Rumble Strip

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.

This story is co-produced by Larry Massett and Erica Heilman. It first ran in 2015. To read the comments on this story from over the years,click here .

An interview with Erica about the show, by the excellent people at The Third Coast

50 Best Podcasts of 2015, The Atlantic Monthly...#16

Music in this show:

Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten–Arvo Part

Tabula Rasa for 2 violins, strings and prepared piano–Arvo Part

Speigel im Speigel–Arvo Part

Under the Weather Mix–Steve Reich

Clapping Music–Steve Reich



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 long lost shell family. Nick is from Vermont, and he’s working on a new TV series set here, so when he was in town I dragged him to a matinee of Marcel the Shell...the same movie theater where he used to clean the bathrooms. And then afterwards he let me ask him ten million questions about what it’s like to work in the film industry. This show is a bit of both.

More:

• Nick’s website
• News on Nick’s upcoming TV series, Phony, and a picture of him in a cardigan
• Link to Marcel the Shell trailer
• Interview about the making of Marcel, with Nick Paley and Dean Fleischer-Camp
• Broad City Episode Nick directed

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, recorded in a simpler time. Let's play some good D out there.



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. I asked my editor at Vermont Public if I could drive around and ask people, ‘what class are you?’, just to see what would happen. And he said, ‘sure.’ So I did. This is the series that came of that experiment. And even though these conversations took place in rural Vermont, I think they are indicative of what people are thinking and feeling all over the country. And maybe we should all be having these conversations? I don’t know. Here is the series, What Class Are You?

This series was produced for Vermont Public, and I am grateful to them for allowing me to share it with the Rumble Strip audience.

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 How to Speak Whale. It describes the very real possibility that someday, maybe even in my lifetime, we’ll begin to understand the complex language of whales–and all this would imply.

I interviewed Tom for hours and I didn’t want him to stop until he’d told me every last thing he’s learned about whale behavior and every story he could remember. He was polite about it. I don’t know why I felt this insatiable need to hear every story. Maybe it seems that if we could understand whale culture a little bit, everything would make a little more sense? Anyway I recorded Tom for as long as he’d let me.

Links

Tom’s website

How to Speak Whale

Roger Payne’s website

Under The Water, song by Hand Habits and Amelia Meath

Whale photo above is a screengrab from one of Tom’s films