John Ryan
Good thing KUCB's fill-in reporter John Ryan was a clumsy traveler.
Otherwise his cheap microcassette recorder wouldn't have fallen out of his pocket in an Indonesian taxi, a generous BBC stringer wouldn't have lent him some professional recording gear, and he wouldn't have gotten the radio bug. But after pointing a mic at rare jungle songbirds and gong–playing grandmothers for his first radio story, there was no turning back.
In the past 15 years, he's freelanced for NPR News, Marketplace, the Christian Science Monitor and the Los Angeles Times. After working as a transportation reporter at the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, he got his first job in radio (and the Alaska bug) at KTOO-Juneau. For the past six years, he's been a reporter at NPR station KUOW-Seattle, where he's won regional and national awards for investigative reporting.
-
This brings the total of reported attacks on the Northwest power grid to 10 since November. Attacks on substations in the Pacific Northwest have heightened concerns about grid vulnerabilities.
-
An oil train derailment near Seattle is under investigation. In late 2020, 10 tanker cars went off the rails. Now, the rail workers unions says they believe the disaster was caused by sabotage.
-
Washington has OK'd a plan to allow Navy SEALS to train in state parks. The special ops will now do exercises at more than a dozen sites around the state. Parkgoers are worried about safety.
-
Families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border are beginning to be reunited. In Seattle, a Honduran mother got to see her son for the first time in nearly two months.
-
The consulate closes Friday under orders from the White House. In addition, 60 Russian officials are being expelled from the U.S. because of the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy and his daughter.
-
The move comes seven months after an ill-fated fish farm collapsed, releasing as many as 250,000 of the nonnative fish into areas where wild Pacific salmon are already struggling to survive. -
Historical photos show fishermen with chinooks almost as tall as they are. A century's worth of dam-building, overfishing, habitat loss and hatcheries has cut the size of the average fish in half.
-
Officials blame the failure of a pen near Washington's Cypress Island on high tides caused by the eclipse, but that is being questioned. Fishing boats are scrambling to catch as many as possible.
-
Member station KUCB tagged along with a meteorologist at one of America's most remote weather stations. This story originally aired on Dec. 22, 2015, on All Things Considered.
-
Twice a day, like clockwork, people release balloons around the world at the same time. These balloons are scientific tools, and the people releasing them are meteorologists.
