KQED's Forum

Aisha Harris has long been an observer of pop culture. Today she serves as critic and co-host of NPR’s hit podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, but in the 1990s she was growing up in suburban Connecticut, watching The Powerpuff Girls, and listening to her parents play (and often sing) Stevie Wonder. In her new book “Wannabe,” Harris takes a close look at the pop culture that has shaped who she is today...

On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump will be arraigned in a Florida courtroom on charges that he mishandled classified documents and attempted to obstruct justice. According to the 37-count indictment, Trump corralled top secret documents in closets, storage rooms and even a bathroom in Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence. Included in the documents were information about the country’s nuclear p...

We discuss the Ukraine military’s long-awaited counter-offensive, signaling a new phase in its war with Russia. The push comes as the country reels from the catastrophic Nova Kakhovka dam collapse. We’ll get the latest from Ukraine and talk with the director of a new documentary on the war, “20 Days in Mariupol”. Guests: Steven Pifer, affiliate, Center for International Security and Cooperation at...

Diet culture permeates our society. And that’s impacting our kids. Children as young as 3 learn to associate being fat with negative traits, and anti-fat bias can be found in the doctor’s office, in the classroom and on the sports field. In her new book “Fat Talk,” author Virginia Sole-Smith argues we need to take a new approach to how we navigate and discuss fatness and anti-fat bias with our chi...

Singer Sid Sriram was born in southern India, but his family moved to Fremont when he was just a year old. His voice and his sound are the product of his family’s legacy as carnatic traditional signers and of a childhood in the Bay Area suburbs, listening to jazz and hip hop. Sriram has already achieved fame in India, his career expanded globally after singing for Grammy-Award winning composer A.R...

Humorist Samantha Irby is known for her all-too-relatable essay collections, including 2020’s bestseller “Wow, No Thank You,” and she’s written some of the knockout punch lines on shows like “Shrill” and “And Just Like That.” Her new essay collection, “Quietly Hostile,” explores how success and Hollywood aren’t as glamorous as her hate mail assumes. And with a light touch, she gives toilet etiquet...

Every city sits where it does for geological reasons, be that suitable terrain, availability of water or other natural resources, good climate or beautiful scenery. In the case of Oakland, it was all of these things. Since the original inhabitants, the Ohlones, Oakland has attracted settlers for its landscape, beauty and resources, each of which has a connection with its distinctive geology. But a...

Allergies have intensified over the last few decades. An estimated 30 to 40 percent of the global population has some form of allergy, and experts say that number could rise to 50 percent by the year 2030. So what’s behind this? Research shows it’s a complicated picture, with climate change, our stress levels and genetics all playing roles. We talk to medical anthropologist Theresa McPhail, author...

San Francisco has long been a favorite target of conservative news outlets. But a recent CNN special on the city’s drug and homelessness crises posed the question, “What Happened to San Francisco?” and a New York magazine piece asks: “What is it like to live in a city that no longer believes its problems can be fixed?” For Mayor London Breed, talk of a San Francisco “doom loop” is premature. Her n...

Few drugs in history have generated as much controversy, or held as much promise as MDMA, writes science journalist Rachel Nuwer. Health officials once said the psychedelic drug known as Ecstasy or Molly would eat holes in the brains of the people who took it. Decades later, researchers are on the verge of applying for federal authorization to use the drug to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,...

Some people may think palm trees are native to California, but they’re not. In fact, non-native flora abound throughout our state. A bill moving through the California Legislature aims to boost the proliferation of native plants by requiring landscaping on some public and commercial areas to use at least 75 percent low-water, native plants by 2035. The idea is to promote cultivation of California’...

Citing an increased risk of natural disasters, two of California’s largest property insurers, State Farm and Allstate, are no longer selling new homeowners insurance in the state. Insurers have been shrinking their coverage areas in California for the last few years, especially in wildfire-prone regions, but the latest moves signal just how much insurers are accounting for the increasing costs of...

For most of its history, Santa Clara based company Nvidia has been known primarily as a designer of computer parts meant for video games. But in recent years, those parts have become a crucial part of artificial intelligence programs. Now, Nvidia dominates the market of graphics processing units, or GPUs, meant for AI at a time when interest in AI is exploding. Skyrocketing demand for these GPUs h...

Haggling. For some people, a transaction is not complete if it doesn’t include a request for a discount, an upgrade or something more. For others, the very idea of haggling makes them cringe. They don’t want to look like a jerk or seem petty about money. But, in an economy where it feels like things are more expensive than ever, haggling can save you money and time. With a little or a lot of haggl...

When music streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music recommend a song or an album, it can be a make-or-break moment for lesser-known artists. But it still doesn’t pay the bills: musicians earn on average less than half of a cent per stream unless they’re among a platform’s top artists. Streaming fraud and copycat tracks can also cut into their pay — types of theft that could be made even easi...

In her new book, “Raw Dog: The Naked Truth about Hot Dogs,” author and comedian Jamie Loftus dials in on why America loves the hot dog: “They’re high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food and they’re hangover food and they’re deeply American for reasons that few people can explain but everyone has been told their entire lives.” Loftus chronicles her cross-country journey eating some of...

Beginning in the 19th century, Americans harvested ice from frozen lakes and transported it to warm places, turning ice harvesting and delivery into a lucrative business. Then came manufacturing and refrigeration, ice cream and iced tea. One of the first films made in America was of an ice hockey game. These are some of ice’s cultural moments that historian and journalist Amy Brady explores in “IC...

In recent months, protesters targeted businesses including the Los Angeles Dodgers, retailer Target and beer maker Anheuser-Busch for celebrating the LGBTQ+ community. While many companies rushed to embrace the queer community in recent years, in the face of intense backlash, they are now struggling to navigate the political and social divides. Meanwhile, gay rights advocates say now is the time f...

Child labor violations are on the rise across the country. Yet Republicans in multiple states are working to roll back regulations for underaged workers, including lowering age limits, removing restrictions for dangerous work and extending allowable work hours, including on school nights. Critics say the new laws endanger children, depress wages and make it harder for regulatory officials to catch...

More data from the 2020 Census reveals demographic changes that paint a picture of a different Bay Area today than that of a decade ago. In conjunction with migration out of the area during the pandemic, the region’s population is getting older and homeownership rates are dropping. Racial demographics throughout the nine counties are also shifting, but maybe not in the way you’d expect. We’ll talk...

“What do you do?” is one of the first questions we ask when meeting new people. And that’s part of the increasingly common American belief that our jobs define who we are. Journalist Simone Stolzoff is a recovering “workist” himself who interviewed more than 100 people — from corporate lawyers in Manhattan to fast-food workers in California — about the role that work plays in their self-identities...

Parents of young kids in California often find that childcare is not only expensive, but also hard to secure and even more so for low-income families. The cost of childcare eats up between 8 and 19 percent of family household income, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. While high costs and lack of availability have been problems for decades, the pandemic made it worse. Numerous childcare ce...

It seems like actor and director Randall Park has been in everything. “Veep.” “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” “WandaVision.” “Aquaman.” He played an amiable version of the North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un in the movie “The Interview.” He starred and co-wrote the Netflix hit movie “Always Be My Maybe” with Ali Wong. And his single scene in “The Office” playing the Asian version of lead character Jim is a...

The buoyant protagonist of San Francisco writer Kathryn Ma’s new novel, The Chinese Groove, migrates from China, where he’s part of the outcast branch of his family, to San Francisco, where he is sure his distant relatives will welcome and nurture him and shepherd him along his path. Forum talks to Ma about the comedy of errors that follow, San Francisco through a new immigrant’s eyes and her char...

Connie Wang never intended to write a book about her mother. It felt almost too cliched – the first generation immigrant writing about her parent’s sacrifice. But her mother, with her rejection of the trope that she should be a model minority, her belief that the perfect dinner is two creme brulees, and her intense devotion to the movie “Magic Mike XXL,” made her an irresistible topic for Wang. In...