When Tinotenda Charles Rutanhira arrived in Vermont in 2000, he had $100 in his pocket. His first apartment in Burlington, he recalled, was so rickety, if you rolled a ball on the floor, you wouldn't know which way it would go. Rutanhira held multiple jobs, including as a waiter, dishwasher, cashier at a deli and daycare giver, to make ends meet.

Fast forward 17 years. Rutanhira is now a solutions strategist at Dealer.com and he's performing in the play The Call, at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in mid-April. The acting gig was borne out of his determination to do something that scares him each year. And it comes on the heels of an idea the Zimbabwean native finally put into action last October: making his own podcast.

This week, what is possibly the world's shortest radio show comes to Vermont. Kind of. The World According to Sound is a  90-second sonic series produced by San Francisco-based radio guys Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett. It airs weekly on public radio stations including NPR's "All Things Considered."

On March 25, Hoff and Hartnett will stage a live — and extended — version of the show at the University of Vermont. The performance kicks off their East Coast tour, which also stops on March 31 at Town Hall Theater in Middlebury.

Each episode of the show focuses on a different sound, as the title implies. Their selections are unpredictable and yet somehow completely mundane: Sounds made by people, animals and things that we usually only pay attention to in the context of a larger story. Together, Hoff and Harnett have broadcast the fuzzy thump of a pulsing artery, the roar of political protest, the labored sound of a coal miner's breath, and the wet gurgle of mud pots.

Hi! Amelia Devoid here. You may know me as the girl dancing like Kate Bush at the local rock show. Or maybe you stumbled into Halflounge to find me playing ambient music with two guys in frog hats backing me up on saxophones. I'm a local musician and a freelance music writer for Seven Days. But enough about me.

Seven Days has set up a play date for us every Friday, which we're calling Playtime. Each week I'm going to gush about my local music obsessions and play my favorite songs, some newer, some older, in the hope that they might also become your favorites.

Send me your best friend's bedroom project, that record from your Dad's band from back in the day, videos of your cat playing the keyboard, and I'll write about them, too!  Today, I'd like to introduce you to the one and only Chance McNiff.