KQED's Forum

“In Indian Country, everybody seems to know somebody who’s gone missing or been murdered,” begins LA Times reporter Hannah Wiley’s reporting on the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in California. The Sovereign Bodies Institute reports that at least 183 indigenous women and girls have disappeared or were murdered in California, a figure it says could be many times higher ow...

When he was named San Francisco Poet Laureate in 2021, Tongo Eisen Martin said, “I want to push even further into places where poetry has not yet permeated.” He’s taken poetry to youth in homeless shelters, group homes and psych wards. Using poetry as a means to bring power, beauty and truth to more people is a goal that unites several poets and poet laureates joining Forum to mark the beginning o...

As America gradually becomes a cashless society, credit card rewards programs have become increasingly popular, offering to give consumers back a portion of what they spend in the form of points to be used on flights or hotel stays, or cash back. To pay for these rewards, credit card companies have raised the fees they charge merchants for every credit card transaction, and merchants in turn pass...

San Quentin is the oldest and most notorious prison in California. It’s home to the largest death row in the nation, housing infamous criminals including Charles Manson. But Governor Gavin Newsom has a new vision for the institution, renamed the “San Quentin Rehabilitation Center”. Under his plan the nearly 550 condemned inmates would move to other maximum security facilities in the state. With a...

A Manhattan grand jury has indicted former President Donald Trump on charges believed to be related to illegal payments his team made to porn star Stormy Daniels to stay silent about her alleged affair with the then-president. This is the first time in U.S. history a former president has been charged with a crime. We'll analyze the latest and hear your reactions. Guests: Josh Meyer, domestic secur...

When Laurel Braitman’s father died, after more than a decade at battle with a rare bone cancer, she was a teenager, just finishing up high school. It wasn’t until about two decades later, when she was 36, that she found herself asking if could join a grief group for kids. She ended up volunteering as one of the grief counselors, launching a wide and varied quest to understand, and heal, from the t...

U.S. lawmakers are debating a series of proposals that would ban the deeply popular video app TikTok or otherwise curtail its reach, a week after a House panel grilled TikTok CEO Shou Chew about the platform’s perceived threat to national security and ties to the Chinese government. An outright ban would represent “uncharted territory” for the U.S. government, according to former national security...

California has laid out ambitious goals of becoming carbon neutral by 2045. That means not just limiting emissions, but also removing about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. It’s not easy to extract and contain carbon once it’s emitted, but a small crop of Bay Area startups are working on technologies to do just that. Some companies use giant machines to pull carbon out...

In San Francisco, self-driving taxis with no human operator are accelerating around city streets day and night. Google-owned Waymo expanded to L.A. last month, and General Motors’s Cruise has applied to widen its testing to cities across California. There’s a magic to seeing a steering wheel turn on its own, and many in the transit world are excited about the benefits autonomous vehicles could bri...

During Ramadan, observant Muslims who are able to fast from sunrise to sunset, eating and drinking nothing. It is not a surprise then that food takes on a special, and often celebratory, meaning during this month-long spiritual reset. And in the Bay Area, the food prepared during Ramadan, whether it’s suhoor, the pre-sunrise meal before the fast begins or iftar, the meal eaten to break the fast, r...

The egg, writes Lizzie Stark, is a "universe in a shell." It’s an ingenious piece of tech that contains everything a developing embryo needs, and it’s a symbol of the cosmos in creation myths across cultures. It’s been a tool of political protests, the target of wildlife poachers and the center of a Gold Rush-era territorial war on the Farallon Islands. It’s also inspired painters, conceptual arti...

Last week, workers at the Starbucks at Embarcadero Cove in Oakland were among the latest in the Bay Area to try forming a union at their store. They join workers at close to 300 Starbucks locations nationwide who have petitioned or voted to form unions since December of 2021 when a store in Buffalo New York successfully formed Starbucks Workers United. Workers in San Francisco, Berkeley, Mill Vall...

Ari Shapiro has been the host of NPR's "All Things Considered" since 2015 and has reported from all over the world, including Iraq, Ukraine and Israel. His journalism has won him many accolades, including two Edward R. Murrow awards – one for his reporting on Breonna Taylor and another for his coverage of asylum policies on the US-Mexico border. On top of that, he’s a singer and member of the band...

The statistics on poverty in the U.S. are shocking and shameful: one in 9 Americans lives in poverty and one in 18 lives in “deep” poverty, defined in 2020 as annual income below roughly $13,000 for a family of four. More than a million public schoolchildren are homeless; more than 2 million Americans live in homes without running water or toilets. In his new book, "Poverty, by America", Matthew D...

Meditation apps, expensive spa retreats and other staples of the self-care industry claim to offer relief from the ongoing stress of work and family obligations so many of us feel. But they fall short, according to psychiatrist and women’s mental health specialist Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, because they do nothing to address underlying causes. In her new book “Real Self Care,” Lakshmin says that authenti...

When people refer to “the one that got away,” they are usually talking about a romantic partner. For Alisha Fernandez Miranda, that phrase applied to a list of jobs and dreams she never pursued. As she reached her late 30s she found herself feeling stuck, burnt out and unhappy even though she seemingly had it all –a thriving family, CEO position, and lots of activities she loved. She gave herself...

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Saturday a 10-year partnership with nonprofit drug company Civica Rx to manufacture the state’s own supply of insulin. Part of the state’s new CalRx program, the move is only the first step in California’s ambitious plan to produce more affordable generic prescription drugs — like overdose reversal medication naloxone — and make them available on the n...

It might be hard to visualize at the moment, but not long ago we were in a severe water emergency. Marin county asked for 40% cuts in usage and planned for an emergency pipeline to bring in water from the East Bay over the Richmond bridge. Now, many reservoirs are overflowing and water managers are releasing water to avoid floods when the massive Sierra snowpack melts. Forum talks with water manag...

More than 5 million Californians use the state program CalFresh to pay for their groceries. But come April, CalFresh users will see a drop of at least $95 each month with the end of CalFresh’s pandemic fund program. Recipients of these funds report that the extra money gave them the cushion to stop choosing from between going hungry and paying bills. Indeed, according to the Public Policy Institut...

Each year in the United States, roughly 100,000 young adults experience a psychotic episode including hearing voices or hallucinations. Treating those episodes early on can prevent some of the worst outcomes of mental illness such as homelessness or not being able to hold down a job. The National Institute of Mental Health has outlined what experts call a “gold standard” for early treatment of psy...

If you felt like your house might blow away yesterday, you aren't alone. The storm that battered the Bay Area Tuesday was stronger and more destructive than weather services forecasted. Blisteringly high winds toppled trees and tore down power lines. Rain, which was also heavier than anticipated, soaked waterlogged soil, causing floods that have closed down roads. Thousands remain without power. W...

Is there a case for ignoring the news sometimes—or even most of the time? That’s the question Shadi Hamid urges us to consider in his recent essay for The Atlantic "You’re Better Off Not Knowing." Hamid explores research suggesting a negative correlation between personal well-being and political awareness and argues that unless you need to follow politics for a living, "it’s unclear what the news—...

The new PBS Frontline documentary, “Age of Easy Money” traces how the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented monetary experiment has both helped and hurt the American economy. Beginning in 2008, the Federal Reserve stepped in to prop up a banking system on the verge of collapse. In the decade that followed, with low interest rates and massive infusions of cash into the system, the Fed enabled a bull stoc...

President Biden approved on Monday ConocoPhillips’ controversial Willow project in Alaska, one of the largest oil developments ever proposed on federal land. The White House says it lacked legal latitude to cancel the project and simultaneously proposed rules that would limit other oil and gas leases in the region. But indigenous groups and climate activists say the project’s environmental and pub...

During last week’s atmospheric river storm, a levee broke on the Pajaro River, turning the town of Pajaro - inhabited mostly by Latino farmworkers - into a lake. As the LA Times reported, officials knew for decades that the levee was unstable, but delayed fixing it because of “benefit-cost ratios.” We’ll talk with community representatives and water management experts about what Pajaro residents a...