Zocalo Public Square » Nexus

It was New Year’s Day in Charlotte, North Carolina, and seemingly half of Mecklenburg County had come to the K&W Cafeteria for black-eyed peas, greens, and hog jowls—foods to bring good luck ...

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/revelatory-culinary-road-trip-new-south/

Can the shaking of earthquakes upend political power? This question often has been answered by referencing Mexico. Political scientists often link Mexico City’s devastating 8.0 magnitude earthq...

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/mexicos-85-earthquake-didnt-start-revolution/

The stupefying deeds of the Trump White House are passing in such a blur these days that it is hard to parse the incompetence. From policies foreign and domestic that churn without solidifying, t...

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/trumps-staff-save/

Nearly 100 years ago, in 1918, the world experienced the greatest tidal wave of death since the Black Death, possibly in the whole of human history. We call that tidal wave the Spanish flu, and m...

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/1918-flu-pandemic-revolutionized-public-health/

The United States has an extensive system of amazing parks. From the Shenandoah National Park, close to where I grew up, to Sequoia National Park, where I am a trustee for Lost Soldier’s Cave, ...

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/trump-administration-wants-uranium-mining-utah-dinosaur-fossils/

It’s a paradox, both of our globalized culture and of Los Angeles: My mother’s quest to cook authentic Indian food when she visits here has taught me a lot about Mexican and Mexican-American ...

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/mexico-india-fused-l-kitchen/

Risks are inherent in life and so, over the centuries, people have devised many mechanisms to pool and reduce risks. These institutions range from families to religious tithing to formal insuranc...

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/risk-taking-profitable-perilous-interdependent-world/

As Game of Thrones looks to its eighth season, the show—strictly speaking—is no longer filming the books of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Of course, it is still using the cha...

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/paradise-lost-harry-potter-fanfiction-writers-reimagine-classics/

My youngest daughter often asks me to tell her about the day when, pregnant with her, I was riding to work on the subway and wondering whether she would be a boy or a girl. Just at that moment, I...

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/gender-reveal-fad-says-modern-pregnancy/

I suspected that something was wrong on the Sunday morning when I saw the beginning of a Facebook post in my newsfeed sidebar that said, in French, “Our dear AJ has given up …” I was unable...

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/live-online-will-anyone-know-die/