Public Health Official Tangerine Brigham

In the Green Room

Do We Really Need Finland to Teach Us How to Teach STEM?

Up For Discussion

Searching for Utopia in Illinois

Who We Were

Nexus

Is My Disability the Most Interesting Thing About Me?

How I Learned to Write About Cerebral Palsy without Preaching, Selling Out, or Being Forced to Become a Beacon of Inspiration

by Carly Okyle|October 23, 2014

I’m awful at the art of the retort. My older brother tried his best to teach me about comebacks, but the lessons never stuck. Insults leave me stunned and silent. And so it happened one summer night in 2007 that I was mute when a college writing professor told me: “Your disability is the most interesting thing about you.”

My disability, which I’ve had since birth, is cerebral palsy (CP), a …

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Trade Winds

The City of Riyadh Sends More Students to American Universities Than the Entire Country of Mexico

by Andrés Martinez.

My Mexican father applied to colleges in the United States in the late 1940s and was offered scholarships by the University of Arizona and Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve) in Cleveland. His father sat …

Nexus

Who in the World Named My Cashmere Socks?

by Ellen Lutwak

When I tell people at cocktail parties what I do, they’re always curious. “You’re a namer-of-things? That sounds like fun. Tell me more,” they say, seemingly surprised that it’s an actual job.

In fact, the profession …

In the Green Room

Writer Joshua Wolf Shenk

Joshua Wolf Shenk is an essayist, curator, and author—most recently of the book Powers of Two: Seeking the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs. When he’s not reporting or writing, he works with the storytelling nonprofit …

In the Green Room

Healthcare Reporter Chris Rauber

Chris Rauber covers the business of healthcare as well as the wine business for the San Francisco Business Times. Before moderating a panel on what San Francisco can teach Obamacare, he talked about his love …

Readings

Have Our Politicians Become Boring?

by Matt Bai

Have our politicians gotten more boring? Yes, says Yahoo! News national political columnist Matt Bai. New technology—both social media and the 24-hour cable news cycle—have made political candidates particularly cautious about saying anything remotely controversial …

Nexus

Burned by Betrayal and 87 Rounds of Tear Gas in Hong Kong

by Bon Cheng and Yvonne Chiu

On Sunday, September 28, 2014, we stood among the estimated 80,000 Hong Kong protestors in the Admiralty neighborhood that hosts the government headquarters, when tear gas began raining down on us. The effects were immediate: …

The Shot

Zócalo at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles

WHAT IS ZÓCALO PUBLIC SQUARE?

Zócalo Public Square, a project of the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University, is a not-for-profit Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism. We partner with educational, cultural, and philanthropic institutions, as well as public agencies, to present free public events and conferences in cities across the U.S. and beyond, and to publish original daily journalism that we syndicate to more than 150 media outlets nationwide. At a time when our country's public sphere is narrow and polarized, Zócalo seeks to be a welcoming intellectual space where individuals and communities can tackle fundamental questions in an accessible, nonpartisan, and broad-minded spirit. We are committed to translating ideas to broad audiences and to engaging a new, young, and diverse generation in the public square.

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