Zócalo Public Square (Audio)

Mayim Bialik is at the very least a triple threat. She’s an actress who stars on CBS’s The Big Bang Theory; she’s a neuroscientist who received her Ph.D. from UCLA, where she wrote her dissertation on the genetic disorder Prader-Willi syndrome; and she’s the author of a book on parenting, Beyond the Sling: A Real-Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way. At an event co-presented by UCLA, Bialik talked with Huffington Post science correspondent Cara Santa Maria about how she weaves the many threads of her busy life together—and how they sometimes come into conflict.

The key division in American politics and economics right now isn’t between liberals and conservatives, says Michael Lind. It’s between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. What does this division mean now, what is its history, and how did America’s economy get into the current mess? Lind, a public intellectual, co-founder of the New America Foundation, and author of Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States, tries to answer these questions.

Like the Internet, knowledge today is inclusive and overwhelming, unsettled and messy, and linked, says David Weinberger, author of Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room. The demise of the Encyclopedia Britanica and the uncertain future of the newspaper and libraries demonstrates that the Internet is destroying knowledge as we have always known it. But according to Weinberger, we shouldn't fear these changes but rather embrace them.

UCLA cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and UCLA writing lecturer Kathryn Bowers, authors of Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Health and Science of Healing, talk with Los Angeles Times science writer Eryn Brown about what they think is medicine's next frontier: collaboration between human and animal doctors. Animal and human diseases across the spectrum--from eating disorders and psychiatric maladies to certain types of cardiac arrest and cancers--overlap. And by working together and sharing knowledge, doctors and veterinarians might be able to better treat patients of all species. Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers share many of their discoveries, from the possibility that jaguars share the BRCA1 gene mutation that's common in Jewish women, and increases susceptibility to breast cancer, to a chlamydia epidemic in koalas in Australia.

How do you make an American poet? California’s new poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, answered that question with laughter, singing, storytelling, and poetry as he recounted his life and work in a conversation with KPCC News Editor Oscar Garza. Herrera grew up all over California, and he spoke about how his itinerant childhood influenced his work. He also talked about why he believes Latino writers in the 21st century are able to write as writers--no prefix needed.

L.A. has the largest population of Iranians of any city outside Iran. If reform were to come to Iran, would life change for the hundreds of thousands of Iranian-Angelenos who call Southern California home? Writer and activist Amir Soltani, entrepreneur and philanthropist Sharon S. Nazarian, and acting director of Iranian Studies at UCLA M. Rahim Shayegan joined moderator Shiva Falsafi, UCLA lecturer in women's studies, to discuss what reform in Iran could mean for the city known as Tehrangeles.

U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine joined Sacramento Bee editorial page editor Stuart Leavenworth in Fresno to discuss whether social isolation is a threat to democracy. In a wide-ranging conversation they discussed poetry, Levine's youth in Detroit, the community he came to love in Fresno, and the future of American democracy.

LAPD Chief Charle Beck, Pepperdine University economist Angela Hawken, and UCLA political scientist Mark Peterson joined moderator Mark Kleiman, a UCLA public policy analyst, to discuss the legacy of the late political scientist and long-time Southern California resident James Q. Wilson. How did Wilson's broken windows theories change our cities? Where did his greatest influence lie? And what made him special?

Black Swan choreographer Benjamin Millepied--Natalie Portman's husband and a recently retired New York City Ballet principal dancer--talks with Amanda Fortini, a contributing writer to The New Yorker, about why he loves L.A., his plans for his new L.A. Dance Project, and the making of Black Swan. Millepied plans to take advantage of the city's vibrant arts culture to collaborate with many different kinds of artists, and to incorporate his own background--his classical ballet training as well as the African and modern dance he performed in his youth--into the company's work.

Actor Adrian Grenier sees the paparazzi as storytellers. Us Weekly editor Carolyn Davis publishes their photos to entertain. And celebrity photographer Galo Ramirez is just trying to make a living. But why do the rest of us crave photographs of Brad and Angelina’s wedding, or Jennifer Aniston’s baby bump—the two hottest “dream shots” of the moment—and what makes a great paparazzi photo? Grenier, Davis, and Ramirez joined the Los Angeles Times' Carla Hall and curator Carolyn Squiers to discuss the art and allure of the work of the paparazzi at the Getty Museum.