Taxidermied dogs. A CIA agent's hat. A perfume that made strangers on elevators lose their composure.

This is what happens when you pull names from a vase at a brewery and say: show us something you love, and tell us why.

Our fourth live Show and Tell at Little Red Barn Brewers in Winsted, Connecticut delivered exactly what this format always delivers: stories that are intimate, hilarious, and impossible to predict. Even for us.

Suggested episodes:

• Audacious Live! Show & Tell in Stamford

• Audacious Live! Show & Tell birthday bash in Hartford

• Audacious Live! Show & Tell in Willimantic: From rare computers to hand grenades

GUESTS:

• Jon Barbagallo: Director of Sales at Little Red Barn Brewers, who brought a styrofoam curling rock that was used as a movie prop

• Jill Bowen: New Haven resident, who brought Doggie, her stuffed animal

• Lauren Pierson-Gallagher: New Milford resident, who brought a bottle of Shalimar perfume, her late mother’s signature scent

• Gerri Griswold: Director of Administration & Development at the White Memorial Conservation Center in Litchfield, who brought a taxidermied dog in a display case

• Nils Johnson: Co-founder & President of Little Red Barn Brewers, who brought an 1861 one-dollar note issued by The Winsted Bank

• Theresa Taylor: Canton resident, who brought her late father’s British bowler hat

• Nora Pasco: New Britain resident, who brought her Persephone rosary beads

• Caroline Christensen: Winsted resident, who brought a conch shell

• Alex Harper: Winsted resident, who brought her service dog’s harness

• Terry Wolfisch Cole: Simsbury resident, who brought a tin of 100-year-old Ramses condoms from her late uncle’s collection of antique pharmaceutical containers

Support the show: https://www.wnpr.org/donate

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Fewer than 10% of truck drivers are women, and in this episode, you’re going to meet three of them.

Spend the day with Chion and a tow truck driver, get to know a woman who runs a CDL training school, and hear about life on the road from a truck driver who happens to be a trans woman.

This episode originally aired on January 13, 2023.

GUESTS:

• Chantel Comerford: A driver for Meagan’s Towing & Recovery out of Danbury, Connecticut. She lives in Sandy Hook
• Michele Howard: Owner of Affordable CDL Training School in Colchester, Connecticut
• Hope Alexander: Host of the podcast, Simply Live with Hope, where she talks about being a trans woman and her 12 years in the trucking industry. She lives in Georgia

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine feeling an unbearable itch, convinced that tiny insects are crawling under your skin. But no doctor believes you. You try to prove it, collecting samples, documenting everything. But under a microscope? Nothing is there.

That was Paula Cox’s experience with delusional infestation, a rare disorder where people are absolutely certain they’re infested with bugs, despite all evidence to the contrary. In this episode, Paula shares her harrowing experience, and experts - a leading entomologist and a psychiatrist-dermatologist - explain what’s really happening in the brain and how healing is possible.

Suggested episodes:

• Body Integrity Dysphoria: When being disabled is a desire
• When every face you see is distorted: Living with PMO

GUESTS:

• Dr. Gale Ridge: an entomologist and Associate Scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven. She oversees the daily activities of the insect inquiry office. She’s also the editor of The Physician's Guide to Delusional Infestation
• Paula Cox: a woman in Australia who experienced delusional infestation. She started a Facebook support group called “Delusional parasitosis help”
• Dr. John Koo: a Professor of Dermatology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center and Director of the UCSF Psoriasis Skin and Treatment Center. He is board-certified in both dermatology and psychiatry and co-author of Morgellons Disease: High Yield Principles for Clinical Practice

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What kind of person looks at a Boeing 727 and thinks, yes, I should live there? Or boards a cruise ship and decides never to go back to a traditional home?

Bruce Campbell is a 76-year-old engineer and pilot who has spent more than 25 years living in a retired jetliner in the Oregon woods.

Angelyn and Richard Burk are a married couple who turned loss, an enthusiasm for minimalism, and a love of travel into an everyday existence at sea.

They share wisdom about home, routine, freedom, minimalism, and staying put.

Suggested episodes:

• Audacious at sea: Wisdom from strangers on a cruise ship

GUESTS:

• Bruce Campbell: 76-year-old engineer who has lived in a retired Boeing 727 in the woods of Hillsboro, Oregon, since 1999. He welcomes visitors from around the world into the airplane home he built after deciding a conventional house no longer made sense for him
• Angelyn and Richard Burk: Married couple from the Seattle area who have been living as cruise nomads since 2021. After losing all their belongings in a moving-truck fire in 2013, they embraced minimalism and now spend much of the year making cruise ships their home

Support the show: https://www.wnpr.org/donate

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Obituaries are meant to mark an end. But sometimes they start a whole new conversation.

First, Andy Corren, whose funny, biting, tender obituary for his mother captured so much life that it went viral and became a memoir.

Then, Sallie Hammett, whose loving obituary for her dog Charlie rippled across the internet and moved countless strangers.

And finally, we talk with professional obituary writer Jamie Passaro about what makes an obit memorable, honest and worth reading.

Suggested episodes:

• Rethinking funerals with the Coffin Confessor, living eulogies, and designer caskets

• What death investigators can tell you about life

GUESTS:

• Andy Corren: Writer and author of Dirtbag Queen, a memoir that grew out of the viral obituary he wrote for his mother, Renay

• Sallie Hammett: South Carolina writer whose heartfelt obituary for her dog, Charlie, went viral after she shared it online

• Jamie Passaro: Professional obituary writer and founder of Dear Person Obits; she also co-founded Elegy.us, an online obituary platform

Support the show: https://www.wnpr.org/donate

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What’s a sentence that invites the universe to call your bluff?

“I could do that!”

Meet three people who said it, and then had to live it.

Christopher Lamar runs Lunar Embassy, a company that sells deeds to plots on the Moon and other celestial bodies. Logan Goodspeed learns what happens when you casually claim you could run a marathon “with 24 hours’ notice,” and your spouse takes that seriously. And Mandle Cheung, a tech CEO and devoted music lover, writes a huge check to fund a Mahler concert, so he can conduct the Toronto Symphony Orchestra himself.

Suggested episodes:

• What Happens When You Act Like You Belong

• GOOD GOURD! A show about pumpkins!

• TOPS: A woman summits Everest, a man considers a body transplant, and world-record hat-wearing

GUESTS:

• Christopher Lamar: CEO of Lunar Embassy, a company that sells deeds to plots on the Moon and other celestial bodies. The business was founded by his father, Dennis Hope, in 1980

• Logan Goodspeed: A 32-year-old software engineer from California who ran the Rock ’n’ Roll San Diego Marathon with about 24 hours’ notice and no formal training

• Mandle Cheung: A 78-year-old technology CEO and amateur conductor who founded Mandle Philharmonic in 2018. In June 2025, he personally funded a one-night performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”) and conducted the Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Jessica Severin de Martinez, Meg Fitzgerald, and Robyn Doyon-Aitken contributed to this show, with help from Coco Cooley.

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At 74, Karen Smith is still chasing the feeling she fell in love with as a kid: the freedom and aliveness of playing sports.

After years of sudden pain and uncertainty, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis - news that could have ended her life in athletics. Instead, adaptive equipment helped her keep skiing, and it reshaped how she carried the diagnosis.

Through the Gaylord Sports Association, she helped expand a program now offering 17 adaptive sports, and she became a gold medal-winning goalie on Team USA’s women’s sled hockey team.

At Choate Ice Rink, she and veteran player Anthony Kuntz introduce Chion to sled hockey, and to Karen’s fierce belief in inclusion and the “dignity of risk.”

Suggested episodes:

• A marathon swimmer and ultrarunner: surviving cancer, breaking records
• Revealing Our Blind Spots About Blindness

GUESTS:

• Karen Smith: Team manager of the Gaylord Wolfpack sled hockey team and a longtime leader in Connecticut’s adaptive sports community. In her early 60s, she earned the starting goalie position on Team USA’s Women’s Sled Hockey squad at the first IPC Ice Sledge Hockey Women's International Cup in 2014, winning gold alongside teammates decades younger
• Anthony Kuntz: Gaylord Wolfpack sled hockey player from Colchester, Connecticut, who has spina bifida. He has 22 years of experience in the sport, including four on the U.S. Junior National Team, competing internationally in Vancouver during the 2010 Paralympic Games
  

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Two Scotlands, one episode.

Scotland One: kilts, haggis, bagpipes, and that irresistible fairground mix of music and muscle at Connecticut’s Scottish Highland Festival & Games! Plus swordplay and the oddly soothing chaos and grunts of Weight Over Bar.

Scotland Two: centuries of witch trials, powered by rumor, rubber-stamped by law. Meet Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi of Witches of Scotland, a campaign and podcast working to restore names and dignity to the accused from 1563 to 1736.

Suggested episodes:

• Where We Live - 'Before there was Salem, there was Connecticut': State formally pardons accused witches
• Where We Live - Are witch hunts truly a thing of the past?
• Dress to unrepress: Women who dressed like men, broke rules and made history
• Are you very superstitious or just a little 'stitious'?
• Big E ep? (similar vibe)

GUESTS:

• Benjamin Elzerman: flute player from East Hartford, CT
• Haley Hewitt: harpist from Manchester, CT
• John Morahn: instructor at Western Swordsmanship Technique and Research (WSTR) from Ashford, CT
• Eric Lewis: weight over bar competitor at The Scottish Highland Festival and Games from Woburn, MA
• Christopher Annino: weight over bar competitor at The Scottish Highland Festival and Games from Groton, CT
• John H Spencer: the only living founding member of The Scottish Highland Festival and Games
• Reggie Patchell: Co-Chairman and Vice President of Scotland Connecticut Highland Festival Committee
• Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi: founders of Witches of Scotland, a campaign seeking justice for the roughly 4,000 people - mostly women - accused of witchcraft in Scotland between 1563 and 1736, many of whom were executed

Support the show: https://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.