Episodes
Nov. 5, 2019
#83: Knock Knock. Who’s There? Climate Change. Climate Change Who? Climate Change Pooped On Your Head. (A Conversation About Mangroves)
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...
Oct. 29, 2019
BONUS: Help Dr. Ghazala Hashmi Flip Virginia
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...
Oct. 22, 2019
#82: Sustainable Trees + Death Metal = Climate Progress
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 ...
Oct. 8, 2019
#81: Legalizing the Other Weed
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...
Oct. 1, 2019
#80: Mosquitoes. The Serial Killers of Nature. Should We Make Them Go Away?
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...
Sept. 24, 2019
#79: Air Pollution: The Low Hanging Fruit of Our Hellish Future
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 P...
Aug. 27, 2019
#78: How to Be A Better Ancestor
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, Techn...
Aug. 21, 2019
BEST OF THE BEST: Where Does Ebola Go From Here?
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 Mozamb...
Aug. 13, 2019
#77: Please, Please, Please Do A Good Job, Colorado
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 co...
Aug. 6, 2019
#76: Save the Corals, Save the World
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 specializ...
July 31, 2019
BEST OF THE BEST: It’s Getting Hot in Here, and America’s Poor Are Dying Faster Than Everyone Else
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...
July 23, 2019
#75: Can Zebrafish Beat Childhood Cancer?
In Episode 75, Quinn & Brian discuss: Beating the crap out of childhood cancer with science and... zebrafish? We’re getting really nerdy about beating childhood cancer with Dr. Jaclyn Taroni and Dr. Genevieve Kendall. Dr. Ken...
July 16, 2019
#74: Incentivizing Those Dirty Capitalists to Solve Climate Change for Us
In Episode 74, Quinn & Brian discuss: Making carbon capture suck more (but this time, with carrots). Our guest is Henry Elkus, the frustratingly young and impossibly optimistic founder of Helena, an organization that assemble...
July 10, 2019
BEST OF THE BEST: What’s It Feel Like To Be Asked To Save the World?
Today’s episode is a rerun of Episode 56, where Quinn & Brian asked: What’s it feel like to be asked to save the world? Our guest is Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who is writing policy and leading the Green New Deal project at New Cons...
July 2, 2019
#73: Did A.I. Just Make My Life’s Work Obsolete?
In Episode 73, Quinn & Brian ask: Hold On A Minute -- Did A.I. Just Take Our Jobs? Of course, we aren’t talking about our jobs. If A.I. took our jobs, the show would have won that Webby. We’re talking about really, really imp...
June 25, 2019
#72: The Monsoon Is 11 Days Late
In Episode 72, Quinn & Brian discuss: Monsoons, food, and people. Our guest is Dr. Deepti Singh, an Assistant Professor in the School of the Environment at Washington State University - Vancouver who is motivated by the poten...
June 18, 2019
#71: Why Raising the Status of Girls Can Change Everything
In Episode 71, Quinn & Brian discuss: Why raising the status of girls can help change everything. Our guest is Dr. Katharine Wilkinson , a Vice President at Drawdown, an author, a public speaker, and an expert in just about e...
June 11, 2019
#70: Who’s Fixing the People Fixing Our Planet?
In Episode 70, Quinn & Brian discuss: When things are broken, when the people who are working on those things are also broken, and why we need to help them. Our guest is Nikki Silvestri, the founder and CEO of Soil and Shadow...
June 4, 2019
#69: Rebuilding Los Angeles & L.A.’s Green New Deal
In Episode 69, Quinn & Brian discuss: Rebuilding Los Angeles and L.A.’s Green New Deal. Our guest is Jeanalee Obergfell, who works just down the street from Important, Not Important HQ as a City Planning Associate for Los Ang...
May 28, 2019
#68: Let’s Send Our Homework into Space
In Episode 68, Quinn & Brian discuss: Sending our homework to space. Our guest is Michelle Lucas, an actual rocket scientist and the founder of Higher Orbits. Michelle spent 10 years at NASA, where part of her role involved t...
May 21, 2019
#67: Is Climate Change "Flippable"?
In Episode 67, Quinn & Brian ask: Is Climate Change "Flippable"? Our guest is Catherine Vaughan , CEO and Co-Founder of Flippable, an organization dedicated to flipping state governments from red to blue. You may not be surpr...
May 14, 2019
#66: So We Can’t Just Blow Up Asteroids, Then?
In Episode 66 , Quinn & Brian want to know why the hell we can't -- and further -- shouldn’t just blow up asteroids . Our guest is the incredible Professor K.T. Ramesh , professor of mechanical engineering at John Hopkins, fo...
May 6, 2019
#65: Chernobyl: A Preventable and Rare Accident from the Past or a Vivid Picture of Our Hellish Nuclear Future?
In Episode 65 , Quinn asks: Is Chernobyl a preventable and rare accident from the past or a vivid picture of our hellish nuclear future? Our guest is Craig Mazin, a screenwriter, podcaster, and the creator of a new HBO mini-s...
April 30, 2019
#64: Sunrise Movement Tour - Live (ish) in LA!
In a very special Episode 64, Quinn & Brian discuss (live! Kind of): everything that’s good at the Sunrise Movement Tour (and everything that’s not-so-good in the local communities)! Our guests are politician and native Hawai...