A Pill Bug Mutters Makeshift Myths
Tommy Vinh Bui Wins a 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize Honorable Mention Award
We lack the lexicon
to commune with rising rivers …
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For Political Journalists, Neutrality Isn’t the Goal
It’s Objectivity, and Being on the Side of the Truth in an Intellectually Dishonest Era
My ability to be neutral as a political journalist depends on the intellectual honesty of the people …
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In Midnight Interview, Dracula Sees Bright Future for Democracy
‘Democracy and Vampires Have a Lot in Common,’ Says 600-Year-Old Romanian Count
I emailed Dracula’s people because I was heading to Romania, for a global democracy forum that I help lead.
While I’m in Bucharest, I asked, could I take the train up to Transylvania and spend a day chopping it up with the Count? After all, he’s been around for 600 years and has seen many, many dark times for governance and democracy.
In reply, I got a cryptic text telling me to arrive by midnight at an address in Beachwood Canyon, high in the Hollywood Hills above L.A. The place was invisible from the street, and so dark I had to turn on my iPhone flashlight to find the door.
But then, at my knock, the world’s most famous vampire opened the door. He ushered me to a chair in a room lit only by fireplace …
Héctor Tobar Wins the 2024 Zócalo Book Prize
Our Migrant Souls Is an Essential Exploration of ‘Latino’ Identity
Héctor Tobar is the winner of the 2024 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino.”
Zócalo has awarded the $10,000 prize yearly since 2011 to the nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion. The 13 previous Zócalo Public Square Book Prize recipients include Heather McGhee, Michael Ignatieff, Danielle Allen, Jonathan Haidt, and most recently, Michelle Wilde Anderson.
Tobar is the author of six books, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and a professor at UC Irvine; he was born and raised in Los Angeles and is the son of Guatemalan immigrants …
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Can the Real San Francisco Airport Please Stand Up?
SFO and OAK Both Want to Claim the Bay Area City, but Neither Is Actually Located There
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Huell Howser Lives!
One Chronicler of Our State Offers His Take on Another
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A Movie That Might Be Worse Than Civil War
‘Civil War’ Offers A Vision of California Fighting the U.S. That Matches Foreign Propaganda—and Misses the Point
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What the Wonkapocalypse Can Teach Us
An Immersive Experience Gone Wrong Shows Us the Perennial Emptiness of Carefully Curated Escapes from Reality
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Cowboy Boots Were Made for Everyone
For Over a Century and Half, the Footwear Has Carried the Story of a Nation
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Why We Hunger for the Holiday Special
Every December, an Age-Old Format Warms the Winter Night
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Why Shouldn't Phillis Wheatley's Poems Show Up at an NFL Game?
At Last Night’s Event—”Can a Football Stadium Be a Black History Museum?”—Panelists Argued to Democratize Culture
On the rarified second level of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, amid premium owner suites and premium beer sales, there’s an Angela Davis quote plastered on a wall.
“Our histories never unfold in isolation,” reads the excerpt from the scholar and activist’s 2015 book, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. “We cannot truly tell what we consider to be our own histories …
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Artist Maurice Harris
‘I Am Deliberate and Afraid of Nothing’
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Poet aja monet
The Energy You Bring to a Word Can Heal or Harm
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Agent and Former NFL Player Jacques McClendon
There’s Nothing Like ‘Rocky Top’