The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman

This January marks the 51st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade that established a constitutional right to abortion. But 18 months ago, the Supreme Court took away that right in its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In the aftermath of Dobbs, the landscape of reproductive rights around the country has sharply fractured. Fourteen states have enacted to...

On a drizzly day in late October, a strange looking truck pulled over on a dirt road in Hinesburg. The truck had electronic billboards attached to three sides that displayed the smiling face of a young woman. The neighbors knew the face well — it was Eva Frazier, whose family lived on the road. Eva was a top student at nearby Champlain Valley Union High School, from which she graduated in 2022. Ev...

VTDigger is re-releasing some of our favorite interviews of the past decade to mark the 10th anniversary of The Vermont Conversation. John Irving, widely hailed as one of America’s greatest novelists, is back, and he has a lot to say. Irving, 81, is the author of 15 novels, including the international bestsellers “The World According to Garp,” “The Cider House Rules” and “A Prayer for Owen Meany,”...

Naomi Klein realized that she had an alter ego, or doppelganger, during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. She was in a public bathroom and overheard people talking about her. The author of numerous international bestsellers including “No Logo,” “The Shock Doctrine,” and “This Changes Everything,” Klein realized that she was being confused with Naomi Wolf, the liberal feminist author of the...

VTDigger is re-releasing some of our favorite interviews of the past decade to mark the 10th anniversary of The Vermont Conversation. This Vermont Conversation with Alison Bechdel was originally published in May 2021. Alison Bechdel is obsessed. Her passion is exercise — karate, cycling, running, skiing in all its forms, to name a few of her pursuits. This obsession is the focus of Bechdel’s new g...

Are we alone? The question of whether human beings on Earth are the only intelligent life forms has long inspired scientists and philosophers. It has also animated generations of conspiracy theorists who believe that the U.S. government has been engaged in a decadeslong coverup about extraterrestrial intelligence and unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. Bestselling Vermont author and historian Ga...

In an attack that shocked the world, three Palestinian American college students were shot and wounded while walking in Burlington on Nov. 25. The men were in Vermont visiting family for Thanksgiving. Police allege that 48-year old Jason Eaton stepped off his porch and shot the three men. The attack appears to have been unprovoked and the assailant said nothing before opening fire, the victims tol...

This Vermont Conversation originally aired on January 8, 2020. A beloved voice of Vermont fell silent with the passing of Kenley Dean Squier on Nov. 15, 2023 . He was 88 years old.  Squier is best known as a NASCAR Hall of Fame broadcaster and the owner of radio station WDEV, part of the Radio Vermont Group, which has been owned by the Squier family for over nine decades. Ken Squier was my friend....

The war raging between Israel and Hamas continues to take a staggering toll. About 1,200 Israelis were killed and 230 were taken hostage on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked Israel, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. In response, Israel has mounted a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that has claimed the lives of 1 of every 200 Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, according to G...

Newly married couples swear that they will love each other “till death do us part.”   But for many couples, love ends far sooner than life. Half of first marriages and two-thirds of second marriages end in divorce.   Is a happy ending still possible after a divorce?   Collaborative divorce is a process of ending a marriage through cooperation and negotiation. Couples agree to work together with th...

The war between Israel and Hamas reaches new levels of brutality each day. Some 1,400 Israelis were killed and 5,400 injured in Hamas’ surprise attack on Oct. 7, according to Israeli officials. In retaliation, Israel launched a bombardment and blockade of the Gaza Strip, killing over 8,500 Palestinians and injuring more than 22,000 as of Nov. 1, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. UN Secretary...

When Becca Balint ran for Congress last year, she spoke about how her family’s history as Jews who lived through the Holocaust motivated her to “heal divisions .” Now as a progressive Jewish member of Congress, Balint has been thrust into the center of a raging debate about how to respond to the horrific attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s intense retaliatory bombardment of the Gaza Strip, home...

Rick Hubbard left his home in South Burlington in October 2022 driving a large RV en route to Los Angeles, where he began walking across the country. The 81-year-old retired attorney says he is walking to fix our democracy. One year later, Hubbard is still walking. The Vermont Conversation caught up with Hubbard in Colorado, where he is currently walking. The purpose of the walk, he said, is “to i...

Several decades before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took the notion of "purifying" society to genocidal extremes in the Holocaust, the ideas behind it were enthusiastically embraced in Vermont. Eugenics is the pseudoscience that humans can be improved through selective breeding. Many American states, including Vermont, used eugenics as the basis for public policies including family separation, insti...

VTDigger is re-releasing some of our favorite interviews of the past decade to mark the 10th anniversary of The Vermont Conversation. This Vermont Conversation with Jane Mayer was originally published in April 2022. 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 t...

Sixty years ago, a troupe of performers toting giant papier-mâché puppets and art painted on bed sheets made its first appearance in a protest march in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This was the Bread and Puppet Theater, founded by Peter and Elka Schumann. In 1970, the Schumanns moved to Vermont, eventually purchasing a farm in Glover, which has been the home of Bread and Puppet ever since. Pe...

“The truth isn’t dying. It’s being killed.” Lee McIntyre argues this in his latest book, “On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth andProtect Democracy.” McIntyre is a research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. His previous books include “Post-Truth,” and “How To Talk To A Science Denier.” The war on truth is threatening to topple democracies around...

Philadelphia is synonymous with liberty and possibility. It is the city where the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were signed. But there is a lesser-known side to Philadelphia. It is the poorest large city in America. Kensington is its poorest neighborhood, a place where “18th-birthday celebrations are not rites of passage but miracles,” writes sociologist Nikhil Goyal. Goyal...

For the fortieth summer, hundreds of Vermont high school students had a different kind of learning experience. They attended one of eight programs of the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont.   In 1983, the very first Governor’s Institutes of Vermont program was launched. It was focused on the arts, addressing what advisers to Gov. Richard Snelling felt was a dearth of opportunity in arts education in...

When Champlain College President Alejandro "Alex" Hernandez is asked about the value of an education, he responds by telling the story of his family. He is the child of immigrant parents who both became school teachers in California. After Hernandez received a masters degree from Stanford, he went into finance, but eventually left to become a high school math teacher in South Central Los Angeles....

Stephen Kiernan spent much of his life as an award-winning journalist for the Burlington Free Press and the Boston Globe. In 2013, he made the jump from reporter to novelist with the publication of his debut book of fiction, “The Curiosity.” He has never looked back. Kiernan has now published five critically acclaimed novels, including “The Baker’s Secret” and “Universe of Two.”  His latest novel...

Scenes of the smoldering ruins of Lahaina, Maui, are the latest evidence that no place, no matter how idyllic, is safe from climate disruption. The wildfires that destroyed the town this week are the deadliest in the modern history of the U.S. The Maui wildfires were far more lethal but they share common elements with the floods that ravaged parts of Vermont last month. Both disasters were fueled...

Will it be three indictments and Trump’s out? Stuart Stevens doesn’t think so.  “The indictments will help (former president Donald) Trump in the Republican primary, of which there’s a certain crazy logic,” he said. “The Republican Party now is pretty much officially a white grievance party. And there's no greater way to prove the grievance than to be indicted by the Deep State.” Stevens contends...

The brick crashed through Lauren Chooljian’s window accompanied by a message scrawled on the side of her house: “THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING.” Chooljian had a good idea what this attack was about. She is a senior reporter and producer at New Hampshire Public Radio . She had been investigating alleged sexual misconduct by Eric Spofford, the founder of GraniteRecovery Centers , New Hampshire's larges...

In the early hours of July 11, the rain-swollen Lamoille River rose up out of its banks and tore through the heart of downtown Johnson. Parts of the small Vermont town lay in ruins. Johnson’s wastewater treatment plant was destroyed, and the downtown supermarket, the town offices and fire department, surrounding farms, the Johnson health center, and dozens of manufactured homes all sustained heavy...