To My Pen Pal in Hamburg, Germany, With Love From Watts, California

How a Transcontinental Correspondence Turned Into One of my Most Valuable Friendships

How can we celebrate the people we’ve never met who helped get us through the worst year of our life?

When I was a child, my grandmother often expressed the importance of communicating with everyone. She backed that up with her own behavior. When she walked down the street, she spoke to everyone. It did not matter if you were elderly or a child, or if you spoke English or Spanish. She had a smile and a conversation for you.

My grandmother knew people mattered, so she invested her time and energy …

Can Innovation Really Solve Society’s Problems? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Can Innovation Really Solve Society’s Problems?

To Reckon With Today’s Greatest Challenges, We Need to Rethink Innovation Itself

Since World War II, the United States has famously funded research to advance all fields of science and innovation, fueling new disease-fighting drugs, increasing economic productivity, and sparking an information …

Will Holograms Help Us Grieve? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Will Holograms Help Us Grieve?

Ready or Not, Digital Afterlives Are Here to Stay

Long before Kim Kardashian West made headlines for being gifted a hologram of her deceased father for her 40th birthday, a panel session at South by Southwest Interactive, an annual …

Why CRISPR May Be the Most Important Thing to Happen on the Planet in 4.5 Billion Years | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Why CRISPR May Be the Most Important Thing to Happen on the Planet in 4.5 Billion Years

This Gene-Editing Technology Promises to Revolutionize Medicine, Spark Ethical Debate, and Might Even Bring Woolly Mammoths Back to Earth

Bringing extinct species back to life may sound like science fiction, but it’s a real thing—perhaps the most important to occur during the past 4.5 billion years. Called “de-extinction,” the …

How COVID-19 Will Reshape Us | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How COVID-19 Will Reshape Us

The Pandemic Will Wane. Ins and Outs of Daily Life Are Staying on Zoom

Those of us who have lived through the COVID-19 pandemic will almost certainly never forget it. Like my father-in-law who lived through the Depression and could never bear to use …

Announcing the 10th Annual Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Announcing the 10th Annual Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize

Awarded Annually to the Poem that Best Evokes Connection to Place

Zócalo is delighted to announce that we are now accepting submissions for the 10th annual Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize. The deadline for entries will close on January 29, 2021.

Since …