The Most Important Question

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. And they've left footprints, good and bad, on our institutions and the stories we tell ourselves.

So why do we keep missing the lessons?

My guest today is Edna Bonhomme, a historian, author, and public health expert who looks at disease in captivity through her own story of near-death illness, Haitian migration, and a lifetime of asking: Why does our world blame instead of heal?

Edna is the author of the new book, A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class and Captivity Shaped Us From Cholera to COVID-19.

If you've ever wondered how pandemics warp our social fabric and what it would take to heal old wounds and stop repeating the same mistakes, stick around.

-----------

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

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.

Take Action at www.whatcanido.earth

-----------

INI Book Club:

Links:

Follow us:

Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

What Can I Do?

The United States has long been the largest aid donor in the world, accounting for about 40 percent of humanitarian assistance globally last year, according to the United Nations. But that is quickly changing. 

Most U.S. foreign aid is currently on hold. Thousands of projects are at risk of elimination. And nearly all staff from the U.S. Agency for International Development are on administrative leave. 

How did we get to this moment? And what has been the impact of the foreign aid freeze so far, including on women and girls? 

In this episode from The Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women, hear a conversation taped at Foreign Policy magazine’s Emerging Threats Forum, an official side event of the Munich Security Conference, about the economic and security implications of halting overseas development assistance.

Foreign Policy editor in chief Ravi Agrawal spoke with Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, the president and CEO of the One Campaign, and Umulkher (Umi) Harun Mohamed, a member of Kenya’s National Assembly. 

The Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women is a podcast from Foreign Policy, supported in part by the Gates Foundation and Northwestern University’s Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs.

Follow and listen to more episodes: 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hidden-economics-of-remarkable-women-hero/id1572532247 

-----------

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

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.

Take Action at www.whatcanido.earth

-----------

Follow us:

Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

What Can I Do?

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?

Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

What Can I Do?

What Can I Do?

One of the ways this Trump administration is different from the last is, relatively at least, how much more unconstitutional, how much more organized and comprehensive the attacks on our institutions, particularly the scaffolding we built for ourselves the most precious parts of of our societies: immigration, agriculture, the VA, NIH, the CDC, the NSF and humanitarian work around the globe.

Do some of these need reform? Of course, they do. Is this the way to do it? No, it is not.

These institutions, the ones we built over the last century that, again, however imperfect, baseline keep us fed and safe and on the other hand, help advance remarkable scientific progress.

They're at more risk than ever. Every single day. To combat this onslaught, we need groups who are actually prepared to fight back.

My guest today is Dr. Gretchen Goldman. 

Dr. Goldman is the President of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Previously, she served almost two years in the Biden-Harris White House as the Assistant Director for Environmental Science, Engineering, Policy, and Justice in the Climate and Environment Division of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and later as the Climate Change Research and Technology Director at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

She is a prolific writer and speaker on science policy and her words and her voice have appeared in Science, Nature, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR, and the BBC, among others.

-----------

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

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.

Take Action at www.whatcanido.earth

-----------

INI Book Club:

Links:

Follow us:

Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

What Can I Do?

What Can I Do?

We didn't always call our work science for people who give a shit.

But ever since we did, we've welcomed at least two types of people to our flock. The first is people who are deeply invested in science, but are unsure how to tie it into measurable action on the human level. And the second is people already fighting for a healthier, more equitable society, but who are curious about the evolving science behind our complex systems.

They all want to know a version of the most important question, what can I do?

It's a big question right now. And today, after almost 200 conversations and on this, our newly rebranded show, we're going to confront that question as some of our most vital human and humane systems are being put in the shredder.

My guest today is Dr. Ticora Jones. Dr. Jones has spent the last two years leading the efforts to expand the vision for science in the science office at the NRDC, to support the scientific and evidence based nucleus for organizational strategy and advocacy.

Before joining the NRDC, Dr. Jones served nearly 15 years at USAID, a little agency you may have heard about recently, in a number of roles, including most recently as Agency Chief Scientist, Executive Director for Innovation, Technology, and Research, and Managing Director for Research.

As the Agency Chief Scientist, which is really a hell of a title, Jones chaired the Research and Development Council, which was responsible for revising and instituting science policy.

She advocated for process changes to better support scientific integrity and research generation and use. And she led efforts to expand USAID's interagency role with international science and technology cooperation for deeper strategic partnerships with the U.S. government.

As of this month, that is all in serious trouble.

-----------

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

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.

-----------

INI Book Club:

Links:

Follow us:

Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

What Can I Do?

What can we do about land power?

It's the most important question and my guest today is Mike Albertus.

Mike is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. He's the author of the new book, Land Power. Who has it? Who doesn't? And how that determines the fate of societies. 

In the book, Mike examines how land became power, how it shapes power today still, and how who holds that power determines the fundamental social problems that societies grapple with.

Mike studies how countries allocate opportunity and well-being among their citizens and the consequences this has for society, why some countries are democratic and others are not, and why some societies fall into civil conflict.

-----------

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

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.

-----------

INI Book Club:

Links:

Follow us:

Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

What Can I Do?

Not. Right. Now.

I hope you enjoy our new show. It’s super, super informal, and fun, and full of profanity, and personal, and — I hope — something you or a parent in your life can identify with, and maybe get some relief from.

It’s intentionally and decidedly NOT an advice show. 

It is a once-a-week parasocial commiseration session about trying to raise kids and continue to be a human and maybe even a partner amid…all of this.

Listen to Not Right Now here https://www.notrightnow.show/

Read Claire's intro to Not Right Now in her Evil Witches newsletter here https://www.evilwitches.com/p/out-now-a-witchy-project-in-pod-form

Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

What Can I Do?

Please enjoy the debut episode from our new show, Not Right Now.  

Every week, Claire (Evil Witches) and Quinn (Important, Not Important) dive into the chaotic reality of raising tiny humans in these wild times.

From behavioral reflection forms and schoolyard diplomacy to the eternal question of "how many water bottles does one child need?", we explore the messy, hilarious, and occasionally terrifying truth about modern parenting.

Plus: why every parent should have friends who don't make you add "...but of course I love them!" to your rants, the special anxiety of raising boys who won't become supervillains, and the paradox of counting down to bedtime while simultaneously scrolling through baby photos.

A conversation for parents who know that both dreading dinner and cherishing every moment can be true at the same time.

A new show from Important, Not Important.

-----------

Have feedback or questions? Send a message to [email protected]

Get all of our episodes at https://www.notrightnow.show/

-----------

Follow us:

Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

What Can I Do?

Not Right Now is a podcast for parents navigating the impossible task of raising kids while *gestures wildly at everything*.

Join Quinn Emmett (Important, Not Important) and Claire Zulkey (Evil Witches) for honest conversations about parenting in an era of climate change, artificial intelligence, social media anxiety, all while trying to get your kid to just please put on their shoes.

From discussing how to talk to kids about the news without traumatizing them (or yourself), to debating the right age for a phone, to admitting that sometimes the best parenting happens when you're hiding in the pantry eating handfuls of trail mix for dinner- Quinn and Claire bring humor, empathy, and real talk to the wild adventure of raising tiny humans in these chaotic times.

Because being a good parent doesn't mean having all the answers - it means figuring it out together, one "not right now" at a time.

Join us every week, wherever you get your podcasts.

-----------

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

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.

-----------

Links:



Follow us:

Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

What Can I Do?

I’m not religious. But I did (barely) successfully major in religious studies.

For better and often for worse, the history of faith and organized religion has been the backbone of human history, political science, culture, wars, sexual ethics, and more.

Subtle or not, religion and faith are most often the answer to why people do what they do, and to how we got here, even now as the west barrels towards majority secularism.

Advertise with us: importantnotimportant.com/c/sponsors

Mentioned in this episode:

What Can I Do?