For this long weekend, enjoy some of our recent favorite interviews:

• Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, former Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019, author of To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul (Knopf, 2023), talks about her new book, a manifesto for facing our history and moving forward together.

• The Fifth National Climate Assessment, a government mandated report on climate change, was released mid-November. Kate Marvel, climate scientist at the environmental nonprofit Project Drawdown and a lead author of the report, breaks down the warnings -- and the climate solutions -- laid out in the assessment.

• Michèle Lamont, professor of sociology, African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and the author of Seeing Others: How Recognition Works—and How It Can Heal a Divided World (One Signal/Atria, 2023), argues that "recognizing" and dignifying more than material success offers a path out of today's polarization.

• Carolina Hidalgo, senior producer for WNYC's Radio Rookies, introduces the new class of Radio Rookies while: Christina Adja shares the story she reported about gentrification coming to her neighborhood in the South Bronx; Saldon Tenzin shares her story on her experience of growing up as a first-generation Tibetan and learning to be proud of a home she's never visited; and Fanta Kaba shares her story on how her family found stability in a NYCHA apartment, and how residents are wary as public housing here in the city is changing.

These interviews were lightly edited for time and clarity; the original web versions of the interviews are available through these links: 

Tracy K. Smith's Manifesto (Nov. 7)

A Climate Scientist's Optimism (Nov. 28)

Recognition, Dignity and Worth (Sep. 21)

Radio Rookies 2023: Gentrification Comes to The Bronx (Sep. 13)

Radio Rookies 2023: Learning What it Means to be Tibetan (Sep. 14)

Radio Rookies 2023: Changes Coming to Public Housing (Sep. 15)