Cascade PBS Ideas Festival

Seattle’s socialist councilmember shares her solutions to Seattle’s problems after narrowly avoiding ouster in December. After narrowly defeating a widely watched recall attempt in December, Seattle city councilmember Kshama Sawant called the result a progressive victory over big-business influence.  The victory by the council’s longest-serving and only socialist member presented something of a co...

Secretary of State Steve Hobbs discusses his plans to fight misinformation and what the failure to pass voting rights legislation means for Washington state.  Election security has been making a lot of headlines recently, but the integrity of the ballot has been an issue for more than five years now.  It has become a major course of national anxiety and, for some, Washington state is a kind of ant...

This week we have a special preview of Mossback, a 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 t...

The leader of the House progressive caucus shares insights into the fight for the social and environmental spending plan. When Rep. Pramila Jayapal helped turn the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law, the progressive leader did so with the understanding that the social and environmental spending plan known as Build Back Better would follow soon after.  Two months later, that bill's passage...

The owners of Canlis discuss the many creative ideas that came as the iconic restaurant contended with the peak of COVID-19. When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States, just about every business had to rethink how business is done, especially those that relied on the ability of people to gather in numbers.  Restaurants were among the hardest hit by the restrictions put in place by loc...

Social media platforms have been used to divide people and tilt elections. Can anything be done about it? The question of disinformation in the modern age has become inextricable from the social media platforms that command so much personal attention — Facebook and Twitter in particular.  These platforms do a lot of things, but one thing they do really well is feed on a kind of confirmation bias....

The urban theorist discusses the appeal of urban life to young workers and how remote work is going to change the way we live. The future of American cities has been a point of ongoing anxiety. For the past couple of decades, the fate of both fading industrial centers and booming tech hubs has resulted in much hand-wringing.  When COVID-19 arrived in early 2020, it supercharged anxieties about the...

The author and strategist discusses the anti-government sentiment that emerged in the wake of the civil rights movement and what it still costs all Americans. Over the past two decades, Americans have grown accustomed to reports on the yawning gap between the country's rich and poor. Such news might be seen as a catalyst for change, but that hasn't really been the case.   So, what is going on? Wha...

The Black Lives Matter co-founder discusses how recent social movements are challenging Americans to press for real change.  Power is an active and ever-evolving element in American politics and an animating force in American culture. The act of seeking it, discovering it, fighting for it and defending it is the drama of a democracy. Yet it’s not always so apparent.  There are times in American hi...

Science journalist Michelle Nijhuis and philosopher Peter Singer discuss the complex relationship between people and the other creatures they rely on. Human beings may often view themselves as apart from animals. But even in the most urban existence, creatures big and small loom large in the day-to-day existence of just about everybody. Animals are sustenance, nuisance and company. The relationshi...

The founders of The 19th share the lessons learned in the first year of their industry-bending journalism startup. Over the past two decades, the journalism industry has experienced a lot of change. Much of that transformation has been bad: shrinking page counts, shrinking budgets and, ultimately, shrinking newsrooms.  In recent years, though, the kind of changes the journalism industry is seeing...

The two journalists discuss how the decisions following the attacks of Sept. 11 led to distrust and division. Racism, inequity and political polarization have been a part of American history since the beginning of the country. And yet, all of the issues have exploded in the past few years as Americans have become more polarized than they have been in generations.  There is no single reason for the...

He talked a big game during the presidential campaign. Our guests look at what the president is doing in his first year to back that up. Democratic control of the federal government was far from certain heading into the 2020 general election. But following the election of Joe Biden to the presidency and Georgia's two Senate seats going blue, an unexpected opportunity emerged.  One of the biggest q...

The ‘White Fragility’ author and Slate podcast host Jason Johnson discuss the massive cultural changes since the murder of George Floyd. In the months after the murder of George Floyd, many institutions and white people across the country were openly grappling with the idea of whiteness — in particular, what responsibility white people and white-led institutions bear in addressing racism in Americ...

Is it still ethical to ski and hike? How is raising a kid to love the outdoors changing? The director of the UW Climate Impacts Group talks us through those questions. For a long time, climate change was more of a theoretical threat for many people. While certain events would underline the threat the scientists were warning the world about, they were rare enough that it was possible to ignore or q...

Three leaders of Seattle institutions discuss the ways a year without in-person events disrupted worlds and how it transformed how they do their work. Before the pandemic, it could be easy to take the live arts for granted. In a city like Seattle, on any given night, audiences gathered in all kinds of spaces to take in a performance or a screening. That this part of life would someday come to a ha...

The senior senator from Minnesota talks about Facebook, Google and Amazon and if antitrust legislation is the answer. In the last two decades, tech behemoths like Facebook, Google and Amazon have become essential to the lives of millions of Americans. They have also become more and more troubling to those concerned about privacy, disinformation and the consolidation of power.  As these concerns ha...

In conversation with journalist Soledad O'Brien, the historians discuss the stories found in their anthology, ‘Four Hundred Souls,’ and what a “community history” can reveal. It's impossible to tell the complete story of the United States of America without talking about the experience of Black Americans. Yet Americans can't agree on exactly how much of that history should be taught in our schools...

The Connecticut senator discusses the origins of gun violence in the U.S. and how the debate around this may be changing. The United States holds a distinction among wealthy nations for the number of gun deaths that occur each year. And the argument over what to do about gun violence has become a part of the national identity.  In recent decades the shape of that debate has become fairly predictab...

Three experts on religion discuss the history, the meaning and the possible hypocrisy of an unlikely union. When Donald Trump won the White House in 2016, he did so with the overwhelming support of white evangelical Christians. And through the tumultuous four years of his presidency, the faithful stood with him to the dismay of many. Critics contend that it is the height of hypocrisy for a faith b...

Journalists Sonia Shah and Abrahm Lustgarten discuss what happens when people must flee from drought, fire and floods. Human beings are a migratory species. We have moved for food, for economic opportunity and for safety from prosecution. And now, more and more, people are moving to escape the deleterious effects of climate change.  How people think about these migrants will go a long way to deter...

The travel expert shares his vision of globetrotting when the pandemic ends. After a year of being homebound by a raging pandemic, Americans are traveling again. But while rising vaccination rates have normalized weekend trips to the coast or across borders to see family, traveling abroad is still an iffy proposition.  Over the past few weeks, many countries have opened their borders to Americans...

The Washington state secretary of health discusses the state's decision to remove restrictions, the risks that come with it, and the strange and hopeful new reality Washingtonians are about to enter.   As vaccination numbers have ticked up and COVID-19 infections have gone down, states across the country have dropped mask mandates and lifted restrictions on businesses and other public spaces. Wash...

The former Secretary of Defense for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama has strong opinions on the United States’ place in the world. That America has been an exceptional power in the years following the end of the Cold War is of little doubt. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States stood alone in its power to influence global events.   Yet, in recent years that power appears t...

Former Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin and organizer Shaun Scott discuss the anti-racist movement and whether it will result in lasting change. It's been just over a year since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, and the fallout continues to shape conversations and culture.   This time last year, the streets of Seattle — as in so many other cities across the nation — were filled w...