KQED's Forum

San Jose mayor Matt Mahan has only been in office about a year but he’s already up for re-election in March. We talk to mayor Mahan in our San Jose studio about what he’s learned in the past year that informs his plans to address San Jose’s most pressing issues including homelessness, housing and policing. Then we check in with Santa Clara Board of Supervisors president Susan Ellenberg about the c...

“Our national mythos,” writes historian Blair LM Kelley, “leaves little room for Black workers, or to glean any lessons from their history.” Kelley’s latest book “Black Folk” offers a corrective, focusing on the lives of Black working people after the Southern Emancipation, the challenges they faced bringing their skills to bear and the networks of resistance they formed. Kelley’s book is also per...

Court cases like the Dred Scott decision and Brown v. Board of Education are among the legal milestones that mark the arduous journey towards civil rights. But throughout the 19th century, ordinary Black Americans, freed and enslaved, sought to enforce their rights under the law. It’s a hidden and largely untold story of how Blacks both relied on, trusted in, and tried to leverage the legal system...

How soon will Californians be able to travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco by high-speed rail? In welcome news, the California High-Speed Rail Authority received nearly $3.1 billion in federal funding last month to advance work on the project. Environmental reviews are largely complete for the 500-mile route, and construction has begun on bridges and tunnels in the Central Valley. But the...

The key from your first apartment. An old typewriter you used to write your thesis. Fabric buttons made by your grandmother. We all have objects, big and small, that have no real monetary value, but are precious. They tell the story of our lives or remind us of a happy or even sad time. These are the objects that constitute our own personal archive. We’ll talk to artists and writers about the thin...

“Gentle parenting” is generally described as parenting your child without shame, blame or punishment. It has gained traction in recent years, driven in large part by social media. Fans of the approach say it’s all about treating kids with empathy and respect, a stark contrast to the power dynamics of prior generations. But what happens when those well-meaning techniques — modeled so simply in Inst...

A lot of ink has been spilled about the outflow of workers from San Francisco and the Bay Area but, according to a recent Harvard Business Review article, “In the technology world, San Francisco remains the center. It remains the sun on which the planets orbit.” Those planets include places like Portland, Seattle, and Austin, to which companies and workers decamped during the pandemic. This theory...

In a case with potentially monumental legal and political implications, the U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide if former President Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the 2024 ballot. Late last year, the Colorado Supreme Court issued an opinion removing him from the state’s primary ballot for his effort to overturn the 2020 election and his incitement of the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capit...

Could 2024 be the year we start wearing computers on our faces en masse? Might scientists cure sickle cell patients and move to geothermal energy? The answer is yes, according to the MIT Technology Review. Each year, the journal publishes a list of its top 10 predictions of technologies that could make a lasting impact in the year to come. This year’s list focuses on advancements in health, green...

Poll after poll finds Americans believe the economy is getting worse. Yet, indicators such as low unemployment rates, rising wages and declining inflation tell a different story. Economists agree that the country managed to avoid another recession, but why don’t we feel good about it? Prior to 2020, Americans’ feelings about the economy tracked with objective figures, but more recently perception...

If elected to a second term Donald Trump has promised to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” in addition to other harsh approaches to immigration. President Joe Biden, who has long been criticized for continuing many Trump era immigration policies, now faces increasing pressure from both parties to step up enforcement as a record number of migrants are crossi...

18 California children are suing the EPA for failing to protect them from climate change. The lawsuit is one of many efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry to account that reporter Dharna Noor highlights in her series for the Guardian US called “Big Oil Uncovered.” We’ll talk to her about the strategies oil and gas companies are using to delay or avoid action on climate change — and the people a...

Last year, nearly a quarter of public school students in California were considered “chronically absent” – more than double what it was before the pandemic. Factors such as parent work schedules, poverty, and lack of interest have led millions of students to miss more than 10 percent of the school year. In response, many schools are trying everything from hiring social workers to offering Uber rid...

Since China’s annexation of Tibet in the 1950s, more than 100,000 Tibetans have fled the mountainous region, known as the rooftop of the world. Most of those refugees live with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, citizens of what’s considered the Tibetan government in exile. Journalist Amy Yee has been documenting the stories of Tibetans outside Tibet — in Dharamsala, as well as in Australia, Bel...

More than 25% of Americans identify as having no religious affiliation and that number is on the rise according to Pew Research. While atheists –also called freethinkers, humanists or secularists –are defined by their lack of religious faith, many are still seeking community to ponder life’s existential questions. For those wanting the fellowship and soul searching found in churches, synagogues an...

In a recent piece for the New Yorker called “The Year of Ozempic,” journalist and physician Dhruv Khullar writes that “we may look back on new weight-loss drugs as some of the greatest advances in the annals of chronic disease.” But the drugs don’t work for everyone, and there are ongoing questions about side effects, costs and availability. We’ll talk with Khullar about his piece and check in wit...

Before you open your next electricity bill, you might want to brace yourself. PG&E is hiking their rates starting this month, and this one is historic. Bills for the average household are expected to jump $34.50 a month and there could be more rate hikes on the horizon. The increase will fund projects addressing wildfire mitigation, especially an unprecedented attempt to bury power lines in high-r...

When Manjula Martin fled her West Sonoma home in the summer of 2020 with wildfire raging around her, she realized her go bag was packed for an apocalypse, not a sleepover. She had flashlights, but no toothbrush. Books, but no shampoo. In her debut memoir, “The Last Fire Season,” Martin reflects on how Californians are simultaneously preparing for the end of the world, while also going about their...

Every year KQED food editor Luke Tsai publishes a list of his favorite dishes that he tried that year, in part to inspire the rest of us to up our culinary game. In 2023, his list included Korean-style sourdough toast from Rize Up Bakery, braised oxtails from Haitian restaurant T’Chaka, and the mezze brunch board from Palestinian restaurant Lulu. For this installment of All You Can Eat, our regula...

Time flies. Time is money. Time waits for no one. There is no shortage of aphorisms about time because we are consumed by the minutes, hours, days and years that constitute a life. We want to use time efficiently; we want to get the most out of it; we feel guilty wasting it. But maybe we should reclaim our relationship with time. That’s what co-hosts Becca Rashid and Ian Bogost argue for in the la...

“Our experience as humans make it challenging to grasp the conditions that occur inside the planet,” writes scientist Dr. Sabine Stanley. “There’s just nothing like it in our everyday experience.” Stanley has dedicated her career to uncovering the mysterious inner workings of Earth and other planets in our solar system. Below a planet’s surface can be a swirling world of wonder from magnetism, rot...

“I am searching for the soul-family from whom I descend.” That’s how former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith describes the impulse animating her latest book “To Free the Captives,” a chronicle of her endeavors to learn more about her father’s ancestors and the challenges they faced in the deep south of the early 20th century, born as they were “into a nation intent upon their diminishment and inu...

You may think that winter is a time when a garden lies fallow, earth upturned and waiting for spring. But there is a lot to do in a winter garden, particularly in our California climate. There is fertilizing, pruning, and even nurturing seedlings for spring. At this moment, when the days are shorter and the world feels darker, tending a garden can settle our mind and also remind us about the promi...

For almost as long as there’s been a New York Times Book Review — that is, since 1896 — their book editors have named the annual standouts of the many, many, many books they read. And for the past two decades, they’ve named the 10 Best Books of the year, recognizing some of the most inventive and well-crafted works of fiction and nonfiction. 2023’s standouts include a dystopian satire, a “journey...

Every day, first responders in the Bay Area are straining to help people struggling with addiction. Firefighters and paramedics respond to emergency calls for people acting erratically or overdosing on drugs. Nurses administer care when they arrive at hospitals. Then, a network of social workers and counselors try to intervene with services. Many of those workers see their jobs as crucial, but als...