Connecting California, Featured »

How Data Is Making California’s Water Wars Worse

By | November 6, 2017

If you thought California’s famously bitter water wars were hard-fought, just wait until you see our water data wars.
Californians fight over water because we all need it and there is rarely enough to satisfy the full needs of many competing interests—farmers and fishermen, environmentalists and industry, state and local water agencies, and, of course, residents. In this way, California water history mirrors that of the …

Headline, What It Means to Be American »

When Variety Theaters Tantalized the Frontier West

By | November 6, 2017

In the spring of 1897, Spokane, Washington’s Spokesman-Review published an exposé of its city’s thriving red light district—known as Howard Street. The newspaper lingered on distasteful scenes in variety theaters with names like the Comique or the Coeur d’Alene: Places where a man could pick up a game of keno, watch a show, and—for the cost of a drink—enjoy the flirtations of “waiter girls” in …

Featured, Poetry »

You & me knew/ this would happen eventually #poem

By | November 3, 2017

We cross the Vincent Thomas bridge
in our Hyundai Santa Fe. We’re on our way
to my grandparents’ house
& then the market to get husks for the tamales.
Our car begins to shake
& the ground beneath seems to wiggle.
It is time for the bridge to collapse
after 83 years. Cars begin careening
off, some hang over the edge like they’re about
to go skydiving but not quite ready to jump. Some …

Essay, Headline »

The Role of War and Sacrifice in Russia’s Mythic Identity

By | November 3, 2017

If you want to understand Russia better, think of war. But not the one in eastern Ukraine or the frightening possibility of a conflict with NATO.
Go back instead to Russia’s 1945 victory over Nazi Germany. That triumph is the greatest event in Russia’s thousand-year history. In the largest war ever, Russia led the Soviet Union in crushing absolute evil and thereby saved the world …

Headline, What It Means to Be American »

How New Mexico’s “Peons” Became Enslaved to Debt

By | November 2, 2017

Imagine a time and place where a small debt—even just a few dollars—could translate into a lifetime of servitude not only for the debtor, but also for his or her children. For much of the 19th century, the American Southwest was just such a place. There, a system commonly called debt peonage relegated thousands of men, women, and children to years of bondage to a …

Featured, In the Green Room »

Zócalo Talks Treason, Chocolate, and L.A.’s New Vitality With KCRW’s Warren Olney

By | November 1, 2017

Warren Olney, the dean of Southern California journalists, is the host and executive producer of the nationally syndicated public radio program “To the Point” originating from KCRW in Santa Monica. Previously a prominent TV journalist, he also hosted “Which Way, LA?”, KCRW’s signature daily local news program, from 1992 until 2016. Before moderating a Zócalo/KCRW “Critical Thinking With Warren Olney’” event, titled “What Does Treason …

Essay, Headline »

How Don Quixote’s Battles Predicted Piracy in the Digital Age

By | November 1, 2017

Although Don Quixote wasn’t the first great novel (that honor belongs to the Tale of Genji, written by an 11th-century lady-in-waiting at the Japanese court), it was the first to do something important: capture a new world of print.
That world had begun when Johannes Gutenberg improved upon Chinese printing techniques and combined them with paper, itself an invention that had arrived from China via …

Essay, Headline »

How the Evolution of the Human Brain Led Us to God

By | October 31, 2017

The human brain is the most intriguing object in the universe, populated with 100 billion neurons connected by nerve fibers, which, if laid end to end, could circle the earth four times. British neurologist Macdonald Critchley spoke of “the divine banquet of the brain … a feast with dishes that remain elusive in their blending, and with sauces whose ingredients are even now a secret.” …

Connecting California, Featured »

California’s Fear of High-Rise Living Is Blocking Our View of the Future

By | October 30, 2017

Want to spook your neighbors this Halloween? Don’t bother with big displays of goblins, ghouls, or ghosts. Instead, just decorate your door with a picture of an eight-story apartment building.
Californians are famously fearless in most things. We devote ourselves to extreme outdoor sports, buy homes near earthquake faults, and launch startups and make TV pilots against all odds. But in the face of tall buildings, …

Headline, What It Means to Be American »

How Americans Can Stop Fighting the Civil War

By | October 30, 2017

It began as a loving effort to heal the South’s wounds, to properly mourn the young men who gave their lives for a lost cause, and to extract dignity from the humiliation of defeat.
Immediately after the Civil War ended, the white women of the South went to work. They tended graves, erected modest monuments, and followed former president Jefferson Davis’ plea to “keep …

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