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To live in the Northwest is, to some extent, to roll the dice. If you lived through the 1965 Seattle earthquake, or the Nisqually quake in 2001, or if you just read the New Yorker article about the “really big one” destined to hit our region, you know this well: There are forces under our feet that could just shrug our cities off into the abyss. The push and pull of continental plates is so huge compared with a puny little human. And yet, for a man named Kelcy Allen, the act of a child shielded

There are some things you might only be able to notice if you happen to be an insider. If you have lived in Tacoma for any extended period of time, there is a pretty good chance that you feel a bit territorial about it. It is a city that gets told that it can't measure up to Seattle. It is often associated with a certain aroma, while residents know that the smell doesn't really exist anymore, or at least doesn't compare to how it did decades ago. And if you ask around, residents would probably

This week on Sound Effect , we bring you some memorable stories we’ve shared about the people of Tacoma. GI Newspapers 88.5’s Paula Wissel gives us a glimpse into the underground GI movement , a network of subversive publications and meeting places catering to the military which sprung out of the antiwar movement during the Vietnam era. We learn about one particular underground newspaper published near Ft. Lewis.

Four years, after becoming the “Upper Tacoma Business District,” Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood finally reclaimed its name. Back in 2007, the area was struggling with drugs and gang violence, and business owners felt re-branding the neighborhood would do away with what they saw as a tarnished reputation. But to many locals, the name Hilltop was a point of pride. The decision to rename the neighborhood was eventually reversed in 2011. Some now reference the increased number of families in the area

This week on Sound Effect , we bring you stories of TMI, as in too much information. The Jeopardy Champ Seattle resident Ken Jennings won 74 times in a row on the popular trivia show "Jeopardy!" and is the the second highest earner in game show history with a total of more than $3.1 million. He explains how he keeps all that information in his brain. The Home of The Cloud Quincy, Washington is home to seven major data centers for big tech companies such as Microsoft and Dell. How did this small

Ken Jennings says knowing a lot of random facts can really come in handy when it comes to bringing people together — connecting with total strangers. He says having random knowledge about someone’s job or alma mater is a little bit like knowing about a person before you even get to meet them. Jennings says that the trick to being able to consume and retain so much knowledge is largely due to a wide interest in everything, because people are more likely to retain things that they are interested

The electronic data we use isn't as ephemeral as it seems. Our photos, videos, and email take up physical space in the world. Patty Martin knows this. Some of it ends up outside her kitchen window. Martin lives in Quincy, a rural Washington town that happens to house vast chunks of the internet in gigantic data centers. Quincy, a town of about 7,000 people in a bowl of gentle hills, was known for food processing plants that turned potatoes into French fries. That is, until companies like

Editor's Note: This post, which contains accounts of sexual assault, may not be suitable for younger listeners. The phrase 'rape kit' is often used in the media and on television shows like "Law and Order: SVU" to refer to the process of collecting evidence of sexual assault. T he term makes it sound like this neat and tidy little exam. However, the actual process is long and difficult. Your body is a crime scene; the nurse scraping every part for evidence of assault: DNA, bruises, fingerprints,

For comedians like Seattle’s Scott Losse, sharing lots of information about their flaws and their family members is just a given. He goes on stage in front of a live audiences telling jokes about things like his lifelong issues with anxiety and his deep love for his 16-year-old cat named Kitty. But c omedy often comes from pain, and that's true for Scott. When he was younger, Scott lost his two older brothers — one from suicide, the other, in a car accident. Scott Losse talks with 88.5’s Ariel

After years of bad experiences with hormonal birth control, at 19, I thought I had found a holy grail: The diaphragm. It was 2006, and nobody used diaphragms anymore, but I knew all about them — because since I was about 10 years old, I knew that my very existence depended on my mother leaving hers in the dresser drawer one cold winter day in January of 1986. I was conceived under the dining room table, on the shag carpet of their Fremont apartment. “Be careful,” she said. “You were a diaphragm