KQED's Forum

A recent piece in the New York Times, called the Oakland A’s “the loneliest team in baseball.” Though the Coliseum where they play can hold 57,000 fans, on average only 6,000 show up for home games. What happened to the glorious days of the A’s when manager Billy Beane was acclaimed for his savvy in managing the roster and payroll to get the most out of bench players? Has the management of the A’s...

“Modern life conspires against friendship,” says Atlantic staff writer Jennifer Senior, "even as it requires the bonds of friendship all the more." That’s one of the paradoxes at the center of Senior’s new piece “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart” — a meditation on why friendships fade and collapse and why in midlife those losses sting particularly hard. We’ll talk to Senior about how at 52 s...

More than one million Americans have died from COVID-19. Close to 8,000 Americans have died from gun violence in 2022. Another nine thousand died of suicide. The difficult news of our time goes far beyond death. The planet is in crisis, tornados, floods and fires are ravishing whole towns, economic instability, racial injustice, and the rolling back of rights we’ve counted on for 50 years. It’s a...

“War remains a large part of who we are as Americans,” writes Phil Klay, who notes that almost a sixth of our federal budget goes to defense, supporting a military that now wages counterterrorism campaigns in 85 countries. But those overseas wars are invisible to most Americans because they’re fought by so few and because of political and strategic choices that shield them from public view. We’ll...

This week’s deadly shooting rampage at a Texas elementary school didn’t stop the National Rifle Association from holding its annual meeting this weekend in Houston. The latest massacre ignited another round of demands for tighter gun regulations and more criticism of the NRA and politicians who take donations from the group. But some experts say the NRA is mired in dysfunction and is no longer the...

The nation is mourning the 19 children and two teachers gunned down on Tuesday at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, TX, the deadliest school massacre since a gunman murdered 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT nearly a decade ago. And the horror of the shooting -- and the unspeakable grief experienced by family members, classmates and all those who loved the victims -- is agonizing...

Novelist and journalist Vanessa Hua’s new book “Forbidden City” is a historical fiction set in 1960s China. It’s the story of a 16-year-old girl who was plucked from a rural village to join a troupe of dancers formed to satisfy an aging Chairman Mao’s – historically accurate – love of ballroom dance and teenage girls. Hua writes in the author’s notes, “I believe that fiction flourishes where the o...

On May 26, 2021, a Valley Transportation Authority employee in San Jose shot and killed nine coworkers in what became the Bay Area's most deadly mass shooting. As the nation mourns the deaths of 19 students and two teachers killed in a Texas elementary school this week, we remember the victims and the tragedy in San Jose on the first anniversary of the shooting. Learn more about your ad choices. V...

President Biden is weighing proposals to cancel some student loan debt, which in the aggregate totals more than $1.7 trillion – a record high figure that outpaces the nation’s collective credit card debt. We’ll talk about who’s most likely to shoulder student loans and hear from those who’ve been grappling with them. And we’ll hear from you: How have student loans affected your life? Would you be...

For better or worse, Twitter is a crucial part of our public sphere now. That’s one reason that Elon Musk may end up buying the social media platform. The move is prompting experts and scholars to reconsider the future of digital communities. Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit have been criticized for overt censorship and for algorithms and guidelines that encourage t...

John Mooallem became a magazine writer after realizing that “instead of thumping my head against the biggest questions of my own life” he could train his insights and inquiry on the world. “I’d been puzzling over myself, torturously trying to unlock the truth of who I was. The truth is, I am the puzzling,” he writes in the prologue to his collection of essays, “Serious Face.” In his wide ranging c...

When they came to power in August, the Taliban assured the international community that the status of Afghan women would be secure. The opposite has been true: women are being erased from public life. They are restricted from working outside the home. If they travel more than 45 miles from their house, they must be accompanied by a male relative. Girls no longer have access to secondary education....

After the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked, some abortion advocates recommended that people delete apps that track menstrual cycles for fear that this information could be used against them in a post-Roe America. Given the draft opinion’s conclusions questioning the right to privacy, digital privacy experts warned that private search queries and health data could be...

“Learn to live with the cringe,” advised Taylor Swift at NYU’s recent commencement ceremony for the Class of 2022. Across the nation, graduates are being peppered with all kinds of advice from commencement speakers who range from politicians, scientists, CEOs, celebrities, and their own classmates. So what makes a good graduation speech? Is it pearls of wisdom like “Oh the places you’ll go” or “To...

It’s been known as the “happiest place on earth,” and if you’re a Californian, chances are you have been to Disneyland at least once. Indeed, when he opened the park in 1955, Walt Disney declared that “Disneyland is your land.” In 2019, over 18 million people visited Disneyland, and since its opening, the company estimates that 750 million visitors have come to the park, taking a spin on the Mad H...

Summer travel is on the rebound after a steep decline in 2020. But, as more people indulge the urge to travel this year, prices for gas, hotels and plane tickets have soared. That, along with ongoing concerns about the pandemic are forcing some travelers to rethink how and where they travel. Many people are hunting for new experiences like discovering a lesser-known state park or small town on the...

California’s seven-day COVID positive test rate is at five percent, the California Department of Public Health reported on Tuesday — the highest rate since February. The news comes as COVID cases have more than tripled in the U.S. since April 1, owing in large part to the highly transmissible BA.2 omicron subvariant. With many pandemic mandates lifted but masking still “strongly recommended” in mu...

In a career spanning over two decades, five albums, numerous musical features in film and television and now a lifestyle brand, R&B singer-songwriter Goapele continues to make a mark in music with her soulful sound and introspective lyrics. Her iconic song “Closer,” which was first released independently in 2001, remains influential in R&B music today, inspiring artists like fellow Bay Area musici...

Who was George Floyd, and what was it like to live in his America? Those are the questions that Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Tolu Olorunippa set out to answer in their new biography “His Name is George Floyd." Based on public and private records and hundreds of interviews with those close to him, the book examines Floyd's life in its complexity and the institutions stacked against...

A recent DNA analysis has found that the federally unrecognized Muwekma Ohlone Tribe has been in the Bay Area for at least 2,000 years. The evidence bolsters the tribe’s decades-long case to reinstate their federal recognition which they lost, along with dozens of other California Indian tribes, in the 1920s. Tribal leaders say recognition is a necessary first step for the Muwekma Ohlone to establ...

Next month, Berkeley’s Cafe Ohlone will reopen in a new space in the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. The restaurant, which serves traditional dishes of the Bay Area’s original inhabitants, closed during the pandemic. Cafe Ohlone’s owners say they hope to repair the fraught relationship the Ohlone people have with the Hearst Museum, which contains a large co...

Dating, for everyone, is full of tricky social conventions. How long should you wait to call someone after getting their number? Who should cover the dinner bill? And navigating some of these situations can be extra difficult for autistic people. Netflix’s new season of “Love on the Spectrum,” an American version of the Australian docuseries, produced by Northern Pictures, premieres on Wednesday a...

Jane Stanford and her robber baron husband Leland founded what would become Stanford University in 1885. 20 years later Jane Stanford was murdered, poisoned by strychnine. Historian Richard White dives into the corruption and coverups shrouding the unsolved murder in his new book, “Who Killed Jane Stanford?” His book is both a true crime mystery and a history of the corruption, inequality, yellow...

Barely a day after a gunman killed 10 people at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood, another gunman at a church service for a Taiwanese congregation in Laguna Woods, California, killed one person and injured several others. “This should not be our new normal,” said Orange County representative Katie Porter. And yet, these incidents and their impacts feel all to...

For about a quarter century, KQED Forum listeners have been getting dressed, brushing their teeth and driving to work to the sounds of “Peter Pan” by musician Mike Marshall. On Monday, they will have a new soundtrack. Each hour of the show is getting its own new theme song, composed by NPR’s Ramtin Arablouei. To mark the occasion, we’ll talk about what makes a great theme song, including the best...