Where I Go: Becoming a Pokémon Champion

For the Last 15 Years, These Cute Digital Creatures Have Helped Remind Me That I Can Overcome Any Challenge That May Come My Way

Most kids are obsessed with things—fantasies, foods, films—that they eventually outgrow.

It’s only natural. Our taste ages as we do.

But for me, it’s been 15 years since my parents got me my very first video game, Pokémon Platinum. I’m 22 years old now, and I’m as obsessed as I’ve ever been with the elemental creatures that I first met on a Nintendo DS screen in second grade.

Since then, the franchise has provided me with a place to go to find stability when my life has felt most chaotic—whether that happened to …

by Rithwik Kalale | August 10, 2023

What Makes a Song a ‘Camp Song’?

Most Aren’t Composed at Camp. Nor Are They About Camp. But They Unite Kids Across North America on Trails, in Mess Halls, and Around Bonfires

by Shelley Posen | July 27, 2023

At a children’s summer sleepaway camp in upstate New York in the mid-1920s, two young staffers, Artie and Larry, write a song for the annual camp play. It begins:

Who Are the Anglo-Indians?

Our Small, Enduring Community—Invisible in Most Colonial Histories—Straddles Two Worlds

by Moira Shourie | May 4, 2023

“I thought they died out,” a woman remarked flippantly to my friend just the other day. She, like many Indians, has long believed that Anglo-Indians ceased to exist when the …

| Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Our Favorite Public Programs of 2022

This Year on the Zócalo Stage, Our Panelists Shared Some Jabs, Gave Voice to Resistance, and Reimagined Home

December 28, 2022

This year on the Zócalo stage, panelists dared us to reimagine home. Showed us that we can build a better America. Reminded us that incarceration is big business. Demonstrated what …

Every Era’s Vampires Require New Blood

A Queer, Multiracial Adaptation of Anne Rice’s Seminal Novel Follows a 200-Year-Old Tradition

by Jackie Mansky | October 21, 2022

For all the puffy shirts, brooding glances, and implicit queerness of Interview with the Vampire, the blockbuster 1976 novel by the late Anne Rice that became the 1994 cult classic …

The 2023 Zócalo Book Prize Honors Explorations of Community

We’re Looking for the Best Nonfiction Books on Human Connection

September 8, 2022

Since 2011, Zócalo Public Square’s annual book prize has recognized the U.S.-published nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness …

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