The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman

For 90 years, Yankee Magazine has been telling stories of and about New England. And for more than half of the magazine’s life, Mel Allen has been Yankee’s foremost storyteller. Allen wrote his first stories for Yankee in 1977, then held various editorial roles before becoming Yankee’s fifth editor in 2006. He retired as editor earlier this year after 48 years with the magazine, which is based in...

“Plastic is everywhere — wrapped around our food, stitched into our clothes, even coursing through our veins.” That’s how Judith Enck begins her new book, "The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and our Planet Before It’s Too Late," co-authored with Adam Mohoney.  A former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, Enck warns that plastics are a toxic industry tha...

Leila Stillman-Utterback graduated from Middlebury Union High School in June and decided to take a gap year to pursue a dream. The 18-year-old Vermonter traveled to Israel to participate in a solidarity program that included volunteering with Rabbis for Human Rights in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to help Palestinians harvest olives. She was part of an effort to provide “protective presence” for...

Every week, two local newspapers close somewhere in the country. Some 50 million Americans have limited to no access to local news. That may increase with loss of public media funding.  What is the future of journalism in an age where truth itself is under attack?  Local news is essential because “that's where rebuilding confidence in facts and truth starts,” said VTDigger editor in chief Geeta An...

The health care apocalypse has arrived.  In the past month, many of the 30,000 Vermonters who get their health insurance through Vermont Health Connect — part of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare as it's popularly known — are experiencing sticker shock. Average health insurance premiums on Vermont Health Connect are projected to more than double, the highest rate increases countrywide. This is...

The No Kings protests in October, which drew over seven million people across the country, were hailed as the largest demonstrations in American history. Now the question for many people is: What works to stop authoritarianism? Maria Stephan has been studying this question. Her award-winning book, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict,” co-authored with Erica Chen...

On New Year’s Day 2020, Adam Tendler unexpectedly received his father’s final gift: a wad of cash stuffed into a manila envelope handed over in the parking lot of a Denny’s restaurant in West Lebanon, NH. The strangely furtive exchange launched a musical journey. Tendler, a renowned concert pianist who grew up in Barre decided to use his inheritance to commission an all-star cast of modern compose...

In 2016, Jamie Raskin was elected to Congress from Maryland just as Donald Trump was first elected president. Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, and Trump, a real estate developer who flouts rules and shatters norms, have been locked in a struggle ever since. When Congress impeached Trump in 2021 for inciting an insurrection, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tapped Raskin to be lead i...

They are being described as possibly “the biggest ever mass demonstrations in American history.” More than 7 million people participated in No Kings protests on Saturday, October 18 across more than 2,700 events in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and in cities around the world. In Vermont, organizers estimate that some 43,000 people participated in more than 40 events around the state. People cam...

The world’s attention is focused on the Middle East this week as a fragile ceasefire takes hold in Israel’s two-year long war in Gaza. Split-screen images show joyous reunions as Palestinians and Israelis who had been held captive greet their families, alongside scenes of shocking devastation in the Gaza Strip. For Mohsen Mahdawi, this story is personal. In April, Mahdawi sat in a Vermont jail cel...

Chuck Collins, the heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune, gave away his millions to progressive political causes when he was in his twenties. Ever since, the resident of Guilford has fought to expose how the rich make themselves richer at everyone else’s expense. In his new book, "Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet," Collins shows how the actions o...

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk is the latest in a growing list of incidents of political violence. There have been 150 politically motivated attacks just this year, and a 2000% increase in targeted violent plots over the past two decades. What explains this surge in political violence? Extremism expert Cynthia Miller-Idriss confirms that this is “the worst moment of politi...

Jeffrey Amestoy, chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court from 1997 to 2004, is best known for authoring the 1999 decision in Baker vs. Vermont that legalized same-sex civil unions. That case laid the groundwork for the legalization of same sex marriage in Vermont a decade later and ultimately led to the U.S. Supreme Court legalizing same sex marriage in 2015. At the age of 79, Amestoy is still...

Democratic and Republican political leaders have universally condemned the killing of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk. But President Donald Trump lashed out at Democrats and other political opponents, charging without evidence that their “rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today.” Trump and other top officials are now promising a broad...

As President Trump’s immigration crackdown intensifies, many immigrants who have lived, worked and paid taxes in the United States for years are getting snatched by masked agents and disappeared into a vast network of jails across the country. In Vermont, a small but growing group of young attorneys have thrown themselves into the fight to defend the immigrants’ rights. Newly minted lawyers, inclu...

The Centers for Disease Control, the nation’s top public health agency, is in chaos following the firing of its director by President Donald Trump and the resignations of its top leaders last week. Nine former CDC directors wrote in the New York Times this week that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, who spearhead the purge of the CDC and is a longtime leader of the anti-vaccin...

Bill McKibben is one of the world’s leading writers and organizers on the issue of climate change. He admits that his message about the perils of a warming planet can leave some people in despair. Now, with the U.S. at an authoritarian tipping point, McKibben has chosen an improbable time to offer hope. McKibben has a new book, “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance...

As President Trump orders federal troops into the streets of Washington, D.C. to “do whatever the hell they want” to stop crime, Sen. Peter Welch is traveling across Vermont to share what he insists is the real news that Trump is trying to divert attention from. Welch has tallied the impact of President Trump’s economic policies and determined that they will cost families in Vermont an average of...

From the moment that Wilmer Chavarria was pulled out of line by immigration agents at an airport in Houston on July 21, he sensed that he was a marked man. Chavarria is the superintendent of schools in Winooski. He was returning with his husband from Nicaragua where they were visiting family — a trip they take every summer. Chavarria grew up in Nicaragua, then received scholarships to attend high...

“Eighty years ago this week,” writes Vermont journalist Garrett Graff, “a group of physicists and military leaders changed warfare — and the world — forever.” August 6 marks the 80th anniversary of the United States atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, which was followed three days later by the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. These two bombings are estimated to have killed over 200,000 people. Graff re...

Vermonters overwhelmingly voted to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution in 2022. But what if those rights – to abortion, birth control and other reproductive health services – are nearly impossible to access? Putting care out of reach appears to be the strategy behind the Trump administration’s relentless assault on Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of reproductiv...

What explains the fierce loyalty of Donald Trump’s base, even when he enacts laws that hurt them? Arlie Russell Hochschild has searched for answers in the heart of Trump country. She is one of America’s most thoughtful writers about right wing movements, whose insights are informed by her deep relationships with people on the right.  Hochschild is a renowned professor emerita of sociology at the U...

This week marks the 25th anniversary of civil unions, which were the most sweeping grant of rights to gay couples in the nation when they became law on July 1, 2000. Civil unions grew out of a lawsuit filed by three gay and lesbian couples who had been denied marriage licenses in Vermont. The lawsuit was known as Baker v. Vermont. In December 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled unanimously that...

Just five months after being sworn in as president, Donald Trump has embroiled the U.S. in a shooting war in the Middle East, a trade war with our allies and neighbors, and a culture war with those who oppose his policies.  Trump has deployed the National Guard and the U.S. Marines into the streets of a major American city over the objections of a mayor and a governor, and unleashed masked agents...

What do Nazis, fascists, incels, skinheads, misogynists, insurrectionists and Proud Boys all have in common? Many of them confide in reporter Elle Reeve. It was around 2015 and Reeve was reporting for Vice News about the rise of the “alt right,” a term coined by its leader, Richard Spencer. She spent time on internet message boards like 4chan and 8chan where far right activists communicated, troll...