KQED's Forum

“It should puzzle us more than it does that one of the greatest foci of human ingenuity and concentrated effort over the past millennia has been the problem of how to get drunk,” writes Edward Slingerland in his new book “Drunk.” Alcohol might not only enable personal creativity and social ease — it may have aided the cohesion and innovation necessary to create civilizations themselves. Slingerlan...

Californian’s famously love their cars, but around the Bay Area a lot of people are more passionate about other ways to roll, like bikes, roller skates or skateboards. KQED’s podcast, Rightnowish, is celebrating our love of wheels and the role they play in community and culture with a series called “Roll With Us”. We’ll talk with host Pendarvis Harshaw about the San Franciscan who’s been dancing o...

With the approval of two major cannabis growing and distribution projects, Antioch has put itself on the map as a significant player in the marijuana industry. “I don’t mind being known as the cannabis capital of Northern California,” declared Antioch mayor Lamar Thorpe, citing the jobs that it would bring to the eastern Contra Costa County town. Meanwhile, Sonoma County has set aside a proposal t...

For 13 years, pop star Britney Spears has been subject to a conservatorship that controlled many of her life decisions, and on Wednesday, Spears testified damningly about the damage done to her by that arrangement. According to the star, her conservators have forcibly placed her on lithium, pushed her into unnecessary rehab, and prevented from having children by refusing to let her remove her IUD....

In Brandon Taylor’s new collection of short stories, “Filthy Animals,” characters either hide their teeth or give in to their animalistic impulses. They thirst: for success, belonging and emotional connection. Taylor, whose debut novel “Real Life” met widespread critical acclaim, is also known for his newsletter and Twitter account, which both combine anecdotes with broader cultural analyses on to...

When we learned that engineers are frantically working to get rid of the annoyingly loud hum that started projecting from the Golden Gate Bridge last summer, it got us wondering about other iconic sounds of the Bay Area. We’ll talk with KQED’s Bay Curious host Olivia Allen-Price about the stories behind some of the sounds of the area, like the sometimes deafening cawing of crows and the rattle of...

Alzheimer's disease affects more than 6 million people in the U.S., and there have been no good existing treatment options. That seemed to change earlier this month when the FDA approved a new drug called Aduhelm that claims to slow the progression of the disease. But while some patients are celebrating the news, many scientists say the drug will deliver marginal, or even no, benefits and that it...

Celebrated writer and podcaster Ashley C. Ford grew up knowing that her father was in prison, but she never knew the reason why. As she writes in her new memoir “Somebody’s Daughter,” she found herself confronting the truth about her father’s crime while coping with her own devastating trauma. The book chronicles Ford’s upbringing in a tight-knit, Black family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a place she e...

More than a half-century after the Fair Housing Act made housing discrimination illegal, segregation in residential communities is not only prevalent, but on the rise. More than 80% of metropolitan regions in the U.S. have become more segregated since 1990, and many Bay Area cities are among them, according to a report released this week from UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute. Housing...

Carl Nassib, a defensive lineman for the Las Vegas Raiders, made history this week as the first active NFL player to publicly identify as gay. We'll talk about the significance of his announcement with Rick Welts, president and chief operating officer of the Golden State Warriors. Welts himself came out while he was an executive with the Phoenix Suns, and we'll hear his reflections on the pressure...

As people resume pre-pandemic activities and a number of workers return to offices, some are dealing with pandemic hangovers in the form of burnout. The term “burnout” gained prevalence in recent years to describe when someone feels exhausted, ineffective and unmotivated to do activities they once enjoyed. Experts say this state, often caused by chronic stress, can affect workers at all levels and...

Often called a “regional Chinese cuisine,” Taiwanese food is making its own distinctive mark on the Bay Area food landscape. Taiwanese restaurants and pop-ups are serving up dishes like lu rou fan, a pork belly rice, and gua bao, an open pork bun, and cooking up dishes for an immigrant diaspora nostalgic for the night markets of Taipei. We take a deep dive into Taiwanese food with KQED food editor...

The Western monarch butterfly population has fallen by 99% since the 1980’s largely due to pesticide use and habitat loss. And the butterflies that have survived are changing their behavior in unexpected ways, remaining in the Bay Area over the winter instead of heading to the California coast from October to March. In response, conservation groups like Oakland’s Pollinator Posse are working to re...

Critical race theory has come under fire from some conservatives, elected leaders, parents and educators. The concept evolved decades ago from legal scholarship seeking to understand how racial bias plays a role in U.S. laws and institutions. Efforts to dismantle critical race theory are now gaining traction more than a year into what many people consider a national reckoning with racism. More tha...

Sacramento-based poet Alexandra Huynh says that poetry is a way both to acknowledge our reality and imagine a better world. Huynh, who was appointed the 2021 National Youth Poet Laureate last month, interweaves stories and images of fire in California, floods in Vietnam and the global impact of a single footprint. We’ll talk about her work, which addresses social injustice, the global effects of c...

Confronting the reality of climate change is often a terrifying and paralyzing activity. But, in the right hands, the story of our warming planet can be a tale of human ingenuity, resilience, and adaptability. Humans, for better or worse, find ways to adapt to almost anything, even the collapse of civilizations. Forum brings together two legendary local science fiction writers, Kim Stanley Robinso...

Decades ago, when forest ecologist Suzanne Simard set out to understand why forests tended to heal themselves when left to their own devices, she uncovered early evidence that trees communicate with each other, lending mutual aid during times of duress. Over the years her research deepened and expanded, marked by discoveries that trees relay information through cryptic underground fungal networks...

The Bay Area has recently been presented more as a bundle of problems than the generative, fascinating place that it’s been for decades. What are creators in the Bay Area thinking about the future of our cities? How might it change to be a better place for more of our residents? And what could Forum’s role be in building this community? These are some of the questions that Alexis Madrigal, Forum’s...

Of the 1,300 top Hollywood films of 2007 to 2019, just 44 featured Asian American and Pacific Islander lead actors, and of those only six were women. That’s according to a new USC Annenberg study that found a dearth of AAPI representation both behind and in front of the camera — as well as abundant on-screen stereotypical depictions that exoticize, hypersexualize or emasculate Asian characters. We...

Calling it “one of the greatest honors” he would have as president, on Thursday, Joe Biden signed new legislation to make June 19 a federal holiday. Known as Juneteenth, the holiday commemorates June 19th, 1865, the day when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas first learned that the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been signed two years earlier, had ended slavery. We talk about Juneteenth and...

Earlier this week, a video surfaced showing a man filling a bag with items in a San Francisco Walgreens then exiting the store on his bike with the stolen goods as onlookers and a security guard filmed him. This is the latest evidence of a problem that retailers say is driving them out of the city. Now, some in the retail and grocery industries are demanding a focus on solving these types of crime...

Former Obama Administration official Andy Slavitt was one of the few outside health experts regularly talking to the Trump White House during the pandemic's first year, bearing witness to what he calls "missed opportunities, willful neglect, and indifference and denial from our president." During that time, as Covid-19 deaths skyrocketed, Slavitt began publicly documenting what he saw, and those o...

As the lockdown ends, Bay Area arts exhibits and shows are re-emerging. Through a free app Kronos Quartet and Composer Ellen Reid present a curated, GPS-based experience that encourages reflection and exploration of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. How does it work, and why Golden Gate Park? We’ll speak with the team behind this new interactive experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Across the Bay Area, employers in retail, restaurants and other industries, report that there are more jobs available than workers to fill them. As California re-opens for business, concern is rising that a labor shortage may impede the state’s ability to bounce back from the pandemic. While there appears to be no single reason for the worker shortage, economists say the high cost of living, wage...

Forecasters are predicting an intense, multi-day heat wave in California this week that could shatter records for mid-June. Cities across the state are expected to see triple-digit temperatures, and parts of the Central Valley could reach 120 degrees. We'll talk about what the heat wave might signal for the state's warming climate, as well as how to best stay cool this week. Learn more about your...