On this Summer Friday, enjoy some of our favorite recent conversations: Sara Abiola, executive director of the Tisch Food Center and associate research professor in the department of health and behavior studies at Columbia University's Teachers College, and Pamela Koch, associate professor of nutrition education and faculty director of the Tisch Food Center, talk about policy proposals for meeting the challenge of food insecurity in NYC following the pandemic and their report, "NY Food 2025." Britt Wray, Human and Planetary Health Fellow at Stanford University and author of the new book Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis (Knopf Canada, 2022), talks about how climate anxiety can affect people's decisions on whether to have children, or not. News about climate change tends to be uniformly bad, but Mic has compiled stories that give reason for some hope. AJ Dellinger, impact writer at Mic, shares a bit of climate optimism. Queens is one of the most diverse places on earth. But like a lot of New York City, it's also segregated. Mark Winston Griffith, executive editor of Brooklyn Deep, and Max Freedman, co-hosts of the podcast School Colors, now on NPR's Code Switch, talk about their reporting into a school diversity plan in district 28 in Queens that proved to be hugely controversial. Rhea Ewing, comic illustrator, fine artist and author of Fine: A Comic About Gender (Liveright, 2022), talks about their new book that the many answers elicited from the transgender community to the question "What is gender?". These interviews were lightly edited for time and clarity; the original web versions are available here: Combatting Post-Pandemic Food Insecurity (Apr 20, 2022) Generational Dread (May 12, 2022) Some Good News Stories About Climate Change (For a Change) (Jun 2, 2022) What Went Wrong With a School Diversity Plan in Queens? (May 13, 2022) Creating 'A Comic About Gender' (Apr 13, 2022)

Theodore Moore, vice president of policy at the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), joins to talk about how a Staten Island Supreme Court judge declared noncitizen voting, which would have given about 800,000 New Yorkers voting rights in municipal elections, unconstitutional.

Aziz Huq, professor of law at the University of Chicago School of Law and the author of The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies (Oxford University Press, 2021),  and Emily Bazelon, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, co-host of Slate's "Political Gabfest" podcast, Truman Capote fellow for creative writing and law at Yale Law School and author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (Random House, 2019), discuss the last two opinions from the Supreme Court, limiting the E.P.A.'s ability to regulate greenhouse gases and allowing the Biden administration to end the Trump "Remain in Mexico" policy, and reflect on this term as a whole.  

Between gun violence, the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, bigotry and other reasons, some Americans say they want to move abroad. Laura Begley Bloom, travel expert and senior contributor at Forbes and Jessica Drucker, consultant who helps LGBTQ folks move abroad and the author of How To Move Abroad And Why It’s The Best Thing You’ll Do (independently published, 2020), trade tips on how to make that happen, and listeners reflect on the class implications of leaving, and whether they are conflicted about leaving.  

Bill McKibben, environmental activist, founder of Third Act and author of many books, most recently, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened (Henry Holt and Co., 2022), joins to talk about the news from Europe, where the E.U. reached a deal to phase out fossil fuels by 2035, in contrast to the breaking news that the Supreme Court in the United States has with conservative states and fossil fuel companies in curtailing the power of the Environmental Protection Agency.