KQED's Forum

There have always been plenty of sad songs to help us wallow in the loss of romantic love, but during the pandemic, and through these last several difficult years, more musicians have been processing other kinds of grief through their music. We’ll talk with Bay Area musicians grappling with the death of parents, siblings and children through their music. Others have taken on the deep sadness of the pandemic, gun violence and living with systemic racism. We’ll talk about the music of grief and we’ll hear from listeners: what song helps you mourn?

Guests:

Nastia Voynovskaya, associate editor, KQED Arts

Rexx Life Raj , rapper, musician, most recent album is "The Blue Hour"

Karega Bailey, musician, Sol Development

Felicia Gangloff-Bailey, musician, SOL Development

Samora Pinderhughes, musician, most recent album is "Grief"

Brijean Murphy, musician, her band, Brijean's new EP, "Angelo," released in August

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By 2035, California plans to phase out sales of new gas-powered cars. The new regulations announced last week by the California Air Resource Board formalize Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2020 executive order which proposed banning the sale of cars that run on fossil fuels. Environmentalists have hailed this move as a much-needed step to address climate change. We’ll talk about what it means for the world’s fifth largest economy and the state that invented car culture to go electric, and we’ll hear from you: are you ready to get an electric car or will you be hanging on to your gas-powered car as long as you can?

Guests:

Russ Mitchell, Automotive Editor, Los Angeles Times. He is based in Berkeley and covers the automotive industry.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law; host of the podcast, Climate Break

Margo Oge, Former director, US EPA Office of Transportation and Air Quality; Author of "Driving the Future: Combating Climate Change with Cleaner, Smarter Cars"

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QAnon, the far right conspiracy movement, hasn’t dominated the headlines lately, but is still an active force in politics. Even locally, members of a QAnon group harassed Los Gatos town council members and shut down a meeting last year. We talk with the creators and hosts of ViceTV’s documentary series “QAnon: The Search for Q.” Now in its second season, the series looks into how the viral movement continues leading people down a path of misinformation, anti-democratic ideologies and violence. We’ll talk about the evolution of the QAnon movement and the danger posed by its followers.

Guests:

Bayan Joonam, film producer, creator and host, "QAnon: The Search for Q" for ViceTV

Marley Clements, documentary filmmaker, host and creator of "QAnon: The Search For Q" for ViceTV

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Tinder — the world’s most downloaded dating app — turns 10 in September. Many see the app as having transformed online dating from a last resort for older people to a young person’s game: according to Tinder, more than half of its members are between the ages of 18 and 25. More than 75 billion matches have taken place on the app — and we want to hear if you were part of any of them. How was your relationship with the app kindled — or extinguished — and what have you learned from the times you swiped right?

Guests:

Jesús G. Smith, assistant professor of Ethnic Studies, Lawrence University

Emily Witt, staff writer, The New Yorker; author, "Future Sex: A New Kind of Free Love"

Alina Liu, clinical psychologist in San Francisco

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When writer Britt Young, who was born without most of her left forearm, got an expensive, high tech myoelectric prosthetic four years ago she was so excited she threw an “arm party”. But the prosthetic was heavy and hard to use and she hardly ever put it on again. In an article in IEEE Spectrum, Young says the media and the tech world have been seduced by whiz-bang prosthetic technology at the expense of what most disabled people really need: access, reliability and affordability. “We are caught in a bionic-hand arms race” she writes “It’s time to ask who prostheses are really for, and what we hope they will actually accomplish.”

Guests:

Britt H Young, writer, "The Bionic-Hand Arms Race" in IEEE; PhD candidate in Geography, UC Berkeley

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“It’s hard to say exactly when PG&E Corporation began to fall,” writes Wall Street Journal energy reporter Katherine Blunt. But the deep decline of the state’s largest utility was hardly more apparent than in the aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire, the blaze ignited by PG&E’s deteriorated equipment that killed 85 people and destroyed the Northern California town of Paradise. Blunt’s new book “California Burning” explains how the Camp Fire exposed the utility’s systemic problems — including chronic mismanagement and criminal neglect of its infrastructure — and why PG&E’s failures are not just a California story, but a cautionary tale for the entire nation’s power grid.

Guests:

Katherine Blunt, energy reporter, Wall Street Journal; author, "California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—And What It Means for America’s Power Grid"

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Big changes are planned for San Francisco’s beloved Castro Theater, which celebrated its 100th birthday this year. Live music promoter Another Planet Entertainment, which now manages the storied venue, wants to restore and renovate it. That includes replacing the orchestra style seats with removable ones allowing for standing room concerts. But more than five thousand fans of the theater have signed a petition opposing the renovation. We’ll talk about the future of the Castro Theater and we want to hear from you. Share one of your favorite memories from the Castro Theater.

Guests:

Gabe Meline, senior editor, KQED Arts & Culture.

Peter Pastreich, executive director, Castro Theatre Conservancy - a nonprofit committed to the preservation of the Castro Theatre, and to the preservation of the kind of programming that has served its community and San Francisco for the last 100 years.

Gregg Perloff, CEO, Another Planet Entretainment

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The artificial intelligence-powered image generator DALL-E 2 can take any words you type in — like "purple kittens snorkeling in the style of Monet" — and create that as a picture. There are some company-imposed limitations to what you can tell the AI to make: you can’t upload faces and you can’t generate images of public figures. But as fake images and videos become easier to generate— by anyone — what does the new landscape of online misinformation look like? Deepfake expert Hany Farid joins us to share his fears and hopes for this brave new world of image generation.

Related link(s):

Tom Cruise Deepfake TikTok

Guests:

Hany Farid, professor with a joint appointment in electrical engineering & computer sciences and the School of Information, UC Berkeley.

Lama Ahmad, policy researcher, OpenAI.

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Sonoma native Ada Limón sees her work as the nation’s new poet laureate as “elevating and promoting the expansiveness of poetry.” Limón's poems cover a huge range of subjects, from groundhogs to grief. “Poetry allows us to breathe,” she said in an interview after being selected as poet laureate. “I really truly believe with my whole body in the power of poetry and in the power of poetry to heal and bring together communities.” Limón joins us to talk about her work, her love of poetry, and how she’s reimagining America’s relationship to poetry.

Related link(s):

Guests:

Ada Limón, poet, 24th Poet Laureate of the United States.

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During the pandemic, experts seemed to have plans on how to open up bars, malls, and airports, but no real idea about how to open schools consistently across the country and how to put children’s needs first. In her new book “The Stolen Year,” education reporter Anya Kamenetz offers a thorough autopsy of how Covid unfolded for kids. Beginning with the early days of the pandemic, Kamenetz examines how the intense pressure Covid put on schools exposed the inequities woven into the fabric of American life, including the impact of racism, childhood poverty and hunger, inadequate childcare, and dysfunctional politics, among other issues. We’ll talk with Kamenetz about what went well, what went wrong, and where to go next.

Guests:

Anya Kamenetz, education reporter and author, "The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children's Lives, and Where We Go Now," "The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life" and "The Test: How to Survive Our National Obsession with Standardized Testing."

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