KQED's Forum

Join us for a roundup of political news in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed numerous bills into laws in the past few weeks including a slew of laws aimed at increasing affordable housing, a new requirement for disclosing policy misconduct records, and changes to the state’s conservatorship law known as the #FreeBritney bill. We’ll take a look at what legislation is moving forward and other...

The San Francisco Giants have clinched a spot in the playoffs for the first time since 2016. With 105 wins under their belt, the 2021 team is among the best in the franchise’s history, and have a serious shot at beating the Los Angeles Dodgers for the division title. With the end of the season in sight, the team could soon be reliving the glory days of their championship victories in the 2010s. We...

Drug company Merck is applying for emergency use authorization in the U.S. for a new oral treatment for COVID-19 that trials suggest cuts the risk of hospitalization or death by half. We'll talk with UCSF's Dr. Monica Gandhi about the promising new treatment, get the latest coronavirus numbers for the Bay Area, and hear what to expect now that flu season is around the corner. Learn more about your...

Residents of the small Northern California town of Willows suffered from smoke-filled air four out of twelve months in 2020. That makes it the smokiest place in the Western United States. That’s according to a recent analysis by NPR’s California Newsroom that looked at air quality across the state--and the country--between 2016 and 2020. We’ll hear about the investigation and catch up on the newes...

Airports are often the first, last, and sometimes only impression a traveler has of a city. Singapore's Changi airport dazzles; Newark Airport in New Jersey offers less delight. SFO leads the way in design with its newly opened Harvey Milk Terminal which boasts Heath tiles in the restrooms, lighting that makes you look less tired, and improved acoustic design. But the airport industry has been cha...

The new film “The Many Saints of Newark” brings Sopranos fans a prequel to the revered HBO series about mobsters in New Jersey. Director Alan Taylor, who won an Emmy for his work on the show, joins us to talk about the movie set during Tony Soprano’s adolescence against a backdrop of the 1967 Newark race riots. The series, which ran for six seasons between 1999 and 2007 followed the story of Tony...

A federal lawsuit from Texas is challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act, the landmark 1978 law designed to keep Native American children within Native American families in state child custody proceedings. The case, Brackeen v. Haaland, is the subject of the second season of the award-winning podcast “This Land” which explores the threats the case poses to the legal structure that defends Native A...

The last time Congress re-negotiated who is eligible for asylum in the United States, it came in the aftermath of the fall of Saigon, when an influx of southeast Asian refugees forced changes to how Americans provided sanctuary. Now, as Afghan refugees continue to arrive after the fall of Kabul and amidst the continuing stream of people fleeing violence in the Americas, could this be a moment when...

Forum Book Club returns with "How Much of These Hills Is Gold," the debut novel from C. Pam Zhang. Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, the book has been praised for its "arresting," "lyrical," and "ravishingly written" style. It follows the quest of two Chinese-American orphans, Sam and Lucy, to bury their father, a failed gold prospector. In this tender coming-of-age story, Zhang asks "what mak...

In the latest installment of Forum's series on asylum seeking in the U.S., we'll take a look at what challenges Central American refugee communities in the Bay Area face. Many struggle to have their cases and stories heard. We'll also check in on the Central American Minors initiative allowing Central American migrant children to enter the country legally, which the Biden administration revived ea...

Marin County officials are considering desalination plants to help weather a drought that is expected to deplete water resources as early as next summer. Newark has desalinated brackish water from the groundwater basin beneath Alameda Creek since 2003. And Antioch is launching its own desalination project. But critics say the environmental and economic costs of the technology are too high. We’ll h...

Pfizer and BioNTech announced Tuesday that they submitted data to the FDA showing that their COVID vaccine is safe and effective for children ages 5 -11 We'll talk about when we can expect the agency to act -- and best practices for parents of young kids in the meantime -- with Paul Offit, a pediatrician and member of the FDA Covid Vaccine Advisory Panel. We'll also talk to Offit about his new boo...

The Bay Area has been home to a vibrant Afghan community for decades. California lawmakers have been showing unified support in welcoming Afghan asylum seekers to the Bay Area, proposing legislation and holding a string of town halls in support of resettlement efforts. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, KQED reports that local service provider Jewish Family & Community Services r...

Palo Alto officials next month plan to reopen University Avenue and some other streets that had been closed to car traffic during the pandemic. Some retailers say turning streets into outdoor dining areas has hurt their businesses by reducing parking spaces and covering up storefronts. Meanwhile many restaurant owners, especially those who invested in furniture and parklets, want to keep streets c...

California's conditional release program, known as CONREP, is supposed to enable patients leaving state psychiatric hospitals to transition to an independent life and avoid violent relapses. But a new investigation by The Marshall Project and the Los Angeles Times found that CONREP can put former patients in a decades-long legal limbo during which the state dictates where they live, whether they c...

The ESPN 30 for 30 podcast, “The King of Crenshaw,” examines the life and legacy of hip hop artist, entrepreneur and son of South Los Angeles Nipsey Hussle told through the lens of his close relationships with professional basketball players. Hosted by Justin Tinsley, a senior writer for ESPN’s The Undefeated, the four-part series explores black male friendship, grief, resilience -- and the respon...

Images of border patrol agents on horses forcibly beating back Haitian asylum seekers at the Mexican border have been igniting outrage. It’s just the latest refugee crisis that critics say the U.S. has handled poorly. This week on Forum we’ll talk with members of the Bay Area’s Haitian, Afghan, and Central American communities to discuss conditions in their countries and the struggle to gain refug...

Haiti is grappling with an unprecedented environmental crisis after a recent hurricane and earthquake. A political crisis following the assassination of the Haitian president has left the Haitian people with a crashing economy, and violence. After the U.S. began deporting some of the approximately 13,000 Haitian migrants to have arrived at the Mexican border, the U.S. special envoy for Haiti resig...

Everything has a story — including that street couch in your neighborhood. As USC professor and creator of streetcouch.com Keith Plocek puts it: “Just think of all the sitting. All the conversations. All the silences. Life. Death. Butts. Pets.” And then one day, that piece of furniture ends up on the street and a new story begins — a lucky find for someone, a new canvas for a graffiti artist or an...

A recently-surfaced memo written by conservative lawyer John Eastman revealed a detailed plan for the Trump administration to overturn President Joe Biden’s election. The document included a six-step plan for Pence to overturn the election in early 2021, including throwing out legal ballots in seven states. The explicit nature of these strategies from President Trump’s legal team shows the stopgap...

Berkeley’s influential Chez Panisse restaurant has turned 50. The restaurant transformed food culture in the Bay Area and put California, and farm to table cuisine, on the global culinary map. We talk with founder Alice Waters, and chefs and food producers who got their start at the restaurant, about the history and legacy of Chez Panisse and the future of the ecosystem of farms, food and restaura...

Most of the 70,000 survivors of wildfires sparked by PG&E equipment between 2015 and 2018, have yet to see any of the promised $13.5 billion settlement with the utility. Now, attorneys in a burgeoning wildfire litigation arena are working fast to hang their shingles in towns like Quincy and Susanville, where many wildfire evacuees -- trapped in motels or staying with friends-- try to figure out th...

Last December, Forum spoke to four nurses and doctors on the frontlines of COVID care in California. At the time, cases were surging statewide, and no vaccines were available. They described heartbreaking patient deaths, overflowing ICUs and the heavy emotional toll of their work. The same healthcare workers join us again, nine months later, to share what has improved and the profound challenges t...

The word freedom can be used in so many ways, sometimes at cross purposes. There are those who defend the freedom to remain unvaccinated, others the freedom to move in the world without excess risk. “Can you think of a more depleted, imprecise, or weaponized word?” writes author and Bay Area native Maggie Nelson in her new essay collection, “On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint”. Nelson p...

"Life is something we need to stop correcting." That's what Theo, the single astrobiologist father who narrates Richard Powers's latest novel, thinks when doctors try to prescribe medication for Robin, his passionately curious and emotionally volatile young son. But as Robin continues to lash out, Theo enrolls him in an experimental brain therapy that expands his empathic abilities and sharpens hi...