Newsletter #288: What $200,000 buys you
This week:
- What IRA means for cars
- Centralizing data for the next pandemic
- A parched Earth
- Big Pharma is Big Mad about IRA
- Fingers crossed that Big Tech will protect democracy
Action Steps:
- Listen to a very-Ira episode of "The Coolest Show" podcast
- Check out this COVID dataset of sequences by variant and country
- Donate to bring clean drinking water to people in developing countries
- Call your senators to urge them to support the INSULIN Act
- Sign upto be paired with a cybersecurity expert
Get more:
- Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.com/newsletter
- Got feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com
- Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp
- Get fun merch at importantnotimportant.com/store
- Take a nap you deserve it
Featured Episodes
Finding the Humanity in Artificial Intelligence
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 Dive Into Challenger Deep
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 …
Can Your Poop Predict The Next Pandemic?
We’re taking giving a shit quite literally this week! Our guest is Newsha Ghaeli , the president and co-founder at Biobot Analytics . If you read our newsletter, you’ll have heard me go on and on about Biobot , whose …
Why is Environmental Justice Journalism Important?
It’s always worth revisiting the inarguable fact that our country was designed to be inequitable . And while much progress has been made over time, the powers that be continued to imagine and design new ways of marginalizing,...
Vaginas and Friends
We have ignored vaginas for so long. Hear me out. On the one hand, history and popular culture, from god-kings to love songs to movies to fan fiction, are littered with supposedly straight men with a single pursuit: intercour...
Life Finds A Way
I think about time a lot. Some days I feel ancient, some days I can’t believe how old I am. I’ve got kids, too. I can’t believe how fast they’ve grown up already. They love so many things. Swimming. Cooking. …
Why We Can't Focus
We are all being pulled in so many different directions. The clock is ticking and we have a climate and virus and society and economy to fix and we’re distracted, all of the time . Not just by all of …
124. Birth Control 2.0
In Episode 124 , Quinn interviews Dr. Elizabeth Ruzzo , a brilliant human geneticist who left the world of academia to launch adyn , her effort to help women find the best birth control for their unique bodies. Family plannin...
119. How to Protect Yourself from Wildfire Smoke
In Episode 119 , Quinn asks: what’s in wildfire smoke, what does it do to your body, and how can you stay safe? Our guest is Dr. Mary Prunicki , the director of air pollution and health research at Stanford …
116: What Really Happens When You Just Give People Money?
In Episode 116 , Quinn wants to know: why is simply giving people money the most effective way to 1) help them make positive changes to their lives and 2) erase global poverty along the way? To help him understand …