Podcasts about Pacific Northwest

In a bonus episode of Cascade of History, Felix Bunnell starts from a Seattle Times story he saw that day and asks Eugenia Wu of Historic Seattle to untangle it. What follows is a patient walk through municipal paperwork. The city's construction and inspections department had issued an order to the parks department about the ladders and walkways on Gas Works Park's old towers. That order came after months in which the parks department's proposals went back and forth before the Landmarks Preservation Board. Bunnell offers the reading "a cynical person" might take: that staff stepped in to override the board's volunteers. He presents it as a possibility, not a finding.

That exchange is a fair key to the region's podcasts right now. Again and again they ask what a place keeps and who gets to decide. The question covers a landmark's catwalks, a mountain's ice, a city's memory of a woman, old trees in a forest and a waterfall on private timberland. Bunnell is open about his own side. "I am clearly, clearly not impartial. I am biased toward historic preservation," he says on Ep. 142, and that candour makes the show easier to weigh.

The same question runs through the news. In September 2026, Seattle mayor Katie Wilson's first budget proposal included 66 additional police positions, alongside reported plans to redirect payroll-tax money originally intended for affordable housing. In October 2026, Portland Public Schools proposed alternatives that would close 11 or 14 school buildings. The district argues that consolidation would lower costs, and opponents argue it would fracture neighbourhoods. Both plans remained proposals. The shows below mostly approach that question indirectly, through history, land, crime and the work of getting on a stage.

What Pacific Northwest is

Under a working definition, the Pacific Northwest is Washington, Oregon and Idaho, in the northwestern United States, covering approximately 655,000 square kilometres. Its economy spans agriculture and forestry, manufacturing and information technology. The Fifth National Climate Assessment, using an older baseline, counted almost 14 million residents across the three states, in landscapes running from the coast through forests to dry inland country.

The past, still under review

Cascade of History broadcasts live on Space 101.1 FM from the old gatehouse of Sand Point Naval Air Station, now Magnuson Park. Its strength is staying with civic process. In Ep. 142: Dr. Annie Russell House Public Meeting Preview; Saving Local History Roadshow; People's Wall in Seattle; Apollo 13 Vintage Audio, neighbours explain how more than 300 public comments helped secure a meeting on a plan to divide a protected property. In Ep. 141: Pacific Northwest "Celebration of Life" for Doomed CBS RADIO NEWS, radio veterans hold a wake for the network, and one of them recalls it as "inevitably East coast centric."

Mossback, the Cascade PBS companion to the video series Mossback's Northwest, is hosted by Knute Berger and Stephen Hegg, and it pays closest attention to how a story got told. Early in Remembering Kikisoblu, Seattle’s “Princess Angeline”, a voice declares, "We are Duwamish people, and we are still here." The conversation then traces how a growing city turned her into a figure of nostalgia until, as the episode puts it, "she only made sense as a princess." Seattle’s Potlatch Riot of 1913 sets rival newspaper accounts against each other and arrives at today's shrinking newsrooms, which makes it a natural companion to the CBS wake. The Nick Zentner Geology Podcast works the same nerve in stone. In Mima Mounds, the show insists that observations come before stories.

Land, water and what lives there

Peak Northwest, the Oregonian's outdoors and travel podcast with Jamie Hale and Chiara Profenna, earns its place by explaining the catch. In Let’s talk about Abiqua Falls: Everything you need to know about Oregon’s newsiest waterfall, one host describes backing a Subaru Crosstrek up a steep stretch about a mile short of the trailhead and walking the rest. The path is marked by an arrow someone carved into a tree. The state has emerged as the apparent buyer, though nothing is final, and the hosts weigh what stairs, signs and a vault toilet would change. In Zen and the art of glass float hunting on the Oregon coast, Hale combs Lincoln City's beaches for hidden floats and decides a second project, such as picking up trash, would have helped.

Spotlight with Laura Dawn gives its guests room to finish their thoughts. In Wandering the Wetlands At Dusk, Dawn admits she grew up in the Seattle area and had never seen a beaver before she started conservation work. Elisa Kerr of Beavers Northwest explains that the animals are mostly nocturnal, that lethal removal is still legal in Washington, and that coexistence work such as fencing valued trees offers another path.

Coast Range Radio is openly an advocacy show. In Defending Eastside Forests, with the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project, a guest calls for protecting the Blue Mountains' mature and old forests and cites a study finding that roughly the largest three percent of trees store 42% of the carbon. The host plainly sides against the Forest Service. On Addicted Fishing Podcast, in Spring Salmon Forecasts Are In!, a host sits through two and a half hours of a call on spring Chinook seasons and comes away saying the tribes sometimes "get kind of a bad rap."

Crime, courts and who gets believed

Expect graphic material in this section. Murder In The Rain, hosted by Alisha and Josh, moves between grim case work and loose banter, and the shifts can jar. Its Man In Blue Van Part 1 turns on Warren Forrest and on Norma, who was 15 when she was attacked and was not believed. The episode says she blamed herself for years, and puts the responsibility squarely elsewhere: "It was the cops' job to believe her." In Caroline Fraser Murderland Interview, Fraser frames her lead argument carefully: "this is a theory and this is something we should be talking about."

True Crime Cat Lawyer, hosted by a lawyer, works in sequence: what investigators found, what the courts ruled, what remains open. Chanin Starbuck covers a Spokane County case in which the couple's children maintain their father had nothing to do with their mother's murder. In June 2021 a judge granted post-conviction DNA testing, and the Washington Innocence Project had evidence tested. As of the recording there was no updated information on the results, and he remained in prison.

Stages, rinks and getting seen

Tri-Cities Mixtape exists to boost Northwest musicians, and Miguel's interviews ramble in a useful way. In Sean Da Don Interview. Tri-Cities Mixtape Podcast, the guest explains that the military brought him to Fort Lewis and he went to clubs in Yakima, where seeing lowriders everywhere was "a culture shock." He recalls being asked to spin a night at Jackson's. In Vaulderie Interview. Tri-Cities Mixtape Podcast, a black metal band recalls a first show at the Central Saloon during a heat wave over 100 degrees, and the host forgets the drummer's name.

Jags Beyond the Baseline follows the Willamette Valley Jaguars of The Basketball League and airs on KWVA 88.1 FM. In 2025 Season- 1-on-1 with Jaguars Owner Marion Clark, Clark recounts the day the Seattle Superhawks' car broke down on the way to Corvallis. Clark scrambled together a replacement game in hours, after the Jaguars' own car had broken down en route to Seattle earlier that season.

Wilaker: A Journeyer's Podcast views the region from a car. Comedian Will Abeles toured the country in 2025. In Wilaker: Chapter 8 | Seattle's Best, he brushes his teeth in a 24-hour Walmart in Bremerton and has a midnight set at Emerald City Comedy Club. In Wilaker: Chapter 11 | Alarm Bells, he asks a bartender to remake a whiskey drink named for him with tequila, calling it "the hysterical part of what alcoholism can do."

Where to start

• If civic process is your sport: Cascade of History, BONUS EPISODE: Gas Works Park Update - Did City of Seattle Staffers Override Volunteers of Landmarks Preservation Board?, and listen for who has the final say.
• For history that questions its own sources: Mossback, Remembering Kikisoblu, Seattle’s “Princess Angeline”.
• Before a weekend outing: Peak Northwest, Let’s talk about Abiqua Falls: Everything you need to know about Oregon’s newsiest waterfall.
• For true crime centred on a survivor: Murder In The Rain, Man In Blue Van Part 1, which is the first of two parts.
• To hear a music scene describe itself: Tri-Cities Mixtape, Sean Da Don Interview. Tri-Cities Mixtape Podcast.

The Pacific Northwest feed on this page plays clips from these shows.