home’s exposure to flooding, fires, heat and wind with Risk FactorNews RoundupHealth & MedicineWhat’s second-hand stress?Next-gen bed nets are coming and could save so many lives Medicaid expansion might finally be coming to North CarolinaClimateJoe Biden approved th

What if I told you there was less oxygen in the ocean than there used to be? That's today's big question, and my guest is Dr. Dawn Wright, or as many in the ocean community know her "Deep Sea Dawn." Dawn Wright is an elected member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. She's the Chief Scientist at ESRI, where she works with other scientists to map the ocean floor in 3D. In 2018, when I was just a baby podcaster, when Brian was my co-host, I saw a headline about the ocean that made me question a lot. I knew the oceans were heating up. I was beginning to understand, I think we were all beginning to understand, just how much global heating the oceans had absorbed over the years.But I didn't know what that meant for the billions of creatures that call the ocean home. I didn't know what it meant for us. So I called Dawn. In celebration of Dawn's return to the show next week, I wanted to replay this incredible conversation we had with her to better understand how far we'v

This week: In response to our ongoing and delightful home electrification series with our friends at Rewiring America, we have received a hell of a lot of questions that are beyond our ability to answer.So we brought in the experts: previous pod guest John Semmelhack, home electrification wiz and co-owner of The Comfort Squad, and Joel Rosenberg, member of the Special Projects team at Rewiring America.Your regularly scheduled newsletter will return next week!Here's What You Can Do:Find a reputable contractor in Colorado with Renu, Xcel Energy, Elephant Energy, or HelioFind a reputable contractor in California with The Switch Is On from TECH Clean CaliforniaFind a reputable contractor in Maine with Efficiency MaineNot from any of those states? Check with your State Energy OfficeCheck out Redwood Energy's retrofit guideLearn more about smart heat pump water heatersBuy a low-level carbon monoxide sensor/alarmGet more:Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.com/newsletter

This week: Can little-old-you really make a difference? Hell yes you can.Plus: cheaper insulin, cleaner camping gear, a new (lidless) coffee cup, good news on BetterHelp, and maybe even some paid leave. Here's What You Can Do:⚡️ Help your local farmers sell online — not just at farmer’s markets — with GrownBy. ⚡️ Help people worldwide get clean, safe, accessible drinking water with charity: water. ⚡️ Support Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s Urban Ocean Lab as they write the future of ocean policy.⚡️ Stay ahead of water news with the award-winning Circle of Blue non-profit newsroom ⚡️ Queer student journalists: Apply to be a member of the 2023 Nat’l LGBTQ Journalists’ Conference Student PROGRAM, a week-long all-expenses-paid reporting intensive News RoundupHealth & MedicineREI has committed to stop selling products with forever chemicals Eli Lilly will cut insulin prices to $35, should still be regulated There’s a new bipartisan push for paid family and medical leave Endovascular thrombectomy will (eventually

What can we learn from trees? That's today's big question, and my guest is Dr. Beronda Montgomery. Beronda's a transformative writer, researcher and scholar who pursues a common theme of understanding how individuals perceive, respond to and are impacted by the environments in which they exist.She recently moved from Michigan State University to Grinnell College where she's a professor of biology and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College, which is perfect because I can't think of anyone who is more intentional about mentorship than Beronda. She is the author of one of my favorite books, Lessons From Plants. She's also one of my all-time favorite podcast guests, so I'm excited to share one of our most popular conversations from all the way back in 2021 as we more urgently and comprehensively try to understand how to adapt ourselves, our society and our economy and our ecosystems to mitigate further harm from climate change. We can learn a lot from plants which are living things that are l

How many nights have you spent up recently worried that AI is just gonna take your job? That's today's big question, and my guest is Dr. Mohammed AlQuraishi. Almost three years before chatGPT and New Bing really hit the scene, Mohammed showed up to a conference excited to share his life's work on protein folding, one of the biggest problems in biology.But Mohammad quickly discovered that Deep Mind or to be more specifically AlphaFold had solved the whole damn thing. Mohammad is an assistant professor in the Department of Systems Biology and a member of Columbia's program for mathematical genomics, where he works at the intersection of machine learning, biophysics and systems biology.Obviously, all this is more important and more relevant than ever before. Literally, it changes every week, so I'm excited to share this conversation from 2019 or a million years ago. The world and AI is moving so quickly, but it's messy and in many places it's moving faster than our societal and ethical guardrails can keep up.---

This week: Pulled in a million directions? Wondering what the hell you do with your days? Find your north stars (and become devastatingly effective) with one simple question.What We Can Do:⚡️ Please don’t use public wifi without a VPN. Please? If you can’t just hotspot, use the lightning-fast Mullvad VPN to secure your data. ⚡️ On the hunt for new furniture? Save some trees and check out Kaiyo’s marketplace to buy and sell fancy used furniture! ⚡️ Cancel out your transportation emissions and find your next (or first!) e-bike at Ride Review⚡️ Want to go to climate farm school, or be a climate VC? Get the education you need and build an incredible network with our friends at Terra.do. News RoundupHealth & MedicineAre we getting closer to curing Alzheimer’s? 5th person confirmed cured of HIV After a brutal winter, an RSV vaccine might finally be around the corner Social media has been a major cause of mental illness in girls for a long time. Here’s the evidence. ClimateHow disinformation is slowing the clean

This week: The future of search and chatbots looks a lot like our ancient past. Why do we keep making the same tools over and over again?What We Can Do:⚡️ Addiction is brutal. Help yourself or a loved one or someone you’ve never met with Shatterproof. ⚡️ I’m so excited to share that my favorite event on Earth, “LA Loves Alex’s Lemonade Stand” is finally back. Support pediatric cancer research and buy yourself some tickets to eat food from some of the greatest chefs on the planet. ⚡️ It’s a pretty pretty pretty good moment to read Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence and The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values. ⚡️ Want to switch your retirement fund to one without fossil fuels? Check out Fossil Free Funds to find mutual funds and ETFs that qualify. News RoundupHealth & MedicineIt’s probably helpful to understand that half of all American hospitals are projected to be in the red this year American teenage girls are suffering in a very real way. Th

Imagine you’re in a sci-fi movie. The one where everything’s on the line. And while dinosaurs or aliens or a virus takes over down on the ground, you’re the scientist unexpectedly riding in the helicopter with the actual president, the scientist who’s run the calculations and asked the questions nobody else thought to ask, who’s uncovered the virus’s single weakness.But nobody’s listening to you. Because it’s complicated when everything is on the line. But you know that what you know could save millions of lives. What do you do next?That’s today’s big question, and my guest is Dr. Linsey Marr.A renowned scientist and multidisciplinary engineer who pioneered research into a better understanding of the flu’s airborne status, and how humidity plays a role in the flu’s seasonality. She is among a very small group of scientists who truly understand the aerosol transmission of bacteria and viruses.Three years later, we’re still wrestling with the implications of this virus and how we level the playing field by clea

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

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’

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.comNew here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at importantnotimportant.com/podcast.-----------INI Book Club:Life as We

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 lo

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 conver