KQED's Forum

Top oil and gas executives from Chevron, ExxonMobile, BP America and Shell will testify Thursday before a house committee examining the fossil fuel industry’s role in promoting climate disinformation. The probe, which House Democrats plan to model on the Big Tobacco hearings of the 1990s, will examine whether Big Oil has misled Americans about how fossil fuels have contributed to climate change and whether those companies can be held accountable. We’ll preview the hearing and also hear about efforts to hold responsible parties in the oil spill in Southern CA earlier this month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

San Jose’s food scene has long flown under the radar. It’s overshadowed by the established culinary reputations of its San Francisco and Oakland neighbors and the city suffers from its association with frequently derided tech culture. But KQED food editor Luke Tsai says he’d rather eat in San Jose than almost anywhere else in the Bay Area. Tsai says San Jose’s robust immigrant communities have formed a thriving and diverse dining experience that deserves more time in the spotlight. Tsai joins us to talk more about the San Jose food scene and some of his favorite restaurants in the city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sonoma County has seen a 100-year flood, a historic drought and six major wildfires that have left death and destruction in their wake, and subjected residents to months of bad air days and routine power shut-offs -- just in the last four years. What does living with chronic catastrophes like these do to people? How does it affect their minds, bodies and spirits? The four-part podcast, “Chronic Catastrophe,” led by journalism students at Santa Rosa Junior College, takes up that question, interviewing experts and local residents about the real impacts of climate change on people’s lives. We’ll talk with the podcast’s producers about the series and their own personal experiences coping through “chronic catastrophe.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Judging is not for the faint of heart," writes Judge LaDoris Cordell in her new memoir "Her Honor." Over two decades, as the first Black female jurist to sit on a superior court in Northern California, Cordell oversaw thousands of civil and criminal cases, many of which laid bare for her the racial biases and other structural flaws that infect the legal system. We'll talk about her experiences on the bench and her proposals to reform how justice is administered in U.S. courts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a flood of criticism from parents, three members of the San Francisco Board of Education are facing recall in a special election set for Feb. 15. Recall supporters accused the board members of mismanaging school re-openings during the pandemic, misplacing energy on renaming schools and changing the admissions process for Lowell High School, the elite magnet school, and being ill-prepared to steward the district’s finances amid a looming $116 million budget deficit. We’ll discuss what’s next for the school board. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's hard to talk about death. And the COVID-19 pandemic has made those conversations even harder, as families have grappled with the sudden illness of loved ones and hospital protocols have shifted those freighted interactions to Zoom. We’ll talk about how to start conversations about end-of-life care, post-mortem wishes and estate planning. And we want to hear from you: Has the pandemic inspired you to make an end-of-life plan? What advice do you need to have an effective conversation about death with your loved ones? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When he founded the Internet Archive 25 years ago, Brewster Kahle ambitiously set out to create a modern-day library that would “create a permanent memory for the Web that can be leveraged to make a new Global Mind.” Housed in a former church on Funston Street in San Francisco, the archive has amassed 70 million gigabytes of data that includes 65 million books, texts, movies, audio files, and images. Its Wayback Machine has saved more than 653 billion web pages and counting. While Kahle’s ideals have stayed steady, the internet has radically changed. We’ll talk with Kahle and a panel of experts about what the internet is, could be and should be.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bay Area was hit with historic levels of rain on Sunday, causing massive flooding in Marin and power outages for close to 150,000 households. We'll get an update on the damage caused and talk about whether this extreme weather may be the new normal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every year about 500,000 Americans who give birth experience anxiety, guilt and insomnia after their baby is born -- and some are even suicidal. The postpartum mental health care they receive varies greatly. Mother and Baby Units are considered the gold standard of inpatient psychiatric care for new mothers in England and several other countries, but none exist in the U.S., despite mental health issues being one of the leading causes of maternal death. We’ll look at the differences in postpartum mental health care in the U.S. and the U.K, and learn about California’s first inpatient perinatal psychiatry unit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hundreds of thousands of workers in industries ranging from health care to coal mining are on strike, in a massive wave of labor actions being dubbed “Striketober”. But even off the picket lines there may be quieter indicators of worker rebellion. Employees are quitting at record rates and employers are struggling to find workers, even after hiking up wages. To former Labor Secretary and UC Berkeley Professor Robert Reich, these are signs that American workers may finally have the bargaining power to push back against low wages, long hours and bad working conditions. “You might say workers have declared a national general strike until they get better pay and improved working conditions” he wrote in an opinion piece for The Guardian.  We’ll talk to Robert Reich about this moment and the future of labor.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices