Soundside

Latest Episodes:

How the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan could affect people with disabilities Mar 13, 2025

Show notes

The One Seattle Comprehensive Plan is working its way through city council. It dictates how the city will grow over the next twenty years, including where density is allowed.

While the details are still being worked out, the comprehensive plan has a new type of zoning: Neighborhood Centers. This part of the plan could affect up to 30 neighborhoods in Seattle – including places like Montlake, Madrona and Queen Anne – and has met with vocal opposition from many residents.

But there is one constituency that sees these neighborhood centers, and more density in general, as a lifeline: people with disabilities.

Guests:

Cecelia Black, organizer with Disability Rights Washington

Related Links:

Why Seattle’s housing density plans are a disability-rights issue | Cascade PBS

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Huckleberries are culturally important food. Tribes say it isn't treated like one Mar 12, 2025

Show notes

Huckleberries appear in any number of Northwest products like ice cream, syrups, jams, teas, pies, tinctures, and vodka, but they are incredibly difficult to grow on farms.

Instead, huckleberries grow at high elevations in fields, and are found mostly in forests that have recently burned.

Native people have been picking huckleberries for generations and huckleberry harvests in the mountains are one of the major food gathering events for Tribes.

But many say a combination of federal forest management practices and commercial picking operations infringe on their treaty rights.

Guests:

Josephine Woolington, writer based in Portland
Elaine Harvey, Ḱamíłpa band member, one of the 14 bands that comprise the Yakama Nation

Relevant Links:

High Country News: The True Cost of the Huckleberry Industry

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

$100 million police hiring bill moves on to the state Senate Mar 12, 2025

Show notes

The Washington state House on Tuesday approved $100 million in funding aimed at helping local police departments hire more officers.

House Bill 2015 aligns with Governor Bob Ferguson’s priorities, and he’s threatened to torpedo any state budget that doesn’t include increased police funding.

It’s been a contentious budget cycle in Olympia. The state’s facing a massive shortfall -- but the progress on police funding may indicate state democrats’ willingness to cooperate with the new governor.

To break down the police funding bill, Soundside was joined by Jake Goldstein-Street, reporter for the Washington State Standard.

Guests:

Jake Goldstein-Street, reporter with the Washington State Standard

Related Links:

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How Rainier Beer went from an old fashioned brew to an advertising icon Mar 12, 2025

Show notes

Behold the Rain-beers, a herd of giant bottles with human legs galloping majestically across the Cascade foothills.

This motif was part advertisement, part cinema — the brainchildren of Heckler Associates, a local ad agency that made Rainier Beer’s personality and brand into the stuff of Seattle legend.

Today Rainier is no longer an entirely local product — it’s owned by Pabst and brewed in California — but go to any antique shop and you’re destined to find beer memorabilia sporting that red calligraphy “R” hearkening from the golden age of Rainier Beer.

It was this mythologizing that drove director Isaac Olsen to make a full documentary film about the commercials and the small firm that put them on the national stage.

Rainier: A Beery Odyssey is showing at SIFF Film Center this week through Thursday, March 13, and other Washington locations through April.

Soundside host Libby Denkmann caught up with Olsen to hear more about his odyssey of making the film.

Guests:

Isaac Olsen, director of Rainier: A Beer Odyssey.

Related Links:

Find showtimes and locations for the film here: https://www.rainierbeermovie.com/

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pramila Jayapal on federal spending, a potential trade war, and more Mar 11, 2025

Show notes

The government’s about to run out of money.
There’s an ongoing, multi-fronted showdown in the courts over who has the power to cut federal spending after it’s been appropriated.
And also a little bit of a trade war brewing with new U.S. tariffs on Canadian steel just announced.
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal shares her view from the House of Representatives with Soundside.

*Note: since this conversation aired, President Trump has halted his plan to double tariffs on Canadian metals.

Guest:

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapalrepresents Washington’s 7th congressional district, which ranges from Lake Forest Park to White Center

Related Links:

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

CORRECTION: 11 people have died at a South King County jail in the last two years - why? Mar 10, 2025

Show notes

On March 10, 2025, Soundside aired a segment about a high number of deaths among people detained at the South Correctional Entity, commonly known as SCORE. After it aired, our staff was contacted by a SCORE official, who objected to two claims made in our broadcast.

One, was an assertion that reports regarding unexpected fatalities that occurred at the facility were not posted within the required timeframe and that some reports remained outstanding. After looking into the Washington State Department of Health website, including searches on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, it appeared that at least some, if not all, of the required reports had been posted in the weeks before our segment aired. The improper labeling of these reports by date of death instead of publication date on DOH’s website may have contributed to the oversight. Members of our team, including the show’s editor, had background discussions with the reporter we interviewed and the SCORE official who raised the issue, and were satisfied that our segment contained errors.

The second assertion was that the mortality rate quoted in the segment for detainees at SCORE was inaccurate, because while 11 deaths in a two year period is arguably high, according to the Department of Justice, it is not enough of a basis to extrapolate a statistically clear comparison with other rates. While the original reporting pointed out this caveat, our broadcast did not.

Because the central framing of our segment was that SCORE “has had over three times the average in-custody death for Washington jails,” we felt it was not possible to correct the errors and decided instead to remove the segment audio from our podcast feed and issue a clarification on the show’s site.

We did not find reason to question the bulk of the reporting that originally aired on SCORE’s recent record of deaths in custody, concerns from family members of those who died, and the troubling reports of conditions at the jail from people who were held there and a former employee of WellPath.

We plan to address this on-air in an episode of Soundside in the near future.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Can the artificial really be 'intelligent'? This researcher wants us to think bigger Mar 10, 2025

Show notes

Artificial intelligence is starting to underpin everything we do, whether we like it or not. And at the highest levels, companies like Google and Open AI are saying their AI is on the verge of crossing a humanlike threshold that we’ve only seen in science fiction.
This is prompting all kinds of conversations about sentience and the possible dangers of a superintelligent computer system.

But the definition of “Artificial General Intelligence,” or AGI, is controversial.

And many researchers aren’t even sure today’s programs have our common understanding of “intelligence” at all. They argue ChatGPT isn’t really thinking -- it's just really good at predicting the next sequence in a pattern (and copying someone else along the way).

So what makes something intelligent? Or alive, for that matter?

For Google’s Blaise Agüera y Arcas, the most interesting piece of examining AI breakthroughs has been how they connect to the evolution of life on earth.
In his new book, What is Life? he argues for a broadened definition of “intelligence,” to include things like single celled organisms and even basic tools. And he says humans’ development of technology -- most recently, AI -- is part of a long history of symbiotic relationships that have pushed our evolution forward.

Guests:

Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Vice President and CTO of Technology and Society at Google, where he leads a team called “Paradigms of Intelligence” researching the intersection of AI, biology, and philosophy. Author of What is Life, the first part of a broader work on intelligence at large.

Related Links:

What is Intelligence? | Antikythera

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Soundside's "Weekend Warmup" - 3/6-9 Mar 07, 2025

Show notes

It’s the end of the week for us here at Soundside, and we’ve been making our weekend plans.

That means if you’re searching for something to keep you occupied this weekend, you’re in the right place.

Soundside Producer Jason Megatron Burrows is here in the nick of time to give you all the highlights.

LINKS:

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

'Get used to it' - Department of Veterans Affairs announces 70,000 jobs will be cut Mar 07, 2025

Show notes

70,000. That’s the number of jobs the Department of Veterans Affairs will cut over the next six months. This comes from an internal VA memo leaked to the public this week.

It’s the latest in a series of mass layoffs conducted by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

In a video released yesterday, VA Secretary Doug Collins said that the changes are necessary to make the department more efficient, accountable, and transparent.

But, In another video released last month Collins promised that health care services and benefits would not be cut, and that 300,000 positions at the department had been labeled “mission critical” to ensure that services would not be interrupted.

Hundreds of thousands of veterans in Washington state receive healthcare, disability compensation or pensions from the VA. The state has five VA hospitals in Seattle, Tacoma, Walla Walla, Spokane and Vancouver, as well as more than a dozen outpatient clinics.

So now, many are wondering - what will these cuts look like, and how will they impact the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States.

Guest:

Orion Donovan Smith, DC Correspondent for the Spokesman Review

Related Links:

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How Seattle's rap scene got its start Mar 06, 2025

Show notes

In the 1980s, Seattle's music scene was hooked on disco. The success of "Saturday Night Fever" meant venues opted for groovy vinyl over live band performances, and songs like Chic's "Good Times" were on constant rotation. That made room for a similar but modified version of the song's simple breakbeat by a group called The Sugarhill Gang, who quickly brought "rapping" to a nationwide audience.

As Ben Camp tells the story, “Rapper’s Delight” – rap’s first hit – made an imprint in Seattle and kicked off a vibrant local scene connecting Sir-Mix-A-Lot to Macklemore.

Camp, who writes under the name of Novocaine132, has been covering music in the city since the 1990s – and he recently published his first book, “The Birth of Seattle Rap.”

Soundside producer Alec Cowan caught up with the writer to hear more about the book and Seattle’s pre-grunge music scene – starting with why it was disco that gave way to hip hop.

Guests: