Zócalo Public Square

Can the arts make a city vibrant both economically and culturally? Artists and arts administrators in Visalia, California, think so. At a "Living the Arts" event co-presented by the James Irvine Foundation in front of a full house at Arts Visalia, Arts Consortium director Caroline Koontz, Visalia Opera founder Rosalinda Verde, and artist and College of the Sequoias professor Richard Peterson talked with Visalia Times-Delta senior lifestyle editor James Ward about their community’s thriving performing and visual arts scene and the support they’ve received from local government, businesses, schools, and individuals to make it possible.

This year, GQ called downtown Los Angeles "America’s next great city" and "the cool capital of America"” and The New York Times included downtown on its list of "52 Places to Go in 2014"” Does downtown actually live up to this (admittedly East Coast) hype - and will downtown’s revival is shifting power and influence away from L.A.’s wealthy Westside? Architect Thom Mayne, restaurateur Bill Chait, Los Angeles Times arts & entertainment editor Laurie Ochoa, and UCLA urban planner Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris talk with New York Times national correspondent Jennifer Medina discussed at a Zócalo/UCLA "Thinking L.A”" event at MOCA Grand Avenue.

According to surveys, some 70 percent of Californians under the age of 40 expect they’ll never retire - and that makes sense, since few are saving money for retirement. Why is it so hard to convince young Californians to do essential long-term planning? Can the state’s existing programs be expanded to convince - or coerce - more people to save? City of Los Angeles financial empowerment initiative director Olivia Calderon, SagePoint financial advisor Alexander Cruz, personal finance columnist Liz Weston, and AARP director of financial security and consumer affairs Gerri Madrid-Davis visit Zócalo to ask how young Californians might be saved from elderly poverty - and themselves.

The L.A. Times has said that we’re living in a golden age of public transportation in Los Angeles. But try telling that to the people stuck on the 10 and 405 freeways at rush hour. Are new train and bus lines decreasing the number of cars on Southern California’s roads? Will technology speed up L.A. traffic? And how will Measure R investments in transit - funded by a sales tax increase - change how we get around? Metro Los Angeles CEO Art Leahy, UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies director Brian D. Taylor, and Fixing Angelenos Stuck in Traffic Executive director Hilary Norton answered these questions for KCRW traffic reporter Kajon Cermak addressed these questions at an event co-presented by Metro at the Petersen Automotive Museum.

Private companies ranging from casinos and credit companies to the website of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page know much more about us than the NSA. What, if anything, can you do to control your personal information, and prevent people from using it against you? Harvard University Institute for Quantitative Social Science fellow Adam Tanner, author of What Stays in Vegas: The World of Personal Data--Lifeblood of Big Business--and the End of Privacy as We Know It, explains how our information came to be harvested and manipulated, whether we like it or not, and what can be done to protect ourselves.

We’ve reached a pivotal moment in our understanding of what life is. Biologist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter, one of the scientists responsible for bringing us to this point, talked with Arizona State University President Michael M. Crow about what this moment means--and the path that brought him here.

With one in 108 Americans--2.2 million of us--behind bars, the U.S. is home to the world's largest prison population. Why do the number of people in our prisons vastly outstrip those of other democracies, and who are we incarcerating? At an event co-presented by the California Endowment at the Endowment's L.A. headquarters, former California Department of Corrections director Jeanne Woodford, UC Irvine legal scholar Keramet Reiter, and Prophet Walker and Susan Burton--both of whom spent time in the prison system before going on to advocate for its reform--talk with Tim Golden, an editor at The Marshall Project, about why so many Californians and Americans are in prison, and what can be done to lower their numbers.

What would happen if we created and used science fiction to solve our most intractable problems? How can this genre of literature stoke the ambitions of scientists, engineers, and inventors? These were the questions posed to science fiction writer Neal Stephenson, Arizona State University physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, and i09 editor Annalee Newitz at an event at MOCA Grand Avenue in Los Angeles co-presented by the Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination. Stephenson, Krauss, and Newitz, all of whom contributed to the anthology Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, discuss whether science fiction can truly change contemporary science, and what the alternative futures we imagine mean for present-day innovation.

In an age when you can purchase a beach umbrella with solar panels to charge your smartphone, defining a public space—and differentiating it from the digital realm—is complicated. At a Zócalo/Getty “Open Art” event at the Getty Museum, presented in conjunction with an exhibition of the Belgian artist James Ensor, futurist Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, architect Mia Lehrer, and Stanford University professor Robert McGinn talked with San Francisco Chronicle architecture critic John King about whether such technology is killing public spaces and changing our relationships to the world around us and to one another.

Most of us have been buoyed by synergy or thrived off the energy of another person. We know that chemistry is something that exists between certain individuals—like, say, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. But we don’t know exactly what it is. Writer Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Powers of Two, talked with Jonathan Ames, creator of the TV show Bored to Death, about the mysterious act of collaboration, which Shenk believes is a recurring quality in just about every instance of great creative work.

Before Obamacare became part of the American lexicon, San Francisco implemented healthcare reform of its own. What can Healthy San Francisco, which launched in 2007 to subsidize medical care for the city’s uninsured, teach the rest of the country? At an event co-presented by The California Wellness Foundation, California HealthCare Foundation president Sandra Hernández, former Healthy San Francisco director Tangerine Brigham, and HR Ideas CEO Deisy Bach talked with San Francisco Business Times reporter Chris Rauber about how the city’s past can help us to better understand the country’s healthcare future.

Los Angeles is the second-most expensive housing market in the country, behind the Bay Area. What makes Southern California such an expensive place to live—and what, if anything, can be done to lower the cost of housing here? At the Petersen Automotive Museum, The Economist's Lauren Schuker Blum moderated a discussion featuring USC Lusk Center for Real Estate director Richard K. Green, East LA Community Corporation founder Maria Cabildo, and Curbed L.A. senior editor Adrian Glick Kudler.

A Conversation with Randy Newman

How do you engage a community in the arts--especially when resources, attention spans, and time are all limited? A panel of local musicians--MoBand director George Gardner, Modesto street corner singer Dellanora Green, and singer-guitarist Patty Castillo Davis--addressed this question and others from Modesto Bee editor Joseph Kieta at a "Living the Arts" event co-presented by the James Irvine Foundation in Modesto.

At a "Thinking L.A" event co-presented by UCLA and moderated by KCRW's Saul Gonzalez, Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Newton, political organizer and activist Torie Osborn, and UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Dean Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr. disagreed on what Mayor Garcetti’s first year in office tells us about what’s next for L.A., and on whether Garcetti is truly a rock star or a bureaucrat.

The man behind the Kogi Korean BBQ phenomenon, Roy Choi, hosted a screening of the movie Chef along with KCRW and Zócalo for a massive crowd at the Million Dollar Theatre. Choi introduced the film, on which he served as a co-producer and technical consultant. Then, after the screening, Choi sat down to to talk with KCRW Good Food host Evan Kleiman--and were joined by a surprise guest, Chef writer, director, and star Jon Favreau. The three discussed the making of the movie, how Choi helped Favreau get the restaurant industry details right, and how the film changed Choi and Favreau's lives.

California's historic drought has forced local communities to find new water supplies. But where? Some coastal cities are looking to the ocean, contemplating desalination projects that once were dismissed as too energy-intensive and expensive. Meanwhile, some counties have looked to the toilet--turning sewage into drinking water in a process called toilet to tap. At an event co-presented by Occidental College, West Basin Municipal Water District public information and conservation manager Ron Wildermuth, Orange County Water District president Shawn Dewane, Water Wise president Sarah Woolf, and Cadiz Inc. president and CEO Scott Slater talked with Bob Sipchen about whether Southern Californians will be drinking ocean water or wastewater in the coming years.

At a panel co-presented by Arizona State University, ASU historian Michael Rubinoff, Slate political reporter Dave Weigel, and Arizona Republic columnist Robert Robb talked with 12 News Sunday Square Off host Brahm Resnik about Barry Goldwater's legacy in Arizona and America today. They tackled postwar libertarianism, Rand Paul, the Tea Party, Arizona history, and what Goldwater would think about contemporary issues like surveillance, drones, Obamacare, and illegal immigration.

Food fads are, in a sense, inevitable: Once we developed the economic means to select from a variety of foods, some tastes became more popular than others. But what determines which foods become trendy when? How do marketers, farmers, scientists, doctors, and even governments create food crazes? At L.A.'s Grand Central Market, journalist David Sax, author of The Tastemakers: Why We’re Crazy For Cupcakes But Fed Up With Fondue, explained why certain dishes take hold of our collective passion, why others lack staying power, and what impact trends like putting bacon on everything and the rise of the food truck have on our economy and our culture.

Washington Post staff writer Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, visited Zócalo to discuss why Americans haven't figured out how to lead balanced lives, and what we can do as individuals and a nation to get some relief from the chaos of modern life.