Alex Heuer

Sex. That little three-letter word strikes fear in many parents’ hearts.

Psychologist Wes Crenshaw told “St. Louis on the Air” host Don Marsh on Monday that the biggest mistake parents make when trying to talk to their kids about sex is “freaking out.”

“Parents just cannot afford to think their kids are the least bit naïve. Kids are tied into the internet and to each other. They know way too much nowadays to take simple answers,” Crenshaw said. Rather than a one-time conversation, talking about sex and sex education is an almost endless conversation, he said.

Today’s edition of StoryCorps, which aired during “Morning Edition,” was a remembrance of Max Starkloff, a pioneer in the disability rights movement who was quadriplegic. He died in 2010.

The StoryCorps conversation featured Starkloff’s wife, Colleen Starkloff, and their daughter, Meaghan Starkloff Breitenstein.

On Nov. 22, 1944, a throng of St. Louis theatergoers packed Loew’s State Theater on Washington Avenue for the world premiere of “Meet Me in St. Louis.” 

Although filmed elsewhere, the musical told the story of the Smith family as it struggled with the prospect of leaving St. Louis for New York in advance of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

Seventy years later, the film endures. Critic Roger Ebert once praised it as “one of the most artful, moving, and exquisitely designed musicals in film history.”

Early voting. Teacher Tenure. Sex Crime Trial Rules. Gubernatorial Budgetary Power.

Those are some of the topics before Missouri voters on Nov. 4.

“St. Louis on the Air” host Don Marsh talked with St. Louis Public Radio reporters Marshall Griffin and Tim Lloyd about the proposed constitutional amendments.

Here’s a recap of Amendments 2, 3 and 6.

Clementine’s, in St. Louis’ Soulard neighborhood, opened in 1978. It is the oldest gay bar in the area.

On Monday, the owners will pour their last drink, and Clementine’s will shut its doors.

The Vital Voice documented how people are reacting to the news.

We have one reflection to add.

For the last five years, Chris Nicastro has served as commissioner of Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. She announced her retirement earlier this month and will step down at the end of the year.

Her tenure was marked by controversial decisions regarding school districts in north St. Louis County, including the Normandy School District, now known as the Normandy Schools Collaborative.  

St. Louis Public Radio education reporter Dale Singer spoke with Nicastro earlier this week and we aired a portion of that conversation on “St. Louis on the Air.” 

On Sept. 22, 1999, a drama about life in the West Wing of the White House debuted on NBC.

In advance of his appearance in St. Louis in October, actor Martin Sheen, who played President Josiah (Jed) Bartlet, reflected on the legacy of The West Wing and its effect on him.

A group of artists are using chalk to inspire conversations about the shooting death of Michael Brown.

#ChalkedUnarmed draws chalk outlines of people on public sidewalks or plazas. The artist then adds the name of an unarmed black man who was killed by a police officer, with the date and location of his death.

On the third Wednesday of every month there’s a unique gathering in St. Louis during the lunch hour. Dozens of people gather for Lunch Beat St. Louis to dance, eat and get away from their normal routine.

Andrew Warshauer is the organizer of Lunch Beat St. Louis, which he started last June.

“I like to say it’s a chance to slip away from the every day,” said Warshauer.

Lunch Beat started in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2010 and has spread to more than a dozen cities worldwide.

About 10 years ago, a silver-plated stopwatch was stolen from the St. Louis home of Mike St. Vrain’s mother during a home invasion.

Thought long lost, St. Vrain of rural Franklin County received an unexpected call earlier this week. The call was from a family friend who saw a post on the public Facebook group, “St. Louis History, Landmarks & Vintage Photos.”

The Sun Theater in Grand Center has reopened after nearly 40 years of neglect and abandonment.

On Grandel Square near Powell Hall and the Fox Theatre, the Sun Theater is being leased by the Grand Center Arts Academy. The Lawrence Group, a St. Louis-based design firm, spent $11.5 million on the theater’s renovation.

Lynne Glickert, executive director of the Grand Center Arts Academy, said she was always hopeful the school would be able to use the Sun Theater for its 535 students. The school is the Beaux Arts Building, which is next to the Sun.

Archeologists from the Missouri Department of Transportation are ecstatic over a discovery beneath the Poplar Street Bridge in St. Louis. They’ve uncovered the first physical evidence dating to when the French founded St. Louis in 1764.

The findings help confirm written documentation of St. Louis’ earliest European settlers and shed new light on the people who live here.

Michael Meyer is an archeologist with MoDOT and the principal investigator of the department’s work in St. Louis.

Updated following the show.

St. Louis is not the only local community celebrating an important milestone this year. Founded in 1814, Belleville, Illinois is turning 200.

Sex trafficking is not just an international problem, or even a national one. It is also a problem here in St. Louis. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, St. Louis is a hot spot of sex trafficking activity, one of the top 20 in the country.

About two weeks ago, Local Harvest Grocery, Café & Catering launched a $120,000 crowdfunding campaign that co-owner Maddie Earnest says was necessary to restock the grocery store and pay off debts acquired as a result of a failed expansion in Kirkwood.  The community responded and fully funded the campaign in six days.

We talked with Maddie Earnest about the overwhelming response and how she plans to move forward after the failed expansion.

Originally aired Feb. 13, 2013

Is it Missour-ee or Missour-uh?

Those two pronunciations of the state, according to linguist John Baugh of Washington University in St. Louis, peacefully co-exist and are “indicative of all of the linguistic collisions from the rest of the country that happen in our wonderful city.”

Baugh and linguist Cindy Brantmeier of Washington University joined host Don Marsh to talk about how language forms, evolves, and is spoken differently throughout the United States.

Local filmmaker and St. Louis native Nathan Sutton and his wife, Elisha Skorman, star in Autumn Wanderer, a feature film about a man struggling to deal with his father’s schizophrenia, and the possibility that he may inherit the disease himself.

The film debuted earlier this year at the Hollywood Film Festival, where Sutton was awarded the “Emerging Filmmaker” award.

Encore (Original Air Date: 12/20/12)

The Midwest sometimes gets short shrift from people on both ends of the country.  They often call it “flyover country.”  In other words, they ask, “Why would anyone want to stop in the Midwest?”

Native Midwesterners or transplants might take exception to the term, “flyover country.”

One man who certainly takes exception to the term is Mike Draper.

Like many cities in the Midwest, St. Louis' factory and warehousing industries have declined since their prominence in the early to mid-20th century.  Calling St. Louis a "Rust Belt bone yard," entrepreneurs from Cherokee Street in south St. Louis are featured in a new locally produced reality cable show, "Salvage City," where they turn so-called junk into a gold mine.

A lot has happened to 12-year-old Gabe Fleisher in the last year and a half. He’s garnered local and national press attention and recently got to meet one of his favorite historians, Doris Kearns Goodwin.

His teeth now sport a set of braces with red, white and blue anchors.

It's all part of a day in the life of Gabe Fleisher, political junkie.

In 2012, he was a regular blogger on the Beyond November website, a cooperative effort by St. Louis Public Radio, the St. Louis Beacon and the Nine Network of Public Media to cover the elections.

The FDA's proposed ban on trans fats and new heart disease prevention guidelines jointly released by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology have stirred up debate over best practices to improve heart health.

A new book, The Smithsonian’s History of America in 101 Objects tells the history of the country in a unique and fascinating way.  The book is filled with enlightening back stories and photographs.

Author and cultural anthropologist Richard Kurin, Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution, said the project was a culmination of a broad effort.  “Not easily,” Kurin said about picking 101 objects out of the Smithsonian Institution’s 137 million objects.

In the age of emails, texts and tweets, we take a look back to a time when the handwritten letter was the primary way people communicated across long distances.

In his book To the Letter: A Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing, author Simon Garfield examines the role of letters throughout history – a role that now must adapt to current technology.

Two new documentary films showing at the St. Louis International Film Festival are taking on the perception and work of public defenders in the criminal justice system.

“I think the biggest public misconception about public defenders is that we don’t care and we are poor attorneys, poor meaning we don’t do a very good job and we don’t know how to try cases,” said Brandy Alexander, assistant public defender for the 20th Judicial Circuit in Florida.

Earlier this year, St. Louis leaders launched the St. Louis Mosaic Project, an initiative to make the region the fastest growing metro area for immigrants by 2020.

According to Betsy Cohen, who is managing the project, the St. Louis community is making great strides.

The goal of the St. Louis Mosaic Ambassador Program is to make the area more welcoming to non-native people.