KQED's Forum

YouTube is the site for step-by-step how-to guides, unboxing and reaction videos, and children’s songs that get stuck in your head. It has also fundamentally changed how we produce and consume online content. As YouTube marks its 20th anniversary, we look at the cultural impact of the platform and how it evolved from a simple video-sharing site to the most visited website after Google’s own homepage. How do you use YouTube?

Guests:

Victor Xie, video creator, his YouTube channel is "Did You Eat Yet?"

Mark Bergen, reporter, Bloomberg News; author of "Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination"

Johnny Cole Dickson, video creator and host, his YouTube channel is "No Lab Coat Required"

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In her new book, “The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyperpersuasion,” Harvard historian of science Rebecca Lemov examines the many ways our minds can be controlled against our wills. Lemov chronicles the use of brainwashing techniques on a range of people from U.S. soldiers who were imprisoned in Korea in the 1950s – some of whom refused to come home after the conflict ended – to members of back-to-land cults that proliferated in the Bay Area in the 1960s. She joins us to talk about how brainwashing is used, the troubling implications, and how anyone can fall victim to mind control, even you.

Guests:

Rebecca Lemov, professor of the history of science, Harvard University

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President Trump’s unprovoked tariffs on Canadian goods, his threats to make the sovereign nation a 51st state, his belittling of Canada’s leaders: it’s all making Canadians just a bit miffed. Or as Vox’s Canada-based correspondent Zack Beauchamp puts it, “out-of-this-world angry about what the United States is doing to them.” We’ll talk about the unraveling of relations with our once closest ally, and how everyday Canadians and their government are responding.

Guests:

Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent, Vox; author, "The Reactionary Spirit"

Vjosa Isai, reporter based in Toronto, New York Times

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During the pandemic, former Atlantic writer Ed Yong became a trusted source for news about COVID and its impact. In 2021 he won a Pulitzer Prize for that work, which often was about “the massive gulf between what you want the world to be and what you see happening around you.” As part of our series looking at the legacy of the pandemic five years on, we talk to Yong about how COVID changed our relationship with health news, reporting and research.

Guests:

Ed Yong, science journalist and author, "An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us." Yong won the 2021 Pulitzer prize for his writing in the Atlantic about the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Sequoia trees. Ojai tangerines. Jasmine. Ocean spray. Weed. “Our sense of smell is often overlooked, but it’s the one thing that can bring back memories of a place faster than anything else,” writes Los Angeles Times assistant editor and olfactory artist Maxwell Williams. LA Times readers shared with Williams their most memorable L.A. smells, including the La Brea tar pits, In-N-Out fries and —of course— the beach. And we want to hear from you, wherever you are in the state: What smell reminds you of California? We’ll talk about the unique scents that surround us in the Golden State.

Guests:

Maxwell Williams, assistant editor of West Coast Experiences, Los Angeles Times

Aashish Manglik, associate professor of pharmaceutical chemistry, UCSF

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As the Library of Congress’s new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Bay Area children’s author Mac Barnett wants to reframe how we think about picture books. With his platform, “Behold the Picture Book,” he’s championing the vital role picture books play in engaging readers of all ages and why we love them. What’s the picture book you love reading over and over and over?

Guests:

Mac Barnett, author of the children's books "Circle," "Square" and "Triangle" which have been made into a new animated series "Shape Island" on AppleTV+. Barnett is also the author of the "Mac B. Kid Spy" and the "Jack" series. His books have won Caldecott honors and E.B. White Read Aloud Awards.

Aida Salazar, children's book author. Her picture books include "Jovita Wore Pants" and "In the Spirit of a Dream."

Laura G. Lee, children's book author and illustrator. Her picture books are "Soy Sauce!" and "Cat Eyes."

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Edward Fishman, a former top sanctions official in the U.S. Department of State, says that “the world economy has become a battlefield,” with sanctions, tariffs, and embargoes as the U.S.’s primary tools for engagement. But after years of U.S. sanctions against Russia and a Ukraine truce still out of reach, are they effective? In his new book “Chokepoints,” Fishman examines the history of economic warfare and when it has helped the U.S. achieve its strategic goals and when it has fallen short. He joins us.

Guests:

Edward Fishman, senior research scholar, the Center on Global Energy Policy; adjunct professor of international and public affairs, Columbia University

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How should we raise children in a world that is burning? This is the question that Berkeley poet Rachel Richardson contemplates in her new collection, “Smother.” As wildfires beset California, Richardson worried about the impact it would have on the land, communities and her own family. “The smoke is not cruel, only truthful,” she writes. And throughout the collection, fire, smoke and air flecked with ash become metaphors and characters as Richardson searches for resilience, defiance, and ultimately, hope.

Guests:

Rachel Richardson, poet, "Copperhead, Hundred-Year Wave," and, most recently, "Smother"; co-founder, Left Margin LIT in Berkeley; recipient of the Stegner and NEA Fellowships.

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Who is the Government? Dave Eggers and Sarah Vowell attempt to answer that question in essays about the scientists who discover new planets at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the archivists who safeguard the nation’s historical record. They’re both featured in the new anthology, “Who is Government: The Untold Story of Public Service.” We talk to Vowell and Eggers about the civil servants who make up what their editor Michael Lewis calls “the vast, complex system Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss and celebrate.” And we’ll get an update on the legal challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal workforce. What public servant in your life would you like to celebrate?

Guests:

Dave Eggers, founder, McSweeney's; co-founder, 826 Valencia; author, many books including “The Eyes and the Impossible” and “The Circle”

Sarah Vowell, author, seven nonfiction books including “Lafayette in the Somewhat United States”, “Unfamiliar Fishes" and “Assassination Vacation"

Stephen Fowler, political reporter covering the restructuring of the federal government, NPR

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President Donald Trump has called for the impeachment of the federal judge who ordered a halt on the administration’s deportation of hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members under a rarely used 18th-century wartime law. The administration went ahead with the deportations over the weekend despite the judge’s order. The clash comes a few weeks after the controversial arrest of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder who is facing possible deportation for his role in Gaza protests. We’ll get the latest on Trump’s recent immigration actions and the legal battles surrounding them.

Guests:

Ted Hasson, immigration reporter, Reuters

Deep Gulasekaram, professor of law and director of Byron White Center for the Study of Constitutional Law, University of Colorado Boulder Law School; co author, the leading immigration law textbook used in U.S. law schools

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