New at Zócalo
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Culture Class
Why It Matters That Star Trek Is Confronting Eugenics
For Decades the Dangerous Pseudoscience Was Heavily Censored on Screen—While Offscreen It Continued Influencing Policy
In a meme that’s been floating around online recently, William Shatner asks, “When did Star Trek get all political?”
The joke is on Shatner, or rather on an old tweet from …
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Essay
When the Public Narrative Fails
In a Nation That’s Lost Its Way, Literature—the Private Narratives of Others—Can Guide Us
Leave it to Joan Didion. In her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” published in 1967, she identified a kind of slippage in our culture, the breakdown of collective narrative. “The center …
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Essay
Surfing the Tides of History in Northern Chumash Land
White Men Have Long Dominated the Sport I Love—But the Status Quo Isn’t Set in Stone
For health reasons I have to stay out of the water for the next couple weeks so I am dreaming about surfing, thinking about surfing, writing about surfing, doing everything …
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Essay
How Do Pandemics End?
Argentina’s 19th-Century Cholera Outbreaks Show the Myth of a Single, Definitive Conclusion
The study of epidemics has routinely centered around what medical historian Charles Rosenberg calls a “dramaturgic structure”: a story of infection that builds to a climax of widespread illness and …
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In the Green Room
August Poetry Curator Connie Voisine
I Developed a Palate That Is Particular and Acute
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Essay
How to Treat the ‘Wounds to the Soul’
A Therapist Assembles an Emotional Toolbox to Help Us Grapple With Collective Trauma
he subterranean strata of U.S. wrongdoing run deep—the genocide of Native Americans, the long history of slavery and racism, the effects of xenophobia, the illegal wars of aggression around the …
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Connecting California
Carmel’s Cautionary Tale for Post-Roe America
Poet Nora May French’s Account of Her 1907 Abortion Is an Infuriating Read—and a Sobering Reminder of What History Omits
I am no longer able to think of Carmel without thinking of abortion and Nora May French.
For this new habit of mind, I blame two things: the U.S. Supreme Court, …
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Essay
How Literature Became a Weapon in Russia’s Culture Wars
It’s a Battle of Tolstoys as Protestors Face off Against Putin’s Propaganda Machine
On April 10, 2022, Moscow police arrested resident Konstantin Goldman for brandishing a book in public. Goldman had posted an image on social media in which he posed holding a …
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