Zócalo Public Square

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.

Even a century after Richard Nixon’s birth, his life and political career are still almost always considered in light of his demons and dark side. But former New Yorker editor Jeffrey Frank, author of Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage, chose to dissect Nixon in an entirely different context—that of his relationship to his boss and eventual in-law, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, for whom Nixon was a two-term vice president. In a conversation with former Nixon Presidential Library director Tim Naftali, he explained how this relationship may have influenced the rest of Nixon's life and career.

Rebuilding After a Bubblicious Bust

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.

Should we just adapt to climate change? The question raises the hackles of environmentalists and global warming deniers alike—yet it’s one we should be asking sooner rather than later. That was the consensus of New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin, UCLA climate scientist Alex Hall, and UCLA environmental historian Jon Christensen during a panel discussion at The Actors’ Gang, an event put on in partnership with the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and with Environmental Humanities at UCLA.

Hot, Sometimes Bothered

In three decades of covering the Supreme Court for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse wrote about 2,700 cases. Greenhouse—now the Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence at Yale Law School—spoke with fellow legal journalist turned scholar Henry Weinstein, a professor of law and literary journalism at UC Irvine, about some of the court’s landmark cases throughout history and its role in American life today.

Was Human Life Inevitable?

Citizen Who

The Past and Future of L.A.'s Global Image

Does Bakersfield Need More Doctors?

Since the January 2010 earthquake, Hollywood celebrities, like so many Americans, have given their money and loaned their faces and voices to Haiti. But are they helping the country? In conjunction with the Fowler Museum at UCLA exhibition “In Extremis: Death and Life in 21st-Century Haiti,” this question was posed by journalist Amy Wilentz to a panel of people who have worked in Haiti and philanthropy: Generosity Water CEO Jordan Wagner, UCSB black studies scholar Claudine Michel, and Giving Back Fund president Marc Pollick.

Name That Tune: Da-Da-Da-DUM

Why Is Cancer Killing More African-Americans?

Will Gaming Change the Way We Learn?

It’s an exciting time to be studying, thinking, and dreaming about space, with the NASA Curiosity rover’s exploration of Mars and the rise of private companies like SpaceX. But as we tighten our belts here on Earth, there have also been questions about whether space exploration is worth an annual investment of billions of dollars. At an event sponsored by the Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation at the Petersen Automotive Museum, NASA Mars Curiosity rover flight director Bobak Ferdowsi, Planetary Society co-founder Louis Friedman, and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne vice president John Vilja talked about what we lose if we don’t go to space - and what we gain by going there.

In California, the end-of-life care you receive may have more to do with where you live than what you want. Shannon Brownlee, acting director of the New America Foundation Health Policy Program, discusses what’s behind this variation, and what can be done to make sure all patients get the care they want and need - rather than the care dictated by where they live.