Sound Effect

This story originally aired on Dec. 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 No. 7 carries more than 11,000 people every day. The No. 7 goes through the Rainier Valley and at night It turns into the No. 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 story originally aired on Feb. 4, 2017. To enter De Charlene William's Beauty and Boutique hair salon at 21st and Madison, where First Hill meets the Central Area in Seattle, you have to get past an iron gate. The extra security is a reminder that doing business here for 48 years has not always been easy. "I've been through a lot here on this corner," Williams says. Despite cars crashing through her front door and thieves cutting holes in her ceiling, Williams' beauty shop continues to...

This story originally aired on May 13. 2017. Television producer and director, Steve Wilson, says making television is just like making cheese. “People consume cheese. Some people make really good cheese. Other people make really terrible cheese. But, everybody eats cheese —and I make the cheese,” he told us. Steve’s decades-long love affair with television began when he was a kid growing up in Seattle. The 1960s was was a golden age in television for kids. This was when KING, KIRO and KOMO...

This story originally aired on Jan. 14, 2017. Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, is headed to Seattle later this month to give a talk. We grabbed a few minutes with him to ask what it is that keeps him from sleeping. As a child, Ira Glass spent nights considering his own mortality. “I would just lie in bed, trying to get my mind around the idea that I would be dead and everything in the world would continue without me,” remembers Glass. After he witnessed an uncle ship out to Vietnam...

This story originally aired on Dec. 1, 2018. For three years running, from 2015 to 2017, the Port Townsend Drizzle took home the gold medal in the over-50 women's division at the Washington State Senior Games . It's an impressive feat for a group of women without much basketball experience. It would be even more impressive if they'd had anyone to play against.

This week on the show, Sound Effect producer Kevin Kniestedt hops in the host chair and shares some of his favorite stories that he has worked on for the show over the years. First, we hear Kevin in one of his earliest interviews, at the age of 3. Then, we hear how a Pierce County land developer became the host of the most famous radio show in the country. Next, a conversation with two friends who participated in a music video that paid tribute to their friend who was killed in a shooting at...

This story originally aired on August 13, 2016. In the early 1900s, Seattle was a major stop for the vaudeville circuit, with the performances held in the city's finest downtown theaters. If you were an African-American during that time, your best chance of seeing one of these shows was from up in the balcony (an area then often referred to as the peanut gallery), if you were allowed to buy a ticket at all. And if you were a black musician who wanted to perform at a club in Seattle, you were...

This story originally aired on November 5, 2016. So when we get emotional about something, we often have to weigh the risks and rewards of acting on those emotions. If someone upsets us, we need to decide if there is enough of a reward in confronting that person, while potentially facing the risks of upsetting that person as well. I found myself in one of those situations at small-town bar in the middle of Washington, upset at a very, very famous young man, and wrote this essay. I feel like...

This story originally aired on February 11, 2017. Marcus Haney has caught several big named musicians on camera, including the likes of Coldplay and Elton John. In 2014, he was asked to produce a music video for the British band Bear's Den. He came up with the idea of coming to Seattle to film his younger brother, Turner Haney, and Turner's friends, who all attended Seattle Pacific University, capturing youth on the brink of adulthood. But on June 5, 2014, the day the filming was supposed to...

This show originally aired on September 8, 2018. This week, stories of career paths and their unexpected twists. First, a man finds himself lucky enough to never have to work again, and decides he’ll pivot to being a LEGO artist . Next, a career dishwasher becomes an internationally renowned artist . Finally, how a man with a PhD in theoretical mathematics becomes homeless, an activist, and an occasional taxi driver. The full broadcast version of this week's show, available below, also...

This story originally aired on September 8, 2018. Some people report to work purely for the paycheck. For others, the job itself plays a big part in their identity. Gregory Blackstock is a man who knows both sides of this coin. Blackstock is autistic and for decades, he eked out a living as a dishwasher at The Washington Athletic Club. It was a place that treated Gregory very well, but he found the work difficult to get through. "I just wanted to get away from drudgery," said Gregory. Today,...

This story originally aired on September 8, 2018. Growing up on Mercer Island, Mark Rose was captivated by rock n’ roll. And like most kids, he wanted to be a part of it. But unlike most kids, Mark did end up in the music business. He didn’t make it as a musician, but instead worked on the business side of things. But because of his close association with the musicians, he ended up living a lifestyle very much befitting a rockstar: drugs, alcohol, incessant partying. And like a lot of rock...

This story originally aired on September 8, 2018. Wes Browning has held an impressive array of jobs at Real Change, the newspaper distributed mainly by homeless vendors: He’s been a columnist, an artist, circulation specialist, public speaker, and so on. He’s also been homeless three times and struggled with his mental health, so he understands the paper’s vendors better than most. But go back in time in Browning’s resume, and you find an even wider range of jobs: taxi driver, teacher,...

This story originally aired on September 8, 2018. Sara Jamshidi grew up in Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution . She remembers when her mother could wear sunglasses and mini-skirts on hot summer days, before the new fundamentalist government made laws about what women could and could not wear. As a teenager Sara found small ways to rebel against the dress code, and the morality police who enforced it: She wore high ponytails underneath her hijab that let her hair show through the scarf,...

This story originally aired on September 8, 2018. Iain Heath had just caught a break. As an early employee of the data visualization at Tableau, he stood to make a bundle when the company went public in 2013. And for the first time, Heath realized he could quit his day job to pursue his passions. He says he asked his boss whether he was planning on leaving, too. His answer: No. “[He said] ‘I don’t know what I would do with myself.’ I realized that a lot of people, their job defines who they...

This show originally aired on June 16, 2018. This week, stories of positive things coming from otherwise negative places. First, music journalist and author Charles R. Cross talks about how a bad economy helped produce the grunge music movement. Then, how the author of the light-hearted Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books actually had a pretty rough life. A mother finds a way to pay tribute to her artistic daughter who battled mental illness. We take a tour of a Seattle neighborhood that decades ago...

This story originally aired on June 16, 2018. Paula Becker grew up reading the "Mrs. Piggle Wiggle" children's books, and loved the whimsical stories of her uncanny ability to cure children of bad character traits. The author of the books, Betty MacDonald, lived in Washington. Many years later, when Becker moved to the Evergreen state, she asked her local librarian what had become of the best-selling author. It was then that she found out MacDonald had written much more than the fanciful...

This story originally aired on June 16, 2018. Every Tuesday night, St. Paul’s Episcopal church in Seattle opens its doors and invites people living with mental illness and homelessness to come in and create. In the unique art space they can paint, knit, play music or find their own creative pursuits. The Karen Korn Project was founded by Pastor Kae Eaton and Patricia Swain, in honor of Swain’s daughter Karen. Karen died from suicide in November of 2014, after struggling with mental illness...

This story originally aired on June 16, 2018. If you have a band in Seattle, good luck finding an affordable practice space. There aren't many to begin with, and if a band can find a place that doesn't mind the noise, it is often small, old and outrageously expensive. Seattle music journalist and author Charles R. Cross says things were noticably different in the early and mid-'80s. "There were many, many empty spaces, that were just empty forever. So the capacity for a band member to rent a...

This story originally aired on June 16, 2018. Real estate. It’s a hot topic in the Northwest right now. A white-hot market like Seattle’s creates winners and losers, depending on which side of the transaction you happen to be on. These days, you’d probably rather be a seller than a buyer. But back in 1985, when Merlin Rainwater and her husband bought their place, the roles were reversed. They were able to score a little bungalow on the East slope of Capitol Hill for just $50,000. “There was...