Hey! If you’re listening to this bonus feature, you’ve probably listened to the show we just did featuring executive producer Catie Talarski’s documentary of a year in the life of two people with end-stage Cystic Fibrosis.

I was so moved by the documentary and so intrigued by how it sounded that I wanted to interview Catie about how she made it.

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When you have Cystic Fibrosis - a genetic disease that causes persistent lung infections - a lung transplant can be a life-saving surgery. But what if you’re not sure you want it? And if you do get it, what new challenges will they present to your newly-extended life? 

Hear an audio documentary by Audacious Executive Producer Catie Talarski that follows two CF patients for one year as they grapple with the choice to pursue lung transplants. Then, she catches up with one of the subjects 10 years later.

GUESTS:

• Brian Sercus was, among many things, an artist, movie critic, and a fan of Dungeons and Dragons. He died of Cystic Fibrosis complications in 2011 at 30 years old
• Mary ElizaBeth Peters is an author, a patient advocate, and a theater arts educator. She has Cystic Fibrosis and received a double lung transplant in July of 2010
• Dr. Ahmet Uluer is the Director of the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Program & Director of the Weitzman Family Bridges Adult Transition Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School

Photo: Freepik.com

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What happens when you do a DNA test from a company like Ancestry.com or 23andme, and you get some life-shattering information, like your sibling is really your half-sibling, or that you may have a life-altering medical condition, or that you thought you were half Black, but the test says you’re barely Black at all.

Before you spit in that tube, hear from people who’ve been stunned and spun around by DNA tests.

GUESTS:

• Randye & Rick Kaye are siblings who found out that their biological dads were two different sperm donors
• Sigrid Johnson had a DNA test tell her that she wasn’t nearly as Black as she thought she was. Plus, instead of being a single child, she now has 20 half-siblings
• Dorothy Pomerantz found out that she is BRCA-positive via a test from 23andme.com

Photo: Pereru, Wikipedia

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When you call 911, it most likely means you’re having a stressful, unpredictable, scary experience. It could be the worst day of your life, or someone else’s.  But what’s it like on the other side of that call? 

Hear about life as an emergency dispatcher here in Connecticut, throughout the country, and even during the massive temporary city in the desert that is Burning Man.

GUESTS:

• Clayton Northgraves is the Director of Emergency Telecommunications for the State of Connecticut
• Wanda Brown worked as an emergency dispatch operator in Lynchburg, VA for 27 years. She retired in May of 2018
• Nanci Tatum of Westminster, CO, worked in emergency dispatch for 33 years. She retired in 2017
• Tanto Goldstein of Los Angeles, CA, is an emergency dispatch volunteer for Burning Man

Photo: Negative Space - Pexels.com

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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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