Today we're bringing you an episode of our sister Hub & Spoke show Rumble Strip, from producer Erica Heilman. It's a conversation with Jay Allison about public media—what it's for, why it's important, and what we stand to lose if the anti-intellectual MAGA right succeeds in killing it off. 

Jay is an independent public radio producer who founded WCAI, a public radio station in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, as well as Transom, a resource and school for people learning how to make audio. He produces the Moth Radio Hour, he curated the recurrng feature "This I Believe" on NPR, and his work has won six Peabody awards, the highest awards in broadcasting. (Erica won a Peabody too, so these folks know whereof they speak!)

To me, Jay and Erica's conversation is a beautiful and elegant cri de coeur about public radio’s founding values, and it reminded me why I make audio and why I joined forces with the other folks at Hub & Spoke to try to create more space for indepencent voices in podcasting. At one point Erica asks Jay what’s so “public” about public radio and Jay answers that for him, it was about openness to all citizens who cared—he literally walked into NPR off the street and somebody gave him a recorder, showed him how to work it, and told him to go out and talk to people and bring back their stories. That dedication to public voices and public service persists, perhaps especially at stations in smaller or more remote markets—the same stations that might have to go off the air now that they're losing their federal funding. The big questions now are: How can we keep those stations alive? And what will public media look like after the current storm?

Thank you to Jay, who generously spent some time with me back in 2022 when I was looking for advice on how to raise money for Hub & Spoke, and thank you to Erica for making and sharing this episode. You can hear more Rumble Strip episodes at http://rumblestripvermont.com.