KQED's Forum

Hackers who could install brain spyware into the apps and devices we’re using. Advertisers that could interface with our minds to know the products we crave, even before we do. It won’t all happen tomorrow, but Duke law professor Nita Farahany says we’re rapidly heading toward a world in which scientists, governments and corporations can peer into our brains and minds. We learn about the neurotech...

More than 2 million Californians identified as more than one race in the 2020 Census. KQED’s California Report Magazine has launched a series to capture the varied experiences of those straddling multiple races. KQED’s Sasha Khokha and Marisa Lagos join Forum to talk about their series, Mixed! Stories of Mixed Race Californians, and both of their experiences growing up in mixed-race families and n...

On the campaign trail, President Joe Biden promised a more compassionate approach to immigration that would roll back Trump administration policies. But the situation at the border, with swelling numbers of migrants fleeing authoritarian regimes and dire economic conditions, has forced the administration to consider more restrictive measures. Those include possibly reviving the policy of detaining...

San Francisco’s once-redhot office market has waned since the pandemic. Less than half of the workers who used to fill downtown office towers are working in person most days. That has led to high office building vacancies, lower revenue from property and sales taxes, and fewer workers riding transit and supporting local businesses. Now that working from home continues to be the norm, city leaders,...

The Black Film Canon, published in 2016 by Slate, accumulated the 50 best films by Black filmmakers, including movies like “Do The Right Thing” and the 1920 silent film “Within Our Gates.” Thanks to films like “Moonlight” and “Get Out,” a 2023 update was due, and in collaboration with NPR The New Black Film Canon was born. The collection now includes 75 films, where they’re streaming and what made...

The Bay Area has a storied hip hop legacy. We’ve also got a legendary food scene. Maybe it’s natural that these two core components of the Bay Area would find each other. In our latest edition of All You Can Eat, our series on Bay Area food cultures with KQED food editor Luke Tsai, we’ll talk about Bay Area rappers in the food world. E-40 is selling ice cream and pre-packaged burritos, Larry June...

Qualified immunity, writes UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz, "has come to represent all that is wrong with police accountability." It’s the Supreme Court-created doctrine that protects police officers from civil liability for excessive force and other misconduct unless there is a prior court case where an officer violated another person’s rights in exactly the same way – a standard that she says...

After experiencing a classic bank run with depositors withdrawing $42 billion in one day, Silicon Valley Bank was shut down by federal regulators on Friday. For many startups, SVB was the bank of choice, and its closure has roiled the tech industry. While federal regulators announced on Monday that 100% of Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits would be repaid, that has not stopped turmoil in the market....

Soy, almond, oat and other plant-based milk alternatives have skyrocketed in popularity over the last few decades. And now new draft guidance from the FDA would allow these drinks officially to be marketed as “milks,” putting to rest arguments by the dairy industry and others that only animal products can be called milk. We’ll look at what makes milk “milk” and how plant-based options measure up a...

Judith Heumann, known as the mother of the disability rights movement, died this month at the age of 75. Heumann’s activism and leadership in Berkeley’s pioneering disability rights movement included the “504 sit-in,” a 26-day occupation of San Francisco’s federal building that eventually led to the passage of the Americans with Disability Act. Heumann used a wheelchair following a childhood case...

Communities throughout California are bracing for another round of severe storms this week. An atmospheric river is poised to dump several inches of rain, which could melt snow reserves in mountains and cause flooding. Mountainous areas of the state are already dealing with power outages, road closures, and collapsed roofs after a series of heavy rain and snow during the past couple of months. We’...

What if time isn’t money? What if time is actually rocks and beans? And what if time is not running out? Jenny Odell, author of “How to Do Nothing,” ponders these questions as she takes us on a road trip through the Bay Area in her new book, “Saving Time.” Pausing at the Port of Oakland, reflecting in Pescadero and Pacifica, and nodding at the Interstate 880 minion, Odell questions who benefits wh...

Fox News Chairman Rupert Murdoch did not believe that Dominion Voting Systems stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, according to testimony released Tuesday. The evidence is part of the record in Dominion's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit, set for trial in April, arguing that Fox executives and hosts deliberately spread the falsehood that Dominion's electronic machines manipulated...

After two decades of trying, the United Nations has finalized a treaty to protect the high seas – that part of the ocean which covers nearly half the earth’s surface and falls outside of the jurisdiction of individual nations. There beneath the lens of blue water is an ecosystem with more species than exist on land. There are seamounts in the Pacific covered in golden corals that are the oldest li...

Meg Zucker was born with one finger on each hand, shortened arms and one toe on each foot, a result of a hereditary condition called ectrodactyly. With the support of her parents who championed her abilities, Zucker learned to ignore how others perceived her and went on to become a successful attorney. But when she passed the same condition to her sons, Zucker says her “old innate pangs of shame”...

Oakland based writer Carvell Wallace has written searchingly and compassionately about Mr. Rogers, Michael B Jordan, abortion rights, race, parenting, bicycling, basketball and so much more. Running through all of his work is the question of how to be a good person in a deeply flawed world. “I’ve long thought that the only thing that really matters is how we treat each other,” he said. “It’s why I...

Atlantic staff writer Jennifer Senior is 53 in real life, but she says that in her head she’s "suspended at 36." That was the age she was secure professionally but still full of potential, paired up with her husband “but not yet lost in the marshes of a long marriage." In "The Age in Your Head," which appears in the April issue of the magazine, Senior explores the discrepancy many of us feel betwe...

UC Berkeley plans to keep fighting to build a dorm for more than 1,000 students on People’s Park, a university-owned site that is known as a haven for unhoused people and social justice movements. A state appellate court stopped the project and called for the university to revise its environmental impact report, looking more closely at noise impacts from students. The legal saga over the dorm illu...

Americans love to talk about our generational differences. Gen Xers complain about Millennials, Millennials can’t relate to Gen Z and on and on. But those defining distinctions are mostly contrived, their boundaries mushy. Except for one generation: Baby Boomers. The postwar population explosion dramatically changed the country and the boomers have dominated culture, politics and the economy since...

Seventy-five years ago, a plane crashed outside of Coalinga in California’s Central Valley. Twenty-eight of the 32 passengers killed were migrant workers in the Bracero Program, being deported back to Mexico. Unlike the flight’s white passengers and crew, whose bodies were sent home to their families, the Mexican citizens were buried unceremoniously in a mass grave, their names omitted from the he...

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 Jong Un in the movie “The Interview.” He starred in 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...

Mexican Americans make up the majority of the labor force sustaining California’s wine industry. And, yet, they only make up about 1 percent of the roughly 4,800 wine producers in the state. A handful of Mexican-American families, including the Robledos and Cejas of Sonoma County,established their labels decades ago. Now newer brands are popping up, such as Healdsburg’s Aldina Vineyards and Seis S...

Mehdi Hasan says he has been arguing all his life, and he’s made a career of it as a formidable interviewer known for challenging presidents and prime ministers on his MSNBC and Al Jazeera news programs. To him, a good-faith debate is not only the “lifeblood of democracy” but it’s also fun, and he wants us all to learn the craft. We’ll hear how to captivate and persuade an audience, use pathos and...

The latest generation of chatbots, powered by their ingestion of huge chunks of writing from the internet, have continued to wow and frighten. ChatGPT and an experimental bot from Microsoft’s Bing are shockingly fluent in English. And being humans, we struggle to imagine anything that could master our language without tremendous intelligence. So, what, then, do we make of a machine that can output...

Across the U.S., migrant children are employed in violation of child labor laws, in under-the-table operations and in global corporations alike, according to a new New York Times investigation. They work in dangerous conditions in construction, in factories and in slaughterhouses. They work long hours in kitchens, hotels and farm fields. They fall asleep in high school after working night shifts;...