99% Invisible - 486- Rumble Strip

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

Every year in the spring, small towns throughout New England host their annual town meeting. Town meetings take place in high school gyms or town halls, and anyone can come. In fact, in Vermont, Town Meeting Day is a public holiday. Everyone gets the day off work to make sure they have the chance to participate. It’s a moment when everyone who lives there can come together to talk out the issues facing the town and decide how they want to spend their money.Radio producer Erica Heilman lives in Vermont and is the host of a  jewel of a podcast called Rumble Strip. It’s ostensibly all about life in Vermont, but it may just also be about life in general.

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Every year in the spring, small towns throughout New England host their annual town meeting. Town meetings take place in high school gyms or town halls, and anyone can come. In fact, in Vermont, town meeting day is a public holiday. Everyone gets the day off work to make sure they have the chance to participate. It's a moment when everyone who lives there can come together and talk out the issues facing the town and decide how they want to spend their money. My parents used to drag me to town meeting. I mean, it's a remarkable institution.

Eric Cahillman is a radio producer who lives in Vermont. She's been going to town meetings since she was a kid. And so I would go and everybody looks terrible because it's at the time of year is a radio producer who lives in Vermont, she's been going to town meetings since she was a kid. And so I would go and everybody looks terrible because it's at the time of year when everybody's been inside. Like they're smeared with salt and stuff and they look awful. But you know, people in a town become legislators for a day.

Erica is loathed to romanticize life in Vermont but she gets pretty romantic about town meeting. I am moved every time, every year I am moved by town meeting because every single person in that room has something to bring that is unique to them. And we may not need it that year, right? But it could be that we do, and they stand up, and they say they say their piece,

and we say, oh my God, didn't know that, right? So everyone is deeply equal in that room. It's not always easy. There are disagreements. But Erica says people learn to disagree civilly, because in a small town, you have to rely on one another. A lot of these small towns depend on volunteers to function, And town meeting is the place where those roles get decided. Somebody's got to do the Cemetery Commission, right?

And, you know, somebody's got to be on the zoning board or whatever. So everybody does a lot of boring, slow work to keep things going. And boring democracy and boring, slow democracy is actually the fastest, most effective democracy. That was a little historic, but I am a lover of town meeting. Erica is the host of a beautiful, unique jewel of a podcast. She's been making it for a long time, but I heard it for the first time pretty recently, and I was blown away. It reminded me of all the things I liked about radio

when I started in radio. It's sound rich, it's meaningful, it's transportive. It's ostensibly about life and Vermont, but it's kind of more about life in general. It's called Rumble Strip. So a Rumble Strip is one of those things on the side of the road that wakes you up when you're about to have a major car accident.

You know, it's essentially slow down and listen is the idea. So it's a very, you know, clean, clear message. It's a little bit trite if you actually spell it out like I just did. The stories that she tells are anything but trite. And the story we have for you today is all about town meeting.

A Vermont tradition that anyone anywhere interested in how government functions can learn from. It was produced in 2021 for Rumble Strip. Here's Erica Heilmann. This is Rumble Strip, chapter one, Vernon Vermont town meeting. What to do about trash. Please state your name, Jeff Kosis.

Some of us in this town already have a dumpster. so we don't have to walk out with those puny bags They don't hold anything. They're darn expensive and I don't feel like having to pay twice because in Frank when he go to Triple T truck and he tell you the recycling Just need to go away. We don't need about any to pay twice for my rubbish. So thank you Gerald recognize Mr. Gilligan. Patrick Gilligan, I believe the pay-as-you-throw program is a great benefit to the town of Vernon.

Nor Mallor is my grandfather, I work at Triple T. He gave the town of Vernon a very good rate to do this. And I hope we all vote yes on this. Further discussion on the motion? The gentleman walking up to the microphone. I've heard a lot of people mention about how cheap pay as you throw is and I'm sure for our older families in town it may be but as a father of a family of three kids and a wife once you have a handful of

diopries on those bags they break as you go down the driveway. This is a recording from town meeting in Vernon Vermont about trash removal and what the residents want to do about it, and it's not over. It goes on for another 20 minutes or so. Between the diapers for the children and the diapers for the elderly and all the little other pads in between,

those things are recyclable and can be put in the cow bin. Town meeting is not glamorous. Sometimes it's boring. We sit on hard chairs. We talk about things like trash removal. But it is also the most civilized and surprising social gathering of the year. Every year. In most of New England, town citizens become legislators for one day a year.

They vote on issues that affect them directly, road conditions and property taxes and zoning laws, and sometimes they talk about more global concerns like immigration and climate change and what they can do about these things on a town level. It's not perfect. A lot of local power has eroded and is in the hands of the state and the federal government now. But every item that is on the agenda is voted on publicly and in person by town residents. It's one of the last examples of direct face-to-face democracy, and this century's long practice of towns doing the slow and hard work of disagreeing and arguing and compromising on how to govern themselves, this has a profound impact on a place and what it means to be from a place.

The problem is we're not selling enough bags. In Vermont, town meeting is the first Tuesday in March. Everyone looks pretty bad after a long winter. Everyone's coat is covered in road salt. A lot of people seem to be sick of their spouses. Some people bring their knitting. They sit on bleachers in the school gym or in the town hall. And the select board, which are elected towns people,

they're sort of like the town's executive branch. They're usually sitting behind a table at the front of the room, and then there's the moderator who runs the meeting, or runs it as soon as the people of the town vote to select them, sometimes for the 50th year in a row. We're going to discussion on the article. Please state your name.

Most of us won't have town meeting this year because of COVID. Most towns will vote by ballot instead or Australian ballot as we call it here. So I figured this would be the year to make this show, to remember what we're missing. And even though this is a show about where I live, which is maybe not where you live, we're all living through a time of awful division, terrible public discourse. There aren't a lot of opportunities anymore to disagree civilly in public, and maybe there should be.

I talked with town meeting moderators from all over Vermont about town meeting culture and what it's like to moderate these meetings. Here is some of what they said. My role is to ensure that the meeting remains the people's meeting. This is Kelly Green, defense attorney, and Randolph-town moderator. It's my job to ensure that the town's people get to transact the business that they want to transact. So this process recognizes that it is the people who run the town. We hold the power to get things done and do things. The people in the government are our servants. We direct the select board and the town to do our bidding.

It's unbelievable if you think about it. I mean, I don't know that people really understand that they have this authority and power. I'm not sure everybody understands it. You are literally legislating from the floor. It's beautiful. Most for munchers understand that government is a we, not a they. This is Susan Clark, author and middle-sex town moderator.

It's a thing that we do together, or if we don't, it's by choice, because we're definitely invited. And somebody's always going to call you and ask you to be on some darn committee. I know. If you're not on one, it's because you've avoided them. And that's what it means. I think it's gonna make us less likely to want to storm the Capitol if we understand that we all are part of what makes the democracy tick. Good morning. It being 9 a.m. on the 3rd of March 2020 in the town of Richmond, Vermont, I call this 225th annual town meeting to order.

This is Stephen McGill, ski patrol, beer brewer, and more town town manager, and we went to high school together. Is there a story related to how you became moderator? Did you just, it seems like all the people have talked to you, they kind of back into it. Oh no, no, I fronted into it. I'm probably one of the only people in the state

that's ever actually run against an incumbent moderator and one. What was your rationale for running against this incumbent? The people in town were ready for somebody different. It was a challenging decision because the guy who was the incumbent is a really good guy. And he's still active in town politics. He's an old dairy farmer, and people were just ready for somebody different, and they asked if I would be willing to run, and they asked the right person, because I think it's fun. But about three years after that, we got, it was a particularly challenging meeting, lots of interesting questions, and that's what makes it fun, lots of good back and forth and amendments.

At the end of the meeting when he gets to other business, the guy who had formerly been the moderator raised his hand, and I called on him, and he, from the back of the room, said, I just want to thank the moderator for doing a really good job today. He goes, I know that this is a really hard thing to do. And he's done a splendid job, and I just really want to thank him. It was a blessing from the previous moderator for what I have to do now. So it was a great moment. I often actually don't know what anyone's talking about.

I really have no idea what the capital budget fund is about. I do not understand any of it. People could be speaking Greek. But what I do know how to do, what I am good at, is empathizing with the person speaking. And because I don't really know all the ins and outs of all the stuff that goes on in town, I have to listen carefully to them and understand what they're saying. And, you know, if, if necessary, help that person get their thought

out or use the rules to take some action, whatever. Some people are really excellent speakers. Some people are not. Some people are terrified. Some people talk too much. But it seems like, as a body, the people have room for it all. This is Paul Doughton, Dairy Farmer and Barnard Town moderator. In my management, so called of the town meeting, I really don't have total control. I just try to keep it within the railings, I guess, of what needs to be. And one of the things I point out is that everybody addresses their comments to the moderator, and then the moderator will ask the question, so there aren't two people that are arguing across the room, which can be and has been sometimes a problem because the motions get in the way.

And I try to make sure emotions are set aside. Usually with success, but not always. It frequently will happen that somebody will talk at a turn just a General reminder, you know, hey Joe has the floor right now that works great Yeah, you're snickering. No, I was like it's like so easy. It's so easy But you just have to be there and be ready and not let it get out of hand in a minute It starts to happen. You got to say No, you don't have the floor. I don't care if you're agreeing or disagreeing or what your, what your, doesn't matter what

you're saying. You do not have the floor. That's the important thing, okay? I've only once had to really use my stern voice. And I'm not really a stern person, so it kind of, I have to make it up. But we had somebody that tried, well, he, somebody who had the floor, and well, he had the floor, somebody else raised their hand, and he turned and said, put your hand down, I'm talking. And that's the only time I ever used my gavel. And I said, you are not in charge of the meeting, this is my meeting, and anybody who wants to put their hand up is allowed to put their hand up. Is that your stern voice?

That, no. That is not my stern voice. You can't do your stern voice, just so you can hear it. What are we... I'm gonna wait just a second. What's going on? It's no mobile. It's no mobile, What's going on? It's no more bills. Snow more bills, come on by. What's going on? Snow more bills, come on by. This is what you get when you do an interview in the garage.

This is Bobby Star, X-Truck Driver, Vermont Legislator and Troy Town moderator for 50 years. I think it's the moderator's job to make people feel comfortable enough so they don't give a hoot if they say it if the words come out wrong We'll get it figured out just say him and You know you have all types of people that show up you go from the poorest person in town or the least educated professors and doctors. And a lot of times that person with the least amount of education makes more sense than the professor made. So you know, it doesn't matter who you are or what you are.

The important thing is to participate. This is John McLeary, political policy advisor, and Kirbytown moderator for 55 years. Everybody's got something to contribute that they know that most people don't. And it may not be something that comes up in which case they take it with them and leave the room at the end of the meeting.

But sometimes people got something to say, that it says, well, I happen to work in home care for 27 years and I can tell you what really happens with the state agencies and the hospital and so on. And that's one of the great things about town meeting is that it reassures the people who come here that where they have something to say and they're not just blowing hot air, people are grateful to have that input. When you stand up to make your speech here, you're not petitioning a higher power to do your what you're not going to hearing.

Many of the hearings the legislature has are, I hate to say shams, but they're pro forma exercises which have very little impact on the actual legislators. But here you have a right to be here, you have a right to be heard, your voice is good as anybody's voice, and although you may not be on the winning side every time, you know that you're exercising, you're right to democratic self-government and have and can make a difference. How did the Bolton respond last night? My understanding is they offered $275. The report that we got from the Bolton Townsler QR correct.

So I think it's a little disproportionate here. This number is just, I don't understand how it can be justified. Volunteerism, I've done my share, I'm still doing it. I don't see where we need to have it turned over to the taxpayers. I think raise your money, you're getting enough now. That's my opinion. I think that's just too much, too much. Thank you.

If you have a real disagreement with somebody, you don't have to be disagreeable. You can agree to disagree and move on. Because in a day or two, you may come upon that person at the store, at the post office, or someplace, and you have to come to a time of reckoning that we cannot continue to be is vile to one another as the internet and that whatever the other media is that people can just spout off and not have to worry about the repercussions. This is Gus Sealig, Executive Director of Vermont Housing and Calis Town moderator. The other thing that is special about it is it is a way to get to know people that are

outside of your normal social circle. everything that is special about it is it is a way to get to know people that are outside of your normal social circle. See people and learn from people and hear people that may not be part of the group that they would usually hang around with. And in an age where everybody's going to their own television station, that just reinforces what you already think, the opportunity to go someplace and have people with whom you disagree, speak to you, is I think something that's still worth investing in.

I think there was an article warned on whether Vermont should pay livable wages. And one person got up and said, if I have to pay people, I can't remember what the number was this much an hour, then I'm going to have to raise my prices and you folks won't be able to afford my services. And the next person got up and said,

and if the people you pay don't make enough and they're on food stamps, and they need heating assistance, I've got to pay for that. So within three minutes, we had the whole debate about livable wages and we didn't resolve that that day, but again, it was a great opportunity for people to have to listen to each other and hear from each other about what was important to them. There is a civilizing aspect of town meeting. You're both comfortable, largely comfortable.

It's the same people, it's your town, you're largely comfortable, you're knitting, you know, like you've had a donut, you're comfortable. You know these people, you know these people well. So you're comfortable, but it's also public and there is some formality to it People feel safe to say what's on their mind in their own way of saying things Sometimes it gets heated Sometimes it's sad, sometimes it's funny

There is this beautiful balance that happens, right? It's not sanitary. It's not boring. It's not sanitary. It's not, you know, it's real. It's authentic. But it's always civil. I am never more nervous speaking publicly than I am at town meeting. Why? Why is... Why are the stakes so high when I stand up at town meeting to say something? That's so true. You can't go home afterwards. You already are home. And so here you are being yourself. It's high, high, high stakes. On the other hand, it should be the lowest of stakes because these are your neighbors who've got your back. It's not that we necessarily are going to love each other at town meeting. But we do want to succeed. The worst thing that can happen at a meeting, and it's very rare, is that we come out without

an answer. That's a super easy thing to happen without box voting. Let's just vote no. Uhhh, you know, we'll tell them, well then you don't have a budget. The thing about meetings is that you just have to stay until you find it, until you work to get it. We're not, we're not gonna, you know, completely agree with each other, but to be able to understand what are the points that we can move forward together on? What's the, in the then diagram of ideas,

where's the overlap? If you lose a town meeting, what kind of conversations do not happen? Well, what happens is you don't have any discussion. You do everything by Australian ballot. How do you alter? How do you discuss like your budget, or the road budget,

or the fire budget, or this school budget. It's all you're gonna do is mark an ax on a paper at your leisure and put it in a little box, but you're never gonna be able to discuss the real issue while it too much, is it too little. You miss that whole debate. It serves no purpose. Australian balloting ought to be outlawed as far as I'm concerned.

People will say sometimes that it's inefficient. It takes long sometimes to talk through the answers. They'll say, wouldn't it just be so much more efficient to just have a ballot and vote yes or no? And not only efficient, by the way, but more people will vote if you ask them to vote, then if you ask them to come to a meeting. So, isn't that better? That's more democracy. But every year it happens that people rely on the meeting to inform their vote. I remember the year when we talked about whether we were going to switch to a sterling ballot or not, and I

went into that meeting and asked one of my neighbors, you know, how are you going to vote? And he said, yeah, I'm not sure. I'm going to listen to the debate and decide, just laughed and I said, I think there's your answer, my friend. You know, right now, the old Max house, right there, like Douglass Old Garage here. Okay, every time we flood that, it builds the basement of the water now. I talked to Pat Mail, where Pat Mail grew up.

He said, that was not them. He said, our house was always full of water. I just, you know, we turn around and build that road up now. You think about it. Something else has come pay for it. We said our house was all water. We turned around to build that road up now. You'd think about it. Something else has gone painful. That's why we're looking.

I remember a town meeting where our town, a child had gone missing in our town. And the FBI came to town to investigate immediately. And had gone to the library. They had a tip and wanted to seize and search the library's public computers. In the librarians told the FBI that they needed to get a warrant. The town was grief-stricken and was enraged that the library

was in danger of the public. The town was grief-stricken and was enraged that the library would, at a time like that, demand that the FBI get a warrant? Like everyone in town was like, are you kidding me? A child is missing? And what? This town meeting afterwards afterwards the library budget of course is on is up for discussion as it is every year and the people were still really angry with the library but a patron and I think trustee of the library again a volunteer, someone living in

town, elderly woman stood up and gave the most passionate defense of the fourth amendment and civil liberties to the people on the floor that I have ever witnessed. And, you know, I'm a criminal defense attorney. I spend all day trying to make speeches about the Fourth Amendment. And this woman who also had been, you know, moved with grief about this crime

could also give this smart, compassionate speech where people applauded afterwards. She really persuaded people to understand why at that moment was when our civil liberties did matter. Everyone was sad, but was moved by her speech. Did the library budget pass? The library budget passed. I'm always surprised.

And in awe, and bold over by a neighbor who shines. The second announcement is, I'm on a committee of people called Hope and Action that has been putting on dinners and entertainment here at the Town Hall. If you missed karaoke this past year, you missed a great performance. I don't think people understand how much local volunteerism is involved in town meeting.

And the whole governmental process of towns, I mean, take, for instance, the auditors, townspeople are auditors, not the official audit firm that does the books. The auditors are the ones that put together the town report. And that takes a lot of effort. They aren't qualified as auditors. Their profession might be, I'm not sure what it is, but two of them, I know, are retired

right now that are on there because I had an email from one of them the other night asking if he could leave town reports here in our summer shed where we sell corn. But people just surface and do whatever they need to do. Some of these committees that don't seem, you don't think are real important or high level, sometimes turn out to be much more than that. I mean, the Seminary Commissioners, two of them have been working on this cemetery for my maternal grandfather's buried just behind the farm here, straightening up stones and bringing all that type stuff. That's one example of how local people get involved.

Again and again, we're asked to be involved in small decisions over years, over decades, over literally centuries. What changes is the culture. We actually have a town meeting culture, and even if you have never attended a town meeting, maybe you live in a city. We have expectations in Vermont. Of civility, we have expectations. Of inclusion, we expect to be asked about things before decisions come down.

We have democratic expectations in Vermont that other places might not have. That I think many other places do not have. Because of a town meeting culture that we have created over centuries. When we talk about town meeting day, we're not just talking about one day. Town meeting day, we're not just talking about one day. Town meeting day is a culture. So in every town in Vermont, the people have to be involved in town affairs. Literally, the people run the town in every town, almost every town. To get the work of town done, whether it's managing the lawn mowing at the town cemetery or running recreational programs or figuring out the budget, it takes hundreds, thousands

of volunteer hours. So everybody has to pitch in. And we don't all agree at all on everything or even anything, but as a result of having a town where everyone has to participate or nothing gets done, we're very interdependent. So it's a chicken and egg question like, I don't know if like Vermonters were like this and then we invented town meeting or if town meeting made us like this. But we live in our community, we are very interdependent. If there's a problem, if there's a crisis, people have each other's phone numbers already.

People have each other's email addresses for those of us with email. And you know who to call with your problem or your offer of assistance. Sometimes when people hear the term social capital, they think it means social like, oh, we have lots of potlucks, you know, and we think that if we just socialize together, then we'll have rich social capital. But a big part of building that, it means earned.

It's earned. It's something that we put into our social capital bank account and you don't just do it through picnics. You do it through the hard work of disagreeing with each other and then working to find the way to move forward together anyway. It's what makes us a society, what's what makes us a community is investing in the hard work of self-governance so that when the hard times come, you know, something really difficult is going on in our town, how are we going to pay for flood damage? We have invested over the years in that social capital so that we are ready when the hard times come for the hard work of self-governance, where we have to sit through a long meeting and hear different points of view

and then find the way forward together. capitol feels like it has nothing to do with me whatsoever. I know that's not true. I know that that's not true. I'm a lawyer, so I know that what happens in Washington has effects here. But for some reason, there is a disconnect between what happens on those in my life. My town is really my reality. Day in and day out. I guess I'm kind of a unique individual because my wife and I, we use one green bag every three months. And a big part of that is we don't throw garbage in our trash can.

We put that in a bag, we keep it in the freezer, and then once a week I take it down to the cow. I can put 3, 13 gallon trash bags in one bag. That was town meeting. If you want to see some pictures of town meeting, you can visit my website rumblestripvermont.com. Also, Middlesex Town moderator Susan Clark co-authored a book called Slow Democracy Rediscovering Community and Bringing Decision-Making Back Home. It's about all of the things that they talked about here and a lot more and it's really good. I'll put a link to it on the website also. If you want to make a comment on the

show, I would love to hear it. Just go to the show page and at the bottom of the show page you'll see a comment box. If you want to make a donation to the show, that would also be great. It puts gas in my car. And thank you also to all of the people who already make and have made donations. I want to thank Tobin, Kelly, and Amelia for their help on this show. And thanks to Callis' musician and also furniture maker Brian Clark for his music. I have links to his music and his furniture on my website. Thank you to Angela for digging into her taped bin and thanks to Brattleboro Community Television and Mount Mansfield Community Television

for their recordings of town meeting. And also all the brave people who get up and talk in those meetings. It's weirdly intimidating. Rumble Strip is a proud member of Hobben's Spoke, a collective of excellent and independent and wicked smart podcasters from all over the country. You can find them at hubspokeaudio.org. This is Rumble Strip, America Hyalman. Thanks a lot for listening. Coming up after the break, Erica and I talk about how she makes

her show. And she tricks me into talking a little bit about how we make ours. So tell me a little bit about the origin story of Rumble Strip. Well, it started out as Rumble Strip for a month, but it's funny when you make a show anywhere, but New York and LA and Seattle and Toronto, if you make a show in Topeka, people kind of expect that your show is about Topeka.

It's weird. It's like if you don't live in a major city, then if you live in a small place, it must be that you're making a show about that place. I don't get it. But that's kind of why I dropped the Vermont. It might mean my show features almost exclusively people who live here, but really it's a selfish venture. I mean, I think I do

the show to figure out how to get through my day better. And so every single person that you talk to knows something that if you knew it, you could get through your day better. I mean, I think I believe that, right? So, and I think that that's, you know, not just about for I think somebody in Ohio might find something edifying in the show, you know, even though the person lives in Hardwick, you know, so it's not really about Vermont, but at Varrett, you get you do feel Vermont in it pretty strongly. Well, I feel like I do. And it's one of the things I actually love about it

that it's deeply local and I think that it's intimate because of your association with the place and you wanting to talk to people and having access to people that it is rooted in a community. But it absolutely does speak to a wider audience. I mean, it's funny that you bristle at the idea of, it being located in like, not New York and not LA.

Maybe that's what I should have called my show. I should have called it not New York and not LA. That would have been a great name. It would tell me a little bit about this association with RumbleStrip and Vermont and like, is this a show that could be made anywhere? Like, what is that association? Like, is it just where you are

and therefore that's where your stories are or something else? I think it's that. I think, I mean, or, I mean, I don't know because I think that part of the reason for the show is this very, very deep love hate relationship with where I live. You know, it's like, I've never been married,

but I imagine that you hate your spouse on some level. Or it's that, you know, I mean, you see their blind spots, right? And you sort of gently look away and indicate it's sort of over there, my friend, right? But I think that I didn't hear my state on the radio. I didn't get the feeling that the dark parts were ever being heard or the confusing or banal parts of love and hate. But I think I'm also compelled to make stuff. And so if I lived in Topeka, I'd probably do this there in the same, you know, in the same way, although it would be trying to figure out what the hell is Topeka. I mean, I guess that's what I'm trying to do here too. That makes sense.

But I am definitely of this place. Yeah. But it really is the strength of the show in a lot of ways is that where it is. Are you someone who I have found that I have hard time talking to people in my normal life? And so I created a job that would force me to talk to people. You're an extroverted introvert. Exactly. That's what I am. I'm an extroverted introvert. And I have never, ever had, including this one, I was just going to be honest. I've never done an interview that I didn't really hope was going to get canceled.

Because I'm so nervous all the time. I mean, if you're knocking on somebody's door and it's a perfect stranger, I'm just praying they're gonna be like, you know, today's not gonna work out. But because it's the scariest thing, it will talk to you're asking a lot of somebody to stick a mic in their face and to have an intimate conversation.

And that's very high stakes. And I'm very not an extrovert, you know? But you ask really intimate questions. I mean, you really get into people's lives. How do you overcome that? Well, I think that you just fall in to someone. And that's the, I mean, I guess in the beginning, you just sweat it out until you get everything set up, right?

But then you fall in. I think I reglassed this too, and I really agree with it, which is I don't think I've ever not fallen in love with the person that I'm interviewing, and you maybe you feel that way too. It's just, you just fall in love with them. You know, nine year olds and 13 year olds, and everything in between. So I think that once the light switch goes on,

I think that when you get to a place in an interview where you've asked a question that you're both kind of stumped by. I feel like you know you're in that third place together, that like its own country. And I don't think there's anything more exciting than that. I couldn't agree more. It's the greatest. It is. It is. And I worry sometimes, I have been worrying lately about feeling as though I'm taking. I don't ever want to feel that I've left an inner. I want somebody to feel more than they felt before.

Oh, totally. Yeah. You want them to leave like, like, they, oh, they got the job. You wanted them to feel like I did it. Exactly. Right. Or that they, that they would have said, oh, my God, I never knew I thought that. But then there are sometimes I feel like I did it. Exactly. Right. Or that they said, oh my god, I never knew I thought that. But then there are sometimes I feel like I've taken and that's very upsetting.

Or I mean, I think I don't feel that way often. I guess I worry sometimes that I could slip there. Yeah, I get that. So your subjects are mainly around your geographic area and Vermont. Where do you picture your listeners as being from? Like how much do you explain about where you are based off your image of who your audience is? That's hard because I know that there are Vermont listeners

who already know the backstory of it. Well, actually though, you know, I mean, Burlington, Vermont is another country from where I live in Vermont. I mean, entirely. I mean, it's their worlds, their worlds away. So they need, they need some context also. But I feel like it's, you can, it's so gestural. If you can just get, I mean, even if you use the person's first and last name, like John Smith told me, like you get at a sense of what the place is very gesturally without having to say, in this area, people know one another, you know, and so and so knows his name, whatever,

you know, I feel like I've gotten better or not, I better not worrying about how much I need to explain about this place. And that always less is more. I mean, I write these long intros that turn into four sentences, which takes an entire day and sometimes too. Yeah. Yeah. We sit in a room and edit basically everything that comes out on the show.

There's like at least seven or eight of us in a room going through a line-by-line and we call it nine NPI rights of sentence. And usually the result of it is just cutting the sentence, almost like a good half the time. You know, we'll like hone in and hone in and hone in. Like, wait, wait, wait, what if we just not say this? Absolutely. Yeah, there's a profound relief like nobody cares. Nobody needs to know that part. You know, eight people, I'm trying to even imagine what that's like. You know, it's really, you know, like I started my show as a single person alone in room. It got more and more and more. And one of the things it does is it sort of gives it a different kind of life where I can inhabit the genius

of others, you know, or just like struggle through it all alone. And it's a different skill, but it's super fun. And it does kind of, it changes it a little bit. Like if I were to listen back to my orderly awful shows, I'm much more likely to make a broad generalization joke because it's just a single point of view and it doesn't get like run through a group of people who go, that's not working for me. We're not liking the jokes so much.

So there's a change in it, but the robustness of the collective genius of all the people I work with, where getting, they're just better at so many other things than I am, makes it so much better. And so yeah, it changes, but you learn how to sort of roll with it in different ways. But I like each, I've liked each phase in different ways. Well, and there's a way in which there's a way in which the, you know, and this is a part of not having eight people in the room, there's a being alone, you know, there is a way in which I, you know, I do worry.

I always have to ask myself, am I romanticizing this place? You know, am I slipping into tropes? Will anyone tell me when I am? Will someone make a bird sound that says, it's time to get off the bus, you know, you're done. I mean, like this farmer I interviewed recently, Forest Foster, he's like, he's from another century, right? And there is, I mean, there is easy to other if I him, right? But what I do trust is I have much less interest

in talking about the past than I do about talking about, like, how do you get through today? Like, what do you, you know, how do you think about this? Like what's going on is really the operating question. And that brings it back to, I think that that steers me away from romanticizing somehow. And again, selfishness, always selfishness. Like what do you know that I want for myself, that I want to have? So that's not making something pretty for other people. It's like, what do I get from knowing you? What have I learned here? And hopefully that is what I focus in or focus on when I make a show. I just, you know, the idea is to invite people into the front seat of other people's lives.

And if you find a thread, even if you really dislike the person, if you find a thread of logic to how they've come to where they are, then you can't dissociate from them somehow. You find yourself in them, even in the people that you most dislike. And I guess that seems like a useful thing to be doing right now. You know, that's the goal. That's a good goal. Well, thank you so much for sharing the story and your podcast with us, Erica. Thank you. You can find RumbleStrip wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you'd like a suggestion of where to start, I recommend listening to the episode called Finn and the Bell. It's about a young man named Finn who killed himself in 2020. But the story isn't about suicide. It's about who he was as a person and how the small community around him staggered forward after such a tragedy. It didn't quite fit the purview of 99PI for us to feature it here, but I think it's probably in contention for the best audio documentary I've ever heard.

It can be a tough listen, especially if you have teenage kids. I actually avoided it for a while, even though it was recommended to me by everyone who works on this show. But once it started playing, I realized that I was in really good hands and it is so rewarding. That episode again is called Finn and the Bell from Rumble Strap.

You should listen. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Emmet Fitzgerald, mixed in tech production by Martín González. Delaney Hall is the executive producer, Kurt Colstead is the digital director. The rest of the team is Vivian Le, Joe Rosenberg, Chris Barupé, Christopher Johnson, Lashemadon, Jason Dalyone, Sophia Klassker, Swanriao, and me Roman Mars. We are part of this Stitcher and Serious

XM podcast family now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building. And beautiful, Uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show

and join discussions about the show on Facebook you can tweet me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI org were on Instagram Instagram and Reddit too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI dot org. I'm sorry. www.cabriss.com