KQED's Forum

Seventy-five years ago, a plane crashed outside of Coalinga in California’s Central Valley. Twenty-eight of the 32 passengers killed were migrant workers in the Bracero Program, being deported back to Mexico. Unlike the flight’s white passengers and crew, whose bodies were sent home to their families, the Mexican citizens were buried unceremoniously in a mass grave, their names omitted from the headstone. Tim Hernandez is working to identify their names, families and stories and he joins us to talk about the importance of remembering.Related link(s):'All They Will Call You Will Be Deportee': 75 Years Later, Uncovering the Lives of the Braceros Who Died in a Fiery California Plane Crash, The California Report MagazineGuests:Tim Z. Hernandez, author, "All They Will Call You"Mireya Loza, associate professor of history, Georgetown University; author, "Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom"Michael Rodríguez III, ethnic studies teacher in Santa Ana and great-nephew of María Rodríguez Santana, victim of the plane crash Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It seems like actor and director Randall Park has been in everything. “Veep.” “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” “WandaVision.” “Aquaman.” He played an amiable version of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in the movie “The Interview.” He starred in and co-wrote the Netflix hit movie “Always Be My Maybe” with Ali Wong. And his single scene in “The Office” playing the Asian version of lead character Jim is a viral favorite. But Park’s breakthrough role didn’t come until he was 40 when he booked the hit ABC series “Fresh Off the Boat.” And that success came after many years living at home with his parents and hustling for guest roles and small parts anywhere he could find them. We’ll talk to Park about his career, his directorial debut, “Shortcomings,” and what it means to find success in a fickle industry like show biz.Guests:Randall Park, actor and director. Park's debut directorial feature "Shortcomings" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Park has starred in the Netflix movie "Always Be My Maybe" and the ABC series "Fresh Off the Boat" and will next be in "Strays" with Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mexican Americans make up the majority of the labor force sustaining California’s wine industry. And, yet, they only make up about 1 percent of the roughly 4,800 wine producers in the state. A handful of Mexican-American families, including the Robledos and Cejas of Sonoma County,established their labels decades ago. Now newer brands are popping up, such as Healdsburg’s Aldina Vineyards and Seis Soles in Lodi. We’ll talk with some of the Mexican Americans reshaping California’s wine industry and bringing an old tradition to a new crop of consumers.Guests:Gabriela Fernandez, host, The Big Sip podcast - She also curates lifestyle and educational event experiences for Duckhorn Vineyards.Lazaro Robledo, president of sales, Robledo Family WineryMonica Lopez, co-founder, Aldina VineyardsChristoper Rivera, owner and winemaker, Seis Soles Wine Co. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mehdi Hasan says he has been arguing all his life, and he’s made a career of it as a formidable interviewer known for challenging presidents and prime ministers on his MSNBC and Al Jazeera news programs. To him, a good-faith debate is not only the “lifeblood of democracy” but it’s also fun, and he wants us all to learn the craft. We’ll hear how to captivate and persuade an audience, use pathos and humor and handle low-information interlocutors. Hasan’s new book is “Win Every Argument.”Guests:Mehdi Hasan, journalist and host, "The Mehdi Hasan Show" on MSNBC and Peacock - His new book is "Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading and Public Speaking" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The latest generation of chatbots, powered by their ingestion of huge chunks of writing from the internet, have continued to wow and frighten. ChatGPT and an experimental bot from Microsoft’s Bing are shockingly fluent in English. And being humans, we struggle to imagine anything that could master our language without tremendous intelligence. So, what, then, do we make of a machine that can output sentences in any style about any thing? Forum brings together three people – a writer, a coder and a policy expert working on ethics guidelines for AI – to help us make sense of this new generation of tools.Guests:Simon Willison, independent researcher and developerTed Chiang, science fiction writer; author, "Exhalation: Stories." His latest piece for The New Yorker is "ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web."Claire Leibowicz, head of AI & media integrity, Partnership on AI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Across the U.S., migrant children are employed in violation of child labor laws, in under-the-table operations and in global corporations alike, according to a new New York Times investigation. They work in dangerous conditions in construction, in factories and in slaughterhouses. They work long hours in kitchens, hotels and farm fields. They fall asleep in high school after working night shifts; some drop out of school altogether. Reporter Hannah Dreier spoke with more than 100 migrant child workers in 20 states as well as the companies employing them and the government agencies meant to protect them. She joins to talk about how this “new economy of exploitation” exploded over the past two years and how the Biden Administration has responded to her reporting.Guests:Hannah Dreier, reporter on the investigations team, The New York Times Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Food was a life raft that connected our families to where we came from, “ writes Judy Leung in the new cookbook, “The Woks of Life.” Her daughters, Sarah and Kaitlin grew up loving their parents’ Chinese cooking but when they moved out of the house, they realized that they had no idea how to cook their family favorites. There were no written recipes or helpful YouTube videos. So the women started a blog, “The Woks of Life,” which is now a cookbook, to document their family’s patrimony of recipes. We’ll talk to the Leungs, as part of our All You Can Eat series with KQED food editor Luke Tsai, and hear from you: What’s a family recipe you wish you had in writing?Guests:Luke Tsai, food editor, KQED Arts & CultureKaitlin Leung, Co-author, "The Woks of Life: Recipes to Know and Love from a Chinese American FamilySarah Leung, Co-author, "Woks of Life: Recipes to Know and Love from a Chinese American FamilyReyna Maldonado, Owner, La Guerreras Kitchen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being a teenager has always been hard, writes clinical psychologist and adolescent mental health expert Lisa Damour. But coming of age amid a global pandemic, intense political division and a national reckoning with police violence "makes the work of a teenager -- or raising one -- that much more difficult." We talk to Damour about how to help the teens in our lives navigate the powerful emotions they feel and why she thinks we should all become less afraid of painful feelings like anger, frustration and sadness.Guests:Lisa Damour, clinical psychologist, author, "The Emotional Lives of Teenagers" - co-host of the podcast "Ask Lisa" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Palo Alto is nice,” begins Malcolm Harris in his new book, aptly named “Palo Alto.” But according to Harris, Palo Alto, where he grew up, is also a microcosm for much of what is wrong with capitalism and the California Dream. Charting the history of the town from its founding to the present day, Harris looks at the impact Stanford University, Republican politics, unions and the tech industry have had on the town that has become synonymous with astronomical home prices and venture capital. We’ll talk to Harris and hear from you: Does Palo Alto represent a dream gone awry?Guests:Malcolm Harris, author, "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism and the World" - Harris is also the author of "Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than half of all abortions in the United States are performed with medication, according to the Guttmacher Institute. But a federal court case in Texas could block access to mifepristone, a key abortion drug, nationally. “Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA” contests the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in 2000 and regulation since. If federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk sides with the anti-abortion group, mifepristone would be pulled from the market — further reducing abortion options after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June. We’ll take stock of the case, the projected impacts of losing this gold-standard abortion drug, and where abortion access in the U.S. stands, state by state.Guests:Michele Goodwin, Chancellor's professor, UC Irvine School of Law; author, "Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood"Shefali Luthra, health reporter covering the intersection of gender and health care, The 19th, an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices