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The Columbia: Beginning and End

S10 E8 / 7m 20s
If finding the river’s mouth was difficult, so too was locating the river’s remote origins in British Columbia. It wasn’t followed from headwaters-to mouth by explorers until 1811. The river has been tamed by dams.  Fed by rain, ice and snowmelt, one wonders with climate change, will the Columbia “roll on” in more than song?
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“The Psycho” who Embraced Tacoma

S10 E7 / 7m
Who was the self-professed “Psycho” who inspired Around the World in 80 Days and vowed to beat that record and make Tacoma world-famous? He was an energetic millionaire traveler, writer and activist who believed he could make the “city of destiny” the greatest Pacific port. And he ridiculed “Seattle” by saying it rhymed with “death rattle.”
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The Columbia’s Graveyard

S10 E6 / 6m 33s
For European explorers, finding the Columbia River wasn’t easy, and frustrating (see Cape Disappointment). Even once they did, the place where the river joins the Pacific turned out to be anything but pacific. Thousands have died at the Columbia River’s bar and adjacent coast. Why is the river so deadly? And what evidence can you see today?
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The Three Body Problems

S10 E5 / 6m 53s
A trio of weird Northwest noir stories exploring the exhumation of an infamous Seattle madam, the Olympic Peninsula murder victim who turned into a bar of soap by natural forces and the strange beachcombing horror that made world headlines: the mysterious floating feet found on the beaches of the Salish Sea.
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Upon Further Review: Race and the Outdoors

S10 E4 / 6m 34s
Racism in the early outdoors movement — and among early 20th-century progressives — left a long-lasting imprint on Northwest wilderness recreation. Out & Back host Alison Mariella Désir and Mossback’s Northwest host Knute Berger look at the legacy of that phenomenon in light of new information after the airing of an episode that added to the story of an outdoor advocate.
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Peopling of the Columbia

S10 E3 / 6m 50s
The discovery of bones in the Columbia offered proof of the river’s ancient connections to Indigenous people, trade, and the movement of people. People thrived with salmon, declined with disease and the river was a gateway to colonization from settlers and emigrants. It has been a true lifeline for millennia.
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Horseless Carriages, Ho!

S10 E2 / 6m 46s
In the early 20th century, a new breed of pioneers pushed into the Northwest wilderness with a newfangled invention: the automobile. One of those was the man who launched the Klondike gold rush, a millionaire named George Carmack.
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Ice, Fire and Those Dam Floods

S10 E1 / 8m 13s
Long before the Grand Coulee Dam changed the Columbia River, lava, glaciers and epic floods radically reshaped its course. Geology professor Nick Zentner of Nick on the Rocks joins Mossback’s Northwest host Knute Berger to discuss a surprising phenomenon that altered the river ahead of the dam-builders.
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