Davis Dunavin
ReporterDavis Dunavin loves telling stories, whether on the radio or around the campfire. An Edward R. Murrow Award-winning and Peabody Award-nominated journalist, he is the host of WSHU's Off the Path and created and hosted the 2022 series Still Newtown. He also teaches classes in media studies at Sacred Heart University. He started in Missouri and ended up in Connecticut, which, he'd like to point out, is the same geographic trajectory taken by Mark Twain.
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The state of Connecticut made a joint resolution in 2013 to celebrate the nation’s first powered flight, and it wasn’t by the Wright Brothers. Connecticut is the only state that recognizes a German immigrant as the first to fly. And one man built a replica to prove it. -
Everyone knows the story of the first manned airplane flight, right? The Ohio-based Wright Brothers flew a biplane more than 850 feet across North Carolina’s Outer Banks in December of 1903. But some people say someone else deserves the credit: a German immigrant named Gustave Whitehead. He supposedly flew his flying machine two years before the Wright Brothers in Fairfield, Connecticut. -
Most of us were taught in middle school that the Wright Brothers flew the first plane in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But some people say someone else deserves the credit: a German immigrant named Gustave Whitehead. He allegedly flew his flying machine in Fairfield, Connecticut two years before the Wright Brothers -
Sophie B. Hawkins is a Connecticut resident -- and she’s bringing her new musical, ‘Birds of New York,’ to the Westport Library. WSHU’s Davis Dunavin spoke with her about what it’s like branching out into theatre after a 40-year-plus career as a singer-songwriter. -
MIT debuted the first widely-played video game in 1962. It was a battle between two little spaceships that shot lasers at each other while dodging a vortex. For such a simple premise, the game has had a surprisingly long legacy, with multiple copycats, including the first game from the company that would become Atari. -
The first widely-played video game wasn’t Pong, or Donkey Kong, or Space Invaders. It wasn’t made by Nintendo or Atari. Instead, imagine a bunch of scruffy young nerds at MIT in 1962, given free rein over the latest computer technology. The result: Spacewar! -
The first widely-played video game wasn’t Pong, Donkey Kong or Space Invaders. It wasn’t made by Nintendo or Atari. Imagine a bunch of young MIT nerds in the early 60s, given free rein over the latest computer technology. The result was Spacewar! -
This season on Off The Path, Davis Dunavin digs deep to explore the origins of things that are ubiquitous, Teddy Roosevelt, the tuxedo, the first video game, as well as those stories we think we already know, like the first airplane flight or stories that aren't as well-known, like the beginnings of the artist behind the Barack Obama “Hope” poster. But every single episode involves an element of surprise, an ironic twist or a fascinating connection you might not expect when the story begins. -
WSHU spoke to Father James Martin, one of the nation’s most well-known Jesuit priests, about his new book Come Forth: The Promise of Jesus' Greatest Miracle, and what the story of Lazarus can teach us today. -
Officials say the founder of the Pirate’s Booty snack line baselessly declared himself mayor of the small Long Island village of Sea Cliff.
