12 New England Cultural Experiences That Capture the Region Through Books, Movies & More
From classic literature to indie podcasts, these New England cultural experiences bring the region’s charm and character to life.
By Brian Kevin|May 08 2025|
12 New England Cultural Experiences You Can Enjoy Without Leaving Home
Photo Credit:Whether you’re dreaming of rocky coastlines, white-steepled villages, or maple-drenched backroads, these New England cultural experiences offer a rich taste of the region in multiple media forms—no road trip required. From evocative novels and indie documentaries to podcast portraits and iconic films, this curated list captures the essence of New England in 12 deeply rooted and wildly diverse ways.
12 New England Cultural Experiences You Can Enjoy Without Leaving Home
1. BOOK: Six Walks (2022)
From Cape Cod’s beaches to Maine’s Allagash country, author Ben Shattuck rambles in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau. And while Shattuck’s meditations may or may not confer transcendental insights, they sure do evoke the last vestiges of New England’s wilderness.
2. PODCAST: Rumble Strip (since 2013)
Though inspired by the sort of reported storytelling you’d hear on This American Life, Vermont journalist Erica Heilman’s acclaimed podcast avoids neat narratives and folksy romanticizing about her home state. Instead, she spins field interviews with Vermonters of every stripe—sugar makers, garbage collectors, a preteen neighbor—into vivid environmental portraits.
3. MOVIE: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
In director Wes Anderson’s ensemble comedy, Rhode Island’s Conanicut Island stands in for the granite-ringed isle of New Penzance, where summer camper Sam and local girl Suzy steal away for an adolescent tryst. The film pairs big-time camp nostalgia with an appreciation of New England islanders’ laconic, daffy charisma.
Photo Credit : TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy Stock Photo
4. BOOK: The Lost Summers of Newport (2022)
What went down in the old boathouse of a once-opulent Newport “summer cottage”? This bestseller by a trio of beach-read stars—Karen White, Lauren Willig, and Beatriz Williams—plumbs the decadent past of Newport’s Gilded Age mansions, “monoliths of stone and marble towering above the sea cliffs like Zeus on Mount Olympus.”
5. DOCUMENTARY: Weckuwapok (The Approaching Dawn) (2022)
As daylight breaks over a meadow on Maine’s Schoodic Peninsula, cellist Yo-Yo Ma joins Passamaquoddy musicians and storytellers in welcoming the sun. This 13-minute digital film, by the Reciprocity Project, documents a uniquely moving 2021 ceremony, threaded with sublime aerial footage from the corner of the Wabanaki homeland better known as Acadia National Park.
6. ALBUM: Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers (1976)
On the Modern Lovers’ first single, “New England,” the famously earnest frontman of this Boston-bred band croons, “I have seen old Israel’s arid plain / It’s magnificent, but so’s Maine!” Missing from the lineup but also worth seeking out is Richman’s ’70s gem “Roadrunner,” the Massachusetts night-driving anthem often proposed as the “official rock song of the Commonwealth.”
7. BOOK: New Hampshire (1923)
If it is, in fact, “restful just to think about New Hampshire,” as Robert Frost puts it, then consider the title poem of his Pulitzer-winning collection a tranquil little getaway. Nailing the Yankee vernacular and exalting nature without sentimentalizing it, the poems are like Frost’s famous woods: lovely, dark, and deep.
8. MOVIE: On Golden Pond (1981)
The loons are calling! And the symbolism is heavy-handed! But that doesn’t spoil this ’80s film classic, which finds Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn grappling with mortality at their beloved summer cottage. It was shot on New Hampshire’s Squam Lake but channels Great Pond in Maine’s Belgrade Lakes, where screenwriter Ernest Thompson spent the summers of his youth.
9. ALBUM: Yankee Division (2011)
Twelve instrumentals, here lilting and there austere, channel the New England landscape’s many textures. Composer and pianist Ben Cosgrove takes inspiration from natural and built environments, and on this record, the Massachusetts native goes all in on his backyard.
10. TV: Gilmore Girls (2000–2007, 2016)
Hear us out: The network dramedy (revived as a Netflix miniseries) was filmed on a Warner Bros. lot, but for legions of fans the Gilmores’ home of Stars Hollow is small-town Connecticut. The fictional village’s inn, gazebo, diner, and other sites are based on real landmarks in the Berkshire foothills. You can do a lot worse for Nutmegger charm.
11. PODCAST: Welcome to Provincetown (2022)
Gentrifying resort town, queer bastion, haven for free expression: P-town has layers, and documentarian Mitra Kaboli peels them back in a dozen-ish episodes that are by turns hilarious and poignant. Kaboli shadows the town’s artists, drag queens, and washashores—all of them seekers, all of them a lot, all of them vulnerable.
12. MOVIE: Little Women (2019)
The 1933 adaptation was filmed mostly in Hollywood; the 1994 version in British Columbia. So let’s hear it for Greta Gerwig’s take on the Alcott classic, filmed entirely in Massachusetts and chock-full of Victorian architecture, white steeples, and pastoral tableaus. Jo and Laurie silhouetted against a foliage-filled valley on Groton’s Gibbet Hill? We’re not crying, you’re crying.
Which New England cultural experiences did we miss? Let us know below.
This feature was originally published as “Armchair Inspiration” in the May/June 2025 issue of Yankee.
