GLP-1 drugs that are commonly used to treat diabetes and obesity, like Ozempic and Wegovy – are in big demand.

And they’re going to be more affordable. 

The Trump administration recently negotiated deals to lower the prices of these drugs. It seems like some details still need to be ironed out….  but from the looks of it, many Americans who use Medicare will be able to access GLP-1s at a fraction of their original cost. According to one of the deals, some Medicare patients will be able to get GLP-1s for a $50 copay.

So it’s safe to assume as costs come down, these drugs are only going to get even more popular….

And we want to know more about them. In this latest “ask a doctor” segment, we’re asking two physicians to answer all of our burning questions. 

GUESTS:

• Dr. Scott Hagan, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, who studies obesity.
• Dr. Mara Gordon, a family physician based in Philadelphia. She also writes about the culture of medicine and authors the “Real Talk With a Doc” column for NPR.

RELATED LINKS: 

• Medicare negotiated lower prices for 15 drugs, including 71% off Ozempic and Wegovy : Shots - Health News : NPR
• Ozempic is making me rethink how to be a body-positive doctor : Shots - Health News : NPR 

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.

It’s already the first weekend of December, and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some holiday cheer to lighten up these cold, rainy days.

Thankfully, like Santa soaring past with his reindeer, here with all the stuff that’s worth doing this weekend is Soundside Producer Jason Megatron Burrows!!

LINKS: 

• Year in Review 2025 | Town Hall Seattle
• WTO/99 - Northwest Film Forum
• 21st Annual Urban Craft Uprising Winter Show
• Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition | PMSC-FB
• KRAMPUS BREMERTON
• Seattle SantaCon
• Scintillating sci-fi striptease
• Kraken vs Detroit - Sat 12/6
• Kraken vs Minnesota - Mon 12/8

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.

Shortly after the shooting of two national guard troops in Washington, D.C., the Trump Administration said it was pausing asylum decisions and halting visas for Afghan immigrants. 

The alleged shooter is Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a Bellingham resident who came to the U.S. from Afghanistan in 2021.

The motive for the attack is unknown. One victim – 20 year old Sarah Beckstrom – was killed in Wednesday’s shooting.

The attack has prompted the Trump administration to supercharge restrictions on migrants from 19 countries, primarily ones in Africa and the Middle East. And it has left many others in this country fearful about their future as the federal government turns new scrutiny on green cards and asylee statuses that have already been granted. 

We’re trying to get a sense of how policy actions may impact immigrant communities, so we’re speaking with Luis Cortes Romero. He is an immigration lawyer and managing partner at Novo Legal Group.

A note: 

After our taping, on Tuesday evening, the Department of Homeland Security announced a pause for all immigration applications for people from 19 countries deemed "high risk." 

Those are the same 19 countries Luis and I discussed that were under some previous restrictions: mainly African and Middle Eastern nations, including Sudan, Somalia and Iran -- also Venezuela, Haiti, and more.

DHS says this requires "all aliens meeting the criteria undergo a thorough re-review process."

GUESTS:

• Luis Cortes Romero is an immigration lawyer and managing partner at Novo Legal Group. 

RELATED LINKS: 

• Shooting of National Guard members prompts flurry of U.S. immigration restrictions - PBS
• Trump pauses immigration applications for 19 nations on travel ban list - Washington Post

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.

Have you ever wanted a pet raccoon? 

Well, here’s a possible sign that dream is slowly approaching:  a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology suggests raccoons are getting closer to domestication. 

The study is not definitive yet, and more research is required. But it all has to do with researchers observing a shorter snout on the animals we affectionately refer to as trash pandas. 

GUEST

• Marina Wang, freelance journalist

RELATED LINKS

• Raccoons Are Showing Early Signs of Domestication - Scientific American

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.

Seattle’s brand new Professional Women’s Hockey team, the newly christened Seattle Torrent, faces off against the New York Sirens tonight at Climate Pledge Arena… 

Tonight’s game is the third ever for the team, and their growing fan base has both high hopes and big expectations as the season gets started.

Soundside Producer Jason Burrows sat down with Libby Denkmann ahead of tonight's game to talk about how things are going!

RELATED LINKS: 

• Seattle Torrent lose PWHL debut to Vancouver Goldeneyes in overtime 
• Seattle Torrent drop PWHL home opener to Minnesota before record crowd 
• Seattle Torrent vs Minnesota Frost
• Inaugural Home Opener Post Game Press
• 365 HOCKEY GIRL | PWHL (@365_hockeygirl) • Instagram

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.

Twenty-six years ago, this week over 40,000 people came to Seattle to protest at the World Trade Organization's ministerial conference.

Labor organizers, farmers, and environmental groups planned and executed peaceful action against what many saw as anti-democratic elements of the WTO, and the profound risks from the unfettered expansion of global trade. 

At events from Memorial Stadium to the waterfront and marches in downtown Seattle, advocates for the global south joined arms with American steelworkers, decrying the outsourcing of jobs. 

Ultimately, the “Battle of Seattle” pushed trade policy to the front page. 

But for many, the enduring memories from that week in Seattle are the clouds of tear gas deployed by police and broken windows at downtown businesses. 

A new documentary called WTO/99 tries to capture the events on the ground as they happened. It’s composed entirely of archival footage. And it highlights the way narratives around power and protest are shaped by media images.  

GUEST: Ian Bell, director, WTO/99

RELATED LINKS:

• Soundside's conversation with DW Gibson, author of "One Week to Change the World," about the WTO protests
• Where to watch WTO/99

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.

Some rare bipartisanship is emerging in congress: it focuses on questions about the legality of a September 2nd U.S. strike on a boat in the Caribbean. 11 people were killed, including two men who initially survived the first strike, but were killed by a follow-up attack. This operation was the start of a campaign of strikes the Trump Administration says it is waging to protect Americans from drugs smuggled by narco-terrorists. 

GUEST: Representative Adam Smith (WA-09), ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee 

RELATED LINKS:

• NPR: Congress steps in as questions mount over who authorized a second strike at sea
• NPR: As strikes on alleged drug boats grow, so do questions about their legality and goal

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.

We have a new thing we’re trying out on Mondays on Soundside. We're calling it Front Page.

It’s our chance to talk about the latest news with a rotation of plugged-in journalists and guests, taking a look at the headlines from the weekend and the stories that we'll be following as the week moves forward.

GUEST: KUOW politics reporter Scott Greenstone.

TODAY'S TOPICS:

• National Guard Shooting in Washington D.C.
  • Noem says National Guard shooting suspect was 'radicalized' in the U.S.
• Seattle Traffic
  • Why Seattle traffic got worse in 2024
  • Light rail’s push to Federal Way gives students, workers front-door access
• Pigeons
  • Why Sound Transit is waging a ceaseless battle against birds

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.

Dr. Robert Jones is the new president of our region’s largest educational and research hub. He took the helm at the University of Washington in August, and when we sat down recently, he shared a bit about his background and path to Seattle.

Jones says his parents were sharecroppers farming peanuts and cotton in southwest Georgia.

“Where most people would tell you the last thing you should have anything to do with if you grew up as a son of sharecroppers. I was innately curious about science, and particularly became very curious about plants”

It’s ultimately what set him on his academic path: Crop physiology.

“And in my case, it was corn, and the whole goal was to understand the impact of environment on physiological processes that would be disrupted and cause a reduction in the yield of a major agricultural crops under a global climate change scenario. 

This was before the term global climate change was coined, and so that's what I spent 34 and a half years trying to understand, how do we make corn more tolerant to heat and drought stress? 

And that basic physiological research has led to what is now most of the major agricultural crops being able to withstand temperatures and drought longer than they ever had before in the modern history of production agriculture.”

Jones spent more than three decades teaching and doing research at the University of Minnesota. He later led the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where the enrollment grew by 25% and they launched a new medical school during his tenure. 

The University of Washington has a similar enrollment size to Illinois – more than 60-thousand students and 30-thousand faculty and staff.

So Soundside wanted to hear from the new university president… Roughly 100 days into his tenure, what’s his read on the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the school? 

We should note we are a self-sustaining service of the University of Washington, with editorial independence.

GUEST: University of Washington President, Dr. Robert Jones

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.

On the show today, we’re getting you ready for Thanksgiving leftovers with a little leftovers of our own. We’re pulling some of our favorite segments from Soundside past out of the fridge, and warming ‘em up for you.

Up first: edible plants are all around us in the Pacific Northwest. We'll hear how one local author became obsessed with helping people identify tasty greens and stay safe foraging for mushrooms and leafy goodies.

Also on the show: for over 60 years the quiz game show Jeopardy has been a beloved part of people’s lives. Washington native Ken Jennings says, growing up, the show sparked his love of trivia. It’s a passion that led him to a 74 game winning streak in 2004, and eventually a job behind the podium as host. 

Meanwhile he’s translated his trivia expertise into his own game - called Kennections. It’s a weekly puzzle he writes for Mental Floss.

GUESTS:

• Natalie Hammerquist, herbalist, expert forager, and author of Edible Plants of the Pacific Northwest and Medicinal Plants of the Pacific Northwest

• Ken Jennings, host of Jeopardy and author of The Complete Kennections: 5,000 questions in 1,000 puzzles

RELATED LINKS:

• The many joys (and a few potential dangers) of foraging in the PNW
• Soundside "kennects" with Ken Jennings

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.