KQED's Forum

Thirty years ago, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn and pledged to work together for peace. At that historic meeting, they signed what became known as the first Oslo Accord, ushering in an era of renewed optimism that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be resolved. Was its failure inevitable? Amid the tragedy of the current Israel-Hamas war, The New York Times magazine recently assembled a panel of experts — three Palestinian, three Israeli and one American – to discuss the Oslo peace process and why it broke down. Two of the participants in that discussion and journalist Emily Bazelon, who moderated it, join us to look back at what happened before and after the handshake and what it can tell us about the possibilities for negotiating peace.Guests:Emily Bazelon, staff writer, The New York Times Magazine; author, "Was Peace Ever Possible?" in the New York Times; co-host, Slate's political gabfestEfraim Inbar, professor of political studies, Bar-Ilan University; president, Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and SecurityOmar Dajani, former senior legal advisor, Palestine Liberation Organization's Negotiations Support Unit; professor of law, University of the Pacific's McGeorge School of Law Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Proposition 8 passed 15 years ago this month, banning same-gender marriage in California. Two couples — one lesbian, one gay — sued to overturn the proposition and succeeded, with gay marriage made legal in California in 2013. The trial was videotaped, but those tapes didn’t become public until last year. That inspired KQED reporters Scott Shafer and Carlos Cabrera-Lomeli to invite those two couples to watch their testimony and reflect on how much LGBTQ rights have changed — and how far we’ve yet to go. We’ll talk with them and with plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, and we’ll hear from you: What do you remember from Prop 8?Related link(s):Inside the Trial That Overturned California’s Same-Sex Marriage Ban | KQEDGuests:Carlos Cabrera-Lomeli, community engagement reporter, KQEDScott Shafer, senior editor, KQED’s California Politics and Government desk; co-host, Political BreakdownKristin (Kris) Perry, plaintiff, Perry vs. SchwarzeneggerSandy Stier, plaintiff, Perry vs. SchwarzeneggerVaughn Walker, United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California from 1989 to 2011; presided over Perry v. Schwarzenegger Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With $1.6 billion in assets, the San Francisco Foundation is one of the largest community foundations in the country. The organization is now in its 75th year of using philanthropy to try to improve the lives of residents across the Bay Area by funding nonprofit programs, pushing for policy change, and training leaders. Some of the foundation’s efforts include helping hotel workers win fair wages and benefits, advocating for mixed-income public housing in San Francisco to prevent displacement, and implementing a volunteer-based policing program in Oakland’s Chinatown to combat anti-Asian hate crimes. We talk with the foundation’s CEO Fred Blackwell about their biggest successes, challenges, and goals as well as the changing role of philanthropy in a time of vast economic inequality.Guests:Fred Blackwell, CEO, San Francisco Foundation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

University of Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy loves games. He’s spent much of his career popularizing math — and for him, games are a way to “play mathematics.” But playing math might not be the first reason your nephew gives when you ask him why he loves video games, or your friend when she describes her undying love for “Risk”. There are elements of social psychology, from competition to collaboration, that also draw us toward getting the “Scrabble” board out of the closet and onto the dining room table. For many of us, games not only inform our identities — they build our sense of selves and community. “Tell me the game you play and I will tell you who you are,” writes du Sautoy in his new book, “Around the World in 80 Games”— and we want to hear from you: What’s your game? Du Sautoy joins us to hear your answers, as well as share the history and power our favorite games hold over us.Guests:Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science and professor of mathematics, the University of Oxford Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The New York Times has called Rick Prelinger “one of the great, undersung historians of 20th century cinema.” But the Bay Area-based archivist isn’t known for books on Chaplin or Bergman. Instead, Rick and partner Megan Prelinger collect the film history of everyday life: home movies, industrial films, studio outtakes and other works that would otherwise be lost or forgotten. The duo may be best known for the free movies they make available through the Internet Archive digital library. And locally, they’ve gained a following for their “Lost Landscapes” film project, a compilation of historic Bay Area footage from their archives. We’ll talk to Rick and Megan about the 18th and latest installment of “Lost Landscapes”, entitled “City and Bay in Motion: Transportation and Communication.”Guests:Rick Prelinger, founder, Prelinger Archives, whose moving image holdings may be found online at archive.org; co-founder, Prelinger Library, a publicly-available collection of historical periodicals, books, print ephemera, maps and government documentsMegan Prelinger, co-founder, Prelinger Library; co-director, Prelinger Archives film digitization project. Prelinger is also the author of the books Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957–1962 and Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Americans are doing a lot more of their shopping online, and thanks to generous return policies we’re also sending back more of the stuff that doesn’t fit, doesn’t work or just doesn’t look like its JPG. Many of us even regularly buy clothes in multiple sizes and colors and simply send back anything that we don’t like the look of. But very little of what we return, from bathing suits to defective barbeque grills, is repaired or resold as new. Returned inventory created 9.5 billion pounds of landfill waste last year, according to one estimate. And the shipping of returned inventory in the US, to retailers, resellers and repairers, emitted over 24 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. We’ll talk about the logistics of the reverse supply chain and the environmental consequences of all the stuff we buy and don’t want.Guests:Amanda Mull, staff writer, The Atlantic. She writes the column “Material World” on American consumerismTobin Moore, co-founder and principal, Optoro, a returns technology company Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do you notice out the window from your seat on BART, or Muni, or the Golden Gate Ferry? When you ride public transit, you’re free to look around, and looking around can tell you a lot about where you live. We talk about the breathtaking vistas and hidden histories revealed to us through the windows of public transit and how what we see – or don’t see – shapes our connection to the Bay Area.Guests:Vincent Woo, filmmaker. Woo is the creator and director of "Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorized BART Ride"Liam O'Donoghue, host and producer, East Bay YesterdayMey Lee, co-curator, Muni Raised Me exhibit - at SOMA Arts earlier this year.Sarah Katz-Hyman, editor, Muni Diaries Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brown v Board of Education, the landmark civil rights decision banning racial segregation in public schools, was supposed to give Black children greater educational opportunities. But instead, according to Columbia Teachers College professor Bettina Love, it marked the beginning of an anti-Black educational agenda, characterized by low academic expectations, excessive suspensions, surveillance and physical violence. Love grew up in the 1980s and 90s, a period when the Reagan and Bush administrations pushed ideas of “school accountability” and “school safety” that she says were used to justify punishment of Black children and that have harmed a generation. We talk to Love about her and her peers’ experiences in school as “eighties babies” and why she thinks reparations are essential to repair public education.Guests:Bettina Love, professor at Teachers College, Columbia University; author, "Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2017 students at Albany High School in the East Bay became aware of a private instagram account created by a student, and followed by just over a dozen more, containing viciously racist posts about fellow classmates. The disputes about why it happened, how to hold the creator and the followers accountable, and what to do about the anger, shame and fear caused by the posts tore through the school and the town. “Whatever you believed about Albany, about America, about teenagers, racism, sexism, social media, punishment and the public discourse on each of these topics, the story of the Instagram account could be marshaled as evidence. It was the incident that explained everything and yet also the incident that couldn’t be explained,” writes Dashka Slater. We talk to her about her five years of reporting on the story and her book, “Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed”.Guests:Dashka Slater, author, "Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed." - Her previous books include "The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether you’re a seasoned chef or first-time cook preparing a casual dinner with friends, Thanksgiving can be a stressful time in the kitchen. Many of us are frantically checking the internet for recipes, tips, and fresh ideas on what to eat on Thursday. New York Times Cooking is aware of the stakes — they know their recipes will end up on dinner tables across the country in a few days and have been preparing for this moment since last spring. Not limited to just recipe offerings, their deep-dive videos on green beans, stuffing, and turkey also help us understand why these dishes have become mainstays over the years. They join us to give tips on how to prepare the ultimate feast and answer your last-minute questions.Guests:Eric Kim, chef and food columnist, New York Times Cooking and Food; author of cookbook, "Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home." Website URL: https://erickim.net/Emily Weinstein, editor in chief, New York Times Cooking and Food. She also writes the popular New York Times newsletter "Five Weeknight Dishes." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices