The Most Important Question

This week: The Western drought grows; China’s vaccine exports; menthol cigarettes on the run; bacon and Alzheimer’s; croissants and cancer.

Important, Not Important is produced by Crate Media

In Episode 105, Quinn & Brian ask: How safe is your data (and can your wine fridge take down democracy)?

Our guest is: Dr. Carissa Véliz, an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Hertford College at Oxford University. 

If she sounds kind of awesome, that’s because she is.

So, what role does your phone, computer, wine fridge, smart toothbrush, and fun color-changing ceiling lights have to play in taking down — or saving — democracy, and maybe the planet too? Well, Dr. Véliz recently published “Privacy is Power,” in which she argues that the data economy is too dangerous to sustain. And although we may not be paying money for some of the incredible services that are built on top of our data, like Google Maps or Facebook, we are going to pay in the long run if we keep opting into the surveillance state.

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In brief: The most powerful Joe; when you’re really clear on COVID; Black maternal outcomes; how to understand the AI internal war

Important, Not Important is produced by Crate Media

 In Episode 104, Quinn & Brian discuss: the future of data and medicine.

Our guests are: Robel Kassa & Dr. Sam Scarpino, two of the brilliant minds behind Global.Health, which is setting a new standard for epidemiological data. Global.Health is the first of its kind: an easy-to-use global data repository and visualization platform that enables open access to real-time epidemiological anonymized line-list data, including a COVID-19 dataset that contains detailed information on over five million anonymized cases from over 100 countries.

But this isn’t our first brush with Big Data, and we’ve seen how data can be used to cause material harm, both indirectly and directly. So, can we trust a platform that is trying to aggregate and anonymize all of the world’s health records around COVID? What are we sacrificing by allowing this data to be collected? And will creating such a platform help us predict or prevent another surprise pandemic in the future? We’re trying to wrap our heads around all of that and why the people building the platform are just as important as the data collected, possibly including yours.

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In brief: Batteries are cheaper and increasingly everywhere; the best COVID treatments; a possible opioid alternative; cabbage is off the menu

Important, Not Important is produced by Crate Media

In Episode 103, Quinn & Brian ask: Why do so many more Black people die after heart transplants than everybody else?

Our guests are: Dr. Hasina Maredia and Dr. Errol Bush, who recently published a paper in the American Heart Association’s journal, “Circulation: Heart Failure.” Their paper concludes that “young Black recipients have a high risk of mortality in the first year after heart transplant, which has been masked in decades of research looking at disparities in aggregate.”

Sorry for the spoilers, but that’s really just the beginning. The decades of systemic failures that allowed this to happen — and, most importantly, the steps we can take right now to improve these wildly disparate healthcare outcomes for young Black people — are the real meat of this story, told by two incredibly inspiring people.

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This week: Miami kicks the can down the road, relief for farmworkers, poor Twitter, how not to waste food, how not to do ethical A.I.

Important, Not Important is produced by Crate Media

In Episode 102, Quinn & Brian discuss: How to invest in defeating climate change.

Our guest is: Boris Khentov, SVP of Operations & Legal Counsel at Betterment. If you’ve been reading or listening to our newsletter, you’ve already heard of Betterment, a financial advisory company and investment platform that recently introduced their Climate Impact portfolio — and if you haven’t heard of Betterment yet, start listening to the bonus audio newsletter episodes we release every Friday!

This is a really thoughtful conversation on what it means to participate in the climate fight in every area of your life, where investments are trending and where “greenwashing” is becoming an issue, and how you can position yourself for both relative safety and financial success.

Plus, Boris shares a story about protesting with a past guest and personal hero of ours — Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson — and that’s pretty cool too.

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• "All We Can Save" by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

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This week: the price of climate change, how to re-open your office, a new wave of nurses, bailing out Black farmers.

Important, Not Important is produced by Crate Media

Synopsis: Where does America keep paying clean up costs, instead of doubling down on prevention?

Do Better Better essays help you build mental models and ask questions about our changing world — for yourself, your family, and your business.

These essays compliment the audio version of our weekly newsletter, and of course, our ground-breaking conversations with diverse, interdisciplinary humans working on the frontlines of the future.

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Important, Not Important is produced by Crate Media