If you listen to public radio, you recognize Chris Thile’s name. He was the host of Live From Here! 

And if you’re like me, you knew him from at least one of his gazillion other music projects, like his band Punch Brothers.

I’ve been following his work for over 10 years, simultaneously singin’ my heart out to his recordings, while being totally mind-boggled at his mandolin playing. So you can imagine how freakin’ thrilled I was to interview him live on-stage at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts at UConn Storrs last month, and then again via Zoom from my dining room table. 

So today? It’s just me and Chris Thile and a whole lot of things I've always wanted to ask him.

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This is the first installment of Audacious Little Things!

Meet an anthropologist who explains why she thinks the human animal delights in making miniatures of things, and then meet a sculpturist dubbed “The 8th Wonder of the World” whose art requires a microscope to see.

Find out how one kind of protozoan earned itself the title of “The Immortal Jellyfish”. Plus, what researchers think is going on when starlings fly together in those mesmerizing clouds, and what that has to do with creating underwater robots.

Finally, former US and New York State Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, reads his piece, “The Butterfly Effect” and ponders the reason why we are so compelled by its concept.

GUESTS:

• Dr. Merry White is a professor of Anthropology at the College of Arts & Sciences at Boston University
• Dr. Willard Wigan MBE is a British sculpturist who has set two world records with his microscopic art
• Dr. Naomi Leonard is a professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University who studies how starlings fly in groups to develop underwater robots that react to each other
• Dr. Maria Pia Miglietta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marine Biology at Texas A&M University at Galveston. She is also the Head of the Miglietta Lab, where she studies Turritopsis Dohrnii, a.k.a. the Immortal Jellyfish
• Billy Collins is a poet who served as Poet Laureate of the United States (2001-2003) and as New York State Poet (2004-2006)

Photo courtesy Dr. Willard Wigan, MBE

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When I say BLINK! What do you think? 

Of that American POW who blinked the word “TORTURE” in Morse code live on Vietnamese television? 

Or do you think of someone with locked-in syndrome who can only communicate by blinking? 

Or do you think about the idea of a universal eye language that uses blinks?

Today on Audacious, you'll hear about all that, plus a headset that measures the blinking of long-distance drivers so they know to take a break, and what it’s like when you have a rare condition that makes it so you can’t stop blinking.

GUESTS:

• Blake Stilwell is a former air force combat camera operator, and currently the veteran jobs editor at Military.com
• Jason Gui is the Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer at Vigo Technologies. His wearable headset, Vigo, tracks drowsiness by measuring eye blinks
• Nancy Rosa is a resident of Poughquag, NY who has blepharospasm, a rare condition which causes uncontrollable eye blinking
• Dr. Hemangi Sane led the team that developed the world’s first eye language, “Blink To Speak”. She is also the Founder & President of the Asha Ek Hope Foundation, and the Deputy Director of NeuroGen Brain & Spine Institute in Mumbai, India
• Clodagh Dunlop is the author of A Return To Duty, about how she survived a brain stem stroke and used blinking to begin to communicate her way through locked-in syndrome

Illustration: Macrovector_official at Freepik.com

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What if, in order to do your job, you had to change your voice? 

Meet an actress who’s an accent expert, a man who is the dubbed-over voice of Peter Griffin and Will Smith in Germany, and a news anchor who went viral when she brought her anchor voice home.

GUESTS:

• Amy Walker is a Los Angeles-based actress, singer and accent chameleon
• Ian Odle is a German voice dubber, known best for his work as the German Peter Griffin and Will Smith
• Jeannette Reyes, also known on Instagram and TikTok as @msnewslady, is a news anchor for FOX 5 Morning and Good Day D.C.

IMAGE: Jemastock/Harryarts from vecteezy.com

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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 are as distinct as the person getting them. Sometimes, it’s a memorial to a person or an experience or an idea. Sometimes, it’s nothing more than something that just looks really cool!

Now and then, though, the meaning changes, and the artwork needs to be covered up. So today, you’ll hear stories about how people have used tattoos to allow their skin to, shall we say, evolve.

GUESTS:

• Chris Gladis is a high school teacher living in Osaka, Japan. He has yet to be tattooed
• Jim Bonaldo is a father, husband, improv comic, storyteller, and tattoo canvas, living in Wethersfield
• Tracy Wu Fastenberg is a fundraiser for a nonprofit, and babywearing enthusiast of her two children in West Hartford
• Addy Irizarry was a professional boxer, and is now a school safety officer and boxing trainer living in Tolland
• Michael Kalinowski is a 37 year-old from Baltic, with a wife and 3 daughters
• Jessica Pain lives in Bristol with her wife, 3 children, 4 cats, 2 dogs, and a ball python named Ozzy. After working as an Emergency Room Nurse for over a decade she now has a career in the life-saving world of organ donation
• Mikaela is a firefighter and EMT living in Vermont
• Alex Lawrence is the owner of Mountainside Tattoo in Bellows Falls, Vermont
• Dickie Marcum is a 34 year-old husband and father of three, living in Cincinnati, Ohio. He’s the founder of the “Erase The Hate Project”, a non-profit helping people remove or cover up racist tattoos

PHOTO: TOONMAN_blchin / Wikipedia

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Not everyone who is trans wants to change their voice. Some do. Either way, what do the voices - the actual voices - of trans and non-binary people tell you about who they are?

Today, you’ll meet a trans woman whose work adapting her voice led her to help others. Also, hear from a transfemme non-binary yoga teacher who uses Vedic Chanting to feel centered, and to feel closer to their voice. You’ll hear from members of a choir in the bay area that is exclusively for singers who self-identify as transgender, intersex, or gender-queer.

And you’ll get to know Lucia Lucas. She's the first female baritone to perform a principal role on an American operatic stage, and she happens to be trans.

GUESTS:

• Ama-Rose Wootan teaches vocal feminization and masculinization, and helps run a Discord community called Scinguistics
• Reuben Zellman is the Founder and Director of New Voices Bay Area choir
• Lene Kristian Bryngemark and Jasmine Gee are singers in New Voices Bay Area
• Río Amani is a transfemme nonbinary afro latine puerto rican native living in Denver, who is has been practicing Vedic Chanting for 9 years
• Lucia Lucas is an American opera singer living and performing in Germany. She is transgender, and the first female baritone to inhabit a principal role on an American operatic stage

Photo: Patrick Fore - Unsplash / Illustration by Chion Wolf

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Hear about the 5000 year history of billboards, and meet the man behind the “I LOVE YOU JESUS” billboards on I-84 and I-91 here in Connecticut.  And hear about a technology that focuses the audio of a billboard directly to you and only you.  Plus, why one Baltimore resident chose to propose to his girlfriend with a billboard (and how it went).

GUESTS:

• Gino Sesto is the founder of Dash Two, a Digital and Outdoor Advertising Agency based out of Culver City, CA
• Juan Carlos Puga & Allison Haley of Baltimore, MD, became engaged after Juan’s billboard proposal
• Dr. Joseph Pompei is the Founder, President, and CEO of Holosonics, and inventor of Audio Spotlight technology
• Father Edmund Nadolny has been putting up his positive religious billboards in Connecticut for over 40 years

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Guy Walker Wolf III died on February 13th, 2021. He was 77 years old.

There are many ways to describe Guy, but I’d say we who knew him would all agree that he could be described as the captain of his own ship. And he was my stepfather. I’ve known him since I was 11.

Throughout the process of his death at home, I was compelled by the people who were a part of guiding us through it.

So today, I’m gonna introduce you to the people who helped Guy die, and who helped us celebrate him. From the hospice workers who came to the house, to the funeral home director, to the cantor who sang at his mass.

You’ll meet his wife, my mom, and hear about how she made the choices she did, and how it feels to be a new widow. And at the end of the show, you’ll hear a little something from Guy.

GUESTS:

• Pamela Morrison-Wolf is the loving wife of Guy W. Wolf III
• Mary Czaikowski is a Nurse Case Manager at Farmington Valley Visiting Nurse Association
• Tanya Brown is a Nurse Case Manager at Farmington Valley Visiting Nurse Association
• Trung Le is a Hospice Nurse at Farmington Valley Visiting Nurse Association
• Frank Ahern is the President of Ahern Funeral Homes in Hartford & Unionville, CT
• Pam Frigo Johnson has been a cantor at St. Patrick St. Anthony church in Hartford since 1997

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You know how you can, for the most part, remember what happened to you yesterday? Well what if you were able to remember almost EVERY day that clearly? All the way back to when you were very young?

How would your day-to-day choices be affected, knowing that you’ll remember what you did forever? Do we all have our memories stored inside our brains like they do, but we don’t have a way to access them? Or something else?

Meet two of around 60 people in the world who are known to have Highly Superior Autobiographical Memories, or HSAM.

Plus, hear from an expert studying the people with this ultra-rare condition, and what we can learn about our brains, our memories, and ourselves.

GUESTS:

• Dr. James McGaugh is a professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, specializing in the neurobiology of learning and memory. He leads a team of experts who are studdying Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM)
• Bob Petrella is a Film Studies Professor at Santa Monica University, and he was the fourth person identified with HSAM
• Alyssa Aey is a senior at Wadsworth Highschool in Wadsworth Ohio who has HSAM

Photo by M.T ElGassier on Unsplash / Illustration by Chion Wolf

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Whether you’re superstitious or, as Michael Scott from The O  says, “a little stitious”, on today’s show about superstitions, you’ll learn a lot about humanity.

The author of a book about superstitions from around the world joins us, as well as an expert about anxiety on the difference between superstitious beliefs and OCD or trauma responses.

You’ll hear superstitions from Lauren Komrosky, Katy Tierney, Benn Grippo, Hassan Hodges, Tracy Mind Evolution Caldwell, Caroline Finnegan, Christina Solem, Eileen Ruiz, Mike Ferguson, Cynthia Rojas, Dawn Ennis, Wendy Allerton, and Shawn Lang.

Finally, what happened when a filmmaker broke as many superstitions as he could in one day?

GUESTS:

• Dr. David Tolin is the Director of the Anxiety Disorders Center & Center for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy at The Institute of Living in Hartford
• D.R. McElroy is the author of Superstitions: A Handbook of Folklore, Myths, and Legends from around the World
• Oobah Butler is a filmmaker and the author of the best-selling book, How To Bullshit Your Way To Number 1

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