The Most Important Question
by Important, Not Important
Latest episode
TMIQ Today: Open A Window
TMIQ Today: Open A Window
About this podcast
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.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 496 episodes
- TMIQ Today: Open A Window · 5 minToday: Move beyond being "right" and focus on taking effective, measurable action, because as Florence Nightingale taught us, caring is shown by doing the basics that work…
- TMIQ Today: Peanuts · 3 minToday: A US-made peanut paste can bring starving children back from the edge of death, and we passed a Farm Bill provision that requires at least $200 million annually for this…
- TMIQ Today: A Win For The Amazon · 2 minToday: President Lulu won in Brazil, which is a win for the Amazon. Celebrate the good news wherever you find it! ----------- Have feedback? Tweet us (…
- TMIQ Today: Diapers · 3 minToday: 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…
- *Actually* Pro Life: Our Positions · 14 minFor 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…
- TMIQ Today: Oregon · 3 minToday: 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…
- Facts Are Non-Negotiable, Framing Is A Choice · 1 h 43 min · Episode 223What 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…
- TMIQ Today: The Talk · 4 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Trump Accounts · 3 minToday: 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…
- Murder Mysteries, But For Trees · 1 h 7 min · Episode 222In 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…
- TMIQ Today: Plague · 3 minToday: 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…
- New In What Can I Do: Notifcations · 8 minAfter 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…
- TMIQ Today: Political Hobbyism, Part 2 · 3 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Gun Laws · 3 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Clearing the Air in Schools · 3 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Political Hobbyism · 4 minToday: Many people practice "political hobbyism": obsessively following political news and offering hot takes, while doing little constructive work, because the personal stakes…
- What is TMIQ Today? · 20 minYou'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…
- TMIQ Today: Mitch Voted Against Paid Leave, And Yet · 3 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Florida's Education Loophole · 2 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Cleaner Air, Smarter Kids · 3 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: A Right To Clean Water · 3 minToday: The Fifth Circuit just dismissed a Jackson, Mississippi family's lawsuit over alleged lead-contaminated water, stating that "the Constitution does not guarantee clean…
- TMIQ Today: Summarily Slow · 3 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Measles & Misinformation · 4 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: COVID Vaccines and Pregnancy · 1 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Meta's Settlement · 2 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Dolly's Legacy · 2 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Beyond Our Lifetime · 4 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: Arkansas Medicaid & Postpartum Coverage · 2 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: The Future of Childhood Vaccines · 1 minToday: 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…
- TMIQ Today: FDA Food Safety Delays · 2 minWelcome 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…
- Run To Defend Democracy · 28 min · Episode 221Today, 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…
- Run To Build The Future You Want · 42 min · Episode 220Today 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…
- Run To Unite Your Community · 28 min · Episode 219There 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…
- *Actually* Pro Life: Our Principles · 14 minA 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…
- Run To Flip Your State · 33 min · Episode 218Today 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…
- Run for Working People (And Not For Data Centers) · 43 min · Episode 217Today, 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…
- Introducing: It's Called Reality · 2 minSomething 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…
- Run for Soil and Water and Farmworkers · 21 min · Episode 216You 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…
- Bonus: An *Actually* Pro Life T-shirt · 2 minWe'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…
- *Actually* Pro Life: The Design · 14 minIf 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…
- Introducing: *Actually* Pro Life · 14 min250 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…
- How You Changed The Lives of 250 Families in Rwanda · 9 minLast 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…
- A Calm Voice In A Loud World · 52 min · Episode 215Your 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…
- What's In Your Water · 46 min · Episode 214Whoever 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…
- Life Under A Microscope · 44 min · Episode 213Since 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…
- Public Health Just Got Personal · 43 min · Episode 212The 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…
- Not Right Now: Coloring Pages of Karl Marx · 1 h 12 minThis 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…
- Public Health In A Post-Evidence World · 52 min · Episode 211Just 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…
- The Plastic Crisis Isn't On You, Actually · 1 h 3 min · Episode 210Plastic. 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…
- What's The Purpose of Your Wealth? · 1 h 19 min · Episode 209If our mission is to help people, everyone, answer the most important question, what can I do? Then at some point we need to talk to the people who help really wealthy people…
