Zócalo Public Square

Mickey Edwards, a former Oklahoma Republican congressman and author of The Parties Versus the People: How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans, visited Zócalo to talk about how America's two political parties are hurting the nation--and what can be done to fix our ailing system.

Can the next U.S. president make public universities more affordable - and can the federal government do anything to support crucial research that takes place in these institutions? Yes, said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, and Carnegie Corporation President Vartan Gregorian, in a panel co-presented by UCLA at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that was moderated by David Leonhardt, Washington Bureau Chief of The New York Times.

How much are elections costing America? Zócalo's Joe Mathews talked with political scientist Samuel L. Popkin and campaign finance expert Richard L. Hasen about America's election dysfunction--and election reform--campaign finance, fundraising, and how candidates talk about money.

Studies show that happier, more optimistic people live longer, perform better in work and school, and lead healthier lives than their unhappy, pessimistic counterparts. But what can we do in our everyday lives to make ourselves both happier and healthier? "The Happiness Psychiatrist" Sheenie Ambardar and life coach Cynthia Loy Darst talked with Southern California Public Radio healthcare reporter Stephanie O’Neill about why it’s good to be happy, and how happiness can be achieved.

Will downtown L.A. ever work? It’s already working, said a four-person panel of architects, planners, and designers who’ve been closely involved with downtown over the past decade. At an event in L.A.'s Grand Park, landscape architect Tony Paradowski, urban designer Melani Smith, SCI-Arc's Hernan Diaz Alonso, and architect Alice Kimm spoke with moderator Christopher Hawthorne, the Los Angeles Times architecture critic, about why they feel downtown has at last arrived and what the future might hold.

Time magazine's Michael Grunwald, author of The New New Deal, explains why, contrary to popular opinion, President Obama's 2009 stimulus has been a tremendous force for change in America. It created millions of jobs and lifted the nation's economy out of a free fall. But it is also transforming healthcare, energy, education, and the country's infrastructure.

According to UCLA legal scholar Kal Raustiala, coauthor of The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation, copycats and imitators—legal and illegal—not only fail to hurt creative industries but sometimes help drive them. In a talk at the Goethe Institut Los Angeles, Raustiala explains why a lot of what we think we know about intellectual property is wrong, and how certain industries—like fashion and food—still manage to thrive despite a lack of copyright protection.

Novelist Lisa Zeidner, memoirist Jeanne Darst, critic Heather Havrilesky, and Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum discussed how humor differs between the sexes in its creation and reception. They agreed that the debate about whether women are as funny as men are is tired, but there are still a number of obstacles that face women who are creating comedy.

The directors of three Los Angeles art museums--Ann Philbin of the Hammer, Michael Govan of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Timothy Potts, the new director of the Getty--discussed with Los Angeles Times arts reporter Jori Finkel the state of the city's museums and their hopes for the future. It's an exciting time for the L.A. art world, but although the museums have a great deal of potential they also face obstacles in cultivating a larger donor base, bringing in diverse audiences, and satisfying their many different constituencies.

We’ve all heard the dismal facts about the American healthcare system: high spending, low-quality treatment, poor delivery, and spotty access. But biomedical innovator, businessman, and physician Patrick Soon-Shiong—who is also the richest man in Los Angeles and a Lakers part-owner—says the problems aren’t intractable. Far from it. Instead, we’re on the cusp of a more personalized, more accurate, and less error-prone era in American medicine. He talked with Arizona State University President Michael Crow about what the future of molecular and wireless medicine holds for us all.