KQED's Forum

To sweat is human. That’s according to science journalist Sarah Everts, whose new book “The Joy of Sweat” explores the biology of what she calls our “oddly flamboyant” way of controlling body temperature. We’ll hear why some of us are more profuse -- and smellier -- perspirers than others, what drives our cravings for sweaty workouts and hot soaks and why we still spend billions annually on products to hide the effects of our natural cooling system.

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There’s no better time than now to head out for a picnic. There are few weather impediments in the Bay Area — besides fog and wind — and the pandemic taught us that enjoying life outdoors is a good way to go. Whether you’re just having a sunset cocktail (or mocktail) or going full-on three-course meal, we’ll talk about how to picnic in style, which foods are best to bring and where to find that perfect picnic spot. We’ll get ideas to liven up your picnic with San Francisco Chronicle’s restaurant critic Soleil Ho, and we want your tips: What’s your go-to picnic recipe? Where are your favorite Bay Area spots to bring the family or friends for an al fresco meal?

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In the first retrospective of his work on the West Coast, SFMOMA’s current exhibition on electronic art pioneer Nam June Paik features more than 200 works from the artist whose five-decade career “changed the way we look at screens.” One of most acclaimed of the first generation of video artists, Paik’s early work in the 1960s changed perceptions of television, video and the boundary between art and spectator through its integration of camera, video, music and performance. We’ll talk about Paik’s work and legacy, and we’ll hear from contemporary video artists who will discuss Paik’s impact on their own art.

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For our inaugural Forum Book Club, we’ve picked Maceo Montoya’s “Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces.” The book interweaves its narrative with drawings and scholarly footnotes to tell the story of an aspiring painter with grand ambitions. This would-be artist faces several roadblocks: he is coming of age in 1940s New Mexico with no economic means to support his dreams and, instead of painting, he writes long notes for future works of art. Montoya takes readers along the narrator’s quest to become a celebrated artist — a journey that takes unusual turns including runs in with Chicanx historical figures such as activist Reies Lopez Tijerina and writer Oscar Zeta Acosta. In this comical and satirical tale, Montoya takes aim at what it means to tell a Chicano story, which Chicano narratives are elevated and who gets to become an artist. We’ll meet on the air to talk with Montoya and hear readers’ comments, reactions and questions.

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Recent space flights by Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have raised the tantalizing question of whether space travel is in our near future. Space exploration has traditionally been the venture of governments, but with last November’s launch of an astronaut crew to the International Space Station by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, commercial flights to deep space seem more tangible. But is privatized space travel by billionaires just a vanity project? Or is this a huge step towards tackling space, the final frontier?  

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PG&E announced yesterday that it will bury power lines in high wildfire risk areas of California, amounting to 10,000 miles of lines, enough to reach about halfway around the earth. The utility says the plan would also eliminate the need to order power shutdowns during high fire risk events. We’ll talk with an expert about the advantages of underground power lines and what they cost.

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In the first half of the 20th century, California forcibly sterilized more than 20,000 people in state hospitals and other institutions, under a 1909 eugenics law that remained on the books for seven decades. The victims, deemed by the state as "feeble-minded" or otherwise unfit to have children, were disproportionately women and racial minorities. Now, the state is set to pay reparations to hundreds of survivors, as well as to victims who were involuntarily sterilized in state prisons well after the eugenics law was repealed in 1979. We'll talk about this dark chapter of California history and its survivors' quest for justice.

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President Joe Biden lashed out at Facebook last week, saying the site was killing people by spreading coronavirus-vaccine misinformation. As New York Times reporters Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel highlight in their new book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebooks Battle for Domination, conspiracy theories and hate speech are not just problems that plague the company, they are the inevitable byproducts of the company's algorithms which keep users glued to the screen and mines their data. Relying on 400 interviews of current and former employees and executives, Kang and Frankel give an insiders view of how Facebook influenced the 2016 election, the Trump era and the January 6th insurrection and how the company struggles to create policies that can stay ahead of the challenges created by its own technology. We talk to Kang and Frenkel about their book, and growing tensions between Facebook and the Biden administration.

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Writer and director John Singleton’s 1991 debut film “Boyz N the Hood,” centered on the coming of age of a Black man in South Central Los Angeles named Tre. Played by Cuba Gooding Jr., Tre learns lessons about Black manhood, cyclical violence and gentrification from his father, played by Laurence Fishburne, and his neighbors, with standout performances by Ice Cube and Morris Chestnut. Some critics called the film the cinematic equivalent of N.W.A.’s music, from which it draws its title, for drawing attention to the high mortality rates of and mainstream apathy to the plight of those residing in majority-Black neighborhoods in 1990s Los Angeles County. We’ll talk about the characters, moments and themes from the film that have stayed with us, three decades later.

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In Germany, searches for the missing continue in the wake of recent catastrophic flooding that destroyed villages and claimed almost 200 lives so far. That disaster, together with wildfires that rage in Canada and the western U.S. and record-breaking temperatures in Russia, led New York Times climate correspondent Somini Sengupta to conclude that “the world as a whole is neither prepared to slow down climate change, nor live with it.” We’ll talk to Sengupta about why even wealthy countries are ill-equipped to deal with the worst effects of climate change and what it will take to force international action.

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