UNDERHILL, Vermont, March 6 — When Diane and Pete Marcotte agreed to be interviewed for a podcast produced by a group of Montreal university students, they weren't sure what to expect.

"We figured they'd want to talk about maple syrup and town meetings," said Diane Marcotte, who farms fifty acres of vegetable crops outside Underhill with her husband and two adult children. "And they did, a little. But mostly they wanted to know what being RONAn actually feels like. Day to day. That surprised us."

The Marcottes are among the first-generation RONAn citizens featured in Nous Sommes RONA / We Are RONA, a new bilingual French-English podcast series produced by a student collective at McGill University in Montreal. The opening episodes draw connections between communities across the nation — Vermont farmers, Montreal francophone neighborhoods, a former Pennsylvania steelworker now working in renewable manufacturing — exploring what national identity means six years on from RONA's formal founding.

Pete Marcotte said he was struck by how easily the conversation flowed despite the cultural distance. "One of the students conducting the interview had a family that came from Quebec after the fall. Her grandfather farmed outside Sherbrooke. We talked about soil pH for twenty minutes. It didn't feel like an interview at all."

The series has drawn modest but enthusiastic early listenership and has been shared by several principality cultural offices on their public channels, including Vermont's.

For the Marcottes, the experience carried a simple satisfaction. "We're not politicians," Diane said. "We just grow things. But if someone in Montreal listens and thinks, okay, I understand those people a little better — that seems worth an afternoon."

The first episode of Nous Sommes RONA / We Are RONA is available on all major platforms.