Zócalo Public Square

Critic Camille Paglia, author of Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art From Egypt to Star Wars, believes that art in America is in crisis. Paglia, who has taught in art schools (she is currently a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia) for 40 years, is concerned about most of her students’ lack of exposure to art. But she's also been alarmed to hear the conservative denigratio...

We tend to think that both democracy and diversity are good things; many of us even say that diversity is a strength. But others have argued that our polyglot nation is too big, too complex - simply too diverse - to boast a healthy and vibrant democracy. The Almanac of American Politics author Michael Barone, University of California Irvine sociologist Jennifer Lee, and City University of New York...

Sang Yoon, chef and owner of the Father’s Office and Lukshon restaurants, sat down with KCRW Good Foodhost Evan Kleiman to talk about entrepreneurship, inspiration, burgers, and, of course, ketchup (or rather the lack thereof at his Santa Monica and Culver City gastropubs) at a Grand Park event in partnership with the Music Center.

Mickey Edwards, a former Oklahoma Republican congressman and author of The Parties Versus the People: How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans, visited Zócalo to talk about how America's two political parties are hurting the nation--and what can be done to fix our ailing system.

How much are elections costing America? Zócalo's Joe Mathews talked with political scientist Samuel L. Popkin and campaign finance expert Richard L. Hasen about America's election dysfunction--and election reform--campaign finance, fundraising, and how candidates talk about money.

Can the next U.S. president make public universities more affordable - and can the federal government do anything to support crucial research that takes place in these institutions? Yes, said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, and Carnegie Corporation President Vartan Gregorian, in a panel co-presented by UCLA at the National Press Club in Washington, D....

Studies show that happier, more optimistic people live longer, perform better in work and school, and lead healthier lives than their unhappy, pessimistic counterparts. But what can we do in our everyday lives to make ourselves both happier and healthier? "The Happiness Psychiatrist" Sheenie Ambardar and life coach Cynthia Loy Darst talked with Southern California Public Radio healthcare reporter...

Will downtown L.A. ever work? It’s already working, said a four-person panel of architects, planners, and designers who’ve been closely involved with downtown over the past decade. At an event in L.A.'s Grand Park, landscape architect Tony Paradowski, urban designer Melani Smith, SCI-Arc's Hernan Diaz Alonso, and architect Alice Kimm spoke with moderator Christopher Hawthorne, the Los Angeles Time...

Time magazine's Michael Grunwald, author of The New New Deal, explains why, contrary to popular opinion, President Obama's 2009 stimulus has been a tremendous force for change in America. It created millions of jobs and lifted the nation's economy out of a free fall. But it is also transforming healthcare, energy, education, and the country's infrastructure.

Novelist Lisa Zeidner, memoirist Jeanne Darst, critic Heather Havrilesky, and Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum discussed how humor differs between the sexes in its creation and reception. They agreed that the debate about whether women are as funny as men are is tired, but there are still a number of obstacles that face women who are creating comedy.

According to UCLA legal scholar Kal Raustiala, coauthor of The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation, copycats and imitators—legal and illegal—not only fail to hurt creative industries but sometimes help drive them. In a talk at the Goethe Institut Los Angeles, Raustiala explains why a lot of what we think we know about intellectual property is wrong, and how certain industries—like fa...

The directors of three Los Angeles art museums--Ann Philbin of the Hammer, Michael Govan of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Timothy Potts, the new director of the Getty--discussed with Los Angeles Times arts reporter Jori Finkel the state of the city's museums and their hopes for the future. It's an exciting time for the L.A. art world, but although the museums have a great deal of poten...

We’ve all heard the dismal facts about the American healthcare system: high spending, low-quality treatment, poor delivery, and spotty access. But biomedical innovator, businessman, and physician Patrick Soon-Shiong—who is also the richest man in Los Angeles and a Lakers part-owner—says the problems aren’t intractable. Far from it. Instead, we’re on the cusp of a more personalized, more accurate,...

Californians and their leaders need to move beyond longstanding battles over minor policy changes and begin new, broad debates about how to transform the state’s economy and educational system, argued Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom during an interview with NBC4 Los Angeles' Conan Nolan.

What if there were a drug out there that cost nothing to produce, required no prescription, and made people live longer, feel happier and less stressed, and sleep better? There’d be a run on the pharmacies. But this wonder drug isn’t a drug. It’s altruism and compassion, a team of experts in the benefits of helping others--bioethicist Stephen G. Post, neurosurgeon James Doty, and Big Sunday founde...

For much of American history, newspapers held an exclusive role as democracy’s watchdog, sounding the alarm at any sign of corruption and abuse from those in power. But today there are fewer journalists than ever before, which means fewer people keeping watch. What does the death of newspapers mean for holding powerful institutions accountable? Voice of San Diego CEO Scott Lewis, Reportero directo...

We all know we’re going to die, but we don’t want to talk about it—or plan for it. As a result, we take—and ask our healthcare providers to take—extraordinary measures to prolong our lives and those of our loved ones. Doctors, however, don’t take these same measures. Because they encounter death more often than most people, and because they know the quality of life that follows CPR, ventilators, a...

Where’s heaven? What’s it like? Who gets in? And what tortures await those of us who land in the alternative destination? In a panel moderated by documentary filmmaker Jody Hassett Sanchez, UCLA Buddhism expert Robert Buswell, religion historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, UCLA anthropologist and expert in Pueblo Indian beliefs Peter Nabokov, and Martin Schwarz, curator of the exhibition "Heaven, Hell...

The key division in American politics and economics right now isn’t between liberals and conservatives, says Michael Lind. It’s between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. What does this division mean now, what is its history, and how did America’s economy get into the current mess? Lind, a public intellectual, co-founder of the New America Foundation, and author of Land of Promise: An Economic Histor...

Like the Internet, knowledge today is inclusive and overwhelming, unsettled and messy, and linked, says David Weinberger, author of Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room. The demise of the Encyclopedia Britanica and the uncertain future of the newspaper and libraries demonstrates that the In...

UCLA cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and UCLA writing lecturer Kathryn Bowers, authors of Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Health and Science of Healing, talk with Los Angeles Times science writer Eryn Brown about what they think is medicine's next frontier: collaboration between human and animal doctors. Animal and human diseases across the spectrum--from eating disorders a...

How do you make an American poet? California’s new poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, answered that question with laughter, singing, storytelling, and poetry as he recounted his life and work in a conversation with KPCC News Editor Oscar Garza. Herrera grew up all over California, and he spoke about how his itinerant childhood influenced his work. He also talked about why he believes Latino write...

At a Zócalo/Cal Humanities "Searching for Democracy" event, Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley Henry Brady, the Institute for Civility in Government's Cassandra Dahnke, Arizona State University communications and performance scholar Jennifer Linde, and economist and anthropologist Meenakshi Chakraverti, who leads the Public Conversations Project in San Diego, discussed whet...

According to New Republic editor Timothy Noah, author of The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It, America is in the midst of two significant divergences that are causing increasing wealth disparity. The first is between people with college or graduate degrees and people with lower levels of education. The second is between the 1 percent (people in the...

L.A. has the largest population of Iranians of any city outside Iran. If reform were to come to Iran, would life change for the hundreds of thousands of Iranian-Angelenos who call Southern California home? Writer and activist Amir Soltani, entrepreneur and philanthropist Sharon S. Nazarian, and acting director of Iranian Studies at UCLA M. Rahim Shayegan joined moderator Shiva Falsafi, UCLA lectur...