The game “Pacific Drive” came out last year from Seattle-based Ironwood Studios, and it made a BIG splash for the company. So much so that Hollywood is taking notice: “Saw” creator James Wan’s production company announced last month it has optioned Pacific Drive to develop it into a television series. The Pacific Northwest is home to some major power players in the videogame industry. But this is a big win for an indie game studio. The game pays homage to the our region, with a setting that feel...
Jan 16, 2025•15 min
For over a week now, Los Angeles has been devastated by aggressive wildfire that are expected to be the most costly in California’s history. While many have already seen their communities burned, we won’t know the full extent of the damage for weeks. Already, thousands of families are wondering how they are going to recover and rebuild. Central to that question is how much of the costs insurance will cover. And it comes as California is going through a home and renter’s insurance crisis. Guest L...
Jan 15, 2025•18 min
It’s as American as Apple Pie: You come home from the hospital - maybe it was an accidental slice with your kitchen knife, or maybe something more serious. And as you recover… you wait. For thousands of dollars in medical bills. It’s a problem that radio reporter Dan Weissman had long been familiar with, due to a pre-existing condition. Learning how to navigate the arcane system behind those bills has become a full time gig for Weissman. He’s the host of An Arm and a Leg, a podcast exploring why...
Jan 15, 2025•17 min
This past election, voters in Everett approved an initiative (24-03) that granted the Snohomish River watershed legally enforceable "rights." 24-03 is part of a broader legal trend called the “rights of nature" movement, an environmental legal theory gaining traction around the world in places like Ecuador, India, and Australia. Here in the United States, communities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida have tried giving some bodies of water these extended legal designations -- like the right to e...
Jan 15, 2025•31 min
The Seattle City Council is starting its year by taking on one of any city’s most controversial policy debates: growth. The Comprehensive Plan is now in front of the council. It dictates where and how Seattle can grow over the next two decades. Past comprehensive plans have concentrated growth in areas dubbed “Urban Villages” – places along major arterials, like Columbia City, Othello, Lake City, and Ballard. They largely kept neighborhoods with single family homes unchanged. The current plan co...
Jan 14, 2025•15 min
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is running for re-election in 2025. He’s hoping to break the long running streak of single term mayors in Seattle like Mike McGinn, Ed Murray, and Jenny Durkin. The election is still nearly a year away, and in the meantime, the mayor will finish the last year of his term addressing a long list of issues: public safety, the future of downtown, and the implementation of a new comprehensive plan. The mayor sat down with Soundside host Libby Denkmann to discuss his plans ...
Jan 13, 2025•35 min
Marijuana has been recreationally legal here in Washington since 2012, and it's become big business for the state. Last year sales topped $1 billion, and the state earned hundreds of millions in taxes on marijuana. As the drug’s popularity in the state has increased, so has its potency. As this episode's guest would say, it’s not your dad’s weed. Now, doctors are seeing more harmful, and sometimes fatal consequences from overuse of marijuana. KUOW online editor and producer Stephen Howie has rep...
Jan 13, 2025•15 min
Our first week back after the holiday break has been jam-packed with all the news that’s fit to print… or read out loud into a microphone, whatever. Now that the weekend is nearly here, it’s time to sail away & relax a little… In that spirit, here’s our resident “Cruise Director,” Producer Jason Megatron Burrows live from the Lido Deck with everything exciting happening this weekend! EVENTS: Bridge to Bridge Fake Race at 14th Avenue NW Boat Ramp Unicorns & Rainbows 5k at Green Lake Park ...
Jan 10, 2025•5 min
Five people have died and thousands of homes have burned in wildfires sweeping across the Los Angeles area. Five separate fires are burning in the county - the Palisades fire, Eaton fire, Hurst fire, Lidia and Sunset fires. The Palisades and Eaton Fires are some of the most destructive in the region’s history. Local resources are stretched thin – but some help is on the way from Washington. Dozens of engines and more than 100 firefighters from local agencies have committed to travel to help batt...
Jan 09, 2025•14 min
President Elect Donald Trump has promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants on day one of his administration. Removing the approximately 11.7 million people living in the United States without authorization would take a massive operational effort -- and likely require cooperation from both state and local governments. Right now, most Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in the U.S. happen because of a hand off from local law enforcement. But that kind of cooperation is restrict...
Jan 09, 2025•15 min
As the Trump administration prepares to take office, a fight is brewing over the future of homelessness in America. For about a decade now, the federal government has pushed a strategy called Housing First. It's designed to get people off the streets and into permanent homes... even when they have serious problems with mental illness or substance use. Seattle was one of the earliest adopters of this approach, back in the nineties. But, over the past few years, a growing chorus of critics — mostl...
Jan 08, 2025•53 min
In an effort to curb gun crime, Tacoma announced last year that it was turning to a tool called ShotSpotter. ShotSpotter is a form of Gun Detection Technology (GDT), which uses a series of acoustic microphone sensors to track loud bangs, booms, and pops in a designated area. Once those "dynamic events" are triggered, a human classifier verifies the sound was a gunshot and alerts local police. The entire process happens within 60 seconds or less. The idea is that it’s a faster and more accurate w...
Jan 08, 2025•28 min
Amazon employees are back in the office five days a week, five years after Covid-19 shook up work as we know it; as the company’s so-called Return-To-Office policy took effect on Thursday, January 2nd. Amazon is the largest private employer to roll back its pandemic-era work from home policy. So, what will this mean for both employees AND local businesses in the hubs where Amazon resides? Monica Nicklesburg tackled this question for KUOW as the resident Labor & Economy Reporter, she’s also t...
Jan 07, 2025•12 min
It’s been five years since Covid 19 began spreading around the world from its origin in Wuhan, China. In that emergent time of the pandemic, there was widespread concern about clusters of the virus, in Italy, then Iran, then an outbreak at a nursing home in the Pacific Northwest. By March of 2020, an unprecedented international phenomenon took place: countries began closing their borders. When the World Closed its Doors by Laurie Trautman and Edward Alden looks at how this international effort d...
Jan 07, 2025•21 min
Washington lawmakers are facing an estimated $12 billion dollar budget deficit as they prepare to go back to work next week. How to cover that gap is the big story heading into the session. Majority Democrats are already floating possibilities for new taxes to bridge the difference between spending and revenue. And while the budget is undoubtedly the biggest challenge – lawmakers are also expected to be tackling sticky issues like rent increase caps and education funding. Guest: Washington State...
Jan 06, 2025•25 min
2025 is officially here - and with that comes a whole lotta new: new resolutions, new goals, and a new page a day pull away calendar on your desk at work. But even with all this new to look forward to - at least one thing will stay the same in 2025: we’ll be here to bring you the news coverage you rely on and trust every day. Soundside reached out to the KUOW newsroom to ask reporters about the big stories they’ll cover this year. Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show poss...
Jan 06, 2025•5 min
He’s no longer rolling up to Franklin High School in a blue Oldsmobile Super 88 with homemade white wall tires, or knocking out accounting tests on the University of Washington campus, but Kenny G is still in touch with his Seattle roots -- even after selling more than 75 million records worldwide. The iconic sax-man played a run of sold-out shows at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley over the turn of the new year. In case you couldn’t make it to a show, the story of how Kenneth Gorelick of Seward Park beca...
Jan 03, 2025•36 min
Soundside will be off the air on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. We will be back with some fresh new stories Jan. 2. For today, we’ve revisiting a mix of some of Soundside producer Alec Cowan's favorite segments from this past year, including his patrol with a pair Seattle's "real-life superheroes" and the musicians keeping jazz music alive in Seattle. We also have one new story for you, courtesy of producer Jason Megatron Burrows. 2024 was the 50th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. Burrow...
Dec 31, 2024•53 min
The tabletop role playing game Dungeons & Dragons was first published in 1974. 5 decades later, there’s a new ‘edition’ of the game out, and D&D has changed dramatically from its origins in a little house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The anniversary is happening at a delicate time for the company, Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro. Arguably the first modern tabletop role playing game is, today, fighting for market share – squaring off against a horde of fierce competitors seekin...
Dec 30, 2024•16 min
The Soundside team is taking the week off to rest and prepare for some upcoming shows we’re working on in the new year. So in the meantime, we're going to revisit two of Libby's segments from 2024. And to do that, we're going back in time, to the Seattle of the 1990s. We’ll look back on the music of grunge band The Gits, and hear from the band’s former drummer about his decision to revisit and reclaim the group's history. And later, we’ll revisit the story of a bank robber that feels practically...
Dec 27, 2024•51 min
All this week, Soundside has heard from local sound artists about their quintessential sounds of the Pacific Northwest. We’ve heard coyotes howling across the Methow Valley, the bygone squeak of a metro bus, and the rhythm of melting snow. Along the way we’ve asked for your favorite Northwest sounds. You sent us some good ones – the sound of North Cascades rain on a tent, and a chorus of frogs croaking in Marymoor Park. You also wrote in with your favorites: the grinding of espresso, the crack o...
Dec 20, 2024•3 min
Are your music listening habits stuck in a rut? Did you open your Spotify Wrapped and realize you listened to the same five songs on an endless loop? Maybe you want to mix it up in 2025, and become more acoustically adventurous. Soundside is here to help you out - we've rounded up a panel of local music experts to give you some fresh recommendations for albums to check out before we head into the new year. GUESTS: Bekah Flynn , senior publicist, international promotions manager, and A&R repr...
Dec 20, 2024•19 min
Soundside is about to take a long and well deserved break, we’ve got some best-of shows planned for the holiday week, and we’re just generally excited to go DO some fun STUFF! And in that spirit, here’s somebody who has ALL the stuff worth doing: producer Jason Megatron Burrows with a few sneak peeks of things to keep you occupied through Christmas Day! LINKS: The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show Spokane Valley Summer Theatre - Big Band Christmas Bellingham's Holiday Dockside Market XMAS ACTION MYS...
Dec 19, 2024•4 min
After almost 20 years in public office, Derek Kilmer is stepping down from his role as U.S. Representative for WA's 6th district. The Representative was chair of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress - sometimes called the “Fix Congress Committee” - from 2019 to 2023. He’s also the former chair of the New Democrat Coalition - a caucus of centrist democrats with a pro-businesses, moderate approach to fiscal issues. In other words - he’s a guy who spent a lot of time trying to figu...
Dec 19, 2024•25 min
Around 3:00am today, a King County Metro driver was fatally stabbed near the 4100 block of University Way in Seattle’s U-District. At a press conference this morning, King County Executive Dow Constantine said that the loss is being felt by everyone in county transit. "We are not always able to keep what's happening out on the streets away from the transit that operates on those streets," said Constantine. "We are doing everything that we can, and will continue to ramp up our efforts, to make su...
Dec 19, 2024•10 min
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has fired former Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz. The decision was announced Tuesday in a letter from the mayor to the Seattle City Council. Ashley Hiruko is a KUOW investigative reporter who has been covering news about former Chief Diaz for the past year. She joined Soundside's Libby Denkmann to give a little more insight into what’s happening at Seattle's Police Department. Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help ...
Dec 18, 2024•12 min
The light touch of tea glasses. Jasmine vines. Cigarette kisses. These are some of the images the Redmond-based poet, essayist, and translator Lena Khalaf Tuffaha conjures of Palestine in her most recent poetry collection, Something About Living. Last month, the collection earned Tuffaha the National Book Award for poetry. Through her poems, Tuffaha chronicles the legacy of violence and colonialism in Palestine’s history, while also bringing readers into a homeland that is rich with beauty, fami...
Dec 18, 2024•23 min
What does the Northwest sound like to you? It’s a question we’ve asked local sound artists. And this week, we’ve been sharing some of their sound choices. Yesterday, Christopher DeLaurenti played a recording of the bygone squeak of a metro bus. Our next piece of tape comes from Gordon Hempton. Guest: Gordon Hempton , acoustic ecologist and Emmy Award winning sound recordist See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Dec 18, 2024•2 min
What does the Northwest sound like to you? It’s a question we’re asking local sound artists. And, over the next week, we’ll be hearing some of those sounds. Yesterday, Perri Lynch Howard shared the sound of coyotes in the Methow Valley . Today’s sound has a bit more of a metropolitan flare. This sound originally appeared on a compilation called phongraphy.org 1 on and/OAR records Guest: Christopher DeLaurenti , Seattle born composer and phonographer See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy inform...
Dec 18, 2024•3 min
Breakups are always hard. Especially when you’re two of the largest grocery mega-conglomerates in the country. Last week two judges – including a federal judge in Oregon and a superior court judge based in Seattle – officially blocked a merger between grocery chains Kroger and Albertsons. The companies had argued they needed to unite to compete with the likes of Wal-Mart. While an appeal is possible, Albertsons has backed out of the merger altogether and is now suing Kroger for $600 million over...
Dec 18, 2024•21 min
