PODCAST · news
Zócalo Public Square
by 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
-
How Can Short Docs Make a Big Difference?
Documentary film can bear witness, challenge assumptions, and give voice to communities too often unheard. Where Hollywood and fictional films often rely on stereotypes and reductive plotlines, documentaries can close the representation gap. When the right teams make, distribute, and platform...
-
What Is the New World Order?
The United States has had an epic run on the world stage. Two hundred fifty years of independence and imperial aspirations. Eighty years of hosting the U.N. headquarters. But today the country has abdicated many of its leadership roles, from champion of free trade, global health, and climate...
-
Can We Squash Food Deserts?
There are 150 food deserts in Los Angeles County, areas where affordable, nutritious food is out of reach. Some frontline efforts to combat the issue have transformed unused spaces like front lawns, schools, and alleyways into sustainable microfarms. There, neighbors are growing their own grains,...
-
How Will California Educate Its Future Workforce?
With the largest population of public school students in the country, and an even larger workforce, California has a lot riding on educating its future workers. Pressed by economic and technological shifts and facing enrollment declines, how will the state think outside the box—employing...
-
Can The Energy Crisis Finally Unite Us?
Climate debates are going nowhere. Highly ideological, they end in gridlock more often than solutions. And younger generations, long worried about living on a warming planet, are moving from anxiety to frustration, feeling like they’re left with all the problems but no decision-making power. The...
-
The 2026 Zócalo Book Prize: America, Can We Take Down the Walls Between Us?
The 2026 Zócalo Book and Poetry Prizes are co-presented with The Jar, and generously sponsored by Tim Disney. Americans love building walls, and not just on our international borders. Our houses are bigger and more fortress-like than ever before. We drive cars and trucks designed like mobile…
more -
How Does The Central Valley Harness Its Power?
As an economic powerhouse, California charges forward. The benefits, though, are distributed and felt unequally, especially in places like the Central Valley. Here, thousands of farmworkers feed the nation while facing food insecurity themselves, rural communities struggle to access adequate…
more -
How Do We Dance With Legacy?
Amid great technological, political, and cultural shifts, who choreographs the great dance of America? Which tales have we inherited, which will we pass down, and what will future generations do with them? And, as this series aims to answer: What can become of us? A panel moderated by IAJS…
more -
How Do Museums Resist Censorship?
Museums tell America’s story. Exhibit by exhibit, they acquire, study, preserve, and interpret art and artifacts for the public, offering proof to bolster thoughtful interpretations of our national truths. But they haven’t always done so freely. What can museums do when the state imposes...
-
How Will AI Reshape Our Elections?
With the national midterm elections alongside high-profile contests such as the Los Angeles mayoral and California gubernatorial races, voters, election officials, and policymakers alike are being forced to confront AI’s growing role in democratic life. Can AI be responsibly integrated into...
-
Where Does Deportation Come From?
Deportation has impacted communities across California and the country, and has become the face of U.S. immigration policy today. At the culmination of a year marked by violent ICE raids, it’s crucial to understand how we got to this point, and what may lie ahead. Part origin story, part…
more -
Is Hip-Hop America's Biggest Success Story?
Is hip-hop the driving force behind Black business and economic mobility? What can we glean from its innovative strategies and enterprising spirit? And how do the creative economies hip-hop has brokered affect California’s racially diverse and rapidly changing communities? Tara DeVeaux is a brand...
-
What Is the Language of Taste?
A panel featuring Stanford IAJS faculty co-director Brian Lowery, James Beard Award-winning cookbook author and Jewish cuisine expert Joan Nathan, community organizer and immigration activist Power Malu, and food studies scholar Krishnendu Ray explores how what we eat, and where it’s from, shape...
-
Will California's Future Be Exceptional?
Zócalo Public Square presents two back-to-back panels moderated by Zócalo’s California columnist Joe Mathews to ask: How exceptional do we want California to be? The first panel features expert voices in fields shaping California’s identity: business advocate and public affairs specialist Brooke...
-
Can Music Change Minds?
It used to be that Spanish-language artists had to perform in English to succeed in the U.S. Today, they can sing in their native tongue and top the charts. But with increased visibility, does increased industry equity follow for Spanish-language artists? In an era of division over…
more -
How Is Migration Woven Into America?
This program is inspired by "So, I told her I was half-Indian" (2025) by Chicanx and Punjabi American weaver Kira Dominguez Hultgren. The piece, multiple looms woven together as a suspended sculpture, is commissioned by IAJS and will be on view at Zhou B Art Center from August 12 to September 12,...
-
Can Hip-Hop Be the Soundtrack for Change?
Medusa, the “Godmother of West Coast Hip-Hop,” and reparations advocate and business manager to the stars Khansa T. Jones-Muhammad aka Friday Jones, discuss the role of women in hip-hop. Hip-hop is a conversation across communities. But power and privilege exert control inside this industry as…
more -
2025 Zócalo Book Prize: Can We Reimagine How We Feed Ourselves?
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...
-
How Do We See Ourselves In Each Other?
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...
-
2023 Zócalo Book Prize: How Does a Community Save Itself? With Michelle Wilde Anderson
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...
-
What Alliances Do We Need In Perilous Times?
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...
-
How Can Our World Rethink Climate Mobility?
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...
-
Is Sport the Final Frontier for Queer Acceptance?
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?…
more -
What Is A Good Job Now? In Child Care
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...
-
Will The Real Young Voters Please Stand Up?
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,...
-
¿México y Estados Unidos se están convirtiendo en un solo país?
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.…
more -
When Does Protest Make A Difference?
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...
-
What Is A Good Job Now? In Agriculture
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…
more -
How Does The Inland Empire Strike Back Against Hate?
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...
-
The Zócalo Book Prize: What Is A "Latino"? With Héctor Tobar
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...
-
What Makes A Great California Idea?
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...
-
Is Car Culture The Ultimate Act Of Community In Crenshaw?
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…
more -
How Do You Grow A Rose From Concrete?
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…
more -
Can A Football Stadium Be A Black History Museum?
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...
-
What Is A Good Job Now? In Gig Work
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...
-
Would Parliamentary America Have More Fun?
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...
-
What Is A Good Job Now? For The Formerly Incarcerated
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...
-
Is AI The End Of Creativity—Or A New Beginning?
Artists across disciplines have harnessed generative AI as mind-extenders, expanding the possibilities of their work, and unleashing new ways to see the world. But as bots get more adept at human-like thought, writers, actors, and others protest in lawsuits and on picket lines, asking: What’s…
more -
How Should Arts Institutions Navigate The Culture Wars?
How are institutional leaders navigating the warring tides of politics and public opinion—tides that may steer them toward uncertain futures? Can organizations help artists, patrons, and the public find common ground, or productive ways to discuss their differences, in this moment of deep...
-
Must Artists Be Activists?
Can artists shield themselves from the demands of politics and polarized discourse or—in places and periods where activism puts their life and liberty at risk—from bodily danger? Does all their work, in a moment of crisis, have to address that crisis? And how can they know when that moment has...
-
How Does Confronting Our History Build A Better Future?
Environmental activist and hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (Xochimilco), L.A. LGBT Center communications officer and former editor-in-chief of Out magazine Phillip Picardi, and “On Being” founder, executive producer, and host Krista Tippett visit Zócalo to discuss how society might draw...
-
What Is A Good Job Now? For Fairness In the Workplace
The state of California has some of the nation’s strongest legal protections for workers. But Californians continue to suffer from various forms of abuse by their employers—from unpaid overtime to dangerous working conditions; from wage theft to racial, ethnic, gender discrimination. What are the...
-
What Is The State Of Surveillance?
Early this year, an uncrewed Chinese-operated high-altitude balloon floated across U.S. airspace, stoking anxiety and fascination among Americans, who assumed it was spying on them, and ultimately provoking President Biden to order the Pentagon to shoot it down. Just as alarming as foreign...
-
Do We Need More Food Fights?
We know cooking best as an act of nourishment, love, and tradition—but it can also cut as sharply as the knives that chop an onion. In Sinaloa, Mexico, a group of relatives of desaparecidos (the tens of thousands of people who have disappeared from the country), have banded together to fight back...
-
Why Isn't Remembering Enough To Repair?
Benjamin W. Rawlins Professor of Communication Andre E. Johnson, Monument Lab co-founder and artist Ken Lum, and reparations leader Robin Rue Simmons join Zócalo and the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to discuss what repair looks like, and how different people and...
-
What Is a Good Job Now? In Health Care
Public health professor Helda Pinzón-Perez, health care workforce researcher Janette Dill, and in-home supportive services provider Martha Valladarez visited Zócalo to discuss how to build a healthier health care workforce. This discussion was moderated by KVPR News Director Cresencio...
-
What Does Boxing Owe Its Champions?
Boxing is a sport of contradictions. Known as the “sweet science” because of the technical skills its fighters need to succeed, it is also incredibly brutal. Boxing has provided a creative outlet and a path out of poverty for generations of California strivers, forging cultural and individual...
-
What Kind of Monuments Do We Deserve?
Beyond debates over keeping statues up or tearing them down and changing the names of schools and streets lie more fundamental questions at the intersection of personal and public memory. We know how to honor and memorialize idealized heroes; we know less about remembering complicated, real…
more -
How Is Art A Weapon in War?
There is a long and global tradition of artists—visual, performing, and literary—creating arresting, even beautiful works that address the horrors of war. How is art used as a form of protest, to change minds as well as hearts? What happens to its meaning over time—as war persists, and as new...
-
What Is a Good Tourism Job Now?
Live from The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture at the Riverside Art Museum: One Fair Wage president Saru Jayaraman, hospitality expert Lesley Butler, and restaurant worker Ralph Prado IV visited Zócalo to discuss the future of tourism and hospitality work in the Inland Empire and...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
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.
HOSTED BY
Zócalo Public Square
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Zócalo Public Square have?
Zócalo Public Square currently has 500 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Zócalo Public Square about?
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.
How often does Zócalo Public Square release new episodes?
Zócalo Public Square publishes regularly with 500 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Zócalo Public Square?
You can listen to Zócalo Public Square on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Zócalo Public Square?
Zócalo Public Square is created and hosted by Zócalo Public Square.
URL copied to clipboard!