KQED's Forum

Crises unfold around us daily: gun violence, devastating foreign wars and U.S. democratic norms shattering. And still, we cook dinner and go to work. For those directly affected, the harms are inescapable. But for others, the contrast between catastrophic headlines and ordinary routines creates a dizzying dissonance: life moving as normal, against a backdrop of unsettling change. We’ll talk about...

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...

Climatologist Michael Mann and vaccine expert Peter Hotez say we’re in an “antiscience superstorm.” It’s a movement that has upended federal health agencies, defunded research and weaponized social media and AI to advance its agenda. And now, some of the nation’s most vocal antiscience figures are in major positions of power. We talk to Hotez and Mann about their daily battles against disinformati...

For the second time in just four months, BART had a systemwide outage on Friday, stranding morning commuters for hours and bringing Bay Bridge traffic to a standstill. The maddening meltdown is but one of the BART’s major woes. A promised $750 million dollar loan to shore up struggling Bay Area transit agencies has been tied up in back-room wrangling in Sacramento. We talk with KQED transit report...

After a whale struck Maurice and Maralyn Bailey’s boat in 1972, the British couple found themselves stranded on a tiny rubber raft in the Pacific Ocean. In a new book, journalist Sophie Elmhirst looks at how the shipwrecked couple survived together for months – starving and pushed to their emotional limits. We’ll talk to Elmhirst about relationships under extreme conditions and why we’re so drawn...

Every month, 5.5 million Californians rely on Cal Fresh, the state’s version of food stamps. But Trump’s $186 billion in cuts to SNAP, the nation’s primary anti-hunger program, means that California will lose billions of dollars in funding. Experts note that these changes to SNAP, which began rolling out this month, constitute a drastic overhaul of the social safety net program and threaten to inc...

Millions of people are having deeply personal conversations with AI chatbots, but how safe are these interactions? We’re joined by two technology reporters who have been investigating troubling cases, including a California teenager whose months-long chats with ChatGPT took a tragic turn and a vulnerable man who was convinced by one of Meta’s AI female personas to “meet” in person. We look at how...

Political economist, educator, author, and former labor secretary, Robert Reich, has spent decades examining inequality as a way to make sense of the world. His career has focused on economic justice, the impacts of globalization and our shifting economy. We’ll talk with Reich, who recently retired from teaching at UC Berkeley, about the lessons he’s learned and taught, the influence of corporate...

California’s long-delayed high speed rail project is finally ready to start laying tracks in the Central Valley next year. But the Trump administration has called it a “rail to nowhere,” pointing to construction delays and a budget that’s ballooned by $100 billion. The federal government has clawed back $4 million in grant funding – a move Governor Newsom says is illegal and that California plans...

After decades spent representing the East Bay in Congress, Barbara Lee was inaugurated as Oakland’s new mayor three months ago. She’s now at the helm of a city with a lot of local pride and boasting rights, but also with brutal financial challenges, a politics battered by scandal and recall, and a citizenry eager for progress on crime, homelessness and other urban woes. Barbara Lee joins us to tal...

When political advisor Chloe Dalton found an injured newborn hare near her home in the countryside, she decided to nurse it back to health. The two quickly formed a bond of quiet companionship. We talk to Dalton about what the hare taught her about trust, attention, preparing for loss and the ordinary magic of engaging closely with the natural world. Her new memoir is “Raising Hare.” What has a re...

What does it mean to be an “auntie”? Studies have shown that aunties — whether they are a family member, a chosen maternal figure or a parent’s friend — play a crucial support role in a child’s upbringing. But the work doesn’t end at the family unit. Aunties are often the ones showing up and acting as powerful forces of social change. We’ll talk with artists, scholars and community organizers abou...

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, California has aspired to be a national haven for abortion rights. But the reality is more complicated. Catholic hospitals in the state are refusing emergency care for miscarriages, major retailers have refused to stock abortion medications and federal lawsuits are targeting California doctors and pharmacies. We listen back to our conversatio...

The fast-evolving retail landscape has zapped the life out of once bustling shopping centers throughout the Bay Area. And yet, many of the region’s legacy malls are still thriving. While San Francisco Centre, the former home of high-end department stores downtown, is now mostly empty, a revamped Stonestown in San Francisco’s west side is full of shoppers. Tenants such as indoor arcades, escape roo...

The Republican spending bill signed into law by President Trump last month slashes an estimated $150 billion in federal Medicaid funding to California over the next 10 years. Nearly 40% percent of Californians rely on Medi-Cal for health coverage, and now millions are expected to fall off the rolls. That’s leaving medical providers bracing for impacts, especially in places already struggling to se...

Voters in the Sunset district of San Francisco are casting ballots on whether to recall their supervisor Joel Engardio. Engardio, a vocal champion of the city’s previous recalls of three school board members and former District Attorney Chesa Boudin, has angered residents in his district over his support of Proposition K, which closed the oceanfront’s Great Highway. The 2-mile stretch of land open...

In Los Angeles County—famous for its sunshine—just 20% of urbanized areas are shaded at noon. That’s creating a serious health hazard for people who work outdoors, wait at bus stops or play outside. Environmental journalist Sam Bloch argues that shade should be considered a basic human right, akin to access to clean air and safe drinking water. We speak with Bloch about why modern cities have so l...

As a new crop of students start school this fall, Bay Area colleges and universities are navigating headwinds ranging from funding cuts to a shrinking student population. Fewer Californians are enrolling in college than a decade ago and now schools are bracing for a “demographic cliff,” a drop in high school graduates stemming from lower birth rates after the Great Recession. At the same time, col...

Mars is inhospitable to human life with its cosmic radiation, atmosphere of carbon dioxide and nights as cold as 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. But as Space X founder Elon Musk pledges to colonize Mars, and as NASA renews its push for interplanetary travel, a husband and wife duo has explored whether people really can live in space. What would it require to have babies on another planet? To gr...

On September 1, 1950, Oakland’s Fairyland opened its gates to 15,000 visitors who paid between 9 and 14 cents to explore this storybook adventure land. The park, with its whimsical fairy tale set pieces and rides geared for young children, was a wild success inspiring copycats across the country. It even served as inspiration to Walt Disney himself. Today, Fairyland offers respite and entertainmen...

In October 2005, about six weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck, New Orleans-born writer Clint Smith returned to his devastated home to find haunting remnants: a ruined wedding dress, a chair hanging from a chandelier, a perfectly preserved birthday cake. Smith has continued to visit his hometown, marking progress and the destruction still visible. We talk to him about his new piece for the Atlant...

Before the COVID pandemic hit, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf averaged over 15 million visitors each year. While the waterfront is still one of the most visited areas in the region, the local businesses — including fishing companies, souvenir shops and restaurants — are struggling from a lack of investment, high rents and lower tourism. Now, the Port of San Francisco has announced a multi-year...

In a highly unusual move, the Trump Administration announced the government will take a 10 percent equity stake in computer chipmaker Intel. The new arrangement makes the U.S. government the largest shareholder in Intel, a relationship many economists, policy experts and elected officials say is problematic, unnecessary and signals an overreach of presidential power. Earlier in August, fellow chip...

California Republican lawmakers are suing to block Governor Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan from the November ballot, as President Trump vows his own lawsuit against the state’s effort to redraw its congressional maps to favor Democrats. That’s despite Trump encouraging a similar effort in Texas that favors Republicans. Meanwhile, Newsom is trolling the President on social media, co-opting his t...

Roommate relationships are increasingly common, with a record-high 6.8 million households in America reporting that they share space with roommates and boarders. Sharing a home can be wonderful, but it also creates questions like how should you negotiate fridge space – and whether it’s okay that your romantic partner sleeps over. We’re joined by a comedian who mediates roommate conflicts Judge Jud...