KUOW Presents

Meet The Mellotron

Joshua McNichols — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:05:22 +0000

Ask most people what instrument opens the Beatles' song “Strawberry Fields Forever” and they'll tell you: it’s a flute. But it's not a flute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3jrWVp2L7U

Meet the Mellotron. It's an analog instrument from the 1960s that connects dozens of loops of audio tape, each with a single, pre-recorded note, to a keyboard. It was a clunky and expensive precursor to synthesizers and modern music sampling.

Its inventors intended it as a replacement for an orchestra. At that task, it failed miserably. But musicians in the 1960s and 1970s fell in love with the instrument’s odd sound. That sound defined a musical era. And today, its quirky guts full of tape and levers looks very old school. Yet it's made a comeback, and is popular with modern musicians like Arcade Fire.

Full list of stories from KUOW Presents, June 19:

A History Of Everything

Joshua McNichols — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:52:41 +0000

Despite the complicated history of the universe, today on KUOW Presents we condense it all into seven minutes: from the dawn of time to the present day.

Full list of stories on KUOW Presents, June 18:

Seattle's Tiny Statue Of Liberty

JOSHUA MCNICHOLS — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:12:59 +0000

Out on Alki Beach in West Seattle is a statue. It’s called the Statue Of Liberty. It's a replica of the one in New York Harbor. Only this one is tiny, about six feet tall. It was part of a national Boy Scout campaign to erect statues like this across the country: a campaign called "Strengthening The Arm Of Liberty."

The original Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor symbolized America's freedom from colonial powers and its friendship with France. Over the years immigrants passing the statue on the way to Ellis Island adopted the statue as a sort of patron saint, and the famous quote "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" was eventually added to the statue's base.

By the time Seattle's Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1952, its meaning had changed yet again. Liberty was no longer a revolutionary idea. It was something old and familiar, a sign of stability in a time of great social and political instability.

You can get a sense of that instability from this 1951 newsreel. We sampled it in today's story:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60

Full list of stories from KUOW Presents, June 17:

Maurice Sendak: The Lost Interview, And Conclusion Of Trafficking Series

Joshua McNichols — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:33:10 +0000

Children's book author Maurice Sendak is a kind of father figure for many of us. He had a profound sympathy for children and never belittled their emotions. He daylit their anxieties and coaxed them into poetic form in books like Where the Wild Things Are, In The Night Kitchen, and Outside Over There (a book that frightens many adults).

In 2009, a pair of Newsweek reporters interviewed an 81-year-old Sendak. The result was a good article. But the interview itself never aired, so we're playing it on KUOW today. There's an animated version, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvtgqJTVVhE

Other Content:

Today, we concluded the WGBH series on Human Trafficking. Noel Gomez is a local activist trying to end sex trafficking here in Seattle. She's the founder of the Organization Of Prostitution Survivors. She told us two stories back in 2010:

Other stories on KUOW Presents, June 13:

How To Cover Your Digital Footprints

Joshua McNichols — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 21:16:00 +0000

Want to evade the prying eyes of the NSA? Not that you have anything to hide; but even if you did, covering your digital footprints is complicated business. Just because you delete that racy video you uploaded to YouTube doesn't mean it's gone forever.

Realistically, no one can become a digital ghost. Your personal data is like a child you once clothed and fed; a child who has now left home and begun telling embarrassing stories about you to people you don't know.

There are methods, however, for protecting your reputation among regular people without NSA security clearance. Methods that involve obfuscating rather than obliterating your online legacy.

Full list of stories on KUOW Presents, June 12:

Inside A Toddler's Brain: "Epiphanette"

Elizabeth Austen — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:45:39 +0000

In "Epiphanette," Woodinville poet Dennis Caswell speculates on what happens to the "carefree cognitive tumbleweed" of his baby daughter's mind when it "is struck by the SUV of enlightenment" in the form of a little epiphany.

Already she baby-knows:
A dance you learn; the dancer you're stuck to.
from "Epiphanette"

Vietnam-Era Whistleblower Weighs In On Snowden's Decision

producer — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:07:27 +0000

It's obvious from his interview with The Guardian newspaper that Andrew Snowden knew leaking NSA secrets would get him into hot water. But he seems to have planned for that. Somehow, he's disappeared from his Hong Kong hotel room. Some have suggested he might find refuge in Russia, on mainland China, or on some remote island in the Philippines.

Christopher Pyle knows a thing or two about blowing whistles. In 1970, while in the U.S. Army, he disclosed the extent of the military's surveillance of the protest movement. That led, in part, to the Watergate scandal. Mr. Pyle now teaches politics at Mount Holyoke College and is the author of several books on military surveillance of civilians. The CBC's Carol Off asked him for insight on Snowden's situation.

Other stories on KUOW Presents, June 11:

Catching Up With Our Human Trafficking Series

Producer — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:50:36 +0000

Last week, we began running an outstanding series on human trafficking from WGBH called "The Underground Trade." We're halfway through, with more episodes scheduled through the week. If you've just tuned in, this is your chance to catch up.

A System Of Modern Slavery That Touches All Points On The Globe

Boston-based reporter Phillip Martin began with a police bust of a ring of massage parlors that offer more than massages. Many reporters would have stopped there. But Phillip started pulling on the "thread" of that story, and over his eight-part series, he's unraveled the whole sweater, tracing the route of human traffic all around the world to its roots in Southeast Asia.

It's A Local Problem, Too

Here in Seattle, we're adding local context to this story, capitalizing on the expertise of KUOW reporter Sara Lerner, who created a similar series here on KUOW a few years ago. This time around, Sara's reported on Seattle's John School and how pimps recruit women in the Puget Sound region. From the youth reporters at KUOW's RadioActive, we heard from a local woman who was enslaved in Grays Harbor County, and we ended our series with more reporting from Sara: a discussion on KUOW's Weekday about misconceptions surrounding child sex trafficking stats in the Puget Sound region.

Full list of stories from KUOW Presents, June 10:

On Mixing Music And Motherhood: Jazz Vocalist Jane Monheit

Dave Beck — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 17:05:43 +0000

Jazz vocalist Jane Monheit first visited us in the KUOW studios just after we moved into our then new facility on University Avenue in 1999.

Public radio listeners and music lovers have followed Monheit's career for more than a decade now. She made a sensational debut recording shortly after graduating from the Manhattan School of Music in the late 1990s.

Afghan Massacre Survivors React To Bales' Guilty Plea

Producer — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:43:51 +0000

Yesterday US Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales pleaded guilty to a brutal massacre. The night time killings took place on March 11 of last year in two small villages located near a remote military camp in Kandahar. Since the massacre Associated Press reporter Kathy Gannon has spent a lot of time with the survivors and the families of the victims in Afghanistan. She describes how they've dealt with the massacre's emotional aftermath.

There's something exceptional about this interview. While it's possible to get swept up into the international drama of an event like the Bales massacre, Gannon reminds us that at the center of the media storm there are ordinary people who have suffered.

Full list of stories from KUOW Presents, June 6: