KQED's Forum

More than 350,000 Californians are now behind on their student loan payments – the highest delinquency rate for any type of debt in over two decades, according to the California Policy Lab. Experts say the missed payments are a symptom of a financial safety net that was already broken before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted loan payments and is now further unraveling as borrowers face higher bills,...

Wikipedia, the crowdsourced encyclopedia, is one of the world’s most visited websites, with 11 billion page views each month. Its founder, Jimmy Wales, credits its success to one thing — trust — which he sees at odds with our increasing loss of faith in institutions and in each other. In his new book, he lays out what he calls a “blueprint for building things that last” in volatile times. We’ll ta...

As mayor of San Jose, Matt Mahan has touted his business credentials and his common sense approach to handling issues like homelessness and crime.  In 2024, Mahan was reelected to the office with  87% of the vote, and his profile has risen recently as he has criticized Governor Gavin Newsom’s trolling of President Trump.  According to Mahan, “As mayors, we don’t get rewarded for clever tweets or i...

Minutes before his high-stakes meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping on Thursday, President Trump took to social media to say the U.S. would resume nuclear weapons tests for the first time in decades. It’s the latest in a foreign policy approach that veteran New York Times national security reporter David Sanger calls a mix of instinct, grievance and ego, marked by swerves and reversals. We ta...

Orange marigolds, sugar skulls, skeleton face paint, and altars lined with photos and candles have become familiar elements for commemorating Day of the Dead, the ritual practice of honoring the deceased that has become a cultural phenomenon. Many of the traditions go back thousands of years to the indigenous peoples of Mexico, but others have roots in the United States, where the some of the firs...

Costco, the bulk grocery chain known for consistency, devoted employees and discounts, has 145 million members worldwide. New Yorker staff writer Molly Fischer grew up going to a Costco in San Jose (Warehouse No. 148, on Senter Road), and she says “being a child of California in the eighties and nineties offered a front-row seat to the rise of a retail juggernaut.” But new management and Wall Stre...

For 20 years, the Emmy- and James Beard-award winning show “Check, Please! Bay Area” has brought together local diners to kibbitz about their favorite restaurants. The concept is simple: three locals each recommend a restaurant, everyone tries the places out, and they meet for a spirited conversation about what they liked, what they loved, and what they could do without. The restaurants reviewed r...

Next week, California voters will decide whether to approve Proposition 50, which would temporarily redraw Congressional district maps to favor Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections. This comes after Republican lawmakers in Texas have redrawn districts to favor their party – with Republican leaders in Indiana, North Carolina and Missouri looking to follow suit. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court appea...

As the federal government shutdown extends to its fifth week, its impacts have become more widespread. Over one million federal workers are either on furlough or working unpaid. Most federal parks remain closed. Head Start programs are at risk of closure. And the USDA has announced it would suspend funding for SNAP, a food program that serves over 40 million Americans, including 5.38 million Calif...

Joyce Vance was a federal prosecutor for 25 years, resigning on the eve of Donald Trump’s first inauguration. Now, she’s a law professor, a legal analyst for NBC and MSNBC and author of the popular Substack “Civil Discourse,” signing off every post with the four words: “We’re in this together.” In a new book she encourages readers to not despair at the erosion of democratic norms, but to fight bac...

One of the main drivers of homelessness in the Bay Area is simply a lack of affordable housing for people with the very lowest incomes. In Part 4 of our series “In Search of Home: Solutions for the Homelessness Crisis” we’ll take a look at some innovative strategies developers and cities are exploring to fund projects and lower the cost of construction. We bring together housing developers, housin...

Have you watched a movie review on YouTube or an album takedown on TikTok? Cultural criticism is available for free everywhere which might explain why publications like the New York Times and Vanity Fair are trimming their staffs of professional reviewers. We talk to pop culture critic Angelica Jade Bastién and music critic Kelefa Sanneh about why traditional criticism should endure, even when eve...

The Pentagon announced Friday that the military is sending an aircraft carrier to South America. It’s the latest in the escalating show of force against Venezuela, including strikes on ten boats that the Trump administration says were involved in drug smuggling, which killed 43 people. We talk about the legality of the actions and what the administration hopes to achieve. Then, we turn to the migh...

There’s the picture book you wanted your parent or caregiver to read to you over and over. There’s the one with musical rhymes you love performing for your kids. The editors at the Atlantic’s books desk chose 65 “essential” children’s books, spanning the 1936 classic “The Story of Ferdinand” to 2024’s “I’m Sorry You Got Mad.” The list includes bedtime stories, books that teach counting and tales t...

While indulging in online retail therapy, you’ve probably seen an option at checkout to buy now, pay later. Companies like Afterpay, Affirm, and Klarna let consumers pay in four installments for nearly anything, including clothes, concert tickets, or even a burrito. For some consumers, it’s a tech-assisted layaway plan that helps when cash is tight. For others, it’s a chance to splurge on otherwis...

The Trump administration’s constant flouting of court orders, its conversion of ICE into a massive paramilitary organization, its extortion of universities and corporations. It’s all prompted political commentator David Brooks to pose what he calls the question of the decade: “why hasn’t a resistance movement materialized here?” A self-described moderate, Brooks says we’re naive to think Trumpism...

The Trump administration has fired dozens of immigration judges in California seemingly without cause and despite growing backlogs of cases. Judges who lost their jobs say these firings will impede due process for millions of immigrants facing deportation. This comes at a time when federal authorities want to deport millions of people as quickly as possible. We talk with two local immigration judg...

Reports are rising of addiction, overdose and death tied to 7-OH, a potent new synthetic drug. The painkiller is a lab-made offshoot of the herbal drug kratom. 7-OH is more than 10 times stronger than morphine and has been dubbed “gas station heroin” because it’s sold openly in gas stations and vape shops, including here in California. At least six people in Los Angeles have died from overdoses re...

How exactly does the mind work? How do we learn and make decisions? And how does that compare to the way AI thinks? In their new book, “The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines,” San Francisco State psychologist Gaurav Suri and Stanford’s Jay McClelland examine how neural networks work in our brains, and in AI. Guests: Gaurav Suri, computational neuroscientist and professo...

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl leads the largest synagogue in New York City. But she says she’s never been so afraid to talk about Israel. That’s because she thinks that compassion for people suffering on either side of the war in Gaza has come to be seen as disloyal and even threatening – a zero sum empathy calculus that also applies to ideological battles fought in our country every day. Buchdahl is the...

The cost of healthcare insurance is at the core of the government shutdown. Democrats and Republicans are at a stalemate over the extension of subsidies that decrease the price of insurance purchased under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Without the extension, experts predict a sharp increase in premiums for the 44 million Americans who rely on this health insurance. And hundreds...

Unions for federal employees say the White House is planning thousands more layoffs, even though a federal judge in San Francisco has blocked it. This is taking place as the Trump administration has left the National Labor Relations Board paralyzed after firing Biden-appointed members upon taking office. We talk with William Gould IV, the former National Labor Relations Board Chairman, about the r...

Cory Doctorow coined a word to describe how what we once loved about the internet, and relied on, has become exploitative, corrosive, and anti-user. And now he’s written a book about it, “Enshittification: Why Everything Got Worse and What to Do About It.” He analyzes how TikTok, Google Search, email, music streaming and other services and platforms  – technology that we expect to always improve –...

Glynn Washington, host of KQED and Snap Judgment’s “Spooked,” joins us to talk about the podcast’s new season called The Crossroads. It takes stories about encounters with the unknown to new levels by exploring what happens when desperation drives us to bargain with dark forces. As “Spooked” tours the West Coast — with shows on Oct. 23 in Los Angeles and Oct. 25 in Oakland – we’ll talk about why w...

Why do we leave our homelands? That is the central question which animates the newest work of San Francisco poet laureate Genny Lim and the Bay Area-based Del Sol Quartet. Together, Lim and the musicians explore the implications of migration and the search for a new home in their work, “Facing the Moon: Songs of the Diaspora.” They join us live in the studio for a performance and conversation. Lea...