Politics Between Us

Welcome to the final episode of the first season of Politics Between Us . Today, we’re joined by one of the most talked-about political candidates in the country: Graham Platner , who is running for U.S. Senate in our home state of Maine. We get into the contradictions people keep trying to pin on him — and why he thinks those questions say more about the limits of our political imagination than t...

Welcome back to Politics Between Us and Episode 5 of Mud Season . This week, we’re joined by Betsy Sweet , an important Maine political activist and human rights advocate, two-time candidate for statewide office, and friend of presidential candidate Marianne Williamson. When Betsy ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020 on a platform of healthcare for all, campaign finance reform, and heart-centered polit...

Welcome back to Politics Between Us and Episode 4 of Mud Season . This week, we’re joined by Faiz Shakir — longtime political strategist, Founder of More Perfect Union , former ACLU National Political Director, and Campaign Manager for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. Faiz has spent more than two decades thinking about what American politics gets wrong — and what it might still be capab...

Welcome back to Politics Between Us and Episode 3 of Mud Season . This week, we’re sitting down with Lucas St. Clair — conservationist, foundation leader, and former congressional candidate. Lucas’ story is unlike anyone else in Maine politics. He grew up off the grid in rural Piscataquis County, watched his mom build Burt’s Bees on a wood stove in a one-room schoolhouse, and spent years winning o...

Welcome back to Politics Between Us and Episode 2 of Mud Season. This week, we’re continuing our deep dive into Maine’s 2026 U.S. Senate primary—but stepping back to ask a deeper question: what matters to rural voters? To help us think about this question, we’re joined by Professor Nicholas Jacobs, a leading scholar of rural politics. His work challenges one of the most dominant narratives in Amer...

Welcome to the very first episode of Politics Between Us — and the launch of our limited series, Mud Season . We’re kicking things off with a conversation that gets right into the heart of Maine’s 2026 U.S. Democratic Senate primary: the race between sitting Governor Janet Mills and political newcomer Graham Platner. To help us make sense of it all, we brought in David Farmer, one of Maine’s most...