The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman

Bill McKibben says that “elections should not be this important.” They should not “be the deciding factor between continued stability and whatever kind of creeping fascism we’re playing with,” he writes . “And they certainly shouldn’t be determining questions of planetary survival. But they are.” McKibben, founder of Third Act , which organizes Americans over age 60 “to safeguard our climate and d...

Who is Amanda Janoo? And how is this political novice polling closely with Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, now running for his sixth term? “The conventional political wisdom would say I shouldn’t have a chance,” Janoo told me. “But I don’t think that these are conventional times.” With two weeks to go before Election Day, we invited Amanda Janoo, the Democratic/Progressive candidate for governor, and Gov...

Election deniers, egged on by President Donald Trump, are now running elections in numerous locales across the country. The playbook for stealing elections has remained the same for over a century: “control who votes, control how votes are counted, and control who decides when the counting stops.” That’s the argument by veteran voting rights lawyer David Walbert in his new book, “ Stealing Electio...

Ethan Tapper is a forester, philosopher, bestselling author and social media star. The chainsaw-toting, ATV-driving Vermonter has an audience of some 400,000 followers for his folksy and instructive videos on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. His previous book, “How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World,” won the 2025 New England Book Award in nonfiction and was...

“Gradually, then suddenly, America reached the precipice of authoritarianism.” That’s how author Richard North Patterson begins his exploration into key turning points in the last quarter century that have altered the course of American history. He breaks it down in his new book, “Tripwires: 15 Twenty-First-Century Events That Undermined American Democracy — and How to Reclaim It.” “The fire hose...

Hisham Awartani thought he was going to die. That’s what he told a police dispatcher in desperation as he lay on the ground after being shot by Jason Eaton in November 2023. Awartani and two friends, all of whom are of Palestinian descent, were walking down North Prospect Street in Burlington when Eaton, whom they did not know, stepped off his porch and began firing at them without saying anything...

Bess O’Brien is best known for making award-winning documentary films that take deep dives into difficult issues like addiction, hunger and homelessness. With her latest film, she is taking a different approach: She is inviting audiences on a feel-good journey about resilience and joy. “Every Day: Big and Small” is about the unsung ways that Vermonters show up for each other in good times and bad...

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark has had a busy summer. Since late June, she has sued the Trump administration an average of twice per week. That brings to 67 the number of lawsuits — as of midday Wednesday — she has filed or joined against President Donald Trump since January 2025. They include lawsuits defending birthright citizenship and challenging cuts to medical research funding, the d...

Is technology killing democracy and destroying communities? Yes, argues acclaimed historian Jill Lepore in her new book, “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State.” She writes that the artificial state is “the rule of humans by machines manufactured by corporations.” It is the fantasy of tech billionaires. And its goal is the end of liberal democracy. The artificial state is a “replacement of the...

Journalist Nat Winthrop has been covering Vermont for a half-century, reporting stories that have surprised, infuriated and enlightened readers. From 1978 to 1990, Winthrop was publisher of the pioneering alternative weekly the Vanguard Press, and later the Vermont Times. These publications were launching pads for many journalists and were forerunners to Seven Days , the Vermont weekly that is cel...

Vermont-born rock star Grace Potter releases her seventh studio album on Aug. 21. “Trespasser” is the latest offering from the four-time Grammy nominee. Potter burst onto the music scene in 2002 with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Since that group disbanded in 2015, Potter has gone on to tour with some of the country’s top musical acts, including the Rolling Stones, Kenny Chesney and country sta...

As President Donald Trump intensifies his campaign of retribution against his political opponents and unleashes masked federal agents on immigrant communities, many American citizens are asking: What can I do? For answers, we can look to dissidents who have stood up to authoritarianism. “Authoritarianism is about stealing your rights and stealing your money,” said Ami Fields-Meyer, co-author with...

Few people have turned adversity into opportunity as dramatically as Kelly Brush. Brush was on the Middlebury College ski team when she was paralyzed in a ski racing accident in 2006. Twenty years later, Brush is a leader of a national movement to empower people with spinal cord injuries. “I'm so glad that I'm able to do that and support … thousands of other people that I don't even know and their...

A teen golf prodigy launches a powerful drive that kills a golf caddy at a tony New York country club. Investigations and hidden scandals soon follow. So begins best-selling Vermont author Chris Bohjalian’s spellbinding new book, “The Amateur.” His 26th novel is classic Bohjalian: a riveting tale told by a female protagonist that weaves together mystery, intrigue, romance, betrayal and secrets tha...

President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is intensifying. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained over 10,000 people just in the last week of June. This month, ICE agents killed two men in less than a week, including a young Columbian father in Maine who reportedly had legal status . Despite the Trump administration’s insistence that it is only arresting “the worst of the worst,”...

Summer reading is often about traveling to far-away places and meeting fascinating people. But for two Vermont authors, the exotic destination for their new books is their home state. Hardwick author Brett Ann Stanciu’s latest book is “ Call It Madness .” It features a young protagonist, Avah Lavoie, who journeys to a remote village in northern Vermont to salvage an old farmhouse that offers answe...

In 2016, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was an insurgent candidate taking on Hillary Clinton, the heavily favored pick of the Democratic establishment for the presidential primary. As Sanders barnstormed the country and brought out millions of people to hear his message, the Clinton machine’s operatives and super-PACs swung into action to stop him by any means necessary. Tad Devine was deep in t...

The Supreme Court ended its term with a series of blockbuster decisions on birthright citizenship, immigration, transgender rights and campaign finance. I spoke with U.S. Rep. Becca Balint , D-Vt., who is the vice ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. “It's shocking to me that we ever got to this place that we were having the Supreme Court weigh in on birthright citizenship,” Balint tol...

In the early 1800s, Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake spent 44 years as life partners living together in the small Vermont town of Weybridge. They are one of the earliest lesbian couples in America whose story is documented, thanks in part to a new graphic novel by Tillie Walden. Walden is a rising star in cartooning. She served as Vermont’s fifth cartoonist laureate from 2023 to 2026 , following c...

For 30 years, journalist Amy Goodman has been “going to where the silence is” to report stories that the powerful would rather you not know about and the corporate media have often ignored. She has stared down armed soldiers in Nigeria , survived a massacre in East Timor , documented dogs attacking indigenous pipeline protesters in North Dakota , and been manhandled and arrested while covering the...

The birth rate in the U.S. has dropped by an astonishing 22% since 2007. Are smartphones to blame? Yes, according to a groundbreaking new study by Middlebury economist Caitlin Myers . Her smartphone study is garnering national attention this week, confirming an idea that people have long speculated about but until now have lacked data. Myers and co-author Ezekiel Hooper showed that from 2007 to 20...

As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, two veteran activists are celebrating one of the country’s foundational principles: the right to protest, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence. But they warn that this right is under attack. “Our ability to protest is key to moving forward on a whole range of environmental and social issues … which is why I'm so terrified at the thought of...

When Ben & Jerry’s ice cream held its annual Free Cone Day in April, it had to contend with an unlikely protester: Ben Cohen, the company’s co-founder, was standing on the site of the original scoop shop in Burlington, urging customers to Free Ben & Jerry’s . “Ben & Jerry's itself has not given up on” its values, Cohen told me, but its current owner “has prevented Ben & Jerry's fro...

Vermont journalist Jasper Craven has spent a decade investigating and exposing the culture of toxic masculinity that pervades the American military. In 2018, he wrote a multipart exposé for VTDigger about sexual misconduct and abuse in the Vermont Air National Guard that resulted in hearings at the Vermont Statehouse, reforms in the Guard, and the departure of the adjutant general. His writing on...

The documentary "Best Day Ever" features the world's first adaptive mountain bike trail network and the athletes who are changing lives. In 2022, Allie Bianchi, a 23-year-old outdoor enthusiast and special educator from Richmond, broke her neck while mountain biking. She is now paralyzed below her chest. In 2025, Bianchi was rolling again, this time on a specially adapted mountain bike. Now, she i...