The Oculus Generation Is a Metaphor for Our Moment
How Can We Share a Planet if We Don’t Live in the Same Universe?
Three years ago, my wife and I moved from a spacious apartment. What we couldn’t fit into our new digs ...
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The Feminist Self-Defense Practice That Could Give the Climate Crisis a Beatdown
It's Time to Train Ourselves to Transform Our Fear and Anger into Action
The climate breakdown, which so many of us assumed lay far in the future, is upon us now. ...
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Out With Mass Incarceration and in With Mass Commerce
Can California Call It Progress When Rural Prisons Are Replaced With Retail Warehouses?
As California starts closing prisons, what might open in their place ...
New at Zócalo
Is Anything More American Than Oklahoma! in Oklahoma?
Forget Broadway's Reopening—The Nation's Artistic Heartbeat Is at Its Center
If there’s a more rambunctious and promiscuous genre than musical theater, I haven’t met it yet.
Musicals are an everywhere phenomenon. They touch an enormously broad swath of American lives, unapologetically building worlds that don’t yet exist. I see this commitment to the not-yet as an aspiration for the rest of us stuck living in the here-and-now.
I recently wrote a book about musicals, and visited communities in the heartland that were using musical theater to help understand their place in this country. I watched an original musical about Samson and Delilah in Branson, Missouri ...
Where I Go: Hiking the Mountain That Almost Killed John Muir
Finding an Adventure Story and a Portal to the Past Beneath Mount Shasta
The great outdoor adventurer John Muir—who had skipped over glaciers in Alaska, surfed an avalanche, and gleefully rode a wildly swaying tree in a storm in the Sierras—lay in a hotel bed strewn with wildflowers. He gazed through the window at the majestic sight of Mount Shasta.
He had nearly died on the summit of that mountain the night before. A fierce blizzard had set in after he and mountain guide Jerome Fay reached it. A blinding deluge of snow obscured their route back, making a descent impossible.
They survived by lying on their backs, just below the summit, on a bank of “fumaroles,” fissures ...
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A Letter From Kyiv, Where Reality Is Being Papered Over
In Ukraine’s Capital, the COVID-Era Accentuates, and Hides, Big Divides
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A Letter From India, Where the World Is Collapsing
The Official Count of Cases and Deaths Doesn’t Reflect the Full Tragedy Unfolding Here
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A Letter From Santiago, Where Chileans Are Seeking a New Constitution
Hopes Are High for Transforming the Country's Democracy, but the Risks May Be Even Higher
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Where I Go: The Headlands of Yehliu
It Took Me 20 Years and Five Visits to Develop My Own Relationship to Taiwan
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Where I Go: The Poet Sits in the Dentist's Chair
This Is What Happens When 'Two Mutually Oral Professions' Meet
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Where I Go: The Nature Preserve of Memory
Torrey Pines—A Mythic Hike in My Childhood Imagination—Feels Fragile Now
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I Should Have Recalled Myself!
The Speech and Strategy That Gov. Gavin Newsom Didn’t Know He Needed
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Can the American Republic Survive the Stubbornness of San Francisco?
The City by the Bay Keeps Producing Leaders Who Won't Quit—Even When They Should
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Your Recall Confusion Is Part of a Much Bigger Problem
California's Elections 'Don't Match How Human Beings Think, Choose, and Vote'
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USC Sociologist Manuel Pastor
These Are the Fancy-Ass Skechers
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USC Sociologist Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo
I Love Succulents Because They’re So Sculptural
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Community Coalition Chief Operating Officer Corey Matthews
I Like to Read in the Middle of the Night
