Today is the reddest of red-letter days here at Hub & Spoke! Our member show Rumble Strip, created by Vermont producer Erica Heilman, has been nominated for a Peabody Award, the nation’s most prestigious broadcast media prize. The show is a contender in the Podcast/Radio category in recognition of Erica’s devastating, uplifting 2021 episode “Finn and the Bell.”
Almost simultaneously today, Erica’s 2021 episode “Town Meeting” was rebroadcast by the chart-topping podcast 99% Invisible, in an episode that also features an extended conversation between Erica and 99% Invisible founder and host Roman Mars. At the top of the show Mars calls Rumble Strip a “beautiful unique jewel of a podcast.” He continues: “[Erica’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 everything I liked about radio when I started in radio. It’s sound-rich, it’s meaningful, it’s transportive. It’s essentially about life in Vermont but it’s kind of more about life in general.”
“The story isn’t about suicide, it’s about who he was as a person and how the small community around him staggered forward.”—Roman Mars
In a personal aside at the close of the 99% Invisible episode, Mars goes on to recommend “Finn and the Bell” as a good starter episode for listeners new to Rumble Strip. “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,” Mars says. “I think it’s probably in contention for the best audio documentary I’ve ever heard.”
The Peabody jurors apparently agreed. “Finn and the Bell,” which Erica spent more than a year producing and researching, features deep and often emotional encounters with Finn Rooney’s friends and family in the small town of Hardwick, VT. It also follows a project Finn catalyzed to put a historic school bell back into service as a kind of beacon for the community. In this fashion, rather than dwelling on Finn’s death, the piece celebrates his legacy.
Renowned radio producer and instructor Rob Rosenthal interviewed Erica about the making of “Finn and the Bell” for a recent episode of his craft-focused podcast HowSound from Transom and PRX. “I think ‘Finn and the Bell’ is a kind of audio bonfire,” Rosenthal said on the show. “It gathers the voices of the people in the town along with listeners to the podcast, and we all find ourselves staring into the flames, mesmerized. It’s easily one of the best stories Erica has made.”
“Finn and the Bell” was nominated alongside a stellar list of audio works from major studios and networks such as “Mississippi Goddam: The Ballad of Billey Joe” from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX; “The Lazarus Heist” from the BBC; “Throughline” from NPR; the second season of “This Land” from Crooked Media; “The Improvement Association” from Serial Productions and The New York Times; and “S***hole Country” from Radiotopia Presents and PRX. Erica is the only independent producer named in the Podcast/Radio category by the award’s 19 jurors, who sifted through 1,200 entries to pick this year’s nominees.
“I am deeply honored to be on this list with so many gorgeous makers of things,” Heilman said today on Twitter. “As an independent producer I did not believe this was even possible.”
The Peabody Awards are based at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. Winners of the 82nd annual Peabody Awards will be announced June 6-9 in videos shared on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and the Peabody Awards website.