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The Most Important Question

Important, Not Important

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.

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May 12 · 13 min
Introducing: *Actually* Pro Life
250 years after a group of slaveowners wrote that "all men are created equal", we're done letting hypocrites own the language of life. Introducing Actually Pro Life: a reframe, a research platform, and a direct challenge to anyone willing to be held accountable to what they claim to believe. This is the foundation that unites everyone you actually gives a sh*t: No life is worth more than another. That foundation comes with eight non-negotiable Principles, six Guardrails, and 160+ measurable Positions because opinions are cheap and receipts matter. Together or nothing. -------------------------- Get more: Take action at www.whatcanido.earth Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.com Support our work and become a Member at importantnotimportant.com/upgrade Get our merch https://shop.importantnotimportant.com/ Got feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp Follow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportant Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmett Produced by Willow Beck Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com Take a nap you deserve it Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors
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May 4 · 9 min
How You Changed The Lives of 250 Families in Rwanda
Last Christmas we teamed up with about 40 other big podcasts to support our dear friends at Give Directly with a very special campaign called Pods Fight Poverty. The goal was to raise $1 million to send to families in extreme poverty in Bwakira, Rwanda. Today, I want to share some of those results with you, and some of those stories from the folks you helped. But first, a reminder, some context in Bwakira, most people are farmers, but they don't own large enough plots to grow enough food, and many struggle to eat more than one meal a day. Water supply is inconsistent. People often rely on nearby natural streams to collect water when their wells are dry, and there are very few jobs for young people. Families don't have the capital to start small businesses to create their own jobs. Here's the good news. 500-plus rigorous academic studies show how effective cash can be for local economies, for infant mortality, food security, and more. And that's at least in part because when you give cash directly to people in poverty, it means they can choose how best to improve their own lives. You're also giving them dignity and flexibility. So how did our big campaign go? Well, you and me and the 40 other pods we worked with raised $386,000, reaching 250 families in need. Pretty incredible stuff. I'm extremely grateful to all of you. Families told us they spent the cash on urgently needed livestock, household items, food, housing, land, education, healthcare, and more. Listen for some of their firsthand stories about how much your generosity affected their lives directly. You did this, and you can keep doing this. Consider setting up a new monthly donation at givedirectly.org. Let's go hear from those families. ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com. Find every action recommended in The Most Important Question here: www.whatcanido.earth ----------- INI Book Club: Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club Follow us: Subscribe to our newsletters at importantnotimportant.com Join us at importantnotimportant.com/upgrade Get our merch! Follow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportant Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmett Produced by Willow Beck Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors
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#215
April 27 · 51 min
A Calm Voice In A Loud World
Your kids are hearing about the news whether you are ready or they're ready or not. One study said two-thirds of kids aged 8 to 14 are absorbing current events at least every few days, and almost none of it was made for them. They're getting the fear without the context, the headlines without any nuance, and the algorithms without any sort of filter, and in a country arguing over whether to teach history or ban books. The question of who helps kids make sense of the world has never been more necessary and urgent. So what can I do to help the next generation build a healthy, lasting relationship with news and information? Today's guest is Andrea Barbalich. Andrea is the editorial director of The Week Jr., the only weekly news magazine reporting current affairs directly to children, ages 8 to 14. Under Andrea's leadership, it has grown to over 155,000 subscribers. Andrea's got 25 plus years in editorial leadership at places like Child Magazine. She's also the editor of a book called Feeling Safe: Talking to Children About War and Terrorism. We talk about how you explain wars and elections and climate change to an 8-year-old without either terrifying them or talking down to them, why a physical magazine is thriving in a world of 8 second attention spans, and what every parent, grandparent, teacher, coach, and more can do this week to help the kids in their lives become informed, curious, and resilient. ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com. Find every action recommended in The Most Important Question here: www.whatcanido.earth ----------- INI Book Club: The Golden Rock by Theo Varlet Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club Links: Subscribe to The Week Jr Follow us: Subscribe to our newsletters at importantnotimportant.com Join us at importantnotimportant.com/upgrade Get our merch! Follow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportant Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmett Produced by Willow Beck Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors
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#214
April 20 · 45 min
What's In Your Water
Whoever said this country can't come together about anything anymore in the year of our Lord twenty twenty-six was wrong because PFAS, or forever chemicals, are in the blood of ninety-seven percent of Americans right now. They're in our water, our cookware, our food packaging, children, pets. The companies that made them knew they were toxic as early as the 1960s, and the federal government is trying to roll back the drinking water protections we've had for them for about a year, but they're not even in effect yet. But here's the thing: people are fighting back. Awareness is growing. Communities that were poisoned are building a national coalition right from their kitchen tables. Scientists are literally breaking apart molecules that were designed to last forever, and states are stepping in where the feds will not. So what can I do about a chemical contamination that's already inside me? My guest today is Rachel Frazin. Rachel is an energy and environmental reporter at The Hill and co-author of Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America, a new book built on years of original on-the-ground reporting in four contaminated communities across Alabama, Colorado, North Carolina, and Maine. We're gonna talk about what PFAS are and how they got into virtually all of us, what the companies and the military knew and when they knew it, where regulation stands right now, and what you can actually do to protect your family and to join the people who are demanding that this gets fixed for us and our kids and for later generations. ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com. Find every action recommended in The Most Important Question here: www.whatcanido.earth ----------- INI Book Club: The Radium Girls by Kate Moore Exposure by Rob Bilott Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club Links: Read Rachel's book Poisoning The Well Follow Rachel's reporting at The Hill Find the Best Reverse Osmosis System for your home Find the best Water Filter Pitchers for PFAS Compare PFAS Water Filter Options Use EWG's tool to find our What's In Your Tap Water Follow us: Subscribe to our newsletters at importantnotimportant.com Join us at importantnotimportant.com/upgrade Get our merch! Follow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportant Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmett Produced by Willow Beck Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors
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#213
April 13 · 44 min
Life Under A Microscope
Since the dawn of recorded history, our living earth has been changed by everyone who spends time on it or in it from the smallest bacteria to the largest animals. But like the brain-gut axis inside of us that we still barely understand, we've really never had the ability to see and document and even begin to ask questions about the smallest among us out in the world. In the soil, in the air, in the mud, and, of course, all the different kinds of water on this very, very watery planet. Until recently. Thankfully, there are scientists and documentarians among us who can see and share and spark joy in a simple tablespoon of water. Who can help so many more of us who don't have access to those things, see and understand what's around us every day. And as the world has changed so much faster than ever before, it is vital we support as much of this work as possible. Just when it is most possible. My returning guest today is the great Ariel Waldman. Ariel is a National Geographic Explorer, a documentary filmmaker, an Antarctic researcher, a TED main stage speaker, NASA advisor, YouTube host, producer, and an author. Her solo expeditions in science exploration work have earned her global recognition for bridging adventure, storytelling and cutting edge science. I'm so thankful for making all this for coming back on the show today to share news about her wonderful new six part series, Life Unearthed with Ariel Waldman, premiering in April on PBS. ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com. Find every action recommended in The Most Important Question here: www.whatcanido.earth ----------- INI Book Club: Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club Links: Watch LIFE UNEARTHED with Ariel Waldman on PBS https://www.pbs.org/show/life-unearthed-with-ariel-waldman/ Check out lifeundertheice.org Volunteer for a citizen science project near you https://www.whatcanido.earth/results/?verbs=volunteer&nouns=clean-water,conservation&nounsExclusive=true Donate to The Nature Conservancy https://www.whatcanido.earth/action/the-nature-conservancy/ Find native plants to plant in your yard using Native Plant Finder https://www.whatcanido.earth/action/native-plant-finder/ Follow us: Subscribe to our newsletters at importantnotimportant.com Join us at importantnotimportant.com/upgrade Get our merch! Follow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportant Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmett Produced by Willow Beck Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors
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#212
March 30 · 42 min
Public Health Just Got Personal
The CDC issued six health alerts in all of 2025, down from dozens in a normal year (whatever that means anymore). Measles, a disease we basically eliminated 26 years ago, is closing in on 1000 cases, with children hospitalized for brain swelling. And the people now running our top health agencies are the same people who spent years questioning the science those agencies existed to defend. But the good news is people are building new things. States are forming their own health alliances. Scientists are organizing to fight misinformation where it lives. And one epidemiologist in Texas turned a six-week email experiment in March, 2020 into one of the most trusted public health resources on the planet. So what can I do about the collapse of trusted public health communication? Today's guest is Dr. Katelyn Jetelina. Katelyn is an epidemiologist, a mom, a wife, a data scientist, and the founder of the incredibly popular and free Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter. She started it from her kitchen table, and it now reaches something like 310,000 subscribers in 130 plus countries. She's one of the Time 100 most influential people in health, former advisor to the White House and the CDC, and she now leads Project Stethoscope as well. We talk about how Katelyn built YLE, why the old model of top down public health communication was always broken and is now definitely broken, and what Project Stethoscope and Phoenix are actually doing about it. ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com. Find every action recommended in The Most Important Question here: www.whatcanido.earth ----------- INI Book Club: All The Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club Links: Subscribe to Your Local Epidemiologist https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/ Follow us: Subscribe to our newsletters at importantnotimportant.com Join us at importantnotimportant.com/upgrade Get our merch! Follow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportant Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmett Produced by Willow Beck Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors
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March 23 · 1 hr 12 min
Not Right Now: Coloring Pages of Karl Marx
This week, we're dropping an episode from our other show, Not Right Now, in the feed, where Quinn and Claire have community organizer and dad, Garrett Bucks, on the show to chat about parenting, of course, but also how he answered the most important question by building community locally and across the nation, and how you can make it easier for parents (and kids, why not) to engage civically as well. Garrett runs The Barnraisers Project, writes The White Pages newsletter, and is the author of the memoir The Right Kind of White. He also has a son who is very mad that his sister thinks they live in a suburb. The gang gets into why your son talks differently to his sister than to his friends, kids not knowing what the Epstein files are, growing up in rural Montana, how to get work done in between school drop off and soccer practice, and why protests are important AND performative AND boring and worth doing anyway, and how to actually get your kids to come. ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com. Find every action recommended in The Most Important Question here: www.whatcanido.earth ----------- INI Book Club: Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club Links: Get all of our Not Right Now episodes at notrightnow.show Find Garrett's work at garretbucks.com Subscribe to The White Pages at thewhitepages.net Check out The Barnraisers Project at barnraisersproject.org Read Garrett's memoir, The Right Kind of White https://bookshop.org/a/8952/9781982197209 Join The Interdependence Relay at jointherelay.org Follow us: Subscribe to our newsletters at importantnotimportant.com Join us at importantnotimportant.com/upgrade Get our merch! Follow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportant Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmett Produced by Willow Beck Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors
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#211
March 16 · 52 min
Public Health In A Post-Evidence World
Just because we're done caring about an outbreak doesn't mean the outbreak is done with us. Over the last year, we have watched something unsettling happen in plain sight. The quiet, active dismantling of the systems built to catch outbreaks early, coordinate a response, and keep hospitals and communities from getting overwhelmed. Websites have been scrubbed, teams have been hollowed out. Early warning signals have gone silent, and at the exact same time, diseases that many of us haven't thought about since childhood, like measles, are being let back into the present, which really leaves a lot of people with the same question, said a little differently than usual. If the safety net is being shredded, what do we do now? My returning guest today is Dr. Nahid Bhadelia. Dr. Bhadelia is the Founding Director of the BU Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases, a board-certified infectious diseases physician, and an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. She served as the senior policy advisor for Global COVID-19 Response on the White House COVID-19 response team in 2022-2023, where she coordinated the US global vaccine donation programs and helped lead Project Next Gen, a $5 billion effort to develop next-generation vaccines and treatments for a pandemic prone coronaviruses. Dr. Bhadelia also served as interim testing coordinator for the White House Impacts Response Team, and she's the founding director and co-founder of BEACON, an open-source outbreak surveillance program. Today, we're gonna try to make sense of what's being dismantled, what threats don't wait for politics to catch up, what's starting to fill the gaps and most importantly, what you can do right now to protect yourself, your family, and to help rebuild the public health infrastructure we all rely on whether we have to think about it or not. ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com. Find every action recommended in The Most Important Question here: www.whatcanido.earth ----------- INI Book Club: Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club Links: Get global health alerts from BEACON https://beaconbio.org/ Check out the impacts of new public and global health policies at Impact Counter https://www.impactcounter.com/ Track health trends in your community with PopHIVE https://www.pophive.org/ Check out the Vaccine Integrity Project https://vaxintegrity.cidrap.umn.edu/ Check out the Governors Public Health Alliance https://govsforhealth.org/ Follow us: Subscribe to our newsletters at importantnotimportant.com Join us at importantnotimportant.com/upgrade Get our merch! Follow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportant Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmett Produced by Willow Beck Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors Mentioned in this episode: Get Readwise Get Reader What Can I Do?
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#210
March 9 · 1 hr 3 min
The Plastic Crisis Isn't On You, Actually
Plastic. It is the miracle material that has quietly become the infrastructure of modern life over the past 63 years and the almost undefeated business model that's continuing climate change and keeping fossil fuel companies alive and reshaping our bodies, our oceans, and our politics. Yeah, plastic keeps food fresh and hospitals running, and cars and planes lighter, and it's also in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the supply chains that keep churning out more of it while they tell us recycling will handle it. Meanwhile, cities and states are actually trying to rein it in, companies are pledging circularity, and regular people are left staring at their blue bin thinking, does this matter? Does any of this work? So what can I do about plastic? My returning guest is Beth Gardiner, a journalist and author of the new book Plastic Inc. Beth pulls back the curtain on how plastic became so pervasive, why the personal responsibility story has been so convenient for yet another industry, and what the real solutions actually look like, because that's why we're here. So stick with us because at the end of this conversation, what can I do? Won't feel like a shrug. It'll feel like a plan. ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com. Find every action recommended in The Most Important Question here: www.whatcanido.earth ----------- INI Book Club: North Woods by Daniel Mason Mark Twain by Ron Chernow Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club Links: Read Beth's book Plastic Inc https://bookshop.org/a/8952/9780593717103 Keep up with more of Beth's work here https://www.bethgardiner.com/ Follow us: Subscribe to our newsletters at importantnotimportant.com Join us at importantnotimportant.com/upgrade Get our merch! Follow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportant Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmett Produced by Willow Beck Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors Mentioned in this episode: Get beehiiv Get Readwise
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#209
January 19 · 1 hr 19 min
What's The Purpose of Your Wealth?
If our mission is to help people, everyone, answer the most important question, what can I do? Then at some point we need to talk to the people who help really wealthy people, help people. So today's question, what can I do about high net worth philanthropy? And look, hey, maybe you're among the vast majority who just heard that and you're like, well, this one doesn't apply to me, but hear me out. We have some of the worst billionaires of all time, but if billionaires are gonna continue to exist, we all need to have a good idea of how we can push them to distribute their resources more effectively and ASAP. And I truly do believe that among high net worth individuals, there are some, especially younger folks that are dying to do exactly that. So whether that is you or definitely not you, or maybe you are adjacent to someone like that, I think there's something for everyone here. My guest today is Sharon Schneider. Sharon is the Founder of Integrated Capital Strategies LLC, a consulting firm that helps founders and family offices create positive social change using an expanded toolbox of resources and strategies that spans the return spectrum from grants to market rate investments. She's also the author of Handbook for An Integrated Life: A Practical Guide for Aligning Your Everyday Choices with Your Internal Compass, a number one new release on Amazon that helps individuals live into their values the same way her consulting helps business owners and family offices. Sharon previously served as the Executive Director of the Telluray Foundation, the Founding Director of the Walton Personal Philanthropy Group, and the co-founder and CEO of Moxi Jean, a for-profit social enterprise that was acquired by Schoola in 2015. Sharon was named a Colorado Governor's Fellow in 2022 and in 2024 was named an Aspen Institute Finance Leader Fellow, and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Again, I really do think there's something for everyone here. This is a really important conversation in a time of growing inequality. We gotta help more people. ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us, or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com. Find every action recommended in The Most Important Question here: www.whatcanido.earth ----------- INI Book Club: Handbook For An Integrated Life by Sharon Schneider The Purpose of Capital by Jed Emerson Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club Links: Get in touch with Sharon at incapstrategies.com Follow Sharon on LinkedIn Modeling tool to plan your financial future https://projectionlab.com/ Read about how DAFs are actually being used here and here Follow us: Subscribe to our newsletters at importantnotimportant.com Join us at importantnotimportant.com/upgrade Get our merch! Follow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportant Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow Quinn: on Twitter - twitter.com/quinnemmett; Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/quinnemmett.bsky.social; Threads - www.threads.net/@quinnemmett Produced by Willow Beck Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors Mentioned in this episode: What Can I Do? Get Readwise Get Reader
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