KQED's Forum

2019 was a banner year for diversity in film, according to a new study, but the list of nominees for this Sunday's Academy Awards paints a different picture. Five years after the #OscarsSoWhite campaign called out the Oscars' lack of diversity and ushered in some positive changes, the Academy is back to a nearly all-white pool of nominees for acting and its "Best Director" category features all male nominees. We'll recap the highlights of this year's ceremony and also consider how the Academy can better reflect the strides being made by women and people of color in film.

About a quarter of the other kids New York Times columnist Nick Kristof rode the bus with when he was growing up are now dead from drugs, suicide, alcohol, obesity, reckless accidents and other pathologies. Kristof and his spouse, writer Sheryl WuDunn, tell the stories of several of his former classmates from their rural pocket of Oregon in their new book, "Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope." The book examines the structural causes behind the personal struggles of the working poor and offers policy solutions.

A self-described "Chinese American revolutionary feminist," poet Nellie Wong did not always envision herself as a writer or an activist. It was during her 30s, when Wong enrolled in San Francisco State University, that she says her "world opened" to creative writing, ethnic studies classes and the Freedom Socialist Party. Those experiences sparked a new sense of purpose in her life that she actively carries on today at age 85. As part of Forum's First Person series, which profiles Bay Area figures who make the region unique, we'll talk to Wong about her life, poetry and experience fighting for social change.

China continues its battle to contain the deadly coronavirus. Hubei province, at the center of the outbreak, has a shortage of hospital beds despite building two hospitals. Officials have disabled elevators in apartment buildings to discourage residents from going out. Meanwhile, state authorities clamp down on negative news, and the Chinese people themselves grow increasingly frustrated with the government's response. We discuss the implications of the coronavirus crisis for China.

As high housing costs continue crippling Bay Area residents, demands are growing for more affordable housing. The challenge of providing housing for low-income people is a decades-long struggle that has only worsened because of higher construction costs, less government funding and more people in need. Forum checks in with experts about how the affordability housing crisis reached this boiling point and what what can be done to alleviate it.

Journalist and Salon.com founder David Talbot has spent his career writing about others, covering topics such as the Kennedy years and the counterculture history of San Francisco. Now, after having suffered a massive stroke in November of 2017, Talbot is writing about himself. In his new book, "Between Heaven & Hell: The Story of My Stroke," Talbot recounts the stroke that left him with lasting physical effects, changed his perspective and gave him a front row seat to the complexities that define America’s healthcare system. He joins us to talk about his experience.

In her mid-20s, writer Anna Wiener moved to San Francisco to work for a data analytics start-up, joining what she calls her generation's gold rush. As a feminist, she struggled against Silicon Valley's male-dominated culture, finding herself "in a position of ceaseless, professionalized deference to the male ego." She joins Forum to share her experiences in the tech start-up world and to discuss her new memoir "Uncanny Valley."

President Trump delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday, which comes ahead of a Senate vote on his impeachment trial and after Gallup released a new poll showing Trump's job approval rating at 49 percent — a personal best. We'll get analysis and reaction to the speech.

One of the busiest sections of San Francisco's Market Street is now car-free. Nearly a week ago, after years of planning, city officials closed a 2-mile downtown stretch of Market Street to private vehicles, including Ubers and Lyfts.

State Sen. Wiener introduced new legislation on Monday to make PG&E a publicly owned utility. The bill would employ eminent domain to seize control, forcing PG&E shareholders to sell their shares to the state of California. We'll talk to Wiener about his proposed plan, which is already drawing protests from PG&E's largest union, and about what's next after the Senate last week failed to pass his housing bill, SB50, for the third time.