This past September, Steve Fournier expected to go out with his friends to see one of his favorite Rock bands, Loverboy, in concert. What he didn’t expect is for lead singer, Mike Reno, to get the flu and only be able to perform a couple songs. Reno’s wife started talking to the crowd to find someone in the audience to take his place. Fournier’s friends started pointing at him telling her to pull him up on stage. “The people that were around me started chanting my name, and I was like this is

This week on Sound Effect, we share stories some of the biggest fans in the region. We start by learning some meeting a huge fan of 70’s and 80’s arena rock, who was called on stage recently to perform in place of the lead singer of Loverboy. Next, we meet a woman who found a personal connection with the movie Amadeus. Also, we learn how the worlds of being a nerd and burlesque are paring up. Then, one of Seattle’s biggest sports fans shares how cheering on his teams kept him going. We’ll meet a

The performance artform of burlesque has been enjoying a renaissance in recent years. Ranging from the basic “parade and peel” to elaborately themed shows, burlesque is a big tent with plenty of room for creative subgenres . And lately, the Pacific Northwest has become something of a capital of a very particular brand of burlesque: Nerdlesque. This genre takes two phenomena that mainstream culture rarely links: nerdiness and sex. We’re talking Harry Potter (sexy Dumbledore, anyone?), Tolkien (

Ollie was a gray and white tomcat, a bit of a tough guy, but with a soft side. He’d often curl up on Tom Paulson’s chest at night. Tom is more of a dog person, but he and Ollie bonded -- maybe because Ollie was “not weird and scary like a lot of cats. [He] had more of a dog personality.” But pets are mortal, and one day Tom got a call at work from his wife with the news: Ollie was dead. Please come home and deal with him. So Tom headed home, and collected the cat. What are you going to do with

If you own a dog, it is terrifying to find your beloved pet unresponsive to the point where they won’t even open their eyes when their name is spoken. About four of these cases come into the Blue Pearl Veterinary Clinic in South Tacoma each week. “A patient that is lethargic and having a hard time walking.They might just come in and want to lay down. We’ll take their temperature and their temperature will be below normal by a degree or two. And while they’re laying there they may just start

George Divoky is a scientist in Seattle, at least most of the year. But don’t expect to find him around here during the summertime. He’ll be on a small, flat little island in the Arctic Ocean, off the Alaska coast, called Cooper Island. Back in 1975, Divoky was doing survey work there, when he came across a colony of arctic birds called Mandt’s Black Guillemots. They’re little pigeon-sized birds with bright red legs, and they’re one of the few seabird species that depend year-round on sea ice.

Prior to the summer of 1940, Woodland Park Zoo’s monkeys lived isolated in cages in the Monkey House. Then the zoo decided to do something progressive: relocate the monkeys to a more “natural” setting, on a human-made island in the middle of a shallow moat. What followed was a war for dominance that captivated Seattle for weeks. T he daily newspapers, keen for some comic relief amid the grim news out of war-torn Europe, offered breathless coverage of the Monkey War. “The greatest sea battle of

Have you seen Peaches? This free-flying Goffin's Cockatoo can be spotted in parks all over Seattle, usually within flying distance of his human companion, Taryn Smethers. Sound Effect Host Gabriel Spitzer speaks with Smethers about why she chose to let her pet bird fly free - and about how his social life has changed hers for the better. If you'd like to be certain of a Peaches sighting, just head to Peaches McFly's Instagram page .

This week on Sound Effect, stories about animals. We learn how one vet treats dogs who eat marijuana , and meet a pet bird who enjoys an unusual amount of freedom . Then we travel with a park ranger who is on a mission to make Tacoma's raccoons wild again , and hear dispatches from a 20th century war that pitted monkey against monkey . Finally, we hear why a Seattle scientist has spent three decades studying a colony of arctic birds , and we meet a very stubborn dead cat .

You could make a pretty good case that the epicenter of the opioid crisis in all of North America is British Columbia. Just five years ago overdose deaths there had been holding steady at under 300 a year -- about the same as car crashes. Then it spiked -- last year 1,422 people in British Columbia died of a drug overdose. The crisis in Vancouver has given rise to some radical solutions. Nearly 15 years ago the city opened up North America’s first legal supervised injection site, called Insite .