Members of the arts community in Seattle are joining in the protests against the killing of George Floyd. Hundreds gathered Tuesday near the Seattle Opera House. As musicians, painters, actors and others chanted “Black Lives Matter,” cars and trucks drove by honking their support.

Last week, as protests began to unfold following the death of George Floyd, the president of Seattle Central College sent out a tweet.

We are a country wracked by illness, by economic crisis, and by tears in our social fabric that have existed all along, but are too gaping to ignore, once again. How do we think about these twin emergencies — the pandemic, and the spasm of grief and anger over racism and police violence? What lessons could history possibly teach us about such an unprecedented situation? In this episode we bring you a story about race during a pandemic — it was a hundred years ago, but sheds a lot of light on

As protests raged across the country over the weekend, dozens of black church leaders in Tacoma gathered on street corners to pray. The event had been planned to highlight the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color, but it took on new meaning amid nationwide unrest over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. KNKX’s Will James attended the event to talk with those faith leaders and record their remarks.

Seattle's Chinatown-International District teemed with volunteers and city workers Sunday. They were trying to undo some of the damage in a neighborhood hit hard by vandalism during the weekend's protests.

This show originally aired on June 8, 2019. For this episode of Sound Effect, we're talking toilets — how these things we'd just as soon ignore actually have profound effects on our lives. We meet an author who is, among other things, teaching women how to pee in the woods without peeing on themselves. A Seattle man explains how he uses portable toilets to connect with his homeless neighbors . We hear what Seattle can learn from San Francisco’s approach to cleaner and safer public toilets . We

This story originally aired on June 8, 2019. Mark Lloyd pops his trunk and pulls out his supplies: kitty litter, a small military surplus tent, toilet paper, sanitizer and a 5-gallon plastic bucket, complete with toilet seat. This is the rudimentary toilet set-up that Mark has been assembling and delivering to homeless encampments for about three years now. He guesses he’s given away between 75 and 100. “It's something people need, and I can fill it,” he says. “You really can only do good when

This story originally aired on June 8, 2019. No, Thomas Crapper didn’t invent the modern flushing toilet. Airplanes don’t directly dump “blue ice” and human waste from 30,000 feet. And alligators can’t thrive in a New York City sewer. These are some of the abundant toilet myths that have circulated across the internet and beyond. All that said, some of the stories originated from a kernel of truth: sometimes, unlucky bathroom users can find rats floating in the bowl, but “not nearly as much as

This story originally aired on June 8, 2019. In 1989, a young woman named Kathleen Meyer published a book called "How to Shit in the Woods." For a book whose name can't be said on the radio, it has done very well. The book is now in its third edition, with 2.5 million copies sold. Meyer says it has been found on a coffee table in a nunnery, at a bed and breakfast in Scotland, and in the library at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Meyer says she felt the book was needed because increasing

This story originally aired on June 8, 2019. Seattle, like many other cities, commonly deals with people going to the bathroom in public spaces. If you are someone who does not have access to shelter, finding a safe place to go to the bathroom in Seattle is especially difficult. In fact, work by the Seattle Auditor’s Office revealed just how limited bathrooms are citywide: six publicly funded bathrooms are available for use 24/7, said City Auditor David Jones. And of the bathrooms available, few