KQED's Forum

The Bay Area saw some of the biggest increases in people signing up for food stamps during the pandemic. Home to the highest income inequality in California, the Bay Area’s hunger problem has been an issue of growing concern since well before COVID-19. The Biden administration announced Monday that it will approve the largest permanent increase in food assistance in the history of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Yet the Bay Area’s cost of living may mean that increase is only a drop in the bucket. We talk with researchers and advocates about the unique landscape of food insecurity in the Bay Area and how they’re addressing the problem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With breathtaking speed, the Taliban have regained control of Afghanistan for the first time since American military forces drove them out 20 years ago. Collapse of the U.S.-backed government triggered panic in Kabul,with many questions about what comes next as the Taliban takes over. We'll talk with Afghan-Americans in California about how they're reacting to the news and we'll look back at the past decades of American military involvement to ask how intelligence so badly underestimated the strength of the Taliban and overestimated the stability of the Afghan government. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alameda school board member Mia Bonta and attorney Janani Ramachandran are vying to represent East Bay Assembly District 18 and succeed Bonta's husband, Rob Bonta, who resigned to become the California attorney general. A special runoff election on Aug. 31 will determine who will become the next representative for the district, which covers West Oakland to San Leandro. We talk with the candidates to get their views on housing supply, criminal justice reform and more.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For a few days in late 2015, global outrage coursed at the photo of Alan Kurdi, the lifeless two-year old Syrian boy found washed ashore in Turkey after the boat carrying him and other migrants sank on its way to Greece. Omar El Akkad's new novel "What Strange Paradise" imagines an alternative narrative: a young migrant child survives a shipwreck and tries to forge his way to safety. El Akkad, who's also a journalist and former war correspondent, says he wrote the novel to counter what he calls "the privilege of instantaneous forgetting." We talk to him about the ongoing global refugee crisis and the human stories that inform his work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Later this year, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will be strapped to a French rocket and launched nearly one million miles into space to look at galaxies formed 300 million years after the Big Bang. The telescope employs new and novel technology, including a gold-covered mirror, the largest ever launched into space, and a sunshield the size of a tennis court and made of five paper-thin layers that will cool down the telescope's sensitive infrared equipment. The hope is that the telescope, which has taken 25 years to design and build at a cost of $10 billion, will shoot back images even more spectacular than the Hubble Telescope. The engineering risks are complex, but scientists hope for a grand reward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In one month, the U.S. will mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11, when nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In a new piece for The Atlantic, staff writer Jennifer Senior details how the family of Bobby McIlvaine continues to mourn and search for meaning two decades after he was killed in the attacks. The portrait reveals the disparate ways his loved ones process their grief, including Bobby’s father, who turned to 9/11 truther conspiracies to make sense of the loss, and Bobby’s former girlfriend, who holds on to one of his journals. As we remember the tragedy of that fateful day in 2001, we’ll talk to Senior about what the McIlvaines’ story tells us about grieving, both as individuals and as a nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The number of adolescent patients needing hospitalizations for eating disorders has doubled at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals during the pandemic. In-patient treatment centers have also seen demand skyrocket and now have months-long waiting lists. Experts say that for young people, not being able to see friends or family, taking classes online and spending more time scrolling through social media feeds have all contributed to the rapid increase in eating disorders. We talk about why the pandemic has created a ripe environment for more eating disorders and how to address the problem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo have been described as the “strangest” or “weirdest” in Olympic history. The pandemic delayed the games for a year and limited how the world’s biggest sporting tournament could play out--no spectators, lots of covered faces, social distancing and players isolated from others. The games also roused a plethora of debates ranging from questions over player uniforms to questions about identity to whether they should have been held at all in a country with low coronavirus vaccination rates. In this hour of Forum, we look back at the Tokyo Olympics and explore the triumphs, and challenges of putting on the games in the middle of a pandemic and also dive into California’s influence on the games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last week, Apple announced it will scan U.S. iPhones for images of child sexual abuse. It’s a serious problem. Back in 2018, 45 million photos and videos with child sex abuse material were reported by tech firms. Apple’s move was praised by child protection groups. But privacy experts say that this is an alarming departure from the company’s commitment to security, and will open the door to governments to surveil their citizens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

California’s fourth largest hydroelectric plant, Hyatt Powerplant at Lake Oroville, has been shut down due to lack of water for the first time in its nearly 60 year history. This after water levels sank to 24% of the lake’s capacity, in what the Department of Water Resources attributed to “climate-induced drought.” We discuss the effects of California’s drought on the power supply and what steps the state is taking to make up for the loss of water and hydroelectric power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices