Covid-19

Rural Food Banks Have Never Been More Important

COVID Has Created Thousands of New Clients for California’s Smallest Food Banks—And New Challenges That May Outlast the Pandemic

Rural Food Banks Have Never Been More Important | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Before COVID-19, our little food bank here in Kings County served 1,000 families, on average, a month. But in the pandemic, we are now working to feed more than five times that number, providing food for an estimated 5,000 families in our part of the San Joaquin Valley.

Rural food banks, like the one I work at, have an outsized importance, because there are fewer food options in smaller places. And while we are far from big cities like Los Angeles, where I lived until moving up here 12 years ago, …

by Juan Martinez |

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The Hidden Health Care Workers Keeping Hospitals Safe | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The Hidden Health Care Workers Keeping Hospitals Safe

Meet the Infection Preventionists at the Front Lines of the Pandemic Battle

by Anjali Bisht, Vanessa C. Lewis, and Urvashi Parti |

You’re usually still a little groggy when your pager goes off. You jolt out of bed, unsure what’s going to come next. Getting awakened for work at 2 a.m. is …

What If We Used Play to Solve the World’s Biggest Problems? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

What If We Used Play to Solve the World’s Biggest Problems?

From Foxes to Footballers, Animals Love Games. Let’s Use Competition to Everyone’s Advantage

by Janet O’Shea and Daniel T. Blumstein |

Ours is a time of reduced civility, heightened political partisanship, and decreased faith in institutions. If we don’t figure out how to engage respectfully, we will all lose out. COVID …

How California (Might Have) Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Big, Unbalanced Budget | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How California (Might Have) Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Big, Unbalanced Budget

COVID Is Helping the State Get Over Its Misguided Obsession With Staying in the Black at the Expense of Solving Its Costly Problems

by Joe Mathews |

In the midst of California’s pandemic catastrophe, we may be seeing, at long last, the demise of the dominant mode of thinking of our state’s leaders: “budgetism.”

Budgetism is the false …

SLO Down, You Move Too Fast, California | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

SLO Down, You Move Too Fast, California

In Praise of the Peaceful Pleasures of San Luis Obispo County

by Joe Mathews |

SLO down, California. Even in pandemic, you move too fast.

This new year, perhaps we should all resolve to model the spirit of SLO, the acronym that embodies San Luis Obispo, …

Our Favorite Events of 2020 | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Our Favorite Events of 2020

Zócalo Went Virtual—But Managed to Stay Grounded in the Big Issues of the Moment

Connecting people to ideas and to each other—Zócalo’s mission for over 17 years now—was never going to be simple in 2020. Well before January, we knew that this year would …


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