KQED's Forum

Songwriter Michael Koppy says we’ve all been happily singing along to abysmal lyrics without noticing. In his book “Words and Music Into the Future” -- which he calls a treatise and a manifesto -- he excoriates the lyrics of even our most beloved songwriters, like Bob Dylan and John Lennon. How much attention do you pay to the lyrics of your favorite songs? We want to hear from you. What are the w...

On Wednesday, a Californian died from COVID-19 every two minutes. The level of loss is taking a toll on families and larger communities collectively grieving the more than 38,000 deaths -- many of which were preventable. The numbers don’t tell the whole story, however, of families waiting weeks to bury or cremate loved ones. Or households in which multiple family members died from COVID-19. Or com...

President Joe Biden on Wednesday is set to sign a group of executive actions to fight climate change, on issues ranging from fracking to green jobs. But will they go far enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Jared Blumenfeld and Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot join us to share their reaction to Biden’s plan.  They’ll also d...

What happens to a society that tells generation after generation of white men that they deserve power? That's the question author Ijeoma Oluo poses in her new book, "Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America." A follow-up to her bestselling book "So You Want to Talk About Race," Oluo continues her examination of race in America with a wide-ranging cultural history of white male identity...

With Governor Newsom easing lockdown orders Monday, many parents and students are hoping that school reopenings may soon follow. Last month, Newsom offered $2 billion in grants to schools that begin to open to in- person instruction by mid-February, but some school districts say the plan doesn’t give them the support and guidance they need to safely open. And teacher’s unions say they want to see...

Santa Cruz County ordered the evacuation of nearly 5000 residents Monday ahead of torrential storms predicted to unleash flooding and mudslides beginning on Tuesday. Forecasters say that the weather system, known as an atmospheric river, could bring up to ten feet of snow to the Sierra Nevada by the end of the week and extreme winds and rain throughout the state. We'll talk about the dangers the w...

According to climate reports released this month, the hottest years on record all occurred in the last seven years with 2020 becoming another record-making year for global temperatures. From historic wildfires in California, Australia and the Amazonian rainforest to a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season last year, the impacts of this warming are being felt across the globe. Slowing temperatu...

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to deliver an article of impeachment against former president Donald Trump to the Senate on Monday. This clears the way for a Senate trial, which will decide whether or not to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection at the Capitol. We get the latest on impeachment proceedings and catch up with President Biden’s most recent executive orders. Learn mor...

The California Department of Public Health announced Monday that the state will lift the stay at home order, allowing reopening of outdoor dining and other services. The news comes as Governor Newsom faces criticism over its lack of transparency on key coronavirus data, including how it calculates the ICU projections that had been used as benchmarks for shutting down. We get the latest. Learn more...

Millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. would have a path to citizenship in eight years or less, under the sweeping reform bill President Biden submitted to Congress this week. Biden also issued orders preserving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, halting border wall construction and ending the travel ban that targeted Muslim countries. We'll review the Biden...

The ban on outdoor dining is “arbitrary, irrational, and unfair” according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by a coalition of Bay Area restaurants and wineries. The suit says that there is no scientific evidence to support the spread of COVID-19 in outdoor settings, and it warns that businesses will continue to close unless the ban is reversed. The state says the ban is necessary to save lives and preve...

George Saunders is one of the most celebrated fiction writers today but his new book looks back to examine great stories of the past. "A Swim in the Pond in the Rain" is a close look at seven classic 19th century Russian short stories that grew out of a class he's long taught on Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol as a creative writing teacher. Saunders approaches the work with a writer's curiosi...

As COVID-19 continues to spread and mutate nearly a year into the pandemic, many people struggle with assessing the risk of day-to-day activities amid a sluggish vaccine rollout. The numbers in California -- more than 3 million cases and more than 35,000 deaths -- while rising, are beginning to level out. At the same time, California Gov. Gavin Newsom promised that the state would vaccinate 1 mill...

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn into office Wednesday with an inaugural message of unity. The new administration faces extreme challenges, from far right radicals and the pandemic to a failing economy and foreign cyber attacks. President Biden got right to work, signing 17 executive orders, many aimed at rolling back Trump policies. We’ll talk about the inauguration...

President Biden's proposed plan to halt the spread of the coronavirus includes federal oversight of vaccination via community vaccination centers and hiring 100,000 public health workers to help out. Epidemiologist and sociologist Nicholas Christakis joins us to assess the plan. We’ll also get Christakis’ thoughts on how and when we might get back to normal and his book "Apollo's Arrow: The Profou...

The inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday featured an optimistic address from President Biden and a stirring poem read by Los Angeles poet Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history. Many young people, some who voted for the first time to elect Biden, are looking for the new administration to tackle challenges such as climate change, immi...

“The past has its own terrible inevitability. But it is never too late to change the future.” That’s according to historian Heather Cox Richardson, who observes that the political, racial and economic divisions in the country evoke the crises faced by the nation on the brink of the Civil War. And now as we prepare for a transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden and the nation’s first female...

Throughout the presidency of Donald Trump, many media outlets across the United States were reluctant to label him a liar or a racist, even when his actions merited those terms, or to cover White supremacy as more than a fringe movement. Now, in the wake of the deadly pro-Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, news organizations are grappling with the consequences of their whitewashed political c...

Preparations and security measures continue in Washington, D.C., for Wednesday’s inauguration, and the investigation into the insurrection at the Capitol continues. And as the nation looks to a transition in leadership, on Thursday, President elect Biden introduced an almost $2 trillion economic relief package. We'll discuss the latest political developments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

Our news this month is flooded with images of white supremacists storming the U.S. Capitol and of a confederate flag being hoisted through its halls. This after months of reporting on police killings of people of color, and the racial disparities in COVID deaths. And adults are not the only ones seeing these images and hearing these stories; they're seeping through to our kids too. Should we be sh...

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." But what would he say about this particular bend – four years of President Trump culminating in a violent insurrection? Emory University professor Audra Gillespie, who has written about the legacy of the civil rights movement in American politics, joins us to reflect on how Dr....

Faced with one of the slowest vaccination rollouts in the nation, California Governor Newsom announced Wednesday that Covid-19 vaccines would be available to seniors 65 years and older. While many welcomed news of an expanded eligibility group, local governments and health officials struggled to keep up with demand, and across the state, Californians are asking why it is so hard to get information...

Several Capitol police officers have been suspended, and at least a dozen are under investigation for possible complicity in the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol last week. The actions of the officers -- including one who posed for a selfie with insurrectionists and another who appeared to direct the mob around the building -- have exposed anew the force's troubled history of discrimination agains...

Rancor and division were on full display Wednesday as the U.S. House of Representatives debated and then voted to impeach President Trump for inciting his supporters to storm the nation’s Capitol last week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has excluded the possibility of an impeachment trial before the inauguration. We get the latest on the historic impeachment and what happens next. Learn m...

A majority in the House impeached President Trump on Wednesday for inciting the deadly insurrection at the Capitol last week, while many Republican lawmakers continued to say they oppose impeachment in the name of "unity." And on Monday, President-elect Joe Biden's team announced that the theme for Inauguration Day will be "America United," echoing his campaign and post-election messaging calling...