Zócalo at Central Library

Tuesday, December 11, 7pm at Central Library

The Mexican Restaurant in Los Angeles

Moderated by Jonathan Gold, L.A. Weekly Restaurant Critic

Mexican culture has always been central to Los Angeles.  But only in the last dozen years or so has L.A. become a vital center of Mexican cuisine, bristling with restaurants presenting the regional dishes of practically every state in Mexico, as well as with creative restaurants showcasing the best of Mexican cuisine.

Zócalo has gathered together some of the best and most innovative chefs in Los Angeles, including Gilberto Cetina of the splendid Yucatecan restaurant Chichen Itza, Martin del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu of the groundbreaking cenaduría La Casita Mexicana, and Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger of Santa Monica’s award-winning Border Grill, for a round-table discussion on the state-of-the-art in Mexican cooking in Los Angeles, moderated by L.A. Weekly’s Pulitzer-winning restaurant critic Jonathan Gold. They’ll talk about the rise of regional cuisines, relationships with farmers and growers, the place of the restaurant within Mexican-American culture, and the difficulty of introducing challenging dishes to customers more intent on chips and margaritas than on cuisine.

Audio Available Shortly

Zócalo at The Hammer

Wednesday, November 28, 7 PM at The Hammer Museum

Dirty Business: Should the Porn Industry Be Saved?

Moderated by Mariel Garza of the Los Angeles Daily News

Los Angeles' dirty little economic secret is its $12-billion-a-year pornography industry, located primarily in the San Fernando Valley. Competition from amateur porn on the Internet, piracy and other pressures are cutting into profits. The question is: Should we care? How much should the industry's health risks weigh against its economic value? And how important is the issue of morality when we're talking about jobs, sales receipts, and tax dollars? Zócalo brings together a panel of experts—porn producers and former actors Nina Hartley and Ira Levine, economist Jack Kyser, and Sharon Mitchell of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation—to discuss whether or not L.A.'s porn industry is a boon or a burden.

Audio Available Shortly

Zócalo at Central Library

Tuesday, November 20, 7 PM at Central Library

Can We Solve L.A.’s Gang Problem? A Conversation with Gang Czar Jeff Carr

Moderated by Los Angeles Times crime reporter Jill Leovy

The City of Los Angeles spends over $150 million annually on youth development and anti-gang initiatives, but last year gang crime increased 15.7 percent over the previous year. Gang membership also increased to nearly 40,000 and according to the Los Angeles Police Department over 56 percent of last year’s 481 homicides were gang-related. Promising to combat this trend, on August 1 Reverend Jeff Carr became Los Angeles City’s very first “gang czar.” As director of gang reduction and youth development, Carr is charged with implementing the Mayor’s Anti-Gang Strategy. Will it work? Who is Jeff Carr? How does his evangelical faith influence his approach to battling gangs? Jeff Carr sits down with Jill Leovy to talk it out. (This event is funded, in part, through a civic partnership with The California Wellness Foundation Communications Department)

Audio Available Shortly

Zócalo at NPR West

Thursday, November 15, 7 PM at NPR West

Zócalo and NPR West Present

Girls Gone Mild: Have Roles for Women in Hollywood Gone Soft?

A Conversation with L.A. Times film critic Carina Chocano and op-ed columnist Meghan Daum

Does Hollywood misunderstand women or is it the other way around? Responding to the recent onslaught of studio films featuring unemployed, socially maladjusted men and the bland (and usually blonde) bombshells who love them, Los Angeles Times film critic Carina Chocano recently wrote an essay about the lack of substantial roles for comedic actresses. “The idea that a girl might play anything other than 'the girl' in a studio comedy,” wrote Chocano, “is so far out of the mainstream that it's considered an experimental concept, not to mention a major financial risk.”

Carina Chocano and Meghan Daum visit Zócalo for a thoughtful and witty conversation about women and humor, women and Hollywood and whether or not there’s any truth to the increasingly conventional wisdom that diminishing female roles are a direct result of diminishing female audiences.

Audio Available Shortly

Zócalo at The Skirball

Tuesday, October 23, 2007, 7:30 pm at The Skirball Cultural Center

Francisco Goldman, "The Art of Political Murder in Central America"

Critically acclaimed novelist Francisco Goldman visits Zócalo to discuss the themes of his first nonfiction book, The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? While telling a story as rich in human drama, enigma, and surprise as any novel, Goldman explores the murder of Guatemala’s leading human rights activist, Bishop Juan Gerardi. Known in Guatemala as “The Crime of the Century,” the Bishop Gerardi murder case, with its unexpectedly outlandish scenarios and sensational developments, confounded observers and generated extraordinary controversy. After nine years of intrepid reporting, Goldman gets to the bottom of the case, and in so doing, opens a window on the reality of mara youth gangs, organized crime, and the state of human rights in Central America.

Audio Available Shortly

Zócalo at the Music Center

Monday, October 22, 7:30 pm at BP Hall in Walt Disney Concert Hall

Zócalo and The Music Center
In Conjunction with the Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages
Present

An Evening with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
Moderated by Jim Newton, Editor of the Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa entered office two years ago with great fanfare, landing the cover of Newsweek and receiving recognition as the city's first Latino mayor in over a century. He pursued an ambitious agenda from the start, seeking to increase public safety, gain control of Los Angeles schools, crack down on gangs, pursue downtown development, green the city, and reduce traffic. He's met with some successes as well as setbacks. Now, halfway into his first term, he chats with Jim Newton, editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial pages, about what he's accomplished so far and where he hopes to go from here.

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Zócalo in Downtown L.A.

Tuesday, October 9, 7pm at The Center at Cathedral Plaza

Michael Gerson, “Why We Need Heroic Conservatism”

Michael J. Gerson, the speechwriter who penned many of George W. Bush's most influential speeches, is considered by many Democrats and Republicans to be the most influential White House speechwriter since the Kennedy administration's Ted Sorenson. Known around the administration as the "moral compass," Gerson was more than a speechwriter, he was also a trusted insider helping to make policy decisions. Gerson visits Zócalo to talk about some of the themes from his new book, Heroic Conservatism, which is both a manifesto for the Republican Party and a memoir of his time in the Bush White House. He argues that America needs a new type of conservatism, one that promotes government rooted in moral values and initiates “compassionate conservative” social strategies such as international AIDS funding and anti-poverty initiatives.

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Zócalo at Central Library

Wednesday, October 3, 7pm at Central Library

“An Evening with Michael Govan”

Moderated by Ann Philbin, Director of the Hammer Museum

43-year-old Michael Govan recently completed his first year as director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He visits Zócalo to chat about his meteoric rise through the art world, his dreams of turning L.A. into the new cultural capitol of the U.S., and the things this city must do to help us get there. Ann Philbin, who has been widely credited with turning the Hammer Museum around, will quiz Govan about everything from Jeff Koons, his take on the L.A. art scene, and why he thinks Los Angeles is the most beautifully named city in the world. She may even get him to gossip about Eli Broad.

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Zócalo at MOCA

Tuesday, September 25, 7pm at MOCA

Zócalo and the Huntington-
USC Institute on California and the West Present

Will Grand Avenue Live Up to the Hype?

The remarkably ambitious Grand Avenue Project has been hailed as a key to the urban rejuvenation of downtown Los Angeles. Combining architectural, streetscape, and park-planning elements with huge amounts of new retail and residential space, the project’s sheer reach recalls much earlier eras of urban design and scope. How will the project’s multiple and varied goals be reached? How will Grand Avenue balance public and private constituencies, funds, and needs? Will it all work? LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, developer Bill Witte, president of The Related Companies of California, Dana Cuff, professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, and LA City Councilmember Jan Perry visit Zócalo to discuss the future of Bunker Hill and beyond. (This event is made possible, in part, by a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation of Los Angeles.)

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Zócalo in Hollywood

Tuesday, September 18, 7pm at the Harmony Gold Theatre

“The Jane Austen Book Club": A Screening and Conversation with Director/Screenwriter Robin Swicord

Moderated by Patt Morrison, L.A. Times columnist and host of "Patt Morrison" on KPCC

Karen Joy Fowler’s best-selling novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, the story of five modern Californian women and one enigmatic man who meet once a month to discuss the books of Jane Austen, is coming to a theater near you. After an advance screening (the film will be released by Sony Picture Classics on September 21), Patt Morrison will sit down with the woman who adapted the novel for the screen and directed the picture starring, among others, Maria Bello and Emily Blunt. Robin Swicord, best known for her screen adaptations of Memoirs of a Geisha, Little Women, and The Perez Family, will discuss her career, the writing life, her transition to film directing, and why she thinks Jane Austen is still all the rage more than two centuries after she published her first novel.

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Zócalo at Central Library

Tuesday, September 11, 7pm at Central Library

James Ellroy, "L.A.: Come on Vacation, Go Home on Probation"

Internationally renowned author James Ellroy discusses 60 years of the secret history of Los Angeles in raucous, freewheeling and profane form. Born in Los Angeles in 1948, Ellroy's L.A. Quartet novels – The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, and White Jazz – were international best-sellers. His novel American Tabloid was Time Magazine’s fiction Book of the Year in 1995. His memoir My Dark Places was a Time Best Book of the Year for 1996. His novel the Cold Six Thousand was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book for 2001. Last year, he published a remarkable first-person story in the Los Angeles Times Magazine about his recent return to the "Great Wrong Place that refined [his] imagination." He visits Zócalo to talk about the underbelly of the city he has reclaimed.

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Zócalo at the Music Center

Tuesday, August 28, 7pm at BP Hall in Walt Disney Concert Hall

Zócalo and The Music Center Present

Alma Guillermoprieto, “How to be Mexican: A Musical Instructional Manual”

The brilliant writer (The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books) and MacArthur “Genius Award” recipient Alma Guillermoprieto visits Zócalo to explore the importance of music and song in transmitting the spirit of Mexicanness. In a fascinating multimedia lecture, Guillermoprieto uses contemporary Mexican music to illuminate evolving notions of Mexican national identity. By exploring iconic lyrics and film clips that have been considered typically Mexican--both in Mexico and abroad--Guillermoprieto examines the very idea of mexicanidad.

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Zócalo in Koreatown

Thursday, August 23, 4:30 pm at Southwestern Law School (Bullocks Wilshire Building)

"Should Congress Pass the Korea Free Trade Agreement?"

Moderated by Andrés Martinez, Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation

The recently negotiated Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Korea is the most ambitious trade deal the U.S. has contemplated since NAFTA. Struck with a country whose freedom and prosperity was secured by the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American GIs, the potential economic and strategic significance of the Korea FTA is hard to overstate. But as protectionist sentiment grows in Congress, the 1,400-page agreement is now in political peril. As the hub of U.S. trade with Asia and home to a vibrant Korean community, Los Angeles is caught in the crosscurrents of this broader political debate over globalization and greater economic interdependence. What would passage of a Korean FTA mean for L.A.? How economically significant is L.A.'s unique relationship with Korea? Has free trade been a boon for the local economy, or do local workers and manufacturers stand to benefit from growing skepticism about free trade? U.S. Rep. Diane Watson, South Korean Ambassador Lee Tae-Sik, Jesse Swanhuyser of the California Fair Trade Coalition, and former U.S. trade representative Brian Peck visit Zócalo to discuss the future of America's ties with South Korea.

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Zócalo in Wilmington

Tuesday, July 24, 7pm at Banning’s Landing Community Center

“Can the Ports Clean the Air Without Choking the Economy?”
Moderated by Rick Wartzman, Director of The Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach—which together make up the nation's busiest harbor complex and one of the key engines of the Southern California economy—are poised for an 18-Wheel Revolution. In April, they unveiled a plan to slash diesel pollution from the 16,000 trucks that haul goods to nearby rail yards and warehouses by 80%. And that's only the beginning. The plan—which still needs final approval--also seeks to upgrade conditions for truck drivers, who some say work in virtual "sweatshops on wheels." But is the plan practical? Will it undermine the ports competitiveness' and drive trade elsewhere? Is it just a backdoor way for the Teamsters union to organize drivers? Key players from both sides of this battle along the waterfront--S. David Freeman, president of the L.A. board of Harbor Commissioners, Patricia Castellanos, co-director of the Clean and Safe Ports Campaign, transportation policy consultant Nancy Pfeffer, and Michael Lightman, president of Great Freight Inc.--visit Zócalo to hash it out.

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Zócalo at Central Library

Monday, July 16, 7pm at Central Library

“An Evening with Jonathan Gold”
Moderated by Monica Corcoran, Style Editor at Variety

Jonathan Gold may have begun his journalism career as a classical music critic, but now he's the final word on food in Los Angeles. The L.A. Weekly writer has eaten at thousands of restaurants in Los Angeles alone, often scouring foreign-language papers in which he could only understand restaurant addresses, or simply driving around town and pulling over when the mood struck. Enduring at least as many bad meals as good and risking restaurants with low health ratings, Gold writes expressive, crackling prose that conveys his vast knowledge of the culinary landscape of Southern California, from fine French restaurants to trendy fusion joints to fly by night taco trucks. This year he became the first restaurant critic to win a Pulitzer Prize. He visits Zócalo to discuss his career, where to eat, and the city he’s been savoring for decades.

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Zócalo at Central Library

Friday, June 22, 7pm at Central Library

“An Evening with Larry Wilmore”
Moderated by Oscar Garza, Editor-in-Chief, Ciudad Magazine

The Daily Show’s “Senior Black Correspondent,” Larry Wilmore, skewers political correctness with his satirical takes on everything from Black History Month to snitching. A thirty year television veteran, Wilmore’s credits include early work as a writer for “In Living Color” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” co-creator and producer of “The PJs,” and executive-producer of “The Bernie Mac Show,” for which he won an Emmy for writing. Throughout his career, he has consistently critiqued and undermined Hollywood's racial hierarchy--the same one that, early in his career, forced him to always "read for the part of the fast-talking ex-con," as he told The New York Times. He recently appeared on "The Office"--where he's a consulting producer--as a sensitivity trainer named Mr. Brown. The Southern California native chats with Ciudad editor Oscar Garza about career, race, and when it’s okay to laugh.

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Zócalo in Hollywood

Tuesday, June 12, 7pm at Barnsdall Art Park

Zócalo and the Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages
Present

“Hail to the Chief? A Conversation with Bill Bratton”
Moderated by Jim Newton, Times Editorial Page Editor

William J. Bratton, America's widely acclaimed top cop, arrived in Los Angeles in 2002 to head the country's third-largest police department. Since then he's overseen a 27% decline in homicides and a 29% decline in serious crimes over the past five years. He has also been both praised and criticized for his handling of federal reform mandates, for releasing names of major gang members, for defending Special Order 40, and for his response to controversial uses of police force, including the death of 13-year-old Devin Brown and the May 1 MacArthur Park incident. Chief Bratton sits down with Jim Newton, who covered the LAPD for the Times in the mid-1990s, to talk about crime in the city, controversy in the LAPD, and goals for his likely second term.

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Zócalo at Central Library

Tuesday, June 5, 7pm at Central Library

“Can the LA Times be Saved?”
Moderated by Kit Rachlis, Editor-in-Chief, Los Angeles Magazine

Like newspapers across the country, the Los Angeles Times has struggled to capture online readership and fight declining circulation. To cut costs and stay relevant, The Times has undergone everything from massive layoffs to well-publicized staff shifts and squabbles to major redesigns. Can The Times remain a prominent and profitable news source for Southern California, the country, and the world? What effect will all these changes have on the paper’s quality? Times editor Jim O’Shea, managing editor Leo Wolinsky, general manager Dave Murphy, and LATimes.com executive editor Meredith Artley visit Zócalo for what promises to be an insightful discussion on the fate of one of LA’s most valuable civic institutions.

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Zócalo at The Skirball

Friday, June 1, 7:30pm at The Skirball Cultural Center

“How to be a Genius Without Even Trying: A Conversation with Adam Carolla”
Moderated by Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum

Radio personality Adam Carolla visits Zócalo for a lively, irreverent, and possibly shocking conversation with Meghan Daum. Best known for his comedic rants about everything from the complexities of the American class system to the hypocrasies of political correctness, Carolla's humble beginnings as boxing instructor/carpet cleaner/traffic school teacher informed his sensibility as a wry and unique observer of human behavior. Though no stranger to criticism--he provoked the ire of Asian American activists last year--Carolla's hybrid of scatological humor and sophisticated social analysis has garnered him fans from across the cultural spectrum. He will discuss his obsessions, his politics, and his thoughts on being labeled an "American Genius."

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Zócalo at Caltech

Thursday, April 19, 7pm at the California Institute of Technology

Zócalo and the Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages
Present

“Is California Ready for its Close-up?”
Moderated by David Hiller, Publisher of the Los Angeles Times

As California catapults its presidential primary from June to February, how will it impact the race for the White House? Times op-ed columnists Ron Brownstein, Rosa Brooks and Jonah Goldberg join Times editorial writer Robert Greene and Times Editorial Page Editor Jim Newton to discuss how an early California primary is likely to alter the substance and dynamic of the race.

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Zócalo at City Hall

Wednesday, April 18, 11:30am at Los Angeles
City Hall

“Can Progressives Save Iraq?”
Moderated by Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles City Council President

Former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress (CAP), and military expert and CAP senior fellow Larry Korb visit Zócalo to discuss the pros and cons of the Democrats’ Iraq strategy and ask what Progressives can do to make the best of a bad situation. As the U.S. enters its fifth year of war in Iraq, the nation stands at a critical juncture in its foreign policy. With increased U.S. forces entering Iraq, a debate is raging in Washington over the Bush administration’s “New Way Forward.” Podesta and Korb will outline an exit strategy they call “Strategic Redeployment” and discuss how Iraq will continue to shape domestic politics. Korb has just returned from Iraq and will provide an assessment of the situation on the ground.

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Zócalo at Central Library

Tuesday, April 10, 7pm at Central Library

"Who Really Runs L.A.?"
Moderated by Mariel Garza of the Los Angeles Daily News 

Who runs Los Angeles? It's not just the mayor. It's not just the City Council. And it's not just a handful of rich white men. Los Angeles is no ordinary city, and its non-traditional cast of power brokers and political players span the socioeconomic and ethnic divides. But who are they? How did they acquire their power? And how do they wield it? Political consultant Kerman Maddox, LA Weekly reporter Dave Zahniser, political scientist Jaime Regalado, and Los Angeles Magazine writer Jesse Katz visit Zócalo to square off in a raucous and informative discussion of L.A.'s municipal politics, warts and all.

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Zócalo at Central Library

Monday, March 12, 7pm at Central Library

Alix Ohlin, "Why Mysteries Matter: Detectives, Literature, and Life"

Why are readers and writers perpetually drawn to the mystery, reinventing its plot twists and stock characters—the detective, the criminal, ingénue, the femme fatale—in endless ways? Brilliant young fiction writer Alix Ohlin (The Missing Person and Babylon and Other Stories) says it's because detective stories reflect the way we judge our own society: who’s an insider and who’s an outsider, who’s corrupt and who’s innocent, who’s capable of changing the world and who can find the clues to make sense of it. No crime, even a fictional one, takes place out of context. And mysteries, which tap into the darkest shades of that social context, speak to the chaos each of us may suspect is lurking beneath the surface of our days.

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Zócalo in Little Tokyo

Tuesday, March 6, 7pm at National Center for the Preservation of Democracy

Eric Alterman, "Is Democracy in America Even Possible?"

Walter Lippmann and John Dewey argued over the character and quality of American democracy in the 1920s with each offering devastating but almost perfectly oppositional critiques. In many ways, they were both correct, but the problems each identified have only metastasized. The media are supposed to be the watchdogs of democracy and as well as our surrogates in its practice. This idea was always an idealized one, but increasingly it has become more and more difficult to sustain if one looks at the cold hard reality of both our media and our political system. Eric Alterman, prolific author, media critic, and columnist for The Nation, visits Zócalo to explore the emergence of what he calls America's "pseudo-democracy."

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Zócalo at The California Endowment

Tuesday, February 20, 7pm at The California Endowment

Stanley Crouch, "Blues for Black America"

Columnist, novelist, essayist, and critic Stanley Crouch visits Zócalo to discuss what he says is the "trouble with black popular culture." Calling it a crisis we can no longer ignore, Crouch traces the rise of hoodlums and pimps as role models and the "supposed sanitization" of the "n-word." Calling the phenomenon an "irresponsible rebellion," the ever brilliant, irascible, and controversial Crouch takes the entertainment industry to task and deplores what he sees as the debilitating social effects of low intellectual aspirations and "crass materialist fantasies."

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Zócalo on the Westside

Monday, January 22, 7pm at the Ince Theatre in The Culver Studios

Zócalo and the Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages Present

"Tuning in the Broadband Channel: How the Internet Is Remaking the TV Business"

Moderated by Jon Healey of the Los Angeles Times Editorial Page

With more than 80 million Americans connecting to the Web at video-friendly speeds, TV networks have started using the Internet not just to promote their shows, but also to distribute them. The potential audience for online TV is already larger than the number of homes served by DirecTV and DISH combined and will soon be larger than the cable TV universe as well. In short, the Net is becoming a new set of channels--some free, some not. Mitch Singer of Sony Pictures, Ron Berryman of Fox Interactive, Blair Harrison of iFilm, Vivi Zigler of NBC, and Evan Young of TiVo visit Zócalo to discuss how the Internet is changing everything for the TV networks, producers, and service providers.

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Zócalo at Central Library

Tuesday, January 9, 7pm at Central Library

Jim Newton, "Earl Warren and the Californiaization of America"

The work of Earl Warren and the Warren Court is widely known and fiercely debated for its impact on far-flung fields such as racial equality, privacy, police procedure and voting rights. Less appreciated is that body of work as an expression of Warren’s upbringing – as the leading edge of a period of history in which California shifted from recipient of American problems to crafter of the nation’s future. When he went to the court in 1953, Warren was 62 years old and the most dominant political figure of his generation in California politics. He was not an ideologue but rather a man of experience, and thus the conscience that guided the nation’s new chief justice at that critical moment was one molded from his upbringing in California. Jim Newton, Los Angeles Times City-County Bureau Chief and author of Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, argues that over the 16 years that Warren held his post in Washington, he exported to the nation the values of California Progressivism and the experiences of a Bakersfield boyhood. His remove from the North-South battles over racial segregation helped Warren to break a potentially catastrophic division in Brown v. Board of Education. His insistence on police professionalism was matched by his fury over crime and vice, both products of his early California politics, and that unusual hybrid gave rise to the court’s new paradigm in those fields. Warren is remembered – fondly by some, with irritation by others – as perhaps the most consequential chief justice in American history. He may also be regarded as the man who launched the Californiaization of America.

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