KQED's Forum

Polls find growing ambivalence in young adults’ views towards marriage — even as society continues to grant greater privileges and respect to married people. This comes as the right pushes for a return to “traditional marriage” — an idea which historian Stephanie Coontz says isn’t actually based in history, as expectations of marriage, monogamy, gender roles and even the title “Mrs.” have drastically changed over time and across cultures. We’ll talk with Coontz about how socioeconomic factors have shaped expectations and laws around gender roles, marriage and love and about her new book, “For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage.”

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Federal health officials are eying iceberg lettuce distributed by California-based Taylor Farms as a potential source of the major cyclosporiasis outbreak in the United States. Health authorities tracking 4,173 confirmed and 7,400 likely cases of the infection, which can cause severe diarrhea, cramping and fatigue that lasts up to a month. We talk with food safety and health experts on what it will take to trace and contain the cyclospora outbreak.

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The mandate of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has long been to help states and local governments meet the needs of communities after disaster strikes. But since the Trump Administration took office, the agency has been threatened with closure and has suffered massive budget and staff cuts, essentially crippling its ability to respond to catastrophic events. As natural disasters intensify as a result of climate change, who will step in to help our region recover if a huge wildfire or earthquake happens here? We discuss the impacts of a weakened FEMA, the growth of a private disaster relief industry, and talk through what it would take for FEMA to turn things around as an agency.

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More than four months after President Trump predicted a short war with Iran, the conflict is intensifying and broadening. The ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran has collapsed, leaving passage through the Strait of Hormuz restricted and the two nations on a war footing: the United States has carried out days of sustained airstrikes while Iran targets American allies in the Gulf. To many analysts, it’s raising the specter of a forever war. We talk about where U.S. policy goes from here.

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There was a time when U.S. automakers dominated the global car industry  with their products and innovations. But when it comes to electric vehicles, which accounted for a quarter of global auto sales in 2025, the U.S. is barely a player.  China now builds roughly three-quarters of the world’s EVs; the United States about five percent.  We’ll talk about how the widening technology gap and lukewarm federal support for clean vehicles threatens the entire U.S. auto industry with obsolescence, and what California is doing about it.

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During World War II, the US government asked the Japanese American citizens it interned two questions: Would you serve in the US armed forces wherever ordered? And would you swear “unqualified allegiance” to the U.S. and forswear any allegiance to Japan’s emperor? Those two so-called loyalty questions animate acclaimed novelist Karen Tei Yamashita’s latest book, which explores that historical period of state-sanctioned violence against immigrants and citizens alike — and how this notion of “loyalty” divided, antagonized, imprisoned and expelled Japanese Americans during World War II, with long-term ramifications. Following three generations of Japanese Americans before, during and after internment, the novel is formatted as the archived letters, poetry and oral histories of Japanese Americans real and imagined. We’ll talk with Yamashita about her own family’s story and about the novel’s unfortunate relevance today. It’s called “Questions 27 & 28.”

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When San Francisco police drone video surveillance was accidentally livestreamed on the internet last month, it revealed how extensively, and at what great detail, the city is watched from above. The use of surveillance technology is rapidly growing in the Bay Area, with increasing drone and AI-powered surveillance networks partnering with local law enforcement and government agencies. In 2024, the SFPD launched the Real Time Investigation Center, which included major investments in license plate readers, safety cameras and a drone program and Alameda County just approved the renewal of a $2.25 million contract with Flock Safety. It’s all raising concerns about privacy, data leaks, civil liberty infringements and the use of the technology to aid immigration deportations. We’ll discuss the state of surveillance tech in the Bay Area, and what it means for public safety and privacy.

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Burning Man turns 40 this year, and its changed dramatically since the first event in San

Francisco. The first gathering drew a couple dozen people who gathered to burn an 8-foot wooden effigy at Baker Beach to celebrate the summer solstice. Four decades later, it’s a multi-million dollar operation that every August draws more than 70 thousand people to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. A new HBO documentary called “The Man Will Burn” looks at the staying power of the massive pop-up commune and the struggles to maintain its founding values. We’ll talk with the directors and one of the producers for the series.

Guests:

Jehane Noujaim, co-director, HBO’s “The Man Will Burn”

Vikram Gandhi, co-director, HBO’s “The Man Will Burn”

Muriel Soenens, series producer, HBO’s “The Man Will Burn”

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As a historian who teaches a class called “The History of Information,” Stanford professor Thomas Mullaney has spent decades thinking about the unreliability of archival materials in understanding the past, subject as they are to decay, disorder and obsolescence. But it wasn’t until his own father died and he scrambled to preserve the evidence of his life that he decided to write a personal history of information about how we disappear from the historical record and from the world. We talk with Mullaney about his new book, “How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information.”

Thomas Mullaney, professor, Stanford University; author, “How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information”

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The University of California system is considering requiring SAT or ACT scores in admissions again, after more than 3,000 faculty members signed open letters in favor of bringing back the test requirement. Professors say their students have fared worse in math since the UC system did away with a standardized testing requirement in 2020. Many of the nation’s most selective universities have already reinstated the exams after a pandemic pause, but a 2019 lawsuit — which argued the SAT and ACT discriminate against disabled students and measure race and wealth more than academic aptitude — had limited the UC system’s ability to restore the tests. We’ll discuss the debate and hear from you: Should the UCs bring back the SAT and ACT?

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