KQED's Forum

Soccer can unite a country, but in Iran women cannot even enter the national stadium. For decades they’ve been banned from attending games, and by extension, says podcast host Shima Oliaee, they’ve been banned from standing side by side as equal Iranians. We talk to Oliaee about her new podcast “Pink Card,” all about the women who’ve fought to take their stadiums back and the profound connections...

Back when there was no TikTok, Instagram or social media, there was a concept known as “polite conversation” that defined what you could or should say in public. Now, many people feel freer to share stories about their lives. But has it gone too far? Where is the line between bringing our authentic selves into a conversation and “trauma dumping?” We’ll talk about why and how norms surrounding what...

The 117th Congress concludes on January 3, and for lawmakers the race is on to broker deals and send bills to President Biden’s desk. This year, eyes are on the spending and defense bills, including proposals to reform the Electoral Count Act and streamline permitting for green energy projects. We’ll get the latest and analyze Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s run for House Speaker and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s p...

President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act this week in a flashy White House Ceremony that included performances by pop stars Sam Smith and Cyndi Lauper. The president called deciding who to marry “one of the most profound decisions a person can make.” But marriage equality has had a relatively short history in America. Gay marriage was legalized less than a decade ago and has come un...

Are you an AFOL who builds MOCs? If that sentence made sense to you, chances are you are an Adult Fan of LEGO who likes to build My Own Creations. About 80 million children around the world receive a LEGO set each year, but among LEGO fans, adults can be the most passionate. And it is adult consumers who propelled LEGO from near bankruptcy in the early 2000s to become the most profitable toy compa...

It’s the holiday season and, for some of us, it’s best spent lightly dusted in flour and sprinkles. We’re talking about holiday baking: gingerbread, buche de noel, rugelach, stollen, buñuelos, and piles and piles of sugar cookies. What’s your favorite holiday dessert to make, eat or give as a gift? Guests: Anna Voloshyna, chef, blogger and culinary instructor, author of "Budmo! Recipes from a Ukra...

The newest artificial intelligence sensation, OpenAI’s language model ChatGPT, can teach physics, write in verse and even compose a convincing letter from Santa Claus. Trained on billions of written words ranging from online message boards to classic literature, ChatGPT can also hold respectably intelligent – even witty– conversations, all the while refining its accuracy and style with constant us...

The end of the year invariably means lists upon lists of best-ofs.. “Best music” could mean songs you kept on repeat, those best-selling tracks you couldn’t avoid, or the tunes that touched your heart in ways nothing else could. For some, it was the mega-hits such as Bad Bunny’s “Titi Me Pregunto,” Harry Styles’ “As it Was” or Beyonce’s “Break My Soul.” For other listeners, it was local stars like...

Parasites: they’re seen as blood suckers, freeloaders and the worst kind of groupies, writes parasitologist Scott Gardner. And though they can be dangerous, they’re also "unseen influencers," essential to food webs and in some cases even beneficial to human health. We learn about the surprising world of parasites with Gardner, whose new book is “Parasites: The Inside Story.” Guests: Scott Gardner,...

After Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate-Austin got an appraisal on their Marin City house that seemed unusually low, they took down art and photos that identified them as Black and asked a white friend to pose as the homeowner with a new appraiser. That appraisal came back nearly half-million dollars higher. Stories like this led ABC7 race and culture reporter Julian Glover to investigate bias in home...

Back in 1989 the Los Angeles Times reported that karaoke, then a relatively obscure feature of the urban bar scene, was “beginning to make a big splash with Los Angeles-area yuppies.” Three decades later, karaoke is mainstream, and there’s a new Los Angeles Times project: The Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Go-To Karaoke Songs. We’ll learn more and hear what you like to perform and where, and why w...

During the pandemic, many customers began tipping more to support workers. The standard 15% tip edged up to 20% or even 30% for dining out, haircuts or food delivery. But now that prices forjust about everything are spiking, many consumers are finding that they need to pull back and some are questioning why tip jars seem to be everywhere now, even in places that are self-serve. We examine tipflati...

Duke Energy said it hoped to fully restore power to North Carolina residents by Wednesday night, after shootings at two electrical substations over the weekend shuttered schools and businesses and left thousands of people in the dark. The shootings, which investigators are calling deliberate, are for Californians bringing to mind the 2013 sniper attacks on a PG&E substation near San Jose that led...

In 2003, McSweeney’s, the San Francisco-based literary quarterly, published the first issue of a new monthly magazine called “The Believer.” The graphic-rich journal focused on elevating new writers, publishing poetry, long-form journalism and quirky stories and was nominated for a raft of magazine awards. But hard times led to its sale, and through various twists and turns, the magazine’s website...

There were worldwide box office hits and record-makers, like the follow-ups to “Jurassic World,” “Doctor Strange” and — of course — “Top Gun.” There were movies that quickly developed dedicated fan bases, like “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” “RRR” and “Tár.” And there are the year-enders: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” has been number one at theaters these past four weekends, and the sequel...

Singer and songwriter Valerie June defies genre – she can be a little country and a little rock and roll and there’s also folk, blues, soul, Appalachian and a sound that’s downright ethereal. But her music is all her own, she’s called it, "organic moonshine roots music," and it’s beautiful. She joins us to play a few songs on her banjolele and to talk about her latest album "The Moon and Stars: Pr...

In recent years, companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have introduced plant-based hamburgers that look and feel like the real thing and plant-based chicken nuggets that pass the kid test. Now companies are looking to grow meat from real animals in labs, and the FDA has approved lab-grown meat as safe for human consumption. Although Americans consume on average 250 pounds of meat per per...

Fans all over the globe are tuning into the World Cup, arguably the single most popular sporting event in the world. Still, this year’s tournament in Qatar has stirred backlash surrounding corruption and human rights abuses. And while America’s most beloved squads – Mexico’s El Tri and the U.S. Men – both washed out of the competition, millions of spectators remain captivated by the saga of Argent...

Children's hospitals throughout California are straining under an unusually high number of patients with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common childhood respiratory infection that can in some cases cause pneumonia and other serious lung ailments. We’ll talk about what’s behind the surge in cases and how to keep young kids and other vulnerable populations safe, and we’ll assess the threat of...

What do a retired teacher, a wetland scientist, former investigative reporter and a scout leader have in common? They are all part of the next wave of local leadership stepping in as mayors of four Bay Area cities. We’ll talk with the mayor-elects of Richmond, Martinez, Belmont and Fairfield about the perspectives they bring on housing, public transit, climate change, and other critical issues. Gu...

True crime. Gossip. Niche sports. Deep-dive history. The podcasts that have critics and podcasters hooked in 2022 vary. But what makes a good podcast in today’s saturated and corporate-shaped landscape? We’ll hear from a panel of podcast lovers about the shows that made them turn on episode notifications. And we want to hear from you: Whether your Spotify Wrapped called it your top podcast of 2022...

Remember the playground chants, the jump rope songs, the weird little games you played as a kid that were part of your secret kid world? Scholars have a name for it: childlore. You might imagine, given all the differences between kids—country, culture, class, race, media consumption—that this childlore might be vastly different from place to place. But the strange thing is, many of the little thin...

In a remarkable display of discontent not seen since the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, protesters across China have taken to the streets demanding an end to the country’s stringent zero-Covid policy. At the outset of the pandemic, China adopted a policy of quarantining and locking down its citizens to prevent the spread of Covid. But while most of the world has moved on to treat Covid as e...

“This brutalization of Ukraine's people is barbaric." Those were Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s words Wednesday for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a day after the United States announced a new round of aid to rebuild Ukraine’s decimated energy infrastructure. Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding, who’s been reporting from inside Ukraine since last December, has written what he hopes...

Daniel Aston, Kelly Loving, Derrick Rump, Ashley Paugh and Raymond Green Vance. They were the five people gunned down when a shooter entered an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado last weekend and opened fire, in a terrifying massacre that also injured 22. LGBTQ advocates had been warning that a mass killing would follow the Pulse nightclub shooting six years ago, citing alarming increases in violence ag...