KQED's Forum KQED

Anthony Fauci was the face of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic, guiding the public through the upheavals of school closures and stay-at-home orders and unprecedented loss of life. He implored people to get vaccinated and weathered near constant partisan attacks. The COVID-19 pandemic was one of a number of global public health crises – including AIDS, bird flu, Ebola and Zika – that Fauci handled during his nearly six-decade career. We’ll talk to Fauci about what we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, how we should prepare for the next infectious disease crisis and what he values most about his life in public service. His new autobiography is “On Call.”

As part of our “Doing Democracy” series, we look at state courts and constitutions. Each state has its own constitution, and they generally offer more rights than the U.S. Constitution. For example, the California constitution guarantees the right to happiness, reproductive freedom, and the ability to fish on public land, among other enumerated rights. With a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, activists are increasingly looking at states to protect – and even expand – rights. But will this strategy work? We’ll talk to legal experts about how state courts and constitutions are increasingly becoming battle grounds for preserving or expanding civil rights, and what the impact in California and neighboring states might be.

“If you make it trend, you make it true,” argues online propaganda expert Renée DiResta. Her new book examines what she calls the “invisible rulers” of today — influencers, algorithms and crowds. While some influencers have made good on social media’s promises of media democratization, others saturate our feeds with propaganda, disinformation and rumors that cause IRL harm. These influencers’ motivations, DiResta argues, are rooted in profit as much as — if not more than — ideology. We’ll talk to DiResta about how content moderation, systems design and policy can prevent and blunt the reach of online propaganda — and how we can strive for consensus in a fractured society. Her new book is “Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality.”

Guests:

Renée DiResta, former technical research manager, Stanford Internet Observatory

Hundreds of bicycles stolen in the Bay Area and other places have ended up for sale in a small town in Jalisco, Mexico. A recent article in Wired follows the efforts of a co-founder of Bike Index, a site where people can report bike thefts, to track down a reseller who set up a supply chain of stolen bikes resold via social media. Meanwhile, bike thieves in the Bay Area have become even more sophisticated in their methods leaving cyclists feeling hopeless and vulnerable. We’ll talk about the local and global black market for stolen bikes and what – if anything – can be done about it.

Guests:

Carlos Cabrera-Lomeli, community engagement reporter, KQED

Bryan Hance, co-founder, Bike Index

Christopher Solomon, freelance journalist; author, the recent Wired article “The West Coast’s Fanciest Stolen Bikes Are Getting Trafficked by One Mastermind in Jalisco, Mexico"

Nancy Hernandez, education program co-manager, Bike East Bay

Despite spending one third of our lives asleep, we know very little about why we dream. But in a new book brain surgeon and neuroscientist Dr. Rahul Jandial begins to peel back the mystery. He says that dreams may help us practice responding to threats, allow us to test different interpersonal scenarios, or serve as a sort of “nocturnal therapist, helping us digest and metabolize anxiety-provoking emotions.” We talk to Jandial about the neurobiology of dreams and what they contribute to our waking lives. Jandial’s new book is, “This Is Why You Dream.”

Guests:

Dr. Rahul Jandial, surgeon and neuroscientist, City of Hope

As a journalist and a science fiction writer, Annalee Newitz thinks a lot about the power of narrative and how it can change minds, “if a story can make you feel better or smarter, it can also make you feel worse and more confused. And if that story can change your behavior—­whether in the voting booth or on the street—­it becomes a weapon.” In their new book, "Stories Are Weapons," Newitz dives into the history and practice of psychological warfare and traces how the military tools of psyops – including propaganda and disinformation – have seeped into our lives. We’ll talk about how stories are used to manipulate our politics and drive the culture wars and how we might snap out of their sway.

Guests:

Annalee Newitz, science journalist; science fictions writer; author, "Stories are Weapons"; Newitz is also the author of the books "The Terraformers," "Autonomous" and "Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age"