This week: COVID is over (as far as we know it). What did we learn, and what’s next? PLUS: Gay blood donations are a go, wind power in the UK, social media guidelines, millions for Black farmers, water report cards, and more Here's What You Can Do: ⚡️ Discover which websites are harvesting your data using The Markup’s Blackligh t tool ⚡️ Prepare your home for a wildfire using these resources from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection ⚡️ Ensure everyone, everywhere, receives a...
May 16, 2023•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast How much food do you throw away every week? And do you have to? That's today's big question, and my guest is Matt Rogers . Matt is a former Apple iPod and iPhone engineer . The Co-Founder of Nest thermostats , Founder of incite.org, and former Chairman of Carbon180 . He is now the Co-Founder and CEO of Mill. What's Mill ? It's a membership to a food-shrinking, de-stinking kitchen bin , and it just may be one of the most important levers you and I can take to fight food waste and climate change. ...
May 08, 2023•54 min•Ep 158•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Solutions to our biggest problems shouldn’t be so perplexing. On the other hand, washing our hands wasn’t obvious for a couple hundred thousand years, and my kids STILL don't want to do it. Plus: Seasonal allergy news, a new Barbie, non-profit grocery stores, climate hackers, the SEC, the WHO, Google’s huge new feature, and Khan Academy revolutionizes education — again Here's What You Can Do: ⚡️ Floods or not, fire season’s (probably) right around the corner. Get up to the minute air ...
May 05, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast You've got insurance, right? Are you sure? That's today's big question, and my guest is Washington Post reporter Brianna Sacks . Brianna's an extreme weather and disaster reporter for the Post where she explores how climate change is transforming the United States through violent storms, intense heat, widespread wildfires, and other forms of extreme weather. Brianna deploys to disaster zones, which are sometimes very close to home, and does enterprise reporting on the preparations for responses ...
May 01, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep 157•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Is what you’re working on important? Plus: The cleanest produce, a mosquito factory, lots of rooftop solar, autonomous GPT, maybe, and the latest with the Colorado River Here's What You Can Do: ⚡️ Climate change and mental health are inextricably linked. Get some help with the Climate Mental Health Network . ⚡️ Live in or own a multi-family building? Check out how BlocPower can help electrify it. ⚡️ If you’re like “I wonder if my town or state has e-bike rebates”, here’s a Google Shee...
Apr 26, 2023•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast What can I do? The simple question is the underlying premise of everything we do here. It's often the easiest one to help people answer for themselves, but from the outside, it's often the most imposing. All of which is why we keep coming back to it, and why I'm so excited about the fantastic new book, The Climate Action Handbook by Dr. Heidi Roop. Dr. Roop is the Director of the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership and an assistant professor of climate science and extension sp...
Apr 24, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep 156•Transcript available on Metacast This week: A very basic way to use a mental model, you’re welcome. PLUS: Mosquitoes, overseas abortion pills, healthy ice cream, German nuclear power, electric school buses, and more. Here's What You Can Do: ⚡️ Interested in community solar? Check out Wattbuy’s tools to get some. ⚡️ One of the most effective ways to make fashion more sustainable is to partner up with our friends at Fashion Revolution ⚡️ Want to understand if there’s (actually) a moral case for fossil fuels? You should read Amy W...
Apr 18, 2023•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why is it so dangerous to have Black babies in America? April 11-17th is Black Maternal Health Week , and so we are replaying one of our favourite episodes from 2021 with guest Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois, a nurse and former senior advisor to President Obama. We discuss how this country is failing Black mothers, and her incredible Momnibus Act, a suite of 12 bills designed to improve Black maternal health outcomes in America, where Black women are dying in or after childbirth at ...
Apr 17, 2023•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you had all of the data in the world at your hands, what question would you ask first? That's today's big question, and my guest is Dr. Emma Pierson . Emma is an assistant professor of computer science at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech , and a computer science field member at Cornell University with a secondary joint appointment as an assistant professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College . Sure. Why not? Emma has published a number of game-c...
Apr 10, 2023•58 min•Ep 155•Transcript available on Metacast What if we just gave people money? That's today's big question and my guests are Caroline Teti and Michael Faye from GiveDirectly . This conversation from 2021, one of my all-time favorites is one of those conversations that can help you truly think outside the box and reconsider how to most effectively take a simple action that can have cascading effects. Caroline Teti or just Teti as she likes to be called, I swear, works on the ground in Kenya, Nairobi , where she is the Director of Recipient...
Apr 03, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're going to keeping re-running this 2020 episode until America stops sacrificing children. --- Here we are, yet again. We first ran this episode with Fred Guttenberg, father of Parkland victim, Jaime Guttenberg in 2020 - and what has changed? More gun violence and more senseless deaths. It doesn't have to be this way. In Episode 98 , Quinn & Brian discuss: common sense solutions to prevent gun deaths and destroy the gun lobby. Our guest is: Fred Guttenberg , a gun safety activ...
Mar 28, 2023•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Where the hell did all of the electricians go? That's today's big question, and my guest is leading journalist Emily Pontecorvo . Until recently, Emily was an energy, environment, and climate reporter at Grist , one of our favorite publications. She's now moved on to the new climate newsroom Heatmap . Emily has covered the whole enchilada from green hydrogen subsidies to coal ash, scope three emissions, Fashion Week, airports, locusts, frequent flyers, college divestment movements, carbon remova...
Mar 27, 2023•57 min•Ep 154•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Fighting over ESG is stupid, risky, and bad business. Let’s move on. Plus: RSV vaccines, the E-BIKE Act, Skittles (?), deepfakes, allergies, and a new season of DRILLED What We Can Do: ⚡️ Submit your comment to keep Virginia in the very-successful — and very lucrative — RGGI ⚡️ Some folks need shelter. Some need water. Or food. The data says giving them agency — and straight cash — works better . Do that by donating to GiveDirectly . ⚡️ Health care is a universal human right. Setup a ...
Mar 24, 2023•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast What if you got the chance to dive to the bottom of the ocean? Would you go? And what would you find there? That's today's big question and my returning guest, one of my all-time favorites, is Dr. Dawn Wright , better known the world over as Deep Sea Dawn . Dawn recently became the 27th person ever in history and the first Black person ever to dive into the Challenger Deep , the deepest part of Earth's ocean. Dawn is an elected member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Aca...
Mar 20, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Ep 153•Transcript available on Metacast This week: What we know — and more importantly, what we don’t — about what AI is capable of, and how much change we’re capable of absorbing. Plus: the Willow Project, H-1B visas, blueberries, honeybee vaccines, climate disclosure rules, next-gen bed nets, and health insurance in North Carolina Here's What You Can Do: ⚡️ Just a few bucks buys some life-saving bed nets with Against Malaria , maybe the most effective NGO on the planet ⚡️ The only thing dumber than cancer is rare cancers. Good news:...
Mar 17, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast What if I told you there was less oxygen in the ocean than there used to be? That's today's big question, and my guest is Dr. Dawn Wright, or as many in the ocean community know her "Deep Sea Dawn." Dawn Wright is an elected member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering . She's the Chief Scientist at ESRI , where she works with other scientists to map the ocean floor in 3D. In 2018 , when I was just a baby podcaster, when Brian was my co-host, I saw a he...
Mar 13, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: In response to our ongoing and delightful home electrification series with our friends at Rewiring America , we have received a hell of a lot of questions that are beyond our ability to answer. So we brought in the experts: previous pod guest John Semmelhack , home electrification wiz and co-owner of The Comfort Squad, and Joel Rosenberg , member of the Special Projects team at Rewiring America. Your regularly scheduled newsletter will return next week! Here's What Y...
Mar 09, 2023•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Can little-old-you really make a difference? Hell yes you can. Plus: cheaper insulin, cleaner camping gear, a new (lidless) coffee cup, good news on BetterHelp, and maybe even some paid leave. Here's What You Can Do: ⚡️ Help your local farmers sell online — not just at farmer’s markets — with GrownBy . ⚡️ Help people worldwide get clean, safe, accessible drinking water with charity: water . ⚡️ Support Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s Urban Ocean Lab as they write the future of ocean poli...
Mar 08, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast What can we learn from trees? That's today's big question, and my guest is Dr. Beronda Montgomery . Beronda's a transformative writer, researcher and scholar who pursues a common theme of understanding how individuals perceive, respond to and are impacted by the environments in which they exist. She recently moved from Michigan State University to Grinnell College where she's a professor of biology and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College , which is perfect because I can't...
Mar 06, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast How many nights have you spent up recently worried that AI is just gonna take your job? That's today's big question, and my guest is Dr. Mohammed AlQuraishi . Almost three years before chatGPT and New Bing really hit the scene, Mohammed showed up to a conference excited to share his life's work on protein folding, one of the biggest problems in biology. But Mohammad quickly discovered that Deep Mind or to be more specifically AlphaFold had solved the whole damn thing. Mohammad is an assistant pr...
Feb 27, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Pulled in a million directions? Wondering what the hell you do with your days? Find your north stars (and become devastatingly effective) with one simple question. What We Can Do: ⚡️ Please don’t use public wifi without a VPN. Please? If you can’t just hotspot, use the lightning-fast Mullvad VPN to secure your data. ⚡️ On the hunt for new furniture? Save some trees and check out Kaiyo’s marketplace to buy and sell fancy used furniture! ⚡️ Cancel out your transportation emissions and f...
Feb 24, 2023•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: The future of search and chatbots looks a lot like our ancient past. Why do we keep making the same tools over and over again? What We Can Do: ⚡️ Addiction is brutal. Help yourself or a loved one or someone you’ve never met with Shatterproof . ⚡️ I’m so excited to share that my favorite event on Earth, “LA Loves Alex’s Lemonade Stand” is finally back. Support pediatric cancer research and buy yourself some tickets to eat food from some of the greatest chefs on the planet. ⚡️ It’s a pr...
Feb 22, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Imagine you’re in a sci-fi movie. The one where everything’s on the line . And while dinosaurs or aliens or a virus takes over down on the ground, you’re the scientist unexpectedly riding in the helicopter with the actual president, the scientist who’s run the calculations and asked the questions nobody else thought to ask, who’s uncovered the virus’s single weakness. But nobody’s listening to you. Because it’s complicated when everything is on the line. But you know that what you know could sav...
Feb 20, 2023•51 min•Ep 152•Transcript available on Metacast This week: There are a default group of problems that exist in our society because of the basic needs required to be a human. They are: Air Water Food Sleep These, our most primal needs, are more or less biologically inarguable, and the good news is, we understand them very well and have made enormous progress to ensure they are accessible to a greater percentage of humans than ever before. There have been trade-offs along the way, of course, including plundering most of the solar system’s singl...
Feb 15, 2023•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: For the next few weeks, I’m rewriting and sharing a selection of essays I wrote in 2020 and 2021, so about two hundred years ago. I think they’re more relevant than ever — I can’t wait to hear what you think. This week: What would you say you do here? ( Originally published July 2020, updated February 2023) Why do we exist? After a hundred years of progress, humanity faces stress tests unlike any we’ve faced before, and all at once. The good news: Your company can help rewrite the fut...
Feb 13, 2023•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast How does innovation actually work? That's today's big question, and my guest is Christopher Mims . Chris is a journalist for the Wall Street Journal , and I had him on the show in 2021 to understand how he asks big questions. Chris is constantly asking questions about the most pressing technological and societal issues we face from robot trains to the future of batteries, brain implants, and whatever happens to land in between. And his thesis is this: every little bit counts. And innovation is m...
Jan 30, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Everyone needs insurance. But what kind? And what does it mean to have it, or not? Well, there’s actual insurance, which is a policy where you and an insurer contract with one another in case things go south with (usually) your home, your car, or your body. That’s the layman’s technical explanation, but more colloquially, and for our purposes today, “insurance” can mean just having a buffer or a back up plan, or a “thing you might do to make sure a big decision (like buying a home, ha...
Jan 27, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast How do we reimagine capitalism in a world on fire? That's today's big question, and my guest is Rebecca Henderson , Harvard professor behind the wildly popular class "Reimagining Capitalism". I had Rebecca on the show in 2020 to discuss her book of the same name and her research, which explores the degree to which the private sector can play a major role in building a more sustainable economy, focusing on the relationships between organizational purpose, innovation, productivity, and high-perfor...
Jan 24, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: What does it mean when people say “revolution”? For these purposes, which are pretty narrow and entirely of my own invention, I don’t mean some single moment in time, unless it was a bellwether for something bigger. And I don’t mean the revolutions that have necessarily most directly impacted me. When I think “revolution” I imagine a building up of…something…that affected most people directly or indirectly, so that’s the threshold I’ll use here. This list is in no way comprehensive, I...
Jan 23, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast How can I be a better ancestor? This question has haunted and inspired me since way back in 2019 when I first read the Optimist's Telescope . A beautiful, helpful, inspiring book by Bina Venkataraman. Then I had Bina on the show. I think it's fair to say it reframed and focused my work and now all of our work here . You simply cannot be a better ancestor by hoping shit gets better in posting black boxes on your Instagram stories. You have to do the work for today and tomorrow. If you want your d...
Jan 17, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
