KUOW Presents

North Korea announced it would take China's advice and enter talks with the United States. But that doesn't seem likely because the United States says no talks can happen until North Korea takes steps to denuclearize. But North Korea insists on holding on to its nuclear weapons.

One group in Seoul, South Korea, isn't waiting around for the diplomats to work things out. This group's members hope to build bridges with the North now. They want ordinary people on either side of the border to meet up. Their aim: to break down stereotypes and build relationships between North and South Koreans from the grassroots up.

Full list of stories from KUOW Presents, May 23:

In "Letter from Zelda," poet Marjorie Manwaring creates an imaginary letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, written by his wife Zelda from her room in a mental hospital.

Most of us walk around on the surface of the earth, thinking that's all there is. But divers know better. There's just as much going on under the water as there is on land. We hear how dipping below the surface completely changed one diver's perspective.

This unusual interview comes from the podcast Here Be Monsters. Its creator, Jeff Emtman, is one of the recipients of KUOW's Program Venture Fund. He'll be moving to Seattle to do some reporting for us this summer.

Full list of stories from KUOW Presents, May 20:

The Moscow mausoleum where you can see Vladimir Lenin's body has reopened, following a major renovation project. But most Russians now say it's time Lenin received a proper burial — in the ground.

Perhaps they've come to believe, as Americans seem to believe, that it's a little creepy to have someone's body preserved with chemicals and put on display for all to see. It makes him seem like some character from a fairy tale, like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty.

KUOW headed over to what may be the only publicly displayed statue of Lenin in America, in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, to see how Lenin's reputation is faring here.

Full list of stories from KUOW Presents, May 17:

In the decades leading up to the civil war, white Americans uncomfortable with the rising numbers of free blacks came up with a plan. Get rid of them. Specifically, convince them to resettle in Liberia. It was America's original "self-deportation" scheme. But things didn't go exactly according to plan.

List of stories from KUOW Presents,  May 15:

One of the most persistent stories about America — that it was made by immigrants fleeing "the old country" — is also one of the most incomplete. And since stories shape our perception of reality, poet Colleen McElroy is intent on telling another aspect of America's story in "Crossing Oceans."  The poem appears in her most recent collection "Here I Throw Down My Heart" (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012).

Correction: The original broadcast of this story dated Knute Berger’s year in residence at the Space Needle as 2012. In fact, it was most of 2011.

Seattle's Space Needle turned 50 years old last year. It was built for the 1962 World’s Fair. The public loved it immediately. But the architectural critics of the time were much less enthusiastic. They called it a monstrosity. They called it pretentious. They called it vulgar.
 

Knute Berger spent much of 2011 sitting at a table in the Space Needle where he worked as its writer in residence. His private area was roped off by those dividers they use to line people up at the movie theater. Sometimes tourists would stop and ogle him, as if he were an exhibit.

Knute sympathizes with those tourists. He’s loved the Space Needle since he first saw it under construction in 1961. He tells us why the critics hated it so much, and how they gradually came to accept it for what it was: an experiment with new materials and an unlikely symbol of optimism from an age when people were building bomb shelters in fear of a Soviet nuclear attack.

Knute Berger is the author of "Space Needle: The Spirit Of Seattle." He and other journalists gather to review the news of the week every Friday at 10:00 a.m. on KUOW.

Full list of stories from KUOW Presents, May 14:

Today, the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield begins his return to Earth. But during the past six months he's spent at the international space station, he's become a big celebrity, even for an astronaut. That's because he posts his observations from space on twitter, along with photos of places on Earth as he passes overhead. Yesterday, he tweeted a farewell message to his 800,000 twitter followers. The tweet included a link to him singing a version of David Bowie's song, "Space Oddity."

Other stories on KUOW Presents, May 13: