The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman

Landslide. Tsunami. Earthquake. Bloodbath. Wipeout. Massacre. That is how mainstream news accounts are characterizing the results of this year’s midterm election, as Democrats led a historic rout of Republicans. Democrats are poised to retake control of both the U.S. Senate and House. The election marked a decisive rejection of President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. And with the election to the U.S. Senate of Troy Jackson in Maine and Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, the Boston Globe repo

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 democracy,” has been barnstorming the country in recent weeks to get out the vote and his message. He

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. Scott, a Republican, for separate interviews on The Vermont Conversation. Gov. Scott’s campaign

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 Elections, American Style.” He recounts stories of voter suppression and stolen elections dating back 150 y

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 a regional bestseller. The 37-year-old former Chittenden County forester lives in a 175-acre fores

“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 of stuff around Trump has been so great that we can't keep track of it,” Patterson told me. “If we