This story originally aired on June 1, 2019. When J.J. Harrison fell down in front of a charging, 2,000-pound bull in Hobbs, New Mexico, everything seemed to slow down. "I just remember thinking this could be the end," he said. It wasn't. And even though Harrison was pretty beat up that day, he was back at it almost immediately. "I got my check and I drove five hours to get to the airport," he said, "because I've got to keep going." Harrison says he doesn't like people watching him get hurt,

This story originally aired on June 1, 2019. Krystal Marx is a City Council member in Burien. Her husband James is an Iraq War veteran. They’ve both experienced hardships that never fully left them: in her case, it was poverty and homelessness as a kid; for him, it was combat-related PTSD. Their relationship, and their healing, began on rival superhero teams. Across the country, there are real people, often in full costume, who walk the streets fighting crime, helping the helpless and generally

As the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded, some clear patterns have emerged. One is that people of color are being affected by this virus at higher rates than white people. In Washington state, the disparities are especially stark among the Latino population. More than a third of the state's COVID-19 cases have been Latino, which is way out of proportion to their 13 percent share of the general population.

Washington state officials say they have received a big shipment of coronavirus testing materials from the federal government, putting the state on track to have enough resources to keep a lid on the outbreak in coming months.

Last week, Gov. Jay Inslee laid out the requirements for what it would take for restaurants and taverns to reopen in phase two of his plan to safely restart the economy, but some bar and restaurant owners aren’t entirely sure which of the four phases of Inslee’s plan their business will be pinned to.

We have all been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in our own ways. And the Sound Effect team has been doing our best to cover it in a podcast called Transmission. Today on Sound Effect, we share some more stories that have stood out to us from the series. First, we’ll meet a couple of engineers who repurposed an invention to stop people from touching their faces. Then, we learn how doctors have had to learn on the fly about the insidious nature of the novel coronavirus. We hear how one mother

David Guterson has been walking through the mountains of the Pacific Northwest his entire life. He knows the Olympics best. They’re closest to his home on Bainbridge Island, where he’s lived for decades. Guterson taught high school English there, as he wrote “Snow Falling on Cedars.”

COVID-era isolation affects all of us. And for people with special needs, it brings all sorts of particular challenges, many that can’t be solved with a Zoom call. That’s why most days, you can find a bald, heavily tattooed guy, salt-and-pepper beard down to his sternum and wearing a bright blue face mask, driving around Western Washington to check in on his clients — all adults with developmental disabilities. “I call it my ‘Melissa outreach,’” says Gino Jevdjevich, a crisis counselor with the

This story originally aired on May 25, 2020. This week on Sound Effect , we share stories about how numbers can be the difference between winning and losing, spending and saving, or even life and death. We meet Seattle drag queen Sylvia O’Stayformore, who hosts Rainbow Bingo at the Ballard Northwest Senior Center. A Seattle doctoral student explains how she uses music to help people make sense of complicated climate data. An auctioneer reflects on winning the Chicago Marathon at 15 years old. We

This story originally aired on May 25, 2019. Seattle writer Paulette Perhach likes to spend her food money at a typical boutique grocery store in Seattle. You know, the kind with hardwood floors, shelves that are curated with an ethical conscience — and really good cheese. Perhach is 36 years old. She’s a freelance writer who fully admits to liking fancier things she can’t afford. One of her favorite things to buy in this store is feelings. “Just hippy, happy feelings," Perhach said. "It's the