KQED's Forum

Gay stand-up comedian Zach Zimmerman grew up in Virginia with Evangelical parents and attended a school that taught the Bible instead of history and expelled any student found to have watched an R-rated movie. Zimmerman has journeyed far from their roots, having transformed from a “straight, meat-eating Christian conservative to a queer, vegetarian, atheist socialist.” We talk to Zimmerman about religious guilt, love and comedy and their new essay collection “Is it Hot in Here: Or am I Suffering for All Eternity for the Sins I Committed on Earth?”Guests:Zach Zimmerman, stand-up comedian; author, "Is It Hot in Here? (Or Am I Suffering for All Eternity for the Sins I Committed on Earth?)" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gas and oil production in California has been on a slow decline for decades, and more than a third of unplugged onshore oil wells are sitting idle. Those unplugged wells can leak methane, brine and carcinogenic chemicals — and are vulnerable to geological risks like earthquakes and landslides. A first-of-its-kind study, published by think tank Carbon Tracker, looks at the massive costs of decommissioning and cleaning up wells. With the costs of cleaning up exceeding the industry’s future profits by billions of dollars, the shortfall could mean that taxpayers are on the hook. We learn more about the study.Related link(s):Carbon Tracker, “There Will Be Blood: Decommissioning California’s Oilfields”ProPublica, “It Will Cost Up to $21.5 Billion to Clean Up California’s Oil Sites. The Industry Won’t Make Enough Money to Pay for It.”Guests:Mark Olalde, reporter covering the environment in the Southwest, ProPublica; reported the piece, "It Will Cost Up to $21.5 Billion to Clean Up California’s Oil Sites. The Industry Won’t Make Enough Money to Pay for It."Dwayne Purvis, founder and principal advisor, Purvis Energy Advisors; report author, "There will be blood: Decommissioning California’s Oilfields" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Hetch Hetchy reservoir was created a century ago to supply fresh water for millions of people in the Bay Area. It was created by damming the Tuolumne River, flooding a former mountain valley in the Sierras and forming a reservoir that can hold up to 117 billion gallons of water. Hetch Hetchy embodies a feat of modern engineering, but as the globe warms up and demand for water shifts, the reservoir’s storage capacity and water management capabilities may not hold up. For our next installment of Climate Fix: Rethinking Solutions for California, we’ll talk about how climate change is putting pressure on Hetch Hetchy and what a far warmer future means for this mountain bathtub.Guests:Samuel Sandoval Solis, PhD, professor, UC Davis; cooperative extension specialist in water resources management, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the University of CaliforniaNewsha Ajami, PhD, chief development officer for research in Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and president, San Francisco Public Utilities CommissionEzra David Romero, climate reporter, KQEDPeter Drekmeier, policy director, Tuolumne River Trust Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the end of Title 42, a law enacted during the pandemic to slow the flow of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S., the Biden Administration finds itself caught between policymakers who say the President is too tough on immigration or not tough enough. Immigration is also an issue that Republican presidential hopefuls are keeping at the center of their primary campaigns: Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, and likely-to-run candidate Ron DeSantis are all running on their bonafides as advocates for stringent restrictions on immigration. We’ll talk about the current situation at the border and the role that immigration will play in national politics and the presidential election.Guests:Michelle Hackman, reporter covering U.S. immigration policy, Wall Street Journal's Washington BureauPhilip Bump, national columnist, Washington Post - recent article, "What will the inevitable 2024 debate over immigration look like?"; author, "The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America"Rafael Carranza, reporter covering immigration issues , Arizona Republic and USA Today Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s novel ‘Chain-Gang All-Stars’ portrays an American prison system with corporate-sponsored gladiators whose fights to the death, and most every waking moment, are followed, reality TV style, by the nation. It’s a searing satire of an exploitative prison system and the society that supports it that is uncomfortably recognizable. We talk with Adjei-Brenyah about the speculative, and the actual, American prison system and writing a novel about dehumanization through characters that are full of humanity, compassion and love.Guests:Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author, "Chain Gang All Stars" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Remember the Jordan Peele deepfake of President Obama from 2018? Since then, deepfake technology and other forms of AI-generated text, photos, voices and videos have become far more sophisticated and realistic — and more accessible to the general public. With political organizations and pranksters alike using these tools, we’ll discuss what has experts in AI and misinformation most worried. And we’ll hear what’s being proposed in terms of reform and oversight — from the private sector and in legislation — to decrease disinformation, confusion and conundrums ahead of the 2024 election.Related articles:Watch Jordan Peele use AI to make Barack Obama deliver a PSA about fake newsGuests:Hany Farid, professor, UC Berkeley - with a joint appointment in electrical engineering & computer sciences and the School of Information. He is also a member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Lab and is a senior faculty advisor for the Center for Long-Term CybersecurityScott Wiener, California state senator, representing San Francisco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Millions of families in the U.S. depend on welfare to get by, but it’s far from an efficient system. The bureaucratic mechanisms designed to help people find jobs, a requirement for receiving aid, often don’t work, even as they funnel millions of dollars into private companies with government contracts. In the latest season of Marketplace’s “The Uncertain Hour” podcast, host and producer Krissy Clark investigates the welfare-to-work industrial complex and how businesses profit off of people living paycheck to paycheck. As Washington debates work requirements as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling, we talk with Clark about how welfare eligibility works and whether the current system is helping people escape poverty or keeping them trapped.Guests:Krissy Clark, host and producer, The Uncertain Hour podcast, and senior correspondent at MarketplaceJeanne Kuang, reporter, CalMatters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Governor Newsom released on Friday his May revision of the state budget, which shows a $31.5 billion deficit, nearly $10 billion higher than forecast in January. Newsom has declined to raise taxes or meaningfully dip into rainy day funds to address the deficit, opting instead to limit funding increases for transportation, climate and social service programs. At the same time, the revised budget would increase funding for flood protection, especially in the Central Valley and Tulare Lake basin ahead of the ‘Big Melt.’ We’ll talk about how it all might play out in the legislature before the budget approval deadline of June 15.Guests:Jeremy White, covers California politics, PoliticoChris Hoene, executive director, California Budget & Policy CenterJulie Rentner, president, River Partners - a nonprofit based in Chico, CA, that works to restore healthy watersheds and create wildlife habitat in the Central Valley and Southern California Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dorothy Lazard has held the history of Oakland in her hands for years as the legendary historian and archivist at the Oakland public library. She’s now retired and telling her own story of growing up in Oakland and San Francisco in the late 60’s and early 70’s, which she writes was “the first best time to be a Black kid in America.” We talk to her about coming of age in the 1970’s Bay Area, the books and the libraries that fed her eager young mind, and her memoir, What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World.Guests:Dorothy Lazard, author, What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World; former head librarian, the Oakland History Center Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eurovision, the song contest that brought the world ABBA’s “Waterloo,” concludes with its big finale this Saturday. It’s been dismissed as kitschy and camp. But it’s also considered the Olympics of pop music, and last year, 161 million viewers turned in to watch the finale. This year’s competition includes an Austrian homage to Edgar Allen Poe, Finland’s metal rap entry, “Cha Cha Cha,” and bookie favorite, Sweden’s “Tattoo.” And for the first time, voting is not limited to the Eurozone; viewers from the U.S. can join the musical fray by voting online. We’ll talk about the contest, its history, and predict what song will enter into the Eurovision canon. What’s your favorite?Guests:William Lee Adams, founder of Wiwibloggs, a Eurovision blog; author, "Wild Dances: My Queer and Curious Journey to Eurovision;" senior journalist, BBC World Service Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices