KQED's Forum

During a San Francisco Giants home game this month dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community, four pitchers drew attention for their protest of the team’s themed rainbow uniform. One player opted out of wearing the uniform entirely, while three others doctored their hats with a bible verse that has been used by some Christian groups to “reclaim” the rainbow. Major League Baseball issued a warning to those...

Visitors to Yosemite National Park are reporting huge summer crowds and nearly impossible parking, which are the result of federal staffing cuts and the elimination of the park’s entry reservation system. We’ll dig into the cause and impact of the changes at Yosemite and discuss where else in California you can find peak outdoor experiences. Guests: Sarah Wright, outdoors engagement reporter, KQED...

As part of negotiations over terms of the ceasefire memorandum between Iran and the U.S., the Trump Administration on Monday temporarily lifted all oil sanctions on Iran, a significant reversal of longstanding American policy. Critics in the president’s own party have sharply criticized the deal which includes a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran, a ceasefire and reopening the Strait of Hor...

We rely on the Global Positioning System for so much — mapping our commutes, tracking our runs, hailing ride shares, matching with dates and more — that it can be hard to remember life before it. The U.S. military sent the first GPS satellite to space in 1978, and journalist Katherine Dunn says remembering those military roots can help us understand of how enemy actors today are distorting, blocki...

Communities across the Bay Area, including Gilroy, Oakley and Pittsburg, are pushing back on new data centers in their cities. Data centers, which house the computing equipment and servers that power the internet, have been around for decades, but opposition to them has exploded as tech companies pour hundreds of billions of dollars into building thousands of new centers nationwide. Residents worr...

Historian Ibram X. Kendi says that in order to understand the rise of authoritarianism, we need to understand great replacement theory. It’s the racist idea that “powerful elites are enabling peoples of color to steal the lives, livelihoods, cultures and electoral power and freedoms of white people,” Kendi writes in his new book, “Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age.” We talk to t...

New Yorker magazine poetry editor Kevin Young has called poetry "the most efficient mode of time travel." In his new volume of poems "Night Watch,” Young, a literary hyphenate who edits, writes and teaches, takes readers on a journey of loss and re-emergence. From his cycle of poems about a conjoined pair of twins born into slavery and kidnapped to a carnival freak show to his meditations on grief...

Ultra-endurance athlete Catherine Breed has accomplished many physical feats — including a record-breaking swim across Lake Tahoe—but her latest challenge may be her most audacious. Beginning in July, she’ll spend several months swimming the entire coastline of California. The 900-mile journey will begin at the top of California, and Breed will swim to the California-Mexico border. She joins us to...

Journalist Jonathan Weber has had a front row seat to San Francisco’s many rises and falls as the nation’s tech capital since the early 1990s. His new book, “City on the Edge” offers a sweeping history of the tech industry in San Francisco, chronicling its unprecedented successes as well as its devastating consequences. Drawing on 200 interviews with mayors, CEOs, political leaders, activists, ent...

We tend to focus on how climate change affects coral reefs, sea turtles and polar bears on melting ice. But we rarely focus on how climate change is affecting microbes — the bacteria, fungi and viruses we can only see with microscopes — which outnumber all other life on earth. So says science writer Shayla Love, who warns that a warming planet might be making those microorganisms mutate in a conce...

Cigarettes are cool again…especially with GenZ. Despite decades of anti-smoking campaigns, you’re likely to see more young people smoking in films, at bars, on street corners, and in social media feeds. Researchers tie the trend to Y2K nostalgia, soft nihilism, and a turn away from “clean girl” wellness culture. Actual youth smoking rates are still at historic lows, but we’ll explore how glamoriza...

It’s no longer news that Hollywood studios are using artificial intelligence in editing, animation, visual effects and more. But last week “Dreams of Violets,” a new film about protests in Iran, became the first fully AI-generated live-action feature to screen at Tribeca and is a project that journalist Steven Zeitchik says the industry is watching nervously. We talk about the rapidly growing use...

Oakland filmmaker, rapper and activist Boots Riley’s new film ‘I Love Boosters’ is a surreal crime comedy that follows three women who shoplift clothes to make ends meet. Like all of his work, there’s radical pro-worker politics, indictments of industry, and funk-filled absurdism. We’ll talk to Riley about his distinctive storytelling and how it centers his hometown. Guests: Boots Riley, writer an...

After decades of decline, many church leaders believe that religious life is on the upswing as some younger Americans flock to Christianity — including Vice President JD Vance, whose new book on his Catholic conversion drops this week. But the fuller picture is more complicated. Coming up, we’ll talk to religion reporters and a church leader about what may be driving this shift, and what its lasti...

In writer and poet Ben Lerner’s latest novel, “Transcription,” an unnamed narrator travels to interview his elderly mentor. But shortly after checking into his hotel, the narrator knocks his phone into water, ruining the only recording device he brought. What unfolds is an exploration of all of the mundane and profound ways technology intersects with our lives. There’s the bad: the mental offloadi...

Former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland won the New Mexico Democratic gubernatorial primary this month, and if she wins this November, she would become the first female Native American governor in U.S. history. Haaland was already the first Native American cabinet secretary, which she describes in her new memoir as a uniquely profound experience: “Unlike any previous interior secretary, I had...

Levi’s Stadium will be the site of a series of World Cup matches beginning June 13. Switzerland, Algeria, Qatar, Jordan and Australia are some of the teams that will be appearing in match ups. Though the FIFA extravaganza has had a bumpy rollout with complaints about high ticket prices and tourists opting not to come to the U.S. for matches, local expat communities are ready to cheer their home te...

What’s in a face? For the ancient Greeks, the shape and features of a person’s face revealed their character, virtue and intelligence. Though these attitudes are outdated, they linger today as our faces are scrutinized in selfies and social media. In her new book, “The Face,” historian Fay Bound-Alberti shares the history and science of how we see and make sense of one another’s faces—while she st...

Two of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, are based in San Francisco — and both are preparing public stock offerings that will bestow a huge financial windfall on their employees. In a region where even many affluent residents are already priced out of the housing market,  the expected influx of wealth could make it even harder for many to find an affordab...

What does it mean to be American? That’s the question that animates Ben Rhodes’s new book “All We Say: The Battle for American Identity.” Drawing on 15 speeches spanning more than two centuries, the former Obama speechwriter and national security adviser looks at how they shaped and reflected competing visions over race, democracy, belonging and power. We talk to Rhodes about the speeches he chose...

The Trump administration said it will allocate $75 million dollars to fund a new coal terminal on the waterfront in West Oakland. Developer Phil Tagami has been working on building a shipping terminal on city-owned land for more than a decade. The coal export plan has faced major community opposition and a slew of lawsuits, which have since been resolved. With the legal challenges out of the way a...

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the American workplace, and virtually every week brings a new report that entry-level white-collar jobs could be replaced by chatbots. Facing an uncertain future, 1 in 4 college students no longer believe their degree is worth the time and money. The New Yorker’s Jay Caspian Kang has been reporting on how A.I. is reshaping higher education, and he joins...

Before Andrew Sean Greer won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for his novel “Less,” he was the executive director for a writer’s foundation based in Italy and sponsored by a baronessa. It was a job he has compared to “running a bed-and-breakfast for maniacs.” That experience informs his latest comic novel “Villa Coco,” which centers a young man adrift and yes, a baronessa. We talk to Greer, who lives half...

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann spent years inside some of the country’s most consequential investigations, from the Justice Department’s fraud unit to Robert Mueller’s election interference investigation. In his new book “Liar’s Kingdom,” Weissman argues the U.S. needs new laws to stem the corrosive effects of political deception. We talk with Weissmann about his case for reform and ho...

In her new essay collection, “Freedom,” novelist and UC Davis creative writing director Zinzi Clemmons examines what freedom means in “a world buckling from the consequences of centuries of interlocking injustices.” She grapples with the complicated legacies of Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama and the #MeToo Movement — and explains why she’s no longer an Afropessimist. Clemmons joins us to talk about...