In Episode 54, Quinn & Brian discuss: why the state that’s not a state is a hell of a lot greener than your state. Our guest is Jamie DeMarco, a State-Level Carbon Pricing Coordinator with our friends the Citizens' Climate Lobby (who are working to save our collective asses every single day, NBD). Jamie is dedicated to passing state-level legislation that will serve as a model and inspiration for future national lawmakers – so he definitely has his work cut out for him. Dealing with society’...
Feb 12, 2019•54 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 53, Quinn & Brian ask: How the hell do we pull clean drinking water out of thin air? Our guest is Dr. Shing-Chung “Josh” Wong, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Akron In addition to pursuing bio-inspired materials research, he has worked on mechanical behavior and functional properties of polymers, electrospinning, processing-structure-property relationships, coatings, bio- and nano-materials, and composites. Dr. Wong has authored and co-authored over 70 a...
Feb 05, 2019•55 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 52, Quinn & Brian ask (using their best Seinfeld impression): What’s the deal with the Green New Deal? Our guest is Varshini Prakash, a founder of the Sunrise Movement, a veritable army of young folks fighting to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. We think Varshini will be, no exaggeration, one of the most instrumental people in American politics (and for the future health of our planet) over the next couple years. The Sunrise Movement’s army is c...
Jan 29, 2019•54 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 51, Quinn & Brian ask: Are we thinking about CRISPR all wrong (and what the hell is CRISPR)? Our guest is C. Brandon Ogbunu , an evolutionary systems biologist working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University. Although the title is different, his role is almost identical to Brian’s here at INI: He uses experimental evolution, mathematical modeling, and computational biology to better understand the underlying causes and co...
Jan 22, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast Back in Episode 19, Quinn & Brian asked: What’s the future of antibiotics? To find out, we sat down with bowtie enthusiast and professor of pathology and immunology and biomedical engineering Dr. Gautam Dantas. Dr. Dantas leads the Dantas Lab at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, where they work at the interface of microbial genomics, ecology, synthetic biology, and systems biology, to understand, harness, and engineer the biochemical processing potential of microbial c...
Jan 15, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Back in Episode 26, Quinn & Brian asked: what drives a man to give 200 climate speeches to Congress? Our guest was Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the junior senator from Rhode Island and all-around stellar human. He’s been a member of Congress since 2007 and he was just sworn in for his 3rd term – plus, he’s recently been moonlighting as some sort of Captain Planet figure. We discuss his speeches, his future carbon bill, bi-partisanship, calling bullshit when we see it, Rhode Island’s fossil-fu...
Jan 08, 2019•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Back in Episode 38, Quinn & Brian asked: Is it harder to build clean power plants or play in a reputable cover band? Our guest Sean Casten then went on to win the election for congressman of Brian’s home district, Illinois’ 6th! There’s a little more hope in the world, so we want to re-introduce you to these kickass STEM politicians. Sean is a scientist, clean energy entrepreneur, and cover band member who ran against Peter Roskam, who called climate change “junk science,” which is rea...
Jan 04, 2019•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Back in Episode 37, Quinn & Brian asked: Why does Congress need a female Air Force Officer / Engineer / Chemistry Teacher / Mom among its ranks? We found out – and now our guest Chrissy Houlahan is the new congresswoman from Pennsylvania District 6! So we’re playing that episode again to celebrate. We dig into the very personal reasons she ran, what’s so special about Pennsylvania, and the first thing she’s going to do when she gets elected. Plus, how did she collect such an impressive list of b...
Jan 03, 2019•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 50, Quinn & Brian discuss: How D.C. and LA are dealing with urban heat issues. Our guests are Yesim Sayin Taylor and Molly Peterson. Yesim is the founding Executive Director of the D.C. Policy Center and Molly is a renowned reporter focusing on the environment and climate change (and our first returning guest!). We all remember when Nelly said, “It’s getting hot in herre,” but not a lot of people remember the whole verse: “It’s getting hot in herre, ...
Jan 01, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 49, Quinn & Brian ask: What can the HUGE food and beverage companies do, right now, to improve U.S. food systems and drive trends towards a more sustainable future? It’s a big and complicated question, but our guest Jennifer Mleczko is going to share the one simple thing you can do to address all of it at once. Jennifer is a consultant at the World Bank focused on sustainable development, specifically agriculture and, even more specifically, livestock. There are environmenta...
Dec 25, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 48, Quinn & Brian ask: Why the hell does childhood cancer exist, isn't the world effed up enough as it is, and what can we do to make it go away forever? Our guest is one of our favorite humans, Jay Scott, Co-Executive Director of the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation. Jay runs the organization with his wife, Liz, in honor of their daughter Alex, who was diagnosed with cancer just two days before her first birthday. She set up a lemonade stand in their yard to help support he...
Dec 18, 2018•1 hr 10 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 47, Quinn goes solo for a minute to discuss: America’s data and the future of digital health. Quinn sits down for a one-on-one chat with Dave Gershgorn, the lead artificial intelligence reporter at Quartz (AKA qz.com), to figure out why our data is different, how the future we were promised is both here and pretty damn far away, and whether/why data is too white. The worlds of healthcare and artificial intelligence are looking – big surprise – really biased right now, but with some ef...
Dec 11, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson is an Associate Dean and Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of South Carolina, and today she schools us on radioactivity in the ocean. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Dec 04, 2018•1 hr 5 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Dr. Diwakar Davar, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and a a medical oncologist/hematologist. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Nov 27, 2018•49 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Dr. James Rogers, founder and CEO of Apeel Sciences and one of our most mind-blowing guests yet. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Nov 20, 2018•1 hr•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast Our guests are Dr. Indra Joshi & Maxine Mackintosh, the co-founders of One HealthTech. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Nov 13, 2018•55 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Sian Proctor tells us how we can all help get more women and more people of color into space, one way or another. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Nov 06, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Dr. Minmin Yen, the CEO and co-founder of medical startup PhagePro, where she and her team are developing viruses specifically designed to kill bacteria and prevent bacterial infections. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Oct 30, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast Science for people who give a sh*t. Want to feel better AND unf*ck the world? The 6-time Webby nominee delivers deep conversations with the world's smartest people (scientists, doctors, CEO's, farmers, and more!), and digestible news updates every single week, to help you answer the world's most important question: What can I do? We're talkin' clean energy and coral reefs, COVID vaccines and pediatric cancer research, clean water and carbon capture tech, asteroid deflection and artificial intell...
Oct 30, 2018•32 sec•Transcript available on Metacast Hi. So you read the IPCC climate change report. Not great, Bob. We get it. Now you want to do something about it. We get that, too. So here’s a re-run of one of our favorite episodes, “What’s the #1 Thing You Can Do To Affect Climate Change?” Enjoy. -- On the mic and down the street, Peter Kalmus, an atmospheric scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Peter wrote a book called Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution and also he’s got chick...
Oct 26, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Ariel Waldman, the author of What's It Like in Space? Stories from Astronauts Who've Been There, the founder of Spacehack.org, the global director of Science Hack Day, and a member of the council for NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Oct 23, 2018•1 hr 17 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Dawn “Deepsea Dawn” Wright, Ph.D., the Chief Scientist of the Environmental Systems Research Institute (AKA Esri) and a Professor of Geography and Oceanography at Oregon State University. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Oct 16, 2018•1 hr 12 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Sean Casten, a scientist, clean energy entrepreneur, and cover band member who is running for Congress in Illinois’ 6th district. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Oct 09, 2018•47 min•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Chrissy Houlahan, a candidate for Pennsylvania District 6 on Nov. 6th. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Oct 02, 2018•53 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Mark Magana, the Founding President & CEO of GreenLatinos, a national coalition of Latino environmental, natural resources, and conservation advocates. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Sep 25, 2018•1 hr 18 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Shaughnessy Naughton. She is the President & Founder of 314 Action, an organization founded by members of the STEM community; grassroots supporters and political activists who believe in the power of SCIENCE! Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Sep 18, 2018•1 hr 10 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 34, Quinn & Brian discuss: Electrocuting the S#!t Out of Cancer. Our guest is Theo Roth, an MB/PhD student candidate at UCSF who spends his days running experiments in the Marson Lab, and contributing to kick-ass research like the development of new tools for efficient CRISPR genome engineering in human cells. The topic of this episode is extremely close to us and particularly relevant right now because September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Childhood cancer, unfortunately...
Sep 11, 2018•1 hr 16 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast Our guests are Elsa Mengistu and Emelly Villa, two of the young people behind Zero Hour, a movement that is bringing the voices of diverse youth into the conversation on climate and environmental justice. They’re doing incredible things to make this the world they want to (and can) live in – and they’re only 17 and 18! Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Sep 04, 2018•1 hr 18 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest is Shantha Ready Alonso, Executive Director of Creation Justice Ministries, whose mission is to “educate, equip, and mobilize Christian communities and individuals to protect, restore, and rightly share God's Creation,” focusing on providing support to the vulnerable and marginalized. Want to send us feedback? Tweet us, email us, or leave us a voice message!
Aug 28, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 31, Quinn & Brian ask: Can Texas Go (Clean Energy) Independent? Joining us this week is candidate for Texas district 21, Joseph Kopser. He’s a military vet and clean energy entrepreneur on the hunt for enemy of science Lamar Hunt’s seat. This is the first in our series of conversations with candidates supported by 314 Action, the largest pro-science advocacy organization committed to electing scientists and STEM professionals to public office. Want to send us feedback? Tweet...
Aug 21, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast 
