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**Soundside**

*Soundside* leads the Puget Sound conversation with smart questions, lively debates, and direct access to the region’s most influential voices. Timely, insightful, and unmistakably local, it’s where the Pacific Northwest comes to dig into the news.

Latest Episodes:

Lion Dancing into the Lunar New Year Jan 29, 2025

Show notes

Happy Lunar New Year!

Today marks the beginning of the Year of the Snake.

And it’s an extra special Lunar New Year in Washington, because this year, for the first time, it’s a state holiday.

Festivities have already been happening in many places, but the festival officially goes for the next 15 days, with celebrations all over the state.

For Chinese and other Asian cultures, a critical part of these celebrations is lion dancing.

Soundside went to 51-year-old lion dancing school Mak Fai Dragon and Lion Dancing Association in Seattle to visit dancers preparing for their busy season.

Guests:

Han Eckleberg, Mak Fai member (lion dancing and kung fu)

Martin Leu, Mak Fai member (lion tail player)

Related Links:

Seattle Lion Dance | Mak Fai

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 listeners sound off about our coverage of Trump 2.0 Jan 29, 2025

Show notes

Journalists are struggling to keep up with the breakneck pace of major policy decisions coming out of the White House.

At Soundside, we have to prioritize how our team approaches the firehose of news. And for the past week we’ve been asking you, the audience, to give us feedback about how you want the show to handle covering the Trump Administration 2.0.

And boy, did you deliver. We’ve been flooded with calls and emails.

Requests ranged from completely skipping coverage, to reporting in moderation, to a mandate to keep our heads down and do the coverage, no matter how tough it is. Soundside has been taking all of your feedback into consideration.

It’s safe to say, most newsrooms are working to figure out how to cover the President. To get the local view we spoke to KUOW News Director Jason Pagano, and to get a look at the national scene, we sat down with Washington Post reporter Jeremy Barr.

GUESTS:

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.

Fueling innovation, or exploitation? Trump supporters feud over future of H-1B visas Jan 28, 2025

Show notes

Most of President Trump’s closest allies appear to be cheering on his major changes to immigration policy – which have been numerous.
These include executive orders suspending America’s refugee resettlement program, ramping up and expediting deportations, halting asylum claims and canceling existing appointments, and more.

But one program has exposed a major rift in MAGA world over the role of foreign workers, especially in tech: H-1B visas.

Trump’s inner circle is feuding over the future of the visas, which let companies hire foreign workers with hard-to-find skills, granting them temporary permission to live and work in the U.S.
There were more than 470,000 applications entered for 85,000 spots in the latest H-1B visa lottery. The battle has been heated and sometimes downright nasty. Elon Musk and similar tech moguls say the visas are vital to fostering innovation. Meanwhile, Steve Bannon and other right-wing influencers argue H-1Bs lets companies replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor.

All of this has led to a lot of questions about the future of the program during the second term of a president who once took steps to restrict H-1B visas -- but now says he has “always liked” them.

That’s got big resonance here in the Puget Sound region, where some of the companies with the most approved H-1B petitions are located.

To discuss the climate around H-1B visas, Soundside was joined by Jerry Lopez, CTO of Noise Figure Research, a Renton-based tech company; Andrew Kreighbaum, immigration reporter at Bloomberg Law; and Tahmina Watson, an immigration lawyer with Watson Immigration Law.

Guests: