Cascade PBS

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Channel • 7 Shows

History

History

Updated weekly
Arts

Arts

Updated weekly
News

News

Updated 11/08/2025
Natural Sciences

Natural Sciences

Updated weekly
Society & Culture

Society & Culture

Series
Politics

Politics

Monthly
News

News

Updated weekly

25/01/2022

Why D.B. Cooper Won’t Disappear

A closer examination — with more theories — of the case of the world’s most famous mile-high bandit. On the afternoon of Nov. 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a Seattle-bound 727 in Portland, with plans to pull off what would become a historic heist. Later that night, the man leapt from the plane with $200,000 in hand and, presumably, a parachute on his back. He was never heard from again. Yet the story of that high-flying crime has been told innumerable times, turning the man who became known as D.B. Cooper into a kind of folk hero. Now, 50 years later, the questions surrounding the fate of the polite hijacker who claimed to carry a bomb onto a Northwest Orient flight have led to a bigger question: Why are we so fascinated with D.B. Cooper? It is a question that host Knute Berger touched on in an episode of his Mossback’s Northwest video series late last year, but there is much more to discuss. For this inaugural episode of the Mossback podcast, Berger and co-host Sara Bernard go deeper into the cult of personality that arose in D.B. Cooper’s wake. They discuss the rise of midair hijackings, the cultural climate that likely made the heist so irresistible to a broad swath of Americans and what the tale of D.B. Cooper can tell us about our own fractured culture. Before listening, we suggest you watch the original Mossback's Northwest episode about D.B. Cooper here. --- Credits Hosts: Sara Bernard, Knute Berger Editorial assistance: Mason Bryan Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

25/01/2022

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31 min
TRAILER

Introducing the Mossback podcast!

Mossback is the companion podcast to the popular Mossback’s Northwest video series that airs on KCTS 9. The Mossback podcast digs deeper into the topics that fans want to know more about from the current season of Mossback’s Northwest. Hosted by Sara Bernard, each episode of this series will feature an interview with Mossback, Knute Berger, about one episode of the video series. The podcasts will provide stories and factoids that were left on the cutting room floor, along with critical analysis from Berger and a greater context that will stitch each topic into the long, storied history of the Pacific Northwest. In this preview teaser, Bernard and Berger chat about the origins and aims of their new venture. --- Credits Hosts: Sara Bernard, Knute Berger Editorial assistance: Mason Bryan Executive Producer: Mark Baumgarten

Trailer

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5 min
SEASON 1 TRAILER

Introducing the Black Arts Legacies podcast!

Coming June 1, 2022 When Black artists talk about why they chose to build a career in Seattle, several places come up over and over. Each is regarded with deep love and passion. And each place is full of stories that deserve telling. That is why Crosscut is producing a podcast devoted to those places as part of Black Arts Legacies, a major multimedia project featuring profiles, original photography, and videos all about Black arts and artists in Seattle. Hosted by Brooklyn Jamerson-Flowers, each episode of the podcast will explore the history and ongoing impact of a Black art spaces in Seattle. The stories of each space will be built around the voices of the artists who claim these places as critical to their development and experts who understand their deep history. “It is the places that have helped community come together when no one else could,” CD Forum executive director Sharon Nyree Williams said. “Places that have allowed for marginalized groups to come together and tear down the walls of not being your authentic self.” So, which places? You will hear about Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, The James and Janie Washington Foundation, the Northwest African American Museum, and Black Arts West. The podcast launches, along with the rest of the project, on June 1, with a new release every week in June. Subscribe now.

S1 Trailer

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2 min
24/04/2024

Behind the Scenes of the Mossback Podcast

Producer Sara Bernard offers a peek into how the moss is made and teases what lies in wait for listeners in the podcast’s fifth season. Mossback’s back! The beloved video series has returned, and host Knute Berger continues to explore Pacific Northwest history. The fifth season of the companion podcast that Knute co-hosts with Stephen Hegg is back, too. A couple of episodes are already out – about deadly avalanches and the effort to cover up a Boeing plant during WWII. There’s a Northwest Reports connection, too: Host Sara Bernard has been producing this latest season of the podcast. In this episode of Northwest Reports, host Maleeha Syed catches up with Sara to get a behind-the-scenes peek at how this season is shaping up. The two talk about the insight Sara got into PNW history; her work to bring the show to life through audio; and what it was like to try clam nectar for the podcast. Listen to the fifth season of the Mossback podcast here. --- Credits Host/Producer: Maleeha Syed and Isaac Kaplan-Woolner Reporter: Sara Bernard Story editor: Ryan Famuliner Executive producer: Sarah Menzies --- If you would like to support Cascade PBS, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Cascade PBS.

24/04/2024

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19 min
03/06/2024

The Past and Future of American Democracy

In a live podcast taping, historian Heather Cox Richardson debates the nation's founding and the state of democracy ahead of the 2024 election. Historian Heather Cox Richardson, author of Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, points out a central tension in American history: The founding fathers penned the idea of equality before the law, but as white male property owners, they could always have meant to exclude some people from participating in their new government. As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, Richardson got on stage to dig into this tension with Celeste Headlee, host of Slate’s  Hear Me Out podcast. The two debated the founders’ intentions, the country’s consistent struggle to live up to its ideals and how this fraught historical context impacts the current state of American democracy. In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Headlee and Richardson discuss the American story and the American dream; how some of these narratives help drive the MAGA movement; the bitter war of ideas taking place in our country and what gives each of them hope despite it all. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2024. --- Credits Host: Paris Jackson Producer: Isaac Kaplan-Woolner Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd --- If you would like to support Cascade PBS, go to cascadepbs.org. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Cascade PBS.

03/06/2024

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45 min
02/06/2025

Missed the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival? Listen here

Well, that’s a wrap! The 2025 Cascade PBS Ideas Festival took place in downtown Seattle on May 31. But the event’s thoughtful conversations, lively debates and incisive commentary are all coming soon to your podcast feeds. To kick off this season of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, host Paris Jackson catches up once more with events director Jake Newman to discuss what’s on tap for this year. We can expect a few returning media partners, including The Journal, but this time host Ryan Knutson takes the stage with travel guru Rick Steves. Plus, Criminal host Phoebe Judge and guest Amanda Knox will talk about life after acquittal; Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson will discuss their headline-grabbing book on President Biden with Mike Pesca from The Gist; and Latif Nasser, host of Radiolab, will join forces with Harvard historian Rebecca Lemov to dig into the history of brainwashing. All that and much more is on its way. A new episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast airs every Monday beginning June 9. --- Credits Host: Paris Jackson Producer: Sara Bernard Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd --- If you would like to support Cascade PBS, go to cascadepbs.org. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Cascade PBS.

02/06/2025

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9 min
06/07/2023

The Powers and Possible Perils of Gene Editing

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Jennifer Doudna discusses how the technology she helped advance is treating diseases and raising ethical dilemmas. Gene editing is a game-changer for humanity. From health on individuals to the fate of the planet, the possible impacts of the technology are something previously found only in science fiction. But as with all scientific advancements that supercharge human capabilities and power, the technology comes with ethical questions. These possibilities and questions are at the core of this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast. We’re listening in on a conversation between Nobel laureate and University of California Berkeley chemistry professor Jennifer Doudna and New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer as they discuss one of these technologies, CRISPR. Doudna, who won the Nobel for her work with gene editing technology, explains the fundamental science behind CRISPR, how it’s now being used by scientists to treat a wide range of diseases from HIV to sickle cell anemia, and where it might go from here. This conversation was recorded May 3, 2023. --- Credits Host: Paris Jackson Producer: Seth Halleran Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph --- If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.

06/07/2023

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31 min
15/02/2022

How Crab Louis Became King

No one really knows who made the first of these delicacies, but some sleuthing reveals an origin spurred by the gold rush and railroads. Crab has been a part of the culture of what we now call the Pacific Northwest for a very long time. But how the people of this region eat that crab has changed over the years and those changes can tell a lot. Take Crab Louis, for instance. As a dish it is fairly simple: some crab, some vegetables, some red sauce. Yet the story of Crab Louis is one of western colonial expansion that brought with it new agricultural practices and norms. It is a history that host Knute Berger touched on in a recent episode of his Mossback’s Northwest video series, but there is much more to the story. For this episode of the Mossback podcast, Berger and co-host Sara Bernard talk about how the gold rush and railroads changed cuisine in the Pacific Northwest and how tracking down the origins of a recipe is a lot like searching for the origins of folklore. Plus, Knute shares what it was like to lunch on crab with Anthony Bourdain. Before listening, we suggest you watch the original Mossback's Northwest episode about Crab Louis here. --- Credits Hosts: Sara Bernard, Knute Berger Editorial assistance: Mason Bryan Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

15/02/2022

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28 min
12/01/2021

Quiet Riot

In 2005, Gordon Hempton made a single spot within the Hoh Rain Forest famous for its serenity. But now it’s noisier than ever. For outdoor enthusiasts, Olympic National Park offers a smorgasbord of ecosystems: rocky peaks, driftwood-strewn beaches and high-mountain meadows filled with wildflowers and bears. But its rain-fed temperate rain forests host some of the biggest trees in the world. The Hoh Rain Forest captured audio ecologist Hempton’s imagination for its serene quiet, free from the intrusion of human noise. For decades, he has recorded the birdsong, bugling elk and pitter-patter of rain in painstaking detail. He’s even declared one small section “One Square Inch of Silence” as a monument to preserve the natural soundscape of Olympic National Park. But in the decades since, air traffic over the Olympic Peninsula has made that square inch louder, not quieter — with the Navy’s “Growler” fighter jets providing the biggest obstacle. In this episode of Crosscut Escapes, Hempton and fellow bioacoustic ecologist Lauren Kuehne join us on a trip deep into the forest in search of silence. --- Credits Host: Ted Alvarez Engineering: Karalyn Smith, Piranha Partners Music: The Explorist

12/01/2021

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19 min
15/04/2020

Ep. 2 - Sorting Fact From Propaganda in a Pandemic (Season 1)

Misinformation is nothing new. In the past few years, the spread of convenient fictions and damaging distortions has become ubiquitous in American life, as trolls and propagandists seek to confuse and mislead the American people. What is new, in the era of coronavirus, is the deadly impact of that misinformation. From the beginning of the outbreak in the United States, public health recommendations were questioned at the highest levels while doubts spread about the intentions and efficacy of social distancing. Crosscut engagement editor Mohammed Kloub talks with TCE about the current hunger for information and the troubling trends he is seeing as everyone from Fox News hosts to the president of the United States to our own relatives promote and magnify misinformation about the virus.

15/04/2020

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27 min

At Cascade PBS, we believe that an informed public is essential to solving the challenges of our time. As the Pacific Northwest’s independent, reader-supported, nonprofit news outlet, Cascade PBS strives to provide our audience with the facts and analysis they need to intelligently participate in civic discourse, and to create a more just, equitable and sustainable society.