Latest Episode
Run To Flip Your State
Today we're gonna talk about Texas. For a decade, maybe 100 years, we've heard over and over, this is the year we flip Texas. Sometimes we get closer, sometimes we get much further away. But as much as I'm excited about a candidate like James Talarico, I am always more interested in the people standing up to run in their communities at the state and local level. So today, I'm going to introduce you to Junior Ezeonu . You all ave asked for more examples of people fighting for progress you can act
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Feb. 10, 2025
Essay: Have Mercy
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
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March 17, 2025
Going Quietly Is Not An Option
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, wh
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May 8, 2023
Fighting Food Waste With The iPhone of Trash Cans
How much food do you throw away every week? And do you have to? That's today's big question, and my guest is Matt Rogers . Matt is a former Apple iPod and iPhone engineer . The Co-Founder of Nest thermostats , Founder of incite.org, and former Chairman of Carbon180 . He is now the Co-Founder and CEO of Mill. What's Mill ? It's a membership to a food-shrinking, de-stinking kitchen bin , and it just may be one of the most important levers you and I can take to fight food waste and climate change.
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Feb. 20, 2023
Clean Air Is An Inside Job
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 sav
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April 14, 2025
Table To Farm
Sometimes you buy organic, sometimes you hit a restaurant that's plant-based, or at least you choose the veggie option. Maybe the fish option at the market or the restaurant is marketed as being sustainable. Maybe you compost. It's all useful. But we've been doing it for a while and it's not moving the needle for climate, for restaurants, for farmers, for our health. So anyone who gives a shit wants to know, what can I actually do to scale regenerative agriculture to benefit everyone? My guest t
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Oct. 30, 2023
What Causes Depression?
Content Warning We're going to be talking about stress and anxiety, depression, suicide, and more today. If any of this could be triggering to you in any way, please feel free to just skip over this one. Nothing in this conversation should be taken as medical advice. If a treatment or combination of treatments prescribed or recommended by your healthcare provider is working for you, that's great. Your personal experience with that treatment is much more relevant than anything in this conversatio
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Nov. 6, 2023
Can Your Gut Predict Alzheimer's?
Can your gut composition predict Alzheimer's? That's today's big question and my returning guest is Gautam Dantas. Gautam heads up the Dantas Lab at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis . His lab works at the interface of microbiogenomics, ecology, synthetic biology, and systems biology to understand, harness, and engineer the biochemical processing potential of microbial communities. Since our last conversation, Gautam was named a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiol
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Nov. 13, 2023
The Female Origin of Species
How did the female body drive 200 million years of human evolution? And why the hell are we just finding out about it now? That's today's big question, and my guest is Cat Bohannon . Cat is the author of the incredible new book, “Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution” . Cat is also a researcher and author with a Ph.D. from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative in cognition. Cat's essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazi
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Dec. 4, 2023
How To Make Ethical Decisions
Has there ever been a more important time, a more consequential time, to lead with ethics? That's today's big question, and my guest is Dr. Susan Liautaud . Susan is the author of The Power of Ethics and of the Little Book of Big Ethical Questions . She teaches cutting-edge ethics courses at Stanford University . She is the C hair of the Council Trustees at the London School of Economics and Political Science . She's the Vice Chair of the Global Partnership for Education , and is Chair of the St
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June 22, 2026
Run To Flip Your State
Today we're gonna talk about Texas. For a decade, maybe 100 years, we've heard over and over, this is the year we flip Texas. Sometimes we get closer, sometimes we get much further away. But as much as I'm excited about a candidate like James Talarico, I am always more interested in the people standing up to run in their communities at the state and local level. So today, I'm going to introduce you to Junior Ezeonu . You all ave asked for more examples of people fighting for progress you can act
217
June 15, 2026
Run for Working People (And Not For Data Centers)
Today, we're gonna talk about data centers. Now, I know these things are a hot topic amid everything else: the heat, water, prices, lack of homes, lack of childcare, you name it. But we do need to speak out about them. So, who is the most qualified here to speak about them, and when necessary, against these just enormous data centers that are affecting the heat, the water, the prices, the lack of homes, and more? In this second batch of conversations, in partnership with our best friends at Run
June 9, 2026
Introducing: It's Called Reality
Something new from the team behind The Most Important Question! It's Called Reality is a podcast about reality TV, and the systems hiding inside it. Every episode, hosts Willow Beck and Briana Brown take a show you're already watching and pull the thread on what it's actually revealing about power, media, and the world we live in. If you listen to The Most Important Question, you already think about who controls the narrative, how misinformation spreads, and what it means that the media environm
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June 8, 2026
Run for Soil and Water and Farmworkers
You may feel like you're giving it all you have, but obviously things are tough out there. We're working on all of it, but in particular, you, our listeners have asked for over and over more examples of a fight and actual progress that you can see and touch and feel. And in these, the new second batch of conversations, in partnership with our best friends at Run for Something , we're gonna give you more of exactly what you're asking for. Going forward, not every conversation will be the same. So
June 3, 2026
Bonus: An *Actually* Pro Life T-shirt
We've spent the last two essays building the case for *Actually* Pro Life: wht it means, where it comes from, and why the logo was designed to be worn, carried, and declared in public. Now we're asking you to do exactly that. We just launched our first ever APL Member Drive. The first 50 people who upgrade to become an Important Member get a free *Actually* Pro Life t-shirt. And one member who joins before June 12th wins a full APL swag bag. A paid membership is what keeps this work honest. No a
May 18, 2026
*Actually* Pro Life: The Design
If the name Actually Pro Life is deliberate, then so is the logo. Because like I said in our intro post, we’re reclaiming "pro-life" from the same people who blame kindergartners for getting shot at school, and we’re grounding it in evidence. Evidence like, “Does this action make it measurably less likely or more likely that kindergartners will get shot at school?” Any action can only go one way, and we only go one way, and you can go our way, or 🎵 you can go your own way 🎶, in which case — go f
May 12, 2026
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 Posi
May 4, 2026
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
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April 27, 2026
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 nec
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April 20, 2026
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
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