This One Actually Caught My Attention
A closer look at a recent Rumble Strip episode...and why sometimes asking the How question, not the Why question, is more interesting. Unflinching honesty is powerful.
It’s not that I don’t listen closely. I do, generally. Sometimes I take notes or drop a bookmark pin. But sometimes I’m listening while multitasking, or I’m listening but also daydreaming about something else, and I miss things. Other things pass me by without much notice.
If a detail emerges later that doesn’t fit the puzzle of the narrative I’m trying to piece together, I generally just get on with it and figure that it will eventually make sense. Or it doesn’t, and that’s okay too.
But when something does catch me while I’m listening, it’s a physical response.
Say I’m walking around or multi-tasking, and I hear something, there’s a physical reaction. It’s a head turned halfway sideways, or a brow furl with pursed lips, or I say: “Wait, What?” aloud, involuntarily. That’s when I push the back button to replay so I can hear the moment again and let it fully sink in.
The fact that this happens less and less frequently is either a comment on me or the work that I’m listening to
Or both. Pure volume can also do that. Conversely, it signals growth in terms of knowledge and taste, albeit from a different direction.
Sometimes I wonder if this is part of a languishing effect that is more industry-wide. There are just…so…so…many hours to listen to. I’ve often wondered how many of my listening hours go on the ledger for output deal memo, and not the ledger for best storytelling practices. What happened to ‘less is best’ when it comes to the number of episodes?
Sure, it takes time to form a habit of returning to a feed, and thus if it’s “always on,” or finds new ways to upkeep the connection to a fan base, this will help to form a habit. Or the new holy grail of “community.” Somewhere there’s deep math to put towards to fund that conclusion.
Defining when or why these Wait, What? moments happen is intangible. It could equally be the weather, my mood, or the amount of coffee I’ve had that day.
I had a moment like this recently. It was from the show Rumble Strip and the episode The World Under the World.
Rumble Strip is one of my perennial favourites, as is the host and producer Erica Heilman. The episodes are often brief. They offer a glimpse into a world I don’t know well (Vermont), and they always include her unique take on the story, or the event, in an honest and sometimes vulnerable way. I believe this is how and why she won a Peabody for her work.
One morning last week I was returning home from driving my teenage daughter to school when I put on the most recent episode. My expectation when I reach for Rumble Strip is that I’ll be introduced to another character from Heilmen’s world, living and doing things that I don’t do (private investigator, maple syrup harvestor, little league player). If I could sum it up quickly: I’m drawn to her work because it’s deep and meaningful, but it’s brief in this deep way.
She opens the episode with an advisory: This show is an explicit descriptions of active drug addiction, so it might not be for everyone.
Like the many other warnings that I hear, I was pleased to be advised, but didn’t worry that it would trigger me, or cause me harm. How different could it be from other stories that I’ve heard about drug addiction or the rampant use of cocaine in virtually every television series that I’ve watched in the last few years?
I was wrong.
Heilman’s opening narration shared the backstory of why she felt compelled to make this episode. She recalls an older episode, when she spoke to a private investigator friend, who in the middle of her interview told a story of the day that a woman broke into her office in the middle of the day, packed up a bag of electronics, and left.
The thief, she explains, was a heroin addict, in the throws of active and debilitating addiction, and she needed to acquire items to sell in order to get her fix that day.
The story stayed with Heilman. She kept seeing that woman’s face, and wondered where she had come from before that event, and where she went after.
The sparse language that Heilman uses to describe her curiosity make you, the listener, want more.
She asks a basic, and perhaps mundane question:
What was the before, and then the after, to this event?
That simple question led her to find four different people who were willing to talk about their lives as recovering addicts. But not the part where they’ve pulled themselves back together and gone sober.
The part she wanted to dig into was the impetus, and the actions, that addicts have, which fuel their lives.
She wanted to ask the How question…and recognize that sometimes the Why question does not translate across cultural barriers of understanding (looking here at the logic divide between sober people and drug-addicted people…which is a category of people, and not a judgement of a person who exists in a place).
The answers to her questions are absolutely unflinching
Heilman asks the questions straight, no polish or filler words, to try to bridge the distance between interviewer and interviewee.
“What does it feel like to get high? What is the difference between the moment before you get high, and after?” Heilman asks the first respondent, Mark.
“It’s really a magnificent feeling,” he concludes, while also admitting that euphoric feeling also brings people to the edge of life and death. The only difference is that it doesn’t matter for them, while they are there.
“You will do anything to get food and water…and that’s what drug addicts feel like,” another respondent Avery said.
And then Mark talks about how the drugs make you sick, and that’s why you need more.
But Heilman doesn’t take this as a conclusion. She digs into find out what being “dope sick” actually means, and what it looks like. How does that make him feel?
Mark answers in a real and visceral way, with lots of details. He says its the worst thing one can feel.
Heilman follows up with the question: If it’s that bad, then why do you do it?
Both the questions and the answers, are so entirely unflinching that it made my eyes stand up right. My stomach turned with some of the descriptions. My memory jogged over some of the recent folks that I’ve seen on the streets of my city, looking like the walking dead.
There was the audacity to ask the obvious question. And then the bravery to keep digging in for more information.
But everything began with the belief that every human life has an explanation. And everything is worth exploring.
This episode tells the story of drug addiction from the place of how and why it happens. Not the reasons, or the excuses, or the come-to-Jesus moment after. Sometimes learning about the act of doing something is where the power lies. Becuase the actions are what tells the story, and explain the reasons.
How is the question, and the answer provides details that tell a story. Why is irrelevant here.
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