Important, Not Important

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

What if we get it right? That's today's big question, and my returning guest is Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist. She is a policy expert, a writer, and a teacher working to help create the best possible climate future. She co-founded and leads the Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities, and is the Roux Distinguished Scholar at Bowdoin College.Ayana authored the forthcoming book, What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures, co-edited the best selling climate anthology, All We Can Save, and co-created and co-hosted the Spotify slash Gimlet podcast, How to Save a Planet. Lastly, she co-authored the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean, what an idea, into climate policy.This is a special one for me. Ayana was guest number seven or eight on the show a long time ago. She took a chance on us. And almost 200 episodes later, a pandemic later, a few degrees of warming later, a lot has changed.But Ayana's passion for nature, her in

In this throwback episode from October 2020, Quinn & Brian discuss: Why state elections matter not just for your state but for the future of our planet.Our guests are: Aimy Steele & Amanda Litman. Aimy is a candidate for the North Carolina House of Representatives in District 82, a mother of five, a former Spanish teacher, and a former K-12 principal. Amanda is the co-founder and Executive Director of Run For Something, a PAC that is recruiting and supporting young progressives who want to run for state and local elections. They’re endorsing more than 500 candidates in the 2020 elections, primarily women and people of color, and they’re inviting all of us to take an active role in writing a new future for our country.And let me tell you -- if those 500 candidates are even half as inspiring as Aimy, we’re in for one hell of a new generation of state representatives. Aimy represents one of those rare times when we get the hero we need and they’re so much better than we deserve. Really, we

This week: Next up in our series of “How to Eat More Plants”. Today’s topic? Beef!Here's What You Can Do:Read the essay and get the links online hereDonate to the Humane Farming Association to support their work against factory farming.Volunteer with Planted Society to help cities, restaurants, and individuals make sustainable changes in their food culture.

This week: Please enjoy this hopeful ditty on how we have finally harnessed the sun ☀️ — and how we’re just getting started.Here's What You Can Do:Donate to Grid Alternatives to advocate for community-powered solar policy that gets everyone on a clean energy grid (

This week: Today’s post is more of a macro introduction to the why and how of the “eat more plants (and consequently) fewer animals” lifestyle.Deep-dives on how to eat fewer animals, by type, including meat/beef/pork, chicken/turkey, dairy, and fish (and humans! Can’t forget humans) will follow in subsequent posts.My overall goal is to help you — someone who already gives a shit for one reason or another — understand why eating more plants and fewer animals is intersectional as hell.Here's What You Can Do:Donate to Friends of the Earth to help transition our food system into one that is more sustainable, healthier, and more just.Volunteer with Kiss The Ground to help shift policies and resources towards regenerative agriculture.Get educated about more ways to eat more plants by subscribing to Vox’s Meat/Less newsletter.Be heard about passing a strong Farm Bill that provides critical funding so farmers can grow nutritious food via sustainable far

This week: We're running an updated version of a popular essay from last year.Tolkien described life (and often, his stories) as a "long defeat", where evil frequently, inevitably wins.But he allowed for "eucatastrophe" — sudden joyous turns (just like breakthroughs in elections and voting rights).We must keep fighting, to hold off the darkness.Here's What You Can Do:Donate to protecting voting rights and advocating for democracy with Fair Fight.Volunteer to bring together conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between to fix America’s political system with RepresentUS.Get educated about quick, easy, daily actions you can take to save democracy by subscribing to the Chop Wood, Carry Water newsletter.Be heard about fair elections and add your name to the End Gerrymandering Pledge.Run for your state or local office with Run for Something (if you’re under 40, if you’re over 40, donate!)Get more:Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importan

How did our planet come to life? Is it alive? And where are we as part of that? Those are today's big questions and my guest is Ferris Jabr. His new book, Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life, is one of the most compelling, beautiful, timely, and important reads I've ever got to underline throughout.Ferris is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and Scientific American. He has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, National Geographic, Wired, Outside, Lapham's Quarterly, McSweeney's, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other wonderful publications. I've been on a bit of a bender lately. I'm getting older. I've got kids that are getting older quickly. Work continues. Everything keeps changing and staying the same. I'm trying to contextualize for myself, for this work, for you all, and for my kids, time and place and presence and relationships.How much time do we each have here? Do we as a species have here? Who do we spend it with? How do we spend it? How precio

When is a cancer scare, a rejected mortgage loan, a false arrest, or predictive grading, more than a glitch in A.I.? That's today's big question, and my guest is Meredith Broussard. Meredith is a data journalist and associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, Research Director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology and the author of several books I loved, including More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender and Ability Bias in Tech, and Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Her academic research focuses on A.I. in investigative reporting and ethical A.I., with a particular interest in using data analysis for social good. She's a former features editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. She's also worked as a software developer at AT&T Bell Labs and at the MIT Media Lab. Meredith's features and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, and other outlets. If you have ever turned on a computer or used the

How do we stop overfishing if we don't know who's doing the fishing? That's today's big question, and my guest is Jennifer Raynor. Jennifer is an Assistant Professor of natural resource economics at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Before entering academia, she conducted policy-relevant economic research for the U.S. federal government for nearly a decade, most recently at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries. Jennifer's research focuses on improving the efficiency and sustainability of fisheries and wildlife management, primarily using methods from economics, data science, and remote sensing.She strives to inform the legislative decision-making process and works closely with state and federal resource managers to design and evaluate conservation policies. She serves on the board of trustees for Global Fishing Watch, and her research has appeared in top journals such as Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Jennifer and her team decided to tackle

This week: We are occasionally asked why we link to scientific journals, news outlets, and sometimes even opinion pieces that are behind paywalls.In a world where HBO HBO Max Max and Spotify and everyone else raise prices once a month, it’s a great question:Our newsletter is free — why the hell do we make you click through to something that costs money?Here's What You Can Do:Donate to the 19th, a diverse, indie, non-profit newsroom reporting on gender, politics, and policy. They do amazing work.Volunteer with Documenters to fill the gap in local media coverage and make sure public meetings are on the record.Get educated about what journalists can do to help journalism survive, from getting involved in policy to unionizing.Be heard about helping journalists and publishers receive fair compensation from tech platforms for use of their content and ask your representative to support the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act.Invest in compani

How do we tackle huge systemic intersectional environmental justice issues at the local level?That's today's big question, and my guest is Jacqui Patterson. Jacqui is the Founder and Executive Director of the Chisholm Legacy Project, which helps connect Black communities that are being disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis with the resources they need to create systemic change across connected challenges.Jacqui was recently named to Time Magazine's 2024 list of Women of the Year, and she took home the Earth Award for her work. Jacqui was previously the Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Since 2007, she has served as Coordinator and Co-founder of Women of Color United.She has served as the Senior Women's Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid, where she integrated a women's rights lens for the issue of feud rights, macroeconomics, and climate change, as well as the intersection of violence against women and HIV/AIDS.Previously, she served as Assistant Vice Presiden

Why is it so important that we share the science of fiction, and what do we do with it once we have it? That's today's big question, and my guest is Maddie Stone. Maddie is a prolific science journalist. She is a doctor of earth and environmental sciences. She's the former science editor of the technology website Gizmodo, which I love, and the founding editor of Earther, Gizmodo's climate focused vertical, which I love.Maddie has edited articles for The Verge, Polygon, and Grist, and her original and award winning journalism has appeared in National Geographic, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Grist, Vice, MIT Technology Room, Technology Review, and Drilled, and many other outlets we love and link to basically every day.An avid science fiction fan like me, Maddie runs one of my favorite blogs called The Science of Fiction, an email newsletter and a blog, if you're old, that explores the real world science behind fictional monsters and alien planets and stuff like that (which checks all of my b

This week: Do you like cookies? What about olive oil cake? What about chocolate chip coffee cake? Listen on.Here's What You Can Do:

How do we take a huge chronic disease burden like Lyme disease or long COVID or even long flu and make it so personal that we simply can't ignore it anymore? That's today's big question and my guest is Dr. Mikki Tal, an immunoengineer and a principal scientist at MIT.Dr. Tal leads the Tal Research Group within the Department of Biological Engineering, and also serves as the Associate Scientific Director of the Center for Gynepathology Research. Mikki is working to identify the connections between infections and chronic diseases.I've written a bit recently about the lessons we finally need to learn about post viral and bacterial health issues, the societal and medicinal and health and economic issues and improving our baseline of wellness and community health, so that we don't suffer from those quite as much.These things are very real, we've known about them for a very long time and the compounding effects of chronic diseases are just going to continue add up the longer we ignore them, and we gaslight people.

This week: This week I wrote about a groundbreaking and essential new study that — thank christ — is not actually about which seemingly reasonable dietary supplement will definitely extend/tragically cut short your life.It’s about 

This week: In this essay, I will argue that Bridget Jones is the perfect climate-era hero, because she is all of us.Here's What You Can Do: