KQED's Forum - TopPodcast.com

Latest Episodes:

Fantastic Negrito Shares New Album and Ancestral Stories with KQED Live Jun 03, 2022

Show notes

Fantastic Negrito is one of the most original and successful performers to emerge from the Bay Area over the last decade. A musician, a storyteller and a carrier of our region’s Black musical traditions, he began performing on the streets of Oakland. Now he’s won 3 Grammys and he’s got a new album coming out today. Alexis, Mina Kim and some lucky KQED Live fans, got to hear a preview of that album a few months back, and we’re excited to finally be able to share Fantastic Negrito’s electric performance with you.

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In the Aftermath of Uvalde, Teachers Share Their Reflections Jun 02, 2022

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As teachers process the horror of the Uvalde shootings, they’re also managing concerns about safety in their own workplaces and supporting and protecting students worried about gun violence. And that’s all on top of two years working under the stresses of the pandemic. We’ll talk to teachers across California about how they’re coping in the wake of Uvalde — inside the classroom and out.

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Daytripping Food Destinations and Favorite Road Stops Along the Way Jun 02, 2022

Show notes

Summer is the perfect time to hop in the car for a day trip, and while there’s nothing wrong with stopping at In-N-Out on 580, with a little planning, you can find something unexpected and delightful as you hit the road. As part of our regular segment on Bay Area food cultures, KQED food editor Luke Tsai joins us with his suggestions for how to plan your excursion to include delicious stops along the way. What’s your favorite roadside stop or dining destination?

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New Documentary ‘Plague at the Golden Gate’ Examines Public Health, Racism and Why History Repeats Itself Jun 02, 2022

Show notes

An infectious disease arrives in San Francisco and is immediately associated with residents of Chinatown. Scientists and public health officials try to stop the spread. White residents believe they are immune. Politicians and the business class say the disease is not real because they worry about hurting commerce. Vulnerable people die in droves. A new PBS documentary, “Plague at the Golden Gate,” takes viewers back to 1900 when the bubonic plague hit San Francisco in a manner eerily similar to the way the COVID-19 pandemic has played out the past three years. The film examines how racism, discrimination, and misinformation contributed to the spread of the disease. We’ll talk about the film and how history is repeating itself.

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Should California Keep Generating Nuclear Power? Jun 01, 2022

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With the possibility of rolling blackouts looming for the summer, Governor Gavin Newsom said last week that he would consider delaying the 2025 shutdown of Diablo Canyon, California's last remaining nuclear power plant. As the world seeks to wean itself off of fossil fuels, some climate change activists have argued for a pivot to nuclear energy. But while nuclear energy technology has improved, concerns persist about nuclear power, the waste it generates and the possibility of disasters like Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. We’ll talk about the future of nuclear energy and whether it can be a viable way to combat climate change.

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How Big Tech Turned Work Into a Religion Jun 01, 2022

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In her new book, "Work Pray Code," UC Berkeley professor Carolyn Chen offers up a provocative spin on what has happened among Silicon Valley professionals. Their work has become their religion. She means this literally, and she’s a religion professor, so she should know. Based on in-depth interviews with more than 100 Silicon Valley workers, she found that their work isn’t soul-crushing but rather as she writes, “Work has become a spiritual practice that inspires religious fervor. People are not ‘selling their souls’ at work. Rather, work is where they find their souls.” We’ll talk with Chen about her new book and ask our listeners: Is work where you look for belonging, identity, and transcendence?

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To Reduce Gun Violence, Advocates are Using Public Health Strategies May 31, 2022

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What if some of the same public health strategies used to manage a pandemic could be marshaled to stem gun violence? As legislative solutions falter and firearm sales continue to increase, gun violence prevention advocates are looking to public health approaches that include systematic data collection, individual and community-level risk assessments and evidence-based prevention measures. We’ll look at what it means to treat gun violence as a public health emergency -- and the community organizations doing that work in California.

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For Oakland A’s Fans, It’s Not Been A Field of Dreams May 31, 2022

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A recent piece in the New York Times, called the Oakland A’s “the loneliest team in baseball.” Though the Coliseum where they play can hold 57,000 fans, on average only 6,000 show up for home games. What happened to the glorious days of the A’s when manager Billy Beane was acclaimed for his savvy in managing the roster and payroll to get the most out of bench players? Has the management of the A’s turned off fans with their threats to move to Las Vegas if they don’t get a new stadium? And can Bay Area fans sustain two major league baseball teams? We’ll look at the state of the Oakland A’s, their future, and the hard economics of major league baseball.

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Forum from the Archives: Jennifer Senior on the Fragility of Friendship May 30, 2022

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“Modern life conspires against friendship,” says Atlantic staff writer Jennifer Senior, "even as it requires the bonds of friendship all the more." That’s one of the paradoxes at the center of Senior’s new piece “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart” — a meditation on why friendships fade and collapse and why in midlife those losses sting particularly hard. We’ll talk to Senior about how at 52 she’s navigating what she calls a “Great Pandemic Friendship Reckoning” and what it means to overcome the heartbreak of a lost friend.

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Understanding Grief in a Time of National Mourning May 30, 2022

Show notes

More than one million Americans have died from COVID-19. Close to 8,000 Americans have died from gun violence in 2022. Another nine thousand died of suicide. The difficult news of our time goes far beyond death. The planet is in crisis, tornados, floods and fires are ravishing whole towns, economic instability, racial injustice, and the rolling back of rights we’ve counted on for 50 years. It’s a lot. On this Memorial Day, we take time to make space for our individual and collective grief.

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