Economists Make the Case For and Against California’s Billionaire Tax
Claudia Rankine on the Friendships That Unsettle and Sustain Us
Concerts, Art, and Festivals Not to Miss in the Bay This Fall
The Hidden Psychology Behind Procrastination
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"content": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Airdate: Monday, September 14, 2026\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>California voters will decide this fall whether the state should impose a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires, with much of the revenue going toward health care amid federal funding cuts. Supporters say Proposition 40 could raise tens of billions of dollars while also helping to address the growing wealth inequality in the state. Opponents argue the tax could drive billionaires out of California, shrinking the state’s income tax base and ultimately costing more than it raises. We talk to two leading economists: Gabriel Zucman, who helped develop the measure, and Joshua Rauh, one of its most vocal critics, about whether the billionaire tax would help California’s economy – or hurt it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman,\u003c/strong> professor of economics, UC Berkeley; Paris School of Economics – author of “We Need to Tax Billionaires”; helped develop Prop 40\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh,\u003c/strong> economist and professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business – senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; opposes CA Prop 40\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Welcome to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>, I’m Alexis Madrigal. Proposition 40 is one of the most contentious and intriguing propositions of recent years. It’s a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. It would raise a substantial amount of money, though there are questions about how much net revenue it could pour into state coffers, and those dollars would mostly be used to fund health care.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Our first guest is Gabriel Zucman. He is a UC Berkeley economist and author of the admirably straightforwardly named book, \u003cem>We Need to Tax Billionaires\u003c/em>. He helped to develop the proposition. Welcome, Gabriel.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> Thanks for having me.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Our second guest is Joshua Rauh, an economist and professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He authored a study about the potential effects of the wealth tax and has emerged as perhaps the leading economist voice opposing Prop 40. Welcome, Josh.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh:\u003c/strong> Good to be on the show.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Okay, you guys ready? Ready to fight? Gabriel, let’s start with you. You did help develop this proposition. So let’s just start with the basics. What’s the measure do? Who’s subject to the tax, where does the money go?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> So this would be a one-time tax on billionaires. Only people who have more than $1 billion of net wealth would be affected. We’re talking about roughly 250 people in California, mostly Silicon Valley tech billionaires who would have to pay a one-time tax equal to 5% of their wealth. For context, their wealth has grown by 170% since 2023, and they would have to pay just 5%.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We can expect about $100 billion in tax revenue for the state with this tax. Ninety percent of the money would go to health care. And California needs this money because the big budget bill that was passed last year by Congress has defunded Medicaid. And if nothing is done, two million people in California are going to lose their health insurance. The fraction of uninsured individuals will increase from 6% to 10%.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The California governor, Gavin Newsom, or the California legislature haven’t proposed any solution. So voters can solve this problem by themselves with Prop 40.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I’m curious, just like, is this for you primarily a fiscal measure about the state’s budget, or is it more of a moral one about the way that you think the state should be approaching billionaire wealth?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> Well, it is a budget fiscal issue. There’s a major shortfall of revenue for Medicaid. And the question is, where do we find the money? Now you have essentially two big levers. There is the California income tax, and there is this potential wealth tax on billionaires.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What’s really important to understand is this. And when I first realized that, it blew my mind. If you look at the total wealth of California’s 250 billionaires, we’re talking about $2.3 trillion today. This is as big as the total income of all Californian families. Their total taxable income, AGI, is also $2.3 trillion.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So essentially, if you want to get $100 billion in revenue for the state, you can do it in two ways. Either with a 5% tax on the wealth of 250 billionaires or with an increase in the income tax of five percentage points for all Californian taxpayers.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> And so, in answer to the question of why target wealth specifically rather than income, that’s where the money is. It represents this massive sum. But is it also that billionaires don’t have traditional income as their core component of how they make money?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> True. The current tax system fails at taxing billionaires. This is true in California. This is true in the U.S. more broadly. This is all over the world. And the reason is that when you’re extremely rich, it’s very easy to organize your wealth such that this wealth will generate no or very little taxable income.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That’s how, in 2019, in 2022, in 2023, the two worthiest billionaires in California, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, essentially paid no income tax. They didn’t pay themselves any wage from Google. Google didn’t distribute any dividend. They didn’t sell shares in the company, so they didn’t realize any capital gains.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So their taxable income, what is subject to the income tax, was zero or close to zero, extremely low, so that no matter the rate that you apply to that income, you are not going to be able to make billionaires pay more tax just by changing the income tax. This is why the proper way to tax the super rich is with a tax directly on their wealth.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Josh, let’s bring you in here to a two-part question here. Do you agree that wealth concentration in billionaires is a problem generally? And then more specifically, do you agree that billionaire taxation is also a problem?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh:\u003c/strong> Well, I’d like to begin with just the premise that you have to support anyone who votes for Prop 40, for the Billionaire Tax Act, has got to support — first, you have to believe that it will raise revenue, not lose revenue for the state. And I think this is one of the key points of difference between myself and Gabriel Zucman, which is that they say it will raise $100 billion for the state. We say it will lose $25 to $38 billion for this state.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And why the difference? It’s because of the losses to the state coffers that will be caused by these high-net-worth individuals who are leaving in response to the tax. The state won’t collect the wealth tax from the billionaires who have left in response to the tax, and it won’t collect any more income taxes from the billionaires who have left in response to the tax.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so Dr. Zucman and his colleagues have assumed 10% losses when they arrived at their $100 billion estimate, but going through person by person, we find that public announcements have shown that already 30% of the wealth tax base has left. Half a trillion dollars of wealth has left California. So this is gonna lose money for the state government. Those people, their wealth isn’t gonna be collected by the Billionaire Tax Act, and their income taxes will no longer be collected.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Secondly, you have to believe, if you support this proposition, that on balance the tax will be good for the people of California. And that’s a different question from whether the tax is going to raise revenue or not. I mean, even if the tax were gonna raise revenue — and to be clear, our models say that this one will not — but that revenue has to be balanced against the damage to the economy that the tax will do.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So to take an example, a policy that brings in an extra dollar of revenue for the state but destroys 100,000 jobs, that would be a bad policy because you have to believe that the well-being the state can create with an extra dollar of revenue is so great as to offset the pain from losing the job.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So the billionaires who are leaving have created tens to hundreds of thousands of jobs in California, and while those jobs won’t go away overnight, if the founders are gone, the billionaire tax will accelerate the shift of jobs to other states that we’re already seeing. And it’s not just companies already here. If the wealth tax passes, then founders will increasingly choose one of the other emerging ecosystems around the U.S., Austin, Miami, Nashville. And already we have investors saying they won’t invest in startup companies in California if the founders are in California. Notably, Mark Cuban has said that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So whether or not billionaire wealth concentration is a problem or not, whether you think that or not, that’s actually not relevant for what we should do on Prop 40. The question is, do you think it’s going to bring in money for the state? I do not think it will. And second, do you believe that on balance it will be good for the people of California? And I think given all the losses in economic activity we’re seeing here already as a result of this and what we will see if the billionaire tax passes, it will not be for the people of California.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> That’s Josh Rauh, an economist and professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. We’re also joined by Gabriel Zucman, an economist and professor at Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics, helped to develop Prop 40.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’d love to get your opinions on what you think about the tax. 866-733-6786, \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em> at kqed.org. This is \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. I’m Alexis Madrigal.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Josh, I want to stay with you here. What you’re saying is that even just the threat of this tax is causing people to leave and maybe hurting the dynamism of Silicon Valley. And at the same time, we’re experiencing this massive boom in San Francisco of AI company wealth creation and new jobs and businesses that are being created at the time. So it’s one factor, right, in the way where companies decide to locate.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh:\u003c/strong> That’s correct. It’s one factor, and investors have been clear about what’s going to happen if the tax passes. You have to realize California companies, the amount of money they receive from venture capitalists from across the state, country and world is a staggering amount of money itself. It is $360 billion. That’s very comparable in a year to the amount of money that the government of California spends.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This ecosystem is fragile. We have people leaving. We have investors saying they’re not going to invest in California if this passes. And it’s interesting to consider the reason why people are saying they won’t invest in that if this passes. You know, Dr. Zucman and you in your intro were clear that this was gonna be a one-time tax. That’s how it’s pitched, but Dr. Zucman has admitted that it’s probably not going to be one time. In fact, I’ll quote from an interview he did on the Capital & Main website. He said, quote, “California could absolutely implement an annual wealth tax,” said Zucman. “This one-time tax is just the starting point of what it could be.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so now that he is admitting that, and people are starting to think, what happens if this wealth tax passes? Investors are beginning to think, wow, this could be really bad, and it could be very harmful to the economy.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The discussion has changed since the ballot proposition was made. “One time, one time, one time” kept being repeated, and now the tone of the architects has changed.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Gabriel, what do you think? On the one-time issue specifically.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> So, a few things. So first of all, this line of reasoning on how the tax is going to hurt the economy is, of course, a very classic argument, which makes sense in the abstract, but you have to look at the numbers. And if you look, for instance, at the flow of venture capital funding —\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I might actually cut you off here only because we’re gonna have to go to a break in a second, and I really want you to be able to get to the full set of numbers. You guys can go back and forth a little bit on this. So let me let me throw to a break.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Of course, we’re talking about Prop 40, California’s billionaire tax, with, you know, on the pro side, Gabriel Zucman, who helped design it, and Josh Rauh, who has authored a study about the potential effects of the wealth tax. Way back, more right after the break.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Welcome to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>, I’m Alexis Madrigal. Proposition 40 is one of the most contentious and intriguing propositions of recent years. It’s a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. It would raise a substantial amount of money, though there are questions about how much net revenue it could pour into state coffers, and those dollars would mostly be used to fund health care.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Our first guest is Gabriel Zucman. He is a UC Berkeley economist and author of the admirably straightforwardly named book, \u003cem>We Need to Tax Billionaires\u003c/em>. He helped to develop the proposition. Welcome, Gabriel.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Our second guest is Joshua Rauh, an economist and professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He authored a study about the potential effects of the wealth tax and has emerged as perhaps the leading economist voice opposing Prop 40. Welcome, Josh.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Okay, you guys ready? Ready to fight? Gabriel, let’s start with you. You did help develop this proposition. So let’s just start with the basics. What’s the measure do? Who’s subject to the tax, where does the money go?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> So this would be a one-time tax on billionaires. Only people who have more than $1 billion of net wealth would be affected. We’re talking about roughly 250 people in California, mostly Silicon Valley tech billionaires who would have to pay a one-time tax equal to 5% of their wealth. For context, their wealth has grown by 170% since 2023, and they would have to pay just 5%.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> So this would be a one-time tax on billionaires. Only people who have more than $1 billion of net wealth would be affected. We’re talking about roughly 250 people in California, mostly Silicon Valley tech billionaires who would have to pay a one-time tax equal to 5% of their wealth. For context, their wealth has grown by 170% since 2023, and they would have to pay just 5%.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We can expect about $100 billion in tax revenue for the state with this tax. Ninety percent of the money would go to health care. And California needs this money because the big budget bill that was passed last year by Congress has defunded Medicaid. And if nothing is done, two million people in California are going to lose their health insurance. The fraction of uninsured individuals will increase from 6% to 10%.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We can expect about $100 billion in tax revenue for the state with this tax. Ninety percent of the money would go to health care. And California needs this money because the big budget bill that was passed last year by Congress has defunded Medicaid. And if nothing is done, two million people in California are going to lose their health insurance. The fraction of uninsured individuals will increase from 6% to 10%.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The California governor, Gavin Newsom, or the California legislature haven’t proposed any solution. So voters can solve this problem by themselves with Prop 40.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The California governor, Gavin Newsom, or the California legislature haven’t proposed any solution. So voters can solve this problem by themselves with Prop 40.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I’m curious, just like, is this for you primarily a fiscal measure about the state’s budget, or is it more of a moral one about the way that you think the state should be approaching billionaire wealth?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I’m curious, just like, is this for you primarily a fiscal measure about the state’s budget, or is it more of a moral one about the way that you think the state should be approaching billionaire wealth?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> Well, it is a budget fiscal issue. There’s a major shortfall of revenue for Medicaid. And the question is, where do we find the money? Now you have essentially two big levers. There is the California income tax, and there is this potential wealth tax on billionaires.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> Well, it is a budget fiscal issue. There’s a major shortfall of revenue for Medicaid. And the question is, where do we find the money? Now you have essentially two big levers. There is the California income tax, and there is this potential wealth tax on billionaires.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>What’s really important to understand is this. And when I first realized that, it blew my mind. If you look at the total wealth of California’s 250 billionaires, we’re talking about $2.3 trillion today. This is as big as the total income of all Californian families. Their total taxable income, AGI, is also $2.3 trillion.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>What’s really important to understand is this. And when I first realized that, it blew my mind. If you look at the total wealth of California’s 250 billionaires, we’re talking about $2.3 trillion today. This is as big as the total income of all Californian families. Their total taxable income, AGI, is also $2.3 trillion.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So essentially, if you want to get $100 billion in revenue for the state, you can do it in two ways. Either with a 5% tax on the wealth of 250 billionaires or with an increase in the income tax of five percentage points for all Californian taxpayers.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So essentially, if you want to get $100 billion in revenue for the state, you can do it in two ways. Either with a 5% tax on the wealth of 250 billionaires or with an increase in the income tax of five percentage points for all Californian taxpayers.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> And so, in answer to the question of why target wealth specifically rather than income, that’s where the money is. It represents this massive sum. But is it also that billionaires don’t have traditional income as their core component of how they make money?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> And so, in answer to the question of why target wealth specifically rather than income, that’s where the money is. It represents this massive sum. But is it also that billionaires don’t have traditional income as their core component of how they make money?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> True. The current tax system fails at taxing billionaires. This is true in California. This is true in the U.S. more broadly. This is all over the world. And the reason is that when you’re extremely rich, it’s very easy to organize your wealth such that this wealth will generate no or very little taxable income.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> True. The current tax system fails at taxing billionaires. This is true in California. This is true in the U.S. more broadly. This is all over the world. And the reason is that when you’re extremely rich, it’s very easy to organize your wealth such that this wealth will generate no or very little taxable income.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>That’s how, in 2019, in 2022, in 2023, the two worthiest billionaires in California, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, essentially paid no income tax. They didn’t pay themselves any wage from Google. Google didn’t distribute any dividend. They didn’t sell shares in the company, so they didn’t realize any capital gains.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>That’s how, in 2019, in 2022, in 2023, the two worthiest billionaires in California, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, essentially paid no income tax. They didn’t pay themselves any wage from Google. Google didn’t distribute any dividend. They didn’t sell shares in the company, so they didn’t realize any capital gains.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So their taxable income, what is subject to the income tax, was zero or close to zero, extremely low, so that no matter the rate that you apply to that income, you are not going to be able to make billionaires pay more tax just by changing the income tax. This is why the proper way to tax the super rich is with a tax directly on their wealth.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So their taxable income, what is subject to the income tax, was zero or close to zero, extremely low, so that no matter the rate that you apply to that income, you are not going to be able to make billionaires pay more tax just by changing the income tax. This is why the proper way to tax the super rich is with a tax directly on their wealth.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Josh, let’s bring you in here to a two-part question here. Do you agree that wealth concentration in billionaires is a problem generally? And then more specifically, do you agree that billionaire taxation is also a problem?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Josh, let’s bring you in here to a two-part question here. Do you agree that wealth concentration in billionaires is a problem generally? And then more specifically, do you agree that billionaire taxation is also a problem?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh:\u003c/strong> Well, I’d like to begin with just the premise that you have to support anyone who votes for Prop 40, for the Billionaire Tax Act, has got to support — first, you have to believe that it will raise revenue, not lose revenue for the state. And I think this is one of the key points of difference between myself and Gabriel Zucman, which is that they say it will raise $100 billion for the state. We say it will lose $25 to $38 billion for this state.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh:\u003c/strong> Well, I’d like to begin with just the premise that you have to support anyone who votes for Prop 40, for the Billionaire Tax Act, has got to support — first, you have to believe that it will raise revenue, not lose revenue for the state. And I think this is one of the key points of difference between myself and Gabriel Zucman, which is that they say it will raise $100 billion for the state. We say it will lose $25 to $38 billion for this state.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And why the difference? It’s because of the losses to the state coffers that will be caused by these high-net-worth individuals who are leaving in response to the tax. The state won’t collect the wealth tax from the billionaires who have left in response to the tax, and it won’t collect any more income taxes from the billionaires who have left in response to the tax.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And why the difference? It’s because of the losses to the state coffers that will be caused by these high-net-worth individuals who are leaving in response to the tax. The state won’t collect the wealth tax from the billionaires who have left in response to the tax, and it won’t collect any more income taxes from the billionaires who have left in response to the tax.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And so Dr. Zucman and his colleagues have assumed 10% losses when they arrived at their $100 billion estimate, but going through person by person, we find that public announcements have shown that already 30% of the wealth tax base has left. Half a trillion dollars of wealth has left California. So this is gonna lose money for the state government. Those people, their wealth isn’t gonna be collected by the Billionaire Tax Act, and their income taxes will no longer be collected.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And so Dr. Zucman and his colleagues have assumed 10% losses when they arrived at their $100 billion estimate, but going through person by person, we find that public announcements have shown that already 30% of the wealth tax base has left. Half a trillion dollars of wealth has left California. So this is gonna lose money for the state government. Those people, their wealth isn’t gonna be collected by the Billionaire Tax Act, and their income taxes will no longer be collected.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Secondly, you have to believe, if you support this proposition, that on balance the tax will be good for the people of California. And that’s a different question from whether the tax is going to raise revenue or not. I mean, even if the tax were gonna raise revenue — and to be clear, our models say that this one will not — but that revenue has to be balanced against the damage to the economy that the tax will do.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Secondly, you have to believe, if you support this proposition, that on balance the tax will be good for the people of California. And that’s a different question from whether the tax is going to raise revenue or not. I mean, even if the tax were gonna raise revenue — and to be clear, our models say that this one will not — but that revenue has to be balanced against the damage to the economy that the tax will do.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So to take an example, a policy that brings in an extra dollar of revenue for the state but destroys 100,000 jobs, that would be a bad policy because you have to believe that the well-being the state can create with an extra dollar of revenue is so great as to offset the pain from losing the job.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So to take an example, a policy that brings in an extra dollar of revenue for the state but destroys 100,000 jobs, that would be a bad policy because you have to believe that the well-being the state can create with an extra dollar of revenue is so great as to offset the pain from losing the job.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So the billionaires who are leaving have created tens to hundreds of thousands of jobs in California, and while those jobs won’t go away overnight, if the founders are gone, the billionaire tax will accelerate the shift of jobs to other states that we’re already seeing. And it’s not just companies already here. If the wealth tax passes, then founders will increasingly choose one of the other emerging ecosystems around the U.S., Austin, Miami, Nashville. And already we have investors saying they won’t invest in startup companies in California if the founders are in California. Notably, Mark Cuban has said that.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So the billionaires who are leaving have created tens to hundreds of thousands of jobs in California, and while those jobs won’t go away overnight, if the founders are gone, the billionaire tax will accelerate the shift of jobs to other states that we’re already seeing. And it’s not just companies already here. If the wealth tax passes, then founders will increasingly choose one of the other emerging ecosystems around the U.S., Austin, Miami, Nashville. And already we have investors saying they won’t invest in startup companies in California if the founders are in California. Notably, Mark Cuban has said that.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So whether or not billionaire wealth concentration is a problem or not, whether you think that or not, that’s actually not relevant for what we should do on Prop 40. The question is, do you think it’s going to bring in money for the state? I do not think it will. And second, do you believe that on balance it will be good for the people of California? And I think given all the losses in economic activity we’re seeing here already as a result of this and what we will see if the billionaire tax passes, it will not be for the people of California.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So whether or not billionaire wealth concentration is a problem or not, whether you think that or not, that’s actually not relevant for what we should do on Prop 40. The question is, do you think it’s going to bring in money for the state? I do not think it will. And second, do you believe that on balance it will be good for the people of California? And I think given all the losses in economic activity we’re seeing here already as a result of this and what we will see if the billionaire tax passes, it will not be for the people of California.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> That’s Josh Rauh, an economist and professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. We’re also joined by Gabriel Zucman, an economist and professor at Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics, helped to develop Prop 40.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> That’s Josh Rauh, an economist and professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. We’re also joined by Gabriel Zucman, an economist and professor at Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics, helped to develop Prop 40.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We’d love to get your opinions on what you think about the tax. 866-733-6786, \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em> at kqed.org. This is \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. I’m Alexis Madrigal.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We’d love to get your opinions on what you think about the tax. 866-733-6786, \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em> at kqed.org. This is \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. I’m Alexis Madrigal.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Josh, I want to stay with you here. What you’re saying is that even just the threat of this tax is causing people to leave and maybe hurting the dynamism of Silicon Valley. And at the same time, we’re experiencing this massive boom in San Francisco of AI company wealth creation and new jobs and businesses that are being created at the time. So it’s one factor, right, in the way where companies decide to locate.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Josh, I want to stay with you here. What you’re saying is that even just the threat of this tax is causing people to leave and maybe hurting the dynamism of Silicon Valley. And at the same time, we’re experiencing this massive boom in San Francisco of AI company wealth creation and new jobs and businesses that are being created at the time. So it’s one factor, right, in the way where companies decide to locate.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh:\u003c/strong> That’s correct. It’s one factor, and investors have been clear about what’s going to happen if the tax passes. You have to realize California companies, the amount of money they receive from venture capitalists from across the state, country and world is a staggering amount of money itself. It is $360 billion. That’s very comparable in a year to the amount of money that the government of California spends.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh:\u003c/strong> That’s correct. It’s one factor, and investors have been clear about what’s going to happen if the tax passes. You have to realize California companies, the amount of money they receive from venture capitalists from across the state, country and world is a staggering amount of money itself. It is $360 billion. That’s very comparable in a year to the amount of money that the government of California spends.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This ecosystem is fragile. We have people leaving. We have investors saying they’re not going to invest in California if this passes. And it’s interesting to consider the reason why people are saying they won’t invest in that if this passes. You know, Dr. Zucman and you in your intro were clear that this was gonna be a one-time tax. That’s how it’s pitched, but Dr. Zucman has admitted that it’s probably not going to be one time. In fact, I’ll quote from an interview he did on the Capital & Main website. He said, quote, “California could absolutely implement an annual wealth tax,” said Zucman. “This one-time tax is just the starting point of what it could be.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This ecosystem is fragile. We have people leaving. We have investors saying they’re not going to invest in California if this passes. And it’s interesting to consider the reason why people are saying they won’t invest in that if this passes. You know, Dr. Zucman and you in your intro were clear that this was gonna be a one-time tax. That’s how it’s pitched, but Dr. Zucman has admitted that it’s probably not going to be one time. In fact, I’ll quote from an interview he did on the Capital & Main website. He said, quote, “California could absolutely implement an annual wealth tax,” said Zucman. “This one-time tax is just the starting point of what it could be.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And so now that he is admitting that, and people are starting to think, what happens if this wealth tax passes? Investors are beginning to think, wow, this could be really bad, and it could be very harmful to the economy.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And so now that he is admitting that, and people are starting to think, what happens if this wealth tax passes? Investors are beginning to think, wow, this could be really bad, and it could be very harmful to the economy.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The discussion has changed since the ballot proposition was made. “One time, one time, one time” kept being repeated, and now the tone of the architects has changed.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The discussion has changed since the ballot proposition was made. “One time, one time, one time” kept being repeated, and now the tone of the architects has changed.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Gabriel, what do you think? On the one-time issue specifically.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Gabriel, what do you think? On the one-time issue specifically.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> So, a few things. So first of all, this line of reasoning on how the tax is going to hurt the economy is, of course, a very classic argument, which makes sense in the abstract, but you have to look at the numbers. And if you look, for instance, at the flow of venture capital funding —\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> So, a few things. So first of all, this line of reasoning on how the tax is going to hurt the economy is, of course, a very classic argument, which makes sense in the abstract, but you have to look at the numbers. And if you look, for instance, at the flow of venture capital funding —\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I might actually cut you off here only because we’re gonna have to go to a break in a second, and I really want you to be able to get to the full set of numbers. You guys can go back and forth a little bit on this. So let me let me throw to a break.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I might actually cut you off here only because we’re gonna have to go to a break in a second, and I really want you to be able to get to the full set of numbers. You guys can go back and forth a little bit on this. So let me let me throw to a break.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Of course, we’re talking about Prop 40, California’s billionaire tax, with, you know, on the pro side, Gabriel Zucman, who helped design it, and Josh Rauh, who has authored a study about the potential effects of the wealth tax. Way back, more right after the break.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Of course, we’re talking about Prop 40, California’s billionaire tax, with, you know, on the pro side, Gabriel Zucman, who helped design it, and Josh Rauh, who has authored a study about the potential effects of the wealth tax. Way back, more right after the break.\u003c/p>\n"
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Airdate: Monday, September 14, 2026\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>California voters will decide this fall whether the state should impose a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires, with much of the revenue going toward health care amid federal funding cuts. Supporters say Proposition 40 could raise tens of billions of dollars while also helping to address the growing wealth inequality in the state. Opponents argue the tax could drive billionaires out of California, shrinking the state’s income tax base and ultimately costing more than it raises. We talk to two leading economists: Gabriel Zucman, who helped develop the measure, and Joshua Rauh, one of its most vocal critics, about whether the billionaire tax would help California’s economy – or hurt it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman,\u003c/strong> professor of economics, UC Berkeley; Paris School of Economics – author of “We Need to Tax Billionaires”; helped develop Prop 40\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh,\u003c/strong> economist and professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business – senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; opposes CA Prop 40\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Welcome to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>, I’m Alexis Madrigal. Proposition 40 is one of the most contentious and intriguing propositions of recent years. It’s a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. It would raise a substantial amount of money, though there are questions about how much net revenue it could pour into state coffers, and those dollars would mostly be used to fund health care.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Our first guest is Gabriel Zucman. He is a UC Berkeley economist and author of the admirably straightforwardly named book, \u003cem>We Need to Tax Billionaires\u003c/em>. He helped to develop the proposition. Welcome, Gabriel.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> Thanks for having me.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Our second guest is Joshua Rauh, an economist and professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He authored a study about the potential effects of the wealth tax and has emerged as perhaps the leading economist voice opposing Prop 40. Welcome, Josh.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh:\u003c/strong> Good to be on the show.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Okay, you guys ready? Ready to fight? Gabriel, let’s start with you. You did help develop this proposition. So let’s just start with the basics. What’s the measure do? Who’s subject to the tax, where does the money go?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> So this would be a one-time tax on billionaires. Only people who have more than $1 billion of net wealth would be affected. We’re talking about roughly 250 people in California, mostly Silicon Valley tech billionaires who would have to pay a one-time tax equal to 5% of their wealth. For context, their wealth has grown by 170% since 2023, and they would have to pay just 5%.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We can expect about $100 billion in tax revenue for the state with this tax. Ninety percent of the money would go to health care. And California needs this money because the big budget bill that was passed last year by Congress has defunded Medicaid. And if nothing is done, two million people in California are going to lose their health insurance. The fraction of uninsured individuals will increase from 6% to 10%.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The California governor, Gavin Newsom, or the California legislature haven’t proposed any solution. So voters can solve this problem by themselves with Prop 40.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I’m curious, just like, is this for you primarily a fiscal measure about the state’s budget, or is it more of a moral one about the way that you think the state should be approaching billionaire wealth?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> Well, it is a budget fiscal issue. There’s a major shortfall of revenue for Medicaid. And the question is, where do we find the money? Now you have essentially two big levers. There is the California income tax, and there is this potential wealth tax on billionaires.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What’s really important to understand is this. And when I first realized that, it blew my mind. If you look at the total wealth of California’s 250 billionaires, we’re talking about $2.3 trillion today. This is as big as the total income of all Californian families. Their total taxable income, AGI, is also $2.3 trillion.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So essentially, if you want to get $100 billion in revenue for the state, you can do it in two ways. Either with a 5% tax on the wealth of 250 billionaires or with an increase in the income tax of five percentage points for all Californian taxpayers.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> And so, in answer to the question of why target wealth specifically rather than income, that’s where the money is. It represents this massive sum. But is it also that billionaires don’t have traditional income as their core component of how they make money?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> True. The current tax system fails at taxing billionaires. This is true in California. This is true in the U.S. more broadly. This is all over the world. And the reason is that when you’re extremely rich, it’s very easy to organize your wealth such that this wealth will generate no or very little taxable income.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That’s how, in 2019, in 2022, in 2023, the two worthiest billionaires in California, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, essentially paid no income tax. They didn’t pay themselves any wage from Google. Google didn’t distribute any dividend. They didn’t sell shares in the company, so they didn’t realize any capital gains.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So their taxable income, what is subject to the income tax, was zero or close to zero, extremely low, so that no matter the rate that you apply to that income, you are not going to be able to make billionaires pay more tax just by changing the income tax. This is why the proper way to tax the super rich is with a tax directly on their wealth.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Josh, let’s bring you in here to a two-part question here. Do you agree that wealth concentration in billionaires is a problem generally? And then more specifically, do you agree that billionaire taxation is also a problem?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh:\u003c/strong> Well, I’d like to begin with just the premise that you have to support anyone who votes for Prop 40, for the Billionaire Tax Act, has got to support — first, you have to believe that it will raise revenue, not lose revenue for the state. And I think this is one of the key points of difference between myself and Gabriel Zucman, which is that they say it will raise $100 billion for the state. We say it will lose $25 to $38 billion for this state.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And why the difference? It’s because of the losses to the state coffers that will be caused by these high-net-worth individuals who are leaving in response to the tax. The state won’t collect the wealth tax from the billionaires who have left in response to the tax, and it won’t collect any more income taxes from the billionaires who have left in response to the tax.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so Dr. Zucman and his colleagues have assumed 10% losses when they arrived at their $100 billion estimate, but going through person by person, we find that public announcements have shown that already 30% of the wealth tax base has left. Half a trillion dollars of wealth has left California. So this is gonna lose money for the state government. Those people, their wealth isn’t gonna be collected by the Billionaire Tax Act, and their income taxes will no longer be collected.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Secondly, you have to believe, if you support this proposition, that on balance the tax will be good for the people of California. And that’s a different question from whether the tax is going to raise revenue or not. I mean, even if the tax were gonna raise revenue — and to be clear, our models say that this one will not — but that revenue has to be balanced against the damage to the economy that the tax will do.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So to take an example, a policy that brings in an extra dollar of revenue for the state but destroys 100,000 jobs, that would be a bad policy because you have to believe that the well-being the state can create with an extra dollar of revenue is so great as to offset the pain from losing the job.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So the billionaires who are leaving have created tens to hundreds of thousands of jobs in California, and while those jobs won’t go away overnight, if the founders are gone, the billionaire tax will accelerate the shift of jobs to other states that we’re already seeing. And it’s not just companies already here. If the wealth tax passes, then founders will increasingly choose one of the other emerging ecosystems around the U.S., Austin, Miami, Nashville. And already we have investors saying they won’t invest in startup companies in California if the founders are in California. Notably, Mark Cuban has said that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So whether or not billionaire wealth concentration is a problem or not, whether you think that or not, that’s actually not relevant for what we should do on Prop 40. The question is, do you think it’s going to bring in money for the state? I do not think it will. And second, do you believe that on balance it will be good for the people of California? And I think given all the losses in economic activity we’re seeing here already as a result of this and what we will see if the billionaire tax passes, it will not be for the people of California.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> That’s Josh Rauh, an economist and professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. We’re also joined by Gabriel Zucman, an economist and professor at Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics, helped to develop Prop 40.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’d love to get your opinions on what you think about the tax. 866-733-6786, \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em> at kqed.org. This is \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. I’m Alexis Madrigal.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Josh, I want to stay with you here. What you’re saying is that even just the threat of this tax is causing people to leave and maybe hurting the dynamism of Silicon Valley. And at the same time, we’re experiencing this massive boom in San Francisco of AI company wealth creation and new jobs and businesses that are being created at the time. So it’s one factor, right, in the way where companies decide to locate.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Joshua Rauh:\u003c/strong> That’s correct. It’s one factor, and investors have been clear about what’s going to happen if the tax passes. You have to realize California companies, the amount of money they receive from venture capitalists from across the state, country and world is a staggering amount of money itself. It is $360 billion. That’s very comparable in a year to the amount of money that the government of California spends.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This ecosystem is fragile. We have people leaving. We have investors saying they’re not going to invest in California if this passes. And it’s interesting to consider the reason why people are saying they won’t invest in that if this passes. You know, Dr. Zucman and you in your intro were clear that this was gonna be a one-time tax. That’s how it’s pitched, but Dr. Zucman has admitted that it’s probably not going to be one time. In fact, I’ll quote from an interview he did on the Capital & Main website. He said, quote, “California could absolutely implement an annual wealth tax,” said Zucman. “This one-time tax is just the starting point of what it could be.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so now that he is admitting that, and people are starting to think, what happens if this wealth tax passes? Investors are beginning to think, wow, this could be really bad, and it could be very harmful to the economy.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The discussion has changed since the ballot proposition was made. “One time, one time, one time” kept being repeated, and now the tone of the architects has changed.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Gabriel, what do you think? On the one-time issue specifically.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriel Zucman:\u003c/strong> So, a few things. So first of all, this line of reasoning on how the tax is going to hurt the economy is, of course, a very classic argument, which makes sense in the abstract, but you have to look at the numbers. And if you look, for instance, at the flow of venture capital funding —\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I might actually cut you off here only because we’re gonna have to go to a break in a second, and I really want you to be able to get to the full set of numbers. You guys can go back and forth a little bit on this. So let me let me throw to a break.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Of course, we’re talking about Prop 40, California’s billionaire tax, with, you know, on the pro side, Gabriel Zucman, who helped design it, and Josh Rauh, who has authored a study about the potential effects of the wealth tax. Way back, more right after the break.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Airdate: Thursday, September 10, 2026 at 9am\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Acclaimed poet and essayist Claudia Rankine’s new book, “Triage,” follows the turbulent, decades long friendship between a Black woman and a nonbinary Palestinian who meet in college and invent a ritual of collapsing to the ground whenever they see each other. Over time, that act of collapse comes to hold new meaning as they reckon with wounded histories, political violence and the strain of loving someone who can also unsettle you. Blending memoir, criticism, essay and visual art, “Triage” is Rankine’s first book after her celebrated American trilogy and some of her most personal writing yet. Rankine joins us to talk about friendship, grieving, and what it means to keep acting – and relating – in a time of relentless personal and global loss.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine,\u003c/strong> poet, playwright and author, her new book is “Triage”, professor of Creative Writing at NYU; a MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Alexis Madrigal here. As you probably know, this is the first day of our membership drive, our pledge drive during this time of the year. We’re not gonna be doing One Good Things, these little things that I read, these little odes to different parts of the Bay Area every single day. However, today we are, in fact, going to do one.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This actually came from my newsletter, which is also called One Good Thing, which you can subscribe to at kqed.org/onegoodthing. And it’s about a tree in my neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This tree is monumental. I’m standing at its base, redwood bark seeming to flow down, down until it finally gets to ground, where I can’t help but see something elephantine in the way it bulges where it touches earth. I don’t have to imagine the roots. The infrastructure of this place has had to accommodate itself to this tree. The sidewalk is covered in a spongy material to prevent the inevitable cracking of concrete by root.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Strange to think that concrete, which, if you’ve ever hit a slab of it with a sledgehammer, feels adamantine and everlasting, will always yield to the redwood root. The asphalt of the road beyond the sidewalk knows, too. It’s cracked along a line that suggests the tree below.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This tree has no name that I know of, though stay tuned because I found out the tree’s name. It stands on a small side street in Berkeley near the Claremont neighborhood. Lovely area, trees abound, including a smattering of other redwoods. But none of the other redwoods are like this one, which feels out of scale for a neighborhood of single-family homes.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I’m filled with wonder and envy that someone lives with this tree in their front yard. Every day they go about their business in the understory of this remarkable living creature, forgetting their keys in the glory of creation, telling a kid to hurry if they’ll be late under the majestic branches.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I don’t know much about the tree. Must be old, but how old? Was it here in 1926, 1776? Before, could Indigenous residents have known this tree when it was a small sapling? No. In the presence of a giant like this, the brain can get scrambled. I know better.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Uplands neighborhood nearby was created in the early 20th century out of ranch land. And it seems unlikely that there were huge numbers of redwoods on or near that ranch. The house that shares the redwood’s property was built in 1906, which probably means it was planted around then. Just guessing here. Could it be just 120 years old? Guess that’s not so young.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On the outside, maybe it settled into ranch land in the decades before the subdivision. But regardless of the precise history, this redwood, as grand and majestic as it is, is a planting. It’s a co-creation of the people who have lived on that street and its own magnificent possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Somehow it feels weirder to think that someone’s lovingly tended this tree. They could not have known they’d picked the very perfect spot for a redwood. And yet they did.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This magnificent tree is not a remnant or an area of preservation, but an attempt at repair. People have worked to keep it here, despite the complexities it must introduce into life in an American house.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This tree is grown up in this neighborhood. Same as my kids.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This week, I’m gonna send out a follow-up with the tree’s name.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Welcome to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. I’m Alexis Madrigal. One thing I love about Claudia Rankine’s books, and this new book, \u003cem>Triage\u003c/em>, in particular, is that each one seems to create its own genre.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Triage\u003c/em> reads kind of like an experimental novel or long poem or an essay or a memoir. What is this thing between the two covers of the book? Without a doubt, it does what a book should do, refine and press a generous span of thinking. But it isn’t quite like anything I’ve read before.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Triage\u003c/em> is a book for confronting the self in a time of global cruelty and tragedy. In a very rough sense, it’s a novelistic book about friendship and grief and the state of the world. And this work asks, how do our own personal losses grind us into the particular shape that we use to confront the world and its endless variations of loss?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And also, maybe its author, Claudia Rankine, winner of myriad awards, a certified MacArthur genius, also an NYU professor, joins us this morning.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Welcome back to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>, Claudia.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Thank you, Alexis. It’s so good to have you.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> As we’re settling in here, I want you to maybe confront the sort of basics of this book, which has a quite complicated form. It’s quite very interesting. But our book opens with our narrator watching their old friend, referred to in the book as the theorist, deliver a lecture. And it’s the narrator’s 60th birthday. It’s a friend from college who they haven’t seen in a long time.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And during a Q&A, someone asked the theorist how they feel, given all that’s going on in the world today. You can even see them, like, doing that thing with their hands we all do. And the theorist pauses and says, “Sometimes I want to throw myself in front of a speeding car.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So this book really is responding to that feeling in the world right now. How do you see it showing up for you, that sense of too much?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Well, yeah, I think it is a moment when everything is happening and nothing is happening. And we’re caught in this sort of liminal space where we see what should be done, but we cannot do it. And it’s a strange dynamic, I think, to understand that things are happening and we have no control to stop them, things that are impossible, that you have lived your life thinking, “This is not possible,” and yet it is possible, and it is now happening, and it’s now.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> There’s a repeated line in the book which I found quite chilling: “The choices are not choices.” This sense that the political and even personal possibility for things has shrunk to the point where the choices are not choices.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> You know, I don’t know about you, but we all grew up with Anne Frank and thinking, if this ever happened, if we were ever in this place, we are very clear about what we would do.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Oh, man.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> And suddenly we are just watching disaster after disaster. There are wars, there is genocide, there’s climate change. And we’re just continuing on as if we stay quiet, it will reverse things. And I don’t think that has ever been the way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> One of the sort of wonders and the mechanism of this book for me is that in this book, the narrator comes across as a version of you. Maybe not exactly, maybe not fully, but like in the multiverse, some Rankine out there. And yet it’s really that character who’s sort of paralyzed, who is not doing the things.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So you’ve kind of taken the person that we want to identify with as, you know, oh, this is whose consciousness we’re with, and given her the difficult task of not doing the things that we wish we would do.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> I know. I think some people are disappointed. They think I’ve tricked them somehow. They’re like, “Gotcha!” But it is the dynamic I personally found myself in, where I have one idea about what is right and what my moral stance is and who I am, and then the reality is there in front of us, that there is little we can do, or at least so we think.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And then you see what’s happening in Minnesota, and you’re like, oh, okay, there are other ways.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Yeah, there was a line, I think the review in \u003cem>The Atlantic\u003c/em> pulled it out, too. It struck me as well, that people find themselves in a state where, quote, “nothing else functions but one’s grief.” And it does feel like part of this book is trying to somehow maybe get to the end of that grief, get to, what does it mean to feel it all the way, to somehow move past it?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> And move through it. And also, you know, there’s a sense that you can’t get past it. We’re in a dynamic now —\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> We’re —\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> — where there is no end. And so, you know, let’s take climate change. We, I guess, we are now, the U.S. is now reclassified as a tropical climate, which, you know, September in the 80s, you kind of believe it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So whatever the trajectory is, it’s happening. So the new question is, the new way of being is, how do you live within it? What are your responsibilities to the moment when you know that there is no end to it?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Um.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> So, and that’s, you know, that’s hard to hold in terms of not having a plan that has a solution. You need a plan, but it might not be a solution.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I mean, the theorist in this book has an answer, which is essentially sort of action first, right? That’s kind of the theorist’s answer is, well, we gotta do something. What’s the sort of narrator’s position on that position?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Well, Daenerys’ position on that position, I believe, is maybe you’re right, but am I the one to do it? And that’s the other thing. Is it our job to police the actions of others rather than to do what each of us can do to the point that we can do it?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> The phrase that kept occurring to me — there’s regular listeners of this program who will wonder why I’ve brought up many times Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish philosopher, who has this amazing line about our times, that anything can happen, but nothing can be done. And that’s sort of the state of power in the world, what he calls liquid modernity.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And that line really resonated throughout this book for me, this sense of that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’re talking with poet, playwright, and essayist Claudia Rankine about her new book, \u003cem>Triage\u003c/em>. She is, of course, also the author of the American Trilogy, including \u003cem>Citizen\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Just Us\u003c/em>, professor of creative writing at NYU and a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I want to hear from you. Can you relate to the feeling of too-muchness in the world today, or the kind of only mechanism that’s working in being your grief? How are you responding to those feelings or trying to move through them?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You can give us a call, 866-733-6786. That’s 866-733-6786. The email is forum@kqed.org. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Acclaimed poet and essayist Claudia Rankine’s new book, “Triage,” follows the turbulent, decades long friendship between a Black woman and a nonbinary Palestinian who meet in college and invent a ritual of collapsing to the ground whenever they see each other. Over time, that act of collapse comes to hold new meaning as they reckon with wounded histories, political violence and the strain of loving someone who can also unsettle you. Blending memoir, criticism, essay and visual art, “Triage” is Rankine’s first book after her celebrated American trilogy and some of her most personal writing yet. Rankine joins us to talk about friendship, grieving, and what it means to keep acting – and relating – in a time of relentless personal and global loss.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Alexis Madrigal here. As you probably know, this is the first day of our membership drive, our pledge drive during this time of the year. We’re not gonna be doing One Good Things, these little things that I read, these little odes to different parts of the Bay Area every single day. However, today we are, in fact, going to do one.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Alexis Madrigal here. As you probably know, this is the first day of our membership drive, our pledge drive during this time of the year. We’re not gonna be doing One Good Things, these little things that I read, these little odes to different parts of the Bay Area every single day. However, today we are, in fact, going to do one.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This actually came from my newsletter, which is also called One Good Thing, which you can subscribe to at kqed.org/onegoodthing. And it’s about a tree in my neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This actually came from my newsletter, which is also called One Good Thing, which you can subscribe to at kqed.org/onegoodthing. And it’s about a tree in my neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This tree is monumental. I’m standing at its base, redwood bark seeming to flow down, down until it finally gets to ground, where I can’t help but see something elephantine in the way it bulges where it touches earth. I don’t have to imagine the roots. The infrastructure of this place has had to accommodate itself to this tree. The sidewalk is covered in a spongy material to prevent the inevitable cracking of concrete by root.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This tree is monumental. I’m standing at its base, redwood bark seeming to flow down, down until it finally gets to ground, where I can’t help but see something elephantine in the way it bulges where it touches earth. I don’t have to imagine the roots. The infrastructure of this place has had to accommodate itself to this tree. The sidewalk is covered in a spongy material to prevent the inevitable cracking of concrete by root.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Strange to think that concrete, which, if you’ve ever hit a slab of it with a sledgehammer, feels adamantine and everlasting, will always yield to the redwood root. The asphalt of the road beyond the sidewalk knows, too. It’s cracked along a line that suggests the tree below.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Strange to think that concrete, which, if you’ve ever hit a slab of it with a sledgehammer, feels adamantine and everlasting, will always yield to the redwood root. The asphalt of the road beyond the sidewalk knows, too. It’s cracked along a line that suggests the tree below.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This tree has no name that I know of, though stay tuned because I found out the tree’s name. It stands on a small side street in Berkeley near the Claremont neighborhood. Lovely area, trees abound, including a smattering of other redwoods. But none of the other redwoods are like this one, which feels out of scale for a neighborhood of single-family homes.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This tree has no name that I know of, though stay tuned because I found out the tree’s name. It stands on a small side street in Berkeley near the Claremont neighborhood. Lovely area, trees abound, including a smattering of other redwoods. But none of the other redwoods are like this one, which feels out of scale for a neighborhood of single-family homes.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I’m filled with wonder and envy that someone lives with this tree in their front yard. Every day they go about their business in the understory of this remarkable living creature, forgetting their keys in the glory of creation, telling a kid to hurry if they’ll be late under the majestic branches.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I’m filled with wonder and envy that someone lives with this tree in their front yard. Every day they go about their business in the understory of this remarkable living creature, forgetting their keys in the glory of creation, telling a kid to hurry if they’ll be late under the majestic branches.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I don’t know much about the tree. Must be old, but how old? Was it here in 1926, 1776? Before, could Indigenous residents have known this tree when it was a small sapling? No. In the presence of a giant like this, the brain can get scrambled. I know better.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I don’t know much about the tree. Must be old, but how old? Was it here in 1926, 1776? Before, could Indigenous residents have known this tree when it was a small sapling? No. In the presence of a giant like this, the brain can get scrambled. I know better.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The Uplands neighborhood nearby was created in the early 20th century out of ranch land. And it seems unlikely that there were huge numbers of redwoods on or near that ranch. The house that shares the redwood’s property was built in 1906, which probably means it was planted around then. Just guessing here. Could it be just 120 years old? Guess that’s not so young.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The Uplands neighborhood nearby was created in the early 20th century out of ranch land. And it seems unlikely that there were huge numbers of redwoods on or near that ranch. The house that shares the redwood’s property was built in 1906, which probably means it was planted around then. Just guessing here. Could it be just 120 years old? Guess that’s not so young.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>On the outside, maybe it settled into ranch land in the decades before the subdivision. But regardless of the precise history, this redwood, as grand and majestic as it is, is a planting. It’s a co-creation of the people who have lived on that street and its own magnificent possibilities.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>On the outside, maybe it settled into ranch land in the decades before the subdivision. But regardless of the precise history, this redwood, as grand and majestic as it is, is a planting. It’s a co-creation of the people who have lived on that street and its own magnificent possibilities.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Somehow it feels weirder to think that someone’s lovingly tended this tree. They could not have known they’d picked the very perfect spot for a redwood. And yet they did.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Somehow it feels weirder to think that someone’s lovingly tended this tree. They could not have known they’d picked the very perfect spot for a redwood. And yet they did.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This magnificent tree is not a remnant or an area of preservation, but an attempt at repair. People have worked to keep it here, despite the complexities it must introduce into life in an American house.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This magnificent tree is not a remnant or an area of preservation, but an attempt at repair. People have worked to keep it here, despite the complexities it must introduce into life in an American house.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This tree is grown up in this neighborhood. Same as my kids.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This week, I’m gonna send out a follow-up with the tree’s name.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Welcome to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. I’m Alexis Madrigal. One thing I love about Claudia Rankine’s books, and this new book, \u003cem>Triage\u003c/em>, in particular, is that each one seems to create its own genre.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Triage\u003c/em> reads kind of like an experimental novel or long poem or an essay or a memoir. What is this thing between the two covers of the book? Without a doubt, it does what a book should do, refine and press a generous span of thinking. But it isn’t quite like anything I’ve read before.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Triage\u003c/em> reads kind of like an experimental novel or long poem or an essay or a memoir. What is this thing between the two covers of the book? Without a doubt, it does what a book should do, refine and press a generous span of thinking. But it isn’t quite like anything I’ve read before.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Triage\u003c/em> is a book for confronting the self in a time of global cruelty and tragedy. In a very rough sense, it’s a novelistic book about friendship and grief and the state of the world. And this work asks, how do our own personal losses grind us into the particular shape that we use to confront the world and its endless variations of loss?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Triage\u003c/em> is a book for confronting the self in a time of global cruelty and tragedy. In a very rough sense, it’s a novelistic book about friendship and grief and the state of the world. And this work asks, how do our own personal losses grind us into the particular shape that we use to confront the world and its endless variations of loss?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And also, maybe its author, Claudia Rankine, winner of myriad awards, a certified MacArthur genius, also an NYU professor, joins us this morning.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And also, maybe its author, Claudia Rankine, winner of myriad awards, a certified MacArthur genius, also an NYU professor, joins us this morning.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Welcome back to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>, Claudia.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Thank you, Alexis. It’s so good to have you.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Thank you, Alexis. It’s so good to have you.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> As we’re settling in here, I want you to maybe confront the sort of basics of this book, which has a quite complicated form. It’s quite very interesting. But our book opens with our narrator watching their old friend, referred to in the book as the theorist, deliver a lecture. And it’s the narrator’s 60th birthday. It’s a friend from college who they haven’t seen in a long time.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> As we’re settling in here, I want you to maybe confront the sort of basics of this book, which has a quite complicated form. It’s quite very interesting. But our book opens with our narrator watching their old friend, referred to in the book as the theorist, deliver a lecture. And it’s the narrator’s 60th birthday. It’s a friend from college who they haven’t seen in a long time.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And during a Q&A, someone asked the theorist how they feel, given all that’s going on in the world today. You can even see them, like, doing that thing with their hands we all do. And the theorist pauses and says, “Sometimes I want to throw myself in front of a speeding car.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And during a Q&A, someone asked the theorist how they feel, given all that’s going on in the world today. You can even see them, like, doing that thing with their hands we all do. And the theorist pauses and says, “Sometimes I want to throw myself in front of a speeding car.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So this book really is responding to that feeling in the world right now. How do you see it showing up for you, that sense of too much?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So this book really is responding to that feeling in the world right now. How do you see it showing up for you, that sense of too much?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Well, yeah, I think it is a moment when everything is happening and nothing is happening. And we’re caught in this sort of liminal space where we see what should be done, but we cannot do it. And it’s a strange dynamic, I think, to understand that things are happening and we have no control to stop them, things that are impossible, that you have lived your life thinking, “This is not possible,” and yet it is possible, and it is now happening, and it’s now.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Well, yeah, I think it is a moment when everything is happening and nothing is happening. And we’re caught in this sort of liminal space where we see what should be done, but we cannot do it. And it’s a strange dynamic, I think, to understand that things are happening and we have no control to stop them, things that are impossible, that you have lived your life thinking, “This is not possible,” and yet it is possible, and it is now happening, and it’s now.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> There’s a repeated line in the book which I found quite chilling: “The choices are not choices.” This sense that the political and even personal possibility for things has shrunk to the point where the choices are not choices.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> There’s a repeated line in the book which I found quite chilling: “The choices are not choices.” This sense that the political and even personal possibility for things has shrunk to the point where the choices are not choices.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> You know, I don’t know about you, but we all grew up with Anne Frank and thinking, if this ever happened, if we were ever in this place, we are very clear about what we would do.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> You know, I don’t know about you, but we all grew up with Anne Frank and thinking, if this ever happened, if we were ever in this place, we are very clear about what we would do.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Oh, man.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> And suddenly we are just watching disaster after disaster. There are wars, there is genocide, there’s climate change. And we’re just continuing on as if we stay quiet, it will reverse things. And I don’t think that has ever been the way.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> And suddenly we are just watching disaster after disaster. There are wars, there is genocide, there’s climate change. And we’re just continuing on as if we stay quiet, it will reverse things. And I don’t think that has ever been the way.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> One of the sort of wonders and the mechanism of this book for me is that in this book, the narrator comes across as a version of you. Maybe not exactly, maybe not fully, but like in the multiverse, some Rankine out there. And yet it’s really that character who’s sort of paralyzed, who is not doing the things.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> One of the sort of wonders and the mechanism of this book for me is that in this book, the narrator comes across as a version of you. Maybe not exactly, maybe not fully, but like in the multiverse, some Rankine out there. And yet it’s really that character who’s sort of paralyzed, who is not doing the things.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So you’ve kind of taken the person that we want to identify with as, you know, oh, this is whose consciousness we’re with, and given her the difficult task of not doing the things that we wish we would do.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> I know. I think some people are disappointed. They think I’ve tricked them somehow. They’re like, “Gotcha!” But it is the dynamic I personally found myself in, where I have one idea about what is right and what my moral stance is and who I am, and then the reality is there in front of us, that there is little we can do, or at least so we think.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> I know. I think some people are disappointed. They think I’ve tricked them somehow. They’re like, “Gotcha!” But it is the dynamic I personally found myself in, where I have one idea about what is right and what my moral stance is and who I am, and then the reality is there in front of us, that there is little we can do, or at least so we think.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And then you see what’s happening in Minnesota, and you’re like, oh, okay, there are other ways.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Yeah, there was a line, I think the review in \u003cem>The Atlantic\u003c/em> pulled it out, too. It struck me as well, that people find themselves in a state where, quote, “nothing else functions but one’s grief.” And it does feel like part of this book is trying to somehow maybe get to the end of that grief, get to, what does it mean to feel it all the way, to somehow move past it?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> And move through it. And also, you know, there’s a sense that you can’t get past it. We’re in a dynamic now —\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> And move through it. And also, you know, there’s a sense that you can’t get past it. We’re in a dynamic now —\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> We’re —\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> — where there is no end. And so, you know, let’s take climate change. We, I guess, we are now, the U.S. is now reclassified as a tropical climate, which, you know, September in the 80s, you kind of believe it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> — where there is no end. And so, you know, let’s take climate change. We, I guess, we are now, the U.S. is now reclassified as a tropical climate, which, you know, September in the 80s, you kind of believe it.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So whatever the trajectory is, it’s happening. So the new question is, the new way of being is, how do you live within it? What are your responsibilities to the moment when you know that there is no end to it?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So whatever the trajectory is, it’s happening. So the new question is, the new way of being is, how do you live within it? What are your responsibilities to the moment when you know that there is no end to it?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Um.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> So, and that’s, you know, that’s hard to hold in terms of not having a plan that has a solution. You need a plan, but it might not be a solution.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I mean, the theorist in this book has an answer, which is essentially sort of action first, right? That’s kind of the theorist’s answer is, well, we gotta do something. What’s the sort of narrator’s position on that position?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Well, Daenerys’ position on that position, I believe, is maybe you’re right, but am I the one to do it? And that’s the other thing. Is it our job to police the actions of others rather than to do what each of us can do to the point that we can do it?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> The phrase that kept occurring to me — there’s regular listeners of this program who will wonder why I’ve brought up many times Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish philosopher, who has this amazing line about our times, that anything can happen, but nothing can be done. And that’s sort of the state of power in the world, what he calls liquid modernity.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> The phrase that kept occurring to me — there’s regular listeners of this program who will wonder why I’ve brought up many times Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish philosopher, who has this amazing line about our times, that anything can happen, but nothing can be done. And that’s sort of the state of power in the world, what he calls liquid modernity.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And that line really resonated throughout this book for me, this sense of that.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We’re talking with poet, playwright, and essayist Claudia Rankine about her new book, \u003cem>Triage\u003c/em>. She is, of course, also the author of the American Trilogy, including \u003cem>Citizen\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Just Us\u003c/em>, professor of creative writing at NYU and a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We’re talking with poet, playwright, and essayist Claudia Rankine about her new book, \u003cem>Triage\u003c/em>. She is, of course, also the author of the American Trilogy, including \u003cem>Citizen\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Just Us\u003c/em>, professor of creative writing at NYU and a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I want to hear from you. Can you relate to the feeling of too-muchness in the world today, or the kind of only mechanism that’s working in being your grief? How are you responding to those feelings or trying to move through them?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I want to hear from you. Can you relate to the feeling of too-muchness in the world today, or the kind of only mechanism that’s working in being your grief? How are you responding to those feelings or trying to move through them?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>You can give us a call, 866-733-6786. That’s 866-733-6786. The email is forum@kqed.org. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>You can give us a call, 866-733-6786. That’s 866-733-6786. The email is forum@kqed.org. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.\u003c/p>\n"
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Airdate: Thursday, September 10, 2026 at 9am\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Acclaimed poet and essayist Claudia Rankine’s new book, “Triage,” follows the turbulent, decades long friendship between a Black woman and a nonbinary Palestinian who meet in college and invent a ritual of collapsing to the ground whenever they see each other. Over time, that act of collapse comes to hold new meaning as they reckon with wounded histories, political violence and the strain of loving someone who can also unsettle you. Blending memoir, criticism, essay and visual art, “Triage” is Rankine’s first book after her celebrated American trilogy and some of her most personal writing yet. Rankine joins us to talk about friendship, grieving, and what it means to keep acting – and relating – in a time of relentless personal and global loss.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine,\u003c/strong> poet, playwright and author, her new book is “Triage”, professor of Creative Writing at NYU; a MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Alexis Madrigal here. As you probably know, this is the first day of our membership drive, our pledge drive during this time of the year. We’re not gonna be doing One Good Things, these little things that I read, these little odes to different parts of the Bay Area every single day. However, today we are, in fact, going to do one.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This actually came from my newsletter, which is also called One Good Thing, which you can subscribe to at kqed.org/onegoodthing. And it’s about a tree in my neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This tree is monumental. I’m standing at its base, redwood bark seeming to flow down, down until it finally gets to ground, where I can’t help but see something elephantine in the way it bulges where it touches earth. I don’t have to imagine the roots. The infrastructure of this place has had to accommodate itself to this tree. The sidewalk is covered in a spongy material to prevent the inevitable cracking of concrete by root.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Strange to think that concrete, which, if you’ve ever hit a slab of it with a sledgehammer, feels adamantine and everlasting, will always yield to the redwood root. The asphalt of the road beyond the sidewalk knows, too. It’s cracked along a line that suggests the tree below.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This tree has no name that I know of, though stay tuned because I found out the tree’s name. It stands on a small side street in Berkeley near the Claremont neighborhood. Lovely area, trees abound, including a smattering of other redwoods. But none of the other redwoods are like this one, which feels out of scale for a neighborhood of single-family homes.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I’m filled with wonder and envy that someone lives with this tree in their front yard. Every day they go about their business in the understory of this remarkable living creature, forgetting their keys in the glory of creation, telling a kid to hurry if they’ll be late under the majestic branches.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I don’t know much about the tree. Must be old, but how old? Was it here in 1926, 1776? Before, could Indigenous residents have known this tree when it was a small sapling? No. In the presence of a giant like this, the brain can get scrambled. I know better.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Uplands neighborhood nearby was created in the early 20th century out of ranch land. And it seems unlikely that there were huge numbers of redwoods on or near that ranch. The house that shares the redwood’s property was built in 1906, which probably means it was planted around then. Just guessing here. Could it be just 120 years old? Guess that’s not so young.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On the outside, maybe it settled into ranch land in the decades before the subdivision. But regardless of the precise history, this redwood, as grand and majestic as it is, is a planting. It’s a co-creation of the people who have lived on that street and its own magnificent possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Somehow it feels weirder to think that someone’s lovingly tended this tree. They could not have known they’d picked the very perfect spot for a redwood. And yet they did.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This magnificent tree is not a remnant or an area of preservation, but an attempt at repair. People have worked to keep it here, despite the complexities it must introduce into life in an American house.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This tree is grown up in this neighborhood. Same as my kids.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This week, I’m gonna send out a follow-up with the tree’s name.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Welcome to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. I’m Alexis Madrigal. One thing I love about Claudia Rankine’s books, and this new book, \u003cem>Triage\u003c/em>, in particular, is that each one seems to create its own genre.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Triage\u003c/em> reads kind of like an experimental novel or long poem or an essay or a memoir. What is this thing between the two covers of the book? Without a doubt, it does what a book should do, refine and press a generous span of thinking. But it isn’t quite like anything I’ve read before.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Triage\u003c/em> is a book for confronting the self in a time of global cruelty and tragedy. In a very rough sense, it’s a novelistic book about friendship and grief and the state of the world. And this work asks, how do our own personal losses grind us into the particular shape that we use to confront the world and its endless variations of loss?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And also, maybe its author, Claudia Rankine, winner of myriad awards, a certified MacArthur genius, also an NYU professor, joins us this morning.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Welcome back to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>, Claudia.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Thank you, Alexis. It’s so good to have you.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> As we’re settling in here, I want you to maybe confront the sort of basics of this book, which has a quite complicated form. It’s quite very interesting. But our book opens with our narrator watching their old friend, referred to in the book as the theorist, deliver a lecture. And it’s the narrator’s 60th birthday. It’s a friend from college who they haven’t seen in a long time.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And during a Q&A, someone asked the theorist how they feel, given all that’s going on in the world today. You can even see them, like, doing that thing with their hands we all do. And the theorist pauses and says, “Sometimes I want to throw myself in front of a speeding car.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So this book really is responding to that feeling in the world right now. How do you see it showing up for you, that sense of too much?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Well, yeah, I think it is a moment when everything is happening and nothing is happening. And we’re caught in this sort of liminal space where we see what should be done, but we cannot do it. And it’s a strange dynamic, I think, to understand that things are happening and we have no control to stop them, things that are impossible, that you have lived your life thinking, “This is not possible,” and yet it is possible, and it is now happening, and it’s now.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> There’s a repeated line in the book which I found quite chilling: “The choices are not choices.” This sense that the political and even personal possibility for things has shrunk to the point where the choices are not choices.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> You know, I don’t know about you, but we all grew up with Anne Frank and thinking, if this ever happened, if we were ever in this place, we are very clear about what we would do.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Oh, man.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> And suddenly we are just watching disaster after disaster. There are wars, there is genocide, there’s climate change. And we’re just continuing on as if we stay quiet, it will reverse things. And I don’t think that has ever been the way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> One of the sort of wonders and the mechanism of this book for me is that in this book, the narrator comes across as a version of you. Maybe not exactly, maybe not fully, but like in the multiverse, some Rankine out there. And yet it’s really that character who’s sort of paralyzed, who is not doing the things.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So you’ve kind of taken the person that we want to identify with as, you know, oh, this is whose consciousness we’re with, and given her the difficult task of not doing the things that we wish we would do.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> I know. I think some people are disappointed. They think I’ve tricked them somehow. They’re like, “Gotcha!” But it is the dynamic I personally found myself in, where I have one idea about what is right and what my moral stance is and who I am, and then the reality is there in front of us, that there is little we can do, or at least so we think.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And then you see what’s happening in Minnesota, and you’re like, oh, okay, there are other ways.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Yeah, there was a line, I think the review in \u003cem>The Atlantic\u003c/em> pulled it out, too. It struck me as well, that people find themselves in a state where, quote, “nothing else functions but one’s grief.” And it does feel like part of this book is trying to somehow maybe get to the end of that grief, get to, what does it mean to feel it all the way, to somehow move past it?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> And move through it. And also, you know, there’s a sense that you can’t get past it. We’re in a dynamic now —\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> We’re —\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> — where there is no end. And so, you know, let’s take climate change. We, I guess, we are now, the U.S. is now reclassified as a tropical climate, which, you know, September in the 80s, you kind of believe it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So whatever the trajectory is, it’s happening. So the new question is, the new way of being is, how do you live within it? What are your responsibilities to the moment when you know that there is no end to it?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> Um.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> So, and that’s, you know, that’s hard to hold in terms of not having a plan that has a solution. You need a plan, but it might not be a solution.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> I mean, the theorist in this book has an answer, which is essentially sort of action first, right? That’s kind of the theorist’s answer is, well, we gotta do something. What’s the sort of narrator’s position on that position?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Claudia Rankine:\u003c/strong> Well, Daenerys’ position on that position, I believe, is maybe you’re right, but am I the one to do it? And that’s the other thing. Is it our job to police the actions of others rather than to do what each of us can do to the point that we can do it?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Madrigal:\u003c/strong> The phrase that kept occurring to me — there’s regular listeners of this program who will wonder why I’ve brought up many times Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish philosopher, who has this amazing line about our times, that anything can happen, but nothing can be done. And that’s sort of the state of power in the world, what he calls liquid modernity.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And that line really resonated throughout this book for me, this sense of that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’re talking with poet, playwright, and essayist Claudia Rankine about her new book, \u003cem>Triage\u003c/em>. She is, of course, also the author of the American Trilogy, including \u003cem>Citizen\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Just Us\u003c/em>, professor of creative writing at NYU and a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I want to hear from you. Can you relate to the feeling of too-muchness in the world today, or the kind of only mechanism that’s working in being your grief? How are you responding to those feelings or trying to move through them?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You can give us a call, 866-733-6786. That’s 866-733-6786. The email is forum@kqed.org. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Airdate: Friday, September 4, 2026 at 9am\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Fall is one of the most exciting times of year for arts and culture. To celebrate the start of the season, we’ve invited KQED’s Arts & Culture team to share their picks for the Bay Area’s best concerts, theater, exhibitions and local festivals. From major headliners and Broadway hits to neighborhood gatherings, local artists and up-and-coming gems, we’ll talk about what stands out on this fall’s calendar. We’ll also take the temperature of the Bay Area arts scene – what’s changing, what’s challenging and what’s giving our critics plenty to look forward to.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Gabe Meline,\u003c/strong> senior editor, KQED Arts & Culture\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Sarah Hotchkiss,\u003c/strong> senior editor, KQED Arts & Culture\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Nastia Voynovskaya,\u003c/strong> editor and reporter, KQED Arts\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>David John Chávez,\u003c/strong> theatre critic, KQED\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n",
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"content": "\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Airdate: Tuesday, August 25, 2026 at 10 am\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz,\u003c/strong> affiliated lecturer, Cambridge University; author, \u003cem>Solving Procrastination The Science of Why We Put Things Off and How to (Finally!) Stop\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> Welcome to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll dig into that after the break. Stay with us. I’m Mina Kim. This is \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> Welcome to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. 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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> Welcome to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. 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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Airdate: Tuesday, August 25, 2026 at 10 am\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz,\u003c/strong> affiliated lecturer, Cambridge University; author, \u003cem>Solving Procrastination The Science of Why We Put Things Off and How to (Finally!) Stop\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> Welcome to \u003cem>Forum\u003c/em>. 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Itamar Shatz:\u003c/strong> 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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mina Kim:\u003c/strong> We’re talking with Itamar Shatz, a researcher and lecturer at Cambridge University, about the psychology behind why we procrastinate. 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"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9pm-10pm, TUE-FRI 1am-2am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_world_service",
"meta": {
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"source": "BBC World Service"
},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/BBC-World-Service-p455581/",
"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The California Report",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
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}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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}
},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/commonwealth-club-of-california-podcast/id976334034?mt=2",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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},
"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"here-and-now": {
"id": "here-and-now",
"title": "Here & Now",
"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"order": 15
},
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
"meta": {
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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