Zócalo Public Square

A panel moderated by KCRW's Warren Olney, featuring energy journalist Lisa Margonelli, UC Berkeley energy expert Daniel Kammen, SolarCity's Jim Cahill, and LADWP general manager Ron Nichols discusses the future of solar energy in California. They agreed that solar energy has the potential to change the way the state is fueled, but that the financial and political policies need to catch up to techn...

A panel featuring KQET's Sarah Varney, the Bayview Child Health Center's Nadine Burke Harris, San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center director Katie Albright, and Robin Karr-Morse, author of Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease, discussed what childhood trauma is, how it can be treated and prevented, and its effects on the health of adults. Children who experience chronic...

Is Phoenix the Next L.A., God Forbid?

KCRW's Kim Masters, Homeland and Cold Case writer and producer Meredith Stiehm, the Boston Globe's Joanna Weiss, ex-TV executive James Andrew Miller, and Occidental College historian Thaddeus Russell debate whether we're currently living in the golden age of television--or if more choice means more mediocrity. Their lively conversation encompassed the merits of Cupcake Wars and American Idol, the...

Getty Trust President and CEO James Cuno explains why museums matter today more than ever in a talk at the Petersen Automotive Museum. Cuno shares the museum's 18th-century Enlightenment origins and responds to critics who have called the encyclopedic museum elitist and imperialistic.

Historian Olivier Zunz, author of Philanthropy in America: A History, explains why philanthropy is such a powerful force in American politics, economics, and society by explaining the history of the institution.

Leaders of four major research universities--USC President C.L. Max Nikias, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, ASU President Michael Crow, and Rice University President David Leebron--discuss the role of urban universities in their communities with the Chronicle of Higher Education's Jeffrey Selingo. They agreed that while universities alone cannot save dying cities, but they can contribute a great deal...

How Life Imitated Art

At a panel as part of the Pacific Standard Time art initiative, New York University historian Thomas Crow, UCLA historian Eric Avila, Huntington Library curator Jennifer Watts, and Kirse Granat May, author of Golden State, Golden Youth, discussed the allure of Los Angeles imagery through the decades. In a conversation about Disneyland and dream houses, freeways and film, they moved from the 19th c...

Why is the U.S. the only western country that can't agree on healthcare? Sociologist Paul Starr, author of Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle Over Health Care Reform, explains our bitter war over healthcare through its history from the early 20th century--when the American Medical Association and other groups used xenophobia to defeat the first healthcare bills--up through Preside...

Panelists with extensive experience in local, regional, and state government offered arguments for and against splitting California into more than one state in a conversation at the Fresno Art Museum. They agreed that the state is not fulfilling its promises to its citizens, but while some argued for a North-South split (or even a three-state division), others felt that reform, not secession, is n...

An Evening With Ricardo Salinas by Zócalo Public Square

America's public schools are failing--in a large part because the teacher's unions and the bureaucracy don't put students first, according to media mogul Steven Brill, author of Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools. Brill explains his journey through the country's public school system, where he discovered heated wars over charter schools, teachers struggling to succeed without...

Five leaders in e-government--technology consultant April Manatt, senior management analyst for the city of Carlsbad Greg Hermann, executive director of California Common Sense Dakin Sloss, Intellitics, Inc.'s Tim Bonnemann, and executive director of the National Conference on Citizenship David B. Smith--joined Irvine Senior Fellow Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation to discuss whether techn...

In a panel moderated by The New York Times' Marc Lacey, former Arizona House Minority Leader Art Hamilton, Arizona State University political scientist Jennifer Steen, and Tom Zoellner, author of A Safeway in Arizona, discuss how the state became the front lines of America's biggest cultural and political battles, from immigration to gun control.

Economist and New York Times columnist Robert Frank, author of The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good, proposed a radical plan to save America's economy--grounded not in conventional economic theory but in the work of Charles Darwin, which turns Adam Smith's invisible hand on its head.

Academy Award-nominated director Gus Van Sant and his good friend, architect Brad Cloepfil, visited Zócalo to explore why they live in Portland, what influences their work, and how they get inspired. They talked about how Portland provides a refuge away from New York and L.A., traced back their careers to the beginning, and discussed where their precise moment of inspiration comes from.

In an event sponsored by the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University's Washington Center in Washington, D.C., Colin Woodard, author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, talked with Zócalo editorial director Andrés Martinez about America's divisions. Since the founding of the nation and into the present, 11 regional cultures--as disti...

Daniel Yergin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, visited Zócalo to answer the question, "Is Energy Security Possible?" He discussed the innovation and technological development that are shaping our future, from shale gas to oil sands to electric cars, how conservation is our single best source of energy, and how California led the w...

Patrick French, author of India: A Portrait, answers the question, "Is India rich or poor?" India is both rich and poor, he explained to a large crowd at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica. It's such a large country and is changing so rapidly that it is creating its own paradigms about what it means to be rich, and confounding the world's expectations when it comes to global economic development...

With the 100th anniversary of direct democracy upon California, some of the state's keenest political minds gathered to discuss whether the system works, and how it can be improved.

A panel from California with ties in L.A. and the Bay Area debates which half of the state rules--or whether the real power struggle ultimately will be between the east and the west.

How Do We Put the People Back in the Initiative Process?

David Lawrence

Randall Kennedy, Harvard professor of law and author of The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency, shares some of his critiques of the president.