Cascade PBS Ideas Festival

The legendary journalist, who helped change the industry with his reporting on Watergate, talks about how journalism changed his life. Carl Bernstein is best known as one half of the investigative team that broke the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Fifty years later, it is still regarded with reverence by both those who practice journalism and...

The New Yorker staff writer says human ingenuity may offer some solutions to the planet's biggest problems. The relationship between humanity and nature is complicated. People are a part of nature, but at the same time they are a force that acts upon nature … and usually to the detriment of the rest of nature.  Climate change is the most high-profile example of this interaction, but there are many...

Salmon in the Pacific Northwest have been on the decline. Two advocates tell how breaching the dams along the river could restore the population.  Salmon are integral to Pacific Northwest culture and have been for a very long time. Many generations before images of salmon filled Seattle gift shops, Native tribes relied on the fish for sustenance, and they still do today. But the salmon populations...

The food that Americans eat says a lot about the political culture they live in. An expert panel discusses what the country's diet is telling us now.  Food is something that human beings think about every single day. It is the most intimate way we engage with the outside world – by ingesting parts of it – and the need to eat requires us to make choices. What makes it onto our dinner plates, then,...

The iconic environmentalist discusses the history of climate change and climate denial, as well as the challenges and opportunities the future holds. It’s been more than 30 years since Bill McKibben wrote The End of Nature , an essential text in the fight against climate change. And in many ways the world has changed dramatically in that time. But while the possibilities of avoiding the worst impa...

At a live Civic Cocktail event, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and an expert panel discuss the Supreme Court’s decision to end federal protection for abortion. Roe v. Wade  established the right to a safe and legal abortion nationwide. Its reversal means that each state in this extraordinarily divided country of ours will need to decide for itself whether to keep abortion legal, ban it o...

The actor and the engineer discuss solutions to the water crisis. Access to clean water is a major issue across the globe. According to a 2020 report from the World Health Organization and UNICEF, 771 million people lack access to safe drinking water.  This issue has also brought together two unlikely partners, engineer Gary White and actor Matt Damon, in the creation of the nonprofit water.org. T...

The author of So You Want to Talk About Race discusses how the conversation around race has evolved since the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in the spring of 2020 fueled a nationwide conversation about race. It drew hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets, elicited commitments from businesses to do better when it comes to equity a...

Two labor journalists discuss what the Great Resignation, union organization and hybrid models mean for the future of work.   Work is a huge part of American life. For most people, it takes up more than a third of their days, at least. And it provides the paychecks that meet their everyday needs. And in America it also provides health insurance. Then, of course, there is the fact that a person’s i...

The Fred Hutch scientist was one of the first people to explain COVID-19 to the public. Thousands of Twitter followers and a MacArthur grant later, he reflects on what he learned. In many ways, the world is swimming in information about the pandemic. Two-plus years after the virus was first detected in the United States, the COVID-19 dashboard has become, and remains, a fixture in many Americans'...

The pandemic presented new challenges to U.S. health care. Two experts discuss where the system failed, as well as the advancements spurred by the virus. For more than two years now, talking about health care in the United States has really meant talking about COVID-19. And yet, health care is so much more than a single virus. And while much of the country watched the dashboards showing the peaks...

Enjoy this short excerpt of Crosscut's newest podcast title, which features host Brooklyn Jamerson-Flowers touring the places that have fostered Seattle’s Black artists. Every episode of the Black Arts Legacies podcast explores the history and ongoing impact of an art spaces in Seattle, the stories of each built around the voices of the artists who claim these places as critical to their developme...

A panel of experts discusses similarities and differences between anti-democratic developments in Russia and the U.S.  There is a lot to be said about authoritarians right now. Most notably, president of Russia Vladimir Putin has been waging a war in Ukraine that is upending the global order while suppressing dissent at home.  Even before his attempted conquest of Kyiv, though, Putin’s authoritari...

After taking over for her progressive predecessor, Davison discusses how her office will navigate prosecution and public safety. When Ann Davison was elected Seattle city attorney last November, it flew in the face of the city’s progressive reputation. Electoral races in the city are nonpartisan, but Davison’s identity as a Republican was well-known, and her platform was firmly tough on crime. Her...

At a live Civic Cocktail event, panelists discussed how city law enforcement might navigate short-term solutions and systemic reforms. What does it mean to be safe in Seattle, to be shielded from danger or threat so you can live your life fully, without fear, no matter where or who you are?  It's a big question, as Seattle wrestles with rising crime, an overwhelmed police department, a strained le...

King County outreach leaders say an approach informed by lived experience can help solve the worsening crisis. In January, the King County Homeless Authority issued a report stating that more than 40,000 people had experienced homelessness in the county in the past year. It was a much larger number than any previously reported, in part a result of using new methodology, but it was not necessarily...

The state's top education official and a Seattle teacher’s union leader discuss lessons learned and the path forward. Concern over America’s students predates the pandemic. Education — and public education, especially — is always in some form of crisis for someone. Gaps in student opportunity and achievement, for instance, existed long before anyone had heard of COVID–19. What the pandemic did, th...

Washington's attorney general discusses his post-Trump workload and the future of reproductive rights in the state. For many Americans opposed to the policies of then-President Donald Trump, the litigation brought by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson was an essential part of their resistance. By the time Trump left the White House, Ferguson’s office had won 50 out of 52 decisions in c...

For the first in a series of conversations with statewide leaders, the governor discusses how he has used his office to address mounting crises. For much of his three terms as governor, Jay Inslee has remained a relatively popular politician, a Democrat leading a blue state through an era of deep partisanship. More recently, though, his approval ratings have sagged under the weight of historic cri...

The New York Times journalist discusses how the 1619 Project has become a source text for America’s racial reckoning — and the subject of major backlash. That slavery is a part of the American story is no secret. But until a few years ago, the question of how central slavery has been to American life has rarely been considered beyond academic circles.  That all changed with the publication of The...

The former Obama strategist and the Lincoln Project co-founder discuss upcoming midterm elections and the 2024 presidential race. The revelation that the U.S. Supreme Court may very well overturn Roe v. Wade this summer turned up the heat on what was already a period of intense partisan division in the United States. With continued fallout from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and the upcoming midte...

The New York Times columnist and popular podcast host discusses what he pays attention to and why. Ezra Klein makes a living paying attention. As a columnist for the New York Times and the host of the Ezra Klein podcast, he must decide what to focus his attention on, how long to focus it and when to move on. And, given the unforgiving churn of the modern newscycle, that is no small task. Klein’s j...

In a conversation with the PBS NewsHour host, the president's chief medical adviser discusses recent data on the pandemic and the future of variants. At the beginning of the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are many things that public health officials know about the virus that they didn’t know before: how it spreads, for one, and how effective vaccines are against many of the current var...

The Amicus host and an expert panel discuss the “shocking, but not surprising” draft opinion leaked from the Supreme Court this week suggesting an end to Roe v. Wade. Since a conservative majority of justices assumed their seats on the U.S. Supreme Court, many have wondered about the future of Roe v. Wade, the controversial ruling that has protected the right to abortion in America for the past ha...

This edition of Crosscut Talks features the season debut of Civic Cocktail , featuring a discussion with local historians and a futurist on what was and what will be in the Emerald City. There is a lot to talk about in this present moment. The pandemic continues to disrupt everyday life, while news of clashes on battlefields virtual and actual meet us every morning. Here in Seattle, meanwhile, we...