The Takeaway

What if you could learn to sing like Maria Callas, theorize like Stephen Hawking, and, at the same time, become fluent in Russian and French? What if you could accomplish all that in just three years? Impossible, right?
Not if Arizona State University President Michael Crow has his way. At a Zócalo event moderated by Sacramento Bee publisher Cheryl Dell, Crow and California Lt. Gov. Gavin …

What does genocide mean? What are its causes? And what kind of actions can be taken—in the U.S. and elsewhere—to stem this horrifying, ongoing global problem? Kal Raustiala, director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, opened a discussion about genocide, and how the world reacts to it, by posing these questions in front of a full house at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, at …

Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam grew up in the 1950s in Port Clinton, Ohio, a small town on Lake Erie. Central to his new book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, is his return to Port Clinton to meet with childhood friends, see how the community had changed, and reflect on how it shaped him. In front of a full-house crowd at the …

At around age 12, I quit reading sports journalism and stopped tracking the daily movements of the Phoenix Suns and Denver Broncos. It felt like a switch inside me had flipped, and I suddenly knew there was a larger world out there, one that didn’t leave me with the time or headspace to follow sports anymore.
Over the past few years, I’ve gradually come to …

I want to argue that Americans are risk-takers, Jack Hitt, author of Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character, told the crowd at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. But some days, “I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and I think we’ve become a nation of worry-warts” who dress our kids in kneepads and helmets. Hitt was moderating …

What inspires artists as they grow older? Do they approach their work in new ways? Do they see the world differently? Painter Charles Garabedian, muralist Judithe Hernández, and musicologist Karen Painter tackled these questions at an “Open Art” event co-presented by the Getty. It was inspired by the Getty exhibition “J. M. W. Turner: Painting Set Free,” which features works from the final years of …

Who or what creates and builds a city’s arts scene? How can a flourishing arts community advance to the next level? At a “Living the Arts” event co-presented by the James Irvine Foundation at the Riverside Art Museum, Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival director Bill Fold, UC Riverside historian Catherine Gudis, and Downtown Riverside Arts Walk co-founder Cosme Cordova tackled these questions.
Kevin Vincent, KVCR …

American society is obsessed with change and the future—yet our institutions of higher education love to advertise how long they’ve been around. Why? Kevin Carey, author of The End of College and education policy director at the New America Foundation, told a crowd at the ASU Art Museum that it’s because universities want to signal to us that they’ve always been here—and will always be …

Don’t sell your car just yet—but be prepared to get to where you’re going in a lot of different ways. This was the conclusion of a discussion about car culture co-presented by Metro in front of a large crowd at MOCA Grand Avenue.
Automobile Magazine editor-in-chief Mike Floyd, the evening’s moderator, offered a preview of what was to come by explaining how each panelist had gotten …

Where did the Cuban Revolution succeed, and where did it fail? How will Cuba change as the country enters a new era of rapprochement with the United States? What is Cuba today—and what will it look like in 10 years? Will an open Cuba model itself after Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia, or China and Vietnam? Associated Press Latin American and Caribbean editor Marjorie …