Zócalo Public Square
Zócalo Public Square’s podcast connects people to ideas and to each other through an innovative blend of ideas journalism and live events. Listen to conversations on topics ranging from politics and science to art and pop culture.
Episodes
May 30, 2025 • 61 mins
Jean-Martin Bauer is the author of “The New Breadline: Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century” and the winner of the 2025 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize. He’ll visit Zócalo to explore the role hunger plays in our world today, and what it takes to help people come together and feed one another. This discussion is moderated by Ertharin Cousin, Food Systems for the Future CEO.
Zócalo Public Square is proud to award the 2025 Zó...
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May 9, 2025 • 89 mins
This program is inspired by "Coatlicue & Las Meninas: The Stanford Edition" (2007/2025) by Mexican American artist Pedro Lasch, commissioned by IAJS and on view at Asheville Art Museum from April 16 to July 13, 2025.
Asheville Art Museum associate curator Jessica Orzulak and artist Pedro Lasch discuss the work’s larger themes, including how mirrors encourage viewers to reflect on the movement of people, ideas, and objects across ...
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April 28, 2025 • 64 mins
America’s high-poverty cities and counties have suffered for decades, enduring skyrocketing inequality, the opioid epidemic, rising housing costs, and widespread disinvestment. Governments have offered a variety of failed solutions, from luring wealthy outsiders to slashing public services. But four communities are turning inward instead: Stockton, California; rural Josephine County, Oregon; Lawrence, Massachusetts; and Detroit, Mi...
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March 13, 2025 • 102 mins
Live from the Arizona State University California Center Broadway in Los Angeles, CA:
As coalitions, partnerships, and allegiances shift and emerge, Zócalo and an alliance of partners convene two back-to-back panels to discuss how we might best ally to survive this moment in history.
The first panel explores how alliances are rebuilding Los Angeles in the wake of January’s fires, and features Altadena business owner Nadeerah Faq...
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February 6, 2025 • 57 mins
Live from the Natural History Museum Commons Theater in Los Angeles, CA:
Artist Tanya Aguiñiga, paleobotanist and curator Regan Dunn, climate mobility scholar Liliana Gamboa, and New Nomad Institute co-founder Badruun Gardi discuss what it would take to build a more interconnected, resilient, and nomadic world on the international, community, and individual levels. Moderated by New York Times international correspondent Simon Rome...
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January 26, 2025 • 39 mins
Actors and athletes alike dress up and stage plays to entertain large audiences. Why is queerness so readily exhibited and accepted in the theater and still so taboo on the field? Can history show us how song and dance can break through the rigid heterosexuality ubiquitous in American sports? What if we made sport a place to play with gender and sexuality, and give voice to our authentic selves—to who we are as a people, community,...
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December 2, 2024 • 60 mins
Live from the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands, CA:
Child Care Law Center executive director Maisha Cole, child care worker and administrator Juanita Gutierrez, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo, and Child Development Consortium of Los Angeles executive director Lisa Wilkin visit Zócalo to discuss what a good job looks like in the field right now, and their vision for a more sustainable and nurturing ...
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October 23, 2024 • 55 mins
Live from the Arizona State University California Center Broadway in Los Angeles, CA: A panel of civically engaged Gen Zers and young millennials from across the political spectrum visit Zócalo to stand up and speak for themselves: progressive political digital media specialist Annie Wu Henry, youth civic engagement advocate Ava Mateo, and former Iowa State representative Joe Mitchell, moderated by Christian Paz, senior politics re...
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September 23, 2024 • 55 mins
This program is in Spanish. For a version with English audio interpretation, please visit: https://youtube.com/live/A9zQSsOYdhk
Zócalo Public Square y la Universidad de Guadalajara transmiten en vivo desde la feria de libro LéaLA en la LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes en el centro de Los Ángeles. Únete a una conversación moderada por Alfredo Corchado, editor ejecutivo del PUENTE News Collaborative, con Irasema Coronado, directora y pro...
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August 23, 2024 • 96 mins
Live from the Arizona State University California Center Broadway in Los Angeles, CA: Zócalo convenes two back-to-back panels moderated by KQED correspondent and co-host of “The California Report” Saul Gonzalez to discuss when and how protest makes a difference.
The first panel features scholars and thinkers who can offer larger context for the current moment: urban journalism professor Danielle K. Brown, constitutional law profe...
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August 23, 2024 • 68 mins
Live from Sherwood Elementary in Salinas, CA: Agriculture worker and student José Anzaldo, agricultural consultant James Nakahara, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas executive director & co-founder Mily Treviño-Sauceda, and retired farmworker attorney Juan Uranga visit Zócalo in “America’s salad bowl” to discuss what it would take to make life in California sustainable for the people whose work helps sustain us all. This is the sixth e...
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July 22, 2024 • 76 mins
The Inland Empire exemplifies an ongoing tension between hate and resistance, harboring grassroots movements that have banned lessons about race in public schools at the same time as it celebrates the opening of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture. This duality makes the region a perfect place to grapple with the history of hate in California, and understand past and present efforts to strike back and fight for justic...
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June 14, 2024 • 62 mins
Is “Latino” a race or an ethnicity? Is it European or American? Is it a source of strength or of subjugation? And does it bring people together—around shared histories of migration and resilience—or is it born from racial ideas about “the other,” borders, and national identity? Journalist and novelist Héctor Tobar is a professor of English and Chicano/Latino studies at UC Irvine, a native Angeleno, and the son of Guatemalan immigra...
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June 6, 2024 • 61 mins
Live from the CalMatters Ideas Festival in Sacramento, CA:
XPRIZE Foundation CEO Anousheh Ansari, Public Policy Institute of California president and CEO and retired Chief Justice of California Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, and Ian Klaus, founding director of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace California Center, visit Zócalo at the CalMatters Ideas Festival to discuss the state of new ideas in the Golden State. This discussion w...
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June 3, 2024 • 60 mins
Live from the ASU California Center Broadway in Los Angeles, CA: Artist and sculptor Charles Dickson and Destination Crenshaw founding lead historian Larry Earl visit Zócalo to discuss Dickson’s sculpture, “Car Culture,” which will be on permanent display in Sankofa Park, and how monumental public art projects and cruising scenes throughout Southern California can bring people together across zip codes. This discussion was moderate...
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May 10, 2024 • 55 mins
Live from the Crenshaw High School Performing Arts Center in Crenshaw, CA: Architect Gabrielle Bullock and Los Angeles City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson join Destination Crenshaw senior art advisor V. Joy Simmons on the Zócalo stage at Crenshaw High School to discuss Destination Crenshaw’s genesis and design.
This program was presented in partnership with Destination Crenshaw, with generous support from Akieva and Martin...
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March 29, 2024 • 78 mins
Live from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA: Artist and Bloom & Plume founder Maurice Harris, sports agent and former NFL player Jacques McClendon, and poet aja monet visit Zócalo and Kinsey Collection at SoFi Stadium to discuss what one of the world’s largest private collections of Black art and historical objects is doing at one of the world’s grandest football stadiums, why it matters, and where similar efforts are scoring big. This...
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March 14, 2024 • 67 mins
Live from the New Parkway Theater in Oakland, CA: Gig worker and advocate Sergio Avedian, Gigs founder and CEO Allen Narcisse, and the Workers Lab chief research officer Shelly Steward visit Zócalo to help us understand how we might make gig work good work. This is the fifth event in Zócalo's series “What Is a Good Job Now?,” co-presented with the James Irvine Foundation. This discussion is moderated by CalMatters reporter Levi Sum...
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February 26, 2024 • 62 mins
Maxwell L. Stearns, constitutional law professor and author of the new book Parliamentary America, visits Zócalo to outline a three-part plan to turn the United States into a multi-party parliamentary democracy that could make our politics less maddening, more collaborative—and perhaps even more fun. What are the legal, constitutional, and political steps needed to modernize American democracy and reignite civic zeal and joy? And h...
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January 25, 2024 • 69 mins
What are the best ideas and models for finding good jobs for the formerly incarcerated? How can we improve the low pay and challenging working conditions in those industries that are most likely to employ people who have been in the system? And what policies and economic changes would open more possible career paths and economic opportunities for this population?
Amity Foundation president and CEO Doug Bond, Root & Rebound executi...
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