Boston — December 26, 2020 — Rumble Strip, Erica Heilman’s quirky and deeply human running portrait of the people she encounters in her audio reporting in Northern New England and beyond, has been named the top podcast of 2020 by The Atlantic Magazine.
In the magazine’s December 26 article The 50 Best Podcasts of 2020 by Laura Jane Standley and Eric McQuade—former writers for the now defunct and much-missed podcast criticism site The Timbre—Rumble Strip ranked #1. Specifically, Standley and McQuade called out Heilman’s miniseries “Our Show,” an artfully edited collection of audio recordings submitted by listeners during the first depths of the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020.
Standley and McQuade write:
In March, host Erica Heilman asked listeners to submit recordings of their lives in quarantine, and by April 16, she had produced seven episodes of Our Show. People participated from around the world—Tasmania, Spain, Singapore—and from across the U.S., resulting in stunning variety. A child leads a meditation about the beach. A couple choose their walking route by flipping a coin. A man impersonates Elvis singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight.” Heilman creates a collage with them, stitching the various moods and voices together into a sonic quilt that relies on her artistic sensibilities more than theme or topic. “I made a chicken pot pie, and then I ordered a mini trampoline,” someone says. An elderly man decides not to take the bus. Others just say hello. Somehow, Heilman seems to have picked the snippets that will endure. (She’s good at this—just listen to the rest of her catalog,) The result is a poignant soundtrack of 2020, built from one of the hardest months in world history. It came out at just the right moment and remains as heartrending and comforting now as it was then.
Listen to the first episode of Our Show here.
One of Heilman’s more recent projects is Shaking Out the Numb, an experimental podcast produced with the band Sylvan Esso to accompany the release of their new album Free Love.