KQED's Forum

Come 2027, Californians will have a new post-death option: to become human compost. A law signed by Governor Newsom this month made California the fifth state to legalize “natural organic reduction,” which lets human bodies decompose into a cubic yard of soil. While green burials — the process of wrapping the deceased in a shroud and placing them in the ground — are already legal, composting doesn’t require a dedicated portion of land. And though it’s more expensive than cremation, it’s also less carbon-intensive. We’ll talk about the new law and hear whether you’d want to become human compost.Guests:Courtney Applewhite, doctoral candidate studying environmental disposition ("eco-funerals"), UC Santa BarbaraCristina Garcia, assembly member, representing California's 58th Assembly DistrictKatrina Spade, founder and CEO, Recompose Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The death of the 22-year old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, for a supposed violation of the country’s strict dress code, has sparked protests across Iran and around the world. As Iranian citizens protest in call for justice and women's rights reform, many have gotten arrested, injured and even killed. We'll talk with Iranians here in the U.S. about the reactions to Amini's death and the status of women's rights in Iran.Guests:Persis Karim, Iranian-American poet and essayist; director for the Center of Iranian Diaspora Studies, San Francisco State UniversityShaghayegh Cyrous, artistHoda Katebi, writer, community organizer and creative educator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Points, badges, progress bars and leaderboards: they’re among the games designed to make dull activities fun -- and to make us more productive at the gym, in school or at work. But to video game developer Adrian Hon, gamification has become the twenty-first century’s most advanced form of behavioral control, coercing our decisions and justifying corporate and government surveillance. We’ll talk to Hon about his new book “You’ve Been Played.”Guests:Adrian Hon, game developer and author, "You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments and Schools Use Games to Control Us All." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three historic BIPOC-focused media outlets are celebrating anniversaries this fall - India Currents turns 35, Willie Ratliff, the publisher of San Francisco Bayview National Black Newspaper turns 90, and the Mission’s El Tecolote turns 52. These outlets may be small (compared to the mainstream media) but they are mighty. We’ll find out how their communities sustained their local media through the pandemic, and how the outlets sustained their communities in turn. Thriving together through difficult times. Guests:Vandana Kumar, Editor-in-chief, publisher and co-founder, India Currents.Nube Brown, Editor-in-chief, San Francisco Bayview National Black Newspaper.Alexis Terrazas, Editor-in-chief, El Tecolote. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The California condor is not one of nature’s cutest birds, but it is probably one of its most compelling. The largest bird in North America, the condor has a wingspan measuring nine and a half feet. It can fly at speeds up to 50 miles per hour, glide at 15,000 feet in the air without flapping, and can cover 150 miles a day. The condor once flew freely across the west, but by 1982, only 23 condors remained in existence worldwide, and by 1987, all living condors were in captive breeding programs. The success of those programs has allowed the reintroduction of the condor to the wild, and this year, the condor was reintroduced to Northern California in partnership with the federal government and partners like the Yurok Tribe. We’ll talk to experts about reintroducing a species to the wild, and hear from you: What comes to mind when you think of the California condor?Guests:Tiana Wiliams-Claussen, Director, Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department.Joe Burnett, Senior Wildlife Biologist and California Condor Recovery Program Manager, Ventana Wildlife Society.Ashleigh Blackford, California Condor Coordinator & At-Risk Species Coordinator, U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the goal of helping San Francisco’s under-resourced students develop their voices as writers, the nonprofit 826 Valencia — founded at that exact address in San Francisco’s Mission District — turned 20 this year. There are now nine 826 chapters nationwide, and in San Francisco more than 5,600 students are served by the program in the back of its pirate store flagship, in its Tenderloin and Mission Bay centers and in eleven public schools across the city. Nearly 3 thousand students have been published in its writing collections and podcasts, proudly calling themselves published authors. We’ll hear some works by 826’s youth authors and talk with the founders and current team about the importance of celebrating — and publishing — youth voices.Related link(s):"Truth Of The Fenced Castle" by TiarriMore 826 Valencia PodcastsGuests:Dave Eggers, co-founder, 826 ValenciaNínive Calegari , co-founder, 826 ValenciaBita Nazarian, executive director, 826 ValenciaBianca Catalan, alumnus and Board Member, 826 Valencia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In one of her undergraduate history seminars, Harvard professor Drew Gilpin Faust recently discovered that the majority of her students could not read cursive. To them, it was like a foreign language. This is not surprising as cursive was not part of the Common Core educational standards introduced in 2010, though half of the nation’s states, including California, now include cursive in their curriculum. Some argue that computers have made the need for handwriting obsolete. But research suggests that handwriting, and cursive in particular, helps children read better and retain knowledge. What is lost when we cannot write or read in cursive? We’ll talk to experts on handwriting, and we’ll hear from you: Is cursive relevant anymore and how’s your handwriting?Guests:Drew Gilpin Faust, Arthur Kingsley University professor in History Organization, Harvard University - Faust is the former president of Harvard University; recent article for the Atlantic is titled, "Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive"Robert Wiley, assistant professor, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, GreensboroVirginia Berninger, professor emeritus, University of Washington College of EducationSandra Gutierrez, associate DIY Editor, Popular Science; recent article, "Wait, It's Not to Late to Get Good Handwriting" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jann Wenner started Rolling Stone magazine in San Francisco at the tender age of 21 – placing himself smack in the middle of 1967’s wild and groundbreaking music scene. We’ll talk with Wenner about San Francisco rock and roll, the legacy of Rolling Stone magazine and his new memoir, “Like a Rolling Stone”.Guests:Jann Wenner, founder, Rolling Stone Magazine; author of the memoir, "Like a Rolling Stone" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do some people with mental illnesses recover while others with the same diagnosis don’t? According to New Yorker staff writer Rachel Aviv, the answer in part lies in the gap between people’s actual experiences and the language of contemporary psychiatry that names and defines their conditions. In her new book “Strangers to Ourselves” Aviv writes about people who she says “have come up against the limits of psychiatric ways of understanding themselves” -- a woman who stopped taking her meds because she didn’t know who she was without them, a man subject to years of failed psychoanalysis, and Aviv herself, who at age six was hospitalized for refusing to eat. We’ll talk to Aviv about her discoveries.Guests:Rachel Aviv, writer of "Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Biden says he aims to end hunger and food insecurity in the United States by 2030. Next week the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health will consider the policy changes needed to reach that goal. The last conference on hunger and health was in 1969 during the Nixon administration, and it led to many of the nation’s major health policies like child nutrition assistance and food stamps. We’ll talk about what hunger and food insecurity looks like in the U.S. now, and what it would take to ensure no Americans go hungry.Guests:Ahori Pathak, director of policy, Poverty to Prosperity Program at Center for American ProgressKassandra Martinchek, research associate, Urban InstituteDariush Mozaffarian, cardiologist and professor of nutrition, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University; co-chair of the Task Force on Hunger, Nutrition and health - an independent task force working to help inform the White House Conference Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices