KQED's Forum

In some parts of the country, barbecue is a fighting word. It launches hot debates on vinegar versus tomato-based sauce and the right ways to rub, spice and smoke. KQED Food editor Luke Tsai has a different take. His new series, BBQ in the Bay, highlights the region’s unique barbecue cultures from various traditions of cooking food outdoors over an open flame and how it brings communities together. As part of Forum’s regular segment on food cultures of the Bay Area, called All You Can Eat, we’ll dish on Mongolian barbecue, lechon, barbacoa, barbecue oysters, brisket and much more.

Guests:

Luke Tsai, food editor, KQED

Pendarvis "Pen" Harshaw, columnist, KQED Arts; host, KQED's "Rightnowish" podcast

Ray Castro, dentist in East Bay; amateur barbecue competitor

Rocky Rivera, emcee; writer; part of KQED's BBQ in the Bay series

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The Food and Drug Administration’s vaccines advisory committee decided Tuesday to recommend that covid vaccines be reformulated to better protect against the highly transmissible omicron variant. The vote comes as reported coronavirus cases top 10 million in California – a figure widely considered an undercount. We’ll discuss what the vote means, as well as the latest on covid subvariants, boosters and long covid, with UCSF’s Dr. Peter Chin-Hong.

Guests:

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong M.D., infectious disease specialist, UCSF Medical Center

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Former President Donald Trump tried to wrestle control of a vehicle so he could join the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2020. That was just one of several major revelations from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former chief of staff Mark Meadows, during Tuesday’s testimony before the House committee investigating the attack. Hutchinson also testified that Trump called to lift security during his rally despite knowing that many people were heavily armed, threw his lunch at a wall over a news article about former Attorney General William Barr, and endorsed a violent attack on Vice President Mike Pence. Former Trump staffers and aides have testified before the committee, giving the nation a fuller account of what happened on Jan. 6 and how Trump behaved. We discuss the latest news from the committee hearings and what these revelations mean for Americans.

Guests:

Nicholas Wu, reporter covering Congress, Politico

Aimee Allison, founder, She the People - an organization elevating the political voice of women of color

Ankush Khardori, lawyer based in Washington, D.C; contributing writer, New York magazine's Intelligencer; contributing editor, Politico magazine

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A recent Los Angeles Times report examined seven affordable housing projects in Northern California in which the cost of development surpassed $1 million per unit. Part of the reason for the exorbitant cost of building is skyrocketing construction prices with rising material and labor costs exacerbated by the pandemic and supply chain shortages. But, as the L.A. Times points out, local and state requirements add a sizable amount to the total expense. For nonprofit developers who build subsidized housing, that means fewer units for more money. As California looks for ways to alleviate the housing crisis, we discuss why affordable housing is becoming more unaffordable and strategies to bring down the price tag.

Guests:

Liam Dillon, statewide housing affordability and neighborhood change reporter, Los Angeles Times

Heather Hood, vice president, Northern California, Enterprise Community Partners, Inc.

Tim Grayson, California State assembly member, district 14 (encompasses portions of Contra Costa and Solano Counties)

Ben Metcalf, managing director, Terner Center of Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley; former director, California Department of Housing and Community Development

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Former President Trump repeatedly tried to persuade top Justice Department officials to act on baseless fraud allegations in the days after the 2020 election, former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue testified on Thursday. As the January 6 committee hearings pause before resuming in July, we'll analyze the information presented so far and talk about what's next for the DOJ's investigation into Trump’s attempt to interfere in the 2020 election.

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Author Ben Tarnoff thinks the internet is broken:It is rife with misinformation and vitriolic hate speech. It potentially invades privacy rights. In the United States, it costs way too much to access compared with prices in other countries. And, it’s no surprise that it doesn’t work for consumers, Tarnoff says, because the internet was built by companies focused on power and profit. In his new book, “Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future,” Tarnoff offers a vision for a better internet that centers on public ownership of internet service providers and companies. We’ll talk to Tarnoff about his hopes for a more utopian internet.

Guests:

Ben Tarnoff, author, "Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future"; founding editor, Logic magazine

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Roe v. Wade is overturned. Just short of 50 years after the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion, the Court ruled Friday in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that states may ban the procedure as early as conception. The ruling is expected to set in motion a cascade of highly restrictive abortion laws in half of the states. We analyze the decision, look at its impact and hear your reactions.

Guests:

Michele Goodwin, Chancellor's professor and director, Center for Biotechnology & Global Health Policy, UC Irvine School of Law; author, "Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood"

Susan Matthews, news director, Slate - host of season 7 of the Slow Burn podcast, about Roe v. Wade

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"Painful" is how many reproductive rights advocates are describing their reactions to the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe vs. Wade that was officially released Friday. A leaked draft decision in May warned of the impending opinion's ruling. In dissent, the Court's three liberal justices warned that the opinion's approach  "places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage." In this hour, we hear and react to listeners as they process the Supreme Court's decision.

Guests:

Jessica Pinckney, executive director, Access Reproductive Justice, a nonprofit that helps patients access abortions by providing information, financial and logistical assistance

Lauren Rankin, writer, speaker, and activist; author, "Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines of the Fight to Protect Abortion in America"

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California allocated a record $1.5 billion for wildfire prevention and forest health in 2021. Yet Cal Fire, the agency largely in charge of prevention efforts, is struggling to track and implement projects and took years to authorize to establish a prescribed-burn workforce certification program, as required by state law. At the same time, its firefighting staff has increased substantially — demonstrating what experts have characterized as an internal prioritization of suppression over mitigation. That’s all according to a monthslong investigation by California Newsroom reporters, who join us to talk about their findings.

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“I really wanted to depict the ways that young Black girls are made adults by a culture that sees us that way,” says Leila Mottley of her debut novel “Nightcrawling." The 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate started writing the book when she was 17 and three years later, has received glowing reviews and a spot in the Oprah Book Club. Set in Oakland, “Nightcrawling” tells the story of Kiara, a character who offers an unflinching and lyrical portrayal of what it is to be poor, Black and a young woman. We talk to Mottley about her book.

Guests:

Leila Mottley, author, "Nightcrawling" --Mottley was the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate.

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