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Proposed Facility Opens New Battle Between Port of Oakland and Neighbors Over Air Quality Jan 27, 2022

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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.

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Wajahat Ali on How to Become an American when America Doesn’t Seem to Want You Jan 26, 2022

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“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 right to be there.

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The Foods to Welcome the Year of the Tiger with Luke Tsai Jan 26, 2022

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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?

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Remembering Bay Area Businesses Lost During Covid Jan 26, 2022

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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.

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Liz Weil On Coming to Terms with the Trans-Apocalypse Jan 25, 2022

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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.

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San Francisco Shifts Its Approach to Covid Jan 25, 2022

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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.

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NYT’s Peter Goodman on “How the Billionaires Devoured the World” Jan 25, 2022

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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.

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The Roots of America’s "Burnout Culture" Jan 24, 2022

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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.

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Salmon Swim in Some Bay Area Tributaries For First Time in Almost 20 Years Jan 24, 2022

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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.

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After Decades Working on James Webb Space Telescope, Astronomer Marcia Rieke on the Anticipation of its Orbit Jan 24, 2022

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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.

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