KQED's Forum

In her new collection of poems, Mimi Tempestt wrestles with both intensely personal struggles and injustices across the globe. In one of the poems in “the delicacy of embracing spirals” she writes,

Every day i wake up & watch my old renditions steal

my heart away from my mother’s wildest dream

you keep asking me to tell my story

i’m too busy creating the world

Tempestt, who grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in Berkeley, is known for poetry that blurs convention and questions everything from gender to gentrification. We’ll talk with Tempestt about how she employs poetry to reclaim her identity and live out loud.

Guests:

Mimi Tempestt, multidisciplinary artist; poet and author "The Delicacy of Embracing Spirals"

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From oat milk at coffee shops, to cashew cheese at Target, to McDonald’s McPlant burger, it’s becoming easier to consume fewer animal products. That’s a win for the environment, given a livestock sector that’s responsible for about 15 percent of global greenhouse emissions, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. But simply offering substitutes to the American diet won’t be enough to stop climate change or the exploitation of food workers, land and animals, argues food and culture writer Alicia Kennedy’s new book “No Meat Required.” Kennedy joins us to share how the counter-cultural history of veganism, vegetarianism and plant-based eating can help us rethink American food norms and still uphold the cultures, flavors and joys of food.

Guests:

Alicia Kennedy, food and culture writer; author, "No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating" - Kennedy also has a popular food newsletter on Substack

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In September, Alameda County declared a state of emergency on homelessness to address growing numbers of unhoused people. Suburban and rural areas throughout California are seeing more homelessness, according to a recent study from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. Homelessness outside of big cities can be less visible and requires a different approach since towns and suburbs often lack the resources and infrastructure that larger cities have to help unhoused people. We’ll talk about what’s driving homelessness in Bay Area suburbs and what’s being done about it.

Guests:

Kerry Abbott, director, Office of Homeless Care and Coordination for Alameda County

Ryan Finnigan, associate research director, Terner Center for Housing Innovation - helping design and execute the center’s research agenda. His research has focused on homelessness in California, and poverty and social policy both in the United States overall.

Jennifer Loving, executive director, Destination: Home - a public-private partnership focused on ending homelessness in Santa Clara County.

Aubrey Merriman, CEO, LifeMoves - a homeless services provider for San Mateo County

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Each week we bring you a selection of interviews we don't want you to miss - in 30 minutes or less! This week Mina Kim speaks with comedian Keegan-Michael Key and writer/director Elle Key about the couple's new book "The History of Sketch Comedy: A Journey Through the Art and Craft of Humor," and we hear Alexis Madrigal's conversation with Oakland-based graphic novelist, Daniel Clowes on his new book "Monica."

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Romantic crushes: we’ve all experienced that feeling of intense yearning for someone we know we’d never end up with. But while crushes may bring heartache, they also carry benefits, according to Atlantic editor Faith Hill, author of the article “A Crush Can Teach You a Lot About Yourself.” Hill says crushes can offer a happy escape from reality, help us figure out what we like in our partners and make us feel more alive. We’ll talk about crushes and the biology that underlies them, and we’ll hear about the crushes you’ve had, and what you’ve learned from them.

Guests:

Faith Hill, senior associate editor, The Atlantic; author of the article "A Crush Can Teach You a Lot About Yourself"

Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist and senior research fellow, The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. Her books include "Why We Love" and "Anatomy of Love"

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The hushed thrum of the womb. The warble of the last living species of a now-extinct bird. The fury and thrust of a jet engine in flight. These are some of the sounds that populate filmmaker Sam Green’s immersive documentary “32 Sounds.” The movie is not just a collection of sounds, but rather a meditation on the strange power that sound has on us, whether it is voices, music, the natural world or sounds that we are trying to tune out. Watching the movie, even on a tiny screen, can be a full-body experience in which you’re encouraged by Green, who narrates the film, to feel the sound. We’re bringing this segment out of the Forum archives as 32 Sounds returns to Bay Area theaters later this month for more screenings at:

Roxie Theater, San Francisco, Oct. 28

Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, Berkeley, Oct. 29

Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol, Sebastopol, Oct. 30

Guests:

Sam Green, filmmaker, "32 Sounds"

Mark Mangini, Sound designer, "32 Sounds." Magini has won two Oscars in sound design for his work on the movies "Dune" and "Mad Max Fury Road. He has received multiple Academy Award nominations for his sound design work on films including, "Blade Runner 2049" and "Star Treks I, IV and V."

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it really mean biologically to be a woman? That’s one of the central questions Cat Bohannon explores in her new book “Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.” Bohannon makes the case that until recently scientists have effectively ignored women: the majority of subjects in clinical drug trials are male, and too many researchers still mistakenly assume that sex differences are mainly about sex organs, rather than a panoply of biological and physiological features that evolved in the female body over millions of years. We talk to Bohannon about her new book, at once an evolutionary history and a call to action to “tear down the male norm and put better science in its place.”

Guests:

Cat Bohannon, researcher; author, "Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution"

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers in five states —including 22,000 in the Bay Area — went on strike Wednesday after the company and unions failed to resolve a dispute over wages and staffing levels. The union says the strike, set to last three days, is the largest in the healthcare sector in U.S. history. We’ll look at how the walkout is affecting patient care and how it fits into the recent trend of labor actions targeting a range of industries across the country.

Guests:

Jeannifer Key, licensed clinical social worker at Kaiser Oakland; member, SEIU-UHW

Ken Jacobs, chair, Center for Labor Research and Education at UC Berkeley

Farida Jhabvala Romero, reporter, KQED

Dr. Robert Pearl, former CEO, The Permanente Medical Group; author, "Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients"

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most histories of social media focus on Big Tech: the inventors, the investors and the innovations they made. But Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz writes in her new book “Extremely Online” that “tech founders may control the source code, but users shape the product.” Providing a “social history of social media,” Lorenz looks at how influencers — the content creators, bloggers and uploaders who amassed followings just from their online posts — drove change on the platforms we use and guide how we post today. We’ll talk with Lorenz about the influence of influencers.

Guests:

Taylor Lorenz, columnist covering technology and online culture, The Washington Post; author, "Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet"

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In September, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors reviewed a 400-page report outlining more than 100 recommendations on how to provide reparations for the city’s African-American residents. Proposals include establishing a city office dedicated to reparations, programs to support Black-owned businesses, and cash payments to individuals, a suggestion that has stirred controversy. A city commission developed the plan after nearly three years of work, which mirrors a statewide reparations study that is ongoing. We’ll talk about San Francisco’s recommendations, the harms they are meant to repair and what San Franciscans think about it.

Guests:

Otis R. Taylor Jr., managing editor of news, KQED

Don Tamaki, member, California Reparations Task Force; partner, Minami Tamaki LLP

Eric McDonnell, chair, San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee

Alison Ford, Bay Area native; descendant of people who were enslaved

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices