Kqeds Forum

Many of us spent the better part of the last pandemic year taking pains to minimize interactions with people outside our households or pods. With social venues now reopened, many vaccinated adults have the chance to meet new people and chat at length again — but do we remember how to talk to strangers? Journalist Joe Keohane joins us to remind us how and to explain why even small talk and passing interactions with those we don’t know can enhance happiness, cognitive functioning and our sense of belonging. We want to hear from you: Tell us about a memorable time that you connected with a stranger.

In a major breakthrough, scientists at UC San Francisco developed technology to decode words from the brain activity of a paralyzed man who is unable to speak and translate them to text that appears on a screen. The technology, known as a “speech neuroprosthesis,” may hold promise for the thousands of people each year who lose speech owing to a stroke, accident or disease. We’ll talk to the researchers about their achievement.

It's summer in the Bay Area, which means it’s time to cozy up by the fire and read some books about tropical islands, deserts and other warm places. We’ll gather a panel of Bay Area booksellers and bookworms to discuss summer reading trends and the best books coming out this summer. They’ll take your questions on what to stick in your bag for that campervan trip, whether you’re looking to dive into a weighty historical biography or plow through a pile of pulpy fun. And we’ll want to hear your picks: what book are you recommending to all your friends this summer?

Blindspotting was one of 2018’s critically acclaimed films. Penned by old friends, Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, it took on race and gentrification in Oakland. Now, they’re back with a new television show based on the movie that’s a wild love letter to the Bay Area. We’ll talk with them both about the show and honoring the place that made them.

Ransomware group REvil’s sites on the dark web went down Tuesday, weeks after the group attacked meat processing company JBS and information technology firm Kaseya in a breach that compromised up to 1,500 clients. And those attacks came on the heels of DarkSide’s major strike in May against the Colonial Pipeline, forcing it to temporarily cease operations. Ransomware attacks — which encrypt online systems and hold their data for ransom — more than doubled from 2019 to 2020 in the US, according to a Washington Post analysis. We’ll look at how and why these attacks occur and the national security threat they pose.

Los Angeles County has over the last several days recorded more than 3000 new covid cases, 99 percent of which occurred among the unvaccinated, according to the county health department. The spike in cases, fueled by the rapidly spreading delta variant, mirrors that of other regions in the state and country beset by low vaccination rates. The increase also comes as California tries to adopt a cautious approach to school reopening this fall, requiring even vaccinated students and teachers to wear masks. We’ll talk about the effort to vaccinate more Americans as the delta variant takes hold and take your vaccine questions.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of America’s premier thinkers on racism and systemic inequality, has taken on many roles: Atlantic staff writer, best-selling author, novelist and comic book writer. Last week, Coates made headlines for his latest move: teaching journalism at his alma mater Howard University along with Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times “1619 Project” writer Nikole Hannah-Jones. The announcement came after Hannah-Jones rejected an offer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after a contentious and drawn-out tenure process, which Coates publicly criticized. We talk with Coates about disinformation, police brutality and the role of journalism in American democracy.

The class of 2021 has graduated and millions of young people are now looking to start their first “real world” jobs. Some experts say the current economy is among the best for young workers in decades, now that post-shutdown hiring is ramping up and some industries confront persistent labor shortages. Still, for some workers, finding the best opportunity can be both daunting and time-consuming. We’ll hear stories of starting out in the workplace and get guidance from experts.

When Ifeoma Ozoma detailed the racism and sexism she faced as a Pinterest employee in a Twitter thread back in June 2020, she did so knowing she was in violation of her nondisclosure agreement. Now, Ozoma is co-sponsoring a California bill to protect workers under NDAs who say they’ve been discriminated against on the basis of race, sexual orientation, religion, disability or age. The bill would expand protections passed several years ago for workers who come forward about sex-based discrimination despite having signed an NDA. With no companies formally against the new bill, it could signal a shift in big tech, which has long been protected by NDA practices. We’ll talk about the fight over NDAs and what it could mean for workers in the tech industry and beyond.

Twenty years ago, California went dark. Without enough electricity to power the state, rolling blackouts shut down businesses, PG&E filed for bankruptcy, the state’s economy contracted and then-Governor Gray Davis’ administration spiraled into crisis. Part of the blame rested with Enron Corporation, an energy company whose brokers created an artificial electricity shortage by taking power plants offline — thereby raising prices by 800% or more. Enron ultimately unravelled when whistleblowers revealed its books were cooked, but not before the company severely damaged energy markets. Two decades later, Forum asks what we’ve learned from that calamity— and whether our electricity supply is safe from market manipulation.

A recent KQED report found that Kaiser Permanente, the largest health insurer in California, impeded some patients from accessing brexanolone, the first and only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat postpartum depression. The condition, affecting one in eight new mothers in California, can harm parents and children if left untreated. KQED reporter April Dembosky joins us to discuss her reporting and the challenges parents face in receiving treatment for postpartum depression.

By law, trucks weighing more than 4.5 tons are barred from driving through a portion of Interstate 580 in Oakland and San Leandro near the East Bay Hills. This 10-mile ban means most commercial trucks use Interstate 880, which runs through Black and Latinx neighborhoods and is a historically working class region. Research from the Environmental Defense Fund found that concentrations of black carbon along I-880 were approximately 80% higher than average concentrations along I-580. Why are trucks banned from this stretch of I-580, and should residents along I-880 exclusively bear the burden of truck pollution? We’ll discuss the pushback to I-580’s truck ban.

Decades ago, when forest ecologist Suzanne Simard set out to understand why forests tended to heal themselves when left to their own devices, she uncovered early evidence that trees communicate with each other, lending mutual aid during times of duress. Over the years her research deepened and expanded, marked by discoveries that trees relay information through cryptic underground fungal networks and that old trees, known as mother trees, can discern which seedlings are their own and transmit food and water to them. We’ll talk to Simard about her work, and the intertwined story of her family, all chronicled in her new book “Finding the Mother Tree.”

Is San Francisco over? Its a question that has dominated conversations in the city for years, maybe even decades. Has its maverick soul been lost to the tech industry, outrageous rents and the sadness of the suffering in the streets? For a city proud of its reputation as the glittering, devil-may-care zone of misrule at the end of the continent, the question of how its changed touches on San Franciscans deepest sense of who they are, who they were, and who they want to be, writer Gary Kamiya says in the introduction to a new essay collection, The End of The Golden Gate: Writers on Loving and (Sometimes) Leaving San Francisco. Well talk with some of the books contributors and we want to hear from you: Why do you stay? Why have you left?

From celebrities like Harry Styles and the members of boy band BTS to social media beauty influencers like Patrick Starrr and Kenneth Senegal, more and more men and nonbinary folk are publicly embracing makeup in their daily lives. And as author and journalist David Yi argues in their new book, the male beauty influencers of today have ancient cultural precedents. “Pretty Boys” traces male beauty figures throughout history, from Ramses the Great to ‘80s glam rockers to drag culture newly entering the mainstream. We’ll hear about how beauty influencers, both past and present, have explored gender through makeup.  

Last week temperatures hit 116 degrees in Portland, 108 in Seattle, and 121 degrees in western Canada. According to news reports, nearly one billion sea animals may have cooked to death in British Columbia. San Francisco, a similarly temperate climate, has had its own moments of extreme heat. It reached 106 degrees during the 2017 heat wave, breaking all previous records. But what would happen if San Francisco’s temperatures reached as high as Portland's did last week? How would roads, bridges and the health system respond to 116 degree temperatures? Could the electrical grid manage to stay on line? Forum talks to a panel of experts about what a future with extreme heat looks like and what we should be doing to prepare.

At a seashell museum on Sanibel, an island off southwest Florida, environmental journalist Cynthia Barnett discovered that 90% of the museum’s visitors didn’t know shells were made from living animals. In her new book “The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans,” Barnett explains the science of how shells are made and their role in the ecosystem of the oceans. And she delves into the long cultural history of seashells which have been used as money, jewelry, tools, instruments, building materials and more. Barnett joins us to discuss the mysteries of seashells and their mollusk makers and what they can teach us about the health of our oceans.

The social media app TikTok has grown exponentially since its release in 2016, with over 689 million active users worldwide. Famous for its short, looping videos that feature a range of content including lip syncs, dance routines, personal storytelling and documentary-style footage, it’s become a popular place to spend hours online, especially among Gen Z. Particularly in the past year, when in-person interaction was limited due to the pandemic, many people found community on TikTok and used it as a way to de-stress or express their creativity. We’ll talk about TikTok’s appeal and hear from popular creators Nick Cho and Taylor Cassidy about the communities they’ve found and built on the app.

Can self-deception be beneficial? That’s one of the questions animating Shankar Vedantam’s new book “Useful Delusions,” which argues that holding false beliefs is not necessarily a sign of pathology or ignorance. We’ll talk to theHidden Brain podcast host about the lies we tell ourselves — and each other — and the role some forms of deception play in sustaining relationships and advancing mental well-being.

Sebastian Junger walked 400 miles from Washington, D.C., to Pittsburgh, using railroad lines to follow the footsteps of America’s first colonizers. Analyzing what freedom meant to the settlers and indigenous people of this land centuries ago and what it means to its inhabitants today, Junger describes his trek in his new book, “Freedom.” “We failed to come up with a single moral or legal justification for what we were doing other than the dilute principle that we weren't causing harm so we should be able to keep doing it,” he writes. Junger joins us to talk about his journey, “Freedom” and the tension between doing whatever you want and the bonds of community.