Huell Howser Lives!
One Chronicler of Our State Offers His Take on Another
“Do you know Huell Howser?” I got that question recently while chatting with a counter guy at …
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Who Is Shakespeare For?
I Asked My Students to Take the Bard Off His Pedestal—It Let Us Reconsider His Place in Our World
“What do we do with Shakespeare?” “Who is Shakespeare for?” “What would it look like to reject Shakespeare?” …
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How Do We Disagree in the Public Square?
Those Who Study and Work to Keep Civil Discourse Civil Share the ‘Secret Sauce’ for Productive Debate
For this fifth and final installment, we pulled in people working to understand our contentious public …
The Genius Mexican Composer History Forgot
Uncovering Juventino Rosas, Whose Waltz Took the World By Storm But Whose Story Remains a Mystery
Juventino Rosas’ waltz “Sobre las Olas” (Over the Waves) is perhaps the most famous song of its generation. Now, more than 130 years after it was written, the tune still feels immediate—sweeping, dreamy, and above all, supremely sure-footed. Every note is both rooted and soaring, coaxing even the wallflowers to dance and sway. It is easily on par with his contemporary Johann Strauss Jr.’s masterwork “The Blue Danube”—to the point that Strauss Jr. is often mistakenly credited with having composed “Sobre las Olas.”
Why is this so? Is it simply because Strauss …
A Movie That Might Be Worse Than Civil War
‘Civil War’ Offers A Vision of California Fighting the U.S. That Matches Foreign Propaganda—and Misses the Point
The new film Civil War is a historic cinematic achievement. British director Alex Garland has made a movie that might be worse than a real American civil war.
Perhaps that was Garland’s intention. His film is a series of horrifying set pieces—Abu Ghraib-style torture by gas station attendants, government aerial bombings of civilians, summary execution of journalists, a massive California and Texas invasion of Washington, D.C.—that seem to add up to a warning. If we don’t steer away from our current path of polarization and political conflict …
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The Losing A’s Found a Winning City to Host Them
West Sacramento Is on a Hot Streak. Other California Cities Should Watch
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I’m Proud to Be Un-American
A New Poll Shows the Rest of the Country Hates the Golden State—And That’s a Good Thing
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California’s High-Speed Rail Dreams Could Go “Whoosh”
The Golden State Seems Primed to Repeat the Mistakes and Miscalculations of Indonesia’s New Bullet Train
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What the Wonkapocalypse Can Teach Us
An Immersive Experience Gone Wrong Shows Us the Perennial Emptiness of Carefully Curated Escapes from Reality
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Cowboy Boots Were Made for Everyone
For Over a Century and Half, the Footwear Has Carried the Story of a Nation
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Why We Hunger for the Holiday Special
Every December, an Age-Old Format Warms the Winter Night
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Why Shouldn't Phillis Wheatley's Poems Show Up at an NFL Game?
At Last Night’s Event—”Can a Football Stadium Be a Black History Museum?”—Panelists Argued to Democratize Culture
On the rarified second level of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, amid premium owner suites and premium beer sales, there’s an Angela Davis quote plastered on a wall.
“Our histories never unfold in isolation,” reads the excerpt from the scholar and activist’s 2015 book, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. “We cannot truly tell what we consider to be our own histories …
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Artist Maurice Harris
‘I Am Deliberate and Afraid of Nothing’
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Poet aja monet
The Energy You Bring to a Word Can Heal or Harm
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Agent and Former NFL Player Jacques McClendon
There’s Nothing Like ‘Rocky Top’
