Zócalo Public Square (Audio)

Private companies ranging from casinos and credit companies to the website of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page know much more about us than the NSA. What, if anything, can you do to control your personal information, and prevent people from using it against you? Harvard University Institute for Quantitative Social Science fellow Adam Tanner, author of What Stays in Vegas: The World of Personal Data--Lifeblood of Big Business--and the End of Privacy as We Know It, explains how our information came to be harvested and manipulated, whether we like it or not, and what can be done to protect ourselves.

We’ve reached a pivotal moment in our understanding of what life is. Biologist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter, one of the scientists responsible for bringing us to this point, talked with Arizona State University President Michael M. Crow about what this moment means--and the path that brought him here.

With one in 108 Americans--2.2 million of us--behind bars, the U.S. is home to the world's largest prison population. Why do the number of people in our prisons vastly outstrip those of other democracies, and who are we incarcerating? At an event co-presented by the California Endowment at the Endowment's L.A. headquarters, former California Department of Corrections director Jeanne Woodford, UC Irvine legal scholar Keramet Reiter, and Prophet Walker and Susan Burton--both of whom spent time in the prison system before going on to advocate for its reform--talk with Tim Golden, an editor at The Marshall Project, about why so many Californians and Americans are in prison, and what can be done to lower their numbers.

What would happen if we created and used science fiction to solve our most intractable problems? How can this genre of literature stoke the ambitions of scientists, engineers, and inventors? These were the questions posed to science fiction writer Neal Stephenson, Arizona State University physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, and i09 editor Annalee Newitz at an event at MOCA Grand Avenue in Los Angeles co-presented by the Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination. Stephenson, Krauss, and Newitz, all of whom contributed to the anthology Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, discuss whether science fiction can truly change contemporary science, and what the alternative futures we imagine mean for present-day innovation.

In an age when you can purchase a beach umbrella with solar panels to charge your smartphone, defining a public space—and differentiating it from the digital realm—is complicated. At a Zócalo/Getty “Open Art” event at the Getty Museum, presented in conjunction with an exhibition of the Belgian artist James Ensor, futurist Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, architect Mia Lehrer, and Stanford University professor Robert McGinn talked with San Francisco Chronicle architecture critic John King about whether such technology is killing public spaces and changing our relationships to the world around us and to one another.

Most of us have been buoyed by synergy or thrived off the energy of another person. We know that chemistry is something that exists between certain individuals—like, say, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. But we don’t know exactly what it is. Writer Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Powers of Two, talked with Jonathan Ames, creator of the TV show Bored to Death, about the mysterious act of collaboration, which Shenk believes is a recurring quality in just about every instance of great creative work.

Before Obamacare became part of the American lexicon, San Francisco implemented healthcare reform of its own. What can Healthy San Francisco, which launched in 2007 to subsidize medical care for the city’s uninsured, teach the rest of the country? At an event co-presented by The California Wellness Foundation, California HealthCare Foundation president Sandra Hernández, former Healthy San Francisco director Tangerine Brigham, and HR Ideas CEO Deisy Bach talked with San Francisco Business Times reporter Chris Rauber about how the city’s past can help us to better understand the country’s healthcare future.

Los Angeles is the second-most expensive housing market in the country, behind the Bay Area. What makes Southern California such an expensive place to live—and what, if anything, can be done to lower the cost of housing here? At the Petersen Automotive Museum, The Economist's Lauren Schuker Blum moderated a discussion featuring USC Lusk Center for Real Estate director Richard K. Green, East LA Community Corporation founder Maria Cabildo, and Curbed L.A. senior editor Adrian Glick Kudler.

A Conversation with Randy Newman

How do you engage a community in the arts--especially when resources, attention spans, and time are all limited? A panel of local musicians--MoBand director George Gardner, Modesto street corner singer Dellanora Green, and singer-guitarist Patty Castillo Davis--addressed this question and others from Modesto Bee editor Joseph Kieta at a "Living the Arts" event co-presented by the James Irvine Foundation in Modesto.