KQED's Forum

There’s only one proposition on California’s March 2024 ballot, but it deals with some of the state’s biggest challenges: homelessness, substance abuse, and mental health. Proposition 1, backed by Governor Gavin Newsom, is a two-part measure: It asks voters to approve nearly $6.4 billion to increase mental health and substance abuse services and build supportive housing. It also makes big changes to how existing funds are spent under the 2004 Mental Health Services Act, which imposed a 1% tax on personal incomes above $1 million. But critics say Prop. 1 would actually hurt the mentally ill by forcing people into treatment and diverting funding for local services. We’ll break down the measure, and take your questions.Guests:Guy Marzorati, reporter and producer, KQED's California Politics and Government DeskKristen Hwang, health reporter, CalMattersClare Cortright, policy director, CalVoicesDarrell Steinberg, mayor, city of Sacramento Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The human longing for connection – to be heard and understood – is what Rabbi Sharon Brous calls the “amen effect.” It’s the idea that we can awaken our shared humanity when we learn to talk across differences with curiosity and empathy. Rabbi Brous has for decades been ministering to members of IKAR, shepherding the Los Angeles Jewish community she co-founded as they navigate celebration and sorrow, both personal and collective. We talk to Rabbi Brous about spirituality, community and how she is grappling with the war between Israel and Hamas. Her new book is “The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In many Asian families, the highest compliment you can offer a dessert is, “it’s not too sweet!” Bringing in flavor profiles from Asian cultures like pandan leaves, black sesame, and ube, bakers around the Bay are reimagining Asian- American dessert offerings. There’s choux pastry covered in almond crunch and filled with durian cream or a thumbprint cookie with an umeboshi plum center. On the next edition of All You Can Eat with KQED food editor Luke Tsai, we’ll talk to bakers and cookbook authors about Asian-American desserts and the role they play in Lunar New Year celebrations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The United States is in the middle of a massive modernization effort of its nuclear weapons, as tensions rise globally, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to expanding arsenals in China and North Korea. Journalist Sarah Scoles set out to understand the U.S.’s biggest reinvestment in its atomic infrastructure in decades by talking with the people who work on them daily, scientists at nuclear labs. In the process, as she documents in her new book “Countdown,” she interrogates our need for these weapons and their impact on war — and peace. She joins us to share more about the science, technology and philosophy of nuclear weaponry.Guests:Sarah Scoles, journalist; author, "Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons" and "Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price was elected into office in 2022 on a reform platform to root out racial and socioeconomic disparities in the county justice system and end mass incarceration. But as Oakland contends with a surge in crime and as brazen robberies and assaults shake residents, Price has become the target of a well-funded recall campaign from those who say criminals are emboldened by a lack of consequences. We talk with Price about her vision for the office and the recall campaign against her.Guests:Pamela Price, district attorney, Alameda County, California; civil rights attorney. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The podcast explores the challenges and benefits of hybrid work, focusing on the impact on employees and employers. Topics include the advantages for working parents, the value of work relationships, and the varying experiences of productivity. Both the benefits and costs of remote work are discussed, along with the challenges of managing hybrid teams. The chapter also highlights the gratitude to listeners and includes sponsor acknowledgements.

Hundreds of thousands of people lost power in the Bay Area, streets were flooded and trees were uprooted, crushing houses and cars as winds gusts reached as high as over 100 mph in Sunday’s storm. But some of the most feared impacts, such as flooding from the Guadalupe River in San Jose, didn’t happen. We check in on how the Bay Area fared in the storm.Guests:Ezra David Romero, climate reporter, KQEDThe nation’s largest grower of stone fruit, Prima Wawona, is shutting down leaving 5,400 workers out of a job. Four years ago, a private equity firm bought up two major stone fruit growers in Fresno to create the peach power house, which claimed it produced five times more peaches than the entire state of Georgia. Last fall, Prima Wawona shocked the Fresno community by declaring bankruptcy, blaming too much debt, bad weather, and rising costs among other factors. The former CEO has since sued the company claiming the failure was caused by poor management and unnecessary spending on consultants. We’ll talk about what the company’s stunning demise means for Fresno and what the increased interest from private equity in agriculture means for the future of farming in California.Guests:Antonio De Loera-Brust, director of communications, United Farm WorkersDaniel Gligich, senior reporter, The San Joaquin Valley SunRod James, reporter covering private equity, The Wall Street Journal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More and more TV households are cutting the cord and moving to streaming. In 2023 alone, pay-TV providers lost more than 5 million subscribers. But now that streaming companies have a robust subscriber base, rates are rising and commercials are making their way back into programming. Historian Kathryn Cramer Brownell says that when cable companies tried similar tactics in the 1980s, the government stepped in to protect consumers. So why hasn’t that happened with streaming? We’ll take a look at the history of cable with Brownell to understand how the cable tv model set the foundation for our current media landscape and what consumers can do about it.Guest:Kathryn Cramer Brownell, associate professor, Purdue University - author of “24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a visit to her grandmother’s house, journalist Maya Lin Sugarman unexpectedly discovered a trove of screenplays written by her uncle Galen. She was shocked to learn that one of the screenplays was turned into a gangster movie starring Rob Lowe, and even more shocked to learn that it was based on Galen’s real life experiences as a young gang member in Oakland’s Chinatown. Maya’s podcast “Magnificent Jerk” explores the shadows of family history, spotlights a slice of the Bay Area’s past that few seem to want to discuss, and searches for understanding in the gaps between fact and fiction. We talk with Maya about her uncle’s wild screenplay and what she learned trying to excavate buried secrets.Guests:Maya Lin Sugarman, journalist, host and executive producer of the podcast “Magnificent Jerk”William Gee Wong, journalist; author of “Sons of Chinatown: A memoir rooted in China and America”Brian Wong, Oakland Chinatown resident; friend of Galen Yuen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wearing blue vests labeled “Press,” journalists in Gaza risk their lives to document and publicize a war that’s killed more than 28,000 people. At least 85 journalists are among the dead – 78 of whom were Palestinian. Because Israel and Egypt have denied foreign journalists entry into Gaza, the burden of on-the-ground reporting falls predominantly to Palestinian journalists, who work amid airstrikes, intermittent cell and internet service and an abiding fear for the safety of their loved ones. In December, the Committee to Protect Journalists labeled the post-Oct. 7 conflict deadlier for media workers than any full year of conflict, anywhere, since it began keeping track in 1992. We’ll speak with journalists from Gaza about what it means to report, amid trauma and loss, a story they’re part of.Guests:Rushdi Abualouf, Gaza correspondent reporting from Istanbul, BBCMai Yaghi, correspondent based in Gaza, AFPAdel Zaanoun, bureau chief in Gaza, AFPYoumna ElSayed, English Correspondent in Gaza now speaking from Egypt, Al Jazeera Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices