SCIENCE FOR PEOPLE WHO GIVE A SHIT

Videos

July 4, 2025

The Jaws Effect: Why Some Movies Stay With You Forever

Telling better stories is a type of Compound Action. Get more: • Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at https://www.importantnotimportant.com/ • Got feedback? Email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com (mailto:questions@importantnotimportant.com) • Follow us on Twitter at @importantnotimp (https://twitter.com/importantnotimp) • Subscribe to our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkUwIVGwYxsZHEgL2fstz9Q) • Take a nap you deserve…

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June 27, 2025

Why We Made An App

This week: You’d think that -- considering we just spent two years building our new What Can I Do? (https://www.whatcanido.earth/) - that I’d have a really good answer for why we were doing it in the first place. But I didn’t. I knew, of course, the practical reasons why it…

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June 26, 2025

How Low Is Your Bar For Childcare?

This week, Quinn and Claire are diving into the ever-evolving world of childcare, from the brutal economics of quality care to the desperate measures parents take just to keep working. They explore how childcare standards change from first kid (extensive vetting) to third kid (you haven't murdered recently), the impossible…

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June 23, 2025

When Foreign Aid Gets Zeroed Out Overnight

Imagine waking up to discover that the United States has just pulled $35 billion out of foreign aid overnight, and that hundreds of HIV clinics, and child malnutrition programs, and poverty graduation trials will shut their doors within days and weeks. Now imagine there's a rapid response team quietly sifting…

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June 20, 2025

About 2025

The 2024 elections hit hard. But here's the thing about baseball legend Roberto Clemente's philosophy: "All that matters is tomorrow's game." Democrats are almost entirely out of power nationally. The new administration promises to blow past climate targets, gut public health, and attack civil liberties. But we've been here before—and…

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June 16, 2025

How to Make Your Bathroom Habits Save the Planet

Toilet paper. You use it. I use it. Sometimes, even my children use it. The point is, toilet paper is everywhere. Almost everyone needs it, and so much of it still comes from actual forests, and yet 2 billion people don't have access to even basic sanitation, much less readily…

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June 13, 2025

Why Does Disney Always Kill the Moms?

This week, Claire and Quinn welcome screenwriter and director Chris Winterbauer (Moonshot, What Went Wrong podcast) to chat about movies! They cover what they let their kids watch, what they force them to watch, and which movies scarred them for life. Featuring passionate defenses of Dumb and Dumber, the death…

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June 9, 2025

We Live In A World of Trees

You've heard people say it. It shouldn't have been called Earth. It should have been called Ocean, but it is simultaneously a planet of trees. As Richard Powers put it in The Overstory: We live in a world of trees. Once something like 6 trillion trees, and humanity are the…

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June 5, 2025

We're Gonna Be the Woke Family

This week, Claire and Quinn ask: How do you raise charitable, empathetic kids when you can barely manage getting them to put their dishes in the sink? Topics include when your anti-gun household meets the school rummage sale Nerf gun haul, teaching empathy vs. performative wokeness, the privilege and burden…

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May 29, 2025

I Don't Want to Be My Kid's Banker (But Here We Are) |

This week Claire and Quinn welcome their first guest, Lindsey Stanberry, founder of The Purse and former editor at Fortune. Together they explore how to teach kids about money in 2025 -- from birthday party gift overload to teaching financial literacy when you can barely manage your own finances. We…

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May 26, 2025

How This Indian City Beat Deadly Heat Waves (And You Can Too)

Picture a city that beats brutal heat waves with cool tree-lined streets, slashes household energy bills, and cuts carbon pollution by as much as 80%, without waiting for these miracle technologies. That future-positive vision is already taking shape in fast-growing places like Ahmedabad, India, where community-designed cooling plans and demand-side…

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May 19, 2025

How Saving Salamanders Could Save Us All

In every flood scarred bend of an Appalachian river sits a chance to rebuild something stronger, cleaner water for people, and room for a 160 million-year salamander to thrive again. Hurricane-shaped chaos is unveiling a surprising truth when we restore stream banks, fund green storm water projects, and protect keystone…

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May 15, 2025

Will Parents EVER Sleep Well Again?!

Hatch alarm clocks Bed Jet cooling/heating system Feals sleep gummies Sleep mediation machines for kids Merlin sleep suit Follow us: Subscribe to Quinn's newsletter at importantnotimportant.com Subscribe to Claire's newsletter at https://www.evilwitches.com/ Try a free 30 day free trial of the Important Membership here: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/upgrade. Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notrightnowpodcast/…

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May 12, 2025

Essay: What's in a name?

This week: There are a million legitimate reasons why standing up to bullies may require a pseudonym (and a cowl), or even anonymity. As has been clear for centuries, and even more so in this moment of inescapable mass surveillance, some of us — by nature of our birth nation,…

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May 8, 2025

I Had So Many Opinions About Parenting (Then I Became One)

This week, we talk about the humbling experience of parenthood and how reality shatters expectations. We cover: The gap between pre-parenting fantasies (museum trips and Christmas traditions) versus post-kid realities (barbecue chip crumbs in the car) Why buying your postpartum wife lingerie is a terrible idea How having children affects…

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May 5, 2025

How Positive Abortion Language Can Change Everything | The Abortion Positivity Project

63% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and yet here we are. So what can we do to make the language around abortion more positive? My guest today is Sophie Nir. Sophie is the CEO of the Abortion Positivity Project. The Abortion Positivity Project…

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May 1, 2025

Q&A: Questions We're Not Qualified to Answer (But We'll Try Anyway)

In our first bonus Q&A episode, Quinn and Claire tackle listener questions with their signature blend of honesty, humor, and zero judgment. Topics covered: • Making parent friends: Is it a real connection or just shared misery? What makes friendship work during the parenting years, the importance of finding your…

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April 24, 2025

Family Travel Survival Guide: Lower Your Expectations & Pack More Snacks

This week, Quinn and Claire dive into traveling with kids. They share personal stories about family trips from their own childhoods and with their children now, covering everything from dealing with jetlag to bathroom emergencies at 30,000 feet. Also discussed: the myth of "vacation" with children (let's just call it…

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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…

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April 10, 2025

The Truth About Youth Sports

This week, Claire and Quinn dig into the minefield of youth sports: understimulated kids who are getting on everyone's nerves vs. overscheduled families who have no time to breathe, the horrors of early-season kid-pitch baseball, the importance (or not) of having "hustle", and what is the point of kids sports,…

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April 7, 2025

The Pandemic Lessons We Keep Missing

We've spent the last few years learning up close how a crisis like a global pandemic reveals and deepens all of our faults, inequalities, biases, and outright failures of empathy. But here's the kicker: it's not the first time. Plagues and epidemics have always shown us who we really are.…

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April 3, 2025

Kids & Clutter: The Crisis No One Talks About

This week, Claire and Quinn lament on the endless influx of STUFF that children seem to magically manifest in your home. From mysterious bouncy balls to apple juice containers full of sand to fantasies of cleansing fires, they explore the anxiety and dread created by attempting to manage the unmanageable…

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March 28, 2025

Essay: Give A Little

This week: You’ve never had a better opportunity to improve one person’s life than you do right now. I would argue, in fact, that there’s never been a better time to improve one person’s life than there is today. Sounds crazy, right, considering all the destructive nonsense? Here's What You…

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March 27, 2025

The #1 Rule of Solo Parenting: Lower Your Expectations (Immediately)

This week, Claire and Quinn unpack the often messy, often thankless job of solo parenting while your partner is away. We cover why you should never, EVER call your partner with "options" while the kids are listening, the cursed timing of arriving home during bedtime (just drive a few extra…

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