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Tom Banse

Tom Banse covers national news, business, science, public policy, Olympic sports and human interest stories from across the Northwest. He reports from well known and out–of–the–way places in the region where important, amusing, touching, or outrageous events are unfolding. Tom's stories can be found online and heard on-air during "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" on NPR stations in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

Before taking his current beat, Tom covered state government and the Washington Legislature for 12 years.  He got his start in radio at WCAL–FM, a public station in southern Minnesota. Reared in Seattle, Tom graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota with a degree in American Studies.

When not sifting through press releases, listening to lobbyists, or driving lonely highways, Tom enjoys exploring the Olympic Peninsula backcountry and cooking dinner with his wife and friends. Tom's secret ambition is to take six months off work and travel to a faraway place beyond the reach of email.

  • The floral industry collects millions of pounds of moss from the wild. Botanists worry harvesting is occurring at unsustainable levels. In the Pacific Northwest, scientists are exploring "moss farming" as an alternative to stripping moss out of forests. But cultivation is proving curiously tricky.
  • A rare mushroom that grows in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest may offer protection from smallpox -- an infectious disease that security experts feel may be a biological weapon of choice for terrorists who wish to attack America.
  • Much of the political debate about border security is focused on the U.S. border with Mexico. Tom Banse reports from the Canadian border about patrol efforts there to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the United States from the north.
  • Now that snowboarding has become mainstream, a new "alternative" sport is catching the eye of adrenaline junkies in select ski areas. It's called airboarding -- sort of the bodyboarding equivalent to surfing the slopes. Reporter Tom Banse visits a small resort in the Pacific Northwest to see what it's like to fly down the slopes belly-first.
  • Oregon's Wheeler County, one of the poorest in the American West, hopes to stimulate a struggling rural economy by attracting attention to ancient fossils and the state's prehistoric times.
  • That holiday tree in your living room seems fresh, but it was probably plucked from the farm earlier this month. Tom Banse has an insider's look at the industrial operation to bring trees to market.
  • In the small town of Seaside, Ore., residents took time out of the weekend to participate in a tsunami evacuation drill. Producer Tom Banse sends this audio postcard of the disaster-preparation training day.