KQED's Forum

Geoffrey Fowler recalls that when he first began reporting on consumer tech innovations two decades ago, the worst you might say about a product was that it was too expensive or too hard to use. But today, the tech we've come to depend on can steal our data, spy on our kids, send us down rabbit holes and feed us misinformation. Fowler joins us to talk about his new Washington Post series "We the U...

Reem Assil, owner of San Francisco and Oakland’s Reem’s Kitchen, began her career as a chef with a thirst for activism, often advocating for social justice and sustainability at work. As the opening chef of Dyafa, an Arab fine-dining restaurant in Oakland, Assil began to reimagine power dynamics in the kitchen which she boldly reflected on in her Eater article, “Don’t Call Me Chef.”  Assil joins F...

For decades, award-winning health journalist Linda Villarosa says she “long understood that something about being Black has led to the documented poor health of Black Americans.” And that “something” was not race per se or poverty or lack of access to education, information, or healthcare. According to Villarosa, poor health outcomes are directly tied to racism itself. In her latest book, “Under t...

Norman Mineta, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Transportation, Congressmember and San Jose mayor, will be laid to rest in San Jose on Wednesday. Mineta was born in San Jose in 1931. During the Second World War, at the age of 10, he was imprisoned with his family in a Japanese internment camp in Wyoming. As a U.S. Representative, Mineta worked to provide reparations for interned Jap...

Water has agency. It wants to go where it wants to go. Humans, particularly in recent centuries, have fought against the desires of water with almost unimaginable amounts of concrete, pumps the size of houses, and enormous canals. We’ve usually been able to make the water go where we want it to, and keep it from where we don’t. But, journalist Erica Gies argues in her new book, "Water Always Wins,...

In blunt testimony to the January 6th committee, former Attorney General William Barr testified he thought Donald Trump was “detached from reality” as the former President continued to tout the lie of a stolen election, a lie that had been repeatedly been debunked by Trump’s own advisors and campaign. Interweaving recorded interviews with live witnesses, on day two of the hearings, the committee f...

“What would it mean to build artificial intelligence and other machines that were more like octopuses, more like fungi, or more like forests?” asks James Bridle in their new book, “Ways of Being.” From computers made of crabs, to theories of plant memory, to the legal push for an elephant’s personhood, “Ways of Being” looks beyond human intelligence to examine how our technology could better encom...

“The appearance of the anus was momentous in animal evolution, turning a one-hole digestive sac into an open-ended tunnel,” writes Katherine J. Wu in her Atlantic piece, “The Body’s Most Embarrassing Organ Is an Evolutionary Marvel,” set to appear in this year’s Best American Science and Nature Writing. Yet societal taboos can keep us from talking about this evolutionary marvel, and that “creates...

A new series from KQED Arts & Culture takes stock of how Bay Area artists have weathered the pandemic and what they are doing now to lift up themselves and their communities. "Our Creative Futures" profiles artists and programs that support them, highlighting voguers in Oakland tackling LGBTQ+ health issues, a guaranteed income pilot program for artists and a new collective in San Francisco that u...

Residents of California's South Coast -- the hydrologic region that includes Los Angeles -- used about 25% more water in April than a year ago, according to state data released this week. Statewide, urban dwellers used about 17% more. That's sounding alarms about Californians’ ability and willingness to conserve water in the third year of what's shaping up to be the worst drought in state history....

Office buildings in downtown San Francisco sit empty or nearly empty as thousands of workers continue working from home. Back in 2019, San Francisco had one of the tightest office real estate markets in the country with about 5% vacancy and record-setting rental rates. Now, vacancy has plummeted to 24% and rental rates have fallen by 13% since the end of 2019, according to commercial brokerage fir...

As Californians went to the polls on Tuesday to vote in the state’s primary, predicted low voter turnout seemed to be the top headline statewide. While every registered voter was mailed a ballot, only 16% of them had been returned by Tuesday. This lackluster turnout stands in contrast to the energy behind some of the hotly contested races, like the mayor’s campaign in Los Angeles and the effort to...

Voters cast ballots in consequential races across the Bay Area on Tuesday. San Franciscans decided whether to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a campaign followed in national media as a referendum on progressive criminal justice reform. San Jose’s mayoral primary brought in historic amounts of campaign spending. We’ll look at the impact of California’s new redistricting maps on congressional...

California – and specifically Lincoln Park in San Francisco – is at least in theory the ultimate destination for the band of travelers and seekers that populate Amor Towles’s latest novel, “The Lincoln Highway.” But their journey becomes defined by detours, reversals and recalibrations – in much the same way that Towles describes how he composes his novels. “While I’m writing chapters,” he says, “...

Tens of millions of Mexicans immigrated to the U.S. to give their children better lives, but now some of those children are choosing to pack up and make their own lives in Mexico. The pandemic has fueled a major uptick in Americans looking to move abroad including a growing number of people moving to countries where their families originated from, especially Mexico. Many of those expatriates desir...

California voters head to the polls Tuesday to narrow the candidate fields in multiple state and local elections, from mayors’ races in San Jose and Los Angeles to statewide contests for governor, attorney general and state controller. In what some political observers consider to be referendums on pandemic crime rates, voters will also weigh in on candidates for Los Angeles sheriff and decide whet...

The Golden State Warriors are back in the NBA finals this year, facing serious competition from a tough Boston Celtics squad. We’ll talk about their season, the return of key players to the court, the future of the franchise and how they’re looking in the finals with reporters who’ve been following the Warriors all season long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oklahoma last week became the first state to ban almost all abortions from the moment of conception, and at least 20 more are poised to outlaw or severely restrict the procedure if, as widely expected, the Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade this month. How did we get to this point? That’s the question legal historian Mary Ziegler seeks to untangle in her new book “Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abort...

Fantastic Negrito is one of the most original and successful performers to emerge from the Bay Area over the last decade. A musician, a storyteller and a carrier of our region’s Black musical traditions, he began performing on the streets of Oakland. Now he’s won 3 Grammys and he’s got a new album coming out today. Alexis, Mina Kim and some lucky KQED Live fans, got to hear a preview of that album...

As teachers process the horror of the Uvalde shootings, they’re also managing concerns about safety in their own workplaces and supporting and protecting students worried about gun violence. And that’s all on top of two years working under the stresses of the pandemic. We’ll talk to teachers across California about how they’re coping in the wake of Uvalde — inside the classroom and out. Learn more...

Summer is the perfect time to hop in the car for a day trip, and while there’s nothing wrong with stopping at In-N-Out on 580, with a little planning, you can find something unexpected and delightful as you hit the road. As part of our regular segment on Bay Area food cultures, KQED food editor Luke Tsai joins us with his suggestions for how to plan your excursion to include delicious stops along...

An infectious disease arrives in San Francisco and is immediately associated with residents of Chinatown. Scientists and public health officials try to stop the spread. White residents believe they are immune. Politicians and the business class say the disease is not real because they worry about hurting commerce. Vulnerable people die in droves. A new PBS documentary, “Plague at the Golden Gate,”...

With the possibility of rolling blackouts looming for the summer, Governor Gavin Newsom said last week that he would consider delaying the 2025 shutdown of Diablo Canyon, California's last remaining nuclear power plant. As the world seeks to wean itself off of fossil fuels, some climate change activists have argued for a pivot to nuclear energy. But while nuclear energy technology has improved, co...

In her new book, "Work Pray Code," UC Berkeley professor Carolyn Chen offers up a provocative spin on what has happened among Silicon Valley professionals. Their work has become their religion. She means this literally, and she’s a religion professor, so she should know. Based on in-depth interviews with more than 100 Silicon Valley workers, she found that their work isn’t soul-crushing but rather...

What if some of the same public health strategies used to manage a pandemic could be marshaled to stem gun violence? As legislative solutions falter and firearm sales continue to increase, gun violence prevention advocates are looking to public health approaches that include systematic data collection, individual and community-level risk assessments and evidence-based prevention measures. We’ll lo...