The sheer physicality of aging and dying are things we try not to think about, so it’s especially striking when these subjects turn up in unexpected places — say, your indie rock playlist. Carrie Goodwin plays bass for the Seattle-based band Great Grandpa , and she also happens to be a nursing student. In her song “Rosalie,” Goodwin introduces us to someone losing her grip on life — and maybe gets us a little closer to wrapping our brains around our common fate. She caught up with Sound Effect

For decades, soldiers in the U.S. Army learned military navigation using a very specific map. Today, that map is burned in the memories of generations of service members. And it happens to be a map of a tiny town in Washington called Tenino. “It’s a topographical map, its scale is 1:50,000 … and up until about 2012, everybody in the army knew the Tenino Map Sheet,” said John Millard, a military veteran who used the map in training in the 1980s. It didn’t matter if you were stationed in

Every year, in the Fall, Dr. Ron Naito makes a trip to Still Creek. The Portland, Ore. primary care doctor visits the creek, in the shadow of Mount Hood, to watch the salmon come back. “They always return to within 100 yards of where they were born, and it’s quite sort of a spiritual kind of thing, because that’s where they die and also where new life is coming in the coming months,” said Dr. Naito, from his hillside home in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Naito has drawn nourishment from this ancient

There really was a punk rock riot on the Kitsap Ferry. There are contemporary media reports and court records to corroborate it. So it's a true story. But the story has also become legend -- part of local lore. Over the past 30 years, people in Seattle’s punk scene have told it over and over. So have people who work for Washington State Ferries. Over time, the details have gotten a little murky. The basic facts are these: It was 1987, and there had been a big punk show in Bremerton, including

First, we learn about a map that shows the vast web of connections among Seattle bands. Then, we meet the chief of equity for Seattle Public Schools, whose work is informed by her own past experience as a black student in the district. We meet a performance artist who explores how expectations of beauty killed her mother . We travel to a ridgetop observatory where young adults are working out who they’re going to be. And we learn how a Tacoma woman went from “cult” to college .

Growing up in Santa Rosa, California, Susan Lieu’s mother, Jennifer Ha, was the glue that held her Vietnamese family together. " Mom was mega mom, she was super mom, right?” Lieu said. Ha was the person who pushed to leave Vietnam. She was the one who sponsored other family members to join her in America. Ha provided work for her family when she opened up her nail salons. “They were living that American dream and I would say, yes, it was led by mom,” Lieu said. Ha died while undergoing plastic

Rachel Ratner is in a band called Wimps. She’s also a software engineer and a brand new mother — and the creator of the Seattle Band Map . “I was in a band called Partman Parthorse, and that’s where the idea started," Rachel says. "I remember I was talking to one of my friends about the band and how I was able to, through other people I played music with, connect my band to my friends’ bands, and we started to diagram them out, like a six degrees of Kevin Bacon, just to see how we were all

If you went back in time and told 14-year-old Grace Sullivan that she’d grow up to study biology, she probably wouldn’t know what you were talking about. That’s because 14-year-old Grace didn’t know about cells, or atoms, or what a negative number was. Instead, her schooling covered what her parents considered relevant: quilting, knitting, grinding wheat, canning — and most of all, bible study. “You’re preparing for a life of motherhood and service,” she said. Grace Sullivan grew up as a member

The Manastash Ridge Observatory, or the MRO, sits on top of a huge stretch of earth that pops out of the surrounding landscape of flat timothy hay fields.The ridge is actually an earthquake fault line, one of several in this part of the state.

This show originally aired on September 22, 2018. This week, stories of childhood mischief. First, host Gabriel Spitzer shares some mischief from his childhood, when he took some poetic liberties during the morning announcements in middle school. Then, a story about a boy in the 1930’s who shot and killed the town sheriff. Next, a woman talks about a mathematical discovery she made in third grade, and how it likely kept her from working hard in her education from then on. Also, a man reflects on