Pacific Time: West Coast What-Ifs

Algorithms increasingly decide what we watch, hear, and discover. Commercial radio has collapsed into repetition and ad inventory. Streaming platforms optimize for engagement over surprise. Public media faces political and financial pressure. And across the internet, culture itself increasingly feels automated. And yet somehow, a scrappy Seattle-born radio station has become one of the most truste...

San Francisco is dead! Long live, San Francisco!  Or, maybe it's not so simple? The City by the Bay has always been a bellwether for the West Coast—economically, culturally, and politically. But in recent years, San Francisco, in particular, has faced a cascade of challenges: empty downtown offices, housing shortages, public safety concerns, and a lingering post-pandemic identity crisis. I s San F...

Washington just passed a “millionaire’s tax”—but the real story is what it reveals about a broken system. For decades, Washington State has operated the most regressive tax system in the country. High sales taxes, heavy reliance on consumption, and no income tax have created a structure where lower-income households pay a larger share of their income than the wealthy. Now, lawmakers have approved...

For decades, the U.S.–Canada relationship was the most stable economic partnership in the world. Deep trade integration. Shared institutions. Quiet cooperation across the longest peaceful border on Earth. That assumption is no longer safe as an increasingly unreliable U.S. becomes a 'bad guy' on the world stage, and a particularly bad neighbor. In this episode of Pacific Time , Greg Amrofell and A...

Housing is unaffordable. Healthcare is fragile. Wages lag costs. And Congress, well, Congress is paralyzed by spectacle. The affordability crisis is no longer abstract — it’s the organizing reality of American life. Housing, healthcare, childcare, energy, and education costs are squeezing households. Congress competes for attention, trying to score short-lived popularity points, and seems take pri...

Christopher Armitage, founder of The Existentialist Republic , joins Pacific Time to argue that “soft secession” may be the most realistic way to defend democracy without tearing the country apart—and why the West Coast is uniquely positioned to lead. Summary As national institutions fracture and federal power grows more hostile to democratic norms, many Americans feel trapped between resignation...

2025 cracked old illusions. 2026 raises a harder question. As federal institutions crumble, can the West Coast finally unite its imagination with its power and political will? In this anniversary episode, Pacific Time host Greg Amrofell is joined by longtime friend, frequent guest, and democracy thinker Ashley Brown to take stock of what 2025 revealed—and what 2026 demands. Together, they reflect...

Seattle’s Rough & Tumble is a sports bar centered on women's sports and women sports fans that also happens to be a really fun place for any sports fan to watch a game. Founder Jen Barnes joins Pacific Time to talk about representation, cultural power, and why the West Coast might be the birthplace of a new era in sports fandom. Summary Women’s sports are exploding in talent, investment, and f...

The 2025 elections delivered shockwaves across the country—and even sharper aftershocks across the West Coast. In our first Pacific Time compilation episode, Greg brings back three trusted voices back to make sense of what just happened and what might be coming next: • Ashley Brown, comparative elections expert • Mark Fiore, Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist • Sandeep Kaushik, West Coast polit...

What if America’s political dysfunction isn’t a moral failure — but a design failure? In this episode, Greg talks with Robbie Bach , former President of Xbox and now a leading civic reform advocate, about how the United States might update its political operating system. Robbie argues that polarization isn’t an accident — it’s an output of incentives. And if incentives can be redesigned, the syste...

What if everything we’ve been told about the economy — about housing, inflation, and government debt — was upside down? What if the problem isn’t that we’re spending too much, but that we’re letting the wrong people decide what we can spend on? What if you feel rich when you leave the West Coast and poor when you live in or visit one of our big cities like LA, SF, or Seattle? In this episode of Pa...

What if banking our own money on the West Coast could help us fund housing, infrastructure, and small business growth? And what if it bought us greater financial freedom from Wall Street and Washington, D.C.?  In this episode of Pacific Time , host Greg Amrofell talks with Marco Rossi , a public banking advocate and legislative strategist with Washingtonians for Public Banking . Together, they exp...

What if the solution to America’s housing crisis isn’t just about building more , but smaller — smarter homes that restore freedom, affordability, and balance? Zack Giffin — professional skier, builder, and co-host of Tiny House Nation — joins Pacific Time to explain how 400 square feet could help fix housing affordability, mental health, and climate resilience across the West Coast. At a time whe...

Civil rights aren’t abstractions—they’re lived every day in families, schools, prisons, churches, and courtrooms. Protecting the rights of any minority protects everyone’s rights. So attacks on trans rights have your attention? What if the West Coast held the line on protecting the LGBTQ community—and led the way? In this episode, Greg Amrofell talks with Shannon Minter , Legal Director of the Nat...

Mountains and democracy have something in common: they don’t manage themselves. In this episode, Greg talks again with Pacific Time pal Gwyn Howat, longtime leader of Mount Baker Ski Area and advocate for public lands, fresh off a trip to Washington, D.C. Gwyn met with members of Congress and leaders of the U.S. Forest Service to speak up for the future of the commons — the mountains, forests, and...

How about some good news from the West Coast, where we're building momentum to address climate change on our own? That’s the question Greg poses to Reuven Carlyle, former Washington State Senator and architect of the state’s cap-and-invest law and an advisor to legislators doing the same in California. Carlyle explains why pricing pollution isn’t just about reducing carbon—it’s about building a st...

Trump says Portland needs “cleaning up.” What if Portland is actually a model of democracy in action—messy, loud, and making progress? If Donald Trump and his MAGA minions don’t want to be called fascists, here’s a thought: stop acting like them. Instead of threatening West Coast cities with troops, raids, and funding cuts, a real leader might look at how places like Portland are tackling their ow...

Political violence is rising, ICE is profiling, hate is mainstreaming. What if we on the West Coast have to fight extremism and the return of civil discourse on our own? This summer has been a chilling reminder of how fragile our democracy feels: assassinations of Minnesota lawmakers, the murder of a conservative commentator, a mass shooting at a Minneapolis church, and continued racial profiling...

This summer, West Coast sovereignty wasn’t a theory—it was tested.  From ICE raids in Los Angeles, and Marines on California streets, to attacks on our flagship universities, and shakedowns of tech stalwarts, Washington D.C. came hard for our region. But West Coasters fought back—with mass protests, citizen surveillance, social media jabs, ballot initiatives, and new policies that neither submit t...

What if the fastest-growing sport in America could also be its most democratic? Pickleball was born on Bainbridge Island – just across the water from Seattle. It started in 1965 with a wiffle ball, a net, and a few bored kids. Sixty years later, it’s a multi-billion dollar industry, the official state sport of Washington, and the most diverse scene you’ll find on a neighborhood court. In this epis...

A recent survey shows that Californians want autonomy—what does this mean? In this episode, Greg talks with Coyote Marin, co-founder and executive director of the Independent California Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on educating Californians about their relationship with the federal government. Unlike advocacy groups, Coyote’s organization doesn’t push a single path forward—it lays out...

What if the quickest fix for American democracy isn’t new maps—but better ballots? In this episode, we ask whether top-two primaries, ranked-choice voting, and a bigger U.S. House could outflank gerrymandering’s worst effects—fast. Episode summary: Redistricting wars grab headlines, but the map fight is only part of the story. Marketing veteran and election systems enthusiast Ashley Brown joins Pa...

The EPA just gutted the backbone of federal climate regulation. Could the West Coast step in? In this episode of Pacific Time , veteran climate reporter Molly Peterson joins Greg to unpack the devastating implications of the EPA’s reversal of its greenhouse gas endangerment finding—the legal trigger that forces federal climate action. Without it, Washington no longer has to regulate greenhouse gas...

If America is a brand, what does it stand for now? What truths still hold? And can a 250-year-old experiment in self-government be reimagined without losing the plot? Michael Megalli is a brand strategist, the author of the upcoming book Brand New World , the founder of Indie.biz, and the son of Egyptian immigrants who believed fiercely in the American dream. In this episode, he unpacks the state...

What if growing food didn’t have to destroy the planet? Ariane Lotti grew up in the U.S., trained in environmental policy at Yale, and worked on Capitol Hill. But her journey took an unexpected turn: she returned to her family’s rice farm in Tuscany to reinvent agriculture from the ground up. In this episode, we meet this regenerative farmer who's testing the limits of what’s possible—combining po...