Rumble Strip

By Erica Heilman / Rumble Strip, Erica Heilman

Personal Journals Society & Culture Places & Travel

What's Rumble Strip about?

Good conversation that takes its time, hosted by Erica Heilman.

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Rumble Strip episodes:

04.10.2024
Fifty: A Phoenix Moment. REDUX!
This is a show I made a few years ago that very significantly involves Total Eclipse of the Heart, which is my favorite song. I am playing it again now because it is ECLIPSE WEEK. I hope you enjoy it.
03.26.2024
Kasey is Figuring it Out
Kasey Phipps is transgender and has always been transgender. But Kasey didn’t grow up in a place where the word transgender was well understood. Or understood at all. It’s only in the last four years that Kasey’s put a name...
03.15.2024
What Class Are You Ashley?
Ashley Messier grew up in Essex, Vermont with an abusive father and with little money, and she found herself repeating the cycle in early adulthood. This is a story about multi-generational poverty and abuse, and the temporary relief of opiates.
03.13.2024
What Class Are You Ashton?
Ashton runs a concrete business and in his free time he makes community meals at the American Legion in Hardwick. We sat down to talk about class, which then turned into a conversation about eating, and how eating together as...
03.11.2024
What Class Are You Kathleen?
Kathleen lives in Derby, Vermont in a subsidized apartment with two cats, two pugs, and about 400 clocks. She was working as a home health aide until COVID hit. She received COVID funding and rent assistance until she didn't. And...
03.10.2024
Revisiting Isaac
Many of you got in touch with me after Isaac's story aired in the first week of What Class Are You. Isaac's on his way to Columbia in the fall, on a full scholarship, and you came up with amazing...
03.08.2024
What Class Are You Ethan?
When I met Ethan Perry, he was taking a break from his job at Family Dollar in Orleans VT. At the time he was 29. When I asked him what class he is, he said he grew up lower-middle class....
03.06.2024
What Class Are You Mike?
Mike Donofrio moved to Vermont with his family when he was two years old. He grew up, he left Vermont for college and law school, then he moved back and worked in the attorney general's office. Now he's in...
03.04.2024
What Class Are You John?
John Rodgers runs a construction business up in West Glover, Vermont most of the year. He runs a plow business in the winter. He rents properties, he runs a cannabis farm with his son, he's a stonemason. He's one of...
03.01.2024
What Class Are You? A Conversation with Garret Keizer
In this episode I talk with one of my favorite poets and writers, Garret Keizer. Garret has written extensively on the history of labor unions and for this show we drove around and talked about the obscene class inequality in...
02.28.2024
What Class Are You Kytreana?
This is episode 5 of What Class Are You. Kytreana was one of the first people I interviewed for this series. I was driving around the Northeast Kingdom and my last stop was Olney’s General Store in Orleans, right across...
02.26.2024
What Class Are You Kate?
This is episode 4 of a special series called What Class Are You, wherein I drive around asking people to talk about class and privilege and power and money and how much or little of it they've got. Kate...
02.23.2024
What Class Are You Irfan?
Irfan Sehic and his family fled the war in Bosnia when he was seventeen, and landed in Barre, Vermont. Irfan did a lot of jobs when he got here, then went to college, and now runs an insurance company out...
02.21.2024
What Class Are You Isaac?
What Class Are You is a series about money and privilege and how much or little of it you've got. This story is about Isaac, an 18-year-old in Newport, Vermont.
02.19.2024
What Class Are You Susan?
First episode in a series called What Class Are You? This time...Susan Randall, a private investigator in Vermont, talks about growing up upper-middle class.
02.13.2024
Makeup For Special Occasion Valentines Day Redux!
This is a rerun of what could be called a VALENTINE’S DAY SPECIAL, and I hope you enjoy it. Last year on Hardwick's Front Porch Forum, someone called Tiana asked if there was anyone who could help her with her hair...
01.25.2024
A 100 Year Flood
These are some stories from Vermont's 100 year flood last July in Vermont. It devastated our state. In my hometown of Calais, we had dirt roads that were so destroyed, with holes so big that people were down there digging...
01.11.2024
Little League Playoffs
This is one of my all time favorite shows. I made it for Vermont Public in 2019 and I think about these guys all the time. It was the little league playoffs in St. Johnsbury in 2019, before the pandemic,...
12.15.2023
East Hill Tree Farm Please Buy Their Trees
East Hill Tree Farm is my new sponsor. It’s the place where I buy all my trees and berry bushes so it’s easy to wax poetic about them. Also it’s a barter. Nicko Rubin is planting some trees here and...
12.10.2023
Forrest and I Sit in the Truck and Talk About Pain
I got in a car accident. For some reason I thought it would make me feel better to talk with Forrest about all the accidents he’s had and how he thinks about pain.
11.30.2023
John Rodgers Weed Farmer
John Rodgers is a stonemason in West Glover. He also runs a construction business, plows driveways and rents properties, and for sixteen years he served in the Vermont Legislature in both the House and the Senate. He works seven days...
10.30.2023
Ode to Village Life
A lot of people in rural America live near small towns or villages. Here in Vermont, a lot of small village schools and general stores and post offices are closing for all kinds of reasons. And this isn’t unique to...
10.20.2023
Taylor Swift Music for the End
My friend Kelly Green is a defense attorney who represents people accused of murder. She spends a lot of time reading autopsies and driving around talking with witnesses and worrying. She’s got a lot going on at the moment. A...
10.04.2023
Susan on the Train Tracks
Susan’s been a private investigator in Vermont for 24 years. She defends people who are accused of crimes, which often involve drugs in one way or another. This summer she was robbed by a person with a terrible heroin addiction,...
09.04.2023
Forrest Foster Lays Karen to Rest
Forrest Foster is a dairy farmer in Hardwick, Vermont and a friend of mine. This past spring, on Memorial Day, Forrest’s partner, Karen Shaw, died after a long illness. They were together 43 years. The day after she died, Forrest...
08.16.2023
The Homesteading Game
I am a terrible vegetable gardener. And I have friends who are GREAT vegetable gardeners, who also raise their own animals for milk and eggs and meat, and they put up enough food from the garden to get through the...
07.27.2023
The Civic Standard in the 100 Year Flood
We just had a massive, devastating flood here in Vermont. And Hardwick got hit pretty hard. This all happened exactly a week after I launched the show about mystery dinner theater in Hardwick, put on by the Civic Standard. As...
07.06.2023
The Civic Standard
Rose Friedman and Tara Reese were in the early stages of starting the Civic Standard, an organization that gives the people of Hardwick excuses to get together. Rose and Tara were explaining this idea to Brenda at a baseball game...
05.31.2023
Let's Talk about Guns
This is a show about guns. I made this story for Brave Little State, a podcast of Vermont Public, which invites listeners to create story ideas and then vote on them. I was excited to make a story about guns but...
05.08.2023
Nightwalking 1, from Constellation Prize
This is a guest episode by my friend Bianca Giaever, producer of the podcast Constellation Prize. This is the first of a 4 part series called Nightwalking.
03.30.2023
What Class are You?
For years I've been wanting to make a show about the terrible cultural divides growing in our country, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without getting into boring conversations about politics. So I backed into an experiment....
03.15.2023
Mary Lake Sheep Slaughterer
Mary Lake is a sheep farmer and sheep shearer and itinerant slaughterer. She is a tall, muscular woman in bib overalls and a baseball hat and dangly earrings she carved out of a ram’s horn. She wears a chain around...
03.07.2023
It’s Town Meeting Again.
It's town meeting day. So let's TALK ABOUT IT AGAIN!
03.07.2023
It's Town Meeting Again
It's town meeting day here in Vermont. In most of New England, town citizens become legislators for one day a year. They get together in school gyms and town halls and vote in person, and in public. This centuries long...
02.21.2023
Winter's Bear
Sheila LaPoint wrote a post in Front Porch Forum asking if there was anyone in town who could turn her grandmother's fur coat into a teddy bear. She didn't want to spend a lot of money. She can't wear the...
02.21.2023
Winter’s Bear
A show about neighbors helping neighbors. And seasonal depression.
01.26.2023
Speaking Whale
Tom Mustill is a conservation biologist and he makes beautiful films about where nature and people meet. He’s worked with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, he’s been shat on by bats in Mexico, and recently he finished a book called...
01.23.2023
Police Log: The Fanny Pack Edition
This show is about crime. Really crimey crime.
01.07.2023
Fishing with Jay
Jay Allison makes the kind of radio that made me want to make radio. It isn’t news, and it doesn’t really have a beginning middle and end but it’s personal and surprising and you get to fall in love with...
12.02.2022
Nature’s Top Deck, with Forrest Foster
Sitting at deer camp talking about hunting and loneliness and what to do next.
12.02.2022
Nature's Top Deck, with Forrest Foster
Forrest Foster was loading up the tractor with kindling for deer camp. It was two days before deer season. I was over there visiting and helping him with his night chores. I like Forrest. I like being around him, and...
11.21.2022
Nick Paley and a Shell with Shoes
A conversation about working in HOLLYWOOD. And Marcel the Shell makes several adorable appearances.
11.21.2022
Nick Paley and a Very Small Shell
Nick Paley is a writer, editor and director for film and TV, and a co-writer on the recent film, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which stars an adorable one-inch tall shell who wears shoes and is looking for his...
11.10.2022
An American Life
Vaughn Hood was a 118-pound barber when he was drafted into the Vietnam War. And in Vaughn’s war, most men didn’t survive their first three-month tour. In honor of Veteran's Day, here is the story of an extraordinary American life....
09.14.2022
Armand’s Garden
What does God have to do with gardening? For Armand...everything.
09.14.2022
Armand's Garden
Armand Patoine sat with me in his tea house, deep inside his garden, which leads down to a stream. He has been creating this garden for 49 years. We talked about gardening, and what God has to do with his...
08.26.2022
The Neighborhood
My son is leaving for his freshman year of college in a week and I am feeling maudlin. I listened to this show I made years ago and it made me feel better. So before August is really, really over,...
08.15.2022
Leland is Moving On
Leland is my neighbor and for the last seven years, we’ve been getting together in the spring to talk about his year, and things like God and space and pork shortages. This year Leland graduated from high school and I...
07.27.2022
Makeup for Special Occasion
Tiana and I talk about what she has planned for her 1-year anniversary with her boyfriend.
07.18.2022
The Farm, from THE BIG PONDER
Ira is a story keeper who collects epic tales from his everyday life.

What's Rumble Strip about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Rumble Strip episodes:

Fifty: A Phoenix Moment. REDUX!

Kasey is Figuring it Out

What Class Are You Ashley?

What Class Are You Ashton?

What Class Are You Kathleen?

Revisiting Isaac

What Class Are You Ethan?

What Class Are You Mike?

What Class Are You John?

What Class Are You? A Conversation with Garret Keizer

What Class Are You Kytreana?

What Class Are You Kate?

What Class Are You Irfan?

What Class Are You Isaac?

What Class Are You Susan?

Makeup For Special Occasion Valentines Day Redux!

A 100 Year Flood

Little League Playoffs

East Hill Tree Farm Please Buy Their Trees

Forrest and I Sit in the Truck and Talk About Pain

John Rodgers Weed Farmer

Ode to Village Life

Taylor Swift Music for the End

Susan on the Train Tracks

Forrest Foster Lays Karen to Rest

The Homesteading Game

The Civic Standard in the 100 Year Flood

The Civic Standard

Let's Talk about Guns

Nightwalking 1, from Constellation Prize

What Class are You?

Mary Lake Sheep Slaughterer

It’s Town Meeting Again.

It's Town Meeting Again

Winter's Bear

Winter’s Bear

Speaking Whale

Police Log: The Fanny Pack Edition

Fishing with Jay

Nature’s Top Deck, with Forrest Foster

Nature's Top Deck, with Forrest Foster

Nick Paley and a Shell with Shoes

Nick Paley and a Very Small Shell

An American Life

Armand’s Garden

Armand's Garden

The Neighborhood

Leland is Moving On

Makeup for Special Occasion

The Farm, from THE BIG PONDER