Zócalo Public Square

An Evening with Guillermo del Toro

For every commissioned piece of public art there are countless unlawful works — scrawled spray-painted initials, cheeky visual pranks, massive murals soaring up buildings and across rail cars, shrines tucked into unused corners. Street artists have become figures of global recognition, even acceptance. Artist collectives in Berlin take over buildings; London-based Banksy puts on pop-up exhibits ar...

From a Persian queen’s brutal mastectomy in the fifth century BC to the 19th century recipients of primitive chemotherapy, humans have long tried to beat cancer. But even as we routed other scourges like cholera and tuberculosis, launched ambitious public health campaigns, exposed the dangers of chemicals like nicotine, and survived ever more rigorous treatment regimens, cancer remained as deadly...

Teachers are among the biggest influences on a student’s education. Most parents and educators would say teacher performance should be evaluated. Yet no one agrees on how to do it. From a teacher’s method in the classroom to his or her willingness to spend extra hours with individual students, attaching a number to teacher performance isn’t easy. Some favor a “value-added” teacher ranking system,...

California’s rate of births to teenage mothers has hit a historic low. For years, rates were on the decline around the country, throughout the sex-obsessed 1990s — when parents rallied around the V-chip, fretted about Internet obscenity, and shielded impressionable eyes from strutting pop starlets. Credit went to many factors, from increased access to contraceptives and improved sex education to t...

British writer Christopher Isherwood arrived in Los Angeles after a long, slow bus ride from New York, where he had emigrated with his friend W.H. Auden. After unforgettably chronicling the underworld of interwar Berlin, Isherwood settled into L.A. and its circle of European émigrés, writers, painters, and spiritual seekers — Aldous Huxley, Truman Capote, David Hockney, and Don Bachardy, who would...

Humans have long struggled to explain the trait that makes us human: self awareness. Ancient Greeks and Christian theologians posited a soul separate from a body. A long line of philosophers have argued that we’re defined by our thinking human minds, distinct and higher than our physical selves. Scientists today see evidence of something like minds and cultures in social animals, but they still se...

The latest innovations in medicine seem like the stuff of science fiction: edible pills that can sense, monitor, and report on vital signs from within the body; a stick-on heart monitor that communicates wirelessly with patient and doctor; robotic surgical tools that reduce or eliminate invasive procedures. Medical advances past — from the discovery of antibiotics to the development of organ trans...

In the last 20 years, the Internet has transformed the way we live, easing communication, speeding connections, spreading information, and spurring activism. But its power has prompted governments and corporations to seek to control its uses and limit access. If they succeed, it wouldn’t be the first time a new technology has revolutionized the world before being clamped down. From telephones to r...

Many of us turn to Google at the first sign of sickness, and over the past few years, more and more doctors have started to meet us there. Boutique practices promise easy e-mail correspondence with doctors — along with unlimited in-person access — for a flat fee of a few grand. Kaiser guarantees 24-hour response times for any inquiries made to doctors online. And countless websites, from WebMD to...

Only eight days after German tanks rolled into Paris, silent and deserted in the summer of 1940, France accepted defeat and foreign occupation. But even though a swastika flew over the city, cultural life survived and even flourished. Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf sang for French and German audiences. Pablo Picasso painted in his Left Bank apartment, even though his work was officially banned....

American maps of the modern world centrally and prominently locate the global powers of the 20th century, and the arenas of their wars: the U.S. and Western Europe, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But the 21st century has already begun to see a shift in geopolitical focus to an area generally relegated to the edges of our maps: the Indian Ocean. From the Horn of Africa to the Indonesian archi...

Over the next 20 years, hundreds of millions of people will move to cities, demanding the economic opportunities and material comforts of urban life: air conditioning, personal computers, rich diets, cars, cell phones. In 1950, only 30 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas; by 2030, that figure will rise to 60 percent. While cities have long propelled economic growth and brought p...

When George W. Bush declared the Iraq War finished in May 2003, it was far from over. Over the next several years, terrorism and sectarian conflict continued and American troop levels increased. Now, after Barack Obama’s own speech declaring the combat mission complete, conflict wears on. As the U.S. turns its forces toward Afghanistan, how can America learn to bring conflicts to an end? Driven by...

Over the past 50 years, religion in America has radically transformed. The 1960s saw a drop in religious observance and spurred a conservative reaction that, over the next 20 years, created the Religious Right. In the 1990s, younger generations, put off by the deepening link between faith and conservative politics, began to abandon organized religion altogether. Because it has long inspired volunt...

Americans may worship success, but we’re also good at failing. Nearly three-quarters of all Americans have considered starting their own businesses — compared to fewer than half of Europeans. Silicon Valley executives highlight rather than bury their collapsed start-ups on their resumes. Our corporate and personal bankruptcy systems are the most generous in the world, and New Deal-era financial sa...

Over the past few years, Americans have heaped blame for the financial crisis on hedge funds. These mysterious but powerful organizations have, in just a few decades, invented previously unheard-of financial instruments, created new markets, and rewritten the rules of capitalism. By studying everything from economics to physics, hedge fund managers also seemed to accomplish the impossible — beatin...

For 80 years the Los Angeles River has been less a river than a flood control channel winding from Simi Valley to Long Beach. Its concrete-lined course seemingly carries little more than a trickle of water, and its banks lie largely fallow and off limits despite long-running efforts to restore public access to and green spaces along its edges. Now, an ambitious plan to turn 125 acres of an under-u...

Unscrupulous lenders, mysterious new financial products, and shadowy banks might have taken most of the blame for the economic crisis, but the problem begins with a type of business that has troubled the U.S. since its founding: the monopoly. Over the last 30 years, regulation of monopolies has eased, leaving the companies commanding governments, courts, wars, resources, and even patents to the hu...

Hospitals and clinics are not generally considered well-designed places for today’s healthcare needs. Work spaces for doctors and nurses can be crowded, too close to patient treatment areas, and missing new technology that would streamline care. At hospitals, patient rooms often lack windows or privacy. They can be cramped and far from waiting areas and cafeterias, making it more difficult to visi...

Chefs have always had a knack for fame — from Julia Child to Napoleon’s personal chef, who published lucrative cookbooks and invented the tall white chef’s hat. But today, thanks in part to the Food Network, several seasons of "Top Chef" and "Hell’s Kitchen," and a burgeoning foodie culture, chefs are full-fledged celebrities. Besides running top restaurants across the country, they publish enough...

After a long and bruising legislative battle, President Barack Obama signed national healthcare reform into law. The plan promises coverage to the uninsured, lower healthcare costs for small businesses, and tighter regulation of insurance companies, preventing them from denying care to the sick. The reform comes at a crucial time for California. The economic crisis has left the state considering c...

Salomón Huerta is known for revealing identity by obscuring it. He has painted collections of finely detailed portraits of the backs of heads, florid but unemotional masked lucha libre wrestlers, and unassuming suburban homes stripped of individuality. Huerta, who was born in Tijuana and raised in Boyle Heights, has exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, the Gagosian Gallery, and LACMA, and is beginni...

From translucent slivers of sushi to simple weeknight salmon dinners, seafood is a staple of the American diet, considered both healthy and luxurious. But what if there really aren’t more fish in the sea? Our craving for high-on-the-food-chain tuna and salmon bred nearly as big and thick as torpedoes is destabilizing ocean life and polluting the sea. Even as some chefs and suppliers aim to serve e...

After launching his architecture career in Los Angeles over 20 years ago, Michael Maltzan quickly distinguished himself with socially conscious buildings that depart from the hulking luxury structures of celebrity architects. His housing projects for the homeless – including the Rainbow Apartments on San Pedro, the recently completed New Carver Apartments on 17th and Hope, and the forthcoming Star...