Sound Effect

This show originally aired on October 7, 2017. This week on Sound Effect, stories of better late than never. We open the show by meeting a man who started teaching Pilates in his late seventies. Next, we talk to a woman who has decided to freeze her eggs in an effort to be able to have kids down the road. Then 88-5’s Ashley Gross introduces us to a woman who overcame her fear of the water later in life. Also, Sound Effect’s Jennifer Wing profiles a man who saved some very special boats from...

This story originally aired on October 7, 2017. They say that age is nothing but a number. But for women looking to conceive, age is one of the primary factors to determines that chance at success. That is why women hoping to have children later in life are looking at an increasingly popular method -- freezing their eggs. Marin Landis is one of those women. At the age of 36 her fertility was on the decline and she was feeling pressure to figure out some way to have a baby. Freezing her eggs...

This story originally aired on October 7, 2017. Dr. Kim Holland emerged from the locker room at a pool in West Seattle on a recent Friday morning, suited up and ready to go. But she scanned the pool with a bit of dismay – no empty lanes. “It’s kind of hard because I don’t like it when there’s more than one person in a lap lane because then you’ve got to pay attention,” she said. “The lanes are too narrow.” Nevertheless, she pulled on her bathing cap and goggles, staked out a lane and climbed...

This story originally aired on October 7, 2017. There is that saying that pops up in fortune cookies and is spoken often by parents of antsy kids: Good things come to those who wait. Michael Jacobson of Seattle waited for something. In fact, he waited for nearly three decades to get ahold of two unusual boats that were being used as light fixtures at Ivar’s Salmon House on North Lake Union. When this eventually happened, a new door opened up in his world that he did not expect. These boats,...

This story originally aired on October 7, 2017. So, there’s this online test. The faces of people of different races flash up on your screen along with words, like good, bad, sweet and bitter. And you have to immediately click on one of the words when you see the face. It tests our implicit racial biases in a way that’s really hard to fool. The results can be enlightening. Or horrifying, because it turns out almost all of us have implicit bias. Dr. Caprice Hollins teaches workshops that help...

This story originally aired on October 7, 2017. Washington State is, of course, named after founding father George Washington. But there’s another George Washington, also a founding father, who settled in a little corner of the territory with his wife Mary Jane nearly 150 years ago. There he founded a town called Centerville, later changed to Centralia. What makes Washington an unusual pioneer-type is that he was African-American, born in Virginia to a white woman and a black slave. “His dad...

This story originally aired on September 30, 2017. Seattle Attorney Bill Marler is often thought of as a bug. An agitator. An annoyance to the beef and poultry industries, and even the companies that grow leafy greens. He’s the guy you call if you are unfortunate enough to fall victim to E. coli, salmonella, listeria or any other bacteria that somehow works their way into mass food production and into your stomach. In this midweed installment of Sound Effect's podcast, come listen to Bill...

This show originally aired on September 30, 2017. This week on Sound Effect, stories of bugs in the system. We first head to the Burke Museum where baby beetles eat away at the flesh of dead animals, down to the bone, so scientists can have a clean specimen. Then we hear from a cyber-security expert about what went wrong in a huge disaster in Bellingham. Also, you may not have known that flea circuses are “real”, but we’ll visit one that exists in the Wallingford neighborhood. We’ll also...

This story originally aired on September 30, 2017. Museums rely on many volunteers to carry out their mission. This is quite true for the Burke Museum on the campus of the University Of Washington, in Seattle. In fact, the Burke has dozens of volunteers that live in a small windowless room, not much larger than a walk in closet. These dedicated workers have been here for years. They are dermestid beetles in their larval state: hungry baby beetles. The beetles dine on dead animals picked up...

This story originally aired on September 30, 2017. Seattle Attorney Bill Marler is often thought of as a bug…an agitator…an annoyance to the beef and poultry industries, and even the companies that grow leafy greens. He’s the guy you call if you are unfortunate enough to fall victim to E. coli, salmonella, listeria, or any other bacteria that somehow works its way into mass food production and into your stomach. E. Coli entered everyday lexicon when three people died and hundreds of others...

This story originally aired on September 30, 2017. On June 10, 1999, Bellingham residents began reporting the strong smell of gasoline. Then, within minutes, 911 operators were flooded with reports of a massive explosion. A fuel pipeline had burst, dumping nearly 300,000 gallons of gasoline into nearby creeks. And then it ignited. Black smoke rose 30,000 feet in the air and flames shot out for over a mile. It’s considered a miracle there were only three deaths. Almost 20 years later, the...

This story originally aired on September 30, 2017. There’s Ms Nimbus, Queen of the Air, and Drake, King of the High Dive. There’s the high-wire artistry of the fabulous Dmitry and Annette. And then, of course, there’s Marcel, the world’s only “mime flea.” These are just a few of the cast members of a unique Seattle attraction: Professor Payne’s Phantasmagorical Flea Circus . Payne Fifeld’s breadbox-sized circus sits squarely in a long and proud tradition of performing fleas, dating back to...

This story originally aired on September 30, 2017. Brandon Hopkins was on track to become a high school biology teacher when he was invited by one of his professors at Washington State University to work in a lab with honey bees. “Yeah, I bought every kind of itch cream they sold in the store because my hands were swollen and itching from all the bee stings and I soaked my hands in ice every night and questioned my decision making,” recalls Hopkins. So, there are sperm banks for people....

This story originally aired on September 30, 2017. When Hollywood needs a housefly, they call Graham Owen. The head of the company Film Flies is a specialist when it comes to creating fake insects (and spiders and centipedes) used in movies, print ads and commercials. Owen has watched his creations appear in a Spider-Man movie, alight on the lip of Adam Sandler and even the star in a Breaking Bad episode. Each bug is meticulously recreated, leading to specimens so realistic that they have...

This story originally aired on Jan. 14, 2017 “The streets start really showing their personality after dark,” said Seattle photographer Tim Durkan, on one of the coldest nights of 2016. He’s talking about the neighborhood where he lives, and where he grew up: Capitol Hill. “The commuters have gone home; all the yoga stores have closed; you know, the PCC and the Whole Foods — everybody's got their freaking quinoa. Everybody's home behind their little closed doors. But not Rick, not Jessie,...

This story originally aired on December 2, 2017. Many of us make our way through traffic while riding on a bus. One of the busiest bus routes in Seattle is the #7 carries more than 11,000 people every day. The #7 goes through the Rainier Valley and at night It turns into the #49 when it heads north, to the University District. This is Nathan Vass’s bus route. “It’s very enjoyable to get to do North Seattle and South Seattle in the same vehicle. And you see this sort of shift in turnover...

This week, some of our favorite stories of roundabout journeys. First, we hear the cryptic poem that serves as a map to a buried treasure. Then, the story of a teenager escaping a troubled home life, who found strength in the books of Judy Blume . Next, a group of people who raised their families in a logging camp return to the now closed camp for a visit. Finally, a woman who set out on what was supposed to be a day hike gets lost in thousands of acres of forest. This week we are trying...

This story originally aired March 26, 2016. Many children dream of buried treasure and fantastical adventures in search of gold and jewels. Some adventurous adults are following through on those dreams, scouring the western United States for the treasure of Forrest Fenn. After serving in Vietnam as a fighter pilot, Fenn became a wildly successful art dealer in Sante Fe, New Mexico. When he was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, he decided to put some of his valuable collection in a...

This story originally aired on April 16, 2016. For some people, home is not a place of safety and comfort. When writer Anastasia Selby was growing up around the Seattle suburbs and Olympia, home was a dangerous place of neglect and abuse. As a young girl facing some tragic circumstances, Selby often ran away from home. Selby drew the strength to do that from what might seem like an unlikely place: the novels of acclaimed author, Judy Blume. Titles such as "Are You There God? It's Me...

This story originally aired on Jan. 14, 2017 The sidewalks of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood are home to drug addicts, the mentally ill and kids who’ve run away from home. These are the people most of us give wide berth to as we make our way in and out of trendy restaurants and bars. We turn a blind eye to then when they are camped out in a bus shelter. The level of caution afforded to these individuals goes up significantly when it’s dark outside. The people we avoid at night are the...