Crosscut Talks: Recent Episodes
Crosscut
From Washington State to Washington, D.C., conversations with the politicians, leaders, journalists, academics and thinkers who shape our world. Hosted by Mark Baumgarten
At the 2025 Cascade PBS Ideas Festival, we asked attendees to share their thoughts about what's going on in our city and the nation.
The Cascade PBS newsroom used this year’s Ideas Festival as a chance to engage directly with our audience. A few of our journalists hosted a “Share Your Story” table, encouraging attendees to sit and discuss whatever was on their minds.
In this bonus episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, hear directly from festivalgoers on issues affecting the Seattle community. People share their perspectives on the state of housing in the city, the increasing cost of living in the United States and the impact of President Donald Trump’s second term. Plus, hear a little more from Mike Pesca, host of The Gist podcast, on his session about the alleged coverup of Biden’s health decline.
These conversations were recorded on May 31, 2025.
Credits
Host: Paris Jackson
Producers: Sireen Abayazid, Sara Bernard
Live interview producers: Sireen Abayazid, Ryan Famuliner, David Lee
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.
In a live taping of 'Your Last Meal,' Jayapal shares how her experience as an immigrant and an organizer influenced her affinity for world cuisines.
U.S. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal has represented Washington’s 7th district since 2016. A prominent member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, she focuses on immigration, income inequality and access to health care, among other priorities.
But as part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in late May, Jayapal took the stage with Rachel Belle, host of the Cascade PBS podcast Your Last Meal, to talk – mostly – about food.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, the two discuss why Jayapal still considers herself more activist than politician; why food is such a big part of organizing; Jayapal’s favorite foods growing up and what food she missed when she moved to the U.S. at age 16; and the strong relationship between the food Americans take for granted and the immigrants who brought it here.
This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.
Credits
Host: Paris Jackson
Producer: Sara Bernard, Scot Michael
Production Engineer: Resti Bagcal
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.
In a live taping of The Journal podcast, host Ryan Knutson talks with Steves about the value of travel and Americans’ reception abroad in 2025.
Rick Steves has created one of the most successful travel businesses in the U.S., including guidebooks, European tours and a longstanding TV and radio show. What is it like to run a travel business for American tourists right now, after the pandemic and as the new Trump administration rattles the world order?
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in late May, The Journal podcast host Ryan Knutson took the stage with Steves to discuss these tumultuous times and why Steves believes travel should be a priority for Americans, regardless of recent events.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Knutson and Steves dig into why if everyone traveled before they could vote, “this world would be a much more stable and just and beautiful place”; the impact of the pandemic and social media on European travel; how American travelers are received abroad right now; and why Steves, for one, will be traveling as long as he’s able.
This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.
Credits
Host: Paris Jackson
Producer: Sara Bernard, Scot Michael
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.
In a live taping of the Criminal podcast, host Phoebe Judge speaks with Knox about her new memoir and how a murder accusation redefined her life.
Amanda Knox became a household name when she was convicted, in 2009, of the murder of her roommate while studying abroad in Perugia, Italy. She spent four years in an Italian prison before being exonerated.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in late May, Knox sat down with Criminalpodcast host Phoebe Judge to discuss her new memoir, Free: My Search for Meaning. The memoir moves beyond Knox’s story of conviction and acquittal to explore what it’s been like to live under the shadow of the world’s image of her.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Judge and Knox discuss Knox’s experience of being relentlessly interrogated as Italian prosecutors, global tabloids and even her community back in the U.S. sought to define the narrative around her story. Knox also shares what she plans to tell her children about these experiences and her unlikely relationship with the man who prosecuted her case.
This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.
Credits
Host: Paris Jackson
Producer: Sara Bernard, Scot Michael
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.
In a live taping of Radiolab, co-host Latif Nasser and guest Rebecca Lemov discuss prominent examples of indoctrination and their modern implications.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in late May, Latif Nasser, co-host of WNYC’s Radiolab, sat down with Harvard historian Rebecca Lemov to dig into her new book,The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion.
The book chronicles the fascinating and traumatic history of brainwashing – how the term originated, its chilling permutations over the decades and what it could mean now in an age of artificial intelligence.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Nasser and Lemov discuss the origin story of the term, following the experiences of American POWs during the Korean War. They then delve into the remarkable story of the heiress Patricia Hearst, who survived kidnapping and violence by adopting the perspectives of her captors. Finally, they discuss the “mass emotional contagion” of social media events and the AI chatbots with whom many people have formed very real relationships.
This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.
Credits
Host: Paris Jackson
Producer: Sara Bernard, Scot Michael
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.
In a live taping of ‘The Gist’ podcast, the authors of “Original Sin” — a book questioning the former president’s health — share their findings.
One book has been stirring up a lot of political controversy this spring:Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s deep dive into President Biden’s health during his last year in office.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in May, Tapper and Thompson got on stage with Mike Pesca, host of The Gistpodcast, to dig into the reporting behind Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Tapper and Thompson detail how, according to their reporting, an ever-tightening inner circle worked to conceal Biden’s sparse schedule, failing memory and other signs of serious decline. Tapper describes an atmosphere of unquestioning loyalty, not unlike that of the current Trump White House, that supported Biden’s decision to run for a second term. Thompson and Tapper also get into the politically polarized feedback on the book, which has, at least from the far left and far right, been “ferocious.”
This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.
Credits
Host: Paris Jackson
Producer: Sara Bernard, Scot Michael
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.
In a live taping of the ‘Open to Debate’ podcast, commentator Brandi Kruse and legal scholar Nadine Strossen examine the state of the First Amendment.
From funding cuts at universities to restrictions on the press, critics of Trump 2.0 point to a long list of potential threats to the freedom of speech. But in these polarized times, perception is everything.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in late May, Nick Gillespie, editor-at-large of Reason Magazineand guest moderator of Open to Debate, sat down with political commentator Brandi Kruse and legal scholar and civil liberties advocate Nadine Strossen to dig into the evolving boundaries of free speech in 2025.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Strossen and Kruse take a deep dive into a range of thorny topics, including the Trump administration’s actions against Harvard University; early executive orders banning DEI policies; hypocrisy, bias and objectivity in the media; and how far this or any administration should be allowed to go.
This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.
Credits
Host: Paris Jackson
Producer: Sara Bernard, Scot Michael
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.
In a live taping of CNN's One Thing, Flake speaks with host David Rind about a post-Trump era and his hopes for a party of governance, not grievance.
Former U.S. Senator Jeff Flake (R – Arizona) is perhaps best known for his early and vocal criticism of President Donald Trump. In 2017, Flake announced he would not run for reelection, largely because he saw no room for a moderate, anti-Trump Republican in Congress.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in late May, Flake took the stage with David Rind, host of CNN’s One Thing podcast, to dig into how Flake feels about that decision today and what it all means during a second Trump administration.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Rind and Flake discuss the anger and grievance that dominates American politics; Flake’s role as ambassador to Turkey during the Biden administration; how American diplomacy has been impacted by Trump 2.0; and what a future Republican party could look like.
This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.
Credits
Host: Paris Jackson
Producer: Sara Bernard, Scot Michael
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.
In a live taping of WNYC’s On the Media, author and activist Cory Doctorow argues that tech giants have chased profits at the expense of users.
There’s no question that the products that giant companies such as Amazon, Google and Meta have developed now dominate many people’s lives. The road to that domination, argues author and activist Cory Doctorow, is paved with profit-driven actions that ultimately invade privacy, drive up prices and worsen the user experience.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in late May, Doctorow took the stage with Micah Loewinger, co-host of WNYC’s On the Media, to unpack this theory from his forthcoming book, Ensh–ttification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Loewinger and Doctorow discuss the ways that Amazon, Uber and other companies started by offering good deals to end users and business partners, but ultimately became “too big to care” as they drove out competitors and chased profits. Loewinger and Doctorow also dig into ways to combat these trends, such as the historic antitrust cases proceeding against Google and Apple in federal court, or how new tariffs could potentially promote a freer internet.
This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.
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.
Author, comedian and former U.S. Senator Al Franken has a unique resume. One of the original writers on Saturday Night Live, he won five Emmys, wrote several comedic books on politics and represented Minnesota as a U.S. Senator from 2009 to 2018.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in late May, Franken sat down with Jane Coaston, host of Crooked Media’s What a Day, to discuss his journey from comedy and television to the Senate and beyond.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Franken and Coaston dig into Franken’s Minnesota roots and unusual career; his thoughts on the second Trump administration; the goals of his political action committee, Midwest Values PAC; and what he thinks Democrats should be talking about right now.
This conversation was recorded on May 31, 2025.
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.
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.
Co-hosts Lindy West and Meagan Hatcher-Mays remind us to laugh in this bonus episode recorded live at the Seattle Public Library on October 15.
Lindy West and Meagan Hatcher-Mays join us again for another lively discussion on The Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast.
In a special bonus episode, Cascade PBS partnered with The Seattle Public Library Foundation to put on a live podcast taping of Text Me Back! featuring West and Hatcher-Mays, who were part of the Ideas Festival lineup earlier this year.
The conversation, moderated by Cascade PBS anchor Paris Jackson, took a lighthearted approach to the upcoming election and featured special guests Mariesa Bus, Brett Hamil and Naomi Ishisaka.
This conversation was recorded on Oct. 15, 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/membership. In addition to supporting our events and daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Cascade PBS.
In a live taping of Slate’s A Word podcast, Jason Johnson talks with Coates about the resonance between racism in America and the crisis in Gaza.
On his podcast A Word, veteran political commentator Jason Johnson invites leaders, journalists and other change-makers to have productive and provocative conversations about race in politics and society.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, Johnson sat down with bestselling author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates to discuss Coates’ perspectives on everything from the art of writing to the ongoing crisis in Israel and Palestine.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Johnson and Coates discuss the impact of AI on creators and how lived experience defines the act of writing. Coates also reflects on a life-changing visit to Israel and Palestine, connecting the experience of being Black in America and the history of Jim Crow segregation to the segregation and oppression experienced by Palestinians. The two discuss America’s role in the Israel-Hamas war as well as in World War II, and what impact current events and historical forces have on American voters and the 2024 election.
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.
Atlantic journalists talk the future of election interference in an era of chilling political deepfakes — and, the one company behind much of this tech.
This year, two events will collide: AI voice replicas that can fool family and friends will be easier than ever to use, and half the world’s population will undergo an election.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, Hanna Rosin, the host of Radio Atlantic, and Charlie Warzel, a staff writer for The Atlantic who covers technology, explored the strange and potentially catastrophic effects of this collision.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Rosin and Warzel examine the big trends in AI, particularly that of shockingly accurate voice clones, and discuss the one small company behind much of this software. They dig into how this technology could be deployed to interfere with elections and how likely it is to sway voters. They play clips of a variety of convincing deepfakes, including the fake President Biden robocall sent to voters in a recent New Hampshire primary, and speculate about a very uncertain future.
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.
The Revisionist History podcast host discusses America's firearms problem - and reasons to be optimistic about it - with a trauma surgeon and an activist.
Acclaimed author Malcolm Gladwell explores all things overlooked and misunderstood in his podcast, Revisionist History. He recently produced a six-part series about what we get wrong about gun violence in America.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, Gladwell revisited that conversation with Dr. Babak Sarani, a trauma surgeon from Washington, D.C., and David Hogg, co-founder of March for Our Lives. Gladwell asked them, based on their individual expertise, why so many people are dying from gunshots in the U.S. and how we might prevent it.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, the three discuss gun-violence data, from the number of suicides by firearm to the number of gunshots per victim. They explore the impact of gun-control measures such as red-flag laws, the fraught politics around guns and the role of the Supreme Court. Hogg and Sarani also share what immediate changes each believe could truly make a difference.
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.
Is the personal always political? Washington Post columnists discuss how identity markers have come to define how we think and vote.
Trust in American institutions has reached record lows. Where do Americans turn to for a sense of identity, connection or belonging? Are identity markers such as race or religion a way to build community and understanding or do these affinities further divide us?
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, Martine Powers and Elahe Izadi, co-hosts of The Washington Post podcast Post Reports, spoke with columnists Shadi Hamid and Jason Willick about how personal identity overlaps with politics in our current highly polarized moment.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, the four journalists dig into the Israel-Hamas war and its impact on political and social debates in the U.S. They also discuss aspects of their own identities and how that shapes their worldviews, and whether there is such a thing as a set of shared American values.
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.
In a live taping of Left, Right & Center, David Greene, Mo Elleithee and Sarah Isgur debate media bias ahead of the presidential election.
KCRW’s weekly politics show, Left, Right & Center, takes on the tough, polarizing issues that Americans struggle to have conversations about. Host David Greene invites guests with a wide range of political views to create provocative discussions that can bridge the left/right divide.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, Mo Elleithee and Sarah Isgur joined Greene to debate media bias, political satire and free speech in the context of current events.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, the three discuss the Israel-Hamas war, protests on U.S. college campuses and the way mainstream media covers these events. When it comes to free speech versus hate speech, who gets to decide where the line is drawn and how speech is characterized? They also examine examples of journalists skewing perspectives to favor certain candidates in elections and reflect on various forms of political satire and their cultural impact, including that of Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and Saturday Night Live.
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.
In a live taping of The New Yorker’s Critics at Large podcast, Keefe and a panel discuss the genre's enduring popularity – and its problematic aspects.
The appetite for true crime is more insatiable than ever, but audiences, authors and podcast producers are also grappling with the ethics of the genre. Patrick Radden Keefe, author of books including Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Family and Say Nothing: A True Story of Memory and Murder in Northern Ireland, has made a career out of telling nuanced stories about unconscionable acts and the people who commit them.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, Keefe got on stage to speak with Alexandra Schwartz, Naomi Fry and Vinson Cunningham, co-hosts of The New Yorker podcast Critics at Large, about his work, the state of true crime and what it's like to write about terrible things.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Keefe shares his process and his approach to the genre. Rather than dwell on gory details, he seeks to understand the underlying circumstances that lead people to commit crimes. He discusses the role of the journalist in this work, the challenges of adapting this kind of writing for the screen and what he’s learned from past stories, including “The Oligarch’s Son,” an article he wrote for The New Yorker about the sudden death of a London teenager, which he’s currently expanding into a book.
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.
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.
The Journal co-hosts Kate Linebaugh and Ryan Knutson tackle the gap between bright data points and bad vibes with political correspondent Molly Ball.
Data suggests the U.S. economy is performing well, but many Americans don’t feel that way. How will those feelings influence the 2024 election?
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, Kate Linebaugh and Ryan Knutson, co-hosts of the podcast The Journal, took the stage with Wall Street Journal senior political correspondent Molly Ball to dig into this strange economic picture and its political implications.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Linebaugh, Knutson and Ball note how economic performance can swing elections, even when that performance is due to factors outside of elected officials’ control. They examine the unique drivers of the current economic picture, from pandemic recovery to inflation. They also debate the ways the economy might impact the Biden/Trump rematch, especially compared to other key issues, such as foreign policy, reproductive rights or political polarization.
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.
Lindy West, Meagan Hatcher-Mays and Guy Branum rank Hollywood celebrities and Supreme Court justices in a lighthearted take on pop culture and politics.
New York Times bestselling author Lindy West and democracy expert and “recovering lawyer” Meagan Hatcher-Mays have been best friends for 25 years. Their podcast, Text Me Back!, celebrates that friendship through lively discussions of pop culture, politics, the paranormal and more.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, West and Hatcher-Mays took the stage with comedian and actor Guy Branum for a raucous, gossip-filled dissection of both Hollywood celebrities and the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, the three laugh their way through Branum’s hot takes on his famous colleagues, from Natalie Portman to Chelsea Handler to Ludacris. They then rank the Supreme Court justices from best to worst and give them snappy taglines in the style of the Bravo television franchise The Real Housewives of New York.
Along the way, the trio delve into serious political issues, too, from voting and reproductive rights to the entrenched power dynamics of the nation’s highest court.
This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2024 and contains some strong language.
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.
Tug of War host David Rind and international correspondent Nada Bashir dig into how the war in Gaza has changed the Middle East and the world.
Since the Hamas attacks of October 7 and the outbreak of the war in Gaza, CNN’s Tug of War podcast has brought listeners into the heart of the conflict.
As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, host David Rind and CNN international correspondent Nada Bashir got on stage for a live taping of Tug of War. They discussed Bashir’s reporting in the region – and the unique challenges of covering an unfolding war with decades of context.
In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Rind and Bashir explore the horrors taking place in Gaza and the many impacts the war is having on the rest of the region and the world. They discuss the international media’s heavy reliance on Palestinian journalists, as few other reporters have access to Gaza; what many media outlets get wrong and the impact of bias on all sides; and what Bashir will take with her as she continues her work.
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.
Catch up on every session, featuring speakers such as Malcolm Gladwell, Lindy West and Ta-Nehisi Coates, on our weekly festival podcast.
This year’s Cascade PBS Ideas Festival has officially wrapped. But the insightful conversations that took place on May 4, 2024, are coming soon to a podcast app near you.
To help launch this season of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast (formerly Crosscut Talks), host Paris Jackson sat down with events director Jake Newman to chat about this year’s approach to the festival, some of the luminaries who attended and what we can expect to hear in the coming weeks.
In this short kickoff episode, Newman points to a few guests he’ll be eager to hear from, including author and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell, historian Heather Cox Richardson, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and CNN international correspondent Nada Bashir.
A new episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast will air every Monday, beginning May 13.
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.
The television host shares his ideal last meal and serves behind-the-scenes details from Nickelodeon and the Food Network.
Marc Summers, best known for his role as host of the 1980s Nickelodeon game show Double Dare and host of the Food Network’s Unwrapped,actually launched his career doing magic tricks.
Summers shared this fun fact, and a whole lot more, with Rachel Belle, host of Your Last Meal — a James Beard Award finalist for Best Podcast — during a live taping at the Crosscut Ideas Festival in May.
Another fun fact: Your Last Meal is now a Crosscut podcast! New episodes will be released every other Thursday. Learn more, listen and subscribe here.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Belle and Summers dig into the actor’s lifetime love of show business, how he snagged the job hosting the beloved Nickelodeon show (plus what that legendary slime was really made of), and why Summers decided to share his OCD diagnosis in the late 1990s.
This conversation was recorded May 5, 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.
Research shows the drugs can be effective in treating depression and substance-use disorders — but there’s still much we don’t know.
Psychedelics are moving back into the mainstream. According to a growing body of medical research, psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and ketamine can have a profound impact on people struggling with mental health conditions, including depression, post-traumatic stress and substance-use disorders.
As a result, legal barriers are beginning to fall away. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has designated psilocybin as a “breakthrough therapy,” for example, accelerating its path to approval, and recently released draft guidance for all clinical trials with psychedelic drugs.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation among science journalist and author Carl Zimmer, palliative and rehabilitative care physician Dr. Sunil Kumar Aggarwal and University of Washington psychiatry professor Dr. Nathan Sackett about the rapidly emerging field of psychedelics in psychotherapy.
They discuss these drugs’ specific effects on the brain, explain their use in clinical practice and in current research and explore some of the bigger questions raised — from the challenges of practicing medicine in a legal gray area to the nature of human consciousness.
This conversation was recorded May 6, 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.
Pollution, habitat loss and climate change all threaten wildlife and their ecosystems. Conservationists discuss what we can do to help.
Wildlife numbers are plunging worldwide. From toxic waste to invasive species, deforestation to rising temperatures, threats to the survival of our planet’s millions of plants and animals are causing scientists to warn of a sixth extinction.
It’s estimated that roughly a third of the world’s species have become endangered or gone extinct in the past 500 years. And as the climate crisis continues to escalate, many more will be forced to adapt.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, environmental journalist Michelle Nijuis, Conservation Northwest senior policy director Paula Sweeden and National Wildlife Federation chief scientist Dr. Bruce Stein unpack the reasons we’re facing such a crisis and what we can do to mitigate it.
The panelists’ proposed solutions range from federal legislation to backyard gardens—and ultimately make the case that the biodiversity crisis is inextricable from the climate crisis.
This conversation was recorded May 4, 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.
Following the failure of the Washington Recycling and Packaging Act, experts and a key lawmaker discuss next steps.
Plastic is everywhere. It’s in our refrigerators, in our oceans and even in our bloodstreams. And wherever there are plastics, there are questions over what to do with them.
In Washington state, as in most other places, the answer has been to recycle them whenever possible. In 2011, Washingtonians recycled 56 percent of recyclable materials, but since then there’s been a decline. Now the state recycles about 49 percent.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation from the Crosscut Ideas Festival about plastics and the challenges to recycling. Seattle Times environment and climate editor Ben Woodard leads the conversations with Washington state representative Liz Berry, Ocean Nexus Center director and anthropologist Dr. Yoshitaka Ota and Zero Waste Washington executive director Heather Trim.
The panel discusses why those numbers have dropped, as well as China’s role in recycling, the equity issues surrounding the practice and legislative efforts to hold producers of goods accountable by having them pay for recycling services.
This conversation was recorded May 6, 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.
The climate leaders share why individual responsibility and corporate accountability aren’t mutually exclusive — and how daily habits can aid the planet.
The impacts of climate change are everywhere, often making headlines. Yet most Americans don’t know what climate change really is, or don’t think it will harm them ... until it does.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we are listening in on a conversation about the challenges in communicating about climate change impacts and finding solutions with climate scientists Heidi Roop and environmental strategist Jamie Stroble.
During the Crosscut Ideas Festival in Seattle, the two climate leaders discussed tangible solutions we can all participate in, and how climate scientists must recognize that facts and figures don’t change minds, but human connection can.
Roop and Stroble also discuss the longstanding inequities and structural barriers that result in disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, and how young people’s activism provides some hope for the future.
This conversation was recorded May 6, 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.
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.
Two experts in immersive technologies may disagree on what the metaverse will look like, but they do agree that it is going to change society.
The metaverse may very well be the future. Before we get there, though, it is probably necessary to establish what exactly the metaverse is. That, it turns out, isn’t so easy.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation between Carnegie Mellon University professor Jesse Schell and Wedbush Securities managing director Michael Pachter, who discuss recent developments in metaverse technologies and how the public views these developments.
In this conversation with journalist and author Steven L. Kent during the Crosscut Ideas Festival in Seattle, the two also spar over what exactly the metaverse will be, and share how much further they believe the industry needs to evolve to truly see the metaverse reach its full potential.
What they agree on is that the metaverse will be able to bring us closer together, but also risks pulling us further apart.
This conversation was recorded May 2, 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.
The Washington Post tech industry analyst discusses how America’s major tech companies are grappling with government regulation and a public that has fallen out of love.
Tech companies aren’t the shiny new players in the world economy anymore; they are core pillars of that economy and primary drivers of our culture.
They are also feeling a little old, says Washington Post tech industry analyst Will Oremus, and are now beset by lawmakers who would like to regulate them and users who have fallen out of love with them.
For this episode of the “Crosscut Talks” podcast, Oremus and Lizzy O'Leary, host of Slate's “What Next: TBD,” dive into the tech industry's midlife crisis and discuss how companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook are cutting back by laying off workers in an effort to slim down and stay relevant.
The two revisit what made these tech giants powerful, the tactics they used to get there and how backlash started nearly 10 years ago. And they discuss what the future could hold as these companies attempt to grow and remain dominant.
This conversation took place 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.
The Edmonds-born record-breaker muses on the game’s transformation and reveals behind-the-scenes secrets.
Jeopardy! is an American institution, a television game show that for decades didn't really change all that much. But in recent years the syndicated staple has undergone some relatively seismic shifts.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation with Ken Jennings about the longstanding legacy of the American game show, his fascination with trivia as a child and how he went from computer programmer to 74 consecutive wins on Jeopardy! to being the current co-host.
In this conversation with journalist Peter Kafka from the 2023 Crosscut Ideas Festival, Jennings also discusses how the show has changed since his time as a contestant.
Kennings says Jeopardy! now benefits from social media, where there is a thriving community of fans and prospective contestants. But he also says the game show is dealing with present-day challenges in an entertainment world more and more dominated by streaming platforms.
This conversation took place May 6, 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.
The former presidential candidate believes he knows what is wrong with American politics and shares why his new party is a solution.
When Andrew Yang ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, he did so with hopes of changing the conversation. He left the race despondent, he says. But now he is back with a new party and a renewed sense of purpose.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation with the entrepreneur-turned-politician in which he discusses his political journey, his role in creating a new third party, the Forward Party, and his hopes for the future of American politics.
In this May 6 conversation from the Crosscut Ideas Festival, Yang explains his new party to Crosscut executive editor David Lee and reveals what he believes is a practical approach to working across the aisle to fix America's problems.
Yang also shares why he ran for president on solutions he believes can work, such as aUniversal Basic Income, and why he believes re-energizing voters who feel powerless may be the only way for us to move forward as a country.
This conversation took place May 6, 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.
Former congressman Will Hurd says his party needs to stop election denial and start appealing to voters that have lost trust in the party.
As the 2024 presidential election approaches, the Republican Party and its voters have a major decision to make about the future of the party.
With former President Donald Trump running for another term, there is a likelihood that the party continues on the trajectory set under his presidency. But there is also the possibility of a break from that path.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast we listen in on a conversation with Will Hurd, a former Republican congressman and former CIA officer who is advocating for a kind of Republican reboot.
In conversation with political commentator Brandi Kruse, Hurd put forth a formula for repairing his party and regaining the trust of more voters. One key, he said, is that conservatives must be unafraid to disagree.
This conversation took place May 2, 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.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, advocates are pushing back to assure that people still have access to reproductive care.
Last June the Supreme Court transformed the landscape of reproductive rights overnight when it overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving the power to determine the legality of abortion to individual states. For many the decision also signaled a need for a new abortion underground.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation about this new landscape featuring Kelsea McLain, deputy director of abortion advocacy and reproductive justice organization the Yellow Hammer Fund, and Judith Arcana, a member of Chicago’s pre-Roe underground abortion services organization the Jane Collective.
The two women share their personal abortion stories with journalist Megan Burbank, and they discuss the history of abortion and misconceptions about reproductive rights, as well as the legal challenges facing organizations and individuals who support a the rights of individuals to make their own choices about reproduction.
The current landscape of reproductive rights has become highly politicized, but these panelists offer a framing that suggests more complexity than what’s been normalized.
This conversation took place May 5, 2023. Read Megan Burbank's article about the Jane Collective here.
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.
Three advocates weigh in on the rising threat of the synthetic opioid — and what policymakers can do to fight it.
Seattle is in the midst of a fentanyl crisis. Of the 310 overdose deaths recorded in the city in 2022, more than half were from the powerful synthetic opioid. And we are not alone.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast we are talking about the crisis afflicting cities across the country with three advocates for public health and safety.
Journalist Andrew Engelson speaks about the rising threat of fentanyl with Brad Finegood of Public Health for Seattle and King County; Darcy Jaffe, senior vice president of safety and quality for the Washington State Hospital Association; and Julian Saucier, who works to support organizations and coalitions impacted by the criminal justice system.
The trio challenges listeners to think of the issue as a health crisis rather than a matter of morality. And they identify three key areas policy-makers and the government should be focused on to help bring it to an end.
This conversation took place May 6, 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.
As the new technology proliferates, the founding CEO of the Allen Institute for A.I. discusses how — or even whether — it should be controlled.
Artificial intelligence is everywhere. Companies are already exploring the many uses of AI and a number of tools are widely available for public use. We're seeing the benefits in the business world, from simple to revolutionary, but at the same time a host of critiques.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we dive into the technological phenomenon with Oren Etzioni, founding CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, who spoke at the Crosscut Ideas Festival in May 2023.
Etzioni tells interviewer Chirag Shah, from the University of Washington's School of Information and Computer Science, that he doesn't want to rush sweeping new regulations, but says companies should adhere to current laws and regulators should focus on the enforcement of potential violations.
The bigger concern here, according to Etzioni, is what still needs to be done to prevent this kind of technology from getting into the hands of bad actors. To some degree, he says, it already is.
This conversation was recorded on May 6, 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.
Danni Askini of the advocacy group The Gender Justice League breaks down the misconceptions and myths surrounding gender-affirming care.
Legislation seeking to limit the rights of trans people has been on the rise in state houses throughout the U.S. But why?
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation about the wave of proposals and laws that seek to curtail the ability of trans Americans to use the bathroom or participate in sports according to their stated gender, or receive gender-affirming care.
In this conversation from the Crosscut Ideas Festival, Gender Justice League co-executive director Danni Askini speaks with Jonquilyn Hill, the host of Vox's Weeds podcast, about the impacts of these Republican-led efforts on an already marginalized community.
Askini says the humanity of trans people needs to be at the center of the conversation and implores cisgender people to show up as allies in the fight for trans rights.
This conversation was recorded on May 6, 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.
Three education experts discuss how young people can find postgrad success (and it's not a 'one-size-fits-all' approach).
With high school graduation approaching, many young people across Washington state will be taking a big step toward adulthood. Whether they have all the information and encouragement they need to make a decision that is right for them is less certain.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation about the education-to-work pipeline with education advocates from throughout state, including Seattle Public Schools, Washington STEM and the state superintendent’s office.
Speakers Kelvin Dankwa, Angie-Mason Smith and Rebecca Wallace detail the challenges facing students in the talk, which took place during the Crosscut Ideas Festival in early May and was moderated by Angela Jones of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Wallace, from the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, suggests that there needs to be a better effort made to let students know that there are multiple pathways to success after high-school graduation, that the idea of 'one-size-fits-all' is failing students and their families. The panel also discusses "adult bias in education” and how it affects students' belief in what they can achieve after high school.
This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2023 at the Crosscut Ideas Festival in Seattle.
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.
The Washington congressman said a Ukrainian offensive could beat Moscow’s forces back and have them at the bargaining table by the fall.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, the conventional wisdom in both Russia and throughout the West was that it would be a short war and that Ukraine would succumb to the overwhelming military force being directed by Moscow. More than one year later, the war is still raging and the outcome is far from certain.
Yet, Rep. Adam Smith believes he can now see an end in sight and that it will be Russia on its heels in the end. During an appearance for the Crosscut Ideas Festival in early May, the congressman who represents Washington’s 9th district, and who is the Democrats’ ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, said that he believed the path to a negotiated peace could begin as early as this fall.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on Rep. Smith’s conversation with Seattle University associate professor Connie Anthony as they discuss the conflict in Ukraine, as well as other pressing topics in the arena of foreign affairs.
Smith offers up a defense of the United States involvement in the war and also provides some insight into brewing tensions with China.
This conversation was recorded on May 3, 2023 at the Crosscut Ideas Festival in Seattle.
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.
A year after his release from prison, the former president’s ex-fixer talks about the unprecedented case.
Having completed a three-year sentence for his role in a hush-money scheme for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, Michael Cohen has a lot to say about his former boss.
One month after the Manhattan District Attorney indicted the former president for his role in that same scheme, Trump's former lawyer and fixer took the stage at this year's Crosscut Ideas Festival to talk about his early support for Trump and his fears about another term for the 45th president.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in as Cohen speaks with journalist Joni Balter about the numerous criminal investigations against Trump, as well as the civil case being brought by author E. Jean Carroll that, at the time, was yet to be decided.
In the days after this May 6 conversation, that case was decided by a federal jury that found Trump liable for battery and ordered the president to pay Carroll $5 million. Cohen discusses what else could be in store for the president and the country.
This conversation was recorded on May 6, 2023 at the Crosscut Ideas Festival in Seattle.
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.
The former Attorney General discusses how voting rights laws and Supreme Court term limits could preserve American democracy.
Few people in the United States have more experience at the intersection of the rule of law and the world of politics than Eric Holder.
As the U.S. Attorney General during the presidency of Barack Obama, Holder was responsible for applying the rule of law to cases that were politically charged, from immigration to counter-terrorism to same-sex marriage. And he landed in the middle of numerous political firestorms.
Now, nearly a decade after his departure from office, Holder has his attention focused on another place where law and politics intersect: the ballot box.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Holder sits down with Crosscut managing editor Mark Baumgarten to discuss the numerous threats he sees to American democracy, including the right to vote, the belief that voters should be able to make an informed decision and the expectation that everyone's vote count. And whether he would have brought charges against former president Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels case.
This conversation was recorded on May 6, 2023 at the Crosscut Ideas Festival in Seattle.
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.
Amicus host Dahlia Lithwick and Brennan Center president Michael Waldman discuss SCOTUS's history and coming decisions.
Though its mythology says otherwise, the U.S. Supreme Court is not a static institution. As its justices have slowly turned over, the Court’s ideological makeup and the nature of its decisions have changed. So too has the public’s perception of the Court.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we’re listening in on a conversation between Dahlia Lithwick, the host of Slate’s Amicus podcast, and Brennan Center president Michael Waldman about how the Court has transformed in the past century.
Lithwick and Waldman dig into the Court’s past, present and future, connecting the dots from its long history to its current state and examining questions of its legitimacy and popularity, especially when it comes to Americans with more progressive politics.
As author of the forthcoming book The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America, Waldman has no illusions about the Supreme Court’s ability to rise above politics. In fact, he tells Lithwick, “We are in a great fight for the future of American democracy,” in part because of the partisanship he sees on the Court.
This conversation was recorded May 6, 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.
The host of the New York Times podcast discusses the ways modern politics have transformed the media landscape.
For many American news consumers, Michael Barbaro’s voice is a defining element of the modern era. As a host of the New York Times podcast The Daily, Barbaro speaks to an audience of more than 3 million listeners, delivering insights into the biggest national and international stories.
That success wasn’t guaranteed. When Barbaro and the rest of the team behind The Daily started it in 2017, they were introducing a novel way to experience the news: hearing from reporters about their stories and how they reported them, or directly from the people in the middle of the stories.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Crosscut Now host Paris Jackson talks with Barbaro about the reasons that formula produced one of the most influential and impactful news sources today.
In this conversation, recorded April 25, 2023 as part of the Crosscut Ideas Festival, Barbaro shares his thoughts on the responsibilities and challenges of this kind of platform during such a tumultuous time, with distrust in the media at an all-time high.
This conversation was recorded April 24, 2023. Watch the video of the interview here.
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.
The author and doctor explains how treating the mind and the body as one can help stop humanity from sleepwalking to extinction.
Deepak Chopra has a lot of thoughts on the state of our mental health, and they start with the idea that mental health is not a singular thing that resides in our heads. It is, rather, a problem of the mind and the body.
Chopra is a prominent figure in the alternative-medicine world who is, by turns, a practicing physician, a philosopher and the author of 93 books. His latest isLiving in the Light: Yoga for Self-Realization.
In this, the first episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast’s fifth season, PBS NewsHour co-anchor Amna Nawaz speaks with Chopra about his new book and his prescription for the mental health crisis in America and around the globe.
Multiple times Chopra returns to the idea that human beings are sleepwalking to our extinction. But he also offers a tangible prescription for hope, one that he believes every person can incorporate into their daily routine.
This conversation was recorded April 19, 2023. Watch the video of the interview here.
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.
Science can't fully explain what life is. Three experts try anyway in a conversation about life, death and our desire to push back the expiration date.
Talking about life and death is tricky for anyone, even scientists. Despite considerable research over the course of generations, scientists still don’t fully understand what life is, what death is or even what separates the two.
But where science lacks understanding, there are theories and questions about what makes something alive and how to keep living things from aging. And there are intriguing thoughts on the ethics of efforts to prolong life.
These are the questions at the heart of this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, featuring Andrew Steele, author of the book Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old, and Carl Zimmer, who writes the New York Times column Matter and is the author of Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive.
Led in conversation by University of Washington doctoral candidate Halli Benasutti, these two experts discuss life, death, aging and consciousness. And while they may not be able to arrive on concrete definitions of these elusive concepts, they certainly have very interesting insight into each.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producers: Sara Bernard, Brooklyn Jamerson-Flowers
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
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.
Happiness takes work. The host of The Happiness Lab podcast shares what social science says about making that work more manageable.
Happiness can feel fleeting in even the best of times. In the midst of a pandemic shot through with personal and social upheaval, maintaining a sense of joy or contentment can be especially challenging.
As if that weren’t difficult enough, human intuition often fails at identifying what, exactly, will bring happiness. But according to professor Laurie Santos, the social sciences can help.
As a cognitive scientist and psychology professor at Yale University who launched the popular class Psychology and the Good Life and hosts the podcast The Happiness Lab, Santos has a firm grasp on the science of feeling good.
In this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast she discusses how scientific study has helped shed common misconceptions about what makes people happy and identifies practices that can lead to happier lives, including daily behavioral changes, larger structural changes in our lives and mindfully balancing happiness with our negative emotions.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producers: Sara Bernard, Brooklyn Jamerson-Flowers
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to funding our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.
A decade of advancement by private companies run by billionaires has transformed how humanity is approaching the final frontier.
Some of the biggest news in recent space exploration has revolved around billionaires. Last year, for instance, both Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson actually traveled into space. Those very high-profile – and very brief – journeys were a result of the relatively recent push by private companies to join Earth’s more technologically advanced nations in reaching toward the heavens.
Blue Origin, SpaceX and Boeing have all played a major role in recent developments in space technology and even NASA’s Artemis mission, which is aimed at putting a woman and person of color on the moon, is outsourcing aspects of the mission to private companies.
The story of space exploration is a long, methodical and somewhat slow-moving one – in relation to the news cycle at least. But recent developments from private companies and nations have been coming relatively fast.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, two authors who have been keeping an eye on the skies over the last decade discuss how these relatively new players are approaching the space race and how the nations who have been in the race for decades are responding.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producers: Sara Bernard, Brooklyn Jamerson-Flowers
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to funding our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.
The city’s arts industry is returning to some semblance of normalcy. During a live Civic Cocktail event, four leaders survey the damage done and chart a path forward.
In the spring of 2020, many artists and arts organizations were already struggling to maintain a place for themselves in Seattle. The future of creative expression in the city was uncertain, but the challenges were well-defined. Then the pandemic hit and scrambled everything.
Audiences shifted to experiencing their arts and entertainment through screens as artists pivoted to a new digital reality. Many arts organizations, meanwhile, had to rely on philanthropy, government assistance and their own creativity to survive.
Now, as a vaccinated and exhausted world presses on through year three of the pandemic, the arts are in the midst of a slow return to venues across the city. But the world that artists and arts organizations are encountering is very different from the one they faced when the arts shut down two years ago.
For this episode of the Civic Cocktail podcast, we speak with four community arts leaders – Arté Noir founder and president Vivian Philips, Museum of Museums founder and director Greg Lundgren, Artist Home founder and owner Kevin Sur, and Northwest Folklife managing director Reese Tanimura – about the state of the arts now. They share their experiences leading organizations and businesses through the pandemic, outline new challenges of this late-pandemic era and offer prescriptions to keep the arts alive in Seattle.
This conversation was recorded on July 13, 2022.
Civic Cocktail is a production of Seattle City Club and Crosscut.
To receive future conversations like this one in your podcast feed earlier, subscribe to the Civic Cocktail podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Podbean, or wherever you listen.
Credits
Host/podcast production: Mark Baumgarten
Event production: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Video production: Stephen Hegg
Author Pamela Paul recalls what the world was like before it was connected — and how privacy and personal memory have transformed since.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the internet was there to help much of humanity keep going while maintaining a social distance. The transition was not seamless, but the interconnected world that had been taking shape in the decades prior made it possible for many people’s work and social lives to continue, if in a radically altered manner.
But while the internet has made this new normal possible, it has come at a cost. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, author Pamela Paul tallies those costs, not just since the pandemic but in the decades before.
In this interview from the 2022 Crosscut Festival, Paul discusses her book 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet, in which she documents a history that younger generations may barely remember – if they recall it at all. Baby Boomers, meanwhile, will find in Paul’s work a nostalgia trip through a time when privacy and individual memory remained more intact.
As a member of Gen X, Paul delivers a perspective from somewhere in between. While there was no internet during her childhood, she witnessed its transformative powers as it became central to her life.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producers: Sara Bernard, Brooklyn Jamerson-Flowers
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to funding our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.
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 those who consume it.
That is partially because the story of that reporting is dramatic, enough to fuel a bestselling book and hit film. But mostly the reporting on Watergate continues to resonate because it so clearly changed the course of American history. In the parlance of newsrooms, what Bernstein and his reporting partner, Bob Woodward, did at the Washington Post in the early ’70s was high impact journalism.
None of that is news to anyone. But that isn’t the story Bernstein shares in this episode of the Crosscut Talk podcast. Instead, he tells the story that came before the story, of his earliest days in a newsroom, at the Washington Star, in the early ’60s.
It’s the subject of his recent memoir, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, and it’s a jumping-off point here — in this interview with University of Washington professor Matthew Powers — to talk about the evolution of the journalism industry, the public’s regard for the news and what it means to search for the truth.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to funding our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.
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 other ways that human beings degrade the living world, from ocean acidification to the proliferation of plastics to the role that modern civilization plays in spreading pathogens.
The extent of the destruction wrought by humanity has been amplified by human ingenuity to what could be called an unnatural degree. But what if humanity could use that ingenuity to do the reverse, to mend the damage done.
That is the topic of this episode of Crosscut Talks, featuring author Elizabeth Kolbert and Grist staff writer Lizzy O’Leary discussing the intriguing technologies that may help heal nature and the likelihood that they will protect the planet from the worst ravages of climate change.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to funding our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.
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 that return to the rivers here during their spawning runs are a fraction of what they used to be, and they appear to be sliding toward extinction.
In recent years, a movement to reverse that depopulation has gained steam. It has focused on the dams along the Snake River, which stand as a major obstruction to the salmon. But the dams have also served as sources of hydroelectric power, which is something else that has more recently become woven into the culture of the Pacific Northwest. So removing those dams is no easy task.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, retired environmental journalist Rocky Barker sits down with two people who would like to see those dams breached — Dr. Helen Neville and Washington Environmental Council CEO Alyssa Macy — to talk about what is at stake and where the movement stands now.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to funding our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.
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, says a lot about who we are and what we value, in a nutritional sense as well as a social sense.
To a certain extent, this perspective has become widely accepted. The rise of organic foods in the grocery aisle and farm-to-table on restaurant menus speaks to this kind of understanding. But the system that’s delivering that food to our plates is so much more complex than a label. And that’s what this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast is about.
We invited two people who think a lot about food to share what they see when they look at our food systems. Eddie Hill is a co-founder of the Black Food Sovereignty Coalition and director of the Black Farm Bureau. Robert Paarlberg is the author of Resetting the Table: Straight Talk About the Food We Grow and Eat.
In conversation with Grist staff writer Kate Yoder, they tangle with the food system’s biggest problems, discuss whether a focus on local and organic foods are actually solving some of those problems and share what they see as the best course toward a healthier future for everyone.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
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.
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 impacts of climate change have decreased, the audience for work like McKibben’s has grown.
When McKibben was first writing about the effects of humanity on the natural world, climate change was still something of a niche category of news. It is only in the past couple decades, as its impacts have become devastatingly apparent, that the story of our rapidly changing planet has become central to everyday life.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, which was recorded as part of the 2022 Crosscut Festival, Bill McKibben shares his perspective on this current state of the climate fight with Grist climate reporter Shannon Osaka.
McKibben discusses the history of climate change and climate denial that have led to this point, as well his outlook for the future that may be more dire than it was 30 years ago, but remains unwritten.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 or severely limit it.
Washington state decided decades ago that abortion access would remain in the state even if Roe fell. But the impact of this decision extends far beyond access.
What changes lie ahead for clinics and service providers as demand grows from other states? Will legislators reinforce Washington’s laws as other states rewrite theirs? And what should Washingtonians know about the broader implications to their rights going forward?
For this episode of the Civic Cocktail podcast, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, Planned Parenthood regional CEO Rebecca Gibron and State Senator Manka Dhingra attempt to answer those questions.
This conversation was recorded on June 22, 2022.
Civic Cocktail is a production of Seattle City Club and Crosscut.
To receive future conversations like this one in your podcast feed earlier, subscribe to the Civic Cocktail podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Podbean, or wherever you listen.
Credits
Host: Mónica Guzmán
Podcast production: Mark Baumgarten
Event production: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Audio support: Sara Bernard
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. Their goal is to help bring an end to this global need in their lifetimes.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, White and Damon describe what drew them to this work while laying out the problem as they understand it.
In this conversation with Dr. Leah Stokes from the 2022 Crosscut Festival, they also detail how their efforts to facilitate the financing of solutions has made clean water available to more than 40 million people and tell the story of how their work has impacted those who previously spent hours each day securing clean water.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 and sent books that tangled with systemic racism, white supremacy and the experience being Black in America up the bestseller lists.
But two years on, where has all that conversation and commitment led us? And where do we go from here? That is the topic of this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, which features a conversation with author Ijeoma Oluo, whose book So You Want to Talk About Race was central to many of the conversations happening in 2020.
In this talk with Seattle Times journalist Naomi Ishisaka, which took place in early May as part of the Crosscut Festival, Oluo offers a clear-eyed appraisal of the state of race in the country right now.
Her assessment may not come as a surprise to anyone who has been tracking the faltering efforts to rethink policing in America, the continued inequities in our health care system or the backlash against educators who acknowledge the role that white supremacy plays in our history and culture. But, in addition to seeing things as they are, Oluo also shares what she believes it would take for them to truly change in a meaningful way.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 identity is tightly aligned to what they do when they are on the clock.
So when the pandemic came and upended work, it really disrupted so much more. The reverberations have been significant and include the so-called Great Resignation and newly energized movement toward organized labor. Management, meanwhile, is trying to figure out how to return to some form of normalcy, or whether that is even possible.
All of these issues are of high interest to the journalists appearing on his episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Eyal Press and Sarah Jaffe. Both have been studying labor in America since before the pandemic and have recently authored books on different aspects of work in America.
In this conversation with This Changes Everything host Sara Bernard they explore what the recent disruption has revealed about work in America and whether our current moment is a transformational one.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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' lives. There is still room for more information that would help the public in its battle against the virus, but the need is nothing compared with the early days of the pandemic.
Those early days are where Trevor Bedford found a new role for himself as a science communicator. A professor in the vaccine and infectious disease division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Bedford was busy at the start of the pandemic. In addition to his day job, he used Twitter to deliver a steady stream of information on the new threat to a public desperate for it.
Bedford continues to inform the public, now with more than 400,000 Twitter followers and a MacArthur “genius” grant to his name.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, reporter Hannah Weinberger speaks with Bedford about how his particular experience with this difficult period has impacted the way he thinks about his work, communication and the pandemic.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 and valleys of COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths, there were many other statistics that shifted into the background, as stress and delay warped the health care system.
It wasn’t as if that health care system was perfect in the first place. The pandemic has both exposed and intensified existing problems in our hospitals, including access for some Americans and deep inequities when it comes to race. The pandemic also created new problems, including shortages of supplies and equipment early on, and now, as the country presses through a fourth virus surge, shortages of hospital staff.
While much of the country attempts to move past the pandemic, the health care industry has no such luxury as health care professionals face continued challenges posed by the virus.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, recorded in early May during this year’s Crosscut Festival, journalist Will Stone interviews two of those professionals, Amazon Chief Medical Officer Vin Gupta and Washington Hospital Association CEO Cassie Sauer, about the past two years of sustained stress on the health care system, examining the cracks it has exposed, as well as some silver linings.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 development and experts who understand their deep history.
The podcast is part of Black Arts Legacies, a major multimedia project from Crosscut also featuring profiles, original photography, and videos all about Black arts and artists in Seattle.
Subscribe to the Black Arts Legacies podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Play.
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 authoritarian rap sheet was plenty long, replete with intercontinental election meddling and persecution of his political opponents. And the Russian leader is only one of a crop of authoritarians throughout the world.
And then there is the creeping authoritarianism in the United States, most visible in an anti-democratic insurrection by supporters of now-former President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, journalist David Corn explores these threads with an expert panel including U.S. intelligence expert Rebekah Koffler, professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat and professor of government Steven Levitsky, all of whom have written recent books that, in one way or another, track the rise of strongmen and their threats to democracy.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 election was a kind of backlash to the backlash.
Just a year before, in the wake of the 2020 protests over racist policing, Seattle leaders were seriously entertaining the idea of defunding the police. Back then, the idea of a Republican overseeing misdemeanor prosecutions in the city was unthinkable. But in November, Davison defeated a candidate who embodied activist opposition to status quo law enforcement, and in January she replaced a 12-year incumbent who was proudly progressive.
In the months since, Davison has been actively retooling how the city handles misdemeanor cases, while the concerns over public safety that helped get her into office have continued to grow. She has also made news for a recent decision to dismiss thousands of backlogged misdemeanor cases.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, journalist Joni Balter talks with Davison about how, exactly, she is reshaping the office she inherited, why she dismissed those cases and when voters can expect to see the impact of her leadership.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 legal system and neighbors fed up and frustrated by everything from distrust around racial disparities to what feels like inaction, bordering on neglect. All with this nagging sense that, after the reckonings of the past few years, we're still not seeing the bigger picture.
For this episode of Civic Cocktail, host Mónica Guzmán explores how we define and address public safety over the course of two conversations with four guests close to the issue.
The show begins with three local leaders whose community advocacy gives them each a critical lens on what public safety is all about. Then, Guzmán sits down with the man in charge of the most powerful local institution officially charged with supporting safety in our city, Seattle Police interim Chief Adrian Diaz.
This conversation was recorded on May 19, 2022.
Civic Cocktail is a production of Seattle City Club and Crosscut.
Subscribe to the Civic Cocktail podcast now to receive future conversations in your podcast feed earlier.
Credits
Host: Mónica Guzmán
Podcast production: Mark Baumgarten
Event production: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Video Production: Stephen Hegg
Audio support: Sara Bernard
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 surprising.
Now seven years after the city and the county declared a state of emergency to help address homelessness, the problem has become so widespread in the greater Seattle area that it is nearly impossible to ignore. It can also seem nearly impossible to address in a meaningful way.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation with three people who are nonetheless attempting to do just that: King County Regional Homeless Authority CEO Marc Dones, outreach provider Karen E. Salinas and the CEO of the Racial Equity Action Lab, Lamont Green.
In conversation with Crosscut city reporter Josh Cohen, these three outreach leaders discuss why the homeless population has grown so large, where leadership has gone wrong in the past and how an approach informed by the lived experience of those living in a state of homelessness could help them get things right.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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, though — and this is a well-worn idea for anyone who has been tracking reports or has parented a student through this period — is that it made the problems in America’s schools impossible to ignore. And it also may have presented some solutions.
Those persistent problems and unlikely solutions are the subject of this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, which features Washington state’s superintendent of public instruction, Chris Reykdahl, and Uti Yamassee Hawkins, vice president of the Seattle Education Association, which represents the teachers in the state’s largest school district.
In their conversation with Crosscut news editor Donna Blankinship, which took place on May 3, 2022, as part of the Crosscut Festival, both draw on their perspectives as leaders, as well as their classroom experience, to help examine an education system at a crossroads.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
Notes
If you enjoyed this conversation, you'll want to listen to the latest season of This Changes Everything, a six-episode examination of the impact of the pandemic on public education in Washington state, told through the experiences of students, teachers and families. Search "This Changes Everything" on your podcast player or listen to all episodes here.
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 cases against the administration, a record highly touted at the time.
But with Trump’s departure from the White House, Ferguson’s star turn on the national stage has ended, for the time being. His work hasn’t.
Under his direction, the Office of the Attorney General made headlines recently for successfully taking prescription opioid distributors to trial and for battling the Biden White House, which is challenging a state law that seeks to protect workers at Hanford. The office has also helped shape state legislation that impacts gun sales and police accountability.
This episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast features a May 7, 2022, conversation from the Crosscut Festival in which the attorney general spoke with former KIRO-TV journalist Essex Porter about the reasoning behind these decisions, as well as the possibility of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 crises.
The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, has become a defining event for the Democratic governor, who early on used his executive authority to issue some of the most severe restrictions in the nation, including masking requirements, vaccine mandates and business closures.
Now the governor finds himself at a crossroads where patience for such measures has waned, even as the virus remains a threat. Meanwhile, Inslee has mounted a full-throated defense of reproductive rights in the state and continued to trumpet climate policy he believes will stave off future disaster.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, the governor talks about all of these issues with KUOW’s Bill Radke. The interview, which was conducted on May 7 as part of the Crosscut Festival, is the first of three with statewide leaders that we will be publishing over the next week.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 1619 Project, a work of journalism created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, the guest on this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast. Launched by the New York Times in 2019, the project puts Black Americans at the center of the American story, starting with the arrival of the White Lion, a ship that in 1619 carried captive Africans to the shores of what would become the United States.
The project has become a major text for the racial reckoning that has unfolded in the past few years, and it has been met with severe resistance from some quarters, and it’s not done. Hannah-Jones published a book version of the project last fall and is currently at work on a documentary series based on the project.
In this conversation with University of Washington professor Christopher Sebastian Parker, which took place in early May as part of the 2022 Crosscut Festival, Hannah-Jones discusses the project’s aims, what it has achieved and how she views the backlash it has received.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 midterm elections, there is little indication that Democrats and Republicans will come together any time soon.
Still, while partisan rancor may pose a threat to American democracy, politicians in both parties are leveraging it in their own attempts to build support, raise money and get things done.
Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson and former presidential adviser Robert Gibbs are both familiar with the calculus involved in turning partisanship into political gain. But they are also aware of the threats that severe partisanship can bring.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, the two political strategists discuss the fight for Congress in 2022 and the White House, detail missteps in their own parties that helped create the current landscape and consider why some Americans may prefer authoritarianism to democracy.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 journalism is expansive enough to effectively respond to that news cycle. He delves into topics as divergent as white nationalism, science fiction, abortion rights and cryptocurrency. But he is no dilettante. Klein comes to each of these topics deeply researched and with well-developed ideas and questions. And when he really wants to understand something, he goes all in and takes his listeners with him.
That was the case earlier this year when, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Klein decided to go deep into the conflict. Over the course of a few months, he committed 11 episodes of his hourlong interview podcast to the conflict, investigating numerous aspects of the conflict with expert guests.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, recorded as part of the 2022 Crosscut Festival, we invited Klein to discuss the thinking that went into his coverage of the war in Ukraine and what understanding he gained from that deep dive. And because we couldn’t focus all our attention on one thing, we asked him about the recent leak of a draft opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court and what hope there is for an end to the partisan rancor that defines our national conversation.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 variants. But there is still much that is unknown.
After a difficult winter dealing with the highly transmissible omicron variant, Americans are heading into another pandemic summer not knowing what new variants are around the corner and, ultimately, when the pandemic will shift into an endemic phase.
As the chief medical adviser to the president and the face of the federal pandemic response, Dr. Anthony Fauci holds the unenviable role of guiding a politically fractured nation through this uncertainty.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we are featuring the full interview between Fauci and PBS Newshour host Judy Woodruff, which took place on April 26, 2022, as part of the Crosscut Festival. In this conversation, Fauci discusses the possibility of new variants, the emergence of new therapies and the political divide that has been a defining aspect of the fight against the virus.
Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 half-century.
On Monday, May 2, those questions were (nearly) answered. A draft of the court’s majority opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked to Politico, suggesting that a 5-4 decision officially overturning Roe is indeed likely to be released in June.
As part of the Crosscut Festival, Crosscut invited journalist Dahlia Lithwick, host of Slate’s Amicus podcast, to lead a panel of experts in a discussion about what officially overturning the 1973 ruling could lead to — and what it portends about a court willing to take on the most divisive issue in generations.
In this week’s episode of Crosscut Talks, Lithwick and her guests discuss the potential legal ramifications of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion as written and the ways in which we are already living in a post-Roe America.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Sara Bernard
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 continue to struggle with homelessness, growth, inequality and public safety.
As we try to better understand this moment, the inclination is to zoom in. But we’re doing something different for this new season of Civic Cocktail, and the inaugural episode of the Civic Cocktail podcast. We will be taking a step back. First, by taking stock of where we’ve been. And then, where we might be going — after some of the most tumultuous years we’ve ever known.
How do we do that in just 60 minutes? With the help of four experts, including Leonard Garfield, executive director of Museum of History and Industry; Jerry Large, president of blackpast.org; and Ron Chew, founder of Chew Communications, as well as Glen Hiemstra, founder of futurist.com.
From well before the city’s founding in 1851, through war, migration, innovation, and incredible growth, ours is a story of conflict and collaboration, of heartbreaking exclusion and steps toward more meaningful inclusion. In this episode we discuss where we’ve been so we can know better where we ought to be going.
Civic Cocktail is a production of Seattle City Club and Crosscut. To subscribe to the Civic Cocktail podcast, go here.
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Host: Mónica Guzmán
Podcast production: Mark Baumgarten
Event production: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Video Production: Stephen Hegg
Audio support: Seth Halleran
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 counter-narrative to the general election, which took place a month earlier and saw city leadership tilt slightly to the right, suggesting a possible new approach to longstanding problems.
Since then, Sawant has continued legislating from a socialist playbook now very familiar to Seattleites.Over her 8-year tenure, Sawant has helped to increase Seattle’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, secured more protections for renters and was a leading voice in the push for a new tax on business.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we spoke with the councilmember about how she plans to legislate after the recall attempt, whether the change in city leadership is impacting her approach and what she thinks it will take to address the city’s biggest problems.
This interview was recorded at 10am PST on February 16, 2022.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 antidote. The state's mail-in voting system was viewed as a model during the 2020 election for states looking at ways to assure access and security for their voters.
As Washington's newly appointed secretary of state, Steve Hobbs is responsible for maintaining that reputation while advancing efforts to bolster cybersecurity and fighting misinformation.
For this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Hobbs discusses his plans for the office, the threats Washington state faces and how the failure to pass voting rights legislation at the federal level impacts his work at the state level.
This interview was recorded at 10am PST on January 18, 2022.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 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.
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Hosts: Sara Bernard, Knute Berger
Editorial assistance: Mason Bryan
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
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 is less than certain. Concerns over inflation have emboldened critics of the legislation and Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia whose vote is needed to pass the bill, has been hesitant to sign on.
Much is on the line for a Democratic party that holds the slimmest of majorities in Washington, D.C., and the emboldened progressives within its ranks.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Jayapal tells us why she believes America and the Democrats need Build Back Better to pass, what the future holds for the progressive movement and how she approaches her conversations with Manchin.
This interview was recorded at 10am PST on December 15, 2021.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 local and state governments.
Hardship followed, but so did innovation, as the pandemic changed the way people dined. Among the most innovative restaurants was Seattle fine dining stalwart Canlis.
For this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we have partnered with the Your Last Meal podcast to bring a conversation with the owners of Canlis about how they weathered the first year of the pandemic.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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. And, as recent history has shown, people with agendas can leverage that bias to their advantage.
What can be done about it? Beyond deleting their accounts or enacting a heightened regimen of personal vigilance, the average person is left to rely on government intervention or the willingness of the companies to police themselves.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we speak with two authors who know a lot about social media, Jillian C. York and Andrew Marantz, about the likelihood that anything can be done, or will be done, about it.
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 future of cities while also challenging some assumed wisdom about who will occupy American cities in the future and how.
Americans have been living in that future for a year and a half now and, while the fate of cities may be a little clearer, it is still difficult to say exactly where urban life is headed.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, urban theorist Richard Florida shares his evolving vision of America's urban future, explaining why early concerns of an exodus were overblown and how work will really change the way city dwellers live.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Sara Bernard, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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? What is it about America that, despite its incredible wealth, prevents it from closing the gap?
Heather McGhee has an answer, which she puts forth in her book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. The problem, she says, is America's zero sum theory of economic well-being. And the roots of that theory, she says, are found in racism.
For this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, McGhee sits down with the Root senior writer Michael Harriot to discuss the origins of that theory and how it affects all Americans.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 history when the pervading power dynamic is largely taken for granted. Now is not one of those times.
The crises of recent years, along with the spread of new technologies, have disrupted the status quo and brought power struggles of all sorts into the open. Those denied power — whether because of their race, their gender or their immigration status — are staking a claim to it. These struggles are shaping politics at all levels in a very real way and touching American lives on an individual basis.
For this week’s episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza discusses how she and others are pushing to rebalance power in this country, especially when it comes to Black Americans. In conversation with The 19th’s Erinn Haines, Garza discusses the role that activists have played in the shifting of power and the forces that are working to stop or even reverse that shift.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 relationships between people and the animals they rely on are often taken for granted, even though these relationships are embedded with deeply consequential questions.
What right do human beings have to interrupt or manipulate the lives of other beings? What is that interruption doing to them? And what is it doing to humanity?
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we invited science Nijhuis and Singer to answer these questions and to explain the history of humanity’s tangled relationship with the animal kingdom.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 have themselves changed. As the old ways have fallen away, some new approaches to the industry’s financial and philosophical underpinnings have resulted in new hope for many.
A lot of that hope is embodied in The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom focused on covering gender, politics and policy.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we feature a conversation with The 19th founders Amanda Zamora and Emily Ramshaw about the origins, intentions and successes of their outlet.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 division and political mistrust that have become endemic to public life, but there is an argument to be made that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, served as an animating force of this difficult era.
This is the idea behind the latest installment of PBS's Frontline series, America After 9/11.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we speak with Michael Kirk, the filmmaker behind the documentary, and journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran about how that one day and the decisions that followed transformed the country.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 questions facing the party now in power is what it would do with this moment when it came to the environment.
Climate policy has never been a given when it comes to actual legislation at the federal level. But President Biden and many of his fellow Democrats have put climate front and center in this first year of his administration.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson and Julian Brave Noisecat discuss the moves the president has made to shore up his administration's environmental acumen, the scope of his vision and whether it will amount to anything.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 American society.
Anti-racist statements were issued from corporate accounts and personal pledges made on social media. A year later, the national conversation about racism continues as the cultural shift promised in those early days meets reality.
In some places, stated goals of diversity, equity and inclusion are coming up against headwinds created by a status quo that is pretty resistant to change.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we speak with Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Race. Interviewer Jason Johnson, who hosts Slate's A Word podcast, speaks with her about what has actually changed in the past year and what still needs to happen.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 quickly forget about the dangers ahead.
That is becoming more and more difficult to do now as headlines about record-breaking heat waves, drought, wildfires and flooding become more frequent.
It is also becoming more difficult to ignore for one particular segment of the population: outdoor adventurers who rely on snowy slopes, forest trails, waterways and clean air to get their kicks.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we speak with Amy Snover of the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group about the ways the changing climate is changing the nature of outdoor recreation and what can still be saved.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 halt was unthinkable.
The arts did continue, much of it digital and streaming, but the spaces in our cities remained empty and the future of the organizations that once filled them, uncertain.
Now that audiences are tentatively beginning to gather again, they are returning to a landscape that has been forever changed, for worse and for better.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Crosscut arts reporter Margo Vansynghel speaks with the leaders of three Seattle institutions — Vivian Hua of the Northwest Film Forum, Tim Lennon from Langston and Erin Johnson of Velocity Dance Center — about the difficult decisions and innovations that have brought them this far and what the future looks like for their organizations.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 have grown, so have calls for government action. Tech CEOs have been brought before congress to answer questions about their practices and plans.
Critics have been vocal about what they believe should happen, but lawmakers will ultimately decide what will happen.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we are featuring a conversation with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic lawmaker who authored a recently published book on antitrust and is seeking to reign in what she views as excesses in big tech.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 Black experience has played a part in the long-accepted version of American History. The Underground Railroad, Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights movement, for instance, are all parts of the country's story that should be familiar to most Americans.
But now, a new generation of historians and journalists are bringing forward the experiences of more Black Americans, revealing that there is much more to their stories.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we feature a conversation from the 2021 Crosscut Festival with Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, two leading lights in the effort to deepen Americans' understanding of the Black experience and the country's history. In conversation with journalist Soledad O’Brien, they discuss why this history is essential and how it came together.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 predictable, to the point that it is difficult imagining an outcome that strays from the status quo.
Sen. Chris Murphy believes that that could be changing and has been pushing to make that change happen.
For this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we speak with the Connecticut senator about the origins and history of gun violence in America and why he believes the debate is changing.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 built on the teachings of Jesus Christ and guided by the Ted Commandments to empower a person who has chosen hubris over humility and is seemingly unbound by a number of the divine laws.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast we posed that question to three experts: the Rev. Rob Schenck, the Rev. Lenny Duncan and Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
The answer, they say, begins long before Trump descended that golden escalator to announce his presidential campaign, perhaps as far back as the faith’s very beginning.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 determining how individual societies and the global community move forward through an era that will be defined by climate change and the drought, floods and fires that come with it.
The question facing governments and individuals is whether to push back against the tide of migrants, or to embrace it.
For today's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, science journalists Shah and Lustgarten consider the impacts of the great climate migration and what it might mean to view it as a solution instead of a problem.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 and other foreign travelers, but there are restrictions in many places, requiring proof of vaccination or even a negative COVID-19 test.
Meanwhile, in some other parts of the world, the pandemic continues to rage, and travelers are being advised to stay away.
For this issue of the Crosscut Talks podcast, travel expert Rick Steves discusses how he plans to ease into post-pandemic travel, what he expects to find when he does and what lessons from the lockdown he will bring to his future adventures.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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. Washington state, the first American state to record a pandemic death and one of the slowest to return to normal, is set to reopen on Wednesday, June 30.
Much is changing, but one thing remains a constant for many: worry. After a year spent navigating many unknowns while attempting to avoid an unusual, deadly and highly contagious virus, it is, perhaps, difficult to stop worrying. But there are also reasons to worry, including a host of variants that have the potential to change the course of the virus, a politically charged divide between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, and shifting social norms that may feel risky or just plain weird.
The undercurrent to all of this is an unsettling sense of the unknown and a desire for more information.
For today’s episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Northwest Newsmakers host Monica Guzman speaks about all of this with Dr. Umair Shah, Washington state’s secretary of health. In this conversation, recorded on June 22, 2021, the doctor speaks about the reopening plan, the risks that come with it and how he believes the pandemic has changed us.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 to have waned some as adventurism abroad and partisan gridlock at home have tarnished the country’s global reputation and tested the trust of its allies.
China, meanwhile, has emerged as an economic force that is coalescing power while building allyships of its own through the Belt and Road Initiative.
For this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates discusses what the rise of China means for American exceptionalism and how the country might best navigate the new global terrain.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
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 with protesters calling for an end to racist policing. The anti-racist movement spread from there, hitting pretty much every institution in the country.
Promises of change flooded social media, coming from business leaders, nonprofit organizations, professional sports leagues and city leaders.
But where are we now? That is a question that former Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin and organizer Shaun Scott are actively contemplating and one that they discuss with Northwest Newsmakers host Monica Guzman for our latest episode of the Crosscut Talks episode.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
Adam Jentleson and Ellie Mystal discuss the structural issues they say threaten how we govern, and the solutions they believe are within reach.
The battle over the fate of American democracy has heated up in the past few months, as pundits and political leaders spar over issues of accountability and reform.
Much of the conversation has revolved around what some consider immediate threats: state legislatures seeking to curtail voting, disinformation campaigns warping the electorate, disgruntled voters storming the U.S. Capitol.
This week's guests on the Crosscut Talks podcast — Kill Switch author Adam Jentleson and Nation magazine justice correspondent Ellie Mystal — are concerned about those issues, but they have focused their attention and considerable passions on more long-burning threats coming from within the government.
In this conversation with Slate's Dahlia Lithwick from last month's Crosscut Festival, Jentleson and Mystal discuss why the U.S. Supreme Court and Senate have long undermined any sense of true democracy in the United States, what can be done to fix them and why now is the time they must be fixed.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
The senior senator from Montana discusses the challenges facing Democrats as they try to convince red state voters to go green.
The impacts of climate change are felt across the political spectrum, from the blue coastal cities contending with rising oceans to the red rural communities where drought and deluge upend growing seasons.
Yet convincing residents of America's more conservative areas has proved difficult for lawmakers seeking to stave off the worst effects of climate change.
Sen. Jon Tester knows all about this. As a Montana farmer contending with new pests, historic droughts and erratic growing seasons, he understands the impacts of climate change on rural communities. And he knows about the difficulties in selling climate policy because he is a three-term senator in a state where Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential contest by more than 16 points. He is also a Democrat.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, recorded at the Crosscut Festival in early May, the three-term senator discusses the prospects of moving his conservative neighbors and his Republican colleagues toward government-devised climate solutions.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
The congresswoman from Seattle speaks about the importance of grassroots activism and how to make it effective.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal embodies change. As a progressive lawmaker, the Democratic congresswoman from Seattle is someone whose job is to press for political change. But she also represents a sea change in the world of activism.
Jayapal's life as a change-maker began around the turn of the millenium, when activists were largely set apart from the government, applying pressure from the outside. But over the course of two decades, her philosophy of change changed.
Now she is at the forefront of a new approach to activism for the left, in which the pressure is applied from inside the halls of government, and often by women of color.
For the latest episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Jayapal discusses her journey from organizer to lawmaker and shares some of the thinking required to turn a desire for societal change into actual change.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
The historian discusses how the battle between North and South lives on in American politics today.
Deep partisanship defines American politics in the 21st century. But division is nothing new to the country. Long before modern Democrats and Republicans were at loggerheads over health care and tax policy, Americans fought over the fate of the country.
The Civil War was obviously the most consequential of those conflicts and, for much of American history, the conventional wisdom has held that the war’s conclusion resolved some of the most pressing questions about the nation’s fate.
Yet the appearance of the Confederate flag in the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection — a site never before seen in the nation's history — signaled that the war might not be over in the minds of some Americans.
For the latest episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, recorded during this year's Crosscut Festival, historian Heather Cox Richardson speaks with Crosscut's Knute Berger about America's enduring conflict and the founding paradox at the root of it all.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
Months after losing the presidency and the Senate majority, the Republican Party is at a defining moment. Which way will it go?
That the Republican Party is undergoing a very public reckoning isn't really in question. But, depending on where you sit on the political spectrum, that reckoning can look very different.
Is a GOP in free fall doomed to shatter once it hits bottom? Is the party still in the early stages of a painful but necessary transformation? Or is it only the Republicans who won't go along with the so-called "Big Lie" who are due for a reckoning?
Conservative columnists Henry Olsen (Washington Post) and Ross Douthat (The New York Times) have been tangling with each of these takes on their preferred party since before Republicans lost the presidency and their Senate majority last fall.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, both men dissect the political realities of the current moment while mapping out potential futures for the GOP.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
Three Seattle artists discuss disruption, unrest and the pain — and healing — that comes from making art.
All art, whether searingly relevant or seemingly superficial, has a kind of political weight to it. Murals, photography, printmaking and performance can help shape our perception of reality, challenging certain ways of living and thinking, and giving power to others.
In the past year, in particular, it's been hard to view any work of art as divorced from the hugely disruptive events that we've been living through and the politics of inequity that underline each one of them.
Listening to the artists who appear on this week's episode of Crosscut Talks — Monyee Chau, Steven Miller and Teddy Phillips — it's clear that rather than existing in a separate realm, art is intrinsically affected by political and social change, and vice versa.
In this conversation, led by Crosscut arts and culture editor Brangien Davis, three Seattle artists talk about the particular political challenges they address in their work, as well as the impact their artmaking has had on them as individuals: how it has helped them cope and connect, as well as the pressures they've felt and the limits they've hit.
Links
A Seattle engineer’s inner artist blooms for Black Lives Matter (feat. Teddy Phillips) - Crosscut, August 7, 2020
Seattle artist fights anti-Asian racism in the Chinatown-International District (feat. Monyee Chau) - Crosscut, May 13, 2020
Seattle photographers trade Zoom calls for a zoom lens (feat. Steven Miller) - Crosscut, April 20, 2020
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
Almost a year since the protests that led to her resignation, Former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best tells us what she thinks should be done to fix the force.
When Best was appointed Seattle police chief in 2018, many in the community celebrated. As the first Black woman to hold the post, her ascent was notable, especially for a department that was under federal supervision for using excessive force and possible bias.
Then, last summer, Best was leading that department through the tense protests that followed the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. As a result, she lost the confidence of many in the community.
A few months later, Best retired from her post as top cop, a move the 30-year SPD veteran attributed to Seattle City Councilmembers' stated aims to cut funding to the department.
For this episode of Crosscut Talks, Best sits with Crosscut reporter David Kroman to discuss her decision to leave, her thoughts on the protests and her opinions on how policing should change.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
The famed scientist says she sees threats everywhere, but she also sees reasons to believe humans can save themselves and the environment.
It has been a difficult year for everyone, and Dr. Jane Goodall is no exception. The famed primatologist, anthropologist and ethologist has been waiting out the pandemic at her family home in England at a time when she had planned to be out and about.
She didn't let that stop her from delivering her message about species protection and environmental conservation. Over the past year, she says, she has been able to reach many millions more people through video conferencing and podcast interviews than the in-person meetings and appearances she had planned.
The kind of human ingenuity that has allowed Goodall to continue her work through the pandemic gives the doctor reason to believe that our species can right its wrongs, though our reluctance to employ its cleverness toward a world-saving endeavor also confuses her.
In this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Goodall speaks with Dr. Katharine Wilkinson as part of the Crosscut Festival, which took place earlier this month. They discuss the challenges facing the planet, how confounding she finds humanity's destruction of its home and, yet, how she holds onto the hope that it may be able to pull itself back from the brink.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
‘Hidden Barriers’ producer Jen Dev and health justice educator Edwin Lindo on raising awareness of and seeking solutions to systemic racism in the health care industry.
When Dr. Ben Danielson resigned in protest from his post with Seattle Children's late last year, he provided a rallying point for those seeking changes to a health care industry that produces disparities in care based on race.
Danielson’s departure brought greater attention to the issue and resulted in action from Seattle Children’s, which, among other things, launched an independent investigation into his claims.
Systemic racism, though, is not about a single doctor or a single hospital. It is, by definition, everywhere. That broader view of inequities within the health care system is the subject of the second season of the Crosscut documentary series “Hidden Barriers,” in which data and personal stories are brought together to shed light on disparities invisible to many, but all too apparent to some.
For this week’s episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we speak with the creator of “Hidden Barriers,” Jen Dev, about her approach to this story. Joining her is Edwin Lindo, the assistant dean for social and health sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine and one of the voices that helped guide Dev’s reporting.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
Dr. Nicholas Christakis discusses the future course of COVID-19 and the world it will leave behind.
It's been a little over a year now since the novel coronavirus was declared a pandemic and normal life in America -- and around the world -- came to a screeching halt.
Since then, vaccines have been developed and deployed, but uncertainty remains. Variants of the virus are helping to drive spikes in infection rates in some areas while vaccine hesitancy remains a barrier to herd immunity. And then there is the question of lasting impacts and how they will ultimately change humanity.
Dr. Christakis has been attempting to bring clarity to this uncertain process throughout the pandemic, including in his book “Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live.”
For the latest episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, he provides some insight into what the future holds for this virus and the society it has reshaped.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
Citizen University CEO Eric Liu talks about all that separates Americans and whether coming together is really possible.
Division has become an everyday reality for most Americans. Reading or scrolling through the news inevitably leads to some kind of partisan rancor or social conflict. And it can be difficult to think that there is anything other than deeper division in the country's future.
Of course, division is nothing new. Political and social strife is woven into the history of American life, a counterweight to the lofty idea of national unity that is central to the national mythology. And, in the midst of a pandemic that has deepened some divisions, that idea of unity — the coming together of the American people toward a singular purpose — appears to be fading as division dominates.
Liu doesn't necessarily see it that way. Through his writing and his Civic Saturday events, the CEO and founder of Civic University promotes an idea of interconnectedness and civic possibility that challenges the national narrative of division. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Monica Guzman sits down with Liu to discuss how he views our current divisions and how the American people could possibly come together.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
'Coded Bias' filmmaker Shalini Kantayya and researcher Meredith Broussard dissect the inequities perpetuated and created by emergent technologies.
Every day, human beings use technology that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago. But while the biometric computation and artificial intelligence that drive much of this tech have the sheen of something new, a growing chorus of researchers argues that they also contain something very old: the racism, sexism and other discrimination that have long been part of our history.
The machines we have made don't just suffer from the ills of our society, they argue, but also threaten to perpetuate them. And, as this technology becomes more ubiquitous and invasive, it may become a serious threat to our civil rights.
For this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we are speaking with Kantayya, whose film Coded Bias serves as a warning against the widespread, unregulated adoption of these technologies. Joining her is Broussard, one of the expert voices from the film and the author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
The former medical director of Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic shares his surprise at the support he received in his protest against the hospital and thoughts on what’s next.
When Danielson resigned in protest from his position as medical director of the Odessa Brown Children's Clinic late last year, he ended two decades in a role he regarded as his "dream job." And when that decision was made public, it thrust the doctor into a new role, as an unofficial spokesperson and high-profile advocate for equity in our healthcare systems.
In the weeks following the publication of a Crosscut report detailing the doctor's claims of racism at Seattle Children's Hospital, which runs the clinic, supporters came out in droves and the Seattle institution responded by firing one of its leaders and launching an independent investigation.
Four months later, Danielson is in a new role at University of Washington Medical Center and is continuing to tell his story. For the latest edition of Crosscut's Northwest Newsmakers event series, host Mónica Guzmán sat down with the doctor to reflect on the last few months and to talk about how we might address systemic racism in the health care industry and beyond.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
Journalists Leah Sottile and Bill Morlin talk about how America’s history of racist, anti-government action culminated in the Jan. 6 attack.
It appears that the first chapter of the Jan. 6 insurrection has come to a close with the acquittal of former President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial earlier this month. But this isn’t really the first chapter of this story.
While the House impeachment managers laid out a strong argument that placed the former president and his false claims of a rigged election at the center of the violent riot, there were forces at play in the storming of the U.S. Capitol that predate Trump and the current iteration of the Republican Party: the persistent presence of white supremacy, the rise of anti-government militias and the history of domestic terrorism.
For this episode of the Crosscut Talks, we are speaking with Leah Sottile and Bill Morlin, two journalists who cover anti-government groups in the Pacific Northwest. They share what they saw while watching the insurrection unfold, what they are looking at right now and what the political future of the former president might mean for the anti-government movement.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
The Seattle Public Schools superintendent discusses her plans to keep students and teachers healthy while reopening, and reflects on how the district could have better responded to the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has made this one of the most unusual and challenging school years in modern history. The arrival of multiple vaccines in recent months has not made it any easier.
As the number of Americans who have been vaccinated has slowly climbed, the pressure to bring students and teachers back into a classroom setting has also increased. Along with that pressure have come fears from some teachers and families over the safety of congregating before a vaccine has been widely distributed.
In the midst of this conflict, Seattle Public Schools has announced plans to begin a phased reopening later this winter, but the details are still murky. To help clarify things, Crosscut invited the outgoing superintendent to join us for a live Northwest Newsmakers event last week.
Juneau, who will be leaving her post in June, discussed what the district has planned to keep students and teachers safe, where the district went wrong in its response to the pandemic and what she hopes it will learn from this historically challenging year. She also reflects on her three years in the job, the challenges she has faced in targeting inequity in the schools and how the district has set itself up for success in the future.
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Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph
Evan Osnos, presidential biographer and staff writer at The New Yorker, tells us what he sees in Biden’s early actions.
Over the course of three weeks in January, the U.S. Capitol was the site of three major events, each of which could have filled its own chapter in the history books. Taken together, the insurrection of the U.S. Capitol, the second impeachment of Donald Trump and the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States amount to a historic turning point.
What, exactly, the country is turning toward is hard to say. But one certainty is that the administration of President Biden will have a major influence on its direction.
For this episode of Crosscut Talks, we are featuring a live conversation with Biden biographer and New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos about the challenges before the new president.
Through an examination of Biden’s early actions and statements, as well as the president’s life experience and political acumen, Osnos shares with us what he believes is in store for the presidency and the country.
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Credits
Host: Mark Baumgarten
Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara
Engineer: Resti Bagcal
Columnist Katie Wilson tells us how the law created in the Gilded Age will help shape the next chapter of the Digital Age.
As a concept, antitrust may seem fairly simple. Companies that get too big and abuse their powers to unfairly eliminate competition, and maybe drive up prices, must be brought to heel, either through regulation or a breakup.
But the reality is not so simple, and the history of trustbusting in the United States has been uneven at best. Still, the government has managed to employ this power to interfere in the market to manage Big Oil, Big Railroad and Big Steel. Now it looks as if those powers will again be used, this time against Big Tech, in particular on Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon.
For this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we are speaking with columnist Katie Wilson about the mounting efforts to rein in these digital behemoths and what the history of antitrust can tell us about this latest effort and its possible outcomes.
Links
A new era of trustbusting could begin with Amazon, tech giants (Oct. 22, 2020)
Capitalism, competition, and why antitrust is so confusing (Oct. 28, 2020)
1912: When antitrust views collided in a presidential election (Nov. 4, 2020)
How Big Tech landed in the crosshairs of antitrust law (Nov. 12, 2020)
Why 21st century trustbusters are picking on Amazon (Nov. 19, 2020)
Imagining a futurewhere Amazon runs the world (Dec. 9, 2020)
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Jake Newman
Engineer: Resti Bagcal
Daudi Abe talks about four decades of hip-hop in the isolated, disrespected, idiosyncratic Northwest.
From the moment "The Rapper's Delight" first played over the air of KYAC in Seattle, the trajectory of culture in the Pacific Northwest shifted. That song, performed by New Jersey's Sugarhill Gang and one of the earliest tracks in the history of hip-hop, was a clarion call for a youth culture hungry for something new.
Seattle was not alone in this respect. But the way that hip-hop hit in the city and the music its artists made in response to those early influences was unique.
Nestled in the Northwest, isolated from the major culture centers and largely disrespected, these artists were exposed to many of the same factors shaping much of hip-hop culture elsewhere — gentrification, gangs, mass incarceration — but they interpreted it differently. It can be heard in the music of artists throughout the four decades of Seattle hip-hop, from Sir Mix-a-Lot and Macklemore.
Abe, the author of 'Emerald Street: The History of Hip Hop in Seattle,' walks us through a history that he lived, discusses the cultural pressures that shaped it and details the distinct way that Seattle artists made an art form their own while telling a universal story.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Jake Newman
Engineer: Resti Bagcal
Reporter Lilly Fowler discusses what years of reporting on Mergensana Amar tell us about U.S. immigration policy.
The first time that Amar made news in the United States he was in the middle of a hunger strike, a protest against his failed bid for asylum and his imminent deportation after being held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. The next time he made the news, he was fighting for his life after a suicide attempt. At least that was the story pieced together from the information provided by officials of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
As newly discovered documents now make clear, Amar was officially dead days before authorities acknowledged as much, counter to agency policy that ensures quick notice in matters of death. He was also kept shackled to his bed against the wishes of hospital staff, even after hopes for recovery had been abandoned.
This week on Crosscut Talks, Fowler recounts the story of the Russian national, who sought asylum in the United States. She discusses how these recent findings illuminate the confusing days following news of the suicide attempt and considers what his story tells us about the state of immigration in the United States and the agency charged with caring for those in the system, in life and death.
Links
New details of a death at Tacoma ICE facility raise questions over care (Dec. 3, 2020)
An asylum seeker vowed never to return to Russia. His death in ICE custody sent him back (June 10, 2019)
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Jake Newman
Engineer: Resti Bagcal
Author Ruchika Tulshyan talks about the change that diversity can bring to a workplace when that workplace is the White House.
When Kamala Harris walks into the White House on Jan. 20, she will be carrying with her a lot of firsts. She will be the first woman vice president of the United States, not to mention the first woman of color to hold the office. She will also be the first Black person to be vice president and the first Asian American to achieve such a height of elected office.
In some ways it will be a moment reminiscent of January 2009, when Barack Obama became the country's first Black president. But there are many ways it is very different, aside from the fact that leading Harris into office will be a septuagenarian white man, Joe Biden.
One of the main differences is, of course, Harris' gender. Another is that, unlike Obama, she has arrived at her post as a part of a larger wave that swept a record number of women of color into elected office at the federal and state levels.
This week on the Crosscut Talks podcast we are speaking with Tulshyan about Harris' ascent. The author of The Diversity Advantage: Fixing Gender Inequality in the Workplace discusses how Harris will change the White House, what Obama's presidency can tell us about the challenges she will face and how Tulshyan imagines the new vice president might lead.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Jake Newman
Engineer: Resti Bagcal
Reporter Melissa Santos discusses the politics and path for the GOP's great West Coast hope. When Kim Wyman won re-election as Washington state's secretary of state earlier this month, she outperformed her party's gubernatorial and presidential candidates by double digits and became the GOP's only statewide elected official on the West Coast of the lower 48. Some in the party see her appeal to split-ticket voters as the path to statewide relevance, perhaps as a candidate for governor. Yet, the rightward swing of the base during the Trump era complicates the equation. This week on the Crosscut Talks podcast we speak with Santos about Wyman, how she is able to keep her office in such a deep blue state, and the tough choices ahead for the Republican party.
Links
How Republican Kim Wyman keeps winning in blue Washington state (Nov. 11, 2020)
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Jake Newman
Engineer: Resti Bagcal
'Calling Bullshit' co-author Jevin West tells us how the attempts to delegitimize the presidential election could be warping the electorate. Misinformation has been a part of American politics since George Washington didn't have wooden teeth. But in the past decade lies and distortions have become central to the conversation about how our country is run and who runs it. Social media platforms have taken some measures to help stop the spread of many of these lies in the run-up to the 2020 election, and it appears they had some success. But the job isn't done, as misinformation concerning the result of the election and the validity of the vote continues to spread. For this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast we speak with University of Washington researcher Jevin West about the election and its aftermath. The co-author of Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World tells us what he saw on Election Day, why the lies surrounding this election are different from those we've seen before and how to combat them. He also discusses what four years of almost nonstop nonsence has done to our country and our brains, and what it means for our future.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Jake Newman
Engineer: Resti Bagcal
Talk radio host Michael Medved and political science professor Christopher Parker consider the future of the parties and the nation. There was no first-round knockout. In fact, while the result of the race for the American presidency was not immediately clear in the days following the election, the early vote totals quickly dispelled any notion that the current president's aberrant behavior and haphazard management of the COVID-19 pandemic might have turned off a mass of his supporters. Rather, support for President Donald Trump has grown. The incumbent president eclipsed his 2016 vote total by at least 3 million votes, while gaining ground with Black and Latino voters. Unfortunately for the president, Joe Biden did even better, breaking the previous record for a presidential candidate in the popular vote, outgaining the 2008 total of his former boss, Barack Obama, by at least 3 million votes. How that would play out in the Electoral College remained to be seen when we sat down on Thursday morning with conservative talk radio host Michael Medved and University of Washington professor Christopher Parker for the latest episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast. They discussed what the continued support for the president says about the country, what it portends for the future of the Republican Party and how the Democrats might govern, given their new coalitions.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Jake Newman
Engineer: Resti Bagcal
Journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn revisit the struggles they found in America's blue collar communities. When the novel coronavirus came to the United States, it found a nation that was arguably already in a kind of existential crisis. America's life expectancy, a primary indicator of the nation's overall wellbeing, had dropped for three straight years by that point. Obesity, opioid use and suicide, meanwhile, were on the rise. The despair feeding these numbers, say journalists Kristof and WuDunn, was being disproportionately carried by the country's working class. And it was the stories of these Americans that the two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists sought to tell while reporting their latest book, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, which was published weeks before the virus grew to pandemic proportions. That despair is also credited, in part, with the rise of President Donald Trump. Now, on the eve of the presidents' re-election bid, these Americans must decide if they will continue supporting the president. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Kristof and WuDunn tell us how the pandemic has impacted the Americans in their book, what their research portends for a possible recovery and whether they plan to support the president again.
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Jake Newman
Engineer: Resti Bagcal
Journalist Charles R. Cross tells us what live music has done for Seattle, and what could happen if local venues don’t see any economic relief. When the novel coronavirus took hold in Washington state, live music venues were some of the first businesses to go dark. It made sense. Little was known about the virus then, but it was clear that crowded rooms of people dancing, shouting and singing were not advisable. Now, as the nation looks forward to the potential of reopening, it has become clear that these venues will be among the last to re-open. When they do reopen, there are likely to be far fewer of them. Cross discusses the efforts to secure government assistance for these businesses.
Links
My heart (and arm) bleeds for the Seattle music scene (Oct. 8, 2020)
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Host: Mark Baumgarten
Producer: Jake Newman
Engineer: Resti Bagcal
Michael Kirk, the director of ‘The Choice,’ tells us what the presidential candidates’ response to tragedy, failure and humiliation tells us about how they lead. The two candidates are old. In fact, President Donald Trump was already the oldest American to assume the presidency when he was sworn in for his first term. Now he is four years older and his opponent Joe Biden is even older than that, by three years. So, both men have had a lot of time to wrack up successes, which they have obviously leveraged in their quests for political power. But both candidates have also experienced their fair share of personal crisis and the failure and humiliation that often accompanies such moments. Perhaps more than their fair share. Some of these tragedies were thrust upon these men and some were self-inflicted — and many involved issues of race — but they all demanded a response. It is in these responses, says director Michael Kirk, that the true character of the candidates is revealed. This week on the Crosscut Talks podcast, Kirk talks about his latest installment of "The Choice" for Frontline, which chronicles two lifetimes of crisis that have culminated with an election defined by crisis. Plus, Crosscut news and politics editor Donna Blankinship talks about our recent poll on protests and policing.
Elie Mystal tells us why expanding the court isn't an outlandish idea, and how it might work. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away last month, her death marked the beginning of a fresh debate over the future of the Supreme Court. But the biggest question of that debate wasn't who would take her place. President Trump was expected to nominate one of a list of conservative figures that he had previously made public — which he did soon after, naming Amy Coney Barret — and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell quickly made public his plans to put that nominee up for a vote before the election, all but assuring that the court would remain decidedly conservative for years to come. The biggest question, rather, was what Democrats were going to do about it. The answer, says Mystal, is to pack the court. On this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, the justice correspondent for The Nation tells us why he believes Democrats must embrace the idea of adding seats to the court and filling them with liberal justices even if that seemingly radical act undermines the court's legitimacy. Plus Crosscut Reporter Hannah Weinberger discusses the cascading impacts the wildfire smoke is having on Washington state.
Terrion Williamson, the director of the Black Midwest Initiative, discusses how parachute journalism is hurting Black people in America's heartland. When the video of Minneapolis police officers killing George Floyd went viral in the spring, the Minnesota metropolis quickly transformed into a theater of discontent as the nation's battle over race and policing unfolded in its streets. The center of that conflict has shifted throughout the summer as it has fueled partisan rancor, but it has often returned to Midwestern cities where Black Americans have been shot by police in questionable circumstances. These news items are just the latest example of national media descending on a Midwestern city to tell a story of Black Americans in distress. Whether it is gun violence in Chicago, economic collapse in Detroit or the water crisis in Flint, Americans on the coasts and throughout the country are over-and-over again shown a picture of Black life in the heartland that is devastating. But that life is both more vibrant and more complex than these stories let on, says Williamson. On this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, she discusses the harm that is caused when we only pay attention to Black Midwesterners in crisis. Plus, Crosscut reporter Emily McCarty tells us how college towns are coping during the pandemic.
Director Jeff Orlowski talks about his hit documentary and how his work on climate change helped him prepare to tell the story of social media run amok. In the early days of social media, the promise was real. By democratizing connection, a new breed of tech companies seemed to be doing good in the world: reuniting long-lost family and friends, providing a platform for pro-democracy political movements, helping those isolated by interest or identity to find a sense of belonging. Also, there were a lot of cat memes. The future was bright, until it wasn't. In recent years, social media platforms have been conjuring a different vision of the future: digital dystopia. As seen in the new Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, these platforms are now intense battlegrounds where misinformation is elevated and partisan division is deepened. At the root of the problem, says Orlowski and the many former tech executives he interviews, is a business model that feeds on attention and prioritizes shareholder value. For this week’s episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Orlowski discusses his documentary, how his work covering the climate crisis has helped him navigate this social crisis, and what he believes must be done to save our society. Plus, Crosscut reporter Melissa Santos tells us how a conspiracy cult flourishing on social media has now infiltrated electoral politics in Washington state.
Jacob Ward, host of 'Hacking Your Mind,' tells us why humans are more susceptible to misinformation and partisanship, and what we can do about it. Humanity is facing some daunting challenges right now. The pandemic, massive wildfires, civil unrest and economic uncertainty all threaten the livelihoods of billions on a daily basis. Such challenges demand a rational, thoughtful response. Yet that doesn't appear to be what's happening. Public health recommendations from experts are discarded along with possible responses to climate change that are supported by science. Meanwhile, social problems that demand considered contemplation and collective action serve as fuel for political partisans. Instead of coming together to battle a crisis, people are more divided than ever. At fault, says Ward, is our own evolutionary biology. As detailed in Hacking the Mind, a new PBS series hosted by the former Popular Science editor in chief, the attributes of the human mind that helped humanity survive in prehistoric times may be putting it at risk in modern times. This week on Crosscut Talks, Ward discusses the reasons humans are so susceptible to misinformation and manipulation, the role that social media plays in amplifying our worst tendencies and what can be done to fight this biological reality. Plus, Crosscut reporter Margo Vansynghel tells us what restaurant workers really think about going back to work.
NBC News journalist Jacob Soboroff talks about Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy, its origins and its possible return. When it was first reported that the United States government was systematically separating families at the southern border, the news was met with a kind of disbelief bolstered by a presidential administration that denied it had any such policy. But the signs that America was headed for a hardline approach to immigration policy were abundant in Donald Trump's campaign for the presidency. Once he was elected, his rhetoric turned to action, as his administration sought to transform American immigration policy on almost every front, but especially on the southern border. Eventually public resistance led the president to back down and rescind the policy, the policy the administration had denied existed. But before there was a public battle over the 5,400 immigrant children held by the federal government, there was another battle taking place within the federal government that pitted political appointees against career bureaucrats. This week on the Crosscut Talks podcast, This week on the Crosscut Talks podcast, Soboroff talks about that hidden fight, which he details in his book Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, how it likely prevents more families from being separated and whether the reelection of Donald Trump could result in a return to family separation. Plus, Crosscut reporter Lilly Fowler talks about one of the unintended consequences of pandemic relief in our prisons.
Reporter Leah Sottile discusses how an internet meme became a violent new movement. When people began appearing at state capitols across the country in the spring, demanding that their governments rescind the restrictions put in place to contain the emergent coronavirus pandemic, there were well-known groups in attendance: Trump supporters, anti-vaxxers and militia-members. But among the ranks of the disgruntled was a new kind of reactionary. Wearing Hawaiian shirts with their tactical gear and carrying long guns, these men — and they were predominantly men — flew a different kind of flag: A black-and-white version of the American flag featuring a single floral stripe and an igloo where the stars would go. These were the adherent of Boogaloo, a leaderless movement that has sprung into the public sphere in recent months, bringing with it confusion and violence. The confusion is due to the inconsistent politics of its followers and the violence is in the service of a disturbing aim expressed by many of the adherents, to bring about the downfall of American society. This week on the Crosscut Talks podcast, Sottile discusses her recent story for the New York Times Magazine that explores the origins of this new cultural force, what makes it different from the right-wing militias she has covered and why it's so difficult to understand exactly what it is that the Boogaloo wants. Plus, Crosscut reporter Manola Secaira tells us what happens to a tourist town when the tourists don't show up.
Conservative Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen discusses the split he sees between President Trump and many of the people who vote for him. When the Republican National Convention opens next week, it will be entering uncharted territory. Not just because of pandemic considerations that will prevent the party from packing an arena with delegates, but because those delegates will be supporting a party that is not using the quadrennial event to introduce an updated party platform and a president who is running without any new policy goals that might address the considerable problems the country faces. And while politics watchers can make some safe assumptions about the run-of-show for the convention, the future of the Republican Party is far more difficult to discern, especially if you believe that the president could very well lose the election. Where will the populist fervor that has overtaken the party in the Trump era go if Joe Biden wins the presidency? And how might the leftward pull of the populists in the Democratic Party ultimately affect what a new Republican Party might look like and how it might govern? For this week's episode, we invited Olsen to discuss the rift he sees between Trump and his party, the possibility that Trump could beat the odds and win re-election, and what he believes might happen to the Republican Party and its voters if he loses. Plus, Crosscut city reporter David Kroman discusses the sudden resignation of Seattle's police chief.
Reporter Levi Pulkkinen discusses his investigation into the prison health care system, where a treatable illness can put a prisoner in a body bag. Gross medical negligence in America's prisons isn't anything new. As long as there have been reporters investigating this nation's corrections departments there have been gruesome tales of medical procedures gone wrong and the prisoners who suffer. But new reporting from Crosscut suggests that poor medical care for the incarcerated in Washington state is more prevalent than just the extreme cases. Reporter Levi Pulkkinen found that nine of 10 prisoners who leave our prisons in body bags die from illness. And these aren't just older prisoners finishing their life sentences. Nearly a third of those who die from illness are under 55. The prisoners and families Pulkkinen interviewed for the investigative series, "Prison's Other Death Sentence," say that delays in care that result in poor, sometimes fatal outcomes are a normal part of the prison health care experience. For this week's episode of Crosscut Talks, Pulkkinen discusses what is at the root of all this suffering, why people on the outside should at least acknowledge that suffering and whether state lawmakers may introduce a new normal into prison health care. Plus, Melissa Santos discusses the court case that has every newsroom in the state on edge.
This week, tech historian Margaret O’Mara visits us to discuss what could be in store for the Big Four. Last week's congressional hearings on Big Tech lacked some of the pomp and circumstance of previous antitrust hearings, but there was little doubt that it was a big deal. A gathering of that much raw economic power — even if it was via videoconferencing — is itself notable, but the fact the lawmakers were actually challenging that power is exceedingly rare. The CEOs of Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple had been brought together to defend their companies against accusations of anti-competitive practices, and lawmakers were prepared with evidence from a yearlong investigation. It was a very different look from a federal government that had for decades been largely deferential to a tech industry that had brought innovation and growth to the economy. And it appeared that regulation could be in the offing. For this week's episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we are speaking with O'Mara, the University of Washington history professor and New York Times columnist, about what happened in the hearing, what regulation might look like and where the tech industry could be headed as a result. Plus, Crosscut staff reporter Agueda Pacheco Flores tells us how the pandemic is impacting Seattle partner dance scene.
When the Chinese government enacted new national security law that outlawed dissent in the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, it signaled a new, and perhaps final, stage in the city’s pro-democracy movement. Since 2014, activists had staged sit-ins and clashed with police while calling for greater transparency in the city’s elections and decrying Beijing’s influence over its government and police. The new law, which went into effect at the end of June, made it illegal to even speak of such things. Now many activists and sympathizers have been shutting down social media accounts, or even fleeing the city, for fear of being arrested. Some political leaders in the United States, meanwhile, have denounced the new law, despite the state department’s support for the Hong Kong police, a force that has sought to quell dissent. For this week’s episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we speak with Wilfred Chan, a contributing writer to The Nation and a Hong Kong leftist, about the new law and the movement it threatens to quash. He shares his views on the history of protest in Hong Kong and the complicated role that the United States has played in the conflict. Plus, Crosscut city reporter David Kroman tells us what happened after Seattle activists learned the feds were coming to town.
When the Joe Biden campaign introduced its Build Back Better plan earlier this month, it was delivering what promised to be a kind of silver bullet. The presumed Democratic nominee for the presidency was proposing to fuel an economic recovery, beat back climate change and deliver racial justice through a robust package of programs and standards that would reshape a large portion of the U.S. economy around clean energy. The price: $2 trillion. It was a bold move from a candidate not known as a leader on climate and so it isn't surprising that much of the plan is borrowed, some from his former opponents. This week on the Crosscut Talks podcast, environmental policy expert Leah Stokes talks about the work that led to this plan, tells us who is responsible for what and contemplates the likelihood that this silver bullet will ever be fired. Plus, Crosscut news and politics editor Donna Blankinship walks us through the latest Crosscut-Elway Poll, which looks at Washington voters' attitudes toward the pandemic response and asks, "Are you wearing a mask?"
Patty Murray has been busy. As the ranking member on the U.S. Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, the senior senator from the state of Washington is intimately involved in developing legislation to guide federal oversight of the areas of American life most impacted by the novel coronavirus pandemic. In the last month alone she introduced the Coronavirus Child Care and Education Relief Act and issued a white paper calling for legislation that would assure that a vaccine be made available to all Americans. But Murray is also in the minority. At a time when so much is at stake, the Democratic lawmaker is tasked with both identifying solutions that she believes will save many lives and pushing them through a legislative process dominated by Republicans at a moment of hyper-partisanship. On this week's edition of the Crosscut Talks podcast we speak with the Senator about her efforts to shore up schools and day care providers, the deep frustration she has for the Trump administration's approach to the pandemic and how, exactly, she plans to turn her plans into action. Plus, Crosscut reporter David Kroman delivers the latest on the Seattle's efforts to rethink public safety and policing.
Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe discusses electoral excitement in the era of coronavirus. For years, the presidential election of 2020 has been touted as the most important of the modern era. There was little doubt that the months leading up to the November election would be filled with packed arenas and firey stump speeches. Instead the dominant images of the early stages of the general election have been empty seats in Tulsa and basement communiques from Delaware. With multiple crises dominating the national conversation, the presidential race has taken a backseat to more immediate concerns. Meanwhile President Donald Trump's handling of these crises appears to have done serious damage to his approval rating and the threat of coronavirus has limited the public appearances of his challenger Joe Biden. In the race for the White House, enthusiasm has been hard to come by. We invited Plouffe to weigh in on the state of the race. We talk about the apparent lack of excitement for these campaigns, whether it is a sign of things to come, and if dread and anger will replace enthusiasm as the driving force for this election.
Journalist John Dickerson tells us what it takes to succeed in the White House, why President Trump appears to be failing and whether Joe Biden would be any good. In the last few months Trump has been challenged by the kind of crises that demand leadership. Yet, the manner in which he has responded to the pandemic, civil unrest and economic collapse appears to have turned the electorate against him. Once a favorite for re-election, Trump is now more likely to join the handful of presidents who voters have ousted at the ballot box. A moment of apparent presidential failure is as good a time as any to discuss what a successful presidency might look like. On this week's episode of Crosscut Talks we are sitting down with Dickerson to do just that while talking about his latest book, 'The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency.' Plus, Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger tells us why the top job in Seattle is no breeze itself.
The Black Lives Matter movement has made a tremendous amount of progress in a very short time. In a single month, it has gone from an afterthought for many Americans to the leading topic of conversation in the nation and a major catalyst for change. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets in support of the movement's message, and polling shows that a majority of Americans at least sympathize with its aims. It remains to be seen whether this latest chapter of America's ongoing civil rights movement can hold the public's attention and favor long enough to result in real change. For this week's episode, we are joined by Nikkita Oliver, one of the movement's leading voices, to talk about the work being done by the activists, the demands being made of city leaders and where she sees the fight for Black lives going from here. Plus, reporter Hannah Weinberger provides us with a coronavirus update, parsing the details of and concerns over the state's reopening plan.
Amicus host Dahlia Lithwick joins us to discuss the possible motivations for this week's most surprising ruling. When the U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court nearly two years ago, the consensus was that the highest court in the land had tilted even further to the right. The expectation was that the conservative lean of the court would shape the current term, rife with hugely consequential cases. So it has been with some surprise that the court delivered two big victories to two traditionally liberal causes in its early rulings, first extending employment protections to gay and transgender workers and, later in the week, preventing the Trump administration from immediately ending the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the majority in both cases and Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch penned the majority opinion in the landmark case for LGBTQ rights. Did we misread this court? Or is something else going on here? Lithwick tries to answer these questions while talking about the first of these two decisions. Plus: Crosscut reporter Lilly Fowler tells how an older generation of Black leaders views Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. Note: This conversation took place prior to Thursday’s DACA ruling.
On this week's episode we speak with former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper about tear gas, cop culture and ridding racism from American law enforcement. In the week's since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, the conversation around policing in America has taken a drastic shift. City leaders across the nation are responding to a sense of injustice, or maybe sensing a change in public opinion after videos of police violence against protesters have proliferated, and considering reforms that were far outside the mainstream just days ago. As activists encourage them to "Defund the Police," some have signaled that significant change is coming. While the exact shape of that change has yet to take form, the apparent goal is to re-engineer our idea of public safety, investing in at-risk communities, collaborating with those communities and replacing many police officers with specialists in social and mental health services. On this week's episode of Crosscut Talks we explore what these leaders are seeking to discard, and what will come in its place, with Stamper, who in addition to his 34 years as a police officer, has been a reform advocate. Plus, Crosscut city reporter David Kroman tells us what impact the movement to defund the police is having on Seattle City Hall.
Resmaa Menakem (My Grandmother's Hands) and Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility) join us to talk about the responsibilities they believe white Americans have in this moment and what would need to happen for change to take hold. Following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, the streets of America have filled with activists seeking justice for Floyd and broader reforms of racist police practices. While the protests have been immense and intense, they are not without precedent. Over the past few years, the deaths of Black Americans captured on video have inspired numerous demonstrations again and again. Among the people at these protests are Black Americans and other People of Color for whom systemic racism is an everyday threat. But there are also many white Americans who may be aware of the white supremacy woven into the nation's culture, but are not directly threatened by it. When the protests are over, these Americans have the option to let racial justice fade into the background, a luxury not afforded many of their neighbors. Our guests discuss what would need to happen for these Americans to stay in the fight. Plus, Crosscut photo journalist Matt McKnight tells us what he witnessed on the streets of Seattle during last weekend’s unrest.
One thing is certain about the presidency of George W. Bush: It was consequential. From the Sept. 11 attacks, through the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina and into the financial crisis of 2008, the country was sent careening through an era of deep disruption that changed the way Americans live and think. At the center of it all was the president, first as a unifying figure, later a divisive one and, finally, a derided one. From the moment his presidency ended, amid economic devastation and two prolonged wars, questions remain about how the first presidency of the 21st century would be remembered. Would history damn George W. Bush or somehow exonerate him? Twelve years later — with the nation again in the midst of a transformative crisis, led by a historically divisive Republican president — historians are beginning to take another look. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks episode, we speak with Barak Goodman, the director of a new American Experience film about Bush, and historian Robert Draper about the 43rd president and his legacy.
After two or more months of lockdown, states across the country have begun reopening with the support of the federal government. But with infection rates holding steady or increasing in many states, risk remains for citizens and, especially, for workers. Every state is making a risk assessment, with livelihoods and lives hanging in the balance. But while the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing these assessments to play out for the world to see, some version of these difficult decisions has always been with us. In the workplace and the marketplace, risk is unavoidable. David Michaels knows all about that risk and the forces that have shaped, and warped, its assessment. The former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Michaels is the author of The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception. On the latest episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast he tells us how misinformation campaigns launched by Big Tobacco and corporations are helping shape the federal government's response to the coronavirus and what that means for the new risk we all now face. Plus, Crosscut reporter David Kroman talks to us about a big public works project in Seattle that is facing a big problem.
As it has done in so many other aspects of American life, the novel coronavirus outbreak has lifted the curtain on the nation’s food-production system. The conditions at meat-packing plants, in particular, have become headline news, as clusters of COVID-19 cases have led to thousands of infections and dozens of deaths. In response many factory farmers ceased operations, leading to fears of disruption to the food supply chain. Citing those fears, the Trump administration ordered these plants to reopen, albeit with additional protective gear for workers. For the latest episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, host Mark Baumgarten speaks with Leah Douglas of the Food and Environment Reporting Network about the virus’s toll on the food industry and its workers, and whether any amount of protection could get us back to normal. We also speak with Crosscut reporter Lilly Fowler about a recent report showing the virus’s disproportional impact on Washington state’s Latino population.
Envisioning the future is key to movement politics. But what happens to that vision when the world as you know it comes to a screeching halt? For Democratic activists, that is the current reality, as they prepare for what is being touted as the most important election of our lifetimes. With Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency, organizers are shifting their field operations to account for the coronavirus pandemic while adjusting their messaging for the new reality. But what comes after November? For this episode of Crosscut Talks, host Mark Baumgarten speaks with Leah Greenberg, the co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, about how her organization is moving forward with its mission to unseat Donald Trump; how she believes former Vice President Biden is handling his campaign in the midst of the crisis, as well as the sexual assault allegation against him; and what the next few months mean for the future of the Democratic Party and the country. We also check in with Crosscut Opinion columnist Katie Wilson about the impending recession and the future of the U.S. economy.
When Rick Wilson published Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America From Trump and Democrats From Themselves, the world was a simpler place. It was January and the center of gravity for the political world was in the chambers of the U.S. Senate, where the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump was set to begin. Wilson, a former strategist for the Republican Party and New York Times bestselling author, was busy fielding interviews about his latest, which provided a kind of road map for Democrats to bring an end to the Trump presidency. Then, about a third of the way through his book tour, everything changed. The novel coronavirus had spread to the United States and, in addition to changing everything else about daily life, changed the political landscape, too. For the first episode of the second season of the Crosscut Talks podcast, host Mark Baumgarten talks to Wilson about what has changed, what hasn’t and whether the Democrats are following his advice. Also, Crosscut news and politics editor Donna Blankinship talks about the latest Crosscut/Elway Poll and why she enjoys interviewing random strangers.
As former head of the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, Janet Napolitano has had an inside view of what national security really means. In her book, 'How Safe Are We? Homeland Security Since 9/11,' she discusses the difference between real and perceived threats and shares her thoughts on the Trump administration's approach to those threats.
For the latest episode of Crosscut Talks, we are surfacing a conversation from last year's Crosscut Festival between Napolitano and David Plotz, CEO of Atlas Obscura and co-host of Slate's Political Gabfest. They talked about Russian Interference, the massive political divide facing the country and much more. And while much has happened since this conversation, including the worldwide response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Napolitano does provide a valuable perspective on American preparedness.
The relationship between music and spirituality spans the globe. Indian ragas are an especially powerful and unique example of this tradition. Thousands of years ago, Hindus envisioned them as manifestations of the divine. While some songs are memorized, the style itself is largely a melodic framework for improvisation.
For the latest Crosscut Talks podcast, we partnered with Centrum, a Port Townsend-based arts organization, to gather musicians and scholars to discuss the history and theory of this music, and to play it.
Award-winning Hindustani vocalist Srivani Jade and professional tabla player Ravi Joseph Albright performed selections with local musician Saikat Ray and sat for conversation with Wes Cecil, professor of English and the Humanities at Peninsula College.
Mayors have been popping up in national discourse more and more often in the past few years. For instance, the race for the Democratic presidential nomination has been largely shaped by former mayors suggesting that, in an era of political gridlock, mayors know how to get things done.
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel delivers that same message in his book The Nation City. He takes a close look at the experimentation taking place in the world's urban centers and puts forth the idea of a new kind of political power structure in which ideas flow from city to city, instead of from Washington, D.C.
The former mayor is familiar with that more traditional power structure. He was a senior adviser in the Clinton administration and served as chief of staff to President Barack Obama.
For the latest episode of the Crosscut Talks Podcast we invited Emanuel to share his vision of a future shaped by cities, as well as his thoughts on the race for the White House, which took a big turn on Super Tuesday, the night before the talk.
There is a lot at stake in the 2020 presidential election, especially for Democrats. And in Washington state, 2020 marks a big change for the party. Instead of relying on caucuses to weigh in on the primary race, the party voted last year to pick its delegates based on the state's primary election. That primary is being held on March 10, which means that Washington Democrats could have a real impact on a race that is still far from over. For the latest episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast we gathered political leaders and researchers, including state Democratic party chair Tina Podlodowski and pollster Stuart Elway, to discuss the issues and debate the merits of the remaining Democratic candidates.
In a time of newsroom layoffs, hot takes, "fake news" and intense political polarization, it can be difficult to find in-depth journalism that takes the time to explore underrepresented communities or attempt to tackle the world's toughest questions. But Fred de Sam Lazaro is someone who's been doing just that for over three decades. Lazaro is the executive director of the Under-Told Stories Project, a journalism and teaching endeavour that documents the consequences of poverty around the world and the work being done to address them. He is an award-winning journalist who's been a correspondent with the PBS Newshour since 1985. He's reported from over 70 countries on topics such as labor, sex trafficking, public health and immigration, and directed films from India and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the acclaimed documentary series, Wide Angle. For the latest episode of the Crosscut Talks Podcast, he talks with Crosscut editor-at-large Knute Berger as part of the Communiversity series hosted by Centrum, a Port Townsend-based nonprofit arts organizations.
Ask anyone who has lived in Seattle for the past few years and they will tell you: The city has changed, dramatically. This is a result, in large part, of the booming economy fueled by the major tech companies based here. New jobs at these firms have brought thousands of new residents, plenty of new construction and a cost of living that has radically transformed what it means to live in the city. Challenges abound in this new version of the Emerald City, and few people agree on how to address them. But someone needs to. For the latest episode of the Crosscut Talks Podcast, we invited three city leaders tasked with doing just that to talk about Seattle's problems and some potential solutions. Mayor Jenny Durkan leads off the episode with a discussion about housing, homelessness, crime and controversial tax proposals. New Seattle City Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Tammy Morales round out the conversation with a fresh perspective on how to fix what's broken.
Few people know the Obamas as well as Valerie Jarrett. She first met Michelle Obama, then a young lawyer named Michelle Robinson, in 1991, while interviewing her for a job in Chicago city government. From there, Jarrett grew to be the Obamas' most trusted personal confidante -- a relationship that went all the way to the White House. Jarrett was President Barack Obama's longest-serving senior adviser. She oversaw the offices of public engagement and intergovernmental affairs and chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls. In her memoir, Finding My Voice : My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward, Jarrett shares insights from the Obama White House as well as her own powerful journey. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we invited Jarrett to discuss that journey, from growing up in 1960s Chicago to advising the nation's first black president, with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie.
There are many things going wrong in the world. And a lot of the time those things seem just too big to do anything about. Especially when it comes to climate change, people often feel helpless. What it will take to make an impact is systemic change, not individual change. But Sarah Lazarovic, an illustrator, visual journalist and columnist for YES! magazine argues that small things do make a difference, and the research shows it. In her column for YES!, a nonprofit media organization focused on solutions journalism, Lazarovic illustrates the tiny shifts in our lives that can help us feel human, find inspiration and have hope. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we invited Lazarovic to offer her insights into some of the simple ways we can all take action. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
The idea of decolonization has been with us for as long as countries have laid claim to land already rich with people and an existing history. And generally it is thought of as the giving back of that land. But there is more to decolonization than mere acreage. As Edgar Villenueva argues, "decolonizing ... is about truth and reconciliation."When it comes to philanthropy, decolonization is especially complicated. While attempting to heal communities hurt by colonization, philanthropists can actually end up doing greater harm. What is needed is a process of acknowledging the truth behind many of these philanthropic efforts and reconciling the impact of the corporate power that fuels them. For this bonus episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, editor-at-large Knute Berger speaks with Villenueva about what it will take to do just that.A nationally-recognized expert on social justice philanthropy, Villenueva grew up in North Carolina and is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe. He’s also the author of Decolonizing Wealth, a book that proposes indigenous solutions to dysfunction and inequality in philanthropy and finance. Among other roles, he serves as chair of the board of directors of Native Americans in philanthropy and is a board member of the Andrus Family Fund, a national foundation that works to improve outcomes for vulnerable youth.This conversation was recorded at the KCTS 9 studios in Seattle on Nov. 19 as part of the Crosscut Talks Live series.
The impacts of climate change are already here. From record-breaking hurricanes to fires and floods, some communities are already in crisis. People living on the coast are especially vulnerable. A number of tribal villages in Alaska and Washington state, for instance, have either already relocated or may soon need to. Millions are calling for policy solutions that will reduce emissions and prevent the most egregious effects of climate change. But in the meantime, adaptation is a must. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we invited climate scientist Amy Snover and a climate adaptation specialist Michael Chang to discuss this new normal and the strategies we can learn from Native communities on the front lines. This episode was recorded at the KCTS 9 studios in Seattle on Oct. 24 as part of the Crosscut Talks Live series.
As the impacts of climate change become more apparent, communities along the coast are facing difficult decisions. Two of those communities, the coastal villages of Queets and Taholah, are currently developing plans to relocate. These are ancestral homes to the Quinault tribe, but they've become unsustainable, in part due to rising sea levels. Crosscut video producer Sarah Hoffman and science and environment editor Ted Alvarez have spent more than a year in the presence of the tribal members contemplating the move. The resulting documentary, The Rising, premieres this weekend on KCTS 9. The aim of the film is to present this story from the perspective of the people living it. The key, say the journalists, is to show up, get out of the way and listen. For this bonus episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we invited Hoffman and Alvarez to talk about how they went about doing that. This conversation was recorded at the KCTS9 studios in Seattle on Oct. 24 as part of the Crosscut Talks Live series.
The WTO protests in November 1999 put Seattle on the map in a way that grunge and tech never could. The World Trade Organization had planned a meeting in the city to discuss trade agreements for the new millennium, but then tens of thousands of protestors filled the streets. For days, activists overwhelmed the event and the city's police force, which responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. The protesters were there to condemn corporate power and the potential impacts of free trade on human rights and the environment. And while the WTO ultimately continued its work, the protest had a big effect on Seattle and the world. It influenced similar movements to come, like Occupy Wall Street. And it impacted how we think and talk about capitalism, globalism and economic equity. Now, on the 20th anniversary of the so-called "Battle in Seattle," we invited a panel of local leaders to the Crosscut Talks podcast to discuss what happened in Seattle in 1999 and what it means to our world today. The episode begins with former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper and activist John Sellers, who are later joined by activist Nikkita Oliver and Nowell Coquillard, director of the Washington State China Relations Council. The conversation was recorded at KCTS9 studios in Seattle on November 19, 2019, as part of the Crosscut Talks Live series.
Big tech has a diversity problem. Some communities of color and women still represent a disproportionately small percentage of all employees at major tech companies. In 2017, for instance, African Americans made up just three percent of the workforce at Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter. And women represent jut a quarter of all workers in STEM fields. Changing that takes more than just asking companies to do better. It also means creating more access to education and training. For the latest episode of Crosscut Talks, we gathered a panel of industry experts and diversity advocates to talk about what that access could look like. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
Climate change is impacting our planet, and it's also impacting us — our emotions, our psychology and our worldview. And now, it's a concept that artists and curators are tackling too. The art they create and select helps translate and explore some of these impacts and underscores the connection between art and the environment. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we invited four artists and curators to discuss the work they do and the role they play in a climate-changing world. Taking part in the talk are mixed-media installation artist RYAN! Feddersen, art historian and curator Barbara Matilsky, sound artist Judy Twedt and conceptual artist Chris Jordan. This episode was recorded at Seattle University on May 4, 2019 as part of the Crosscut Festival. During the panel we displayed some of the art work under discussion. To see this work, go to the episode page.
The financial side of the news business has been struggling for decades now, and 2019 has been an especially bad year. Downsizing and closures continue across the country. Buzzfeed, Vice and the Huffington Post all announced major layoffs in recent months, and at least a dozen local news outlets have either eliminated positions or folded completely. Here in Seattle, where there is only one major daily newspaper left, City Arts magazine and Seattle Weekly both recently ended their print runs. Is there any hope left for the business of journalism. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we gathered a panel of Seattle media leaders to weigh in. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University for the Crosscut Festival.
Women's professional sports have seen a surge in popularity in recent years, with more awareness, more fans, and more ticket sales The U.S. women's soccer team's victory in the FIFA World Cup this past summer was an especially big reminder that women's athletics can have just as much cultural value and commercial viability as men's. But the playing field is far from Level. To this day, female athletes earn a fraction of what their male counterparts do. They receive far fewer corporate sponsorships and their teams have far fewer resources. Few women are coaches, executives or athletic directors. And just an estimated 4% of sports media coverage is of women's sports. For this episode of Crosscut Talks, we invited a panel of female athletes and executives from the Seattle area to discuss these persistent inequities, to chart how far we've come and how far we have yet to go. This conversion features former Seattle Storm player Jamie Redd, World Cup champion Amy Griffin, Reign FC co-owner Teresa Predmore and Storm co-owner Ginny Gilder. This episode was recorded on Sept. 26, 2019, at the Cascade Public Media studios as part of the Crosscut Talks Live event series.
To learn more about women’s professional sports in the Seattle area, read Equal Play, the latest in Crosscut’s Focus series.
Republicans and Democrats don't often agree. Environmental policy is no exception, especially climate policy. The response to the Green New Deal highlighted the clear divisions between the parties. Most Democratic leaders stood behind it, while most Republicans ridiculed it. The partisanship softens some when looking at the voting public. But while the gap is closing, surveys show that Democrats across the country still support action on climate change in greater numbers than Republicans do. So, is there a path forward for bipartisan environmental policy? For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we discuss what it might take to get us there by asking leaders with environmental expertise from both parties, including former congressman and RepublicEn founder Bob Inglis, former Washington state gubernatorial candidate Bill Bryant and Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University for the Crosscut Festival.
There's no question that the thriving economies of wealthy west coast cities have left some residents behind. The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever. And although the market has cooled some, the cost of housing continues to rise, leaving more and more people unable to afford housing at all. So, what do we do? For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast we gathered urban leaders, including King County Executive Dow Constantine, Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. They weighed in on what's worked, and what hasn't, to address issues of affordable housing and homelessness in their cities, and to explore what solutions might still be out there.
Grassroots activism has served a crucial role in American culture and politics throughout history. Getting out in the streets and marching in protest is still a valuable tool for the modern activist, but there are a lot of other ways activists spread the word and effect change these days, from social media campaigns to guerrilla marketing. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Hashtag Feminism founder Tara Conley discussed these methods with three other activists: Shout Your Abortion's Amelia Bonow, Momsrising's Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner and Earth-Feather Sovereign of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Washington. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
Artificial intelligence and other forms of automation are on the horizon for a lot of different industries. From self-driving cars to robot factory workers, AI is coming, and it could have a huge impact on jobs in this country. That, combined with global trade and the changing face of the American labor union, creates a lot of uncertainty for the future of work. What does labor look like in 21st century America? For this episode of Crosscut Talks, we invited a panel of labor leaders, scholars and disrupters to offer insights and predictions. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
The #MeToo movement has hit every corner of the U.S., and there have been public accusations of sexual harassment and assault in almost every high profile industry, from Hollywood to politics to the news media. The music industry is no different. Sexual abuse allegations against R&B singer R. Kelly and sexual harassment allegations against alt-rock star Ryan Adams have forced the music business to face a reckoning. For this episode of Crosscut Talks, we invited the hosts of the KUOW podcast Battle Tactics for Your Sexist Workplace to discuss the persistent imbalance of power in the music industry with two women who know it well: Flavr Blue lead vocalist and activist Hollis Wong-Wear and Black Tones lead guitarist and KEXP DJ Eva Walker. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
The scientists charting the impacts of climate change continue to issue dire predictions about our planet's future. In late 2018, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report stating that some of the most devastating effects could be felt as soon as 2040. The National Climate Assessment, a federal report on climate impacts within the United States, also had some grim predictions, including more flooding in the East and more wildfires in the West. For this episode of Crosscut Talks, we gathered co-authors of those two reports, along with other climate policy experts, to help us understand what it all means, and where we can look for hope. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
There's no question that wildfires have been getting worse. They're bigger, stronger, and more destructive than ever before, and the fire season is longer than ever before, too. This is especially true in the western states. Last year, for instance, California experienced the deadliest wildfire in state history, killing at least 85 people, destroying fourteen thousand homes and burning an area the size of Chicago. The Pacific Northwest has escaped the height of its fire season without any major events, but there are long-term trends point toward more big fire seasons in the future. Crosscut gathered a panel of leaders — Including former Cal Fire chief Ken Pimlott, Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz and the natural resources director for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Cody Desautel — to discuss what can be done to manage this new normal. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
Authoritarian regimes around the world are having a renewed impact on American politics. The nuclear threat from North Korea, the presidential crisis in Venezuela and the ongoing conflict in Syria have all driven news cycles this year and are all products of dictatorial regimes. Then there is President Donald Trump's stance toward Russia, a country with authoritarian tendencies that has interfered in our elections and is likely to do so again. At home, meanwhile, critics of the president draw parallels between his administration and the most destructive dictatorships of the 20th century. For this episode of Crosscut Talks we invited experts on Russia, Africa and Central America to discuss all this global unrest, the Trump administration's role in it and what threats it might cause to American democracy. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
President Donald Trump has made immigration a cornerstone of his political agenda. And his rhetoric, while inflaming his critics and galvanizing his base, is not always based in fact. That makes it difficult for journalists, who are attempting to report accurately on everything from migrant caravans to family separation. And for advocates and activists, there's new urgency to counter the administration's narrative. Crosscut brought a few of those perspectives together, to talk about the president's rhetoric and his administration's approach to immigration policy. Sarah Stillman of the New Yorker and Aura Bogado of Reveal discuss their groundbreaking reporting work, while Jorge Baron of the Northwest Immigrant Right Project and Maru Mora Villalpando share tales from the realm of immigrant advocacy. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world. And a vastly disproportionate number of the people we lock up are people of color. A growing bipartisan movement wants reform, but how do we transform our nation's corrections system with an eye toward justice? For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we've invited two authors with expertise in the fields of criminal justice and racial bias to discuss the many ways our incarceration practices impact some communities more than others, and what it will take to change that system. Jennifer Eberhardt is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the author of Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do. Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and the author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
The movement for LGBT rights has gained a lot of traction around the country, but there are still many places that remain unfriendly or unsafe for the queer community. Often, those places are in the more conservative parts of America. But transgender author and journalist Samantha Allen found something different when she traveled through middle America in 2017. She discovered thriving communities and havens for people of all genders and orientations. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we invited Allen to discuss her new book, Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States, as well as her journey from Mormon missionary to openly trans woman. She is joined by David Schmader, a Seattle-based writer and performer whose work often explores queer life. The conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019 at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.
Note: This episode contains adult language. To listen to a bleeped version, visit our episode page.