KQED's Forum

 The California Department of Public Health on Friday released updated guidelines for organized youth and adult sports. Outdoor high and moderate contact sports such as football and water polo may resume in counties with low coronavirus infection rates, which includes the entire Bay Area. In this hour, Scott Shafer talks to Dr. Nirav Pandya and Joe Bates about the updated guidelines and what safety measures will be taken

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Over six years after a state audit found that college campuses in California lacked transparency in how they handled cases of sexual assault, big gaps in services and support persist. The audit largely targeted San Diego State University, UCLA, UC Berkeley and Chico State University and recommended yearly training of university employees. Rachael Myrow talks to KPCC reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez about what campuses are doing better and where they are still falling short when it comes to addressing sexual violence. We'll also hear how COVID-19 is impacting students who may experience sexual violence and their ability to seek support.

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Singing can lift our spirits, and according to medical experts, because of the way COVID is spread, singing can also kill you. Its a dire, and unexpected, dichotomy and one that singers have grappled with during the pandemic. Rachael Myrow talks to KQED's Chloe Veltman and some Bay Area singers who are finding safe ways to bring live singing to audiences, big and small.

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More than 30 California legislators sent a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom this week, urging him to allow museums to reopen indoors in the state. Nationwide more than 70% of museums are open in some capacity, according to the American Alliance of Museums, but, except for a short period starting in October, museums in California have remained closed throughout the pandemic. We'el talk with a panel of Bay Area museum directors about how they are surviving and adapting in the covid era.

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Atmospheric warming, catastrophic sea level rise and mass extinction are just some of the monumental harms humans have inflicted on the planet. Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Elizabeth Kolbert points out that while it might be prudent to scale back our polluting activities, we've become so numerous, and the damage so extensive, that we may need to do more. In her new book, “Under a White Sky,” Kolbert looks at some of the interventions -- such as geoengineering and gene editing -- that scientists say can reverse the environmental harms we've caused. We'll talk to Kolbert about what she learned during her reporting and whether the answer to the problem of our control of nature is, in fact, more control. 

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Many see Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna as a rising star in the Democratic party. He co-chaired Bernie Sanders’ national campaign, and is a big advocate for progressive causes like raising the minimum wage and Medicare for All. Congressman Khanna joins KQED's Scott Schafer to discuss the recent turmoil in Washington, including the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, and what’s ahead for 2021.

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Amidst mounting pressure from parents, health experts and politicians in the Bay Area to reopen schools for in-person learning, the Berkeley Unified School District this week announced a plan to vaccinate all teachers and start getting most students back into class in mid April. On Wednesday, San Francisco's superintendent of schools said the district is gearing up to reopen but didn't offer specifics. We'll get the latest on the status of school openings across the region.

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In the 1950s and 60s, when some towns faced integrating their “whites only” public pools, they drained the pools instead so nobody could use them. Economic and social policy expert Heather McGhee says this zero-sum thinking has impacted the U.S. economy and the public for the worse--and racism is at the root of it. For her new book, "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Us and How We Can Prosper Together," McGhee journeyed across the country, including to California, documenting the stories of Americans who struggle with meeting their basic needs as a consequence of the “drained-pool politics” that keeps the country divided and vastly unequal. We'll talk to McGhee about what she uncovered in writing the book and her proposed plans for charting a more equitable path forward.

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California agencies serving the homeless do not keep track of where billions of dollars are going, fail to follow federal guidelines and are so fragmented that they lose opportunities to people into stable housing. That’s according to a report by the state auditor’s office earlier this month on how state and regional housing agencies are handling the homelessness crisis. We’ll hear about the report and how the state could do a lot better in serving its 150,000 unhoused residents.

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Katherine Seligman's debut novel, "At the Edge of the Haight" tells the story of Maddy, a young homeless woman living in San Francisco who is caught up in a murder mystery. As a journalist and a long-time resident of Haight-Ashbury, Seligman has witnessed the dehumanizing effects of homelessness up close. Her book, which is the winner of the PEN/Bellwether prize, has been praised as a work that "makes alive and visible the lives of people we often walk past, sometimes as quickly as we can." Seligman joins us to talk about her new novel, her transition from reporter to fiction writer, and what it takes to tell the stories of people who often feel invisible.

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