KQED's Forum

For decades, a dedicated, but shrinking, contingent of Oakland A’s fans piled into the Coliseum season after season, banging on drums and sporting their green and gold gear with pride. They did so despite the looming possibility that the team would depart. Now that team owners struck a deal to build a stadium in Las Vegas, scores of Oakland A’s fans are feeling stunned, dejected and hurt. The Vegas proposal comes after numerous failed attempts to find a new home in the Bay Area. We’ll talk about how fans are coping and what could happen next in the A’s long and complicated stadium saga.Related articles:The A’s Are A Poison Pill, by Ray RattoGuests:Ann Killion, sports columnist, San Francisco ChronicleDavid Peters, member, Howard Terminal Community Benefits Agreement Steering Committee; founder, Black Liberation Walking Tour; 3rd generation West Oakland resident and lifelong Oakland A's fanMelissa Lockard, senior editor and staff writer, The Athletic; founder, the Oakland Clubhouse - a blog that covered Oakland A's prospects; lifelong A's fanBryan Johansen, co-owner, Last Dive Bar - small business that makes Coliseum-inspired merchandise and puts on events to rally support to keep the A's in Oakland Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Weddings have gone from celebrating the “Big Day” to the “Big Year,” says journalist Annie Atherton. There’s the proposal party, the engagement party, the bachelor and/or bachelorette parties and even, a will-you-be-my-bridesmaid party. It’s all turned into wedding sprawl observes Atherton. While multi-day weddings are common in many cultures, the numerosity of events stretched over a year or more, feels new. Social media and consumerism play some role in the supersizing of weddings. But how can you separate the idea of the wedding you think you’re supposed to have from the one you really want? We’ll talk about how couples, families and guests are handling the modern wedding, and what to do about saying “I do.”Guests:Annie Midori Atherton, freelance writer and author of the recent Atlantic Magazine piece "The Uncontrollable Rise of Wedding Sprawl"Chanda Daniels, wedding planner, A Monique Affair and Chanda Daniels Planning and DesignCele Otnes, professor emerita of business administration, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - Otnes studies rituals and consumer culture Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the Sony Walkman arrived in 1979 it not only changed the way we experience audio, it also changed the way we experience the world. Suddenly listening was a private experience and everyone with headphones on was experiencing their surroundings with a different soundtrack. Radiolab senior producer Simon Adler created a five part series for the podcast and a new live performance about the transformations spawned by that easy access to audio through the cassette tape and Walkman. We talk with Adler about the impact of the cassette tape across the globe – from opening communist China’s ears to rock and roll through our exported plastic trash to delivering hypnotic self help messages straight to listeners’ souls. What’s a cassette tape that changed your life?Guests:Simon Adler, senior producer, Radiolab Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“I’ve lived nearly all my life with two incompatible ideas in my head,” writes philosophy professor Clancy Martin. “I wish I were dead and I’m glad my suicides failed.” Martin’s new book, “How Not To Kill Yourself,” combines memoir with research to take readers into the mind of a suicidal person. We talk to Martin about what to do if you or a loved one are considering suicide and why it’s important that we push against the stigma that attaches to those who contemplate ending their lives.If you or someone you know is in crisis, you can call or text the national suicide hotline at 988.Guests:Clancy Martin, philosophy professor, University of Missouri, Kansas City; author, “How Not To Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For 26 years, the Open Library of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive has been preserving millions of books and lending them out freely online. Last month, a federal judge sided with a group of book publishing giants – Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley – that sued the nonprofit archive for “mass copyright infringement.” Publishers argued, and the court agreed, that the Open Library provided a way for libraries to avoid paying ebook licensing fees that generate substantial revenue for publishers. Internet Archive, whose mission is to provide “universal access to all knowledge,” said it will appeal the ruling. We’ll talk about the dispute and explore how the lawsuit could set the stage for what book lending looks like in an increasingly digital era.Guests:Brewster Kahle, digital librarian; founder, Internet ArchiveSydney Johnson, reporter, KQED NewsTyler Ochoa, professor, Santa Clara University School of Law Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Twitter isn’t dead. But it’s getting there,” writes Vox tech reporter Shirin Ghaffary in her new piece describing the chaotic six months since tech billionaire Elon Musk took over the social media platform. NPR and PBS left Twitter last week after Musk misleadingly labeled it “government-funded media,” and more public news organizations, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, followed suit this week. The departures come on top of rising hate speech on the site, major software glitches and new data showing that worldwide Twitter usage is down since Musk took charge. We look at Twitter’s trajectory and hear from you: is Twitter still relevant?Guests:Bobby Allyn, business reporter covering Silicon Valley, NPRShirin Ghaffary, tech reporter, VoxShannon McGregor, assistant professor at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ethics scandal surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas continues to deepen. According to Pro Publica, in the last 20 years, Thomas and his wife have enjoyed numerous luxury vacations and gifts paid for by billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow. And it now appears that Thomas has been reporting rental income from a defunct company. Thomas’ ethics issues are not limited to the acceptance of gifts; his wife Ginni’s political activism and efforts to overturn the 2020 election have also raised questions about Thomas’ ability to hear cases that might touch on those issues. The questions surrounding Thomas come at a time when the public’s faith in the Court is at an all time low. We’ll talk with experts about ethics and the Supreme Court.Guests:Emily Bazelon, staff writer, The New York Times Magazine - She's also a Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School and co-host of Slate's political gabfest.Scott Cummings, Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics, UCLA School of Law - Cummings is the founding faculty director of the UCLA Program on Legal Ethics and the ProfessionAlex Padilla, U.S. SenatorJosh Kaplan, Reporter, Pro Publica - Kaplan is a member of the investigative team that broke the story about gifts and luxury trips taken Justice Clarence Thomas and paid for by a billionaire Republican donor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know that bees have thoughts, memories and personalities? They can count to four, play soccer and feel pain, according to Stephen Buchmann, a pollination ecologist who has studied bees for more than four decades, ever since he was a high school student in Placentia, California. We talk to Buchmann about the internal lives of bees and why the stress they feel may be one reason they’re dying off at alarming rates. Buchman’s new book is “What a Bee Knows.”Guests:Stephen Buchmann, pollination ecologist specializing in bees and an adjunct professor in the departments of Entomology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona - He is also the author of “What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories and Personalities of Bees” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Salmon need cold water to hatch and grow strong enough to embark on migrations that stretch hundreds of miles from their places of birth. In California, dams constructed along various rivers have disrupted traditional salmon runs and are one reason the species has been in decline for decades. And, as climate change makes everything hotter, including the rivers, salmon spawning sites are at risk. This year, the situation became especially dire with numbers reaching near-record lows. In response, the Pacific Fishery Management Council made the drastic decision to cancel the salmon fishing season for 2023. But salmon advocates say that stopping the fishing season won’t fix state water management policies that have favored agriculture over fish habitats. For our next installment of Climate Fix, our monthly series examining global warming and solutions, we’ll talk about how climate change, severe weather and human behavior are exacerbating the challenges California salmon face.Guests:John McManus, Golden State Salmon AssociationDanielle Venton, science reporter, KQED NewsJonathan Rosenfield Ph.D., senior scientist, San Francisco BaykeeperKasil Willie, staff attorney, Save California Salmon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Katie Porter ran for Congress in 2018 she was “acutely aware” of her shortcomings – that she was a Democrat in Republican Orange County, that she’d never parachuted into combat and even that she hated apple pie. But above all, as she explains in her new memoir, she was far from rich, which came to set her apart from her colleagues in the House where “the privilege of wealth divides ruthlessly.” That perspective, along with her experience as a consumer protection attorney and a single mom of three, has informed how she legislates and the priorities she’s set as she campaigns for a Senate seat. We talk to Rep. Porter about her political and personal lives and her memoir “I Swear: Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan.”Guests:Katie Porter, U.S. representative, 45th district in Orange County; author, "I Swear: Politics is Messier Than My Minivan" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices