KQED's Perspectives

Richard Friedlander wonders why, if we're all in this together, we don't act that way.

Griffin Ting is back to school, glad the isolation of last year's virtual classrooms is over.

Parents provide tremendous gifts to their children throughout life. But when dementia has taken hold the greatest gift can be a simple one – recognition. Susan Dix Lyons has this Perspective.

Isabella Montano Ponce struggled with depression but it was the inability to talk about it that slowed her recovery.

Peggy Hansen looks at what happens when old truths about ourselves aren't true anymore.

Grant Young says recent government imagery of strange moving objects has rekindled the interest in UFOs.

Joan Cardellino finds herself alone in her home for the first time and on the cusp of a new life.

Tom Moriarty finds one vaccine conspiracy theory to be as ironic as it is far-fetched.

Teacher Alisa Peres says she gets through the stress of teaching in a pandemic with a lot of help from her colleagues.

YR Media's Ivelisse Diaz feels pressure to sacrifice her own interests to help fix a broken school culture.

As the pandemic's surge in animal adoptions slackens, volunteer Leslie Smith advocates for those left behind.

Jonah Raskin joins a large crowd advocating continued closure of the Great Highway to motor vehicles.

Sara Alexander's elderly friend is not one to censor her answers to questions -- even on a mental health test

Richard Swerdlow says today is not a day the superstitions take lightly.

Michael Ellis says a member of what's known as the Little Five is a clever but vicious insect.

At an old-fashioned Vermont town meeting, Andrew Lewis experiences the kind of politics where winning and losing isn’t the only thing that matters.

When Sandhya Acharya's pandemic bubble burst, it was her young son's note that healed her.

When Paul Wolber thinks of vaccine hesitancy, he hears the voice of his mother, long ago, giving some instructions many would do well to heed today. I like to tell people younger than me that I’m old enough that I survived all those diseases no one catches anymore. That’s an exaggeration. I did get measles, mumps, chicken pox, scarlet fever and so many ear infections that I was deaf for a year. Ho...

Les Bloch says a better future can only be built if it can be imagined. Imagine.  Just imagine.  It’s something that envelopes and rewards us, something that has gotten us humans to the moon, something that stretches our brains like hamstrings in yoga class.  It started with language 40,000 years ago.  Before the written word, Homo sapiens carved statues from mammoth tusks and told stories of the...

Fostering an animal awaiting adoption is a great service but Colleen Patrick-Goudreau learned its not without its challenges. Several years ago, I was volunteering at an underfunded county animal shelter socializing cats, cleaning their cages, and providing some enrichment to their little lives. Adoption days were few and far between, and one day I impulsively decided to bring a cat home to give h...

Tracy Cote outlines the right way to discuss politics in the workplace.

Larry Murphy cherishes fishing trips in the back country as reminders of the common origin of all things.

Sometimes, no one finds fault with choosing the easier road to success. But for Jim McClellan’s summer camp director that wasn’t going to happen. They say fortune favors the brave. I think there’s some truth to that, as I was reminded in a recent discussion about childhood memories. I spent a few summers at a great camp for boys in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Willie, the camp’s director,...

Many people put on extra pounds during the pandemic and Dr. Baldeep Singh wishes there was more he could do for his vulnerable patients. When Javier came to see me, he had gained 10 pounds. It was a surprise but since staying at home during COVID, he had stopped exercising and had started eating more. The result was the “Quarantine 15”, the weight gained due to pandemic stressors, such as losing j...

Simi Monheit's recent trip to the Sierra brings fond memories and dread for the future.