My friend Jesse had a birthday party. I attended but spent the entire time lying down upstairs in the guest room. I asked people who attended the party to send me voice memos about the party. This is a show comprised of these recordings. And whales. Happy birthday Jesse.

People often assume the Joslyn House is a nursing home, probably because a lot of old people live there. But it’s not a nursing home. It’s not assisted living. There’s no anonymous art on the wall. It’s a house. It’s a a place where up to twenty older people live independently together…in a huge, elegant house furnished with their own things. It is a place where you don’t have to worry about cooking, where if you’re lonely at night there‘s someone to talk to, or sit with. In other words, a civilized, safe place where love is evident.

I stopped in to visit with Forrest Foster about his barn project. Here's our conversation.

My friend Ralph Rockwell is a mechanic in Wolcott, Vermont, and he runs a tow truck business. He's been rebuilding old vehicles since he was 15. Now he's 72 and he restores old tractors. I don't know anything about tractors, but I love listening to Ralph talk about them. Each story contains the tractor's history as far back as he can go. This begat this begat that. It's almost Biblical. This summer I sat and talked with Ralph in his shop next to a 1953 Ford Jubilee. Then I tagged along to a tractor pull.

A couple weeks ago my friend Susan Randall came to visit. She’s a private investigator and we’ve been friends for thirty years and every now and then we get together and compare notes on our lives, and on what the hell is going on. Sometimes we talk about her work, sometimes our kids, once we made a show about a dead owl. This has been a very difficult year for Susan. In this conversation, we talk about her health...and the federal government.

My friend Bryan Pfeiffer is a writer and field naturalist in Montpelier, Vermont. And recently he published an article about his discovery of these crazy zombie snails…whose eye stalks have been taken over by these long, wet, pulsing technicolor appendages. They are amazing. So we talked about them.

This is a conversation with Jay Allison about the recent attack on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Recently, Congress passed a rescission bill that eliminates $9 billion in previously allocated funding, including $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which effectively defunds public media, which includes NPR, PBS and member stations around the country. This is a conversation about what that means and what we stand to lose. Jay Allison has been working in and around public radio since it’s beginnings a half century ago. He's been an independent public radio producer, journalist, and teacher since the 1970s. He is the founder of Transom, where I learned to make radio, and 25 years ago he founded WCAI, a public radio station in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Jay's work has won most of the major broadcasting awards, including six Peabodys. He produces The Moth Radio Hour and was the curator of This I Believe on NPR.

No. 10 Pond is where I go swimming in the summer. All kinds of people go there. Kids, grownups, grandparents, mothers and fathers, dogs. But ALWAYS there is a group of ladies....standing thigh deep in the pond, talking together. All over the world since the beginning of time, ladies of a certain age have been standing thigh deep in water together, talking. It’s a scientific fact. So here in my town, for hundreds of years--even before recorded history--pieces of these ladies conversations have been drifting around on the pond. This is a show about No. 10 Pond, and the ladies who stand in it.

This is the last episode in season 6 of What Class are You?, a periodic series I make for Vermont Public. Susan Ritz grew up in a wealthy family in Minnesota. For the past 36 years, she's lived in central Vermont, where she writes books and is an active philanthropist. In this episode of "What class are you?" we talk about the surprising complexities of having more than most.

Today, episode 4 of season SIX of What Class are You?, a periodic series I make for Vermont Public about living in the American class system. In today’s episode, we revisit Kytreana Patrick, who was a guest from the first class series back in 2022. Back then, Kytreana was working as a cashier at Olney’s general store in Orleans, Vermont. Since then, Kytreana’s gotten a job at a factory that manufactures combat helmets. She’s got a small apartment in Newport, and this past January she gave birth to her first child, a daughter, Emberlyn.

Dan Sedon has been working as a criminal defense attorney in Vermont, where he works with poor people and rich people and all the people in between. In this latest episode of What Class are You?, reporter Erica Heilman talks with Dan about what this line of work has taught him about the American class system.

What Class Are You? is a periodic series I make for Vermont Public about our lives in the American class system. Sharon Plumb works for a statewide nonprofit in the outdoor recreation sector. She lives in East Montpelier with her husband and daughter. In this conversation, Sharon talks about the advantages she sees in the lives of people whose parents are able to help their kids financially all the way into adulthood.

Ralph Rockwell lives in Wolcott, Vermont with his wife Carol and about 28 tractors. He runs a towing service part time and sells some of the tractors he restores, but he’s 72 and he’s mostly retired from a long career as a mechanic. In this episode of the occasional series "What Class Are You?" Ralph and I sit next to one of Ralph's tractors and talk about class.

This is the fourth episode of What Now Sounds Like, a periodic series comprised entirely of your recordings from all over the world, in which we try to capture these strange times in audio.

This was the inaugural year of Hardwick State, a weekend long university in Hardwick, Vermont, organized by the Civic Standard, and designed to take place during the awfulest time of the year. People from around Hardwick become professors and students. Classes are free, and everyone’s welcome to teach at Hardwick State. Maybe you teach something you do in your regular job. Maybe it’s just something you’re good at. Maybe it’s something you’re not very good at but you love it and you’re better than most. Here are some highlights from Hardwick State.

Death in Venice is a story Larry Massett produced in the early 80s. Joe Frank narrates, and Larry wrote and performed all the music.

We're raising money to rebuild Forrest Foster's barn. This is a very short story (plea) about it.

Larry Massett was driving up through northern California toward Oregon and ended up spending a little more time at Mt. Shasta than he'd had in mind. Thankfully he had his flashlight in his trunk.

This is the second show for LARRY MASSETT TRIBUTE WEEK. Larry Massett owned two Porsches, and he talked about them all the time. His friend, Joe Frank, in addition to being one of the greatest radio producers of all time, was a BMW guy. They decided to argue about this, and then have a drag race that would decide things.

Larry Massset died last week. He was my mentor and my favorite radio producer. His stories was insane and brilliant and heretical and sublime. I wouldn’t have become a radio producer without his guidance and his stories to inspire me. I’m going to run a series of his shows as a tribute to him. This first show is The Eyes of Sibiu, about a trip to Romania with Romanian-American poet and novelist Andrei Codrescu.