Zócalo Public Square (Audio)

Washington may resuscitate the credit market, but will U.S. politics ever be the same? Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and New York Times columnist, explores the impact of what he has called, "the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression" on politics, parties, and people. Will the drive for tighter regulation dissuade the Reagan faithful?

Why are poor countries poor? It's certainly not for lack of effort or interest. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in aid, most of Africa remains as desperate today as it was half a century ago. That's because much of that aid is lost to the grabbing hands of corrupt governments and destroyed through clashing warlords and civil strife. Edward Miguel, U.C. Berkeley economist and co-author of Economic Gangster: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations, explains how the twin evils of violence and corruption keep nations in poverty. He argues that before we can help poor nations, we must first understand the violent, lawless thugs who have wrought havoc throughout the developing world. And to understand these gangsters, he says, we must first get inside their heads.

Reihan Salam is a strange Republican. He doesn’t drive and he loves Los Angeles. But he has a cure for what ails the GOP: breaking out of its demographic box and applying progressive ideas to housing and healthcare. The associate editor of The Atlantic and co-author of Grand New Party: How Conservatives Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream explains himself.

Thanks to medical advances, we now live longer, but living longer doesn’t necessarily make death any easier when it comes. Forget the good life, what in this world makes a good death? How does culture affect our choices? Palliative care offers some relief to suffering, yet it is our uncertainty about the end of life that keeps our dread alive. Experts visit Zócalo to share first-hand accounts and clinical insight: Dr. Susan Stone, the Director of Palliative Care at the Los Angeles County Medical Center; Dr. Betty Ferrell of the City of Hope National Medical Center; and moderator Dr. Michael Wilkes, Vice Dean for Medical Education at UC Davis, join us for an evening of big questions that demand courage, compassion, and a dash of wit. (This event is made possible by a generous grant from the California HealthCare Foundation.)

Since the attacks of September 11th, the United States has tried to build new border defenses to keep out terrorists without stifling the flow of people and ideas from abroad, which have always contributed to our country’s dynamism. But have these new measures cut America off from the world and discouraged the globe’s best and the brightest from coming here? Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Edward Alden visited Zócalo to assess the real effects heightened national security measures have had on both Americans and the world at large. Author of The Closing of the American Border, a book James Fallows has called “outstanding and important,” Alden chronicled the tragic stories of many innocent immigrants who have been upended by post-9/11 restrictions, and the offered a more sensible middle road for preserving American security and American ideals.

Europe has received a wave of immigration from the global south in recent decades, similar in scope to the US—but very different in its results. Many immigrant and second-generation communities, particularly those hailing from the Muslim world, have astronomical unemployment rates and a thin connection to European identity. Some have produced riots and terrorism. If Europe has an Islam problem, whose fault is it? Is Islamic belief and culture incompatible with Western institutions? Or is there such a thing as “Islamophobia,” poisoning immigrants’ efforts to integrate on European terms? Christopher Caldwell, who writes for the Financial Times, The New York Times Magazine and The Weekly Standard, visits Zócalo to talk about themes from his upcoming book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.

We can be forgiven for thinking of Dashiell Hammett as a San Francisco writer. The Maltese Falcon takes place in Northern California, where Hammett somehow transformed himself from a tubercular detective for the Pinkerton Agency into a novelist for the ages. But Hammett’s roots in Los Angeles run deep. Here, in the 30s, he worked on several pictures while under contract to the studios. Here he began his lifelong affair with Lillian Hellman. And here he returned frequently over the years to visit his beloved daughters. Zócalo and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs brought together a panel of writers, family members, and scholars to culminate L.A.’s month-long celebration of this great California novelist. Among the mysteries discussed, if not solved: Why did Hammett fall creatively silent for the last three decades of his life? Why is there no movie version of ‘The Red Harvest’? How did he influence the L.A. Noir scene? And the ultimate, unanswerable question: Hammett or Chandler?

Within weeks of winning the presidential election, Barack Obama has begun to assemble his administration, starting with those charged with addressing the economic crisis and national security. But he still has several key appointments to go. Three former Clinton administratoin officials -- former Deputy Secretary of Defense Rudy deLeon, former Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste, and former Deputy Assistant to the President John Emerson -- join moderator Eric Garcetti at Zócalo to discuss the decisions Obama has made so far, what difficult choices await, and how his transition signals what sort of president he will be.

Media files

Before National Geographic, before the Discovery Channel, Carleton Watkins set the standard for sweeping panoramic photographs of the American West, from vast Yosemite to booming San Francisco. Bob Sipchen, editor of Sierra magazine, leads a panel discussion based on the groundbreaking Getty Center exhibition, "Dialogue among Giants: Carleton Watkins and the Rise of Photography in California." Panelists include Getty Research Fellow Ken Gonzales-Day, UCSD historian Nayan Shah, and Matthew Garcia from Brown University. They explore the dynamic relationship between nature, immigration, and development. How does California's physical environment attract inhabitants and how has it been re-shaped by their efforts to build communities they can call home?

The Statue of Liberty’s pedestal lays claim to "world-wide welcome," but U.S. immigration policy has, since its inception, been a muddle of conflicting attitudes towards immigrants and their place in American society. While our nation does not demand ethnic homogeneity, we are deeply divided over how newcomers should assimilate and offer little support to arrivals eager to become American. Tomás Jiménez, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, sits down with Alfonso Aguilar (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), José Luis Gutiérrez (Illinois Office for New Americans), Laureen Laglagaron (Migration Policy Institute), and Urban Planning Professor Dowell Myers (USC) to ask what government should do to bridge the gap between immigration and integration. Should we offer immigrants more help in adjusting to their new country? Or does the American dream need to be strictly self-service?