The rising cost of Seattle real estate isn’t just affecting housing: it’s also bearing down on houses of worship. The tide of rising rents and gentrification has pushed a string of churches out of Seattle neighborhoods such as the Central District and West Seattle. And that’s had an interesting side effect in nearby Skyway, wedged between Seattle and Renton. “This is church mecca,” says Carolyn Sophor, co-pastor of New Birth Ministries. She points out storefronts just a stone’s throw from their

This week, stories of sacred spaces. We hear from a couple who moved their church from Capitol Hill to Skyway, only to be joined by a long string of churches priced out of Seattle. Then, a musician who started recording in the room where his wife died. We meet an artist who considers her garden her sacred space. We head to the small town of Oysterville, where a church hasn’t locked their doors in 125 years. Finally, we learn about a mosque that has been struck by arson twice . "Sound Effect" is

At the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash., monitors are updating the latest Kilauea eruption on Hawaii's Big Island. About half the scientists there are helping with the Hawaii eruption. Two of them recently flew to the Big Island to assist on the ground. About a year ago, KNKX went inside the observatory to find out what they do for our show Sound Effect . Given all the volcanic activity in Hawaii right now and the fact that this Friday is the 38th anniversary of Mount Saint

Silvana Clark was sitting at home, feeding her 6-month old daughter in the wee hours of the morning. Everything felt peaceful and perfect, like a Hallmark commercial. Suddenly, she felt a whoosh over her head. Turning on a lamp, she was horrified to see a bat sitting in the nursery on a lacy, white curtain. "There’s a bat in the baby’s room. Get it out! Get it out!” she screamed. Then she looked closely at her daughter's face, and noticed blood covering the inside of her child’s ear. She had

A few years ago, a group of teenagers in Washington state took on one of our most perplexing problems with a novel strategy: They sued the state government for failing to safeguard the climate for future generations. The tactic was new, the plaintiffs were young, and yet, they won. A superior court judge ruled in their favor in 2016. But then nothing much happened. Now they’re trying again, this time suing the federal government. Seventeen year-old Aji Piper has become one of the faces of this

When I was 16 I spent a month living with a wonderful family splat in the middle of France. The village where they spent their summers was tiny. Really tiny. It was composed of about 70 people, all of whom were related in some way or another, so, as an extraneous bit of DNA in their midst, it was hard to know what to do with myself or how to fit in. Every night in this tiny village one of the families hosted a soiree, a party that usually started in the middle of the afternoon and went on well

Brad Upton was a fourth grade schoolteacher in Pasco, Wash. who dreamed of becoming a standup comic. On a Tuesday night in 1983 he finally summoned the courage, and made the long drive to Seattle to try his first open mic at the Comedy Underground in Pioneer Square. Just before he was supposed to go onstage, he lost his nerve. “I walked out of there and drove home and waited for a year,” Upton says. “I just hated myself that whole year. I’d gotten that close and chickened out.” When Upton

This week, stories of beating the odds on your very first try. We hear from a comedian who braved an open mic night which led to a career in comedy. Then, a woman who hit the bull’s-eye with a bullet on her very first and last shot. Also, we talk to a teenager who sued the government over climate change and won. We then learn of an unexpected finding of a butterfly thought to be extinct. Finally, new parents are faced with a task no parents are ever trained for in advance. "Sound Effect" is your

This story originally aired on April 15, 2017. When I think back on it now, when I was growing up there’s two things that were really hard for me to tell my parents. The first was: ‘Hey Mum and Dad, so we’re getting sex education at school.’ And the second was, ‘I love you.’

This story originally aired on April 15, 2017. All of our lives are ruled by time, but some of us are more aware of it than others. At the Northwest Kidney Centers in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood, dialysis patients are very aware of the passing hours. They're hooked up to machines that display the elapsing time prominently on a screen. These machines filter and clean their blood, a job normally handled by healthy kidneys. Seattle native Vonita McGee is a patient at the center. She goes in