JAM Podcasts & Audiobooks

Episode 2: “Barre, By God” In 1793 a town meeting was held in Wildersburg, Vermont. The only item on the agenda was renaming the young frontier town. Wildersburg was a mouthful. Two passionate contenders offered up the names of their home towns back in Massachusets—but neither would concede to the other. Victory in a brawl gave one of the men the right to name Barre, well, Barre. Librarian and community historian Paul Heller shares this curious incident. 

Series Description: Roadside Vermont is a podcast series about the historical monuments, markers, and plaques that are all too easy to drive by and never stop to read. In each episode host Kelby Greene travels to the far corners of Vermont to talk to local storytellers, historians, and community stewards about the quirky, quizzical, and surprising events of the history hidden down the dirt roads and rural highways of the Green Mountain state. From vampires to missile silos, to pencil mills and famed fiddlers, this season will span all fourteen counties of Vermont. This season is supported in part by a grant from Vermont Humanities, in partnership with the Vermont 250s Commission and Junction arts and Media—JAM. Special thanks to story editor Sophie Crane. 

Bio: Kelby Greene (she/her) is a Norwich, Vermont based journalist and independent radio producer. Her work is about explaining the present through the past—looking for the precedents to seemingly unprecedented times. Rooted in a passion for rural places and their unique histories, she hopes to tell stories worth talking about: in the car, over dinner, and passing by the state's hundreds of roadside markers. 

Episode Description: In 1793 the town of Manchester Center, then Meads Mill, was rocked by an other-worldly threat. A young woman was supposedly coming from beyond the grave to suck the life out of the living. It was a vampire panic—one of scores that rocked rural New England in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The frenzied family looked for answers and settled on an unconventional remedy. Was the young Rachel Burton really a vampire? or could science explain the deadly incident? Shawn Harrington from VT Folklife unravels the story of the Manchester Vampire.

Series Description: Roadside Vermont is a podcast series about the historical monuments, markers, and plaques that are all too easy to drive by and never stop to read. In each episode host Kelby Greene travels to the far corners of Vermont to talk to local storytellers, historians, and community stewards about the quirky, quizzical, and surprising events of the history hidden down the dirt roads and rural highways of the Green Mountain state. From vampires to missile silos, to pencil mills and famed fiddlers, this season will span all fourteen counties of Vermont. This season is supported in part by a grant from Vermont Humanities, in partnership with the Vermont 250s Commission and Junction arts and Media—JAM. Special thanks to story editor Sophie Crane. 

Bio: Kelby Greene (she/her) is a Norwich, Vermont based journalist and independent radio producer. Her work is about explaining the present through the past—looking for the precedents to seemingly unprecedented times. Rooted in a passion for rural places and their unique histories, she hopes to tell stories worth talking about: in the car, over dinner, and passing by the state's hundreds of roadside markers. 

Located in White River Junction, VT and Claremont, NH – and everywhere via social media and the Internet – Riverbank Church's media strategy has contributed to its growth and mission. This week, Lead Pastor Chris Goeppner and Director of Operations Ira Richards join Samantha on a deep dive into the role of media and storytelling in this Upper Valley faith community. 

In this episode of Mediated Lives, we have an unprecedented situation: The person writing this very bio, the person editing this very podcast and the person being interviewed this very week are the exact. Same. Person. Hello. It is I, Kelsie Hogue also known as Sir Babygirl. The meta of this overwhelms and fascinates me; I feel as if I am in a multimedia hall of mirrors, or that Spiderman meme with the two Spidermen pointing at each other incredulously. In any case, here's my interview with my boss and host Samantha as we dive into the 2025 media landscape of being a working musician. In fact, writing, editing and being the subject of a podcast interview is exactly how it feels to be a working musician these days. How's THAT for meta!

Eavesdrop on Samantha's conversation with JAM's own Dartmouth Social Impact Fellow Maria Hebling (Dartmouth '27), a brilliant young mind in today's mercurial media landscape. Maria lends her unique perspectives on cultural differences via social media, the life-changing impact of media on her as a teen in rural Brazil during COVID, and the What and Why of the JAM media literacy and digital citizenship programs she currently leads. Enjoy listening as Maria waxes poetic about living a double reality on and offline and the ups/downs, pros/cons, pitfalls and miracles of our modern mediated lives.

In Mediated Lives' 6th episode, Samantha picks local family doctor Julie Davis' brain about her experience serving the community's health in our current media landscape. They talk healthy social media habits, discuss the pros and cons of our sticky web of internet culture in today's children and teens, and what healthy family boundaries around tech might look like. 

Vital Communities' Communications Manager and local sweetheart Rebecca Bailey joins Samantha to reveal the brass tacks of Upper Valley Listservs and all the ways they act as connective tissue for the people, places and things of our unique collection of rural towns. 

This week, Samantha and Lebanon, NH City Manager Shaun Mulholland join forces to discuss how media and the work of local government intersect – or collide – and how changes in the broader political culture and media landscape telescope to the local, for better and worse.  With an emphasis on optimistic problem-solving and fearless navigation of the human beings inside the politics, Shaun breaks down growing AI use, communication tactics, the importance of the arts, reaching out across the aisle, and much more.

Episode 3: In this week’s NSFW episode, Samantha is joined by local quadruple threat (comedian, author, educator and inn keeper), Cindy Pierce as they navigate the choppy waters of all things sex and social media. An expert at making the uncomfortable wonderfully engaging, Cindy takes Samantha on an illuminating and no holds barred tour of the developing human brain on porn, AI and general screen time. This episode pairs well with fresh air and touching grass.

Show Bio: Media shape our lives in ways unprecedented in human culture.  How do we understand ourselves and the world we live in differently as a result?  What have we gained? Lost? What choices remain in our power in relation to media, and what’s at stake?  “Mediated Lives” aims to engage Upper Valley citizens across diverse professional and demographic sectors to share their viewpoints on these questions and help illuminate a path toward building a better mediated future in the Upper Valley.

Episode 2:  Rod Smolla, Vermont Law and Graduate School President, joined Samantha in the studio to dig into tough and topical questions about free speech at a moment when social media hold unprecedented sway over our politics.  As an attorney who has argued high-profile free speech cases before the Supreme Court, Smolla offers an illuminating guide to the legally perplexed! 

Show Bio: Media shape our lives in ways unprecedented in human culture.  How do we understand ourselves and the world we live in differently as a result?  What have we gained? Lost? What choices remain in our power in relation to media, and what’s at stake?  “Mediated Lives” aims to engage Upper Valley citizens across diverse professional and demographic sectors to share their viewpoints on these questions and help illuminate a path toward building a better mediated future in the Upper Valley.