KQED's Forum

What happens when prosecutors take on sitting U.S. presidents? That’s the subject of CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig’s new book, which traces the successes and failures of the Department of Justice’s efforts to hold presidents from Nixon to Trump to account. We’ll also get Honig’s take on the latest DOJ controversies, including the firings of veteran prosecutors and the department’s shrinking independence from the Oval Office. Honig’s new book is “When You Come at the King.”

Guests:

Elie Honig, senior legal analyst, CNN - author, "When You Come at the King: Inside DOJ’s Pursuit of the President, from Nixon to Trump"

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We’re  launching a new series, “In Search of Home: Solutions for the Homelessness Crisis” to explore how homelessness happens and what it takes to move people into permanent homes. Our first show takes a look into the many reasons that people end up becoming homeless and how it can be prevented. Research shows that keeping someone housed is far more cost-effective, not to mention less traumatic, than trying to help someone once they lose their home. We’ll hear the experiences of people who have, with help, narrowly avoided losing their housing and talk about proven ways to prevent homelessness.

Guests:

Jennifer Loving, CEO, Destination: Home - a public-private partnership focused on ending homelessness in Santa Clara County

Rob Collinson, assistant professor, Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame and the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities

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What do frog skin, polyester hair and gene-edited pig kidneys have in common? They’re all part of humanity’s long quest to swap out ailing parts of our bodies, according to science writer Mary Roach. From prosthetic limbs to printable organs, Roach joins to talk about the history and complexities of human body replacement and where the science is today. Her new book is “Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy.”

Guests:

Mary Roach, author, "Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy"; her earlier books include "Grunt," "Stiff," "Bonk" and "Fuzz"

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Nuclear capabilities have increased dramatically over the past decade and continue to grow, with the U.S. Department of Defense spending $1.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and infrastructure upgrades. But the conversation around nuclear war has only gotten quieter. The anti-nuclear movement of the 1960s-80s was one of the largest protest movements of its time, with a million protesters marching in New York to demand an end to nuclear weapons. Yet the threat is rarely mentioned today. We’ll talk about the anti-nuclear movement, the normalization of nuclear warfare, and what some experts hope to change about that.

Guests:

Rivka Galchen, contributor, The New Yorker; her most recent article in The New Yorker is "Why Don't We Take Nuclear Weapons Seriously?"

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Crises unfold around us daily: gun violence, devastating foreign wars and U.S. democratic norms shattering. And still, we cook dinner and go to work. For those directly affected, the harms are inescapable. But for others, the contrast between catastrophic headlines and ordinary routines creates a dizzying dissonance: life moving as normal, against a backdrop of unsettling change. We’ll talk about this strange tension and what it does to us, and we’ll hear how you are navigating it.

Guests:

Kate Woodsome, journalist and founder, Invisible Threads (katewoodsome.substack.com), a media and leadership lab exploring the link between mental health and democracy

Adrienne Matei, writer, The Guardian US; her recent piece is "Systems are crumbling – but daily life continues. The dissonance is real"

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New Yorker magazine poetry editor Kevin Young has called poetry “the most efficient mode of time travel.” In his new volume of poems “Night Watch,” Young, a literary hyphenate who edits, writes and teaches, takes readers on a journey of loss and re-emergence. From his cycle of poems about a conjoined pair of twins born into slavery and kidnapped to a carnival freak show to his meditations on grief set to the phases of the moon, Young’s spare and incisive language provides the reader passage through history and memory. We talk to Young about his collection and what it means to be a poet today.

Guests:

Kevin Young, poet and author; poetry editor, The New Yorker; former director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Climatologist Michael Mann and vaccine expert Peter Hotez say we’re in an “antiscience superstorm.” It’s a movement that has upended federal health agencies, defunded research and weaponized social media and AI to advance its agenda. And now, some of the nation’s most vocal antiscience figures are in major positions of power. We talk to Hotez and Mann about their daily battles against disinformation, their personal toll and what we can all do to counter the antiscience threat. Their new book is “Science Under Siege.”

Guests:

Peter J. Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine; co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development, Texas Children's Hospital

Michael E. Mann, professor of earth and environmental science, University of Pennsylvania; director, Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media

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For the second time in just four months, BART had a systemwide outage on Friday, stranding morning commuters for hours and bringing Bay Bridge traffic to a standstill. The maddening meltdown is but one of the BART’s major woes. A promised $750 million dollar loan to shore up struggling Bay Area transit agencies has been tied up in back-room wrangling in Sacramento. We talk with KQED transit reporter Dan Brekke about how the  financial crisis is testing the Bay Area’s historic support for public transportation.

Guests:

Dan Brekke, editor and reporter, KQED News

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After a whale struck Maurice and Maralyn Bailey’s boat in 1972, the British couple found themselves stranded on a tiny rubber raft in the Pacific Ocean. In a new book, journalist Sophie Elmhirst looks at how the shipwrecked couple survived together for months – starving and pushed to their emotional limits. We’ll talk to Elmhirst about relationships under extreme conditions and why we’re so drawn to survival stories. And we want to hear from you: How do you think your own relationship would fare under similar circumstances?

Guests:

Sophie Elmhirst, author of "A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck"

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Every month, 5.5 million Californians rely on Cal Fresh, the state’s version of food stamps. But Trump’s $186 billion in cuts to SNAP, the nation’s primary anti-hunger program, means that California will lose billions of dollars in funding. Experts note that these changes to SNAP, which began rolling out this month, constitute a drastic overhaul of the social safety net program and threaten to increase hunger in the country just as the economy is showing signs of slowing down. We’ll talk about the impacts of Trump’s budget decision on those in need as well as the grocers and food banks that help provide food to SNAP recipients.

Guests:

Leslie Bacho, CEO, Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, a food bank that serves Santa Clara and San Mateo counties

Lauren Bauer, fellow, Economic Studies, Brookings Institute; associate director of the Hamilton Project - her research focuses on social safety net policies

Lupe Lopez, co-founder and owner, Arteagas Food Center, a chain of local grocery stores with outlets in San Jose, Hayward, and Gilroy among other locations

Rebecca Piazza, executive director, safety net strategy, Code for America - Piazza served in the Biden-Harris Administration as Chief of Staff at the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, modernizing delivery of SNAP, WIC, and other nutrition programs

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