Kqeds Forum

At the outset of her new memoir, "The Secret to Superhuman Strength," celebrated graphic novelist Alison Bechdel muses about the origins of her obsession with exercise -- from skiing to running to martial arts to the latest 7-minute workout. For her, the fixation is a physical dependence: "I can't help myself. The sweat, the endorphins, the gear, the togs, the next new thing!" It also has deep emotional and spiritual roots, furthering her quest to get out of her head and transcend her ego. We'll talk to Bechdel about her lifelong fitness odyssey.

The latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show sexually transmitted diseases are at an all-time high for the sixth year in a row. In her new book, Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs, UCSF School of Medicine associate professor Dr. Ina Park says it's easier for people to have sex than to talk about it. She takes a fact-based--often humorous--look at sexually transmitted diseases, from gonorrhea to herpes to HIV. We talk with Park about sex, STDs and take your questions.

A 2020 study found that for every person who dies of COVID-19, at least nine people become bereaved. With more than half a million lives lost to COVID-19 in the U.S., that means more than 5 million people are experiencing grief from the pandemic alone. In her New York Times op-ed, “The Grief Crisis is Coming,” journalist and author Allison Gilbert writes that “we must begin to address the toll” of this grief and its impact on public health. We’ll talk to Gilbert and bereavement researcher Dr. Toni Miles about the rippling effects of grief on this scale and how to address it.

The last time a California governor faced a recall in 2003, there were more than 100 candidates on the ballot. This time around, the gubernatorial recall election is also shaping up to be a circus and not just because of the bear that candidate John Cox brought to a news conference. Well talk about the candidates lining up to replace Governor Gavin Newsom in the recall election later this year, including former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer,

Covering politics has never been easy, but since the Jan. 6 insurrection, the landscape has become particularly difficult for the press. How does the country create costs and accountability for lying and shamelessness in politics? And following four years of Donald Trump, have the rules for press coverage permanently changed? Media critic and New York University professor Jay Rosen joins us to discuss how the press should respond when one party is actively supporting the “Big Lie” -- the false claim that the November 2020 election was stolen. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his $100-billion “California Comeback Plan” on Monday, which includes a proposal for $600 stimulus payments to a projected two-thirds of Californians, with additional $500 checks to families with children. The plan also proposes relief for rent and overdue utility bills. With a projected $75.7 billion state budget surplus, Newsom has until this Friday to submit his updated budget proposal. On Sunday, the governor announced a plan to increase funding for child and home care.  We’ll talk about his budget plan’s potential impacts both economically and politically ahead of the upcoming gubernatorial recall election.

As more people get vaccinated and the state opens up, concerns over how to re-enter the social world are front and center. This is particularly true for babies born during the pandemic and toddlers who may have not learned usual socialization skills in the past year. We’ll talk to a pediatrician about what we should expect from kids that young, what you should and shouldn't worry about when it comes to your child’s social behavior and whether some kids are more at risk from lack of socialization opportunities.

The California Public Utilities Commission is debating potential updates to its rooftop solar program to address customer complaints about equity in billing. California’s Net Energy Metering subsidy program, which credits solar panel-owning customers when their systems generate excess electricity, has been contributing to higher electric bills across the state. The “cost-shift” element places an unfair financial burden on customers without solar panels, shifting the ongoing costs for overall maintenance of the state’s electric grid to them. Advocates for reform want customers with solar panels to pay their fair share of system maintenance, while others worry a rule change would decrease incentives to go solar, impacting the state’s clean energy efforts. We’ll discuss the ways California’s solar rules could be reformed and what potential changes could mean for solar energy in the state.

An old wound was healed last week when former California state Assemblymember and longtime LGBTQ rights leader Tom Ammiano received his varsity letter decades after earning it on his high school track team. During an interview with KQED’s Political Breakdown, Ammiano, now 79, told his story of being denied a varsity letter because of homophobic rhetoric stating, “it’s something that still hurts, even a hundred years later.” A longtime listener was struck by the conversation and reached out to Immaculate Conception High School in New Jersey directly. The president and director of the school had a letter custom-made. His story went viral and since then, Ammiano has gained national recognition for his work in civil rights, education and politics.

Health experts say that while the Bay Area will likely end up with 80% of its population vaccinated against COVID-19, the United States is unlikely to reach herd immunity, a threshold where a high enough percentage of the population is inoculated against the coronavirus to essentially end its spread. Half of the adults in the U.S. have been inoculated with at least one dose, but daily vaccination rates have been dropping. We’ll talk about what this means for the future of the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 579,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States as of May 2021. Michael Lewis’ new book, “The Premonition,” argues that many would still be alive had the Centers for Disease Control and federal government responded promptly and forcefully in the pandemic’s early days. The book follows the American doctors and scientists who advocated for immediate action and charts the roadblocks they faced, including bureaucratic red tape, for-profit health care and partisan politics. Lewis, known for his books “Moneyball” and “The Big Short,” joins us to discuss where our public health systems went wrong.

Low-wage frontline workers have kept Californians fed and vulnerable populations cared for since the start of the pandemic. And they’ve borne a high cost for their work. A recent study out of UC Merced finds a 30% increase in deaths for essential workers in 2020. We’ll hear about people working in restaurants, grocery stores, home care and other industries who feared losing income -- or their jobs --if they took time off to recover from COVID-19. And as the state moves toward a full reopening next month, we’ll look at lessons learned during the pandemic on how we can better protect and support low-wage frontline workers. 

At age 14, Ian Manuel was sentenced to life without parole for shooting and injuring a woman. Manuel spent 18 years in solitary confinement, living in a windowless room 10 feet by seven feet wide. He was released in 2016 following the efforts of Equal Justice Initiative's Bryan Stevenson, and with the support of his victim, who advocated for his early release. Manuel captures his experiences in his new book My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope, and Redemption. We'll talk to him about his advocacy work and how the justice system can be improved.

As the Biden administration passes the 100-day mark, observers on the left have been pleasantly surprised that the presidents policies are more progressive than promised on the campaign trail. Biden has pushed big government programs to maximize vaccination access, rebuild infrastructure and invest in education. But some progressives would still like to see him push for specific policies his administration hasnt yet addressed, like Medicare for All and free tuition at four-year colleges. Well discuss how progressives are looking at the current administration, and how California, the state that voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Primary, grades Bidens performance so far.

President Joe Biden promised a more humane and welcoming approach to asylum seekers, yet many Trump administration policies that limited people's ability to ask for asylum remain. We get an update on the humanitarian crisis for thousands of migrants and asylum seekers who are still waiting at the US-Mexico border and talk about the Biden's Administration handling of the issue so far.

American Indian and Alaska Native women are up to ten times more likely to be murdered than the national average. And too often, according to the U.S. Interior Department, "murders and missing persons cases in Indian country go unsolved and unaddressed, leaving families and communities devastated." Journalist Connie Walker has covered cases of missing and murdered indigenous women deeply, most recently as the host of the podcast "Stolen" which investigates the 2018 disappearance of 23-year old Jermain Charlo near the Flathead Reservation in Montana. Walker joins us to talk about what she learned and what it means to be indigenous in America.

In January, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared India “saved humanity from a big disaster by containing corona effectively.” But this week, recorded Covid-19 cases in India surpassed the 20 million mark, and experts warn that the worst is yet to come. Hospital beds and oxygen devices remain in short supply and crematoriums in Delhi are overwhelmed. Critics contend that the Modi administration’s decision to open up the country and disregard Covid-19 as an ongoing threat left the country vulnerable to what is now the world’s worst outbreak of the disease. We’ll look at how India got to this point and what lessons can be learned from this humanitarian crisis.

When the COVID-19 pandemic came into full force in 2020, the American job market was hit hard. With many losing their existing jobs, and young Millennials and Gen Z entering a shaky job market, working multiple jobs became a financial necessity. Census data shows that the number of Americans juggling multiple jobs is steadily rising. E-commerce websites like Etsy had a 42 percent growth in new sellers compared to previous years. We discuss the increase of side gigs and how some young people have had to jungle their full time jobs with side hustles, monetizing creative hobbies like cooking and jewelry making to earn extra income. Have you had to come up with a pandemic side hustle?

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a committee on Tuesday to study how the city could provide reparations for its Black residents. The 15 member African American Reparations Advisory Committee will take two years to come up with a plan for compensating those whose ancestors were enslaved or discriminated against by Jim Crow laws. Forum will discuss what reparations could look like for San Francisco, who could get them and what it will take to make it happen.

 As the host of NPR’s podcast “Death, Sex & Money,” Anna Sale is not afraid to talk about those difficult topics (and more) with complete strangers. But as she notes in her new book, “Let’s Talk About Hard Things,” sometimes it’s easier to talk to a bartender or a podcast host “because it’s downright terrifying to discuss the things that are the most important to us with the people who are most important to us.” Yet, that is exactly what we should do, argues Sale, because talking -- and listening -- will help us connect with the world around us. We’ll talk with Sale about how to approach difficult conversations, especially as some of us look to reconnect coming out of this pandemic.