In Episode 80, Quinn & Brian discuss Quinn’s wife’s least favorite thing: Mosquitoes! Our guest is Dr. Natalie Kofler, a trained scientist and the founding director of Editing Nature at Yale University, a global initiative to steer responsible development and deployment of environmental genetic technologies. Dr. Kofler’s work navigates the technical, ecological, and ethical complexity of gene editing applications designed to impact wild species, such as CRISPR-edited mosquitoes to prevent ma...
Oct 01, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep 80•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 79, Quinn & Brian are back to discuss: Optimism in the air (wait... that doesn’t sound like us). Our guest is Beth Gardiner, an environmental journalist and the author of Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution. We talk about why Beth was driven to write Choked, how we got to the sad state that we’re in on this planet right now, and how we’re actually getting out of it. It’s not improving everywhere, and it could definitely be improving faster, but this is one area where y...
Sep 24, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Ep 79•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 78 , Quinn & Brian discuss: Planning for chaos. Our guest is Bina Venkataraman , author of the upcoming book The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age and a teacher in the program on Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. Fair warning, so you don’t get upset like Brian did: this is not a real telescope. But you should still be excited, like Brian is now, because Bina is awesome and her book sounds fantastic. As you can probably tell from the title of...
Aug 27, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Ep 78•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 62, Quinn & Brian asked: Where does Ebola go from here? Our guest is Karin Huster, a Field Coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, where she is currently bouncing between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique. She spent a decade in the trauma ICU before flinging herself head first into humanitarian efforts across the globe. She’s sorta the Forest Gump of humanitarian field nurses; if there’s a health-related outbreak, or a storm-related outbreak that turns into a health-...
Aug 21, 2019•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 77, Quinn & Brian discuss: How Colorado can fix this wholllllle thing with one little election. Our guest is Mike Johnston, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Colorado and the first in our series of conversations about the 2020 elections. The 2020 Senate elections are going to be really important because flipping the Senate is one of the only protections we might have from another four years of a Republican President – or, if we want to think a little more optimistica...
Aug 13, 2019•1 hr•Ep 77•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 76, Quinn & Brian discuss: What you don’t see (any more) when you snorkel. Our guest is Dr. Kim Cobb, a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology who specializes in climate change, specifically how the extremes of climate change are changing in the ocean due to anthropogenic greenhouse gasses. She describes herself as 40% Climate Scientist, 40% Mom, and 20% Indiana Jones, somehow managing to balance research in remote areas of...
Aug 06, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep 76•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 50, Quinn & Brian discussed: 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, so take off all y...
Jul 31, 2019•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 75, Quinn & Brian discuss: Beating the crap out of childhood cancer with science and... zebrafish? We’re getting really nerdy about beating childhood cancer with Dr. Jaclyn Taroni and Dr. Genevieve Kendall. Dr. Kendall is a Postdoctoral scholar at UT Southwestern Medical Center who utilizes zebrafish genetic models to understand how pediatric muscle cancers develop and better identify any therapies we can use to treat it. Dr. Taroni is a Principal Data Scientist at the Child...
Jul 23, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep 75•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 74, Quinn & Brian discuss: Making carbon capture suck more (but this time, with carrots). Our guest is Henry Elkus, the frustratingly young and impossibly optimistic founder of Helena, an organization that assembles “some of the world’s most remarkable people to develop and lead projects that help build a better tomorrow.” They’re a little different from other think-tanks, though, because they focus on one problem at a time, creating projects that aim to operationally address a so...
Jul 16, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep 74•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s episode is a rerun of Episode 56, where Quinn & Brian asked: What’s it feel like to be asked to save the world? Our guest is Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who is writing policy and leading the Green New Deal project at New Consensus, which is one of the main think tanks working on the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal is one of the most important pieces of policy being worked on right now, and it could have wide sweeping effects that impact not just our generation but the future for everyone....
Jul 10, 2019•1 hr 28 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 73, Quinn & Brian ask: Hold On A Minute -- Did A.I. Just Take Our Jobs? Of course, we aren’t talking about our jobs. If A.I. took our jobs, the show would have won that Webby. We’re talking about really, really important jobs – like curing cancer and slowing down our climate collapse. But we are talking about people like our guest Dr. Mohammed AlQuraishi, who is a Department Fellow at the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology and the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Med...
Jul 02, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep 73•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 72, Quinn & Brian discuss: Monsoons, food, and people. Our guest is Dr. Deepti Singh, an Assistant Professor in the School of the Environment at Washington State University - Vancouver who is motivated by the potential for climate studies to minimize future disaster risk to vulnerable communities around the world. Because here’s the thing: while there are still many people and governments who are still denying the existence and impact of climate change – or our active climate cris...
Jun 25, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep 72•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 71, Quinn & Brian discuss: Why raising the status of girls can help change everything. Our guest is Dr. Katharine Wilkinson , a Vice President at Drawdown, an author, a public speaker, and an expert in just about everything. She’s made a very specific list of all the ways we can and should be fighting climate change and the climate crisis. She even put the list in order for us – and you won’t believe what number six is! So, this episode is pretty much an audio version of a Buzzfee...
Jun 18, 2019•1 hr 28 min•Ep 71•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 70, Quinn & Brian discuss: When things are broken, when the people who are working on those things are also broken, and why we need to help them. Our guest is Nikki Silvestri, the founder and CEO of Soil and Shadow, a project development firm designing economic and environmental strategies with human left in. As the Co-Founder of Live Real and former Executive Director of People's Grocery and Green for All, Nikki has built and strengthened social equity for underrepresented ...
Jun 11, 2019•1 hr 28 min•Ep 70•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 69, Quinn & Brian discuss: Rebuilding Los Angeles and L.A.’s Green New Deal. Our guest is Jeanalee Obergfell, who works just down the street from Important, Not Important HQ as a City Planning Associate for Los Angeles. When it comes to making L.A. greener and more equitable, you know Jeanalee is either helping someone’s cause or leading the charge. Really, if the Game of Thrones were the game of creating more equitable housing and transportation options in a less hot and more bre...
Jun 04, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep 69•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 68, Quinn & Brian discuss: Sending our homework to space. Our guest is Michelle Lucas, an actual rocket scientist and the founder of Higher Orbits. Michelle spent 10 years at NASA, where part of her role involved teaching astronauts how to... you know, do space stuff. And now, at Higher Orbits, she’s teaching young people who aren’t astronauts yet, but might be, some day, because of her! Now, this isn’t an episode about how to get away with not doing your homework. On the con...
May 28, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep 68•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 67, Quinn & Brian ask: Is Climate Change "Flippable"? Our guest is Catherine Vaughan , CEO and Co-Founder of Flippable, an organization dedicated to flipping state governments from red to blue. You may not be surprised that Catherine is, indeed, one of the people trying to make a positive change by getting states back on the light side of the Force. So, when it comes to things like climate change, cancer, clean energy, (the Presidency,) artificial intelligence... are those things ...
May 21, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep 67•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 66 , Quinn & Brian want to know why the hell we can't -- and further -- shouldn’t just blow up asteroids . Our guest is the incredible Professor K.T. Ramesh , professor of mechanical engineering at John Hopkins, founding director of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute (HEMI), and our new hero. You can think of HEMI as a real-life Avengers (no, we’re not just stuck on Endgame), except every member is like Bruce Banner without all the Hulk-iness or ...
May 14, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep 66•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 65 , Quinn asks: Is Chernobyl a preventable and rare accident from the past or a vivid picture of our hellish nuclear future? Our guest is Craig Mazin, a screenwriter, podcaster, and the creator of a new HBO mini-series called Chernobyl – which is debuting TODAY, May 6th. So, if you currently have an account just to watch Game of Thrones, you’re in luck! We’ve had some accidents, but we’ve learned from them... right? We answer that question, talk about the how and why of nuclear power...
May 06, 2019•1 hr 24 min•Ep 65•Transcript available on Metacast In a very special Episode 64, Quinn & Brian discuss (live! Kind of): everything that’s good at the Sunrise Movement Tour (and everything that’s not-so-good in the local communities)! Our guests are politician and native Hawaiian Kaniela Ing, environmental activist Michelle Cerecerez, native activist Miguel Quimichipilli Bravo, and LA City Councilmember Nury Martinez. We make some new friends and have a lot of fun while we chat about the Green New Deal, supporting indigenous people, the scars of ...
Apr 30, 2019•19 min•Ep 64•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 63, Quinn & Brian discuss: Building a new pipeline of sustainable food growers. Our guest is Dena Leibman, the Executive Director of the Future Harvest Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture (or Future Harvest for short), a non-profit that works to build a sustainable Chesapeake Foodshed from farm and fishery to table. But Dena is one to practice what she preaches – or a workaholic – so the Leibman family also started ZigBone Farm Retreat, a 100-acre sheep and goat f...
Apr 23, 2019•54 min•Ep 63•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 62, Quinn & Brian ask: Where does Ebola go from here? Our guest is Karin Huster, a Field Coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, where she is currently bouncing between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique. She spent a decade in the trauma ICU before flinging herself head first into humanitarian efforts across the globe. She’s sorta the Forest Gump of humanitarian field nurses; if there’s a health-related outbreak, or a storm-related outbreak that turns into a health-re...
Apr 16, 2019•1 hr 15 min•Ep 62•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 61, Quinn & Brian ask: How do we atone for poisoning generations of American minorities? Our guest is Dr. Michael Dorsey, a recognized expert on global energy, finance and sustainability matters. Dr. Dorsey holds Rotary International’s highest honor, The Paul Harris Medal for Distinguished Service to Humanity, and is a “full member” of the Club of Rome. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Yale, and Johns Hopkins University, he is currently Senior Program Officer for Sustaina...
Apr 09, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep 61•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 60, Quinn & Brian discuss: Why YOU should run for something in 2020! Our guest is Amanda Litman , the co-founder and Executive Director of Run For Something, a PAC that helps recruit and support young diverse progressives to run for down-ballot races in order to build a bench for the future. They aim to lower the barriers to entry for these candidates – which could and should be you, unless you’re a white guy (because we have plenty of those) – by helping them with seed money, org...
Apr 02, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep 60•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 59, Quinn & Brian ask: Is Florida the harbinger of doom? (Probably) Our guest is Dr. Salvador Almagro-Moreno, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Central Florida. His lab, The Moreno Lab, lies at the interface between ecology and pathogenesis, studying the emergence and evolution of bacterial pathogens. From what we can tell, this means they’re focusing on how and why bacteria want to eat and/or kill us. This episode...
Mar 26, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep 59•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 58, Quinn & Brian ask: Is faith sustainable? Our guest is Dekila Chungyalpa, a trained scientist and Buddhist operating at the intersection of science, faith, and the environment. She is the director of The Loka Initiative, a new and innovative education and outreach program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for faith leaders and religious institutions. Its mission is to support faith-led environmental efforts locally and around the world through collaborations with faith lea...
Mar 19, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep 58•Transcript available on Metacast We’re digging into our vault and playing a hit this week because there’s big news for former guest Dr. James Rogers and his company Apeel Sciences: Fast Company named Apeel the 7th most innovative company on their list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2019 (and the 2nd most innovative company in the food sector). In this bonus replay episode, Quinn & Brian ask: Is food waste the stupidest thing we do, as a species, and how can we cut it in half? (or: avocado toast is about to g...
Mar 12, 2019•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 57, Quinn & Brian discuss: Why more food ≠ more nutrition. Our excellent guests are Professors Kristie Ebi and Irakli Loladze. Dr. Ebi is the Rohm & Haas Endowed Professorship in Public Health Sciences at the University of Washington, where she has been conducting research and practice on the health risks of climate variability and change for over twenty years. She focuses on understanding sources of vulnerability, estimating current and future health risks of climate ch...
Mar 05, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Ep 57•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 56, Quinn & Brian ask: What’s it feel like to be asked to save the world? Our guest is Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who is writing policy and leading the Green New Deal project at New Consensus, which is one of the main think tanks working on the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal is one of the most important pieces of policy being worked on right now, and it could have wide sweeping effects that impact not just our generation but the future for everyone. Conversations around environmental...
Feb 26, 2019•1 hr 25 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast In Episode 55, Quinn & Brian ask: What are the energy requirements of well-being? Our guest is Julia Steinberger, a Professor of Social Ecology & Ecological Economics at the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment. Her research examines the connections between resource use (energy and materials, greenhouse gas emissions) and societal performance (economic activity and human wellbeing) – or, what happens when you drive your car every damn day. She is interested in quantif...
Feb 19, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast 
