A JAM Podcast
Overview: Media shape our lives in ways unprecedented in human culture. How do we understand ourselves and the world we live in differently as a result? What have we gained? Lost? What choices remain in our power in relation to media, and what’s at stake? “Mediated Lives” aims to engage Upper Valley citizens across diverse professional and demographic sectors to share their viewpoints on these questions and help illuminate a path toward building a better mediated future in the Upper Valley.
Produced and hosted by Samantha Davidson Green, JAM Executive Director
Audio engineering by Chico Eastridge, JAM Senior Producer
Audio editing/post-production by Kelsie Hogue, JAM Assistant Producer
Mediated Lives original graphics by Ana Liu
This podcast is made by JAM – Junction Arts & Media, building community in the Upper Valley of NH and VT through the media arts.
Season One:
Episode 10: 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 electrolytes and digital-age wisdom for all ages.
Episode 9: Located in White River Junction, VT and Claremont, NH – and everywhere via social media and the Internet – Riverbank Church’s media strategy has contributed to its growth and mission. This week, Lead Pastor Chris Goeppner and Director of Operations Ira Richards join Samantha on a deep dive into the role of media and storytelling in this Upper Valley faith community.
Episode 8: In this episode, we have an unprecedented situation: The person writing this very bio, the person editing this very podcast and the person being interviewed this very week are the exact. Same. Person. Hello. It is I, Kelsie Hogue also known as Sir Babygirl. The meta of this overwhelms and fascinates me; I feel as if I am in a multimedia hall of mirrors, or that Spiderman meme with the two Spidermen pointing at each other incredulously. In any case, here’s my interview with my boss and host Samantha as we dive into the 2025 media landscape of being a working musician. In fact, writing, editing and being the subject of a podcast interview is exactly how it feels to be a working musician these days. How’s THAT for meta!
Episode 7: Eavesdrop on Samantha’s conversation with JAM’s own Dartmouth Social Impact Fellow Maria Hebling (Dartmouth ’27), a brilliant young mind in today’s mercurial media landscape. Maria lends here unique perspectives on cultural differences via social media, the life-changing impact of media on her as a teen in rural Brazil during COVID, and the What and Why of the JAM media literacy and digital citizenship programs she currently leads. Enjoy listening as Maria waxes poetic about living a double reality on and offline and the ups/downs, pros/cons, pitfalls and miracles of our modern mediated lives.
Episode 6: In this episode, Samantha picks local family doctor Julie Davis’ brain about her experience serving the community’s health in our current media landscape. They talk healthy social media habits, discuss the pros and cons of our sticky web of internet culture in today’s children and teens, and what healthy family boundaries around tech might look like.
Episode 5: Vital Communities’ Communications Manager and local sweetheart Rebecca Bailey joins Samantha to reveal the brass tacks of the Upper Valley Listserv and all the ways it acts as connective tissue for the people, places and things of this unique collection of rural towns.
Episode 4: This week, Samantha and Lebanon, NH City Manager Shaun Mulholland join forces to discuss how media and the work of local government intersect – or collide – and how changes in the broader political culture and media landscape telescope to the local, for better and worse. With an emphasis on optimistic problem-solving and fearless navigation of the human beings inside the politics, Shaun breaks down growing AI use, communication tactics, the importance of the arts, reaching out across the aisle, and much more.
Episode 3: In this NSFW episode, Samantha is joined by local quadruple threat (comedian, author, educator and inn keeper), Cindy Pierce as they navigate the choppy waters of all things sex and social media. An expert at making the uncomfortable wonderfully engaging, Cindy takes Samantha on an illuminating and no holds barred tour of the developing human brain on porn, AI and general screen time. This episode pairs well with fresh air and touching grass.
Episode 2: Rod Smolla, Vermont Law and Graduate School President, joined Samantha in the studio to dig into tough and topical questions about free speech at a moment when social media hold unprecedented sway over our politics. As an attorney who has argued high-profile free speech cases before the Supreme Court, Smolla offers an illuminating guide to the legally perplexed!
Episode 1: Journalist and Daybreak editor Rob Gurwitt joined Samantha in the JAM audio studio to contemplate how the reporting and delivery “local news” has changed as digital media tools have upended traditional models. How can we strengthen the social fabric and encourage democratic participation in the context of divisive social media algorithms and a culture of distraction?
