For this Fourth of July, enjoy some of our favorite recent conversations:

• Justin Gest, associate professor of Policy and Government at George Mason University and the author of Majority Minority (Oxford University Press, 2022), talks about the demographic trends in the U.S. to 'majority minority' and puts efforts to resist it (like Pres. Trump's attempts to interfere with the 2020 Census) in context.
• Roosevelt Montás, senior lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University’s Center for American Studies and director of its Freedom and Citizenship Programs, and author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation (Princeton University Press November 16, 2021), argues in favor of a collegiate core curriculum and talks about how the 'Great Books' influenced his life.
• Curtis Deutsch, professor of Geosciences and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University, discusses the dire consequences of unchecked, human-driven emissions for ocean life as laid out in a new report he's co-authored, "Avoiding ocean mass extinction from climate warming."
• A. J. Jacobs, NPR contributor, contributing editor at Esquire, and the author of The Year of Living Biblically, The Know-It-All, It's All Relative and his latest The Puzzler: One Man's Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life (Crown, 2022), talks about his new book that tries to puzzle out why we like puzzles and what they do for us.

These interviews were lightly edited for time and clarity; the original web versions are available here:

America's 'Majority Minority' Demographic Future (Apr 11, 2022)

An Ode to The Core Curriculum (Feb 18, 2022)

Unchecked Emissions and the Threat of Mass Marine Extinction (May 6, 2022)

A. J. Jacobs Puzzles It Out (Apr 25, 2022)