KQED's Forum

Acclaimed author C Pam Zhang’s latest novel, “Land of Milk and Honey,” is set after smog blocks the sun, killing 98% of commercial crops and 12% of the human population in famine. Bland mung powder is eaten by all but the very rich, who continue to eat lavishly. As the protagonist — a chef who decides to work for the rich to again taste real food — recalls, “A world was gone. Goodbye to all that, to the person I’d been, to she who’d abandoned, half-eaten, a plate of carnitas under blaze of California sun. It wasn’t grease I missed so much as the revelation of lime. Waiting on grief, I met hunger.” We’ll talk with Zhang about portraying hope in an apocalyptic novel, the interconnections between food, class, culture and climate change, and the meal she’d want to eat if it felt like the world was ending.

Guests:

C Pam Zhang, author of the novels, “Land of Milk and Honey" and “How Much of These Hills Is Gold." Zhang was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize and named a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree

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Roller culture in the bay area has lived many lives – from the roller discos of the 1970s, to the inline skate competitions of the 2000s and a quad-skating revival fueled by TikTok and the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s tangled up with other cultural movements, including the Bay Area’s underground music scene. And improvised roller parties – from Golden Gate Park to Panther Skate Plaza – are building on a legacy of Black and Latino communities originally excluded from formal skate spaces. We’ll talk with San Francisco’s “godfather of skate,” a roller dance teacher with five decades of skating experience and a former professional rollerblader.

Guests:

Azikiwee Anderson, former professional inline skater; co-founder, I Match Your Trick Association; owner, Rize Up bakery

David Miles Jr., owner, Church of 8 Wheels

Richard Humphrey, teaches roller dance classes; former Golden Roller

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Manuel Muñoz is the son of immigrant farm laborers from California’s Central Valley whose four works of fiction center the lives of Mexican-American communities in the region. Patrick Makuakane is a native Hawaiian and San Francisco-based kumu hula, or master teacher, who created a unique form of hula that blends traditional movements with contemporary music. They’re among five Californians who have been awarded the MacArthur Fellowship this year. We talk to them about what the award means to them and their communities and how themes of love, class, sexuality and identity suffuse their art.

Guests:

Patrick Makuakane, A kumu hula, or master hula teacher; director of Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wakiu, a San Francisco-based dance company blending modern music and themes with traditional Hula Movements.

Manuel Munoz, fiction writer and creative writing professor, University of Arizona. He writes about California's Central Valley where he was born and raised.

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During the height of the pandemic, the agency that handles California’s unemployment benefits had an epic meltdown. Not only could its computers not handle the thousands of additional claims, officials couldn’t even say for sure how big the backlog was. Jennifer Pahlka was one of the technology experts brought in to help, an experience she writes about in her new book Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing In the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better. The former United States chief deputy technology officer and founder of Code for America, Pahlka reveals why systems are too often developed to meet the needs of bureaucrats instead of the public. She joins Forum as part of our “Doing Democracy” series.

Guests:

Jennifer Pahlka, author, "Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing In the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better." Pahlka is the founder of Code America and has served as the chief deputy technology officer for the United States Government. She lives in Oakland.

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More than 21 million Americans are breathing air that’s dirtier than official records indicate. That’s according to a new investigation from the California Newsroom, MuckRock and the Guardian. An obscure rule in the Clean Air Act allows regions to strike so-called “natural” and “exceptional events,” like wildfires, from their pollution data on grounds that they are beyond the control of local air regulators. Since 2016, counties in California have had 166 days of pollution forgiven. And this past summer during the Canadian wildfires, more than 20 other states invoked it. As wildfires become more frequent amid worsening climate change, air regulators are expecting to use the “exceptional events” rule more often, and some lawmakers are even trying to make filing easier. We’ll hear more about the investigation’s findings and answer your questions.

Related link(s):

• Smoke, Screened — The Clean Air Act’s Dirty Secret: An Investigation From the California Newsroom, Muckrock and the Guardian

Guests:

Molly Peterson, editor, The California Newsroom; has covered science with a focus on climate change for KQED News; co-author, “Smoke, Screened: The Clean Air Act’s Dirty Secret"

Emily Zentner, data journalist, The California Newsroom; co-author, “Smoke, Screened: The Clean Air Act’s Dirty Secret"

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California’s use of forced sterilizations represents a dark chapter in the state’s history. Up until the 1970s, state hospitals and institutions implemented a eugenics program as a way to decrease specific demographic groups including Latinos, Blacks and Native Americans. In more recent decades, California prisons performed procedures—without patient consent — that left hundreds of women unable to have children. Now, the clock is ticking for survivors to apply for compensation from a $4.5 million fund the state established in 2021. As the Dec. 31 deadline looms, relatively few survivors have applied and the state has rejected most of them. We’ll talk about survivors’ experiences, why they aren’t receiving compensation, and hear from advocates on what should happen next.

More information on how to apply for compensation for involuntary sterilization can be found at the California Victim Compensation Board website. Applications are available in English and Spanish.Anyone needing assistance with the application can call the compensation board’s toll-free helpline at 1-800-777-9229 from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday.

Guests:

Jennifer James, PhD, MSW, MSSP, associate professor of Institute for Health & Aging, Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences, and UCSF Bioethics, University of California, San Francisco; member, the California Coalition for Women Prisoners - She has assisted forced sterilization survivors with their applications for reparations

Cayla Mihalovich, student, UC Berkeley School of Journalism Investigative Reporting Program - Wrote an article about California's reparations program for forced sterilizations for KQED

Moonlight Pulido, recipient, the California Forced or Involuntary Sterilization Compensation Program

Sydney Johnson, reporter, KQED News

Sharon Fennix, her application for the California Forced or Involuntary Sterilization Compensation Program was rejected

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Earlier this year Sonya Christian became the first woman chancellor of the California Community Colleges, the largest higher education system in the country serving 1.9 million students across 116 colleges. We’ll talk to Christian about her plans to address declining enrollment, ease transfers from community college to the UC and Cal State systems and create more community college baccalaureate degree programs. And we’ll hear from you: what did you gain from your community college education? What would you change about California’s system?

Guests:

Sonya Christian, chancellor, California Community Colleges - Website URL: https://sonyachristianblog.com/

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Kishi Bashi is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, filmmaker and Japanese-American. That identity and the liminal space between being Japanese and being American animates his documentary “Omoiyari” in which he traveled to WWII Japanese internment camps and Japan itself to better understand his own identity. Bashi improvises music on site in the film, and his taut melodic phrases, inflected with a bit of Laurel Canyon pop, build and expand to tell a story in a way you have not yet heard. His new double LP – “A Songfilm” – is a companion piece to the documentary and comes out on November 17. Bashi joins us in studio.

Guests:

Kishi Bashi, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist - Bashi's latest LP "Music from the Song Film: Omoiyari" is a companion to his documentary film that explores his identity and the WWII experience of Japanese incarceration. The album comes out on November 17. Bashi is based in Santa Cruz

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Every day in hospitals around the country, while one family is grieving the loss of a family member, another family is given news that will offer them hope: that a possible organ donor match has been made. In California alone, more than 20,000 people remain on the waitlist for a kidney, liver, or other organ. We’ll talk about how organ donation works and hear about a new law that aims to modernize the current system. And we’ll hear from you: have you or a family member received – or donated – an organ?

Guests:

Lenny Bernstein, health and medicine reporter, The Washington Post

Michael Pasco, liver transplant recipient

Kris Netherton, heart and kidney transplant recipient

Dr. Harish Mahanty M.D., surgical director of kidney transplantation, Sutter Health

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Court cases like the Dred Scott decision and Brown v. Board of Education are among the legal milestones that mark the arduous journey towards civil rights. But throughout the 19th century, ordinary Black Americans, freed and enslaved, sought to enforce their rights under the law. It’s a hidden and largely untold story of how Blacks both relied on, trusted in, and tried to leverage the legal system to establish and protect their rights, and it’s the subject of UC Berkeley historian Dylan Penningroth’s new book, “Before the Movement.” We’ll talk to Penningroth about his work.

Guests:

Dylan Penningroth, author, "Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights" - Penningroth is a professor of law and history at U.C. Berkeley and associate dean of the Jurisprudence and Social Policy program. He is the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship and lives in Kensington, California

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