Then & Now

Los Angeles County, one of the largest municipal governments in the world, is overseen by a board of five elected supervisors and three countywide elected officials, including the sheriff.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supervisors voted to remove LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva from his post as head of the County's Emergency Operations Center, and tensions have only risen since. How can we make sense of the ongoing conflict between the L.A. County leaders in this moment of public health crisis? Is this unprecedented? What does history tell us about the division of power at this level of government?
The UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy is pleased to launch its new podcast "Then & Now," featuring an informative discussion on this question with former Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, an LCHP Senior Fellow.

The topic of reproductive healthcare and access to abortion has emerged as a pivotal point in the weeks and months leading up to the 2024 presidential election in the U.S. In this week's episode of then & now, our guest interviewer Professor Elizabeth O’Brien speaks with Professor Cassia Roth, a historian of Society, Environment, and Health Equity at the University of California, Riverside. Roth’s recent book, A Miscarriage of Justice, explores the intersection of reproductive health and legal policy in early 20th-century Brazil. Drawing from her research, Roth highlights parallels between Brazil and the U.S., noting how both countries are undergoing complex shifts in reproductive rights shaped by political and religious landscapes. While some areas of Latin America have seen significant progress toward decriminalizing abortion in recent decades, other countries in the region have imposed increasingly restrictive reproductive policies, underscoring the diversity of legal landscapes across Latin America. The conversation stresses the importance of understanding historical context, such as the role of military regimes and social inequalities, in shaping current reproductive policies. Roth calls for inclusive policies that address the needs of marginalized communities while navigating the ongoing back-and-forth nature of reproductive legislation.

Elizabeth O’Brien is an Assistant Professor in the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History, specializing in the history of reproductive health in Mexico. Professor O’Brien is also a member of the cross-field group in the History of Gender and Sexuality. Professor O’Brien's 2023 book on colonialism and reproductive healthcare in Mexico, Surgery and Salvation, received the 2024 Best Book Award from the Nineteenth-Century Section of the Latin American Studies Association.

Cassia Roth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Society, Environment, and Health Equity at UC Riverside. Professor Roth is a leading expert in women’s reproductive health in Brazil and her acclaimed book, A Miscarriage of Justice, was published by Stanford University Press in 2020. Professor Roth is currently working on a project entitled Birthing Abolition: Enslaved Women’s Reproduction and the Gradual End of Slavery in 19th-century Brazil .

Welcome back to then & now! To kick off our 5th season, we are joined by Professor Amir Alexander, a historian of mathematics in UCLA’s Luskin Department of History. His latest book, Liberty’s Grid, examines how Founding Father Thomas Jefferson transformed early America into a mathematical landscape. Jefferson’s vision of an empty, gridded space was intended to create a framework for people to act freely. Alexander delves into the paradox: though this grid symbolized American ideals of freedom, it also reinforced hierarchies and constraints. Natural obstacles such as bodies of water or geological features, as well as Native Americans who had lived on the land for centuries, were perceived as obstacles in Jefferson's quest to overlay order on an unordered natural world. Over time, opponents of the Jeffersonian grid developed alternative visions of how to organize the American landscape, but we still see remnants of this system in the rigid grids of middle America and in cities such as New York City, particularly Manhatten. We reflect on how this story and the perception of ordering nature is relevant to us today.
Amir Alexander is an adjunct professor in the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History. Professor Alexander's work illuminates the deep interconnections between mathematics and its social, cultural, and political setting, and highlights the intertwined relationship between critical mathematical developments and broader historical trends that motivated these developments and gave them meaning and purpose. Professor Alexander has written multiple books on this topic, and his 2014 book, Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World, was selected as a finalist for the Phi Beta Kappa Science Award in 2015.

More than half the world’s population currently lives in cities, and current estimates suggest that by 2050 nearly 7 out of every 10 people will live in urban spaces. In an increasingly crowded and urbanized world, space has become a precious commodity. As a species, we seem drawn to cities, despite their obvious disadvantages. From the ancient cities of Southeast Asia to the crowded streets of modern Los Angeles, cities offer opportunities for interactions that wouldn’t be possible in urban areas. In this episode, we sit down with Professor Monica Smith, who shares her perspective on the importance of infrastructure and shared spaces in the birth and survival of cities past and present. How do cities affect the way that we interact with the natural environment and with our fellow human beings, and how can we think creatively about shared spaces in crowded urban environments?

Dr. Monica L. Smith is a professor and Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian Studies at UCLA. She is an ancient economic historian who uses archaeological data to analyze the collective effects of routine activities through the study of food, ordinary goods, and architecture. Her current research focuses on the Indian subcontinent, a region that has produced some of the world’s earliest and most long-lived urban areas. Her most recent book was published by Viking Press in 2019, and is titled “Cities: The First 6000 Years.”

In this special episode of Then & Now, we sit down with LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva as he responds to our inaugural episode and gives his take on the current tensions between his office and the Board of Supervisors, and on how the past informs his perspectives and decisions.