Happy Cinco de Mayo!

On today's "Best-of" show, some recent favorites:

• As part of a year-long series on ways of improving U.S. democracy, Danielle Allen, Washington Post contributing columnist, a political theorist at Harvard University, where she is James Bryant Conant University Professor and director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics and the author of Justice by Means of Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2023), proposes expanding the number of members of the House of Representatives, currently capped at 435.
• Peter Grinspoon, MD, instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of Seeing Through the Smoke: A Cannabis Expert Untangles the Truth About Marijuana (Prometheus, 2023), discusses how to use cannabis responsibly and the positive and negative effects the drug can have on someone's health.
• Matthew Desmond, sociology professor at Princeton University, 2015 MacArthur fellow, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown, 2016) and his latest, Poverty, by America (Crown, 2023), draws on research and reporting to make the case that poverty persists in the U.S. (at higher levels than in other advanced economies) because affluent Americans benefit from it.
• Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, a host of the StarTalk Radio podcasts, discusses his book Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization (Henry Holt, 2022), a meditation on political and cultural polarization informed by a view "from above."
• Joy Harjo, former U.S. Poet Laureate, discusses a new a picture book, Remember (Random House Studio, 2023), adapted from her poem. The book, illustrated by Caldecott medalist Michaela Goade invites young readers to reflect on the world around them.

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

Making the House More Representative (Mar 1, 2023)

Cannabis Use and Personal Health (Feb 10, 2023)

Set Up to Be Poor (Mar 27, 2023)

Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmic Perspectives on Humanity (Dec 6, 2022)

Former US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Mar 22, 2023)