Online - Overcoming Adversity: A Conversation with Knute Berger

During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, well-known Seattle journalist Knute Berger was on assignment researching the events in the greater Puget Sound area surrounding the 1918 flu epidemic. What similarities does he see to the present-day crisis? What mistakes did people make then, and what can be learned? What happened locally, during the 1918 epidemic, and what longer-lasting results did it have? Berger’s short video about the 1918 epidemic will lead off our conversation. Then we’ll take a look at the story of Tugboat Annie, the first Hollywood movie to be filmed in Seattle. What did it take to make it happen? How does it compare to the real historical woman on whom the story was based? Berger’s television show, “Mossback’s Northwest,” is seen throughout the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia on KCTS-9 television. His historical research focuses on Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. Each episode provides viewers with the “hidden backstory” behind each historical or “cultural nugget”—and why it’s still relevant today.