One of the heartbreaking things about the past few weeks for Jourdan Imani Keith is how many of her poems, ones that touch on anguish, outrage and sadness — feel so current right now. Keith is Seattle’s Civic Poet, and she sighs deeply as she reflects on it.

Toxic exposures to cleaning products are up sharply since the pandemic began, according to the Washington Poison Center. In the first half of the 2020, poisonings due to misuse of cleaners such as bleach or rubbing alcohol are up 54 percent over the same period last year. There are similar jumps in cases involving children who’ve ingested hand sanitizer, as well as cannabis.

The act of protesting can unfold in a variety of ways, and protesting through music is certainly one of them. Freddy Gonzalez, whose stage name is Freddy Fuego, is a local composer and musician. He's also an educator at Seattle's Northwest School, teaching music to students in grades 6-12. As the school year wrapped up, and protests for racial justice took hold of the country, he wanted to offer his students some background and history of protest music — how a horn or a lyric can be a powerful

This show originally aired on March 30, 2019. We start with a man translating traditional blues into Yiddish . Next, we join "the Jane Goodall of the whales," as she eavesdrops on orcas . Then, an effort is made to rethink how an endangered native language should look on the page. A lso, a story of a musician with autism who uses music as a language . Finally, a rabbi uses modern music to help save a language from extinction. Sound Effect showcases stories inspired by the place we live. The show

This story originally aired on March 30, 2019. Xolie Morra Cogley is a musician in Seattle, and leader of the band Xolie Morra and the Strange Kind. “I’ve always been into music since I was very little," Cogley says. "And so music, I think, really helped to move me in a more social direction, because I didn’t really do a lot of talking when I was little. But I developed a communication skill using music that helped me fit into certain groups. So I didn’t have to have conversations. I was just

This story originally aired on March 30, 2019 Ladino is the language of Sephardic Jews whose ancestors were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition. Now, 500 years later, it’s spoken in more than 30 countries – a language of the Diaspora. But, Ladino is mostly spoken by elders in the Sephardic community and it’s in danger of going extinct. One man is determined to save Ladino. His name is Rabbi Simon Benzaquen.

This story originally aired on March 30, 2019. The American Blues is a genre born of suffering — of oppression, heartbreak and hard work. It originated in African-American communities of the Deep South, but it all sounds very familiar to Jewish Seattleite Ilan Speizer.

This story originally aired on March 30, 2019. Author’s note: Sometimes the best stories are not planned out or deeply researched in advance, but rather the product of simply listening and letting a narrative take you where it wants to go. This one came about because I had always wanted to learn more about how orcas communicate: the extent to which we know they have some sort of language. I asked around and learned the person to contact is Jeanne Hyde, a wonderful character who has devoted more

This story originally aired on March 30, 2019. About a decade ago, Juliet Shen took on dream project. Shen, a typeface designer and artist, was commissioned by the Tulalip Tribes to create a new font specifically for Lushootseed , the now endangered language used by most of the coast Salish tribes. Shen isn’t Native American, but she often thought about the disconnect between Western typeface design and indigenous cultures. “I felt the history of Native Americans was disconnected from the

It’s Juneteenth. The holiday commemorates June 19, 1865, when a Union general reached Galveston, Texas, and freed the last remaining enslaved people in the Confederacy. That was more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and just about two months after the end of the Civil War.