KUOW Presents

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:

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:
 

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:

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:

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"

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:

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:

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.

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: