(An essay from Sound Effect host Gabriel Spitzer) He looked wildly out of context. This was a place of ice and tundra, of weathered brown skin and tan Carhartts. But this guy showed up in neon-colored rain gear with hippie jewelry and zero explanation of why he was there. And he couldn’t really tell us — he only spoke Japanese. I was an outsider too — a reporter, based in Anchorage, Alaska. I’d traveled hundreds of miles to this remote community up against the Arctic Circle. The village is made

Dominic Sivitilli grew up on a farm. “It was a beautiful place to grow up," Dominic said. "We had all ranges of animals, with a really ancient forest, with a really majestic river there. And so there was just an incredible amount of adventure to my childhood. That was my backyard. And so my mind always kind of drifted to ‘where the hell did this all come from?’” Dominic is a graduate student at the University of Washington these days. What drew him there was his fascination with biodiversity —

One of the places in our region where different languages and cultures mix is SeaTac. Not the airport, the town. The census shows more than 70 languages are spoken there, by immigrants from Somalia, Ethiopia and Mexico — all over. And yet the local city council is still dominated by white men and women. A new slate of city council candidates says the city’s leadership needs to reflect that diversity.

Last April, two people were sent to the hospital when the car they were driving was struck by a power pole. The pole was one of 26 that came down unexpectedly along on East Marginal Way South, in Tukwila, in a dramatic collapse during a storm. An investigator's report says the more than two dozen 60-foot tall power poles came down because of six that had internal decay. Reporter David Gutman wrote about it in The Seattle Times, and talked to KNKX All Things Considered host Ed Ronco about what

For three of his four decades at NPR, Robert Siegel was one of the hosts of All Things Considered , the network’s flagship afternoon news magazine. He retired in early 2018. “I’ve been living now for over a year-and-a-half without deadlines,” he told KNKX during a recent visit to Seattle. “Generally, I have been reveling in the idea that on any given day, given the approval of my wife, I can do pretty much what I want to do.”

This week, stories of speaking out, even when it would have been easier to keep quiet. First, a climate scientist talks about her experience speaking out about sexual harassment and assault in field. Next, a doctor shares what he learned about interacting with the assertive parents of patients. Also, a citizen scientist contradicts mainstream research on asteroids. Finally, a retired investigator speaks out about his theory to why fishing vessel "The Arctic Rose" really sank. The full broadcast

It all started when CeCe Moore decided to make a family tree as a wedding gift for her niece. At that point she’d had a whole career in entertainment, working as a model and television and musical theatre actress. But once she started digging into her family history, CeCe quickly realized that she couldn’t put it down. “It just started as a hobby, but once I saw the potential of it, I kind of dropped everything else I was doing,” she said. CeCe started a blog to share her genealogical

The plan for Nathan Myhrvold was to go into academia. He had his Ph.D in physics, and had even done some work with Stephen Hawking. But then he got pulled into this side project. The project turned into a company, the company got acquired by a little Redmond concern called Microsoft, and before long Nathan became the company’s Chief Technology Officer. But Myhrvold kept his passion for science … and while he was at Microsoft -- in his abundant free time --- he started writing papers about

Dr. Sarah Myhre is a research associate at the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington. As a paleoceanographer, she studies ancient climate fluctuations by analyzing core samples of the ocean floor. She's become a prominant voice sounding the alarm on climate change. But it was one of her non-scientific publications that brought on a recent wave of attention, not all of it welcome. "I get harassed all the time on the internet. I get weird emails, I get hate mail. And the majority

In the world we live in today, if a toaster breaks or those comfy sweatpants you bought for cheap from the markdown rack get a rip in them, you’d probably toss them. Replacing things quickly, with a tap on our phones or clicks on a keyboard, is so easy to do. This is why what’s going on at libraries across King County, Washington feels kind of radical. They are called fix it fairs, or repair cafes . People bring in busted toasters, stereos that have been silent for too long and pants that haven