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Bethany Denton used to hike a lot as a kid. Growing up in northwestern Montana, it's just what people did. But as she got older, and as her body got bigger, she stopped feeling welcome in the outdoors. As a self-described fat girl, she noticed that her friends and family gradually stopped inviting her on hikes, and she felt that even short, easy hikes were out of her league. But then Bethany discovered the group Fat Girls Hiking; a “body-positive outdoor community based in Portland, Oregon.”

Bethany Denton used to hike a lot as a kid. Growing up in northwestern Montana, it's just what people did. But as she got older, and as her body got bigger, she stopped feeling welcome in the outdoors. As a self-described fat girl, she noticed that her friends and family gradually stopped inviting her on hikes, and she felt that even short, easy hikes were out of her league. But then Bethany discovered the group Fat Girls Hiking; a “body-positive outdoor community based in Portland, Oregon.”

"The most vocal activist you've never heard of." That's how one news report describes Dolores Huerta in a new documentary about her life.

Our 2018 spring fund drive is underway, and Sound Effect wouldn't exist without the generous support of listeners like you. To make a pledge, click here . For our pledge drive show, we decided to take a look back at some stories that stuck with us throughout the years. First, Jennifer Wing heads to Burien, where people hire Michael McAndrews to come to their events, usually funerals, where he’ll send off a flock of white doves in dramatic fashion. Then we turn our sights to the sky for a

This story originally aired on October 28, 2017. To say that Seattle musician Lydia Ramsey was raised in a musical family would be kind of an understatement. “Me and my brothers joke that, like, in order to sit down in our living room, you had to pick up an instrument because it was taking up the chair. And then you’d be like oh, well I’m holding this so I might as well play something on it,” said Ramsey. Eventually, Lydia would decide to dig a little deeper into her family history. What she

This story originally aired on November 7, 2015. Dr. Sarah Ballard was one of the very first guests we ever had on Sound Effect. In Newness, Sound Effect's very first episode, Ballard told us about what it feels like to discover a new planet. Ballard has not only discovered four new planets, she also discovered a new way to discover planets. We had planned to re-air that interview as part of our Star Power episode when news broke that Geoff Marcy, a prominent astronomer and professor at the U.C.

This story originally aired on May 27, 2017. Michael McAndrews has had a lifelong love affair with birds. It all started with an article he read as a kid in National Geographic. It profiled homing pigeons used in wartime to communicate messages between troops. Michael was captivated by the story of a bird named Cher Ami that saved almost 200 American soldiers in France during World War I. So he started buying his own birds and training them. In fact, his classmates called him “birdbrain,” not as

This week on Sound Effect, stories of unintended consequences. We start with a story about a truancy law intended to help kids that sometimes has the opposite effect - and what Washington State is doing about it. Then, a scientist who accidentally discovered how BPA might be affecting future generations . We talk to an African American man whose well-intentioned white parents had a few things to learn about preparing him for adulthood in America. Then, we learn the story of West Seattle's short

Bisphenol-A, a chemical in plastics, thermal-paper receipts and the lining of tin cans, has been fingered as the culprit for a bunch of health problems . In our bodies, BPA acts like a hormone -- and in animals, at least, it seems to disrupt all sorts of important functions. A lot of what we know about BPA comes from the work of Patricia Hunt , a professor in the School of Molecular Biosciences at Washington State University. And she did not start out looking for toxic chemicals; she started out

Good intentions often have unexpected outcomes, something Chad Goller-Sojourner knows from personal experience. He’s a Seattle based playwright , and also a counselor to white parents who’ve adopted children of color. Chad is black, and when he was 13 months old he himself was adopted by white parents, along with two other kids of color. This was back in the 1970s , when there was a lot less awareness of mixed families. Chad’s parents did their best to expose him to other people of color. The