Kqeds Forum

For more than 100 years, the U.S. government forcibly relocated tens of thousands of Native American children to boarding schools under a federal assimilation program meant to suppress their languages, beliefs and identities. Historians estimate that by the early 20th century, more than three-quarters of all Native children attended one of more than 350 re-education schools, including an estimated 10 in California. In June, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to investigate the loss of life, abuse and generational trauma associated with the schools. We’ll talk about the painful legacy of indigenous boarding schools in California and nationally.

Last fall, in search of a way to cope with his grief over the death of his fiancée eight years prior, Joshua Barbeau used artificial intelligence software to program a chatbot to simulate his fiancée, based on old texts she’d sent him. Barbeau told the San Francisco Chronicle that his conversations with the A.I. bot allowed him to feel a sense of closure and to better handle his grief. Barbeau isn’t the first to chat with digital imitations of lost loved ones, and as A.I software improves, he’s not likely to be the last. It’s all spawning ethics concerns and broader conversations around grief itself. We’ll talk about postmortem A.I. ethics and how A.I. might impact our mourning processes in the years to come.

Podcasts are booming, and it’s hard work to choose among the more than 2 million titles now available on popular streaming services like Spotify and iTunes. Whether your tastes veer toward pop culture, true crime or narrative storytelling, we want to hear from you. What’s the podcast you can’t stop telling your friends about? What do you look for in a podcast? We’ll hear your top picks and get recommendations from a panel of critics and podcasters.

On Thursday, U.S. gymnast Sunisa Lee won all-around gold as fellow gymnast and defending champion Simone Biles celebrated in the stands following her withdrawal from the event earlier this week. We’ll catch up on the big news--and the controversies around women’s uniforms and athlete mental health--in the first big week of the Olympics. And we hear how the Olympians with Bay Area ties are faring, including in mountain biking, softball, and swimming.

"It is 2020 and the City of Flint Says, / 'Don't boil the water' / And I refuse to drink a single drop / from any tap or bottle now. I've stopped / bathing completely, waiting for rain to slick / my skin back on. So begins Jonah Mixon-Webster's poem "Incubation," featured in his debut poetry collection, Stereo(TYPE). Initially published by Ahsahta Press in 2018 and re-published by Knopf Doubleday this month, "Stereo(TYPE)" describes Mixon-Webster's experiences and traumas endured as a Black queer man and criticizes the governmental neglect and treatment of his hometown, Flint, Michigan. In poems that vary in form and use words that overlap and span pages, balancing harshness with tenderness, Mixon-Webster's poetry collection explores what it means to tell one's story - and the story of one's community - through experiments in language.

A new poll by UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies shows that among likely voters, 47% favor the recall of Governor Gavin Newsom, and 50% oppose. While the referendum date is September 14th, mail-in voting starts next month and campaigning for and against the proposal is heating up across the state. We look at where the recall currently stands and how voter turnout might affect the outcome.

Is there a difference between feeling alone and being lonely? This is one of the questions that propelled author Kristen Radtke to write "Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness." Evocative yet spare illustrations by Radtke propel her search to understand the biological underpinnings of loneliness, the research around it and the ways in which it is expressed and handled in American culture. A combination of graphic nonfiction and memoir, "Seek You" moves beyond Radtke's own story to look at loneliness through multiple lenses. We talk to Radtke to learn more about what it means to be lonely.

Four police officers who were on the scene January 6th as insurrectionists breached the U.S. Capitol gave emotional testimony on Tuesday about the physical, verbal --and in some cases racist -- abuse they endured. Meanwhile, Congressional Republican leadership continues to downplay the insurrection, a fact that one officer testifying yesterday called “disgraceful.” We get your reaction to the first major hearing of the House select committee investigating the deadly Capitol attack.

The Delta variant now accounts for the vast majority of new COVID-19 infections in the United States. New models suggest the variant is driving a stark increase in daily case counts. Already, hospitals in some communities in Florida have matched their peaks from the days before the vaccines. The CDC has revised its guidelines about who needs to wear a mask and why. In this hour, we talk about what a Delta wave looks like, who is most at risk, and what’s different now as we mark 450 days of the pandemic.

In 2018, science journalist Lynda Mapes drew international attention for her day-by-day coverage of the female orca known as "Tahlequah," who carried her dead newborn calf more than 1000 miles through the Salish Sea before finally letting her go. That reporting formed the basis for Mapes's newest book "Orca: Shared Waters, Shared Home," which explores the sophisticated social networks that orcas form and the environmental threats that are driving them to extinction.

Not much can beat sipping a coffee or drink from the cafe as you gaze over the SF skyline heading to work — or returning home — on one of the ferries that crisscross the San Francisco Bay. But the pandemic lockdown hit the ferries hard: From one day to the next, the Golden Gate Ferry went from operating six vessels a day, to two. In this hour, we get the latest on when ferry service will be restored to pre-pandemic levels, hear about new routes and plans for a “green fleet” and learn why ferries are key in a disaster.

Yamiche Alcindor may be the ultimate Washington multi-tasker. She’s the White House correspondent for the PBS Newshour, a political contributor for NBC News and MSNBC, and as of this May, she is the new moderator of “Washington Week,” the current affairs program that has been on air since 1967. At “Washington Week,” Alcindor follows in the footsteps of her mentor, Gwen Ifill, who previously hosted the show and died of cancer in 2016. We’ll talk to Alcindor about covering Washington, her hopes for her new program, and her take on the latest news.

To sweat is human. That’s according to science journalist Sarah Everts, whose new book “The Joy of Sweat” explores the biology of what she calls our “oddly flamboyant” way of controlling body temperature. We’ll hear why some of us are more profuse -- and smellier -- perspirers than others, what drives our cravings for sweaty workouts and hot soaks and why we still spend billions annually on products to hide the effects of our natural cooling system.

There’s no better time than now to head out for a picnic. There are few weather impediments in the Bay Area — besides fog and wind — and the pandemic taught us that enjoying life outdoors is a good way to go. Whether you’re just having a sunset cocktail (or mocktail) or going full-on three-course meal, we’ll talk about how to picnic in style, which foods are best to bring and where to find that perfect picnic spot. We’ll get ideas to liven up your picnic with San Francisco Chronicle’s restaurant critic Soleil Ho, and we want your tips: What’s your go-to picnic recipe? Where are your favorite Bay Area spots to bring the family or friends for an al fresco meal?

In the first retrospective of his work on the West Coast, SFMOMA’s current exhibition on electronic art pioneer Nam June Paik features more than 200 works from the artist whose five-decade career “changed the way we look at screens.” One of most acclaimed of the first generation of video artists, Paik’s early work in the 1960s changed perceptions of television, video and the boundary between art and spectator through its integration of camera, video, music and performance. We’ll talk about Paik’s work and legacy, and we’ll hear from contemporary video artists who will discuss Paik’s impact on their own art.

For our inaugural Forum Book Club, we’ve picked Maceo Montoya’s “Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces.” The book interweaves its narrative with drawings and scholarly footnotes to tell the story of an aspiring painter with grand ambitions. This would-be artist faces several roadblocks: he is coming of age in 1940s New Mexico with no economic means to support his dreams and, instead of painting, he writes long notes for future works of art. Montoya takes readers along the narrator’s quest to become a celebrated artist — a journey that takes unusual turns including runs in with Chicanx historical figures such as activist Reies Lopez Tijerina and writer Oscar Zeta Acosta. In this comical and satirical tale, Montoya takes aim at what it means to tell a Chicano story, which Chicano narratives are elevated and who gets to become an artist. We’ll meet on the air to talk with Montoya and hear readers’ comments, reactions and questions.

Recent space flights by Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have raised the tantalizing question of whether space travel is in our near future. Space exploration has traditionally been the venture of governments, but with last November’s launch of an astronaut crew to the International Space Station by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, commercial flights to deep space seem more tangible. But is privatized space travel by billionaires just a vanity project? Or is this a huge step towards tackling space, the final frontier?  

PG&E announced yesterday that it will bury power lines in high wildfire risk areas of California, amounting to 10,000 miles of lines, enough to reach about halfway around the earth. The utility says the plan would also eliminate the need to order power shutdowns during high fire risk events. We’ll talk with an expert about the advantages of underground power lines and what they cost.

In the first half of the 20th century, California forcibly sterilized more than 20,000 people in state hospitals and other institutions, under a 1909 eugenics law that remained on the books for seven decades. The victims, deemed by the state as "feeble-minded" or otherwise unfit to have children, were disproportionately women and racial minorities. Now, the state is set to pay reparations to hundreds of survivors, as well as to victims who were involuntarily sterilized in state prisons well after the eugenics law was repealed in 1979. We'll talk about this dark chapter of California history and its survivors' quest for justice.

President Joe Biden lashed out at Facebook last week, saying the site was killing people by spreading coronavirus-vaccine misinformation. As New York Times reporters Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel highlight in their new book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebooks Battle for Domination, conspiracy theories and hate speech are not just problems that plague the company, they are the inevitable byproducts of the company's algorithms which keep users glued to the screen and mines their data. Relying on 400 interviews of current and former employees and executives, Kang and Frankel give an insiders view of how Facebook influenced the 2016 election, the Trump era and the January 6th insurrection and how the company struggles to create policies that can stay ahead of the challenges created by its own technology. We talk to Kang and Frenkel about their book, and growing tensions between Facebook and the Biden administration.