Cascade PBS Ideas Festival

Getting Red America to Go Green with Sen. Jon Tester

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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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph

The Activist’s Approach to Governance with Rep. Pramila Jayapal

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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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph

Who Really Won the Civil War? With Heather Cox Richardson

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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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph

The Future of the GOP with Ross Douthat and Henry Olsen

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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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph

Art in a Year of Unrest with Monyee Chau, Steven Miller and Teddy Phillips

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.

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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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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph

A Departed Police Chief Looks Back with Carmen Best

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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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph

Holding Out Hope in a Time of Crisis with Jane Goodall

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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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Chi Lee, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph

Finding Harm in Health Care with Jen Dev and Edwin Lindo

‘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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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph

How the Pandemic Is Changing Us with Nicholas Christakis

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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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph

Finding Unity in a Divided America with Eric Liu

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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Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph