Zócalo Public Square

What Would Immigration Reform Mean for Miami?

Live Mayoral Debate Moderated by KCRW’s Warren Olney

Can Americans Learn to Reconcile Politics and Reason?

What Would Immigration Reform Mean for Los Angeles?

How Do Wars Affect Families?

How Are Veterans Changing America?

The Honorable Tulsi Gabbard, Representative from Hawaii

How Are The Wars Changing Medicine?

Is Our Marriage With Mexico Working?

Would Better Leaders Fix Our Problems?

Do Architects Really Shape Cities?

How Do People Re-Invent Spaces?

Who Designs Tomorrow’s Los Angeles?

Should Power Be More Concentrated?

Former Intel CEO and president Craig R. Barrett and Arizona State University president Michael M. Crow discussed what comes after the computer chip, the past 50 years of technological change, and what the United States needs to do to stay at the cutting edge of technology innovation.

Stanford University economist Anat Admati, author of The Bankers' New Clothes, argues that the roots of the 2008 financial crisis lie in the excessive debt the banking industry takes on. But the reforms that have been put in place over the past few years are woefully inadequate. If we can regulate the amount of money banks borrow, we might be able to prevent the next crisis.

How Will L.A. Face Its Post-Immigrant Future?

Television and the Internet are pushing entertainment and journalism closer together than ever. Should journalists fight the trend of news as entertainment, or can responsible reporters find ways to embrace it? New York Times Hollywood correspondent Michael Cieply, former CNN anchor Aaron Brown, TMZ co-executive producer Charles Latibeaudiere, and Zócalo California editor Joe Mathews discussed how best to strike the balance between political journalism and entertainment.

How much does math matter? In a New York Times op-ed last summer, political scientist Andrew Hacker suggested that the answer is not very much. Algebra, contended Hacker, isn’t necessary for all high school students—and it’s a barrier to graduation for some. But Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews, The Calculus Diaries author Jennifer Ouellette, Southern California math teacher Sarah Armstrong, and workforce expert Caz Pereira expressed a very different point of view.

As much as social scientists have learned about what drives people’s decision-making, we still haven’t found a silver bullet for changing people’s behavior. Yet at a panel co-presented by UCLA at MOCA Grand Avenue and moderated by The Atlantic contributing editor David H. Freedman, L.A. County Director of Public Health Jonathan Fielding, University of Minnesota social psychologist Traci Mann, and UCLA health economist Frederick J. Zimmerman agreed that it is possible to get people to make better health choices—if you give them time, and you engage them on several fronts.