JAM Podcasts & Audiobooks

Noah chats with actor Matthew Schofield to dive into the film that inspired this show, Robert Altman's 1971 anti-western McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and attempt to break down what makes the film so hauntingly beautiful.

Cedar swindles Noah into watching the ultra low-budget outsider film So Long Suburbia that prompts bittersweet reflections on the highs and lows of 2010s pop culture.

Description: Noah sits down with old friend Joshua Rosen to discuss the Coen Brothers' 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis and how its wintry depiction of artistic struggles resonate now as creatives in a money-driven world. What makes a movie special to someone? Why do they feel compelled to revisit it time and time again? Is it the technical aspects, the acting, the overall message, a mix of ever...

Premiere Episode: Hiring a lawyer is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in a divorce or family case. This episode covers how to choose the right attorney, what to ask, common mistakes people make, and the warning signs that should make you pause. Practical, clear, and designed to save you time, money, and stress. Divorce Coaching with Margot is a practical, compassionate podcast for a...

S2 Episode 4: Fran Miller–Recorded December1, 2025 Photo: courtesy Fran Miller Fran moved up to Vermont from New York City in the fall of 2019 to work at the Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems. Outside her professional work she is active in pro-Palestinian causes including as a member ofJewish Voice for Peace (JVP). In this interview, she discusses her turnaround from see...

Ep Bio: Noah Mauchly sits down with Media Maker Hayden Young to discuss his upbringing in the Upper Valley watching age-inappropriate movies and what led him to become the filmmaker he is today. Join the JAM team as they discuss all things JAM and what's happening in the Upper Valley. With a rotating cast of guests to keep you on your toes, and local legends and legends in the making sitting...

S2 Episode 3: Sandra Gartner – Recorded November 20, 2025    Photo: Sandy with book, by Liora Among many roles that she plays, Sandra Gartner has been co-producer of Vermont Actors’ Repertory Theatre for 20 years, an actor with the company, and is co-producer with filmmaker Nora Jacobson on her latest project. Sandra also writes for Rutland Magazine and other publications. Not surprisingly, she ha...

The chokehold has been lifted. America breathes again! I mean we narrowly avoided complete, self-inflicted disaster. After harrowing days of the most long-drawn-out government shutdown in U.S. history—a marathon of political brinkmanship—Congress somehow reached a makeshift deal to get off the people's back. Federal workers will return to their offices, airports will return to normal, and the...

S2 Episode 2: Irit Librot–Recorded November 12,2025 Courtesy Photo: Irit. Irit Librot takes us through her early years in Haifa immediately following the creation of the State and the subsequent move to the US where “the streets are paved with gold” (spoiler: didn’t turn out that way). We get a strong and inspiring picture of Irit’s mother, Rachel Dziecholska Rotkovitch,who lived, studied, and wor...

Hi! I’m happy to be back with a second season of OJT. Here, in Episode 0, I have a few words about the "why”of the podcast and some thoughts on this season in the short S2 E0 audio. And let me tease Episode 1–we start out with a great conversation with VT Senator Kesha Ram-Hinsdale. I’ve been asked a few times why I’m doing this podcast and I'd be glad to tell you. I felt from the beginn...

S2: Episode 1: Kesha Ram-Hinsdale– Recorded November 7, 2025 Courtesy Photo: Kesha and baby, VT Statehouse. Kesha Ram-Hinsdale, as we establish at the outset, is our Vermont Senate Majority Leader, and yet here, she is not talking state politics–she’s just an ordinary Jew. Her story, as a self-proclaimed HinJew, is awash with streams of migration and displacement on both sides of her family. Looki...

Episode 5 Description : On Canal Street in Brattleboro are the remains of one of Vermont’s most influential companies. In the 19th and early 20th century people across the country—and the world—played music on reed organs made right here in the Green Mountain state. What is a reed organ? And why were they so popular in a bygone era? Dr. Dennis Waring recounts the story. Series Description : Roadsi...

Episode 6: Roberta Berner – Recorded September 3, 2025  Courtesy Photo: Roberta Berner, with her husband, Rich Abel Roberta has accomplished so much, one would think she lived three lives rather than lived in three places: the deep South, Midwest, and for 27+ years, here in the Upper Valley. She didn’t mention, but I will, that she was awarded a Shem Tov award this year from the NH Jewish Federati...

Episode 5: Ilsa Pinkson-Burke & Briane Pinkson  – Recorded August 6, 2025  Courtesy Photo: Briane on the left, Ilsa on the right Ilsa Pinkson-Burke and Briane Pinkson grew up going to “shula”, a Cooperative Jewish Children’s School teaching Jewish history, ethics, art, music, and politics – everything except Hebrew, liturgy, or religion. The school was in the tradition of their parents and gra...

Episode 4: Ben Thresher's Mill:  A few miles off the interstate, on the banks of the Stevens river in Barnet, Vermont is a bright yellow mill. The rooms are crammed full of old tools, machines, parts, and pieces of a bygone age. One man, Ben Thresher, kept the mill going into the 1990s. Stan Crane, and a team of volunteers, helps to keep this place alive today. Series Description : Roadside V...

Recorded August 12, 2025  Photo: by LA Being a Jew is central to Gene’s identity. He seeks to be a better Jew as a way to be a better person, practices kyudo, goes to sabbath services as a way of meditation, and attends to the little things. In this interview, he contrasts what was worth dying for prior to the nation state, and what is so valued today. Gene is also one of the organizers of the Hea...

Listen in to the inaugural episode of Pass the Torch featuring a special introductory interview with co-host Sen. White digging into Sen. McCormack’s legislative legacy. Highlights include advice on when to stay in the fight and when to pass the torch, and music played by Dick. A podcast co-hosted by Windsor County Vermont Senator Becca White and Senator Emeritus Dick McCormack. Listen in for stor...

Episode 3: Joy Gaine – Recorded July 29, 2025  Photo: Courtesy Joy Gaine Joy defines herself as a teacher, musician, and mother. Her sense of herself as a Jew rose post October 7th with questions on whether being Jewish makes her think differently about the conflict than her progressive friends? And why should that be true? Isn’t it enough to be pro-peace with good will for all who believe in huma...

Daniel Intraub – I knew Daniel solely through a series of graphics projects, both professional and protest-related, that he supported at Gnomon Copy in Hanover, NH. It was the latter type of project that got us talking about the conflict in Gaza where he mentioned that he was Jewish and we quickly fell into a discussion that led straight to this episode of the podcast. Recorded July 19, 2025  Phot...

In the early 20th century one Vermonter found fame as a traveling musician, humorist, and recording artist. Charles Ross Taggart was at the height of his career in the early 1920s, touring the country and talking so much about Vermont he earned himself a nickname: the Man from Vermont. Across the country he shared his stories, music, and dialect with his fellow Americans, and helped preserve disap...

Episode 0: To geo-locate me, Jewishly, I grew up in a WASPy suburb of Chicago, touched down in Pittsburgh for a couple years, then, at age 17, fled this country, my family, and lived in Israel for four and a half years, mostly in Jerusalem with the last year living in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, returning in December, 1972. These years colored my experience of Israel, and all who live...

Episode 1: Susan Russo Susan is a émigré, coming to Claremont in 1975 from Brooklyn where being Jewish was an effortless part of life, ethics, culture, and family politics. Finding herself and raising her children in a profoundly non-Jewish Upper Valley, her identity has been expressed in friendships, noodle puddings, and the rugelach she bakes and gives out at Christmas time. Her exposure to Isra...

Season 1 wraps up by sweating it out (for good!) with Positive Tracks' Founder and CEO Nini Meyer. Take this episode on your next walk, scoot, or dribble as high school friends (shoutout Hanover High) Samantha and Nini have a cathartic chat about physical activity as a means for social change, youth empowerment, mental health, and better media habits. This episode is JAM-packed with emotional...

Episode 2: “Barre, By God” In 1793 a town meeting was held in Wildersburg, Vermont. The only item on the agenda was renaming the young frontier town. Wildersburg was a mouthful. Two passionate contenders offered up the names of their home towns back in Massachusets—but neither would concede to the other. Victory in a brawl gave one of the men the right to name Barre, well, Barre. Librarian and com...

Episode Description: In 1793 the town of Manchester Center, then Meads Mill, was rocked by an other-worldly threat. A young woman was supposedly coming from beyond the grave to suck the life out of the living. It was a vampire panic—one of scores that rocked rural New England in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The frenzied family looked for answers and settled on an unconventional remedy. Was the...