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Sound Effect producer Kevin Kniestedt shared this essay. My earliest memory of watching the Seahawks goes back to when I was probably three or four. I remember sitting in the basement with my dad, with the game on TV, and hearing the announcer saying “there is a penalty flag down.” Since I had no understanding of the game, I imagined that somewhere in that stadium, there was a person standing by a flag pole, lowering and raising a flag that said “penalty” on it every time a player did something

Tuesday evening marks the first night of Hanukkah. And if you know one piece of Hanukkah culture, it’s very likely a certain song about a little dreidel made of clay. What you may not know is how that song connects directly to Seattle.

Lois Langrebe has taught Lushootseed for over two decades, a dying language of the Tulalip tribes that she’s struggling to keep from going extinct. It’s an important role that she never expected to fill while growing up. A child of adoption, Lois was raised by a white family, knowing little about her origins or the culture of Native Americans. For years she struggled with her identity and finding a place that truly felt like home. And then she says God, or the Great Spirit, stepped in and helped

This week on Sound Effect, our theme is "Blood Ties." Host Gabriel Spitzer heads to a class at the University of Washington where midwives learn how to deal with potential blood loss during pregnancy. Alex Ashley profiles a Jehovah Witness who had to find an alternative to a blood transfusion during a medical emergency. We’ll meet a woman who found her birth mother, and then worked to keep her native language alive . Also, Jennifer Wing introduces us to a man who had been seeking a family for

Jeffrey Heckman, from Snohomish, WA, will be the first to tell you life is unpredictable. In the summer of 2015, while vacationing on San Juan Island with friends and family, Jeff was studying his Bible when, all of a sudden, an intense and unfamiliar pain struck him. The culprit was an aortic dissection - a tear in the large vein branching off from the heart. He was airlifted to Providence Medical Center, where renowned surgeon, Dr. James Brevig, prepared to conduct what would be a meticulous

When Darren Maypower was 16 years old he was in his fourth foster care home. Even though he was less than two years shy of becoming an adult in the eyes of the state, he still held out hope that he would find a family to call his own. His criteria was quite simple: stability and love. At the same time Darren was searching for his future parents, two women were also looking to complete their family. Christine Colling and Carrie Power, two educators who live on Vashon Island, originally planned on

Meet a mother and a daughter working through how blood and language have shaped their relationship. Simone Alicea is a reporter and editor here at KNKX. Her mom Veronica Alicea-Galvan is a King County Superior Court judge. They came together in a Storycorps booth in Chicago to talk about something specific: the bilingual court that Judge Alicea-Galvan used to run in Des Moines, Washington. But the conversation strayed pretty quickly into this intimate space, where both women learned things about

In this day of Tweets and texts and likes on Facebook, it may seem like a throwback to pick up a pen and write a letter. But Dec. 7 happens to be National Letter Writing Day, and Seattle author Elana Zaiman is urging all of us to sit down and write letters to our loved ones.

This week on Sound Effect, our theme is "In Traffic." Host Gabriel Spitzer checks out the winning entry for the “ Sorriest Bus Stop in America ,” which happens to be in Seattle. We talk to a bus driver who finds inspiration for his art from his riders. Meet a quadriplegic with a seriously tricked-out wheelchair . We meet a man who decided to move to avoid a five hour commute to work. Also, the detective who worked to stop local animal trafficking . The show wraps up with a conversation with a

If your primary mode of transportation is riding the bus, it's likely you've seen some nice bus stops, some OK ones, probably a couple of bad ones. The website Streetsblog USA holds an annual contest where readers from around the country nominate terrible bus stops, and then vote on them. The bus stop with the most votes gets crowned The Sorriest Bus Stop In America. And congratulations, Seattle: The 2017 title is yours. Alex Lew, a transportation planner in Seattle, nominated the bus stop,