For the past four winters, radio and podcast exec Sophie Crane has taught a class to Dartmouth juniors and seniors on the art and craft of audio storytelling. Their capstone assignment: Produce a story about some aspect of life in the Upper Valley outside the Dartmouth bubble. This year’s crop was outstanding, bringing to our ears the voices and stories of locals engaged in everything from running general stores to the world of yarn to a feud over perfect mixed-drink ice to—well, you’ll just have to follow along.
Each day for two weeks, a new episode will appear here—newest at the top. We start off with:
Apparently, someone was trying to buy up all the general stores in the Upper Valley. It began as a conversation at the Lyme Country Store, where Leila Brady had stopped in after a day of skiing and learned about Ankit Patel and his bid to corner the general store market in the Upper Valley. From there, she headed to several of Patel’s stores and to independents like the Last Chance in W. Fairlee and Chapman’s in Fairlee, trying to answer her question: “Is it bad that Patel is buying up general stores?”
Leila Brady is a junior from Pelham, NY.
And if you’d like to listen to stories from past years’ classes, you’ll find them here:
2025 (“Wednesday at the Circus” and “Plow Guy”)
2024 (Including “Hans Williams: Music from the Upper Valley”, “Yiping”, and “Wishbones”)
2023 (Including “Morning at Shyrl’s”, “If We Don’t Have It, You Don’t Need It”, and “So I Got a Tattoo…”)
