KUOW Presents

Every country has its outlaw heroes. Billy The Kid. Joan of Arc. Pancho Villa. In West Germany, there’s an outlaw hero you may not have heard of. His name’s Mathias Rust. And like most outlaw heroes, he seems to represent a certain old-school morality in a world gone bad. At the height of the cold war, the teenaged Rust was convinced the world was headed for global war.

Maybe he was a little full of himself, but Rust thought he could change things. So he rented a single engine plane and flew it past Russian air defenses. He made it all the way to Moscow, where he buzzed Lenin’s tomb and landed near Red Square. He earned some time in a labor camp, but in the end, the Russians couldn’t help cracking a smile. They pardoned him.

Hear him describe his amazing stunt on KUOW Presents.

More stories from KUOW Presents, Tuesday, January 29:

A little over a year ago, Wikipedia, Google and thousands of other websites went dark. They were protesting an Internet privacy act being considered in Congress. It was the largest protest ever conducted on the Internet. And it worked.

One of its organizers was Aaron Swartz. Swartz advocated for the Internet to be free. His quest for free information got him in trouble.  He was caught trying to leak academic papers to the public. The US Department of Justice tried to make an example out of him. But he committed suicide.

Today, we hear an in-depth report on Swartz’s most successful campaign: the online protest that stopped SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, from becoming law.

Other Stories on KUOW Presents, January 28, 2013:

Michael Idov has a soft spot for Soviet-era design. The puppets, tape recorders and architecture may be awkward -- they may even have a certain ugliness -- but they reveal something about the Soviets: Sputnik was not enough. The Russians also needed toys.

Hear Idov talk about the unsung icons of Soviet design.

Other Stories heard on KUOW Presents, January 24, 2013:

Vancouver's Carmen Aguirre just wanted a normal childhood. Then her mom moved the whole family to Bolivia so they could join the Chilean resistance in the fight against the dictator Pinochet. And you thought your family had secrets!

Other Stories On KUOW Presents On January 23, 2013:

When the fictional character Sherlock Holmes took up his recreational cocaine habit, the drug was still considered a responsible alternative to alcohol. It was a thinking person’s drug. But the public perception of cocaine changed and in response, Holmes’ creator painted the great detective’s coke addiction in increasingly darker tones.

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle revived his character from the dead for Collier’s Magazine, he could not ignore Holmes’ former addiction. That troubled past gives Holmes a complexity that inspires readers to this day.

Hear the story of Sherlock Holmes, the junkie.

Other Stories On KUOW Presents On January 22:

Pop singer Beck’s latest record isn’t actually recorded at all. It’s a binder full of sheet music. The idea behind it hearkens back to the days before mass-produced recorded music, when people bought popular songs on sheet music and gathered to play the songs together. Local composer Wayne Horvitz loves that idea, so he’s getting musicians from all over Seattle together to play some of the pieces Saturday night. He talks with KUOW’s Dave Beck. 

Other Stories On KUOW Presents On January 18, 2013:

In the days before records were mass-produced, people learned about popular songs through sheet music.  The pop musician known as Beck (no relation to KUOW’s Dave Beck) was so intrigued by that idea that his latest album isn’t even a recording at all. 

Until recently, only men competed in boxing at the Olympics. That ended at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, where women climbed into the ring to compete for the first time. Claressa Shields is a 16-year old from Michigan, and she was one of the boxers at the 2012 Summer Olympics. We’ll hear her story today.

Other Stories On KUOW Presents On January 17:

When Eric Molinsky lived in Los Angeles, he kept hearing this story about a bygone transportation system called the Red Car. The Red Car, he was told, had been this amazing network of streetcars that connected the city — until a car company bought it, dismantled it, and forced a dependency on freeways. But like most legends, the one that Eric heard about the Red Car is not entirely accurate.

Other Stories On KUOW Presents On January 16, 2013:

It’s a familiar problem wherever there are immigrants: students who don’t speak the language of their teachers. But it’s not just a problem in the United States. It’s also a problem in Mexico. But in Mexico, the immigrants come from the US. Many have never visited Mexico before. Many don’t speak Spanish.  

They’re the children of deported Americans. And Mexican teachers are reaching out to them – by learning English.

Other Stories From KUOW Presents on January 15, 2013: