Category Archives: Podcast

Podcast

What Does Bay Area Democratic Socialism Look Like?

Audio

Airdate: Tuesday, September 1, 2026

Democratic socialists are on a winning streak. Candidates back by the Democratic Socialists of America have toppled establishment Democrats in primaries from New York to Florida, and national membership has surged past 120,000. In California, DSA candidates are running for mayor in Los Angeles and Richmond, and current incumbents like Assemblyman Alex Lee are members. We talk about what the party stands for and how its politicians and policies — credited with pushing the Democratic Party left — are making local impacts.

Guests:

  • Alex Lee, assemblymember, California State Assembly – represents California’s 24th Assembly District which includes the Alameda County communities of Fremont, Newark, and Sunol, and the Santa Clara County communities of Milpitas and San Jose
  • Charles Homans, writer, New York Times – His latest piece for the New York Times Magazine is titled “Moderates See Socialists as a Threat to the Democratic Party. Socialists Agree”
  • Cecilia Lunaparra, councilmember, Berkeley City Council – Lunaparra is the first undergraduate elected to Berkeley City Council
Podcast

Who Should Pay When Utilities Companies Start a Fire?

Audio

Airdate: Tuesday, September 1, 2026

Wildfire season is underway in California, but the state’s wildfire fund is running low after billions went to victims of last year’s massive Altadena fire, sparked by faulty equipment owned by Southern California Edison. Governor Newsom and the legislature’s debate over fixing the wildfire fund has hinged on the extent utilities, insurance companies and homeowners would pay into it. We’ll dig into the details, and hear your thoughts on who should pay to rebuild after wildfires.

Guests:

  • Guy Marzorati, correspondent, KQED’s California Politics and Government Desk
  • Michael Wara, policy director for the Sustainability Accelerator at the Doerr School of Sustainability, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program, senior research scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
  • Joy Chen, executive director, Every Fire Survivor’s Network
Podcast

The Long Reach of the “Marinaissance” 

Audio

Airdate: Monday, August 31, 2026 at 9 AM

Growing up in San Rafael in the 80’s and 90’s, writer David Perlis sensed that he had just missed something incredible. “I wanted to know what happened here before I was born,” he writes. That kicked off a quest to uncover Marin County’s “seismic cultural awakening” throughout the midcentury that he chronicles in his new book “Morning in Marin: Zen, Drugs, and Ewoks on the California Coast.” Perlis argues that what emerged from “the Marinaissance” was adopted by popular culture across America — yet its influence has been overlooked. We talk to Perlis about the long reach of Marin’s cultural influence and the legendary artists and thought leaders who found refuge there, including Alan Watts, Robin Williams, Anna Halprin, George Lucas and many more.

Guest:

  • David Perlis, writer, musician, filmmaker and author, “Morning in Marin: Zen, Drugs, and Ewoks on the California Coast”

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Alexis Madrigal: Welcome to Forum. I’m Alexis Madrigal. To hear David Perlis tell it in his new book, Morning in Marin: Zen, Drugs, and Ewoks on the California Coast, the Marin thing really begins when some people started to party on an old ferry, emceed by Yonko Varda, down at the waterfront in Sausalito. And next thing you knew, Marin was a crucial artistic center known around the world.

How? Why? Quote, “Because of the fault and the mountain, the moon and the tides, because for so long there were no bridges and then there were,” Perlis writes. “Because of the radio and small presses and breathtaking risk, Marin was the future. Maybe, too, because Eastern art, poetry and philosophy in many different guises began to diffuse into America from this place. For Pacific exchanges, what I learned can be summed up like this: Oakland was the port, but Marin was portal.”

Perlis calls this time period, from about 1950-ish to 1980-ish, the Marinessance — a seismic cultural awakening encompassing literature, music, dance, painting, philosophy, religion, architecture and film. If that sounds grand, let me assure you that it might even undersell what happened in Marin right under the noses of the rich and mostly conservative people who lived up there.

And we have Perlis here with us in the studio. Welcome, David.

David Perlis: Thanks, Alexis. Thanks for having me on the show.

Alexis Madrigal: So what’s your connection to Marin? What made you want to do this book?

David Perlis: Well, I grew up in suburban Spielberg in San Rafael, very much a “kids on bikes” neighborhood where an alien might land in your backyard, although unfortunately no alien ever did. I never got to bond in that way.

And the short answer is because I had to, because there was a magic I sensed in the air in suburban San Rafael and the hills of Mill Valley, driving by the houseboats, Waldo Point, and looking out the window as a kid and saying, “What are those, and how long have they been there, and who made them?”

It was a magic that called to me over the years until I was old enough to understand what it was asking. And that was to solve the mystery and to find the source of the magic.

And I looked around for a book that would explain that to me, and I found the answers scattered across hundreds, if not thousands, of books. And it felt important to put them all in one place. And I think maybe that’s what Marin was calling on me to do — put it all in one place, and so that other people could experience it and to solve the mystery and to find out that, in fact, yes, there was a divergent, distinctive awakening that took place in my hometown of Marin County.

Alexis Madrigal: Do you think that one reason there hasn’t been this sort of regional explanation is that people who are, say, exploring the growth of nature writing and poetry in America in the mid-century are like, okay, it’s like Gary Snyder and it’s the Bolinas poets, or people who were approaching George Lucas in film are like — they go down that route. And what taking this regional approach allows you to do is to sort of draw all the connections individual disciplines don’t do.

David Perlis: Absolutely. There are many wonderful books written about the Grateful Dead. There are many books written by George Lucas and Industrial Light & Magic and Star Wars. But what they don’t have is the context to connect Philip K. Dick and Alan Watts and George Lucas and the Halprin family, Lawrence and Anna Halprin and Daria — to see that they were all part of the same awakening and that there were some common beliefs and values that underlie their work, which were shared and intrinsically tied to the landscape of Marin County.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah. What do you think were the values that informed the Marinessance?

David Perlis: Well, when we talk about the Marinessance, we are talking about almost a half century. And in some ways, maybe it’s still going. I do think that the embers still glow.

But — so we have to think about the beliefs and values as changing over that period of time, and the way that they were interpreted throughout the movement. But there are three that I think really consistently informed the movement from the beginning to the end.

One would be an embrace of Eastern philosophy and mysticism. And we have to see this in the context of World War II, because the artists who were embracing this were actually rebelling. They were rejecting the old world and they were embracing this Eastern mysticism and philosophy.

There was a long streak of anti-Asian racism in California going back to when the Chinese came over to build the railroad. And so these people embracing Buddhism, embracing Taoism, was an absolute rebellion.

I’d say a second core principle would be the idea of self-sufficiency. Yes, as advocated for by the transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau, but more so and especially as practiced by Indigenous cultures of the Americas, especially the Coast Miwok of Marin County, because they exhibited a certain self-sufficiency in making their own clothes, their own shelters, growing their own food and having a deep respect for nature and seeing their resources as not bottomless.

Whereas the old world had this attitude often that Indigenous cultures were somehow inferior, primitive, savage, the Marinessance was one of the first movements in America to see these cultures as equal to, if not superior to, the cultures, the so-called civilized cultures of the old world.

And I would say the third core principle that lasted throughout was this idea of human potential, which took the form of experimentation, which is where the drugs of the subtitle come in.

And these drugs go back to the early Marinessance. Speed was huge, because think of the productivity that can be achieved while on speed. The instant enlightenment of acid.

And then I would also say experimentation, but also, as you mentioned earlier, risk-taking — human potential. Putting it all on the line.

I think too often these days artists do not put it all on the line in the name of achieving purity of artistic vision. These people risked their homes, they risked their livelihoods, they risked their sanity to achieve purity of artistic vision, which is really the truest and purest form of creation.

Alexis Madrigal: We’re talking with David Perlis about his book, Morning in Marin: Zen, Drugs, and Ewoks on the California Coast. Listen, we want to hear from you. You’re hearing David’s theory about how Marin came to be the cultural center that it is. What do you think? What is it about Marin that has generated such tremendous creativity over these decades?

The number is 866-733-6786. That’s 866-733-6786. You can email forum@kqed.org. You can find us on social media, BlueSky, Instagram, Discord or @KQEDForum.

I sent out a note about the Marinessance in this book to my newsletter subscribers. Got a ton of people writing in, stories like this, for example.

Tom wrote in to say, “I was in the Navy from ’66 to ’70. Sometime during one of our import periods, a few of us decided to go to a concert, which was being held on Mount Tam. We drove over, parked, and then started the trek up to concert. As you can imagine, our haircut left no doubt that we were in the service. A few insults here and there as we walked up the road, and then this big convertible pulls up and asks us if we wanted a ride up. Came to find out he was a local disc jockey and was an emcee at the concert. We got in, got great access, and had a wonderful time. Just one of the smaller stories of the Marinessance there.”

Why don’t we go to where you begin the book? So, you know, if you tell someone Eastern philosophy, self-sufficiency, interest in Indigenous — they might be like, “Flash, Gary Snyder.” But you have a bunch of other figures who were also crucial, even if they became not necessarily international or globally famous. Tell us about Elsa Gidlow and Violet Tommy, Henry Anderson.

David Perlis: Yeah, I would love to talk about Elsa Gidlow. The book does start with her for several reasons. And one is, basically, that she was one of the first artists to permanently reside there who held those core beliefs and values in Marin County, and she faced quite a lot of adversity.

Elsa, for those of you who don’t know, was a poet and a radical feminist who was a co-founder of an intentional community called Druid Heights, on Mount Tamalpais. But before that, she came to the town of Fairfax, which was largely summer homes and things of that nature, and she established herself there.

She is known for writing one of the first openly gay poetry volumes, called On a Grey Thread. And she faced some persecution in Fairfax, which I thought was an interesting way to begin the story because while you did have an incredible artistic awakening in Marin County, some of Marin County’s mainstream Marin County was very conservative and resisted that.

And she was actually scrutinized by the Tenney Committee for Un-American Activities because her neighbors didn’t like that she was hanging out with Chinese people, didn’t like that she was living with a woman. And though her name was ultimately cleared, it was more than enough for her to decide to go live up on top of the mountain and get out of Fairfax at that time.

Alexis Madrigal: I mean, I feel like these people are all part of sort of the committee to promote anti-American activity. It’s kind of like the whole point of the thing, you know?

You know, it’s interesting, too, because you note the kind of Sausalito boat life, too. That’s another one. I mean, Yonko Varda comes across in this book as deadbeat, libertine, bohemian, but also absolute heartbeat or soul of this early movement.

David Perlis: Yeah. I don’t like to use the word hippie because I think it can be perceived as a little derogatory to just the young people who are doing their own thing, you know. But Yonko was probably the first hippie, and long before — in 1949, 1950, way before the Summer of Love — Yonko was showing people how to dress the way they felt inside and to behave the way they felt inside and give permission.

He was an authentic European bohemian in Sausalito. And, you know, you drive by Waldo Point now and all the houseboats are lined up in these neat little rows. But you have to think back to the 1950s. It was a jumble out there, you know. There were planks and gangways, and this is how people were getting across the boats, and they were flushing their sewage into the water and the tides weren’t quite carrying it out. So it might have smelled a little bit.

It was a wild and woolly place out there with Varda, who also held these wonderful parties. There were many kind of nexuses of the Marinessance, including Druid Heights, including the ferryboat Vallejo, where Yonko Varda lived, that really brought people to Marin and brought the great minds of the Marinessance together to share and exchange ideas.

Alexis Madrigal: I do love when Anne Halprin says, “All of us went to Varda’s barge all the time for wild parties. It wasn’t the drug period at all. It was just going to a party with your friends and having a good time.”

David Perlis: Awesome!

Alexis Madrigal: Listen, we’re talking with David Perlis about his new book, Morning in Marin: Zen, Drugs, and Ewoks on the California Coast. Maybe you’ve got a Marinessance story to share with us. You can give us a call, 866-733-6786. Were you there? I bet you were. Forum@kqed.org.

I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

Forum, Podcast

What’s Driving the Anti-Sunscreen Movement?

Audio

Airdate: Monday, Aug. 31 at 10 AM

Are you still wearing sunscreen? There’s been a recent wave of viral TikToks declaring that sunscreen is “toxic,” and they’ve helped ignite an anti-sunscreen movement. With recent surveys showing that millions of Americans are cutting back on sun protection, dermatologists worry that misinformation will lead to higher rates of skin cancer and melanoma. We look at what’s driving “sunscreen hesitancy,” dig into the social media claims and hear how health providers are pushing back against misinformation.

Guests:

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Mina Kim: Welcome to Forum, I’m Mina Kim. Some 16 million adults reported reducing or stopping sunscreen use, according to the American Academy of Dermatology’s 2026 Practice Safe Sun Survey, because of online claims about its safety. And a 2024 survey by the Orlando Health Cancer Institute found that one in seven adults under the age of 35 now believes that daily sunscreen use is more harmful to skin than direct sun exposure.

This I learned from Brian Underwood’s piece in Men’s Health last month, called “The Anti-Sunscreen Movement Is Coming for You.” In this hour, we take a closer look at the growing influence of sunscreen opponents and what impact it’s had. Underwood is Beauty and Grooming Director of Men’s Health and Women’s Health and joins me now. Brian, welcome to Forum.

Brian Underwood: Thank you so much for having me, Mina.

Mina Kim: Also with us is Dr. Heather Woolery-Lloyd, board-certified dermatologist and founder of DermFriends. Dr. Woolery-Lloyd, really glad to have you with us too.

Heather Woolery-Lloyd: Thank you for having me.

Mina Kim: So, Brian, let me start with you. Tell me about some of these claims on social media. What are influencers saying?

Brian Underwood: Yeah, well, a myriad of things, but I think that some of the researchers that looked into this have found that the number one thing that sort of anti-sunscreen creators are talking about is the toxicity of certain ingredients that they claim are in sunscreens. And this is mainly the organic filters, commonly known as chemical filters. And that is sort of the main driving argument that these creators have, is that these ingredients are somehow toxic. Some of them, you know, they claim are cancer-causing themselves. And, you know, among other things, I would say that is probably the most prevalent claim that they make on social media platforms.

Mina Kim: And how colorful shall — I always say, hey, are some of these videos or messages getting —

Brian Underwood: Yeah, well, as somebody who did quite a deep dive into this topic for Men’s Health, I viewed quite a few of these videos. And obviously, you know, we’re talking about social media here. So you want to get and hold people’s attention. And the more outlandish you are in doing so, the more the algorithm is going to favor you.

So you have people setting fire to spray sunscreens to create these sort of — almost look like makeshift torches from The Walking Dead or something. But, of course, that’s really what it’s about. It’s about capturing people’s attention, and the way that these platforms prioritize that is by being as outlandish as possible.

Mina Kim: And from the stats I quoted, they are capturing people’s attention, right? These messages have been convincing.

Brian Underwood: Yeah, it appears that way. And that was sort of the genesis of this story. I was speaking to some of my friends at some major skin cancer nonprofits, and some of my other contacts at dermatology associations like the American Academy of Dermatology. And both of those organizations were taking sunscreen misinformation on social media platforms very seriously and have launched campaigns to combat some of it.

And that’s when I realized, that’s what it became — something that I was just seeing on my feed. That’s when it transformed into something that I thought was a bigger story. If these organizations were taking this seriously, then perhaps I, as a journalist, should be taking it seriously. And that is kind of what led me to do this story.

Mina Kim: Yeah. And which groups do you find that these messages seem to be having the most effect on right now?

Brian Underwood: You know, it’s hard to say, but anecdotally, from diving into this world, a lot of the creators were young men. And that’s kind of why we decided to run this story in Men’s Health. We know that men, I think it’s in the 80 percents, do not use sunscreen daily. And so we know that they are already primed for that message. And so that’s one of the reasons, as I said, that we decided to run this piece in, you know, in Men’s Health in particular.

Mina Kim: Dr. Woolery-Lloyd, when you hear this, that these messages are having an impact, they’re having an impact among men in particular, and even Gen Z, I understand. You know, what goes through your mind? Does it concern you?

Heather Woolery-Lloyd: Yes, because, of course, we know that sunscreen is important to protect us against skin cancer and some of the effects of the sun. I treat a lot of patients with darker skin where sun is really responsible for hyperpigmentation when you’re treating pigmentary disorders. So it’s a really important tool for dermatologists, and it is concerning because it’s an unnecessary fear that we’re seeing on social media, and it’s really not based on a lot of data or science.

Mina Kim: So what does the American Academy of Dermatologists sort of recommend when it comes to sunscreen use, or you as a doctor?

Heather Woolery-Lloyd: So we recommend sunscreen, a minimum of SPF 30, ideally broad spectrum, which means UVA and UVB coverage, daily to exposed areas. And we use sunscreen for different reasons. One reason, as I mentioned, is to prevent skin cancer, especially in people who are at risk for skin cancer with lighter skin tones. And then with people with darker skin tones, we use sunscreen to help manage certain pigmentary disorders, like hyperpigmentation, uneven skin tone.

So it’s a really important tool for dermatologists, and I think it’s important that the public understands that this fear that we see online is not really based on any science.

Mina Kim: So FDA-approved sunscreens, you would say, are safe?

Heather Woolery-Lloyd: Yes, and the FDA has stated that.

Mina Kim: Yes. And so why, then, is there some power to the social media messages, Brian? Because I feel like, you know, I remember, for example, that, you know, there were concerns about oxybenzone or avobenzone, mainly that it can mess with your hormones or that it’s an endocrine disruptor and things like that. So there were things that the FDA, you know, was sort of suggesting in its messaging, there was science that was sort of suggesting — we were coming out of tests and so on. Can you just talk about where some of the believability for the messages of these influencers may have come from?

Brian Underwood: Yeah, well, you know, there is some data that shows that certain organic sunscreen filters do have some hormone-related effects. There was a research review, I believe in 2023, that looked at more than 200 studies and found some of that. I think, and that is the data that these anti-sunscreen creators are sort of latching onto.

But I think what’s really important is that you give that data some context, and that’s what’s not happening on social media. So a lot of that data, the vast majority of that, was conducted in rodents and cell cultures and fish. And it is what Dr. Robert Nelson, who I also interviewed for this story, describes as low-relevance data. So it is really not data that you can extrapolate any conclusion from that would lead you to say that sunscreen is unsafe.

I think at the same time, as you mentioned, in 2019, I believe it was, the FDA did a review of sunscreen ingredients and, you know, categorized them differently. So organic and, or chemical, sunscreen filters were Category 3, which means that the FDA was looking for more safety data because they did find that these ingredients were absorbed into the bloodstream at levels higher than what they would have liked to have seen. And I think that caused a lot of confusion.

Now, that 2019 study, it specifically states that the conclusion of the study should not lead anyone to not use sunscreen. So that’s very important to know. And there really is decades of data, safety data, on these ingredients from use overseas that I think the FDA is just a little sluggish to adopt as part of its monograph.

And I think that’s where the confusion came in, because if you’re a consumer and the FDA is telling you, “We need more safety data on these,” but they’re not pulling products from the shelf, I can see why you as a consumer or a creator would be confused by that. But I think it’s really important to understand that in its own conclusion, the FDA says, do not use this data to justify not using sunscreen.

Mina Kim: So, Dr. Woolery-Lloyd, how do you interpret what came out about oxybenzone? What do you tell your patients as well? And do you agree with what Brian is saying? The FDA and other doctors have told them, which is that this is not a reason to refrain from using sunscreen.

Heather Woolery-Lloyd: Yes, I totally agree with what Brian described so perfectly, which is that the information where a lot of this online interest comes from was this study that was done by the FDA. However, in that study, they concluded that — they stated that sunscreens were safe, including oxybenzone, and it shouldn’t stop people from wearing sunscreen.

So in my practice, I absolutely recommend sunscreens to my patients. And I, you know, luckily in my practice, no one has really asked me so much about this. It might be more of a discussion online in certain groups of people, but it hasn’t trickled into people who I see every day.

But that being said, I feel very comfortable and confident recommending sunscreens for my patients based on the data we have today.

Mina Kim: You know, the studies show that oxybenzone could be absorbed into the bloodstream. You’re saying does not mean conclusively that it causes harm?

Heather Woolery-Lloyd: Correct, because there’s no studies to suggest that. We have decades of research on sunscreens, like real-life human use of sunscreen, and not lab studies done on rodents and on other animals. And it is considered safe. And the FDA has stated that.

Mina Kim: So it sounds like you’re saying the greater risk really is avoiding sunscreen altogether than the ingredients that have been necessarily singled out. And then you’re talking about these other studies. What are these other studies showing in terms of effectiveness of sunscreen in preventing skin cancer?

Heather Woolery-Lloyd: And actually, I just wanted to mention one other thing because we’re talking a lot about oxybenzone, but interestingly, oxybenzone is not now commonly used in sunscreen. So it used to be a very common sunscreen ingredient. It used to be seen probably in more than 90% of sunscreens, but now it’s actually less frequently used. So even though there’s a lot of discussion about it, it’s not commonly used anymore. So I did want to mention that.

Mina Kim: Right. An important point that, regardless of whether or not you are worried about it, probably in part because of the bad PR, regardless of the science, it is no longer in as many bottles of sunscreen.

Heather Woolery-Lloyd: That’s correct.

Mina Kim: We’re talking with Dr. Heather Woolery-Lloyd, board-certified dermatologist, and Brian Underwood of Men’s Health, who’s written a piece called “The Anti-Sunscreen Movement Is Coming for You.” And you, our listeners, join the conversation at 866-733-6786, at the email address forum@kqed.org, or on Discord, Bluesky, Facebook or Instagram.

Do you wear sunscreen regularly, listeners? Why or why not? Have you noticed anti-sunscreen influencers in your feeds? You know, do they make you sunscreen-hesitant? Or are the messages concerning to you? Stay with us for more after the break. You’re listening to Forum. I’m Mina Kim.

Podcast

The Iran War at Six Months: Has the U.S. Already Lost?

Audio

Airdate: Friday, August 28, 2026 at 10 AM

Six months into the war with Iran, the quick victory President Trump predicted remains elusive. As Iran’s hardline regime remains defiant, Atlantic writer and military affairs expert Tom Nichols says the United States has already lost strategically: Iran has gained control of the Strait of Hormuz, strained U.S. alliances and depleted American military resources. Nichols also argues that the ongoing conflict has made Trump more reckless, driving him to make ever more irrational foreign policy choices. We talk to Nichols about the costs of the war and where it goes from here.

Guest:

  • Tom Nichols, staff writer, The Atlantic; professor emeritus of national security affairs, U.S. Naval War College
Podcast

What Are the Objects That Define the Bay Area?

Audio

Airdate: Friday, August 28, 2026 at 9 AM

A few years ago, a black Patagonia vest or a Timbuktu messenger bag were a telltale sign that a
person might be from the Bay Area. Now, you might look for an Oaklandish hoodie, a water bottle covered in outdoorsy stickers, a t-shirt advertising a non-alcoholic beer or a Tesla with an Elon disclaimer on the bumper. We’ll dive into the objects and accessories that are hella Bay Area and just how they became so ubiquitous. And, we want to hear from you, what are the items that define the Bay Area for you?

Guests:

  • Carly Severn, senior editor of audience news, KQED
  • Liam O’Donoghue, host and producer, East Bay Yesterday
  • Baruch Porras-Hernandez, performer, organizer, host, curator, stand up comedian, author of “I Miss You, Delicate” and “Lovers of the Deep Fried Circle,” and co-organizer of KQED’s ¿Dónde Esta Mi Gente? Literary Series
  • Pendarvis “Pen” Harshaw, columnist, KQED Arts
Podcast, Technology

How Will Meta’s Landmark Settlement Change Social Media?

Audio

Airdate: Thursday, August 27, 2026 at 10 AM

Meta will pay up to $17 billion to settle a lawsuit alleging Facebook and Instagram violated child privacy and consumer protection laws. The case, brought by 47 states and the District of Columbia, could mark a turning point for social media in the United States. “Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms — and will do it within months,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta when announcing the deal, which includes a $2.2 billion payout to California. “We are talking about time limits, stopping notifications during school, a block on the app during critical overnight hours, bans on plastic surgery filters, and so much more.” 

Guests:

  • Racheal Myrow, reporter and senior editor, KQED
  • Dr. Jason Nagata, adolescent medicine specialist, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals
  • Peter Ormerod, associate professor of law, Villanova Law School

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Mina Kim: Welcome to Forum. I’m Mina Kim. In a landmark settlement, Meta will pay up to $17 billion and make changes to its products in a case brought by 47 states, D.C. and U.S. territories, claiming Meta’s addictive social media platforms harmed children. In announcing the deal, State Attorney General Rob Bonta said it includes more than a $2 billion payout to California.

Rob Bonta: This is a major breakthrough, a milestone moment, a watershed moment, because when it comes to protecting our children’s mental health, there is no time to lose. Instead of getting tied up in years of trials and appeals, we have secured the changes we were after.

Mina Kim: For more on the impact the settlement could have on social media companies and on the way kids use Facebook, Instagram and potentially other major platforms, we begin with KQED’s senior editor of our Silicon Valley news desk, Racheal Myrow. Hi, Racheal.

Racheal Myrow: Hi, Mina.

Mina Kim: So glad to have you on with us. Explain to me why $17.1 billion. What is that for? And what are the major changes that Meta has agreed to make?

Racheal Myrow: Well, so it’s going to be a little unclear how the money gets spent, and there are contingencies we’re going to talk about this hour. Part of it, California shares more than a billion dollars — between $1.5 and $2.2 billion. The range depends on whether Meta’s rivals sign on — TikTok, YouTube — because part of the money, $5 billion, that’s roughly a third of that $17 billion figure, is contingent on those rivals signing on. It’s a very curious settlement agreement for that reason.

But the money for California is earmarked for youth mental health. And, of course, the legislature and the governor get to decide the specifics. So that fight moves to Sacramento this fall.

Now, onto some of the specifics, the things that a family with children is going to see as a result of this settlement: Teenagers get a two-hour daily cap across Facebook and Instagram combined. That’s cumulative. So, right, a second Instagram account doesn’t buy more time for the kid who’s, quote-unquote, addicted.

The apps go dark midnight to 6 a.m., notifications muted during the school day, like counts hidden. Only a parent can lift any of that.

But I’ll tell you, Mina, a few of the things I caught only after a good night’s sleep: Direct messages are exempt. So think of all the teens we hear about who are hit up with dubious drug offers or attempts to groom them for sex trafficking.

And again, going back to that idea of the contingency built into this agreement, the two-hour limit is a five-year commitment, not 10. It only extends to 10 if competitors sign off.

Mina Kim: Hmm. It’s such an interesting deal. So when you say they’re exempt, you mean they continue to receive direct messages even during these sort of block times when notifications are blocked?

Racheal Myrow: Yeah, I mean, then presumably they can see the drug offer after school’s out, you know what I mean? So, talk about —

Mina Kim: You know, these changes are being touted as significant. Why did Meta make — what was Meta being accused of by the —

Racheal Myrow: So Meta was accused of knowing that it had millions — and I mean millions — of children under the age of 13 on its platforms, which is a violation of federal law.

Meta would say, and did say in court during the one week of trial that we got, “Hey, we’re cutting them off.” But internal research and documents also showed that they were enthusiastic about the interest from underage users because those people, long term, could be another set of eyeballs to sell to advertisers.

And so the states were basically arguing that, but also violation of state consumer protection laws, you know, designed — basically arguing not that, you know, this is not a free speech case, right? This is not bad people posting bad things on social media platforms and then holding the platforms accountable for that. They’re arguing, no, this is a consumer product liability, personal injury liability situation where you’ve got a faulty design leading to damaging products, and then you’re lying to the American public about that, and also what you’re —

Mina Kim: Doing about it. Hmm. And so that’s why the states were alleging violations of consumer protection laws.

You’ve been talking about, you know, the contingencies with this, right? Initially, Meta will pay out $12 billion, but the additional five will depend on if Snap, TikTok and YouTube settle with the states as well and agree to similar changes. Did you reach out to these companies to see what they’re thinking?

Racheal Myrow: KQED has, and heard nothing back, and you can understand it, right? I’m sure they’ve got the turkey sandwiches out in some kind of a meeting room trying to figure out how they want to respond.

And it’s worth saying that all of these companies are facing major lawsuits from state attorneys general, from individuals, from school districts that have finally had it. Finally had it.

Mina Kim: I want to bring Peter Ormerod into the conversation now, associate professor of law at Villanova Law School. Peter, thanks so much for being with us.

Peter Ormerod: Thanks for having me.

Mina Kim: I’d love to get your assessment of this settlement and why you think Meta agreed to settle, what incentives they had.

Peter Ormerod: Sure. I think that this is a momentous waypoint in changing the way that young people, youths and teens use social media, the extent to which they do use social media. I don’t think anyone should expect that this is going to be the end of the matter or that this is going to be a cure-all. But it certainly is, I think, an indication of the current trajectory that cases like this — and there are many other cases like this — are currently taking.

And so, you know, the conclusion to the story hasn’t been written yet. But certainly, this is a very important chapter in that story, and I think it’s, you know, certainly emboldening for a lot of plaintiffs, for a lot of advocacy groups that want to change the way that the platforms work and the effects that they have on children.

In terms of why — why do we think Meta settled? My sense about this, and, you know, is just from following the trial, is that it was not going particularly well for them. And I think — I mean, the settlement agreement itself is 130 pages. It clearly was not something that was, you know, put together pretty quickly. So I think it’s fair to speculate that the parties have been negotiating for some time.

But my sense is, from especially the testimony on Tuesday featuring Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, my sense of it is that that examination was going quite poorly for the company. Mosseri was expected to come back on Wednesday morning. Zuckerberg was expected to testify later. And so I think just the direction that things were going really sort of, you know, it would not surprise me if the calculus of their trial lawyers was, you know, taking a deal now is probably the best thing that can happen just because it was not going well.

Mina Kim: I’m sorry, the head of Instagram and obviously Zuckerberg of Meta, and they had lost some cases recently, right?

Peter Ormerod: Yes, they have. I mean, the other sort of most important — there was a verdict in California state court in Southern California in March. That’s the KGM case, advancing a very similar theory, but that was a sort of an individual private plaintiff.

And then there’s an ongoing proceeding in New Mexico that is brought by the New Mexico attorney general. That is not covered by this settlement. That is a completely separate and parallel proceeding.

And in both cases, the company had lost and was facing both significant civil liability in addition to mandated changes to the platform.

Mina Kim: Do you think the company was also feeling very sensitive about its reputation? Has this narrative started taking hold that they treat young users badly?

Peter Ormerod: You know, I think I am reluctant to say that I think that this is going to be the beginning of a large change from the company. Meta has a reputation as being a particularly sort of vexatious litigator. They often press very aggressive legal theories in forums in which they are not likely to succeed.

And so the fact that they settled this is quite — quite significant. If anything, it just signals that this case they did not see going their way.

But I don’t expect their legal strategy on the whole to change. I’m happy to talk a little bit more about the legal arguments that they have available, including the First Amendment, Section 230, which provides them with immunity under federal law. I expect that they are going to continue pressing those legal theories in other cases and in places where, including the KGM litigation, possibly also the New Mexico litigation.

And I don’t really see them stopping that until they get a definitive signal from the United States Supreme Court that those theories are not going to be successful.

Now, if they were to ultimately prevail on those theories, that would not have an effect on this settlement because they are voluntarily agreeing to make these changes and make this payment.

But I — I don’t personally, just given having followed the company in its litigation strategy for many years, I don’t personally see that this is going to be some kind of watershed moment in which they change their business and their strategy more generally.

Mina Kim: Yeah, and of course, Section 230, as we know, shields companies from liability for what users post. And that has been one of the ways that they have argued in the past why they should not be held responsible for the effect of their platforms.

And so given that, Peter, do you think the other companies will sign on to the settlement the way that Racheal has been describing that it’s been written, right, with these contingencies, that it’ll go up to $17 billion if these other companies sign on and various other product changes will be made?

Peter Ormerod: Yeah, and the contingencies are a really interesting wrinkle here. It is quite unusual. It’s not something that I can remember encountering in other contexts.

Do I think the other companies will sign on? I think they’re under an enormous amount of pressure to do so. These same parties, the same companies, were parties to the KGM litigation, and both Snap and TikTok settled that before the trial started.

So I think you already see, to some extent, that maybe they have less appetite for litigation, and so they might be more likely to settle in this circumstance.

YouTube’s attitude is very different, as YouTube maintains that they’re not a social media network at all and that they really don’t belong in these cases. Now, I’m, you know, I think there’s lots of reasons to disagree with that — the sort of short-form video, algorithmically recommended, things of that nature. What the attorneys general argue is sort of the most addictive of the features are shared by YouTube, so you can see why they’re in the case.

But Google’s calculus, I think, is probably a little different from the likes of TikTok and Snap. And so, to me, the thing that I’ll be watching is if there is a holdout, that’s who I would back.

Mina Kim: Listeners, what are your reactions to this settlement between Meta and the states? What questions do you have about how the settlement will work? More after the break. I’m Mina Kim.

Podcast

Trump Trade War with Canada Pits the U.S. Against a Once-Staunch Ally

Audio

Airdate: Thursday, August 27, 2026 at 9 AM

Canada was once one of America’s staunchest allies, but a trade war between the two nations has put the friendship under strain. Following a collapse in trade talks, the Trump administration is hitting Canada with a 50% tariff that targets hockey equipment, cement, dairy, and plywood. Canada vowed to strike back dollar for dollar, issuing nearly $28 billion in tariffs on American steel, seafood, appliances, electronics and more. Canadians are boycotting U.S. products and cancelling trips south. We look at what this means for the two economies, consumers and the future of America’s trade relationships.

Guests:

  • Kyle Handley, Associate Professor of Economics at the School of Global Policy & Strategy and Director of the Center for Commerce and Diplomacy, UC San Diego
  • Daniel Desrochers, international trade reporter, Politico
  • Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Canada bureau chief, New York Times

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Alexis Madrigal: Welcome to Forum. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Well, here we are, talking about tariffs again. Donald Trump’s favorite foreign policy has been a constant feature of his time in office. But this time around, he’s targeted not just China, but many longtime American allies like Canada. This has managed to make the Canadians angry, transforming their internal politics and creating the conditions for an all-out trade war.

In any case, let’s figure out what’s going on with the tariffs. This time we’re joined this morning by Kyle Handley, associate professor of economics and director of the Center for Commerce and Diplomacy at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. Welcome, Kyle.

Kyle Handley: Thank you.

Alexis Madrigal: We’re also joined by Daniel Desrochers, who’s international trade reporter at POLITICO. Welcome, Daniel.

Daniel Desrochers: Thank you for having me.

Alexis Madrigal: And we’ve got Matina Stevis-Gridneff, who’s Canada bureau chief for The New York Times and based in Toronto. Welcome, Matina.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff: Great to be here.

Alexis Madrigal: So let’s just dive in. Daniel, Canada has largely been a quite friendly neighbor to the north over the entire history of these countries. Now we’re in a trade war with this ally. What are the current tariffs that we are imposing on Canada before all this stuff goes into effect?

Daniel Desrochers: So you kind of have to go through the laundry list here, right? So for a pretty long time, about like March or April of last year, we’ve had tariffs on steel, aluminum, and automobiles and auto parts from Canada. And those have been tariffs that have been on the rest of the world, and Canada has been included in that.

Generally, most products that are shipped under a North American trade agreement called USMCA, those products have been exempt from tariffs. Now, what happened this week or this weekend is the Trump administration went through with putting a 50 percent tariff on about $20 billion worth of products. That’s things like furs and hockey equipment, but also things like paper and paper products and wood.

And so those, you know, where often these tariffs that the U.S. has threatened on Canada, you can say that most of the products were exempted. This was kind of the first, you know, non-steel, aluminum, automobile tariff where just everyday items, you know, businesses that before had no tariffs, now they are facing a 50 percent tariff. And so it’s kind of an escalation in what we saw before.

Alexis Madrigal: I mean, is this something where Americans could see sort of immediate price changes on things where we get a lot of a particular product from Canada, like, for example, toilet paper?

Daniel Desrochers: Uh, yeah, I mean, it depends on the item. So, yeah, toilet paper might be a big one. Um, you know, a lot of newspapers used to be printed up in Canada. Newsprint would have been one of those items that is a big one.

But at the end of the day, this is a kind of targeted measure, right? They didn’t go after some of the things that Canada exports to us the most or that are the most important to the U.S., like energy, for example. That’s a really huge one that has remained exempt.

They also didn’t go after potash, which is a key component of fertilizer that would have been really devastating for farmers. And so if you talk to the U.S. side, they’d say this is a pretty kind of measured attack — or not attack, you know, pretty measured package that they’re going after here.

But that’s it. I mean, if you’re in the cement industry, if you were in the wood industry, yeah, this is a big deal.

Alexis Madrigal: So Canada says after this, hey, we’re going to respond dollar for dollar with tariffs. So what American goods then have the Canadians decided to tar?

Daniel Desrochers: Yeah, so the Canadians are also trying to be strategic, and they were really going after kind of the swing states that they’re trying to make a political message. So one of those big examples would be washers and dryers.

Washers and dryers are made out of a Whirlpool factory in Ohio. Ohio is a key swing state that might control — might determine the control of the Senate this year. You know, the U.S. Trade Representative has gone and toured the Whirlpool factory in Ohio.

And so it was items like that. There’s also clothing items that they went after. They went after steel and raised those up to 50 percent.

But already we’re seeing that Canada has walked back some of their tariffs. So they had originally gone after the seafood industry, and that would have hit Maine. Maine is obviously a key state that will help determine control of the Senate. And they already pulled that back after the Canadian seafood industry was outraged by it because those products are sent back and forth over the border.

So Canada is still making their adjustments. Theirs don’t go into effect until September 8th. But yes, they’re trying, you know, it’s $20 billion worth of goods, and they’re trying to be strategic about what they’re hitting.

Alexis Madrigal: Matina, you and a colleague at The New York Times have a fantastic sort of TikTok on what happened here with these trade talks, because at least my understanding is, as recently as last week, it seemed like a trade deal was going to be put into place, but then Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pulled the team back. What happened?

Matina Stevis-Gridneff: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. And thanks for acknowledging our work. You know, there was just a lot of noise and mis- or disinfo in the space. But really, the two sides have signed a confidentiality agreement over the talks. And so it was hard to wade through what happened, especially quite an emotional situation, because trade talks, I know, sound boring. But actually, they’re not that boring, particularly at the very end.

So I think an accounting of what happened last week is that the broad strokes of an agreement were in place by Monday, Tuesday. There were two phone calls between Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Trump. And that was at the back of three and a half weeks of talks in Washington by the negotiating teams of both sides. And then they had to get down to business and resolve those final things.

And my understanding, or our understanding with Anna Swanson, who covers trade for The New York Times in Washington, is that things began to fall apart. There was a lot of volatility on things that were settled or appeared to have been verbally settled.

And I think it’s important for people to understand the physicality of trade talks. So all these people are kind of cooped up in the USTR building just across from the White House, but they break up in little teams and they go to different rooms. And then there’s kind of like aides going between the rooms and listening in and then typing up the notes and then printing off, and there’s draft upon draft.

So it’s not a neat and tidy process. And unlike what one might expect toward the end, instead of things becoming settled, resolved and sort of the emotional elements going low and settling, actually it’s the opposite. Teams try and grab whatever they can at the last minute.

Our understanding is that there were a number of outstanding issues toward the end, which were not shocking or new. They had been lurking as problems throughout the talks. And broadly speaking, I would say they pertained to the tariffs on steel, tariffs on autos and auto parts, and then there were secondary issues such as control of content online, particularly with U.S. streamers.

Alexis Madrigal: Mm-hmm.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff: Which are regulated here in Canada. And then over all of those topics that started being kind of thrown into disarray toward the last 48 hours, there was the question of trust and sovereignty.

And so the United States, not just toward Canada, but toward all its partners, demands a certain leeway, a certain latitude as to what they do next. They don’t want to commit to not changing their mind tomorrow, particularly this administration.

And eventually Prime Minister Carney would call this the signature of the U.S. in pencil. But this really started to creep into the kind of atmosphere in the talks.

And on top of that, I think the Canadians were seeking sufficient reductions in tariffs, particularly in those strategic industries of steel and autos, that would make it worth their while to allow the United States to set effectively tariff rates Canada would take out on other partners, let’s say Brazil or Turkey. And those were, you know, focused on steel.

But I think had a general philosophy that if we’re going to create a free or semi-free trading zone between the United States and Canada, the fence between the two countries, those tariffs should be really, really low. And then together, we can erect higher walls to the outside.

And ultimately, that fence that the U.S. side was offering was just not low enough to make it worth Canada’s while, and Carney walked away.

Alexis Madrigal: Which is sort of in keeping, or at least to me, it resonated with Mark Carney’s speech at Davos, which really came in response to President Trump saying, claiming the U.S. should annex Greenland and just kind of building up all this stuff about Canada as a 51st state, very offensive to many Canadians.

I just wanna listen to a cut here on Mark Carney talking about sort of the sovereignty and integrity of smaller countries that are not the United States.

Mark Carney: In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: compete with each other for favor or to combine to create a third path with impact. We shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield them together.

Alexis Madrigal: Kyle Handley, how much do you think that particular sentiment informed this round of trade talks between the U.S. and Canada?

Kyle Handley: I think that that was probably a major factor in why the talks broke down right at the end, especially Canada feeling like they’re being pushed around by the United States. And also what Mark Carney is saying is, hey, a lot of countries are being pushed around by the economic size of the United States.

And I think — I don’t want to say I know what Mark Carney is thinking, but there’s an element to this where he was given an excuse to maybe discontinue these negotiations on terms that he could explain to the Canadians as like, we’re standing up for ourselves, because obviously they’re not very happy about this.

And that, you know, maybe — I mean, I think they’ll eventually get back to the negotiating table.

And I think what the issue is, is that Canada doesn’t want to put all these concessions on the table and then have the United States in four months’ time or after the election say, “Oh, we actually want to raise the tariff on this, and by the way, we want you to raise your tariff on China or, you know, on this particular good,” and just ceding some of that control.

And so I think that is a big issue for the Canadians.

Alexis Madrigal: Kind of hard to be a leader of the third way if, in fact, you’re sort of just a hand of the United States.

Yeah, we’re talking about the trade war between the U.S. and Canada, what it means for our economy, for their economy and for the security of the United States. We are joined by Kyle Handley, associate professor of economics at UC San Diego; we’ve got Daniel Desrochers, international trade reporter at POLITICO; and we’ve got Matina Stevis-Gridneff, who’s the Canada bureau chief at The New York Times.

Of course, we’ll take your comments, your questions, your concerns about these tariffs. Maybe you’re a Canadian expat, or you have family in Canada. How’s all this stuff playing up there? Give us a call. 866-733-6786. That’s 866-733-6786, forum@kqed.org. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

Podcast

Remembering Dolly Parton

Audio

Airdate: Wednesday, August 26, 2026 at 10 am

A uniquely and universally beloved musician and philanthropist, Dolly Parton died Tuesday at 80. One of country music’s most celebrated performers, her signature songs including “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” resonated across generations. We talk to Parton biographers about the singer’s life and legacy, and what made her such a distinct American icon. What did Dolly Parton mean to you?

Guests:

  • Robert K. Oermann, author, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics
  • Lydia Hamessley, professor of music at Hamilton College; author, Unlikely Angel: The Songs of Dolly Parton and Dolly Parton’s Jolene
  • Jacob Stensberg, artistic director & conductor, San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Mina Kim: Welcome to Forum. I’m Mina Kim. The Times headline announcing Dolly Parton’s death called her simply “superstar” because she was more than a chart-topping country music singer, movie star, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Dolly Parton was a legend. And from San Francisco’s Castro to the halls of D.C., she made people of different genders, races and political affiliations feel embraced.

Dolly Parton would say, and did more than once on NPR and public media, that she was mainly a songwriter. Here she is with Kermit the Frog in 1987.

Dolly Parton: Folks sometimes forget that we’re just everyday people.

Kermit the Frog: Yeah, yeah. You want to talk about it?

Dolly Parton: Not really.

Kermit the Frog: You wanna sing about it?

Dolly Parton: Well, I’d love to, Kermit, but I have a frog in my throat.

Mina Kim: Dolly Parton’s death at the age of 80 was announced yesterday, and listeners tell us: What did Dolly Parton mean to you? The number is 866-733-6786. The email address is forum@kqed.org, and you can find us on Discord, Bluesky, Facebook or Instagram. We’re at KQED Forum.

Joining me this hour, Robert K. Oermann, author of Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. Robert, really glad to have you with us.

Robert K. Oermann: Thank you. Good to be here.

Mina Kim: Lydia Hamessley is also with us, professor of music at Hamilton College and author of Unlikely Angel: The Songs of Dolly Parton. Lydia, really appreciate you being with us, too. Thank you very much.

And Jacob Stensberg, artistic director and conductor of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. Jacob, welcome to Forum. Thank you so much.

So, Robert, you wrote, as I mentioned, Songteller. Tell me, what was your reaction to receiving news of her death?

Robert K. Oermann: Oh, God, it was the worst day of my life. Several people called and asked me, “Was it a hoax?” You know, because there’s so much misinformation out there, and nobody wants to believe that there’s a world without Dolly Parton in it, including me.

And it was devastating, but I didn’t have time to think. CNN called and all, you know, NBC and ABC and CBS. I mean, just had a — I never had time to grieve. I never had time to cry, and I still want to cry. I still haven’t had time. I have never wept over a celebrity’s death before, but this one is the worst.

Mina Kim: Well, I so appreciate you being here to share that, given what you just shared. And also, just the point that you made that nobody wants to imagine a world without Dolly Parton. Why is that, do you think, Robert?

Robert K. Oermann: The one thing that they left out in their introduction about her, you know, philanthropist and musician, star and movie star — how about best dang human being ever? She touched people in profound ways with her life and her music. Yes, a luminous superstar, a great music talent, but above that, a great humanitarian and a person who gave empathy to the world. She gave compassion and understanding and love. And that is the legacy. We should all carry that forward.

Mina Kim: Lydia, you know, similar question that we’re asking Robert and also our audience, but what did Dolly Parton mean to you? You wrote so deeply about her songs, her lyrics.

Lydia Hamessley: Thank you. Well, I had a similar experience as Robert did with assuming it was a hoax, but what she meant to me was just — it was even hard to describe.

You know, I titled my book Unlikely Angel, partly because people think of her as an angel a lot. She often played angels. She wrote a song called “Unlikely Angels.” But to me, in my life, she was also an unlikely angel. I hadn’t expected to fall in love with her in the way that I did.

And just so much joy in her music and modeling of what it might be to be a good human being in the world with, as Robert said, the kindness and empathy.

And as he said, I had just sat down to dinner. I’m in Germany right now, so it was evening, 8:30 p.m. I just sat down, had my phone out to kill time before my food came, and there it was. And I thought, “No, no, that can’t be right.” And I started texting my friends back in the States. And then someone posted immediately the New York Times obituary. And I just choked up and started blubbering. And I thought, “I’m a woman alone at a table in Germany. I don’t really think I should just be crying here. That might look weird,” you know? So I just kept breathing and I ate.

And then, like Robert, I got back to my room and couldn’t cry because I had my phone blew up, this thing.

Mina Kim: Yeah. And actually, we’re going to see, Lydia, if we can get you on a slightly better line because your phone being in Germany is making a bit of a clicking sound, but we’ll see if we can try to figure that out.

In the meantime, Jacob, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus just did a tribute concert to Dolly in June. Talk about why — why Dolly Parton in particular, what she means to you and the chorus.

Jacob Stensberg: Thank you. Yeah, last Pride, Dolly was our muse for the entire Pride season here in San Francisco in the Bay Area, and I was so eager to program a concert completely from her songbook and songwriting, because I discovered that much of our membership, especially the younger generations, knew more about Dolly’s activism and sort of her ethos and the way she made them feel, but didn’t necessarily know all of her incredible music.

And so it was amazing to watch singers take some of her songs, which were incredibly autobiographical, and find so much identity and connection with them, feeling like they were singing about their own experiences and not necessarily just hers.

Mina Kim: Yeah, your lineup included “Travelin’ Thru” and “Coat of Many Colors,” as I understand it. Talk about those songs in particular. “Coat of Many Colors,” in particular, has been described as a queer anthem by some. What makes those songs particularly meaningful, Jacob?

Jacob Stensberg: You know, she has a way of writing these incredible lyrics that can be both hyper-specific to a moment in time, but also universal. And both of those songs that maybe are about, in a really broad sense, going from dark to light or hardship to the other side of that catharsis or healing — especially in a time when all communities, but especially the queer community, is seeking catharsis, healing and joy — singing about those experiences that are both honest but have kind of a happy ending, I think mean a lot to us right now.

Mina Kim: That was “Coat of Many Colors.” We’re talking right now with Jacob Stensberg, artistic director and conductor of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus; Lydia Hamessley, a professor of music at Hamilton College who wrote Unlikely Angel: The Songs of Dolly Parton and Dolly Parton’s Jolene; and Robert K. Oermann, co-author with Dolly Parton of Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. And you, our listeners, are joining the conversation with your reflections and memories.

Corey writes, “I’m a columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald and just published a piece about her. My argument in the piece is that Dolly built a congregation around the idea of American individualism done right. She was completely herself and carefully avoided defining anyone else, but gave them permission to be whoever they could be. In doing that, she created one of the last places in American life where people could be different together.”

Robert, I’m so struck by the choice of the word “Songteller” to describe Dolly Parton for your book. Why “Songteller” as opposed to, say, “songwriter”?

Robert K. Oermann: First of all, I’m not the author. I am the co-author. Dolly and I wrote that together.

Mina Kim: That’s right, you co-wrote it together, yeah.

Robert K. Oermann: We spent days and days together working on that book, and it was Dolly’s idea to call it Songteller. It was completely her idea. I had mentioned to her that Tom T. Hall was a big, huge country music influence on me, and that he was called the storyteller, and he was a great songwriter as well. She thought, “If he’s the storyteller, then I’m the Songteller.” And she’s also named her downtown Nashville hotel the Songteller Hotel. And it will open this fall, sadly without her.

Mina Kim: Yes. What were the types of stories, Lydia, that Dolly would like to tell through her songs that you noticed by looking so deeply at them?

Lydia Hamessley: Well, there are several kind of categories. One of them is the uplifting, very much hope and joy and optimism. So there are many of those kinds of songs where she really thinks there’s one better [world] to get to live in, you know, and don’t complain. Like, if you want things to be different, do it, make it different.

So she has a lot of those, but then she can go the other way and write songs that she would have called “sad-ass songs,” and those are the ones that are the dead-baby songs, you know. I think of one called “Evening Shade,” which is just a horror of orphans being mistreated, and they all band together and burn down the orphanage with the evil matron in it. And her last line in that is, “Evening Shade was burning just like the—” It was, you know.

So she could go from the sublime to the morose to everything in between, and yet in each of those categories you can find 10, 20, 30 songs.

So she has these kind of tropes that she kept revisiting, and in fact, in the book I had to try to figure out, how am I going to talk about all these songs? I can’t do it chronologically. That seemed haphazard. I did it by topic because she revisits these things over the course of a career.

So she might have a song about the dead babies in the ’70s and then another in the ’90s and another, you know, a couple years later. So she’s got these kind of clumps of, for want of a better word, of ideas.

And one thing that she said, especially, I think, about the really sad songs, is that she can tell stories for other people who can’t tell their own stories.

Mina Kim: And she really took that role very seriously, didn’t she?

Lydia Hamessley: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. She felt that that could empower people who didn’t have a voice or, as she said, the gift of rhyme or being able to write a song.

Mina Kim: We’re remembering Dolly Parton this hour with Lydia Hamessley, professor of music at Hamilton College; Robert K. Oermann, co-author with Dolly Parton of Songteller; and Jacob Stensberg of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, and with you, our listeners. Stay with us. This is Forum. I’m Mina Kim.

Podcast

Historian Jill Lepore Warns Against Letting Robots Take Over Our Democracy

Audio

Airdate: Wednesday, August 26, 2026 at 9 am

In her new book, “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,” Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore issues a warning that in our desire for more efficient, data-driven governance we’re falling into “the rule of humans by machines manufactured by corporations.” Her book is an alarming call to action and, she writes, an “inquiry into what humans mean and intend in abandoning constitutional democracy, the liberal nation-state and even humanity itself for rule by automation, government by machine and replacement by artificial intelligence.”

Guest:

  • Jill Lepore, professor of American history, Harvard University; staff writer, The New Yorker; author, “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State”

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Alexis Madrigal: Welcome to Forum. I’m Alexis Madrigal. When you stop to think about it, the idea — as much an assumption as anything else — that if we develop superintelligent machines, they will immediately turn on humanity and try to kill us is so strange. Why wouldn’t these superintelligences just go off on their own and leave us be, as they do in, for instance, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home? Or maybe they’d like humans. Seems possible, at least.

But that is not the orthodox view within many Silicon Valley circles, where the human extinction risk from superintelligence is solid cocktail-party conversation. And one way to read Jill Lepore’s new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, is as an X-ray machine for the strange set of beliefs that have accompanied the rise of the genuinely astonishing success of recent machine-learning techniques.

If you’ve ever wanted an intellectual history of this very powerful and very unusual fantasy about humans, the Earth and our world governments, this is the book. And we have its author, Harvard historian Jill Lepore, with us this morning. Welcome.

Jill Lepore: Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Alexis Madrigal: So in this book, you approach AI, Silicon Valley, from a bunch of different very clever angles, and you bring your own expertise from American history to bear on the topic. But let’s just start with the basics here. What do you mean by the artificial state?

Jill Lepore: So we live in the United States in a liberal democratic nation-state, a constitutional democracy. This is historically a novelty. We are celebrating this year the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States — the world’s first modern democracy, right? So 250 years is a long time in human lifetime, but it’s really not long in the history of humanity. So we shouldn’t really particularly expect the liberal nation-state to live forever, to endure forever.

So what I wanted to do in this book is give a name to what I think is emerging and challenging the liberal nation-state. So the artificial state is, in lieu of government by consent, government by machines, where — and it’s not something that has been built. Its construction is underway. Much of it happened by accident, and a lot of it is a fantasy, but in which increasingly we have surrendered more and more of our obligations, the exercise of our obligations as citizens, to machines and sort of outsourced things that we are supposed to be doing face-to-face with other human beings.

You know, democracy requires participation, representation and deliberation. I’m not sure people are really doing those things anymore. There are tools that have been given to us that can do some of those things for us, or we believe are doing those things for us. But in fact, we’re, I think, yielding our own sovereignty to machines owned by corporations that have very different interests than governments do.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, I guess that’s the first question. How did we lose this agency? Did we give away the consent somehow, or did it get taken away from us?

Jill Lepore: I don’t know, maybe it’s a little bit of both. I mean, it depends on what you’re looking at.

I mean, obviously, states use machines all the time for the running of governments, right? Like, our census is tabulated by computer and has been since the 1950 census, which was the first tabulated on a mainframe computer. We have had Social Security numbers since 1935, and those were used largely to provide benefits of the social welfare state to people.

There’s a lot of data that governments have — state, municipal, national governments — about people, and the machines that organize that data can be used for good purposes, and they can be used for malign purposes.

It’s not really the machines that are the problem. I think it really isn’t that this is coming from government. It is coming from tools that are available commercially and are sold to us commercially, but that have gradually replaced the functions of citizenship.

So if you think about the degree to which social media is really largely responsible for the decline of local news coverage and really the crisis of journalism, and therefore the kind of what people call the epistemological crisis — like, no one knows what’s true anymore — there’s an incredible rise of conspiratorial thinking, and there’s not kind of an agreed-upon national anything that really is from social media.

Is that what social media was designed to do? Although when it started doing it, like when Facebook News — when Facebook released Facebook News and it saw the effects Facebook News was having on local journalism, I think Facebook was actually pleased about that rather than regretting it.

So have we given those things up? I mean, social media is probably the easiest way for people to see whether they have or have not surrendered or abandoned or failed to meet the obligations of citizens to stay well-informed and make good decisions, make informed choices as voters.

Social media is not helping you make better decisions. And this is the first election where people are actually using AI to make decisions. So this is a lot of anecdotal reporting about people saying, “Here are the issues I care about. Who should I vote for?” Which doesn’t seem like an irrational thing to do.

Nor does checking social media to find out what the news of the day is seem like quick, efficient, fast, easy and seemingly to you cheap. I mean, the costs are hidden from you. But then when you think about what it’s supplanting, that’s the piece that I think most people find hard to do.

Like, all right, well, you’re going to ask ChatGPT. That’s different than what about having a dinner party, talking to a bunch of your friends? Let’s actually try to work this out. Like, “Oh, I’m gonna go for a walk with my cousin and see how she’s thinking about this election,” or, “I was just talking to my neighbor over the fence. Like, I don’t know, he seems to want to vote for this guy, but I was trying to convince him to vote for that guy.”

All those kind of daily interactions that are full of friction, that’s nevertheless the kind of glue that holds civil society together. So you just kind of picture the scale of that, of like each of the conversations that you might have chatting with somebody about the upcoming election. Maybe they’re arguments, maybe they’re not that fun, versus each of those being abandoned, set aside, replaced with, like, “Dear Claude, what should I do?” Like, that’s a diminishment of our capacity.

Alexis Madrigal: And Claude’s like, “Great question. I can’t wait to answer this for you.”

So we have this rollout of these social media platforms. That data, of course, is informing, training all these artificial intelligence models. You know, the whole internet has been sunk into them, more or less.

What about the possibility that governments can rein in these actors, these technology companies? I mean, obviously I’m thinking about this morning, you know, Meta paying $17 billion — this is The New York Times headline — in a landmark settlement over social media addiction claims. You know, it’s not the only thing the government has ever done. The Biden administration made various moves. The Trump administration before that was very annoyed with social media companies at times.

To what extent can the current nation-state actually respond to this sort of insurgent artificial state that you describe, in which many of the functions of the government just become sort of obviated?

Jill Lepore: So I think what you’re seeing now, of course, with the settlement today, but if you think of, like, Australia’s ban on social media for people under 16 and the EU contemplating something similar, these are legislative and judicial ways of dealing with known harms. They are social harms, and they’ve been known for a long time.

And you could think, well, some of these people who are happy about the settlements are really gratified that it came about. I think other people would find it’s kind of late in the day.

We can look back to — remember those hearings, those Facebook hearings, where —

Alexis Madrigal: 2017.

Jill Lepore: Yeah. Senator Orrin Hatch famously asked Mark Zuckerberg, like, “I don’t understand. How do you make money? Do you sell ads?” And we’re just like, does he not have a staff? I mean, I understand these guys are all like — is there no one explaining how these tools work?

This is a person we are paying to represent our interests. Like, there’s — you didn’t prepare for the hearing?

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, “We sell ads, Senator,” was the like, uh —

Jill Lepore: So I think that congressional inaction is a part of the piece of the story. And you see now there’s so much more action in the states than there is federally regarding AI.

But, you know, the House passed a bill in 2025, I think, prohibiting states from limiting the development of AI in any way.

Alexis Madrigal: Mm-hmm.

Jill Lepore: Yeah, the Senate didn’t pass it, so it didn’t go anywhere. But, like, it’s not just that Congress hasn’t acted on the AI point, but has actually — is really trying hard to prevent action from taking place.

Alexis Madrigal: And I think it’s worth, just in terms of the Meta settlement, contextualizing in terms of their capital expenditures on data centers and AI, probably going to be something in the range of $130 billion, $140 billion. So if they pay off the states with $17 billion, it’s just worth keeping in mind the scale of these things.

Think about resistance coming from other places. You know, we’ve seen really — there was some remarkable poll I saw in the publication Heatmap that showed solid majorities of the American public turning against a data center in their area. We’ve experienced that here in the Bay Area and Gilroy and out in Pittsburgh, opposition to these things. Is that like a kind of bottom-up response, you think?

Jill Lepore: I do think it’s a bottom-up response, but it’s also bipartisan or nonpartisan, which is like a miracle because nothing in this country at the moment is, and it will be a disaster if someone manages to code it as a culture-war issue.

But it’s, you know, upwards of 70% of Americans are opposed to building data centers near them. And there’s similar numbers in Europe if data centers are built that aren’t involving renewables.

So I think the data center opposition is really interesting. I don’t know how long it will last or what form it will ultimately take. And I think it’s about the data centers, but I actually think it’s also about everything else.

It’s about a series of false promises that go back to the 1980s. The personal computer will liberate you. The internet will allow for direct democracy. Social media will connect the world together and end all wars. AI will usher in a new era for humanity of infinite prosperity and abundance.

And people are like, they’ve been through however many of these cycles you’ve been through, there’s a kind of great howl of, like, “Stop.”

Alexis Madrigal: Right. It’s like, “Ya basta,” yeah. What, like, I’m not, like —

Jill Lepore: These tools are miracles. Like, large language models are incredible. It’s unbelievably fascinating and important. But now we’re going to use it to ask what recipe to use for dinner tonight? Can’t we use it for oceanography and public health?

Why does it — just remember that guy, Chris Hughes, who was a founder of Facebook, and he says, “The best minds — I went in this to actually do, make the world a better place, connect human beings to one another.”

Alexis Madrigal: The best —

Jill Lepore: The best minds of my generation are getting people to click on ads.

Alexis Madrigal: Right. Still true. At least, best minds of a particular kind.

We’re talking with Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore about her new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State. We’re curious if you have questions about sort of ideologies that have informed Silicon Valley over these years and what impacts they’ve had on your life. 866-733-6786. The email is forum@kqed.org. Or you can find us on social media. We’re KQED Forum there, too. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

Podcast

KQED Investigates Botched Clipper 2.0 Launch

Audio

Airdate: Tuesday, August 25, 2026 at 9 am

Last December, Bay Area transit officials launched Clipper 2.0 – a revamp of the payment system used across the region’s 22 public transportation systems. The new version was supposed to allow seamless rides between systems and coordinate discounts and other programs. But its rollout turned out to be a bumpy ride that was riddled with errors including payments not being credited, account software locking out customers and system-wide outages lasting hours. KQED’s Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman joins us to talk about his investigation into what went wrong and what’s next for Clipper.

Guests:

  • Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, reporter, KQED News
  • Adina Levin, executive director, Seamless Bay Area
  • Sarah Syed, board member representing the City of Alameda and portions of Oakland and San Leandro, AC Transit Board of Directors
  • Andrew Fremier, executive director, Metropolitan Transportation Commission

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Alexis Madrigal: Welcome to Forum. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Last December, Bay Area transit officials launched Clipper 2.0, a revamp of the payment system used across the region’s public transportation systems that had been in the works for years. The new version was supposed to allow seamless rides between systems, handle discounts more elegantly, and include new features. But its rollout turned out to be a bumpy ride that was riddled with errors, including payments not being credited, account software locking out customers, system-wide outages lasting hours. Listen.

KQED’s Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman has been reporting on the Clipper problems, and he joins us this morning. Welcome.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Hey, Alexis.

Alexis Madrigal: So just give us a little more detail. Clipper 2.0 — what was the sort of idea? People probably know Clipper as, like, a little card that they had that allowed them to tap into different transit stations. So what was Clipper 2.0, and how was it supposed to be different?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, Clipper 2, also known as Next Generation Clipper, is basically this major update for Clipper, which is the Bay Area’s fare payment system for public transit. It’s used by 22 different transit agencies in the region. And basically, what this was was about bringing it into, like, modern-day fare payment software, updating it to the current day.

Because when was Clipper first launched? 2009.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, all right. So this is, like, an era where, like, you know, people barely had smartphones. The cloud software was what all the billboards on 101 were about. This is a long time ago.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, yeah. They got the contract in 2009, launched 2010. And so this was about, like, really making Clipper a better product for transit riders.

So Clipper 2 basically took Clipper from what’s called, like, a card-based system, where all your information is stored on a card, and turned it into, like, an account-based system. And that meant you could just store a lot more information in people’s accounts. So people could get, you know, better discounts. Like, you could apply for youth or senior discounts, and that information could be stored on your card.

Also, Clipper 2 brought reduced or free transfers, and there was also going to be, like, event promotions. So, like, let’s say if you’re taking VTA to the World Cup, you know, you can get, like, some kind of promotion that makes it cheaper and kind of incentivizes transit.

Alexis Madrigal: So it’s also part of the overall goal of, I think, many transit advocates and MTC itself to kind of knit together the infrastructure of our area out of these 22 different transit agencies, right?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Kind of. The idea of Clipper is to make riding transit in the Bay Area sort of seamless, a word that’s used a lot in the Bay Area transit parlance, right? So if you’re transferring from Bay Area — from BART to Muni or whatever — it’s like you don’t even notice your transfer.

Alexis Madrigal: Right, right. They’re trying to reverse-engineer a system that maybe we should have built like 40 years ago. So, this thing launches in December. You know, there, of course, we did have the World Cup coming, we have all these things happening. Did it feel like the timing was driven by the system being ready, or that we had these big events coming up?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Well, yeah, well, we should say first that, like, you know, Clipper 2 launched December 2025, but that’s around three years later than its original launch date. And, you know, Clipper 2, the original contract was given in 2018. So this has been a long time coming.

Um, there was a desire in sort of Bay Area transit to get Clipper 2 up and running before the Super Bowl and the World Cup came to town. You know, in order to get all these fans to games, you know, we need a modern transit system. You know, like, I don’t know if you’ve ridden an OMNY in New York City, but, you know, tap to pay with a credit card. That’s huge.

That was one of the big things with Clipper 2: now, you know, BART piloted it first, but now tap to pay with a credit card was gonna be at all the transit agencies where you get Clipper. So just making it really easy for visitors to use the system.

Alexis Madrigal: Right, right. So we didn’t have to go find a kiosk, buy a card, wait in line, do all these things. So yes, we have this, and we’re gonna get to a lot more about the specifics of the contract, why this took so long, all these things. But if you were just a rider in December, what were some of the problems that people encountered when this rollout began?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, so right from the jump, there were kind of a host of problems that popped up. So first and foremost, people were locked out of their accounts. So if you were trying to access your Clipper account via the website or the app, you couldn’t get in. And your money is locked in that account. So you’re actually, not only can you not get into the account, but you can’t access the money that you’ve squirreled away to ride transit.

Other problems were the customer service center experienced big wait times. I mean, I think the highest wait time was 100 minutes, and there was like 47,000 people calling the customer service center in roughly the first month. So there was — and the customer service center itself had issues accessing people’s accounts. So there was sort of this, like, lag going in both directions.

Um, a lot of times the ticket vending machines went down. So if you needed to add money to your Clipper card, um, then, you know, they just spun wheels, or they might’ve taken your money without crediting your account.

Yeah, so there was really just a bunch of issues. A lot of times, though, if you already had money on your Clipper card, you could still tap and get on the system, so it wasn’t like a total system —

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, I have to say, my — and I had a fairly seamless experience with all this. And so when I started to read about all the problems, and then, of course, this investigation, you go like, oh, man, what really happened here? Because it does feel like there’s so many different types of problems, actually, that it seemed like it was a more systemic thing.

When did you decide that you were going to kind of launch this investigation and file these public records requests and try to figure out what really happened between MTC, which of course is the accountable body here, and then — they’re a sort of software vendor who made this thing?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, I mean, I started following the Clipper Executive Board meetings. That’s a body of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is sort of this regional oversight body of Bay Area transit, ever since it launched. And in January, it was really the heads of the transit agencies that got my attention.

You had Dennis Mulligan, the general manager of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, saying, like, “This is a hot mess.” That’s the direct quote.

Um, and then you had, you know, riders coming in and saying, you know, they were very upset that this wasn’t working. So I think it was really the transit agency heads that kind of got my attention and wanted me to — led me to report on this.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, yeah. And what did you — how’d you go about reporting this out?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: We did two public records requests with the MTC, just basically asking — one thing that the transit agency heads and MTC talked about was there was this daily email update where Cubic, which is this company that’s responsible for rolling out Clipper, you know, was giving daily updates on what the issues were and that. So we wanted to get ahold of that.

We also were curious about how much revenue the transit agencies are — we’re losing based on this. You know, obviously, if, like, Clipper cards aren’t working, then people aren’t riding transit. And, you know, this is obviously a very, um, momentous year for Bay Area transit. We have two funding measures coming up on the November ballot where transit agencies are going to be asking voters to support them, essentially. So that was another element that played into this.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah. And what did you actually end up getting back from MTC through these records requests?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: So the top line was that there was this sort of fundamental disagreement in basically around a year before Clipper 2 launched about Cubic saying basically, like, “Hey, we need to increase the testing pool of Clipper 2 in order to make sure it’s going to be ready.”

But the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is the contract manager, was saying there’s too many issues with this system. Like, it is not ready to be expanded. Um, and you need to resolve, like, known issues first before we expand this pool.

So there was sort of this, like, contractual-speak formal letter exchange between Cubic and MTC, you know, starting in, like, February 2025 and going right up to the day before it launched. And the day before, you had the director of Clipper saying, “We don’t have confidence that financial settlement” — which is, like, you know, ensuring that —

Alexis Madrigal: The actual fare goes through.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: The actual fare goes through. Yeah. We don’t have confidence in this.

Alexis Madrigal: I mean, you also were able to find, which felt to me quite significant, that in April of 2025, 49% of tests passed. So that means 51% did not. I mean, these are huge issues to be having six months out of this launch after many years of this thing being in development.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah. And 500 open software bugs. And then by October, field testing is only 30% complete. And, you know, I think in software, right, it’s — it’s — you would expect bugs, right? Like, it’s — there’s only so much you can do before you roll out a system.

But, you know, these were pretty — like, Google Wallet being completely blocked two months before you release a system that handles, you know, tens of millions of dollars every month is, you know, that’s — that’s a pretty big issue.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah. I mean, let’s talk a little bit about Cubic. Who are they? I mean, what I know of them is that they were the initial creator of the Clipper system, right? So they kind of had the inside track on this next-gen Clipper upgrade.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, Cubic is a San Diego-based defense and transportation software company, and their division, Cubic Transportation Systems, you know, handles these fare payment systems. They’ve worked in New York City, they’ve worked in Boston, they’ve worked in Chicago, they work internationally. So they’re really big — you know, software — they’re one of the main players in sort of, if you want a fare payment system, like, you go to Cubic.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, yeah. Did they — were there any other people who bid on this contract?

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, so an interesting thing — the short answer is no. Cubic was the only bidder for the Clipper 2 contract, and they did have the Clipper 1 contract.

Now, an important thing about the Clipper contract was that it initially required whoever got the Clipper 2 contract to keep Clipper 1 going. And so you were gonna have to take on the Clipper 2 contract and then run Clipper 1 at the same time.

And the MTC decided that that was not good for competition, basically. Asking companies to come in and run somebody else’s program wasn’t going to get the bids they wanted. So they struck that from the contract. But there was still this requirement to — someone was going to have to keep C1 going, or Cubic, and then someone else could do C2. They still only got one bid.

Alexis Madrigal: It’s interesting, and we’re gonna talk maybe a little more when we bring on folks from MTC and in other places about, you know, why it is that this was difficult to get someone to do this kind of work, because it was, you know, a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s not like this was, you know, a paltry couple million bucks.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman: Yeah, it’s around $400 million — 393 with 20% for contingency. So close to half a billion dollars. And to Cubic’s credit, they told me that this is one of the most complex fare payment systems in the world: 22 different transit agencies across nine counties in the Bay Area. So you’re running up against all these bureaucratic and governmental red tape.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah, yeah. You think they would have known that, though, having run the first system.

We’re talking about a KQED investigation into the rollout of Clipper 2.0 and what’s next for Clipper. We’ve got Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, reporter with KQED News, who wrote the big story on it. And we’re gonna bring in Sue — and the executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

We wanna hear from you. Have you had issues with the rollout of Clipper 2.0? Do you like Clipper? Has it made your life as a transit rider easier? 866-733-6786, or you can email us, forum@kqed.org.

I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

Podcast

The Hidden Psychology Behind Procrastination

Audio

Airdate: Tuesday, August 25, 2026 at 10 am

We’ve all done it: put off that email, project… or even something we genuinely want to do. But why do we procrastinate? Researcher Itamar Schatz says it’s not that we’re just lazy, distracted or bad at managing our time, but that often procrastinators care more rather than less about what they’re doing and fear the possibility of failure. We’ll look at new research that explores the hidden psychology behind why we delay — and tools to finally get moving.

Guest:

  • Itamar Shatz, affiliated lecturer, Cambridge University; author, Solving Procrastination The Science of Why We Put Things Off and How to (Finally!) Stop

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Mina Kim: Welcome to Forum. I’m Mina Kim. Itamar Shatz says the reason solving procrastination is so hard is because what we’ve often been told about it is wrong — like the common misconception that it’s simply a matter of willpower. This leads us to tackle procrastination with approaches that don’t work, causing frustration, stress and guilt that can even make us defer our dreams. But Shatz says ending the cycle of procrastination is entirely possible. And this hour, we’ll hear what he’s learned from his research into this complex phenomenon.

Are you or someone you know a procrastinator, listeners? How does it affect you? You can post your comments on Discord, Bluesky, Facebook or Instagram. We’re @KQEDForum. You can email forum@kqed.org or call 866-733-6786.

Dr. Itamar Shatz is a researcher and lecturer at Cambridge University, where he teaches quantitative and computational research. I want to ask you, actually, because as I was reading your title, I was struck by the fact that if you teach quantitative research methods at Cambridge, how did you end up wanting to study procrastination?

Itamar Shatz: Well, as all great stories begin, by procrastinating to myself. So, in school, when I was in high school, I was a huge procrastinator. And I mean the typical stay-up — you know, you have a semester-long project and then you keep saying, okay, I’ll do it tomorrow, I’ll do it next week, I’ll do it next week, and suddenly it’s the end of the semester tomorrow and the project is due and I haven’t started yet. Then I would stay up all night. I would get away with doing that, but it was never a good experience, and I think it never ended well in terms of performance either.

I could get away with good grades, but not as much as I could if I’d actually done the work well. So I was really familiar with how frustrating procrastination is and how kind of insane it is, in the sense that you know you shouldn’t be doing it, but you still find yourself doing it again and again.

And then, when I was a bit older and was doing my master’s, I started wanting to do things better. I wanted to be productive, make better decisions, communicate better. And I figured, okay, let’s go to science to figure out how to do that. And I started reading about things like cognitive biases and communication techniques and things like that.

And I figured, okay, if doing this is useful for me, it will probably also be useful for other people. And I started writing these notes up and publishing them as articles. And at a certain point I said, you know what I haven’t covered so far? Procrastination. And I decided to write an article about procrastination. And then, as I was going into it, I realized this is way too big of a problem. It’s too common, it’s too painful, it’s too frustrating. I can’t cover everything I need to say about it in a single article.

So I said, let’s do two articles. Let’s do a series. Let’s go a whole website. And from there, I just realized there’s so much that needs to be said about it and so much I could help people that it just grew and grew and eventually became the book that I’m publishing today.

Mina Kim: Yeah, it is really common. You write that one in five adults procrastinate. So when you’re talking about procrastination, what do you mean exactly?

Itamar Shatz: So, what if I was procrastinating chronically, which means they do it very often and for very long, but pretty much all of us procrastinate. And when this happens, basically we put off something that we know we should do, even though we know it would be better for us to do it, and usually despite our best intentions.

So when we tell ourselves, I’m gonna study for this test, or I’m going to write this email, I’m going to make this phone call, I’m going to start writing my book, I’m going to change my habits and start exercising. I’m going to talk to this person I’m interested in, and then we keep finding reasons to do it tomorrow instead, or to do it soon, or in five minutes, or just after this one more video. And when this happens again and again, we’re basically procrastinating.

Mina Kim: Well, one of the myths you debunk right away is that procrastinators, you know, don’t care. In fact, you say that we care so much that it becomes paralyzing. Tell us about this.

Itamar Shatz: Absolutely. So there is this misconception where people think about procrastination as sort of equivalent to laziness. And under this conceptualization of procrastination, it’s basically, okay, people procrastinate because they don’t care enough. But what actually happens usually is that people care too much. And by that I mean, maybe they want to write a book, for example, and it’s something they’re really excited about. They’re very, very enthusiastic. Inside their brain is shouting, just do it already. But the problem is they’re too afraid that it’ll go wrong, they’ll be criticized, that their writing won’t be good enough, that they won’t be good enough.

And the more you care about these things, and the more these mental obstacles like anxiety and perfectionism get in the way, the harder it is to take action when you need to.

Mina Kim: Yeah, the other thing that you bring up is the misconception that addressing procrastination is just a matter of willpower. What effect does this misconception have?

Itamar Shatz: Yeah, so there’s something I call the self-control fallacy. And that’s basically the idea that if we just try harder, we’ll be able to do what we need to when we need to. And the problem with this, it’s very tempting because it offers a sort of silver bullet where, okay, I just need to turn up the dial for willpower and then I’ll be able to do it.

And it makes sense when you think about it because, again, procrastination is irrational. There’s no reason we should do it. So when we’re sitting there and thinking about something that we’ll do later, it’s easy and very comforting to tell ourselves, okay, we’ll be able to do it because we’ll try harder and I’m not going to be irrational again.

The problem with this is that it fails. And it fails again and again. And every time we keep believing that it’s going to be different next time because there are lots of cognitive biases that kind of trick our minds into thinking that’s going to be the case.

So, for example, there is the bias blind spot, which makes us really good at noticing when other people are irrational and really bad at noticing when we’re doing it. And there’s also something called the empathy gap, when we’re sitting there and we’re in a cool emotional state, so we’re rational. We’re not facing something scary at the moment. We’re not facing any temptation at the moment. It’s very easy to think of ourselves as rational beings, but that’s very different from what happens when we’re actually facing, okay, now we need to sit down and write this thing that I’m scared of writing, or make this call that I am afraid of making, or maybe I’m sitting in front of social media and that’s actually drawing my attention, and now my brain is trying to, on the one hand, focus and, on the other hand, deal with this temptation.

And what all this means is that when we think that our willpower will be enough, that our self-control will be, we end up not preparing for the actual obstacles we’ll face. And that causes us to keep getting trapped in the procrastination cycle, where we procrastinate again and again, and we’re not actually trying to solve it the right way.

Mina Kim: And these misconceptions, you know, laziness, a lack of willpower, they sound like, you know, procrastination has essentially been treated as a character flaw, which I imagine can make us judge ourselves negatively for procrastinating, which, I’m sure, doesn’t help at all.

Itamar Shatz: Yeah, it’s not only wrong, it is also unproductive and it’s unconstructive. And the problem is that when people are told, okay, if you procrastinate, that means that you’re not trying hard enough, or that means you’re just lazy, again, it basically means that they’re not actually trying to solve the problem using solutions that address the issues they’re facing. So they’re actually not trying to solve their anxiety or their perfectionism or the distraction or whatever it is because they think, okay, I’ll just exert more willpower and that will get me to do the things that I need to.

And beyond that, it also causes a lot of pain. It causes shame, it causes guilt, it increases the frustration when people are already frustrated because they know they should be doing things and they’re not. And usually what that does is it shuts us down because then whatever it is we need to do becomes even more painful. It becomes more aversive.

So let’s say we have a task that we’ve been putting off. Like maybe, let’s say, we want to change our habits. You want to start exercising. And then somebody tells us, okay, if you haven’t started doing it yet, you’re lazy. And now in our mind, whenever we think about exercising, we have this light bulb going up that says, wait, I’m lazy. I’m a lazy person. I should be ashamed of myself.

And then even though engaging in exercising, engaging in the behavior we’re trying to do, would make us feel better, we associate even more negative emotions with it now because of all the criticism and the judgment. That makes us even less likely to actually do it.

And the most painful thing here is that this can cause a sort of vicious cycle where we want to do something, we get negative feedback whenever we think about it, whenever we want to engage with it, so we put it off, then we feel worse, we put off more, and that basically feeds on itself. It makes it harder and harder for us to do what we need to unless we find ways to break the cycle.

Mina Kim: We’re talking with Itamar Shatz, a researcher and lecturer at Cambridge University, about the psychology behind why we procrastinate. And you, our listeners, are sharing your thoughts, questions and your own experiences around this.

Eloise in Oakland writes, “I find that I procrastinate on things that are important but not urgent until I take care of things that are urgent. And then I run out of time to do the important thing.”

And Jenny writes, “Oh my God, this episode is a story of my life. I have a PhD in procrastinating. And I know that my biggest related culprit is perfectionism.”

We’ll dig into that after the break. Stay with us. I’m Mina Kim. This is Forum.

Podcast

Why California is Rethinking its Nuclear Exit

Audio

Airdate: Monday, August 24, 2026 at 9 am

California’s only remaining active nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon on California’s Central Coast, was supposed to shutter in 2025, but a series of heat waves and stress on the grid prompted state leaders to keep it running through 2030. And now, as demand for electricity skyrockets, a new push is growing to reverse the state’s decision to abandon nuclear power, and to extend the plant’s life through 2045. We’ll talk to advocates who have been fighting the nuclear plant since the very beginning about the risks of continuing operations, and from those who believe nuclear power is necessary to meet California’s mandate to switch to 100% carbon-free energy by 2045.

Guests:

  • Michael Wara, policy director for the Sustainability Accelerator at the Doerr School of Sustainability and director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program and senior research scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
  • Laura Klivans, climate reporter, KQED
  • Adrian Covert, senior vice president of public policy, Bay Area Council
  • Jane Swanson, president and spokesperson, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Alexis Madrigal: Welcome to Forum, I’m Alexis Madrigal. California has had a remarkable turn toward renewable energy for the last couple of decades. Wind and solar now power a big chunk of our electrical grid. We’ve gone away from gas and imported coal-fired electricity. Nuclear has never been a huge part of our energy mix, but we do have one plant still sending electrons into the grid, Diablo Canyon.

That power station, located near San Luis Obispo, is a massive facility that alone generates something like 9% of the state’s electricity and more than 15% of the state’s carbon-free kilowatt-hours. But this is an old facility. It’s in a fault zone. There are risks with nuclear power that simply don’t exist for solar and wind. Maybe this particular type of power plant belongs to an old regime that’s being outmoded by new renewables and batteries.

So that’s the setup. Here to talk with us about Diablo Canyon, we’re joined first by Laura Klivans, climate reporter for KQED. Welcome.

Laura Klivans: Thank you.

Alexis Madrigal: And we’ve got Michael Wara, senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Welcome, Michael.

Michael Wara: Good morning.

Alexis Madrigal: So, Laura, just tell us, give us the quick sort of narrative of what has happened with Diablo Canyon, you know, over the last 10 years.

Laura Klivans: Okay, so 2016, PG&E, labor unions and environmentalists came to this agreement saying, “We’re going to close Diablo Canyon.” There are a bunch of reasons for that. You’ve mentioned some of them. It’s near fault lines. That’s scary to people. Anti-nuclear sentiments were up after Fukushima in 2011. They also use ocean water for cooling, which harms submarine life. And so that’s something. And the licenses were already going to expire in 2024 and 2025 anyway.

Also, energy demand, interestingly, at the time, was flat. So it was kind of like, not in the place now where it’s just — pre-AI data center land.

Yeah, yeah, and electrifying everything as much as we are now. So we were also building out a ton of renewables. So it’s like, okay, let’s close it.

Then 2020, we’re all in this hellscape of COVID and heat, and the climate effects are really being felt in this state. And so there was a ton of stress on the grid, and we had some rolling blackouts. In California, that’s a politically really charged issue. We have had recalls for governors if they have been through blackouts. People want the grid to work. They want us to work.

So Newsom legislation acted in 2022. They extended the life of Diablo Canyon and said it’s not going to be decommissioned anymore. Also, we did not build out the renewables at the pace we were hoping to, even though we have had a huge growth.

Um, so — and then we also started to see this demand for more power with our electrification of buildings and cars, and now with data centers, too. So now we are on track to be open to 2030 for Diablo Canyon, but people — there’s a growing movement for that to extend longer, to 2045.

Alexis Madrigal: Um, Michael, I wanted to just ask you: What is involved, you know, if we think we’re going to shut down a plant and then we decide to keep it going? Did it have to get retrofitted? Were there things that had to be done and paid for there?

Michael Wara: Yeah, the plant had been in this kind of “we’re going to close” mode, and that involved, as Laura mentioned, workforce issues, getting people ready to be retired or moved to other parts of the company. And that’s really significant because, actually, to run nuclear power plants in the United States, the team that runs it has to be trained on that power plant. So you can’t just move around like you can for other jobs, which is probably good from a safety perspective.

Also, there were components of the plant that had reached the end of their lives. And it was sort of like with an old car: If you know you’re going to get rid of it, maybe you don’t replace the transmission. But this power plant in particular needed new high-pressure turbines, which are very expensive components in the power plant that have, since the decision to run it for another decade, been replaced at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. And who paid for that? PG&E customers.

Alexis Madrigal: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Michael, how would you contextualize the 9% of the electricity grid that Diablo Canyon provides? Is that a lot? Is it a special kind of 9%? How should people be thinking about this in the scheme of things?

Michael Wara: Well, it is special in the sense that Diablo provides power — especially, this is special, especially for California — Diablo provides power when it’s dark. And that is an especially valuable kind of power for California because our renewables transition is so dependent on solar.

Alexis Madrigal: Mm-hmm.

Michael Wara: And increasingly, especially even relative to 2020 when this decision was made, dependent on solar plus batteries that last for about four hours. And so, as you get into the middle of the night, the alternatives shrink. They really involve imports, some hydroelectric power, Diablo Canyon, and then a lot of natural gas-fired power plants.

And so getting rid of Diablo right now would be a choice to burn more natural gas.

Alexis Madrigal: And do we even have the capacity to do that, or would we be importing from Nevada, I suppose, or something?

Michael Wara: Well, our gas plants could run a bit more. I think the way that our system works, we’d be looking for the most cost-effective sources of energy and also capacity, and Diablo can be one of those. It’s not always — you know, when there’s a lot of solar on the grid, all kinds of other resources start to be uncompetitive with, you know, the sun.

But at night, and especially also with the advent of much more available battery storage, right? Even during the day, you can buy Diablo Canyon power, store it and serve it to customers at night. And that’s much more feasible today than it was five years ago.

Alexis Madrigal: Laura, what is KQED — what does KQED — what’s PG&E saying about what they’d like to do?

Laura Klivans: Yeah, they would like to extend it to 2045. So what they have is they have permission to do that from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And so they applied for their license, and they applied for the maximum license, which is 20 years, and so they got it.

And so now what is hanging in the balance here is legislation. So we need state legislation to make it possible for them to keep going.

Alexis Madrigal: And do you see, like, who are the sort of forces here that are aligned, you know, for and against, Laura?

Laura Klivans: Yeah, I mean, it’s really — I think you can speak to this, too, Michael — but it’s really changed over time. But there’s a lot of people who are for nuclear power at this point. I think as climate change — we’re really seeing the effects of that and feeling it. People are seeing, hey, this is a carbon-free power source.

So we’ve got PG&E and we’ve — but, um, we’ve got — we also have, like, a bunch of business folks who are lining up behind this. They’ve created a coalition. I think we’re going to hear from somebody on the show about this later, like the Bay Area Council. They would like to see it.

On the flip side, people against it are — we’ve had these staunch groups. For example, there’s one group that’s been around since the sixties or seventies, who we’ll also hear from, I believe, in this hour: Mothers for Peace.

Alexis Madrigal: Mothers for Peace, yeah.

Laura Klivans: Who also say, you know, the risk is still there. Diablo Canyon and other nuclear power plants still produce waste that we do not have a solution for. And then you have other entities. There’s, like, the Coastal Commission that is concerned about the impact on marine life because of the cooling system that the plant uses.

Alexis Madrigal: Um, I want to get into some of the trade-offs here that might exist for Diablo Canyon. Like, were we to try and make up for this with solar capacity — like, Michael, like, how much would it be? I mean, we’re talking probably seven gigawatts of, like, so what does that look like in terms of sort of —

Michael Wara: Look like in terms of sort of industrial scale? So I just want to make one additional point about kind of the situation that’s changed since 2020. At the time when we made the decision to extend the life until 2030, we also were assuming that we would be building significant amounts of offshore wind.

And because of the Trump administration’s decisions about wind, because of their role that the federal government plays in permitting offshore wind, and especially offshore wind in federal waters, which this would be, I think it’s not realistic to think that we’re going to have that additional generation in place when we thought we would. And so that increases the value of Diablo Canyon.

It is true, Alexis, that in order to replace it with a mix of solar and batteries, you would need to build a multiple of the nameplate capacity. That’s the amount of energy it can produce in any given second or moment. In solar, and even then it’d be hard to replace. You’d also have to build a lot of battery storage because the value of Diablo Canyon is firm capacity. Like, it’s always available. It’s gonna be — well, except when it’s shut down for refueling — but it’s a kind of power plant that you can sort of depend on no matter what the weather looks like, no matter the season.

Solar obviously is less productive during the winter. Winter is going to become a source — a time when there’s more energy demand than at present, as we electrify cars and buildings. And so that is an increasing challenge for us.

So there’s a lot of characteristics of a nuclear power plant that make it especially valuable.

Alexis Madrigal: Well, and some folks have talked about this kind of baseload power eventually being provided by something like enhanced geothermal, which might have those same properties. But are we, like, ready to roll out, you know, a two-gigawatt enhanced geothermal plant right now?

Michael Wara: Not yet. And I’m really excited to see the future for enhanced geothermal. There are contracts that have been signed, especially by Southern California Edison, to provide a lot of enhanced geothermal. We’re going to see that technology proved out or not in the next few years, at which point we’ll be able to make a much more intelligent decision about whether to kind of put our chips on enhanced geothermal as an alternative to nuclear, a zero-carbon firm energy source, or whether it’s too expensive.

And I would just emphasize one thing that’s changed about the conversation with nuclear: There are many people that are supportive of nuclear that were not in the past, if it is affordable. And the key question is cost, and cost relative to alternatives that are also firm and also zero-carbon.

And so Diablo might be a great deal for the state of California to get some — approximately 10% of its power and capacity from zero-carbon energy sources — but not if it costs an arm and a leg. And that’s an important part of the conversation.

Alexis Madrigal: Well, at least my understanding — and Laura, maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong in this one — basically, older nuclear power plants, their power ends up being quite cheap because the cost has already sort of been paid for the construction and all the loans. And so what ends up coming out of the plant is really inexpensive relative to building a new nuclear power plant.

Laura Klivans: Yeah, I mean, we’ve paid back. We were about to decommission it. So we’ve — we pretty much paid off this loan to build this huge thing, which is a very impressive facility when you go and see it.

Um, and so you’re seeing estimates from both the CPUC and then folks at Stanford, MIT, where Diablo Canyon can save us tons of money, billions of dollars by some estimates, over a period of like 10 years.

But the criticism that comes up from a bunch of researchers as well is that the deal that was struck in 2022 was a bad one financially for ratepayers.

Alexis Madrigal: We’re talking about the future of California’s last functioning nuclear power plant. We are joined by Laura Klivans, climate reporter for KQED, of course, and Michael Wara, senior research scholar at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Of course, we’re gonna take your calls, too. What do you think? 866-733-6786, forum@kqed.org. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

Podcast

Should You Rethink How Much You’re Drinking?

Audio

Airdate: Monday, August 24, 2026 at 10 am

In their groundbreaking 1976 book, “How to Control Your Drinking,” William R. Miller and Ricardo F. Muñoz offered a guide for moderate alcohol use. Back then about two-thirds of American adults drank, and now about half do. As Americans drink less and question whether any amount of alcohol is healthy, Miller and Muñoz are out with a new book called “Rethinking Drinking,” to help us figure out what role, if any, drinking should have in our lives.

Guests:

  • William R. Miller, American clinical psychologist, an emeritus distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque; co-author of “How to Control Your Drinking” (1976) and “Rethinking Drinking” (2026) 
  • Ricardo F. Muñoz, Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology, Emeritus, Palo Alto University; Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine; co-author of “How to Control Your Drinking” (1976) and “Rethinking Drinking” (2026)

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Mina Kim: Welcome to Forum, I’m Mina Kim. A new Gallup poll finds that about half of Americans drink now — a record low — with 13% saying they sometimes drink too much, compared to 35% who said that in 1989. So what’s changed?

For more than 50 years, doctors William R. Miller and Ricardo F. Muñoz have been looking at what makes people’s attitudes and behavior change. In 1976, they co-authored How to Control Your Drinking. And since then, they’ve revised it five times. The newest version, Rethinking Drinking, will be released next month and incorporates the latest research and social trends.

Muñoz is Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology Emeritus at Palo Alto University, an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the UCSF School of Medicine, where he was Chief Psychologist at San Francisco General Hospital for 25 years. Miller is an emeritus distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He’s known for originating motivational interviewing and also for his work on alcohol use disorders.

Ricardo Muñoz, welcome to Forum.

Ricardo F. Muñoz: I’m very happy to be here. Thank you, Mina.

Mina Kim: Bill Miller, really glad to have you with us as well.

William R. Miller: Good morning!

Mina Kim: So, Bill, take me back to 1976. What were the attitudes and norms around drinking back then?

William R. Miller: It was very common to have a three-martini lunch. People, on average, drank about 20 beers a week, and of course, drinking and driving was a huge problem. Bars had huge parking lots, and in fact, if you didn’t drink, people asked you why. It was kind of unusual not to drink alcohol at the time.

Mina Kim: Yeah, Ricardo, you’ve talked about how people had sort of a binary view about drinking and drinkers. What was their conception?

Ricardo F. Muñoz: Yeah, back then it was thought that there were only two kinds of drinkers. There were alcoholics who really couldn’t drink at all, otherwise they couldn’t stop drinking. And everybody else who didn’t have to worry about drinking. And Bill actually was one of the pioneers in beginning to try controlled drinking approaches. So there were people who had problems with alcohol, but they could learn to moderate their drinking.

Mina Kim: Yeah, but they didn’t believe that they had the problems because they didn’t view themselves as, quote unquote, an alcoholic.

Ricardo F. Muñoz: Yeah, many people who had problem drinking did not think they were alcoholics, and again, Bill’s work was one of the first to try to see whether we could help people.

Mina Kim: Yeah.

Ricardo F. Muñoz: To moderate drinking.

Mina Kim: Bill, what made you challenge, yeah, that commonly held idea that Ricardo was describing? What prompted you to take up studying this and to come up with, you know, the idea of moderation as a tool?

William R. Miller: I had a summer internship on an alcoholism unit in a veterans hospital and firsthand witnessed the devastation that that can do in people’s lives. And my passion really was to try to go upstream and see if we couldn’t prevent this and help people get their drinking turned around before it has the devastating consequences that I was seeing.

Mina Kim: Yeah, what would you say was sort of the kind of public health information about drinking that was available at the time?

William R. Miller: Well, that’s changed so much over the decades. I mean, up until about the 1920s, public education was that this is such a dangerous drug that no one can use it safely. And then when Prohibition was repealed, suddenly, it was available everywhere. And so we had this national case of cognitive dissonance, and by the time that we were writing our first book in the 1970s, drinking was so normalized that people wondered what was wrong with you if you didn’t drink.

Mina Kim: So then, Ricardo, how did you realize the dangers of drinking if the general social, you know, conversation was what Bill describes? Can you talk about when you were an undergrad at Stanford?

Ricardo F. Muñoz: Yes, I was an undergrad living at Lagunita Court, a dorm there, and marijuana joints were passed around when we would get together on weekends, you know, and I would just pass the joint to the next person and…

Mina Kim: Oh, you didn’t smoke it.

Ricardo F. Muñoz: I didn’t smoke it, and one of the guys said, well, you don’t smoke? And I said, no. Do you drink? And I say, yeah. He said, well, drinking is a lot more dangerous than marijuana, and if you don’t believe me, look it up. So I did. I went to the undergraduate library — we called it Ugly back then — and I looked up alcohol and marijuana, and he was absolutely right.

You know, the amount of risk involved with alcohol drinking, both at the individual level — cirrhosis of the liver, problems with dementia and so on — were already known back in the ’70s. But in addition to that, what really convinced me not to drink was all these social risks. I mean, alcohol was involved, obviously, with traffic accidents, but also was involved with violence. It was involved with sexual assaults, date rapes. Also having sex with someone you didn’t intend to because you were under the influence, and domestic violence, all these things that were happening.

So I decided — the guy wanted me to begin using marijuana, but I decided that the reasonable thing to do was stop using alcohol. So I haven’t drunk alcohol since then. It was just a logical choice for me.

Mina Kim: Yes, and it’s a good point to underscore just how much alcohol does come with social harms as much as individual harms.

So, Bill, you know, the book you and Ricardo co-authored in 1976, How to Control Your Drinking, it was considered the first self-help book on moderate alcohol use, as I understand it. What did it address? What were you recommending then?

William R. Miller: Well, again, we were just trying to help people cut down their drinking, which now is what your doctor tells you. When you go to the doctor’s office, they now ask you how much you drink. And if it’s over an amount they think is too much, they encourage you to cut it down.

We were giving very practical strategies for doing just that, of keeping track of how much you’re drinking, of reducing the speed, slowing down your drinking, and just getting out of situations that are high-risk situations. So just, you know, not rocket science, just very straightforward ways to reduce your drinking. And we put that into a self-help format that, to our surprise, we found people could use on their own, even without working with a therapist.

Mina Kim: Are there things in that book that you would not include in your book now, you know, that you would consider dated, Bill?

William R. Miller: Well, one thing we said in earlier versions was that moderate drinking may be beneficial to your health. And I think that has changed. I mean, that was in the ’70s and ’80s, almost an accepted fact that, well, moderate drinking is good for you. Not so much now.

The World Health Organization says there really is no truly safe level of alcohol consumption. And I think we’re just much more aware as a society of both the social and the physical risks attached to alcohol use, and whatever level of drinking you do.

Mina Kim: Yeah, I’ve noticed that the title is different. So you have revised this book five times, Ricardo, and each time it is some version of How to Control Your Drinking. This time, it is called Rethinking Drinking. Why the change in title?

Ricardo F. Muñoz: Well, back in the 1970s, in psychology, it was a move to help people to learn ways of controlling themselves. That was a big deal. There was a book called, for example, Power to the Person, which was a take-off on “power to the people.” But the whole idea was that you could learn what was making you do the things you did.

Mina Kim: So control was a trendy thing.

Ricardo F. Muñoz: Control was a trendy thing, so we had incorporated it. Yes, so How to Control Your Drinking. I also co-authored the book called Control Your Depression, for example, so control was a big deal then — self-control — and that’s what the focus of the book was, to try to help people who felt they had problems.

Now we are thinking, given the data that’s now known about health problems — for example, all the cancers that are related to alcohol — now that people, in terms of controlling their drinking, should think about control all the way down to zero. That is, that one way of controlling your drinking is not to use it at all.

Mina Kim: Though one of the things that I notice is that you really do try to make the point that you’re not telling people, don’t drink. I mean, the subtitle to Rethinking Drinking, Bill, is Making the Right Choice for You. So am I interpreting that correctly, that you still drink on occasion and you’re not necessarily saying with this book you shouldn’t drink any alcohol at all?

William R. Miller: Oh, definitely. Yeah, I mean, I’ve been a drinker all the time that Ricardo’s been an abstainer. I’m a very moderate drinker, I must say. But it’s up to people. It’s — we take risks every day, just in driving cars and so forth.

But what we’re trying to do is help people just be aware of when and how alcohol use can be risky. And how much risk do you want to take with it? So it’s respecting people’s choice to make their own decisions about how they will use alcohol and just giving them the information that they can use to make good decisions.

Mina Kim: Yeah, do you also feel like that with all the new research that has come out saying that no amount of alcohol is good for you, right, that people are, you’re hearing people sort of wondering what place, what role drinking should have, if any, Bill?

William R. Miller: Well, that really is part of the audience for this book now as well. We’re not just writing for people who are drinking way too much and want to moderate it. There are lots of people who are saying, do I want to drink at all? And how do I make that choice? How do I decide that? And so that’s part of the audience for whom we’re writing this book as well, if you’re just thinking about what role does alcohol have in my life. Uh, and it’s not the way I want it.

Mina Kim: The social conversation has really changed.

We’re talking with Bill Miller, American clinical psychologist, distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry emeritus at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, co-author with Ricardo F. Muñoz of the new book Rethinking Drinking. They were co-authors of a book like this, though, you know, it’s been revised five times since 1976, but in 1976 it was called How to Control Your Drinking.

And listeners, join the conversation. Have you started drinking less? And if you have, tell us why. How are you going about it if you are? And what is the hardest part, do you find, of reducing the amount of drinking or probably going cold turkey? What questions do you have about the effects of alcohol on your health? And if you drink, where does alcohol fit into your life?

You can tell us by calling 866-733-6786, by emailing forum@kqed.org, and finding us on Discord, Blue Sky, Facebook, or Instagram at KQED Forum.

More after the break. I’m Mina Kim.