KQED's Forum

When we talk about households led by single parents, we often think about mothers. But a rising number of families are led by single fathers: men who are parenting alone by choice – whether through adoption or surrogacy – or because of divorce, separation or widowhood. Single dads often have the same challenges as single mothers because the economics and emotional work of parenting solo are not al...

Imagine approaching a wildfire with nothing but a bandana to protect you. That’s how U.S. Forest Service firefighters typically battle blazes – with no masks or other respiratory protection. New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier recently headed into the field to find out why. We’ll talk to Dreier and a California firefighter about why it’s been so hard to change the culture and policy around prote...

California now has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.5%. While the Bay Area’s rate is a bit lower than the state’s, it is still higher than the national average, and continued tech company layoffs and threats to jobs from AI, have workers worried. We look at the shifting Bay Area labor market. Where are jobs disappearing and what could replace them? Will AI be a net boom or loss fo...

Remember owning your movies and music on tape, CD or DVD? Physical media is having a moment again as frustration mounts with streaming platforms that can remove beloved shows at a moment’s notice while charging endless subscription fees. More people report feeling nostalgic for a time when we could truly hold onto the media that we love. We’ll look into what’s driving this analog resurgence. What’...

This weekend kicks off the start of the college football season and for the first time ever, players coming on the field can expect a payment from their schools. While college sports is a multibillion business in the United States, schools were barred from giving direct compensation until a landmark court ruling in June changed the rules. Still, it’s unclear how much students will earn and how mon...

The American Academy of Pediatrics is breaking with the CDC for the first time in decades by continuing to recommend Covid-19 shots for infants and young children. By contrast the CDC, under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is no longer recommending the vaccine for healthy kids. Infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm joins us to help make sense of the conflicting me...

The notes app on your phone can be a repository of the quotidian aspects of life – a grocery list or reminder about a doctor’s appointment. But these notes can also be revealing, intimate and beautiful. It might contain a cache of private thoughts and feelings – the fragmented summary of a bad dream, the first line of a poem, or ideas for how to propose to your partner. This juxtaposition of the m...

“Democracy is doomed unless you give $15 RIGHT NOW.” Sound familiar? Those alarmist texts flooding your phone are part of a Democratic fundraising machine Stanford political science professor Adam Bonica says is more scam than strategy — sending millions to consultants while actual campaigns see a small fraction. We’ll talk about how the system works, who profits and why changes could be on the ho...

As both a science journalist and a sci-fi writer, Annalee Newitz thinks a lot about what our technology-saturated future might hold for us. Newitz’s new novella, “Automatic Noodle,” is set in 2060’s postwar San Francisco after California has seceded from the U.S. In the midst of an exploitative dystopia, a crew of robots opens a noodle shop with a sweet and resilient commitment to community, excel...

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’ll talk about the cases reshap...

California is the most expensive state in the country to buy a house for a host of reasons, including a lack of inventory and high costs of building. One oft-blamed culprit is the California Environmental Quality Act. Developers say CEQA, enacted in 1970, made housing more expensive by piling on environmental regulations and making it too easy for individuals to file lawsuits against projects in t...

Can the U.S. help bring an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine? President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Anchorage, Alaska on Friday to discuss a ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump has floated ideas including so-called “land swaps” and potential U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine, but with Ukraine excluded from the talks and Russia continuing to escalate its attacks, movement towar...

California has long prided itself on being a leader on environmental issues. Innovative laws like a carbon cap and trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions and CEQA, which allows for environmental reviews of development projects, were a hallmark of that leadership. But a focus on cost of living and the need for more housing are putting into question how the state will balance environmental...

Remember the flexed arm hang? The mile run? The Presidential Fitness Test – a battery of physical challenges that has prompted both dread and pride in students since the Eisenhower administration – is getting a reboot under the current administration. We’ll look at what California is currently doing to encourage youth fitness and what we’ve learned from more than 50 years of health data collected...

On the surface, being a perfectionist may not seem so bad. What’s wrong with wanting straight A’s or an impeccable home or conflict-free relationships? But, therapists have long warned that not managing perfectionism properly can lead to anxiety, depression and a wide range of other problems. Perfectionism manifests in various ways. Sometimes people expect themselves to be perfect or feel like the...

A federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to restore more than $80 million in grants it withheld from UCLA. The ruling comes as the government accuses the university of antisemitism on campus and discrimination in admissions. To resolve the funding freeze, Trump is demanding a $1 billion settlement, which Governor Gavin Newsom characterizes as extortion and UC of...

For months, economists have predicted that Trump’s tariff policy would crash the economy. While that has not yet happened, leading economic indicators, like inflation and jobs numbers, do indicate that the economy is slowing despite a strong stock market. We’ll talk about how this latest round of tariffs is impacting consumers and businesses, and hear how your spending and savings habits have chan...

Big Tech’s spending on AI infrastructure, like data centers, is so enormous that it’s reshaping the U.S. economy on a scale likened to the building of the railroads. AI is also now at the center of geopolitical conflicts, as President Trump strikes a deal with Nvidia allowing it to sell its chips to China, upending longstanding national security policy. And yet, the much-hyped launch of OpenAI’s C...

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...

What’s happened since former Vice President Kamala Harris said she’s not running to replace Gavin Newsom as California’s next governor? Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, who received early funding and an unofficial endorsement from Nancy Pelosi, said on Friday that she’s not running either. The announcement has again scrambled the political calculations of California’s gubernatorial hopefuls....

In the past, a U.S. president deployed the National Guard on domestic soil to enforce laws or quash protests once every few decades in extremely rare circumstances. President Donald Trump has now done so twice in a matter of three months.. The first was in June to tamp down protests against his immigration policies in Los Angeles. A federal trial began Monday over whether Trump had the authority t...

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...

Nearly eight years ago, journalist Shoshana Walter followed a lead on a drug and alcohol rehab program that put patients to work at a chicken plant. What she found was one of many programs that boasted treatment and recovery, but actually profited off the unpaid labor of people struggling with addiction. In her new book, “Rehab: An American Scandal”, Walter continues to interrogate America’s drug...

Gen Z is having less sex, and journalist Carter Sherman has spent the last several years interviewing more than 100 teens and 20-somethings about why. Sherman found it’s not because they’re uninterested or don’t have progressive views about sex. Instead, anxieties about the overturning of Roe v. Wade among other attacks on reproductive freedom, coming of age during an isolating pandemic and poor s...

Dating is going old school. More than a decade after apps like Tinder, Hinge and Bumble transformed dating, many singles are signing off and asking their friends, families and colleagues to set them up. It’s the kind of news that will make grandmothers everywhere rejoice. Being set up might seem quaint, but for most of modern dating, people met their spouses through friends and family. And with th...