The Most Important Question
by Important, Not Important
The most important question in today's world of climate chaos, AI psychosis, and crumbling democracy is: what can I do? Your host, Quinn Emmett is completely unqualified to answer it, so he's calling the people that already are.If you've got the news, the analysis, the outrage, but still no plan — join us as we figure it out together with long-form conversations with amazing people working on the frontlines, and quick updates responding to today's most important headlines, and what you can do about it, tonight.220+ episodes. 110+ countries. A bunch of Webby and Signal Award nominations. Zero hot takes.
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Episodes
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TMIQ Today: A Win For The Amazon
Today: President Lulu won in Brazil, which is a win for the Amazon. Celebrate the good news wherever you find it! ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us ( http://www.twitter.com/importantnotimp ), or send a message to [email protected] (... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Diapers
Today: A one-year-old boy was killed after a police officer fired three shots into a car pulling away in a Walmart parking lot in Mississippi, following a call that two women were suspected of stealing diapers. No one should have to steal diapers or be... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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*Actually* Pro Life: Our Positions
For two years something has been missing from *Actually* Pro-Life. Obviously, you guys didn't even know about it until recently, but the point is, we had these 1,400+ actions we'd been recommending, reviewing, and refreshing for years. And on the other... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Oregon
Today: Three children and a 25-year-old teacher in Bend, Oregon are dead in yet another school shooting. Police arrived in three minutes, the school had locks, cameras, and drills and it still wasn't enough. What Can You Do: Donate to end gun violence ... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Facts Are Non-Negotiable, Framing Is A Choice
What is the price of exclusion? Well, if your family paid the price, if your people were ever left out of a textbook you don't need this new book to tell you. But the title is just the verdict. The book is the evidence. It is the names, the dates, the ... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: The Talk
Today: We've gotta aim higher than simply meeting a "do not rape" threshold. We've gotta actively work to prevent harm through conversations about consent and concrete actions. What Can You Do: Virginians! Vote for Amendment 1 Call your reps to make su... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Trump Accounts
Today: Key word in the Trump Accounts promise: eligibility. As in, only children born after Dec 31, 2024 and before Jan 1, 2029. So, children born before 2024 or earlier get zero dollars, even though we already know what reduced child poverty, like the... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Murder Mysteries, But For Trees
In 1904, somebody noticed a sick tree at the Bronx Zoo. Within 50 years, the fungus killing it had wiped out about four billion American Chestnut trees from Maine all the way down to Georgia. In 2018, Richard Powers wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Plague
Today: Your algorithm may have spent the last week scaring you about the plague, but probably the wrong one. Pennsylvania has reported over one thousand measles cases, with 198 hospitalized and five dead...yet the CDC is only reporting two measles deat... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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New In What Can I Do: Notifcations
After launching What Can I Do to collect all of our recommended actions in one place, we received feedback from you that you still didn't feel like you were participating in collective action. So, as part of a "brain transplant" through the whole platf... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Political Hobbyism, Part 2
Today: What does it mean to be *Actually* Pro Life? If political power comes from consistently meeting people's basic needs, and if being pro-life means, as Abdul EL-Sayed said, covering everyone's healthcare, then maybe we should go ahead and do that.... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Gun Laws
Today: Although most Americans want stricter gun laws, campaign money surges after fatal school shootings to prevent change. What Can You Do: Call your reps about the Assault Weapons Ban of 2025 https://www.whatcanido.earth/action/assault-weapons-ban/ ... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Clearing the Air in Schools
Today: In the 2024-2025 school year, nearly one in five US school districts cancelled school because of building failures. After Congress sent schools $190 billion, districts planned $9.7 billion for HVAC and spent nearly all of it, but no federal stan... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Political Hobbyism
Today: Many people practice "political hobbyism": obsessively following political news and offering hot takes, while doing little constructive work, because the personal stakes feel low. Let's redirect that energy towards doing the actual, proven, bori... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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What is TMIQ Today?
You've probably noticed short episodes called TMIQ Today popping up in your feed. Today, INI Producer Willow hops on to chat with Quinn about what these episodes are, why we've added them to your feed, and what you can expect coming up! ----------- Hav... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Mitch Voted Against Paid Leave, And Yet
Today: Senator Mitch McConnell was absent from the Senate for three months after falling in June. When he returned in September to vote, his seat was intact. Which is how it should be: your job shouldn't be in jeopardy if you get sick. However...Mitch ... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Florida's Education Loophole
Today: Since 1975, federal law has required public school districts to offer students with disabilities an education. But if parents decline and choose a private school, the district's obligation ends. In Florida, a special scholarship that uses public... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Cleaner Air, Smarter Kids
Today: New York City cleaned up its air over 22 years with multiple policies, and a Columbia University study tracking 1100 children tested from toddlerhood during the same period found that as air pollution decreased, standard development and cognitiv... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: A Right To Clean Water
Today: The Fifth Circuit just dismissed a Jackson, Mississippi family's lawsuit over alleged lead-contaminated water, stating that "the Constitution does not guarantee clean water." We can change that, like in New York, where a state constitutional ame... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Summarily Slow
Today: When someone is detained in the US, the government must quickly justify the detention to a federal judge. But judges are only instructed to decide cases "summarily" with no set deadline, leading to major differences by district. What Can You Do:... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Measles & Misinformation
Today: Parents should have transparent access to measles vaccination rates for their child's specific school and classroom so they can assess their child's risk. Statewide averages can be misleading, and vaccine disinformation and declining rates are m... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: COVID Vaccines and Pregnancy
Today: Senator Ron Johnson claimed that the COVID vaccine causes an 82% miscarriage rate in pregnant women. How did he get that number? He just made it up by taking the real 2021 study and excluding about 700 participants. ----------- Have feedback? Tw... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Meta's Settlement
Today: Parents often lose the "phone at bedtime" battle because social media is designed to keep users (kids) engaged. The attorneys general in 51 states and territories sued Meta, alleging Facebook and Instagram were built so kids can't put them down,... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Dolly's Legacy
Today: Dolly Parton's life is defined by her unmatched generosity and impact, from her Imagination Library, which has distributed at least 300 million books, to her donations of tens of millions to global disaster relief, to her efforts in helping prot... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Beyond Our Lifetime
Today: We are working on projects we may never live to finish, building cathedrals we won't see completed. Think about the work done so far on lead contamination: scientists and activists spent years getting it banned from gasoline. But we still have l... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: Arkansas Medicaid & Postpartum Coverage
Today: While people focus on newborns, new mothers often go unchecked. In Arkansas, Medicaid covers childbirth but ends 60 days postpartum even though the period when mothers die extends to up to a year. What you can do: Call the free hotline 1-833-TLC... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: The Future of Childhood Vaccines
Today: The president signed an executive order directing pediatricians to give children 3 separate shots instead of the combined MMR vaccine, despite those separate products not currently existing in the US. ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us ( http:/... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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TMIQ Today: FDA Food Safety Delays
Welcome to our new series, The Most Important Question Today. These will be short (1-3 minutes) drops, responding to just one news story daily, with action steps. Today: The FDA is handling eleven different food poisoning cases right now, and even thou... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Run To Defend Democracy
Today, another in our series of conversations with friends who are part of the pipeline at Run For Something. I'm excited to introduce you to Sophia Gibb. She is a public servant and elite athlete who knows what it means to perform under pressure, whic... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Run To Build The Future You Want
Today we're gonna talk about Florida and representation, and how Florida has very little of it, in even the loosest definition of the word. We're gonna do that by introducing you to my new friend, May Thach. May is a candidate for state representative ... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Run To Unite Your Community
There are a lot of folks in rural America that can say, "No candidate's ever come and knocked on my door." So today, I'm going to introduce you to the one who knocks, my new best friend, Brittany Newton. You folks around the world have said very clearl... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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*Actually* Pro Life: Our Principles
A huge catalyst for our 2025 pivot towards courting a much wider audience was AOC’s post-mortem of the 2024 election: “We can’t just be right. We have to be effective.”But at the same time, we have to also agree on the fundamentals — human rights — and... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Run To Flip Your State
Today we're gonna talk about Texas. For a decade, maybe 100 years, we've heard over and over, this is the year we flip Texas. Sometimes we get closer, sometimes we get much further away. But as much as I'm excited about a candidate like James Talarico,... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Run for Working People (And Not For Data Centers)
Today, we're gonna talk about data centers. Now, I know these things are a hot topic amid everything else: the heat, water, prices, lack of homes, lack of childcare, you name it. But we do need to speak out about them. So, who is the most qualified her... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Introducing: It's Called Reality
Something new from the team behind The Most Important Question! It's Called Reality is a podcast about reality TV, and the systems hiding inside it. Every episode, hosts Willow Beck and Briana Brown take a show you're already watching and pull the thre... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Run for Soil and Water and Farmworkers
You may feel like you're giving it all you have, but obviously things are tough out there. We're working on all of it, but in particular, you, our listeners have asked for over and over more examples of a fight and actual progress that you can see and ... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Bonus: An *Actually* Pro Life T-shirt
We've spent the last two essays building the case for *Actually* Pro Life: wht it means, where it comes from, and why the logo was designed to be worn, carried, and declared in public. Now we're asking you to do exactly that. We just launched our first... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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*Actually* Pro Life: The Design
If the name Actually Pro Life is deliberate, then so is the logo. Because like I said in our intro post, we’re reclaiming "pro-life" from the same people who blame kindergartners for getting shot at school, and we’re grounding it in evidence. Evidence ... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Introducing: *Actually* Pro Life
250 years after a group of slaveowners wrote that "all men are created equal", we're done letting hypocrites own the language of life.Introducing Actually Pro Life: a reframe, a research platform, and a direct challenge to anyone willing to be held acc... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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How You Changed The Lives of 250 Families in Rwanda
Last Christmas we teamed up with about 40 other big podcasts to support our dear friends at Give Directly with a very special campaign called Pods Fight Poverty. The goal was to raise $1 million to send to families in extreme poverty in Bwakira, Rwanda... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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A Calm Voice In A Loud World
Your kids are hearing about the news whether you are ready or they're ready or not. One study said two-thirds of kids aged 8 to 14 are absorbing current events at least every few days, and almost none of it was made for them. They're getting the fear w... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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What's In Your Water
Whoever said this country can't come together about anything anymore in the year of our Lord twenty twenty-six was wrong because PFAS, or forever chemicals, are in the blood of ninety-seven percent of Americans right now. They're in our water, our cook... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Life Under A Microscope
Since the dawn of recorded history, our living earth has been changed by everyone who spends time on it or in it from the smallest bacteria to the largest animals. But like the brain-gut axis inside of us that we still barely understand, we've really n... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Public Health Just Got Personal
The CDC issued six health alerts in all of 2025, down from dozens in a normal year, whatever that means anymore. Measles, a disease we basically eliminated 26 years ago, is closing in on 1000 cases, with children hospitalized for brain swelling. And the people now running our top health agencies...
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Public Health Just Got Personal
The CDC issued six health alerts in all of 2025, down from dozens in a normal year (whatever that means anymore). Measles, a disease we basically eliminated 26 years ago, is closing in on 1000 cases, with children hospitalized for brain swelling. And t... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Not Right Now: Coloring Pages of Karl Marx
This week, we're dropping an episode from our other show, Not Right Now, in the feed, where Quinn and Claire have community organizer and dad, Garrett Bucks, on the show to chat about parenting, of course, but also how he answered the most important qu... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Not Right Now: Coloring Pages of Karl Marx
This week, we're dropping an episode from our other show, Not Right Now, in the feed, where Quinn and Claire have community organizer and dad, Garrett Bucks, on the show to chat about parenting, of course, but also how he answered the most important question by building community locally and…
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Public Health In A Post-Evidence World
Just because we're done caring about an outbreak doesn't mean the outbreak is done with us. Over the last year, we have watched something unsettling happen in plain sight. The quiet, active dismantling of the systems built to catch outbreaks early, coo... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
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Public Health In A Post-Evidence World
Just because we're done caring about an outbreak doesn't mean the outbreak is done with us. Over the last year, we have watched something unsettling happen in plain sight. The quiet, active dismantling of the systems built to catch outbreaks early, coordinate a response, and keep hospitals and...
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The Plastic Crisis Isn't On You, Actually
Plastic. It is the miracle material that has quietly become the infrastructure of modern life over the past 63 years and the almost undefeated business model that's continuing climate change and keeping fossil fuel companies alive and reshaping our bod... Hosted on beehiiv. Read the full Privacy...
About this show
The most important question in today's world of climate chaos, AI psychosis, and crumbling democracy is: what can I do? Your host, Quinn Emmett is completely unqualified to answer it, so he's calling the people that already are.If you've got the news, the analysis, the outrage, but still no plan — join us as we figure it out together with long-form conversations with amazing people working on the frontlines, and quick updates responding to today's most important headlines, and what you can do about it, tonight.220+ episodes. 110+ countries. A bunch of Webby and Signal Award nominations. Zero hot takes.
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