Alexis Madrigal, Moderator
Journalist and Co-host, KQED's Forum , KQED
Alexis Madrigal is co-host of KQED’s long-running public affairs radio program Forum. He is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic, where he served as a staff writer from 2017-2021. His coverage of the pandemic for The Atlantic led him to co-found and lead the COVID Tracking Project, a 400-person, volunteer-driven initiative to compile and publish data about the outbreak. The Project has been cited in work by dozens of major newsrooms and used by both the Trump and Biden administrations.
Prior to working at The Atlantic, Madrigal served as editor-in-chief for Univision’s Fusion from 2014‑17, where he launched their Bay Area bureau, made the television show Real Future, and the podcast Containers. He was a contributor to Fresh Air between 2014-15, where he produced essays about technology and culture, and, in his first stint at The Atlantic, served as a senior editor from 2010 to 2014. He also covered science and energy for Wired.com from 2007-10.
Alexis has appeared regularly as a commentator on NPR, Radiolab, and 99 Percent Invisible. He is the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology (2011) and is working on a book about Oakland and the Bay Area's revolutionary ideas. He has been a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Information School and UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Technology, Science, and Medicine as well as an affiliate with Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.