Audacious with Chion Wolf

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...

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 th...

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 appl...

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 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 Digi...

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 go...

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 the...

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 T...

As part of our Reports From Recovery series, today we’re hearing from two women whose heroin addictions shook up their lives, and put them right up close to the edge of existence. If you’re struggling with addiction, you can find resources at SAMHSA , the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration. GUESTS: Jaime Wyatt is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter. She’s been sober for ov...

The Doomsday Clock is a metaphor. It moves closer to midnight depending on how close we are to human-made global catastrophe through climate change, nuclear weapons, and pandemics fueled by misinformation and failed leadership. Y’know, the typical folly of humankind. Find out what time it is from two members of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. GUESTS: Sharon Squassoni is a research professor at...

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...

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 for...

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 fo...

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...

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...

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 e...

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...

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 h...

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, p...

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 lear...

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: Ama...

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 t...

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 Bre...

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...

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 rec...