KQED's Forum

Last Thursday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced that the latest Covid surge in San Francisco, which was fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, was on a downward trend, having peaked in early January. This welcome news comes as San Francisco shifts its thinking on Covid. According to the city’s Department of Public Health, the goal is not to stop Covid infections, but rather to focus on preventing worse outcomes like severe illness, hospitalization and death. We’ll get an update from Dr. Naveena Bobba, the department’s deputy director, about how the city is handling Covid and how San Francisco’s approach could influence state policy.

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In his new book "Davos Man," New York Times Global Economics Correspondent Peter S. Goodman exposes the role of elite billionaires in deepening global inequality, often while burnishing a do-gooder image. Goodman joins us to talk about how gatherings like the annual World Economic Forum in Davos help the mega-rich divert attention from their efforts to dodge taxes and fight regulation.

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With historic numbers of people quitting their jobs, there’s no question that American workers are fried and fed-up. But according to author Jonathan Malesic the country’s burnout crisis goes much deeper than the pandemic. A former college professor, he’s the author of a new book "The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives." He joins us to talk about the history of Americans’ dysfunctional relationship with work and how to fix what he calls our "burnout culture." But first, we check in with Riverside County Congressman Mark Takano, the author of a bill that would create a 32-hour workweek.

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Endangered and rare forms of salmon are being spotted in surprising places around the Bay Area — some of which they haven’t visited in almost two decades. Chinook salmon were even seen in Oakland’s Lake Merritt last month; now coho salmon are swimming in the tiny tributaries of the San Geronimo Valley. The reason for this year’s sightings can be traced back to the heavy rains over the last several months, which timed well for these breeds’ spawning periods. But in the bigger picture, land development, climate change, overfishing and drought have all played a role in why we haven’t seen these fish in so long — and are part of the conversation on how we can work to keep them around in the future. We’ll answer your questions about the salmon currently swimming in the Bay Area.

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After one month and 1.5 million kilometers of travel since its launch on Christmas, the James Webb Space Telescope is set to reach its orbit destination Monday. It’s the beginning of a profound shift in the way we see deep space: the telescope will be able to look back 13.7 billion years back in time. To get to this point has taken 10 billion dollars and a quarter of a century of work. For nearly all of that time, astronomer Marcia Rieke was on the project. As she waits for the telescope to thrust into orbit, we’ll talk with her about what it’s like to see a career’s worth of preparation finally come to fruition and what she hopes to learn from the telescope’s journey.

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It’s been five years since California legalized marijuana under Proposition 64 and opened the doors to a new legal market. Yet today, the majority of cannabis consumed here is not legal. A key reason: it’s difficult and costly to start and maintain a state-licensed cannabis business. Meanwhile, a robust system for setting up shop as part of the illicit market has been in place long before voters approved Prop 64. Last week cannabis farmers, business owners and advocates gathered at the State Capitol to demand reform to the burdensome tax system that’s frustrating businesses and growers of all sizes but making small businesses and farms especially vulnerable to collapse. In outlining next year’s state budget proposal this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he “supports cannabis tax reform and plans to work with the Legislature to make modifications to California’s cannabis tax policy to help stabilize the market.” We’ll take stock of California’s cannabis industry and proposed reforms.

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In 2016, the public learned that Millennium Tower, a 60-story luxury condo highrise in downtown San Francisco, was tilting to the northwestby 16 inches. Fast forward five years and the lean is now at about 26 inches. The tower has been sinking at a rate of about 3 inches per year despite tens of millions of dollars being spent to stop it. . Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, the firm hired to fix the leaning tower, recently submitted a revised plan to city officials after their previous efforts resulted in increased titling. We talk about the latest developments in the Millennium Tower saga.

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The city of Sunnyvale is at war with thousands of crows that have invaded downtown. To try and drive the birds away, city employees have been armed with $20 green laser pointers. Ideas for other solutions abound: hang effigies of dead crows off of buildings, blast crow distress sounds from boomboxes, light up the sky with pyrotechnics. What is it with all the crows? And what will it take to shoo them away?

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You may not know who Bruno is, but you do probably know that we don’t talk about him thanks to a song from the animated film “Encanto.” The movie, about a magical Colombian family struggling to maintain their special powers, hit movie theaters in late November and has since infiltrated households across the country with its catchy songs – six of which have landed on the Billboard Hot 100 list this week. Disney, the studio behind the film, is known for pumping out hit songs such as “Let it Go” from “Frozen” or “A Whole New World” from “Aladdin”, but the multi-track success of Encanto is unprecedented. We talk about why songs like, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” “Surface Pressure,” and “What Else Can I Do,” are stuck in so many heads of kids and adults alike.

Guests: Pamela Avila, Los Angeles-based entertainment editor, USA Today, and author of the article, “What Disney’s 'Encanto' teaches us about self-worth and overcoming intergenerational family trauma.”

Bethonie Butler, reporter covering television and pop culture, The Washington Post, and author of the recent article, “How ‘Encanto’ and its vibrant soundtrack became a viral phenomenon”

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President Biden called his first year in office one of "enormous progress" in a press conference Wednesday, citing a successful vaccine rollout, record job creation and the enactment of his bipartisan infrastructure law. But his voting rights and "Build Back Better" plans remain stalled in a bitterly divided Congress, and ongoing supply chain issues and fears of inflation threaten economic recovery and, potentially, Democrats' ability to maintain their House and Senate majorities. We'll look back at Biden's first year and the thorny challenges that lie ahead.

Guests: Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent, NPR

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