KQED's Forum

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

San Francisco resident Kristin Urquiza has spent the past two years advocating for a national Covid memorial for the million-plus people who died from the disease, including her father. She co-founded Marked By Covid to push for a memorial that will not only speak to our grief, but also encapsulate the conditions and decisions that led to so many deaths. Urquiza shared her journey with the podcast 99 Percent Invisible for a recent episode called, “Don’t Forget to Remember.” We’ll talk about what it means to memorialize our collective traumas and what a Covid memorial should say.Guests:Chris Colin, Bay Area-based journalist - his recent story, "Don't Forget to Remember," appeared on the podcast, 99 Percent InvisibleKristin Urquiza, co-founder, Marked by Covid - daughter of Mark Urquiza, who died from Covid June 30, 2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Governor Gavin Newsom pledged this month to veto a bill that would ban tackle football for children under 12. Sponsored by Sacramento assemblymember Kevin McCarty, the bill was designed to protect children from the potentially debilitating long-term effects of repeated head injury. But even as evidence of its potential harm mounts, youth football culture in California is deeply ingrained, with the state producing talented players and successful teams year after year. Advocates for youth tackle football say that it fosters community and camaraderie, and provides access to education and upward mobility. We’ll look at the culture – and future – of youth tackle football in California.Guests:Kate Wolffe, health care reporter, Cap RadioAlbert Samaha, investigative reporter, Washington Post; author, "Concepcion: Conquest, Colonialism, and an Immigrant Family’s Fate" and "Never Ran, Never Will: Boyhood and Football in a Changing American Inner City" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bonnie Ora Sherk began her career as a landscape painter, but then realized she wanted to be in the landscape herself. From the nucleus of that idea, her 1970 installation “Portable Park,” a popup farm complete with sod, trees, and farm animals situated under a San Francisco freeway overpass, was born. As she observed, “Freeways are beautiful, but they need to be softened. Why use them just for cars?” Sherk, who died in 2021, spent her career transforming “dead spaces” into lived experiences like gardens, farms, and trails, all meant to engage audiences by showing them the wonders of the overlooked world around them. Today she is considered the godmother of urban reinvention, gardens, and the parklet. We’ll talk about a new retrospective of her work with curators and artists who have been inspired by her.Guests:Tere Almaguer, environmental justice organizer, Poder - Almaguer works with Hummingbird Farms, a seven-acre urban farm in San FranciscoFrank Smigiel, director of arts programming and partnerships, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture; former curator, SF MOMA - Smigiel helped bring the Bonnie Ora Sherk retrospective to Fort MasonTanya Zimbardo, curator, "Bonnie Ora Sherk: Life Frames Since 1970"John Bela, urbanist; artist - Bela has created a garden space in conjunction with the Bonnie Ora Sherk retrospective at Fort Mason. Bela is also a partner at Urban Field Studio, a Bay Area urban design collectiveRae Alexandra, staff writer, KQED Arts & Culture; creator and author, "Rebel Girls from Bay Area History" series Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2002, California became the first state to pass its own voting rights act with the aim of increasing minority representation at the local level. But as a recent San Francisco Chronicle investigation found, the California Voting Rights Act has produced mixed results— and the state does not track its outcomes. In some localities, the law has led to better community representation and more people of color sitting on city councils and school boards. But in others, it had no effect — and even caused more no-contest or canceled elections. And the financial penalties it allows for have hurt cash-strapped smaller municipalities — without necessarily changing the demographics of elected officials. We’ll talk about the three-part investigative series into how the California Voting Rights Act changed community elections and local governments — and its unintended effects.Guests:Jason Fagone, narrative writer, San Francisco ChronicleDaniel Lempres, criminal justice reporter, San Francisco Chronicle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalism in America was a highly profitable business for more than a century until the internet – and other factors – disrupted the traditional business model resulting in decades of declining advertising and subscription revenue. Last week, the Los Angeles Times cut about 20 percent of its staff, adding to a growing list of news organizations making cuts in the past few months: The Washington Post, Business Insider, Sports Illustrated and NBC News. Meanwhile, hedge funds and private equity firms buying up newspapers has also changed the industry – a trend Bay Area filmmaker Rick Goldsmith examines in his new documentary, “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink.” We’ll talk about the demise of local newspapers, efforts to revive the news business, and what it means for democracy.Guests:Rick Goldsmith, documentary filmmaker; director, "Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink" (2023), "Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press" (1996) and "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" (2009)Julie Reynolds, freelance journalist; producer, Gray Area - a podcast about justice and redemption; part-time associate editor, The ImprintS. Mitra Kalita, CEO, URL Media - a network of Black and Brown community news outlets that share content and revenue; publisher, Epicenter-NYC; veteran journalist; media executive; prolific commentator and authorRamona Giwargis, co-founder and CEO, San Jose Spotlight Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices