KQED's Forum

Fan fiction, where fans reimagine their favorite characters in new – often steamy – stories, is reshaping mainstream literature, television and film. This year alone, three novels spun from fan-written romances between Harry Potter characters have hit national bestseller lists. A ...  Show more

Fan fiction, where fans reimagine their favorite characters in new – often steamy – stories, is reshaping mainstream literature, television and film. This year alone, three novels spun from fan-written romances between Harry Potter characters have hit national bestseller lists. A ...  Show more

Arthur Miller’s classic play “All My Sons” tells the story of a father who attains the American Dream, but at a high cost to himself and everyone around him. Nearly 80 years after the original, Berkeley Rep’s new production reimagines the play with a Puerto Rican family at the ce ...  Show more

Commercial surrogacy has long been life-changing for LGBTQ+ and infertile couples wishing to have children. Even though the practice is banned or highly restricted in much of the rest of the world, the U.S. has no federal laws overseeing the practice. In a new investigation, New ...  Show more

Newer AI tools have begun to act less like “a souped up search engine and more of a junior staffer” observes one industry watcher. Software developers are deploying Claude Code. Small business people are using AI to work out logistics. At home, people are deploying AI to organize ...  Show more

What is consciousness for, and why did it evolve? Can we change our “default” consciousness? These are some of the questions that Michael Pollan says began to preoccupy him after his first psychedelic experience, which altered his ordinary consciousness so profoundly that he want ...  Show more