EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Peabody-winning producer Erica Heilman
Last week, independent podcast Rumble Strip, produced and created by Erica Heilman, won a Peabody Award for the episode "Finn and the Bell." The episode is the story of Finn Rooney, a 17-year-old boy who committed suicide but became a unifying figure to all lives he touched in his hometown of Hardwick, Vermont.
I had the honor of talking to Erica Heilman about her reflections on this episode, the journey to the Peabody, and how the podcast industry can better support independent creators.
Usually, I edit interviews for efficient reading, but I've edited minimally in Erica's case. I believe her experience deserves this space. I hope her words reach you the same way they reached me.
ON CREATING THE EPISODE
Shreya Sharma (SS): What were the challenges you faced in producing this episode?
Erica Heilman (EH): I have a son Finn's age. Was it wise for me to take on a story about Finn's suicide? Probably not. But I have never thought things through in advance. I like proceeding this way. The stories are some kind of extension of my life. One leads to the next.
The Finn story started in a parking lot of the East Hardwick Grange Hall, where I was making a different story. I love it when stories start in Grange parking lots. However, in a lot of places, people love to talk into microphones and imagine a short burst of fame. This is not one of those places. But it was enormously challenging to gain the trust of Finn's community, as it should be. They were deeply reticent about anyone making a story about Finn's death ... and even when I said it was more a story about his life, they were still reticent. It is an inherently reticent place. I did a lot of driving around with people, not talking. I loitered in sawmill yards. I went to baseball games. It was challenging to be patient and let the conversations happen when it was the right time. Tara, Finn's mom, was the reason most people talked with me. She was the fulcrum piece. But of course, the biggest challenge was the edit, figuring out what the story was or wanted to be.
SS: What kept you going through those challenges?
EH: Anxiety and love? At a certain point in the making of something, you know you must finish. For a while, you can imagine that "maybe it wasn't meant to be." You can do that nonsense. But at a certain point, you have asked enough questions, commandeered enough of people's time and energy and emotion, that you must finish. Which is not to say that there weren't times I wished I could enter the witness protection program. About three days into the edit, which consisted of staring at the wall, I was wondering how I might disappear. But love and curiosity are, in the end, what helped me through.
Curiosity is the antidote to fear. Love is the antidote to everything. I loved these people, and it was essential that I do justice to their story. After years of doing this, I know to expect that I will feel certain I will fail or that I will not be able to finish. And over many years of doing this, I've learned that I am wrong. If I just bury myself in the tape and stay down in the tape until I forget that I'm anxious, then the tape, the voices and sounds in the tape, lead to some kind of clarity and then shape. It's the closest thing to religion that I have ... the ability to start and finish, start and finish, even when it seems impossible. To finish is an act of faith. It's like magic.
SS: What would you say was your biggest learning from this experience?
EH: I learned a lot about love — how simple and universal it is — a frequency that we sometimes hear. You can hear it at the grocery store in an exchange with the checkout person. You can see it in a pot of soup a stranger left on your front step. You can hear it in the conversation about chickens at the bell ceremony in the Finn story.
We're good at love. It's our nature. We want to find reasons to care about each other. It is funny that we ignore this simple fact about ourselves so much of the time. Finding reasons to stand around in a parking lot with strangers is important. It is good to find excuses to do more of that. To cultivate the "in-between-the-important" parts of our lives.
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