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)