KQED's Forum

Ten years ago the Occupy Movement dominated local and national news as encampments of protesters nationwide brought conversations about income inequality and the gross disparities between the top 1% of wealth holders and the bottom 99% into the mainstream. We’ll look back at two of the nation’s most visible and active occupy movements, in Oakland and in New York, and assess their legacy in politic...

You can't actually revisit your elementary school years. But, writes Jude Stewart, your nose can transport you there with a mere whiff of dry chalk, wet wool or the stale waft of cafeteria lunch. We'll talk to Stewart about why we smell, how we smell and the power of our olfactory sense to shape our perceptions of the people and world around us. Her new book is "Revelations in Air: A Guidebook to...

From Thomas Nast’s cartoons exposing corruption in late 19th century New York City politics, to the Peanuts comic strip in the 1950’s, to graphic memoirs like Persepolis, Columbia University American studies professor Jeremy Dauber traces the evolution of the art form in his new book “American Comics: A History”. Dauber joins us to discuss why cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels have captur...

When everything from fast fashion brands to uber rides make green claims, it’s easy to feel that eco-friendly consumer products are plentiful. But in many cases, the claims are misleading and minimize businesses’ harmful environmental practices. We’ll talk about what terms like “sustainably sourced” actually mean, the tactics behind greenwashing and how to identify truly sustainable products. Lear...

It’s the youngest generation that will feel the most severe effects of climate change, and youth activists are raising alarms both at home and at the COP26 climate summit, which ends this week. Delegates released a draft agreement Wednesday acknowledging the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but the pact is short on concrete commitments. That’s raising concerns among youth activ...

“I write about people who do extraordinary things,” observed the pioneering science fiction writer Octavia Butler, “it just turned out that it was called science fiction.” This month Forum’s book club discusses Butler’s 1993 novel “Parable of the Sower. In it, fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina navigates a California in the early 2020’s that has been beset by climate change, grotesque income inequali...

Congress passed a massive $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan last week. We'll learn more about what that means for California, which is expected to receive about $45.5 billion from the legislation. In other news across the state: the California Redistricting Commission is expected to release draft maps on Wednesday; Newsom spoke out Tuesday following a slew of "Where's Newsom" headlines after he we...

The most recent count of Oakland’s homeless population in 2019 found 4071 unhoused people, an alarming 47% increase from two years prior.  In recent reporting, San Francisco Chronicle reporters put faces on those numbers, spending five months shadowing four Oaklanders who lost everything and are now unhoused in the communities they grew up in. Reporter Kevin Fagan will join us to share what he and...

As Sam Quinones was researching America's opiate epidemic for his award-winning 2015 book "Dreamland," he watched a troubling phenomenon emerge. As pain-pill prescribing fell, drug traffickers with unfettered access to the world's chemical markets began to fill the void with dangerous synthetic drugs. Opiate addicts began to switch to fentanyl and particularly potent forms of methamphetamine, ulti...

Bay Area-based chef and food justice activist Bryant Terry is back with another cookbook -- but this time it’s not just his recipes. He’s created “a communal shrine to the shared culinary histories of the African diaspora,” as he writes in the introduction to “Black Food.” Bringing together a number of contributors who share recipes, stories and artwork -- plus Terry’s signature playlists to go wi...

In her recent story for The Atlantic, health reporter Sarah Zhang writes that we all know how the COVID-19 pandemic ends: the virus becomes endemic, and we'll have to live with it forever. But what's unknown is how we'll manage the transition to endemicity, a path ahead that right now she says is nonexistent. We'll talk to Zhang about how the country finds its "off-ramp to normal." Learn more abou...

Antonio Lopez is many things. He’s an East Palo Alto native and, at 27, he’s its youngest serving city council member. He’s a doctoral student in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford. And he’s an award winning poet, with a recently published book titled “Gentefication” an invented word he defines in part as, “when gentrification becomes personal, and the poet as native subject must invade lan...

Across the country, an alarming and disproportionate number of black girls and teenagers were involved in police use of force cases, according to a recent analysis by The Marshall Project. The nonprofit news organization, which focuses on criminal justice in America, found that thousands of minors each year are subjected to what police consider “low level” use of force ranging from being tackled t...

Wilma Chan, an Alameda County Supervisor and former member of the California State Assembly, died on Wednesday after being struck by a car as she walked her dog. Described by her colleagues as fearless, compassionate, and tenacious, Chan was known for her advocacy for women, children, and immigrants, and for promoting criminal justice and health care reform. She was the first Asian American to ser...

Public lands have become a refuge for many people who can’t afford housing in the west and who are rejecting certain societal norms that no longer serve them well. For some, becoming vehicle-dwellers and nomads is a way to take back control of their lives. This way of life was portrayed in Chloe Zhao’s award-winning film “Nomadland” which starred Frances McDormand and featured a number of real-lif...

Oakland is one of the most diverse cities in the country. It’s also one of the most unequal. Architectural and Urban Historian Mitchell Schwarzer dives into the politics and decisions that helped make it that way in his new book, Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption.  Schwarzer traces how decades-old decisions about where to put a park or a parking lot, a building or a bunga...

PG&E announced this week that it's the subject of a federal investigation for its possible role in causing the Dixie Fire, the second largest in California history. The utility also said it's likely to amass at least $1.15 billion in losses associated with the fire, which burned one million acres and destroyed the Northern California town of Greenville. We'll hear what’s next for PG&E. We’ll also...

For 46 years, the San Francisco-based American Indian Film Festival has showcased features, documentaries and animated works from Native filmmakers. This year’s festival kicks off Friday with more than a hundred films at a time when filmmakers and audiences are clamoring for more representation of Native communities. Although, Native creators are seeing more interest in their stories and projects...

In late September, writer Saeed Jones lamented the selfishness and cruelty he’d witnessed during the pandemic: “I’m angry and sad and bitter,” he tweeted, adding, “This is not who I want to be.” In October, ProPublica published a story by journalist Sarah Smith with the headline “We’re Losing Our Humanity and the Pandemic Is to Blame,” documenting stories of willful disregard for others’ needs and...

In his latest book “Our Country Friends,” novelist Gary Shteyngart tackles the pandemic novel. In the book, the protagonist, Sasha Senderovsky, a writer whose star is slowly flaming out, gathers his family and high school friends in a pod at his country home to ride out the early days of the pandemic. Lauded by the New York Times as the “perfect novel for these times and all times,” “Our Country F...

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of SB 8, the controversial Texas law that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and deputizes private citizens to enforce it. We’ll analyze what the justices’ responses may signal about the fate of the law, and we’ll look ahead to other cases on the Court’s docket bearing on the regulation of gu...

Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, is an ancient tradition that started with indigenous people in the Americas, morphed when Catholics arrived, and has seen a resurgence in recent decades in California. This year, the Los Angeles Times set up a virtual Día de Los Muertos altar this year to create a community space to honor loved ones who have passed. The virtual altar reflects the pandemic, wh...

Across California, cities are reckoning with their historical legacies of racism towards the Chinese community. In May, Antioch became the first city to issue a formal apology for its anti-Chinese policies and the mob-led destruction of its Chinatown in 1876. This month, San Jose followed with a similar apology for enforcing anti-Chinese policies and fomenting racial hatred that resulted in the ob...

The 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, begins Sunday, collecting world leaders and activists to discuss and negotiate ambitious climate change policies with the aim of staying below 1.5 degrees of global temperature rise. California, which has already been experiencing the effects of climate change in the forms of sea level rise, record-breaking wildfires and extensive droughts, will be rep...

Activist and former sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer famously said “you are not free, whether you are Black or white, until I am free.” Hamer and her bold, radical honesty are the subject of a new biography by historian Keisha Blain, who sheds light on Hamer’s life and the ideas and political strategies that were central to the Civil Rights movement. In “Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring M...