Our “Good News” series of replays begins today with Episode 66, when Quinn & Brian hosted a delightfully important discussion: Why, apparently, we shouldn’t just blow up asteroids.

Our guest is: Professor K.T. Ramesh, who is an absolute delight and may have the coolest job in the world. He is the founding director of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute (HEMI), which is pretty much a real-life Avengers, except every member is like Bruce Banner without all the Hulk-iness or Tony Stark if he was never kidnapped by terrorists. Every day, they’re working to protect people, structures, and the planet, exploring a number of topics that are both critically important and impenetrably complicated.

If, like us, you’ve always considered the seminal feature film Armageddon a blueprint for what to do in case of planetary disaster, Professor Ramesh is here to set the record straight about how we will have to deal with any incoming extraterrestrial projectiles.

This conversation is just so much fun, and we hope it provides a welcome distraction to everything else going on in the world right now.

Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to [email protected]

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INI Book Club: 

• These Truths by Jill Lepore
• https://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/3R5XF4WMZE0TV/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ep_ws_2Gr8Ab6RS5WF3
• INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club

Links:

• Learn more about Professor Ramesh & HEMI: https://hemi.jhu.edu/the-hemi-team/leadership/k-t-ramesh/
• “If We Blow Up an Asteroid, It Might Put Itself Back Together”: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/science/asteroids-nuclear-weapons.html
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jhu_hemi
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HopkinsExtreme/
• Listen to Radiolab’s Dinopocalypse ep: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/dinopocalypse
• Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission: https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart



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• Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com
• Artwork by Amrit Pal

Important, Not Important is produced by Crate Media