Zócalo Public Square
599 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 4 ratingsAn innovative blend of ideas journalism and live events.
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Episodes
Sebastian Mallaby, Are Hedge Funds Heroes or Villains?
September 29, 2010 23:00 - 53 minutes - 25.3 MBOver 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 — beating the market, and surviving repeated financial panics, from the stock market slump of the early 1...
How to Imagine a More Integrated L.A.
September 22, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 34.9 MBFor 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-utilized downtown rail yard into a thriving public space could transform not just the river but th...
Barry Lynn, Are Monopolists Breaking America?
September 21, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 28.5 MBUnscrupulous 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 human genetic code. As consolidation proceeds largely unchecked across every sector — crushing entr...
Does Better Design Make for Better Health?
September 20, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 35.6 MBHospitals 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 visit easily with family. But a growing number of hospitals and clinics are taking design and archite...
Are Celebrity Chefs Good for Food?
September 14, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 38.1 MBChefs 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 books to overwhelm the shelves — and abilities — of most any home cook. They host TV shows that ...
What Does Healthcare Reform Mean for Californians?
July 15, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 32.6 MBAfter 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 cuts to its healthcare programs, particularly for the elderly and the disabled. With nearly one in...
Salomón Huerta, “Ego, Destruction, and Facebook”
July 14, 2010 23:00 - 55 minutes - 26.3 MBSalomón 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 beginning to paint new works with no unifying theme. But Huerta remains committed to his unusual creativ...
Will Seafood Soon Be A Delicacy?
July 07, 2010 23:00 - 1 second - 855 KBFrom 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 environmentally safe fish, others plate shark and whale. How sustainable is seafood? Pulitzer Priz...
Michael Maltzan, Is Good Architecture a Luxury?
July 06, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 36.2 MBAfter 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 Apartments at Sixth and Maple – provide protection, beauty, and services for a community more ac...
William Dalrymple, The Search for the Sacred in Modern India
June 22, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 29.6 MBNo matter how many Silicon Valley-bound software engineers, Texan-imitating call center operators, or Pepsi-endorsing movie stars it produces, India retains a promise of untrammeled, ancient spirituality. But how is modernity changing some of the country’s oldest traditions? Children of businessmen and engineers disobey their parents to join obscure, exacting religious orders; holy men hold work-a-day jobs; Sufi mystics struggle in Talibanizing provinces. Historian and travel writer William D...
Peter Beinart, The Limits of American Power
June 21, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 32.7 MBIraq isn’t the first war that began with an overestimation of American power. Woodrow Wilson and the pro-war progressives believed World War I would transform the world. Lyndon Johnson and the Camelot intellectuals thought America could stop any communist movement from taking power anywhere on earth. George W. Bush and the neoconservatives imagined they could usher in their very own 1989 in the Middle East. Why does success produce hubris, and can tragedy produce wisdom? In an event sponsored...
Jonathan Alter, How to Grade Barack Obama’s First Year
June 15, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 32.8 MBBarack Obama rose to the presidency at a critical time in American history. Propelled by a galvanized left, admired for his cool temperament and high intellect, challenged as inexperienced, and provoking fierce and often racially-tinged opposition, the young Senator from Illinois took the oath of the highest office amid celebration despite the challenges ahead. The country faced its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; troops fought seemingly unwinnable wars in two countries; ten...
Wilbert Rideau, Reforming Prisons from the Inside
June 10, 2010 23:00 - 56 minutes - 26.4 MBWilbert Rideau spent 44 years in one of the country’s most infamous prisons, Louisiana’s Angola penitentiary. After killing a woman in a moment of panic following a botched bank robbery, Rideau was sentenced to death at 19, later amended to life imprisonment. From within Angola, long the sight of prison reform activism because of its brutal living and working conditions, Rideau worked to transform the criminal justice system. Though the brutality of earlier decades is largely gone, prisoners ...
Michael Hiltzik, How the Hoover Dam Made America
June 08, 2010 23:00 - 50 minutes - 24.1 MBThe Hoover Dam was once thought to be a remote regional project, approved as an afterthought by a Republican president before the stock market crashed. But by the time it was completed, and in the 75 years since it was dedicated, the Dam has come to symbolize American resilience and ingenuity at one of the worst times in our history. Construction at the height of the Depression employed thousands and spurred development of urban centers in the West, transforming the political balance of the c...
Zurich vs. L.A.: Which is the Most Democratic City?
May 25, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 35.5 MBZurich and Los Angeles share an intriguing political distinction: each is the largest city in the world’s two greatest centers of direct democracy. California and Switzerland use initiatives and referenda more often than any place in the world, and have for more than a century, when Los Angeles followed Zurich’s model and instituted the first municipal system of direct democracy in the U.S. But direct democracy has been challenged in both places, particularly when it seems that financing, pop...
An Evening with Carlos Ruiz Zafón
May 24, 2010 23:00 - 53 minutes - 25.3 MBWith internationally acclaimed novels that sell millions of copies in 45 countries and 30 languages, Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a writer for a global age. Zafón, born in Barcelona and living in Los Angeles, where he first came to write screenplays, cites as his influences the 19th century British, Russian, and French giants — Dickens, Tolstoy, Balzac. But he also takes inspiration from the great American crime fiction — including the Los Angeles noir master Raymond Chandler — and Hollywood movies, ...
Isobel Coleman, How Women are Transforming the Middle East
May 19, 2010 23:00 - 59 minutes - 28.1 MBTo the Western world, women’s rights and political Islam can appear incompatible. Deeply ingrained social norms and particular interpretations of Islamic law leave women in most Middle Eastern countries without legal protection from domestic violence or spousal rape. Women generally have fewer rights than men when it comes to education, work, divorce, and daily life — from dress to driving to being alone outside the home. But a budding grassroots reform movement has seen women begin to demand...
Geoff Dyer, How We Experience Art
May 13, 2010 23:00 - 41 minutes - 19.6 MBIn his most recent novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Geoff Dyer creates the character Jeff Atman. Much like Dyer, he’s a writer charged with attending and covering the 2003 Venice Biennale. Jeff ignores various masterpieces, stumbles upon one particularly moving piece only by accident, takes in a major light installation while hung over, and participates in a toast to the Bellini—the cocktail—as the best art at the festival. Though Dyer’s views on art and experiencing art don’t exactl...
Ben Wildavsky, How is Globalization Changing Higher Ed?
May 11, 2010 23:00 - 56 minutes - 26.9 MBAs college degrees become an ever more essential qualification for earning a living, students are going further than ever before to get them — and creating a new and rapidly changing worldwide marketplace for higher ed. Nearly three million students leave their home countries to pursue college degrees, a 40 percent increase since 1999. American institutions have set up shop in over 40 countries and are accepting more international students than ever before — with USC leading the pack in matri...
Meghan Daum, Why Are We Obsessed With Real Estate?
May 07, 2010 23:00 - 57 minutes - 27.6 MBFrom the invention of the suburb to the birth of Home and Garden Television, homeownership has long been a central part of the American dream. Americans build ballooning mansions, hunt for hidden architectural gems, drop thousands of dollars per square foot of urban condo or seaside shack, endlessly renovate fixer-uppers, and carefully outfit interiors. Why are we so desperate to own? Meghan Daum, author of Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, visits Zócalo to recount her search fo...
Does Rail Have a Future?
May 04, 2010 23:00 - 59 minutes - 28.5 MBBefore travel shifted to the highways and the skies, the railroad connected Americans and developed the country. Trains built the Eastern seaboard cities, connected the distant coasts, populated and glamorized the West, determined the outcomes of wars, and, when regulated and subsidized, shaped our ideas of government and economy. Today, barring some commuter rails and urban subways, trains are underutilized across the country, particularly in California, where discount airlines are cheaper a...
An Evening with John A. Pérez
April 30, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 32.2 MBJohn A. Pérez, a former labor leader and the first openly gay Speaker of the Assembly in California, ascends to the seat at a particularly challenging time for the state, and with only a year's experience. Not only has California been struggling with a devastating budget crisis, but federal policies expected to assist the state might fail. Transportation and education dollars slated for California haven't been able to blunt layoffs and service cutbacks; and national healthcare reform, whateve...
Joe Menn, Will the Internet Collapse?
April 27, 2010 23:00 - 46 minutes - 22 MBInternet commerce has boomed in the last decade. Americans alone spend over $150 billion in online transactions, and over 50 million U.S. households bank on the web. But how safe are the sites computer users around the world trust with their most sensitive information, and how precarious is the system? Isolated cases of identity theft and computer viruses fail to capture the vast risk crime poses to the way we use the Internet, and a real public debate has yet to begin. Exploiting systemic se...
Would California Be Better Off As Its Own Country?
April 22, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 32.4 MBOne hundred sixty years ago, California, newly independent from Mexico, chose statehood. Since then, California has spurred change around the country. Its progressive policies inspired other states to follow suit, and the innovations sparked in Silicon Valley and fueled by venture capital — more of which is invested in California than in the other 49 states combined — have transformed the way we live. But the rest of the country often gives the Golden State the cold shoulder. Californians are...
Steven Solomon, Is Water the New Oil?
April 19, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 32.5 MBOil may make more headlines, but water is the world’s most indispensable resource, and a dwindling one. Water’s scarcity spawns war, epidemic diseases and the collapse of states across parts of Africa and Asia; its faltering supplies imperil the rise of China and India. What should we do about water? Journalist Steven Solomon, author of Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization, visits Zócalo to trace the history of water from ancient times to our dawning age of scarcity.
Simon Johnson, The Next Financial Meltdown
April 15, 2010 23:00 - 58 minutes - 27.8 MBSince the devastating economic crisis of 2008, new regulations have aimed to reign in the big banks that helped bring down the world economy. But six “megabanks” still rule the financial markets. They are bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever before. They control assets amounting to 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. And their rise from the ashes of the Great Recession is only the latest Wall Street triumph in a long history of showdowns between ...
Picturing Food
April 08, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 34 MBPhotographers have turned their lenses on food since the invention of their art. Early images captured simple, soft arrangements that showcased seasonal bounties — fruits and vegetables in vases and bowls, like still-life paintings. Photographed still lives — whether elaborate or bare — evoked not only taste and appetite, but the experience of a meal, the process, the drama, the company. Shots of markets captured commerce and abundance. Decades later, technological and aesthetic advances tran...
Ian Buruma, Do Democracy and Religion Mix?
March 23, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 29.1 MBWell before the rise of political evangelicalism, Americans have blurred the church-state divide, whether for spurring major social movements like women’s suffrage or civil rights or for hitting the campaign trail. But how well does democracy mix with God? As Europeans and Americans worry about radical Islam undermining Western-style liberal democratic government. Journalist and scholar Ian Buruma, author of Taming the Gods, visited Zócalo to argue that religion — and particularly the passion...
Michelle Alexander, Is Mass Incarceration the New Jim Crow?
March 17, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 36 MBAmericans celebrated the election of Barack Obama as a “triumph over race.” But in major U.S. cities today, the majority of young black men are locked behind bars or labeled felons for life. Jim Crow laws may have been wiped off the books decades ago, but an astounding number of African Americans today, much like their grandparents before them, are trapped in a permanent second-class status — unable to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, ...
Ted Conover, How Roads Shape Our Lives
March 15, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 29.5 MBRoads bind our world. The dense patchwork of an urban grid, looping and soaring city highways, long and straight country trails and narrow, curving mountain passes connect people everywhere with goods, knowledge, disease, and each other. Roads define the way we speak — our careers run in the fast lane; our integrity takes us on the high road; our fates follow paths less traveled — and underpin our stories. What tales do roads tell? Ted Conover, author of The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Chang...
Steve Westly, How California Can Lead the Clean Tech Revolution
March 10, 2010 23:00 - 39 minutes - 18.9 MBSteve Westly is founder and managing partner of The Westly Group. Mr. Westly previously served as the Controller and Chief Fiscal Officer of the state of California, chairing the State Lands Commission and serving on 63 other boards and commissions. During his term, Mr. Westly led an effort to commit more than $1 billion to clean technology investments. Mr. Westly is a former a Senior Vice President at eBay and author of two books on alternative energy and utilities.
How Do We Start a Long-Run Green Boom?
March 10, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 33.9 MBCalifornia has long led the country on environmental initiatives — the state has pledged to produce a third of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Today, California has an estimated 159,000 green jobs, and over the last 13 years, green jobs have grown by 36 percent, while Californian jobs in general have grown by 13 percent. But despite these forward-looking trends, how can policymakers ensure that the green boom doesn’t quickly go bust, or that the boom benefits all Californians, not ...
John Rich, The Psychological Wounds of Urban Violence
March 05, 2010 23:00 - 55 minutes - 26.2 MBViolence affects young African American men more than any other group. Homicide is the leading cause of death for black men between the ages of 15 and 34. In every major U.S. city, black men are more likely than others to be shot or stabbed. But what about the psychological wounds of trauma? Like victims of combat violence or sexual assault, victims of urban violence often suffer post traumatic symptoms like nightmares, flashbacks and loss of the ability to feel emotions. How does trauma chan...
Julia Sweig, What Should Americans Know About Cuba?
February 24, 2010 23:00 - 55 minutes - 26.3 MBAmericans have long been fascinated by Cuba. A mere 90 miles divide the two countries, and their histories have been entangled since the turn of the last century, when the U.S. occupied Cuba after the Spanish-American war. The countries’ relations only grew more complicated from there. Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959, building a one-party Communist state that controlled land, the economy, and the media. He leaned toward the Soviet Union, spurring everything from near-catastrophic confronta...
Gregg Easterbrook, The Next Economic Boom?
February 03, 2010 23:00 - 41 minutes - 19.9 MBIs it possible to envision the next economic boom while we’re still in a bust? Gregg Easterbrook does exactly that in Sonic Boom, arguing that when we pull out of the current recession, the next period of economic growth will be unlike any we’ve seen before. The trends that have drastically changed our world in the last few decades — the lowering of trade barriers and the expansion of financial markets, the vast technological leaps that speed communication and exchange, the worldwide migratio...
Jaron Lanier, Staying Human in a Tech-Driven World
January 28, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 33.2 MBIn a little over two decades, the Internet has gone from a singular invention to an indispensable part of human life. Its rules — requisite anonymity, the free posting of information, and the power of the hive mind — have rapidly become norms that are rarely questioned. But much of the web’s standard design, functions, and assumptions rely on decades-old programming decisions that may not make the most sense for users today. Why is the Internet the way it is, and should we change it? Jaron La...
A Celebration of Gourmet Magazine
January 19, 2010 23:00 - 1 hour - 35.7 MBAfter 70 years of setting the standard for epicurean living, Gourmet magazine ceased publication in October at the order of its parent, Conde Nast. The magazine cultivated its exalted reputation by a devotion to lush photography, lengthy writing by famed authors, and finely crafted and often complex recipes. The commitment to such quality, and the name of the magazine itself, made it an aspirational and indulgent read for generations of gourmands who understood that food—eating it, cooking it...
How Do We Care for Our Aging Parents?
December 08, 2009 23:00 - 1 hour - 37 MBKeeping our elderly parents healthy, particularly when they have a chronic illness or disability, can be a demanding full-time job. Though 70 percent of all elderly are cared for by family and friends, assisted living and nursing homes fill the gap in care in cases too challenging for even the most devoted families. Long-term care can require close medical attention multiple times a day, combined with assistance performing the basic tasks of daily life, like dressing and bathing, and providin...
What Makes an L.A. Writer?
December 04, 2009 22:59 - 45 minutes - 21.5 MBIt’s easy enough to characterize a Southern writer, whether by origin or style, by a character’s audible twang or a novel’s focus on regional history. There is even, perhaps, a certain voice that is distinctly New York or Midwestern. But what makes a Los Angeles writer — birthplace, genre, theme? As part of the Guadalajara International Book Fair, Zócalo invited a panel of writers — Laurie Ochoa, Yxta Maya Murray, DJ Waldie, Gary Phillips, and Jonathan Gold — to explore the city, its writers,...
How Mexican Americans See Mexico
December 02, 2009 22:59 - 1 hour - 28.2 MBOf all the many immigrant communities that have come to the U.S., Mexicans may have the most unusual experience.
Is the Census Controversial?
November 23, 2009 23:00 - 58 minutes - 27 MBThe Census Bureau is fundamental to American democracy — its ten-year counts determine representation in Congress and in the Electoral College, and influence federal and state funding for health, education, transportation, and more. Americans of all political leanings have strong preferences for whom and what they want counted, and obstacles often prevent the Census from making full counts, particularly of minority groups. Some, recalling the Census' history of providing information on variou...
James Morone: Why is the Healthcare Debate So Nasty?
November 20, 2009 23:00 - 1 hour - 34.1 MBEvery president since Harry Truman has struggled with universal healthcare; the last major victory toward it came over 40 years ago, when Lyndon Johnson created Medicare and Medicaid. Since then, presidents’ efforts either made small advances or suffered overwhelming defeat, as Bill Clinton did. This year, as healthcare reform returns as a number-one issue, James A. Morone, co-author of “The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office,” visited Zócalo to explain universal healthcar...
Luis Alberto Urrea, “Humanity vs. Legality”
November 06, 2009 23:00 - 26 minutes - 12.3 MBLuis Alberto Urrea’s fiction and nonfiction works chronicle the Mexican immigrant experience. Urrea, who now teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago, visited Zócalo to explore the experience of moving from south of the border to the Midwest, and the people he meets there.
Is Assimilation Still A Bad Word?
November 06, 2009 23:00 - 1 hour - 40.7 MBZócalo’s panel — including Stanford’s Tomás Jiménez, USC’s Dowell Myers, Peggy Levitt of Wellesley College, and Richard Alba of the State University of New York — explored to what extent immigrants are expected to abandon, or adapt, their native cultures and languages, and what it means to be American.
From Surviving to Belonging
November 06, 2009 23:00 - 1 hour - 38 MBZócalo invited a panel — including Tamar Jacoby of ImmigrationWorks USA, Gary Gerstle of the University of Maryland, Associate Director of the National Alliance of Latin American & Caribbean Communities Jose Luis Gutierrez, and Duke University's Noah Pickus — to discuss how immigrants come to feel at home in the U.S., and what the native born can do to help.
How Will Climate Change Transform L.A.?
October 29, 2009 23:00 - 1 hour - 32.2 MBThe landscape that defines Los Angeles also threatens it. For decades, the mountains and hills that encircle the city have trapped pollution in its basins and valleys, leaving low-hanging brown clouds. Teeming with cars, home to the nation’s largest port complex and the world’s seventh largest airport, and trailing behind other cities in annual rainfall, Los Angeles has always been uniquely vulnerable to pollution, and uniquely poised to fight it. Fifty years ago, Angelenos rallied against ai...
Taylor Branch, “The Clinton Tapes”
October 22, 2009 23:00 - 1 hour - 31.5 MBBetween 1993 and 2001, President Bill Clinton joined his friend of over 30 years Taylor Branch for a series of confidential interviews. Keeping much of his staff in the dark, Clinton recorded 78 sessions, each totaling 90 minutes and taking place at night, in the quiet of the White House Treaty Room. The White House diary project, transcribed, ran several thousand pages and became the basis for The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President. Branch’s work is filled with intimate obse...
Is This the End of the Doctor’s Office?
October 21, 2009 23:00 - 1 hour - 33.5 MBMedical care and convenience don’t usually go together. But the retail clinic aims to change that by doing away with long waits at the doctors’ office and complicated insurance requirements and forms, all while bringing better care to the uninsured and underserved. But critics argue that retail clinics need better regulation and a stronger presence in low-income neighborhoods, and still others suggest that they could be detrimental in instances where patients need more serious attention Zócal...
An Evening with James Ellroy
October 19, 2009 22:59 - 55 minutes - 26.4 MBJames Ellroy, the author of the bestselling L.A. Quartet novels — The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, and White Jazz — has just concluded another high-selling set of novels: the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy. Like the prior two volumes, American Tabloid and The Cold Six-Thousand, Ellroy's latest, Blood's A Rover, captures the explosive 1960s, placing Ellroy's strange characters — a Klan-raised, Yale-educated FBI agent, an ex-cop and heroin runner, and a wheelman for divorce lawyer...
What Do Latinos Mean for Civil Rights?
October 16, 2009 23:00 - 54 minutes - 25 MBBefore the massive demographic shift prompted by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was a black and white city with an African-American majority city council. Across the country, with Latino immigrants increasing in numbers and making up a key swing population, Zócalo’s panel — including University of New Orleans professor Andre Perry, Syracuse’s Jamie Winders, Stanford’s Laura López-Sanders, and urban and population geographer Anita Drever— considers whether the nation’s newest residents upset t...