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 off the side of the road, the carcasses of seals that

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. Next, we talk to one of the best known food safety attorneys in the world about how his career took shape. 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

In the late 1990s, WIl MIller was working as a King County prosecutor in Seattle. And for the first time, he was exploring the gay nightlife. Spending his evenings in the city’s gay bars introduced him to his future lover and, through him, to crystal meth. “If you're a gay man in the 90s and you're a little overweight and you’re a little self-conscious, it really seemed to solve all of my problems,” Miller said. “It played into every one of my weaknesses.” Miller continued working for the

College is really expensive. People take out loans, they work a million odd jobs, and if you’re lucky, you have parents who set up a college fund. When Gracelynn Shibayama was 17 years old, she had a college fund. But then, she got an email from her parents. “We had to use your college fund to pay for Calvin’s rehab. So, at that point it was like, Oh, this is getting really serious and if I want to go to college, and I thought that was going to be there, I’m going to have to start thinking about

Back in the 1920’s a Seattle police officer spotted a lucrative opportunity, and hustled fast to make it happen. His name was Roy Olmstead and for a time, he became a very rich man by running a highly illegal activity. During prohibition, Olmstead supplied a dry Northwest with alcohol. Lots of alcohol. The good stuff too. Not moonshine. No one is really certain how Olmstead went from being an enforcer of the law to a lawbreaker, but it’s believed he had a lot of help. “There were people in high

This week on Sound Effect, we hear stories of people who learned to hustle. The Cookie Hustle They may seem sweet (and they are), but sisters Hayden and Rena Korbol mean business. They are two of the top cookie sellers for the girl scouts in Western Washington, selling over 1,600 boxes each last year. The Bootleg King Back in the 1920s, during prohibition, Roy Olmstead supplied a dry Northwest with booze. Lots of booze. And we’re not talking moonshine here, this was the good stuff. Olmstead

This story originally aired on May 13, 2017. Off the coast of Fiji in the Pacific Ocean, brightly colored coral reefs sit a few inches below translucent waves. It’s these unsuspecting reefs that changed everything for one family back in 1974. Their story starts in the early 1970s in San Francisco Bay where Chuck Wilcox and his wife Dawn loved to sail with their two kids, Garth and Linda. They would glide through the waters of the protected bay, Chuck dreaming of life at sea and Dawn imagining

This story originally aired on May 13, 2017. Marvin Charles is the co-founder of a Seattle organization called DADS —Divine Alternative for Dads Services. Marvin and his wife, Jeanett, help men from all walks of life get back on their feet, find work and ultimately, reconnect with their kids. Now, you might think that Marvin must be one of these parents who know all — a go-to person whose advice is golden and who comes from a loving home himself. This is how Marvin’s life started. But then

This story originally aired on May 13, 2017. Back in 1950, Northgate Mall was just opening its doors. It was struggling to get off its feet and fill empty shops. Big local retailers like Nordstrom and Friedlander didn’t believe that a regional shopping center all the way up north could survive. At that time, downtown was where people went to shop. Jim Douglas set out to change this. Douglas helped launch major city legacies like SeaFair and the World’s Fair, b ut his crowning achievement was

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 created their very own shows for children. Steve