What do the ways we train our dogs say about us? You’ll hear about how dogs are trained to search and rescue, dating back to some of our earliest wars. How they’ve been trained by authority figures for hundreds of years to bite - and hold - and sometimes kill. And how the street dogs of Moscow were trained to fly into space - even though it meant their certain doom. GUESTS: Blake Stilwell is a former air force combat camera operator, and currently the veteran jobs editor at Military.com Denise S...
Jan 29, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 31
With the world the way it is, it’s no wonder we spend so much of our time watching television and movies. From sci-fi flicks like Star Trek, to unscripted reality shows like Queer Eye, to comedy dramas like Schitt’s Creek, we are basking in the very best distractions. And while the actors tend to take center stage, this hour, you’ll enjoy the second installment of a series in which we honor the folks who make the magic happen behind the scenes. You’ll meet the costume designer who made Moira Ros...
Jan 22, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 30
I love Reddit. This mostly-anonymous giant internet bulletin board has a plethora of communities called subreddits, which bring all sorts of interests together. One of my favorite subreddits is Act Like You Belong, where you’ll see a lot of stories about how, if you put on a hard hat, carry a clipboard, and walk with urgency, you can get through a lot of doors that you normally wouldn’t. (a chef’s jacket works well for this, too) Today, a love letter to r/ActLikeYouBelong, featuring stories abou...
Jan 15, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 29
There’s not a lot of great headlines in the news lately. Y’know, between a contentious election, rioting in the Capitol, a raging pandemic, and lots and lots of dangerous misinformation. This hour, well… in every hour of Audacious, misinformation is banned, and different headlines get the attention they deserve. Today, we celebrate FIRSTS in recent scientific observation and achievement. Hear from the researchers and scientists behind these headlines: For the first time, scientists have received...
Jan 09, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 28
It’s finally 2021. But that line in the calendar doesn’t mean that the pandemic is anywhere near over, so I want to start this year off by looking back at people whom I interviewed in the series that we launched before Audacious. US in the Time of Coronavirus was a living history of our experience over nine weeks at the beginning of the pandemic. In this episode, you’ll reconnect with an anxiety expert who tells us about trends he’s seeing in how people have been coping with the pandemic. You’ll...
Jan 02, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 27
It’s estimated that there are as many as 7,000 different known rare diseases in the world. In the The U.S., it’s defined as "any disease or condition that affects fewer than 200,000 people. Today, you’ll meet two of them, and their mothers. GUESTS: Erin Rupolo is the Mid-Atlantic Regional ChairPerson for the Williams Syndrome Association and she's a Special Education Paraeducator in Kensington, MD Sophie Rupolo is 12 years old and has Williams Syndrome Allyson Buck of Greenwich, Connecticut is S...
Dec 18, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 26
The five senses (that we know of) are Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, and Touch. And we’ve all at some point pondered what it would be like to lose one or some of those senses. Many people who can currently see consider blindness a scary prospect. But the thing is, when we sighted people try to imagine being blind? It’s nothing more than our best guess. And that fear you might feel at the thought of having a severe vision impairment - or no vision at all, no light, no color - that fear is a kind of ...
Dec 11, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 25
This pandemic has shuttered so many events, including a few of my own. The Mouth-Off at the Mark Twain House was a storytelling show I hosted and produced for 8 years until 2020. But the good news is that now I get to show off some of my favorite true stories from the series here on Audacious! The theme for this one? Eat It Up. Stories that feature food. GUESTS: Christine Kalafus is a memoirist, poet, and essayist, and the organizer of Quiet Corner Poets in Pomfret, and host of My Word! at the V...
Dec 04, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 24
The older I get, the more excited I am to be corrected when I’m wrong. Sure, it may sting for a second because hearing someone say “actually…” can be kind of annoying, and if I’m wrong about something, then that means that contrary to my sparkling self-image, I don’t know it all. But as you know, a lifetime of listening to public radio has a tendency to remind you that there’s always stuff to learn - and to unlearn. And it feels good to unlearn! The three segments you’re gonna hear today - about...
Nov 20, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Join us as we go behind the scenes to meet people who make the shows you love really, really great. You’ll hear about the power and beauty of natural hair from the hair stylist for actress Issa Rae of HBO’s Insecure , and you’ll find out how the food illustrations are done for the Great British Bake Off . Plus, an intimacy coordinator talks about the ins and outs of filming sex scenes. GUESTS: Amanda Blumenthal is the founder of Intimacy Professionals Association and the lead instructor of their...
Nov 13, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Veterans Day is November 11th. Unlike Memorial Day, when we remember those who’ve died while serving in the military, and unlike Armed Services day, when we honor those who are currently serving, Veterans Day recognizes all people - living and dead - who have served in the military. The VA estimates that 134,000 U.S. Veterans are transgender, and over 15,000 trans people are currently serving in the U.S. military. It wasn’t until 2016 that the Obama administration announced that trans people wer...
Nov 06, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 21
This hour, visit a West Hartford history professor’s eye-opening Halloween display about Black Lives Matter and Covid-19, and hear what passersby think of it. Then, meet a pastor from Indiana who tells us about why he believes that the blue moon this Halloween is a sign of end times. Finally: Candy corn! The CEO of Jelly Belly gives us a history lesson, one woman reports back from having eaten Brecht’s new “Turkey Dinner Candy Corn”, and the co-star of an Atlanta, Georgia-based YouTube channel w...
Oct 30, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Fill in the blank: Love is… Patient. Kind. Love is Work. Hard to find. But if you wanna put your finger on what makes up “long-lasting love”, you’re gonna need some wisdom to fill in those blanks. So today, meet three couples who’ve been together for over 50 years. GUESTS: Angela and Grant Loavenbruck of Rockport, Maine, have been married for 55 years Emery Austin Smith and Vivian Ashton Smith of the Blue Hills neighborhood in Hartford have been married for 65 years Shirley and Seymour Reitman o...
Oct 23, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Imagine feeling like you have glass shards running through your blood, and imagine your doctors don’t believe how much pain you’re in. Then, imagine you’re in a different body, incapable of feeling any pain at all. Then, in body number three, you inflict pain on yourself so you can rate it. For science. Pain is a mystery in so many ways, but the way we evaluate it, make sense of it, and how we recognize it in other people, can change how we understand it. Today: From sickle cell, to CIP (Congeni...
Oct 16, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 18
What does it mean to be a man? What is manliness? What is “toxic masculinity”? And what do - and don’t - specific body parts have to say about what it means to be male? Hear from two journalists and authors about how the ideas of manhood physically and socially may be far more malleable than you think. GUESTS: Thomas Page McBee is a journalist, and the author of “Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness, and Becoming a Man” and “Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man” Emily Willing...
Oct 09, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Addiction affects people of all shapes and sizes. Skin tones and geographic locations. Ages, personalities, and genders. Today, meet two people who are committed to sobriety from alcohol, and the Chief Clinical Officer at a treatment facility. This won’t be the last time you hear stories from people in recovery on this show, so if you’d like to tell me your story about what the sober life has been like for you - whether you’re a few days into it, or it’s been decades, whether you’ve stopped usin...
Sep 25, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 16
I’ve had a recurring dream ever since I was a little kid: I’m playing in the front yard of the house I grew up in, and suddenly, the atmosphere around me changes. I feel an ominous breeze on my face. I look up, and barreling down the street, is a tornado headed straight for me. I turn to run… and the dream ends. I think my compulsion to run away from dangerous weather - in my dreams and in real life - is probably shared by a lot of people. But today? The folks you’re gonna meet go towards the da...
Sep 18, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 15
This hour, we’re talking with people who have become memes. Like, “Hide the Pain Harold”, who is actually András Arató - a stock photo model who is smiling wide but his eyes, well, there’s a real sadness there. And “Overly Attached Girlfriend”, who is Laina Morris. She entered a Justin Beiber song parody competition and just a few moments of her wide-eyed face from the video launched her into supermemedom. And we’ll talk with two Karens - one who is Black and one who’s white - about what it’s li...
Sep 11, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 14
***This show originally aired on June 20, 2020*** Speech disfluencies are mysterious. They are defined as breaks or disruptions that occur in the flow of speech. For over 10 years, I was the midday host at Connecticut Public Radio, telling you the weather, the time, what show was coming up next — And at the top of every hour, the call letters. Our listeners had opinions - lots of opinions - about the way I said the letter “W”, which I had to say dozens of times a day. Most of the opinions came i...
Sep 04, 2020•50 min
The art of tattooing has been traced back 7,000 years. While the significance or reason behind the oldest-known tattoos are total speculation, we do know that often, they were applied as sacred rites, and awarded as a signifier of adulthood. In Ancient Egypt, it’s likely they were used as a means of safeguarding women during pregnancy and birth. And in the ancient Greco-Roman world, they were applied on enslaved people who got caught trying to escape. But today, the reasons for getting a tattoo ...
Aug 28, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 13
What do the 2020 Doomsday Clock - you know, the calculation that tells us which technologies and conditions may annihilate us all - and the 2020 presidential election have in common? Your vote impacts the outcome. To talk with us about the election, Professor Allan Lichtman, who has correctly predicted the outcome of every election since 1994, gives us his prediction. Then, Professor Herb Lin of the Atomic Bulletin of Scientists - the keepers of the Doomsday Clock - tells us how close we are to ...
Aug 21, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 12
For eight years, I hosted a storytelling show at the Mark Twain House, called The Mouth-Off . Five times a year, storytellers would take the stage with their true story on that night’s theme. Now that the pandemic has cancelled the remainder of this year’s season, I wanted to take the opportunity to play you some of my favorites. You’ll hear all sorts of stories in this episode, but the one thing they all have in common? They all deal with relationships with authority figures, like parents, empl...
Aug 14, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 11
When you were growing up, you probably heard about famous inventors. Maybe you thought they were brilliant. Rigorously trained. Confident. Capable. And that their inventions advanced humankind through and through. But Dr. Ainissa Ramirez spent the last 5 years writing a book that strips away those presumptions. In The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another , she paints portraits not of how inventors settled questions of the limits of technology - but of how much further we ...
Aug 07, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Today, you’re gonna hear from three people who had close encounters with wild animals - and have the scars to prove it. You’ll hear how - and if - any of these people felt defined by their experiences, and what sense they’ve made out of their encounters. Plus, you’ll hear from a wildlife expert about what animals you should be careful to keep away from here in New England. GUESTS: Kelci "Saff" Saffery from "Tiger King" was the park manager at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma,...
Jul 31, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 9
From ancient Egypt to Greek mythology, through Abrahamic religions, in ancient African and Native American spiritual traditions, in medieval Europe, and 16th century France (remember that Nostradamus guy?), humans have reliably attempted to predict the future, read minds, and communicate with the dead. And at this moment in our history, with a pandemic, protests, an upcoming election, climate change... On top of the innate chaos of being a human being, it would surely be more psychologically man...
Jul 24, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Right now the world population is 7.8 billion, and growing fast. We have doubled our population over just the past 50 years! Even though the population is growing, fertility rates, overall, are dropping . So, more people are here, but we’re having fewer babies. There’s a lot of reasons for that, and one of them is infertility. The CDC estimates that nearly one out of eight couples struggles to conceive, but because of assisted reproductive technology, we’re upping the population numbers in the U...
Jul 17, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Last year, a 28 year-old guy in Mumbai tried to sue his parents - who are both lawyers - for having brought him into the world. He claims his parents didn’t get his consent to live. In addition to being a very bold person, he is an anti-natalist. That is, he believes that it is morally wrong to bring sentient life into this world - no matter how charmed or how troubled that life is - and that humanity should stop reproducing, full stop. Anti-natalism is not a novel concept. You can trace it as f...
Jul 10, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 6
We’re all naked under our clothes. It’s when we take them off that things could get complicated. I didn't want to be clothesminded, so in 2012 I did something that I had never done before. I took off all my clothes and spent time at Solair, a nudist resort in Woodstock, Connecticut , all in the name of radio. Then, I revisited the resort a few years later to go skinnydipping with four members of one family to find out what the nudist lifestyle means to their hearts, minds, and of course, bodies....
Jul 03, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Imagine you’ve got breasts. It shouldn’t be too hard to imagine, because most every human being has’ em! And that means that most of us are candidates for breast cancer. This hour, we hear very intimate conversations with two women who go through the process of getting a double mastectomy - the removal of all the breast tissue. One decides to get reconstruction, and one does not. I talked to them before the surgery, right after, and then almost a year later. I wanted to find out what it was like...
Jun 26, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Speech disfluencies are mysterious. They are defined as breaks or disruptions that occur in the flow of speech. For over 10 years, I was the midday host at Connecticut Public Radio, telling you the weather, the time, what show was coming up next — And at the top of every hour, the call letters. Our listeners had opinions - lots of opinions - about the way I said the letter “W”, which I had to say dozens of times a day. Most of the opinions came in the form of praise, but now and then an email wo...
Jun 19, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 3
