Kqeds Forum

Rejection is normal and happens to all of us, but it still never feels good to get that email or call from an admissions officer or potential employer saying you weren’t “the one.” In a recent article for The Atlantic titled “A Toast to All the Rejects,” NPR producer Rhaina Cohen writes about the power of turning one’s rejections into a celebration with friends or colleagues. Cohen’s article was inspired by a graduate student lab at UC Irvine led by social sciences professor Barbara Sarnecka where they created a group spreadsheet to collect everyone’s rejections from jobs, academic journals or grants. When they reached 100 rejections as a group, they threw a party. “Instead of shying away from rejection, they’re asking us to run straight toward it—and to do so together,” writes Cohen. We explore the idea of reframing – and even celebrating – rejection.

Northern and Southern California are going to battle on Sunday when the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams face off for this year’s National Football Conference championship and a bid for the Super Bowl. We'll talk about the all-California matchup and hear your fan predictions.

Isabel Allende’s new novel, “Violeta,” opens in the midst of a pandemic, under quarantine conditions. Only it’s 1920 and the Spanish flu. Violeta has just been born; she spends her early life in the virus-induced social bubble that we’ve all come to know. Inspired by Allende’s own mother, Violeta is born into elite, but falls into a rural social stratum after the Great Depression. It’s a saga about family secrets, exiles and resilience, as well as a reflection on the century when the world became technologically modern and socially fractured. We’ll talk with Allende about the novel, her mother and writing through — and about — a pandemic.

After nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer said on Tuesday that he will retire by the end of the current term. Justice Breyer, one of the Court's three liberal members, will step down as the Court considers major cases involving abortion and gun rights. Breyer’s retirement offers President Biden, who vowed during the campaign to nominate a Black woman justice, his first opportunity to shape the Court. It also comes at a time when the non-partisan nature of the Court has come under question. We'll talk about Breyer’s legacy, who might succeed him and the future direction of the Court.

A new report released this week details the experiences of Silicon Valley’s “shadow workforce” -- the temporary contract workers tech companies hire through third parties. These contractors, who are disproportionately women and people of color, receive different pay, benefits and protections than employees. While tech companies have fared well during the pandemic, according to the report authored by TechEquity Collaborative, “the temporary, contract, and contingent workers who are classified differently from their directly-employed counterparts despite performing critical roles for the companies—have been locked out of tech’s prosperity.” We’ll discuss the yearlong investigation’s findings about this “two-tier system” of employment and why some are pushing to change it.

Port of Oakland commissioners will vote Thursday on whether to approve an open air rock and gravel storage facility at the port. The port says the Eagle Rock Aggregates facility will bring much needed construction materials to the Bay Area. The proposal is strongly opposed by some West Oakland residents who say the dust from the facility will further pollute the already dirty air in the neighborhood from the port. Pollution has contributed to higher rates of respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, and cancer in West Oakland compared to other areas of the city. We’ll discuss the proposal, its environmental impacts and the port’s relationship with its neighbors.

“I believe America is simultaneously a riotous comedy and a heartbreaking tragedy,” writes Wajahat Ali in his new memoir “Go Back to Where You Came From.” With humor, Ali recounts a Bay Area childhood growing up as the shy, pop culture-loving, Husky jeans-wearing only son of Pakistani immigrants. Although the community around him made clear the only acceptable careers for him were doctor, engineer, or successful businessman (the only other option was being “a failure”), Ali found a career as a writer, and it was art that saved Ali when his family’s lives were blown apart by scandal. In this book, part autobiography and part social criticism, Ali takes apart the myth of the “moderate Muslim,” and describes what life in America is like post-9/11 and post-Trump for a Muslim who once felt free enough to pray publicly at a Cirque du Soleil concert and the stalls of the Gap, but who no longer feels he can. We’ll talk to Ali about his book and what it means to be American when your fellow citizens question your righ

Lunar New Year is only a week away, on February 1st, which means some of you could already be running behind in getting the spread ready. As part of our new series on the food cultures of the Bay Area with KQED Food Editor Luke Tsai, we’ll talk about the traditional, and not so traditional, foods of the New Year. Whether you’re planning an elaborate feast or just picking up take-out, we want to hear your favorite lunar New Year’s dish or tradition. If you stick with the Gregorian calendar and celebrated weeks ago, we still want to hear from you. What do you eat to mark the New Year and to bring you luck or abundance?

More than 120 restaurants closed in San Francisco in 2021 — and many still-open places feel like they’re on their last legs. Dining simply has not come back, and though some businesses have prospered by making lemons into take-out, others are tapping out. And it’s not just restaurants: the iconic Castro Theater is planning a switch to live events to survive. We open the phone lines to commemorate the beloved Bay Area restaurants and small businesses we’ve lost in recent years.

Beset by a climate crisis that's creating ever more devastating wildfires, Californians may find it "easy, even comforting, to sit in despair," writes reporter Liz Weil. But, she continues, "nihilism is a failure of the imagination, the bleak, easy way out. We need to face the lives before us." That includes recognizing that we're in what climate futurists call the "trans-apocalypse:" a reality defined by the imperative that humans engage constantly with ecological threats. We'll talk to Weil about the origins of California's wildfire problem and how we can reframe and address it.

Last Thursday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced that the latest Covid surge in San Francisco, which was fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, was on a downward trend, having peaked in early January. This welcome news comes as San Francisco shifts its thinking on Covid. According to the city’s Department of Public Health, the goal is not to stop Covid infections, but rather to focus on preventing worse outcomes like severe illness, hospitalization and death. We’ll get an update from Dr. Naveena Bobba, the department’s deputy director, about how the city is handling Covid and how San Francisco’s approach could influence state policy.

In his new book "Davos Man," New York Times Global Economics Correspondent Peter S. Goodman exposes the role of elite billionaires in deepening global inequality, often while burnishing a do-gooder image. Goodman joins us to talk about how gatherings like the annual World Economic Forum in Davos help the mega-rich divert attention from their efforts to dodge taxes and fight regulation.

With historic numbers of people quitting their jobs, there’s no question that American workers are fried and fed-up. But according to author Jonathan Malesic the country’s burnout crisis goes much deeper than the pandemic. A former college professor, he’s the author of a new book "The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives." He joins us to talk about the history of Americans’ dysfunctional relationship with work and how to fix what he calls our "burnout culture." But first, we check in with Riverside County Congressman Mark Takano, the author of a bill that would create a 32-hour workweek.

Endangered and rare forms of salmon are being spotted in surprising places around the Bay Area — some of which they haven’t visited in almost two decades. Chinook salmon were even seen in Oakland’s Lake Merritt last month; now coho salmon are swimming in the tiny tributaries of the San Geronimo Valley. The reason for this year’s sightings can be traced back to the heavy rains over the last several months, which timed well for these breeds’ spawning periods. But in the bigger picture, land development, climate change, overfishing and drought have all played a role in why we haven’t seen these fish in so long — and are part of the conversation on how we can work to keep them around in the future. We’ll answer your questions about the salmon currently swimming in the Bay Area.

After one month and 1.5 million kilometers of travel since its launch on Christmas, the James Webb Space Telescope is set to reach its orbit destination Monday. It’s the beginning of a profound shift in the way we see deep space: the telescope will be able to look back 13.7 billion years back in time. To get to this point has taken 10 billion dollars and a quarter of a century of work. For nearly all of that time, astronomer Marcia Rieke was on the project. As she waits for the telescope to thrust into orbit, we’ll talk with her about what it’s like to see a career’s worth of preparation finally come to fruition and what she hopes to learn from the telescope’s journey.

It’s been five years since California legalized marijuana under Proposition 64 and opened the doors to a new legal market. Yet today, the majority of cannabis consumed here is not legal. A key reason: it’s difficult and costly to start and maintain a state-licensed cannabis business. Meanwhile, a robust system for setting up shop as part of the illicit market has been in place long before voters approved Prop 64. Last week cannabis farmers, business owners and advocates gathered at the State Capitol to demand reform to the burdensome tax system that’s frustrating businesses and growers of all sizes but making small businesses and farms especially vulnerable to collapse. In outlining next year’s state budget proposal this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he “supports cannabis tax reform and plans to work with the Legislature to make modifications to California’s cannabis tax policy to help stabilize the market.” We’ll take stock of California’s cannabis industry and proposed reforms.

In 2016, the public learned that Millennium Tower, a 60-story luxury condo highrise in downtown San Francisco, was tilting to the northwestby 16 inches. Fast forward five years and the lean is now at about 26 inches. The tower has been sinking at a rate of about 3 inches per year despite tens of millions of dollars being spent to stop it. . Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, the firm hired to fix the leaning tower, recently submitted a revised plan to city officials after their previous efforts resulted in increased titling. We talk about the latest developments in the Millennium Tower saga.

The city of Sunnyvale is at war with thousands of crows that have invaded downtown. To try and drive the birds away, city employees have been armed with $20 green laser pointers. Ideas for other solutions abound: hang effigies of dead crows off of buildings, blast crow distress sounds from boomboxes, light up the sky with pyrotechnics. What is it with all the crows? And what will it take to shoo them away?

You may not know who Bruno is, but you do probably know that we don’t talk about him thanks to a song from the animated film “Encanto.” The movie, about a magical Colombian family struggling to maintain their special powers, hit movie theaters in late November and has since infiltrated households across the country with its catchy songs – six of which have landed on the Billboard Hot 100 list this week. Disney, the studio behind the film, is known for pumping out hit songs such as “Let it Go” from “Frozen” or “A Whole New World” from “Aladdin”, but the multi-track success of Encanto is unprecedented. We talk about why songs like, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” “Surface Pressure,” and “What Else Can I Do,” are stuck in so many heads of kids and adults alike. Guests: Pamela Avila, Los Angeles-based entertainment editor, USA Today, and author of the article, “What Disney’s 'Encanto' teaches us about self-worth and overcoming intergenerational family trauma.” Bethonie Butler, reporter covering television and pop cu

President Biden called his first year in office one of "enormous progress" in a press conference Wednesday, citing a successful vaccine rollout, record job creation and the enactment of his bipartisan infrastructure law. But his voting rights and "Build Back Better" plans remain stalled in a bitterly divided Congress, and ongoing supply chain issues and fears of inflation threaten economic recovery and, potentially, Democrats' ability to maintain their House and Senate majorities. We'll look back at Biden's first year and the thorny challenges that lie ahead. Guests: Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent, NPR