Kqeds Forum

Two California scientists, David Julius from UCSF and Ardem Patapoutian from San Diego's Scripps Research, have won the 2021 Nobel Prize for medicine. In their work, which focuses on the biology of our senses, Julius and Patapoutian identified receptors that allow the cells in your body to sense touch and temperature. Their findings hold potential medical applications for better treatment of chronic pain. We talk with the prize-winning researchers about their work.

Not many people get a backstage pass to history, but Ben Fong-Torres has. As a writer and music editor for Rolling Stone magazine, Fong-Torres stood at the center of an era of rock and roll from which acts like Bob Dylan, The Doors, the Grateful Dead and Elton John emerged, and his writing was so revered by musicians that Fong-Torres was often the only journalist bands would talk to. A new documentary by Suzanne Joe Kai taps into Fong-Torres’ personal archives and includes interviews with him as well as some of his famous subjects to tell the story of how Fong-Torres, the Bay Area-born son of Chinese immigrants, found himself in the middle of the cultural zeitgeist. We’ll talk to Fong-Torres about the film, which will be shown at the upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival. 

During a recent Los Angeles Dodgers game, three people sprinted across the field waving banners with the names of former neighborhoods -- Bishop, La Loma and Palo Verde -- that were razed on the land that is now home to the team’s stadium. The protest was an attempt to call attention to a piece of L.A. history known as the Battle of Chavez Ravine, when in the 1950s city officials displaced roughly 1,800 mostly Mexican American families from the area. Officials promised to build a new public housing complex where the families could live, but instead sold the land to the Dodgers to build a stadium. We talk about that history and Mexican Americans’ deep and complicated relationship with the team.

During the past decade, widespread optimism for what technology could accomplish turned into a backlash against Silicon Valley and what it has spawned. Social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter hold enormous power over our economies and lives, but nobody is quite sure how to rein in the companies. In their new book, “System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot,” three Stanford University professors from different fields spell out exactly what has gone wrong and offer ideas to hold the powerful accountable in meaningful ways.  

It's been 30 years since Anita Hill testified before an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearing, describing how he sexually harassed her in the workplace. Anita Hill joins us to reflect on that experience, which she says laid bare the systemic faults in a confirmation process that still casts doubt on the credibility of women, and to talk about her new book "Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence."

A pipeline leak first reported on Saturday has spilled at least 126,000 gallons of crude oil into the Pacific, washing up on the shores of Huntington Beach and contaminating the area's environmentally sensitive wetlands and marshes. While the leak has been stopped, clean-up efforts are just getting underway. We'll talk about the effects of the oil spill and its impacts on the Huntington Beach community and environment.

What do a bicycle, a living room sofa, spools of copper wire, and a six-pack of Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero have in common? All of them may soon be or currently are in short supply as the global economy experiences a supply chain in disarray that has left few consumer goods and commodities untouched. Ships backed up and waiting to dock in California ports, containers that wait for trucks or trains to deliver them, and warehouses that lack enough labor to unpack those containers – all contribute to the bottlenecks in the supply chain that threaten to leave store shelves empty. With the holidays around the corner, some retailers, like Costco, are hiring their own ships to help deliver goods. We’ll look into what is causing these supply chain issues and how they might be resolved in the near- and long-term future.

Join us for a roundup of political news in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed numerous bills into laws in the past few weeks including a slew of laws aimed at increasing affordable housing, a new requirement for disclosing policy misconduct records, and changes to the state’s conservatorship law known as the #FreeBritney bill. We’ll take a look at what legislation is moving forward and other political news.

The San Francisco Giants have clinched a spot in the playoffs for the first time since 2016. With 105 wins under their belt, the 2021 team is among the best in the franchise’s history, and have a serious shot at beating the Los Angeles Dodgers for the division title. With the end of the season in sight, the team could soon be reliving the glory days of their championship victories in the 2010s. We’ll talk about what has contributed to the Giants’ successful run and what to expect from the playoffs.

Drug company Merck is applying for emergency use authorization in the U.S. for a new oral treatment for COVID-19 that trials suggest cuts the risk of hospitalization or death by half. We'll talk with UCSF's Dr. Monica Gandhi about the promising new treatment, get the latest coronavirus numbers for the Bay Area, and hear what to expect now that flu season is around the corner.

Residents of the small Northern California town of Willows suffered from smoke-filled air four out of twelve months in 2020. That makes it the smokiest place in the Western United States. That’s according to a recent analysis by NPR’s California Newsroom that looked at air quality across the state--and the country--between 2016 and 2020. We’ll hear about the investigation and catch up on the newest science on how smoke affects health. Then at 10:40, we’ll dive deep in on how to read and interpret air quality maps, and which ones are best.

Airports are often the first, last, and sometimes only impression a traveler has of a city. Singapore's Changi airport dazzles; Newark Airport in New Jersey offers less delight. SFO leads the way in design with its newly opened Harvey Milk Terminal which boasts Heath tiles in the restrooms, lighting that makes you look less tired, and improved acoustic design. But the airport industry has been challenged by the pandemic, which dropped traveller numbers and put new stresses on airports already grappling with issues like aging infrastructure. We'll talk about airports you love, airports you never want to see again, and hear from experts about airports of the future.

The new film “The Many Saints of Newark” brings Sopranos fans a prequel to the revered HBO series about mobsters in New Jersey. Director Alan Taylor, who won an Emmy for his work on the show, joins us to talk about the movie set during Tony Soprano’s adolescence against a backdrop of the 1967 Newark race riots. The series, which ran for six seasons between 1999 and 2007 followed the story of Tony Soprano, a mafia boss who sought help for anxiety and mental health issues. We discuss the new film, which comes out Friday in theaters and on HBO, and the legacy of “The Sopranos.”

A federal lawsuit from Texas is challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act, the landmark 1978 law designed to keep Native American children within Native American families in state child custody proceedings. The case, Brackeen v. Haaland, is the subject of the second season of the award-winning podcast “This Land” which explores the threats the case poses to the legal structure that defends Native American rights. We’ll talk with writer, activist and “This Land” host Rebecca Nagle about the political interests driving the court challenge and the children and families affected.

The last time Congress re-negotiated who is eligible for asylum in the United States, it came in the aftermath of the fall of Saigon, when an influx of southeast Asian refugees forced changes to how Americans provided sanctuary. Now, as Afghan refugees continue to arrive after the fall of Kabul and amidst the continuing stream of people fleeing violence in the Americas, could this be a moment when our system changes again? And if so, how might we create a better system? In the final show of our series on asylum we talk about how to build a better system for providing humanitarian relief at our borders and inside our country.

Forum Book Club returns with "How Much of These Hills Is Gold," the debut novel from C. Pam Zhang. Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, the book has been praised for its "arresting," "lyrical," and "ravishingly written" style. It follows the quest of two Chinese-American orphans, Sam and Lucy, to bury their father, a failed gold prospector. In this tender coming-of-age story, Zhang asks "what makes a home a home?" and in placing a Chinese family at its center, a group that history has not just forgotten, but in some instances, erased, the novel reshapes the American western. We'll talk to Zhang and a panel of fellow writers about the book.

In the latest installment of Forum's series on asylum seeking in the U.S., we'll take a look at what challenges Central American refugee communities in the Bay Area face. Many struggle to have their cases and stories heard. We'll also check in on the Central American Minors initiative allowing Central American migrant children to enter the country legally, which the Biden administration revived earlier this month. Community advocates Esmeralda Mendoza of East Bay Sanctuary Covenant and Vanessa Velasco of CARECEN SF join us.

Marin County officials are considering desalination plants to help weather a drought that is expected to deplete water resources as early as next summer. Newark has desalinated brackish water from the groundwater basin beneath Alameda Creek since 2003. And Antioch is launching its own desalination project. But critics say the environmental and economic costs of the technology are too high. We’ll hear which Bay Area counties are looking to desalination for drought mitigation and discuss the pros and cons of the technology.

Pfizer and BioNTech announced Tuesday that they submitted data to the FDA showing that their COVID vaccine is safe and effective for children ages 5 -11 We'll talk about when we can expect the agency to act -- and best practices for parents of young kids in the meantime -- with Paul Offit, a pediatrician and member of the FDA Covid Vaccine Advisory Panel. We'll also talk to Offit about his new book "You Bet Your Life," a history of medical innovations from the earliest antibiotics to the first blood transfusions, and the profound risks that accompanied them.

The Bay Area has been home to a vibrant Afghan community for decades. California lawmakers have been showing unified support in welcoming Afghan asylum seekers to the Bay Area, proposing legislation and holding a string of town halls in support of resettlement efforts. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, KQED reports that local service provider Jewish Family & Community Services resettled 77 Afghans in the East Bay -- which is typically the number of people they resettle over six months. But a warm welcome doesn't solve a major issue at hand: the Bay Area's and California's housing affordability crisis. We'll speak with Harris Mojadedi, a local community organizer and member of the Afghan Coalition, about the status of resettlement efforts here in the Bay Area and what Bay Area residents can do to help.