The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman

Jane Mayer has earned a reputation as one of the country’s top investigative reporters. As chief Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, Mayer has been relentless in exposing the hidden forces shaping American politics. Her bestselling book, “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” documents the vast influence of the Koch brothers and was name...

From Brattleboro to Newport and beyond, a crisis is brewing in the Green Mountains. Housing, especially affordable housing, is desperately hard to find. “The state would have to build a minimum of 5,800 homes and apartments by 2025, and more than triple that to address the broader affordability crisis,” Seven Days reported, noting that the growth of Vermont’s housing stock has fallen to one third...

Transgender Vermont educator responds to Fox News attack with ‘love and light’ Laws targeting LGBTQ+ people are proliferating across the country. Some 240 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have so far been filed — more than three per day — mostly targeting transgender people,. In Idaho, Texas and Alabama, Republican leaders have passed laws criminalizing transgender health care, while Florida has banned discussio...

How did leading Republicans go from being Cold Warriors to apologists for Russian President Vladimir Putin?  For insight, we turned to Stuart Stevens, who knows Republican politics from the inside. He was a top Republican political operative who worked on five presidential campaigns, including the campaigns of Mitt Romney in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.  Stevens, who lives in Vermont,...

The Vermont Land Trust, founded in 1977, is one of the oldest and largest land conservation groups in the country. It has helped protect more than 620,000 acres in Vermont, comprising about 11% of the state. The land trust began with a simple goal of conserving land and supporting farmers. But with heightened awareness about equity and racial justice today, things are not so simple. Who can claim...

Education is the new frontline in America’s culture wars. In Florida, teaching about LGBTQ+ issues has become a flashpoint. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently surrounded himself with smiling elementary school children as he signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that bars discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in the state’s primary schools. Teaching about racism is also now perilous. At lea...

Ski mountaineer  Kit DesLauriers  skied off the summit of Mount Everest into history.  DesLauriers is the first person to ski from the so-called Seven Summits, the highest peak on every continent. Her 2006 descent of Everest capped a string of firsts: She was the first woman to ski the Vinson Massif, the highest mountain in Antarctica, and Mt. Aspiring in New Zealand. She also made the first femal...

Countries around the world are debating how to respond to the unfolding humanitarian and political crisis in Ukraine. Few people have more intimate knowledge into the thinking of the Washington national security establishment than  David Sanger . Sanger is a senior writer for the New York Times covering the White House and national security. He is a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a CNN e...

In 2021, the Vermont Legislature issued a long overdue  apology for   Vermont’s early 20th century state-sanctioned eugenics movement , which targeted Indigenous people and other groups. According to VTDigger, “The eugenics movement used forced sterilizations and other practices in an attempt to wipe out targeted populations who were deemed unfit to procreate, including Indigenous people, French C...

Why did Russia invade Ukraine? What motivates Vladimir Putin? What do Russians believe about the war? To help cut through the fog of war and explain the back story behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we turned to  Russia expert Will Pyle . He is Frederick C. Dirks Professor of International Economics at Middlebury College and an affiliate of the programs in International Politics and Economics an...

The world has been watching in horror at the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Author and environmental activist Bill McKibben argues that this is a war fueled by fossil fuels.  He writes in The Guardian , “If you want to stand with the brave people of Ukraine, you need to find a way to stand against oil and gas.” McKibben is the co-founder of the global climate justice group  350.org , and  Third Act...

When Alex Belth went on a first date with Emily Shapiro, he was smitten. He had finally met the woman of his dreams, and he imagined a life together filled with romance and kids. The were married in 2007, five years after that date. Belth, now 50, and Shapiro, 49, remain deeply in love. But their life has been very different from what they first imagined. Shapiro has struggled with chronic illness...

Fifty years ago, a burglary took place at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. What seemed like a petty crime spiraled into a conspiracy and coverup that led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon. A half century later, the echoes of that scandal still reverberate as Congress investigates the alleged crimes and coverups of an...

As the Covid-19 pandemic enters its third year, its impacts have fallen especially hard on young people. In December 2021, the  U.S. Surgeon General warned of “devastating” mental health effects  on youth, noting that there were significant increases in self-reports of depression, anxiety, and a 51 percent increase in emergency room visits for suicide attempts by adolescent girls in early 2021. Me...

In a Winter Olympics filled with iconic moments, one was especially poignant: Vermont skier Ryan Cochran-Siegle,  who stunned the ski world by roaring down the mountain to a second place finish  in the Super G, FaceTiming with his mother Barbara Ann Cochran at the finish of his run. The two were laughing and crying. Ryan had won his Olympic silver medal almost 50 years to the day after his mother...

Katherine Paterson  is one of America's most celebrated writers for children. The author of more than 40 books, she is one of just six writers who have twice won the prestigious Newbery Medal, for Bridge to Terabithia in 1978 and Jacob Have I Loved in 1981. She has also won the National Book Award twice. In 2000, Paterson was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress. Paterson frequently wr...

Student discipline used to be handled by guidance counselors and principals. Today, police are increasingly called upon to respond to children’s behavioral issues, giving rise to the  school-to-prison pipeline . Today, over 1.5  million students  attend schools with police but no counselors. The consequences can be dire: students are  five times  more likely to be arrested and charged when they at...

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in January that for maximum protection against Covid-19 infection, people should upgrade to a N95 or KN95 mask. For Anne Miller, masks and personal protective equipment (PPE) are very personal. In April 2020,  her mother in law was among the first Vermonters to die  after contracting Covid-19. After that, the health care consultant an...

Vasu Sojitra  was an undergraduate at the University of Vermont and wanted to join his friends to go backcountry skiing. But he faced a challenge: Sojitra has only one leg. At the age of 9 months, his right leg was amputated following a serious blood infection. So Sojitra and his friends attached a snowshoe to ski poles to enable him to backcountry ski. Sojitra graduated UVM in 2013, and his remar...

Jeremy Jones  is hailed as the world’s best big mountain snowboarder. He has pioneered first descents on some of the worlds biggest mountains, exploits that have been captured in over 50 snowboard films. He has been voted “Best Big Mountain Rider of the Year” by Snowboarder Magazine eleven times, and in 2013 was named a National Geographic “Adventurer of the Year.” He is also the founder of  Jones...

As the Omicron variant spreads with breathtaking speed, the number of people hospitalized in Vermont is hitting record highs.  More than half of Vermont hospitals report staffing shortages.  Dr. Rebecca Bell, a pediatric critical care doctor at the University of Vermont's Children's Hospital and president of the Vermont chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics warned that health care provider...

President Biden used the F-word — fascism — on Thursday to describe the struggle confronting America as he marked the first anniversary of a failed coup attempt by a pro-Trump mob. Biden said that for American democracy to survive, it  must confront and “triumph over the forces of fascism”  as previous generations have done. Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of t...

On January 6, 2021, supporters of former President Donald Trump, who falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, launched a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress’s formal certification of President Joe Biden's electoral victory. Rep. Peter Welch, who has been Vermont’s lone Congressman since 2007, was in the House chamber waiting to vote. As rioters...

As Covid-19 cases surge to record levels and threaten to overwhelm already strained health care systems, Dr. Mark Levine, Vermont’s Commissioner of Health since 2017, continues to parry and navigate through the pandemic storm.  Vermont has led the nation in vaccination rates, but it has nevertheless endured significant losses. From March 2020 to December 29, 2021, more than 63,000 Vermonters have...

What’s so funny about Vermont? Vermont political cartoonist Jeff Danziger writes that Vermont humor has a quality of "Yankeeness," characterized by "undemonstrative passions, studied understatement, and a reverence for patient consideration." Like this exchange, when a stranger stops to ask for directions. “Does it matter which road I take to Goshen?” asks the lost traveler. “Not to me it don’t,”...