Kqeds Forum

In her new book “Girls Who Green the World,” journalist Diana Kapp profiles 34 women who are working in smart, creative and often entrepreneurial ways to beat back climate change. From recycling food containers into other products to creating a better toilet that can be used in urban slums where sanitation is difficult to find to repurposing and recycling clothing, these women have found ways to make meaningful changes that can heal the planet. We’ll talk to Kapp and two of the climate entrepreneurs profiled in her book.

California on Friday dropped its requirement that those attending indoor events with more than 1000 people show proof of vaccination or a negative test, the latest manifestation of the state's decision to manage COVID-19 as an endemic virus as cases and deaths level off statewide. But public health officials are watching the highly transmissible omicron subvariant BA.2, which has caused surges in parts of Europe and Asia and, recently, in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts. We’ll take stock of how California is faring in this stage, and we’ll also look at recent studies on the longer term cognitive and cardiovascular impacts of coronavirus infection.

On March 2, a father in Sacramento walked into a church for a supervised visit with his three young children. He ended up killing five people: his children, the church member who volunteered to chaperone, and himself. This is a scenario that journalist Mark Follman is all too familiar with. An editor for the magazine Mother Jones, Follman has studied mass shootings for years, and even built a database of such murders because none had previously existed. For his new book, “Trigger Points,” Follman attempts to understand what might be done to prevent shootings before they happen. He’s talked to criminologists and mental health specialists to understand the psychology of mass shooters and looks at whether a model exists for intervening constructively with troubled people before they get their hands on a weapon. We’ll talk to Follman about his book.

In the new Apple TV+ series “Pachinko,” adapted from the bestselling novel by Min Jin Lee, every generation is in dialogue, either indirectly or directly, with the ones that come before and after it. That’s according to Soo Hugh, the series’ creator, showrunner and writer. “Pachinko,” a sweeping multi-generational family drama, features the story of Sunja, played by Oscar winner Yuh-Jung Youn, an impoverished young woman who suffers through the 20th century Japanese occupation of Korea, and later with her family faces of life of hardship and discrimination in Japan. We’ll talk to Hugh about the creative challenges of adapting a beloved novel and what it’s like to create spaces for the telling of diverse stories.

Youth leaders and activists in Sacramento are working to support their communities today, a day after the 2 a.m. shooting in Sacramento that left 6 dead and at least 12 wounded. Videos on social media, eyewitness accounts, and police statements indicate the shooting occurred at 10th and K streets, roughly two blocks northwest of the state Capitol, as club and bar attendees were leaving for the night. Political leaders immediately responded with calls for stronger gun controls in the state. “Thoughts and prayers aren’t nearly enough,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said on Sunday. “We must do more as a city, as a state, and as a nation. This senseless epidemic of gun violence must be addressed. How many unending tragedies does it take before we begin to cure the sickness in this country? Let us be honest, this is a sickness.”

In response to the war in Ukraine, the United States and its allies have implemented sweeping and unprecedented set sanctions against Russia, rendering the nation a pariah state. Flight space has been closed. Export of goods that could be used for military purposes have been banned. Some countries have stopped importing Russian oil. The yachts and private planes of oligarchs have been seized. Transactions with the Russian Central Bank are now barred and both government and individual bank accounts have been frozen. But are these sanctions working to stop the war? Will they lead to the toppling of Russian President Vladimir Putin? We’ll talk about sanctions and how they work with a panel of experts.

With his new single “OFF” reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult R&B Radio chart this week and a new arena tour, Grammy Award-winning singer Maxwell is back in the spotlight. The Night Tour features fellow R&B acts Anthony Hamilton and Joe, and is scheduled to come to Los Angeles and Oakland in mid-April. Maxwell says you can expect a “sexy” show that pays homage to women and feminine energies. We talk to Maxwell about getting back on the road, his upcoming album, his favorite song to perform, and more.

The Netflix series, “Inventing Anna,” reached No. 1 on Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming rankings and has dominated social media discussions for weeks. But it’s not just the profile of wannabe socialite Anna Delvey capturing our interest – television series about scammers abound these days, including former venture capital darlings like WeWork’s Adam Neumann and Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes in the shows “WeCrashed” and “The Dropout.” Not to mention podcasts, documentaries and longform articles that often inspire the fictionalized versions. What is the human behavior driving this interest: Is it just schadenfreude? Or are there other elements informing our interest? We’ll explore this latest content trend and why, as a culture, we’re so into scammer stories.

Joshua Miele is a 2021 MacArthur fellow who develops and invents adaptive technologies for blind and visually impaired persons ranging from tactile-Braille street maps to crowd-sourced audio descriptions for YouTube videos. But back in fall 1987, he was a freshman at UC Berkeley and newly a member of “The Cave,” a library basement gathering hub for Berkeley’s blind students. Following the disability rights movement spearheaded at Berkeley in the ‘60s and ‘70s, The Cave provided its denizens with a space for community, inspiration and innovation as they entered the digital age. We’ll talk about how The Cave was crucial for the innovations of Miele and other alumni, its enduring legacies, and how accessibility tech has progressed in the past few decades.

Benjamin Franklin is “the most amazing American of the 18th century,” according to documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. Burns’ latest documentary on Franklin premieres on PBS next week, and it looks at the ways in which the 18th century reluctant revolutionary operated within a political climate not dissimilar from our own. To Burns, Franklin’s political thinking could help inform modern questions about American identity, partisan divides, international diplomacy and even vaccines. Burns joins us to talk about Franklin's flaws, contradictions and contributions.

Three out of four of the planet’s known animal species are insects, and their populations are crashing as a result of climate change, habitat loss, pesticides and pollution. And the ecosystem-wide effects of all of these losses could be deadly for humanity: globally, one-third of our food is pollinated by bees, flies, butterflies, moths and beetles. We’ll talk with Oliver Milman about his new book, “The Insect Crisis” — and how we can protect what he calls “the miniature empires that hold life aloft on our raucous, plastic-strewn, beautiful planet.”

China has refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite requests from Western nations, and it has criticized sanctions against Russia. “China-Russia cooperation has no limits,” a Chinese government spokesman said Wednesday as Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov visited China for the first time since the Ukraine War began. What will that cooperation look like as the war continues? Will it include Chinese military aid or assistance circumventing sanctions? And how does the relationship between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin, a relationship believed to be close, impact policy? We’ll talk to experts on Chinese foreign policy to learn more.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday ordered cities, water districts and other agencies to tighten their conservation rules, as the state comes to grips with the realities of a drier-than-needed winter rainy season. “While we have made historic investments to protect our communities, economy and ecosystems from the worsening drought across the West, it is clear we need to do more,” Gov. Newsom said. “Today, I am calling on local water agencies to implement more aggressive water conservation measures.” The governor’s executive order focuses on the actions of the 420 largest water providers in the state, even as California’s urban residents have fallen far short of a goal set to voluntarily reduce their water usage. San Jose Mercury News natural resources and environment reporter Paul Rogers helps unpack the latest on the drought and the state’s new water rules.

Paso Robles is a small wine country town between the Pacific coast and the Central Valley – it’s a multicultural town, too, but many residents of color there feel invisible. That’s according to Los Angeles Times reporter Tyrone Beason who features Paso Robles in the latest installment of his ongoing “My Country” series, which explores the things that bind us and tries to make sense of the things that tear us apart. Beason digs into the different viewpoints behind a recent fight to reinstate an ethnic studies class at a local high school, which faced a backlash before ultimately being approved. That debate, like similar debates across the country around ethnic studies curriculum, revealed deeper fissures within the community. Beason joins us to talk about the story and what he learned from the residents of Paso Robles.

From his time with the Merry Pranksters to his influence on Steve Jobs to his utopian “Whole Earth Catalog,” Stewart Brand epitomizes the Bay Area counterculture visionary. Brand has “an eerie knack for showing up first at the onset of some social movement or technological inflection point and then moving on just when everyone else catches up,” writes technology reporter John Markoff. Forum talks with Markoff about the life, work and influence of Brand and his new biography, "Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand.”

Drivers in California paid an average of $5.93 per gallon of regular gas on Monday  — about $1.50 more than the national average. Gas prices rose nationwide following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but while they’ve leveled off in other states, California’s are still rising. To lessen the impact, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a gas rebate last week that would provide between $400 and $800 to California car owners. We’ll talk about the rebate and other legislative proposals and explore why gas in California is so expensive.

In the early 1970s, Dave Goelz was an industrial designer working for Hewlett-Packard by day and obsessing over the puppets on Sesame Street in his spare time. Fifty years later, Goelz still has the dream job he left Silicon Valley to pursue. He’s the Muppet performer bringing life to Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Waldolf, Zoot and others. We’ll talk about the creative alchemy of Jim Henson’s Muppet universe with Goelz as well as Henson’s biographer and the curator of Imagination Unlimited, an exhibit about Henson which opens this week at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

Reyna Grande’s new novel, “A Ballad of Love and Glory,” tells the story of the San Patricios, a battalion of Irish soldiers who fought for Mexico during the Mexican-American War that ended in 1848. The book explores the brutality and contradictions of war while bringing to life the stories of John Riley, the leader of the San Patricios, and Ximena, a woman displaced by the war who becomes an army nurse. Although the Mexican-American war is sometimes called “The Forgotten War,” the conflict reshaped two nations and has had a profound impact on how Mexican Americans are viewed and treated. Grande joins us to talk about the legacy of the war and its parallels to modern day armed conflicts.

In response to the mounting humanitarian crisis brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Biden Administration on Thursday announced that it would allow 100,000 Ukrainian refugees into the United States. Meanwhile, immigration advocates are intensifying their calls on U.S. officials to end Title 42, a Trump-era public health rule that has been used to expel tens of thousands of migrants at the southern border. We'll get the latest on both issues.

During the pandemic, not only did children aged 8 to 18 spend more time on their screens, those under 13 who are technically barred by age limits from platforms, are increasingly gravitating to social media. The new study by Common Sense Media looked at what kids like to do on their screens – spoiler alert: watch videos – and reports that kids on average spend one and a half hours a day on social media but say they don’t really like it. We’ll talk about what this research means and how parents, teachers and caregivers can respond to these trends.