Episodes

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...

Hisham Awartani thought he was going to die. That’s what he told a police dispatcher in desperation as he lay on the ground after being shot by Jason Eaton in November 2023. Awartani and two friends, all of whom are of Palestinian descent, were walking down North Prospect Street in Burlington when Eaton, whom they did not know, stepped off his porch and began firing at them without saying anything. All three friends were wounded, but Awartani, who was 20, was the most seriously injured. A Verm...

Bess O’Brien is best known for making award-winning documentary films that take deep dives into difficult issues like addiction, hunger and homelessness. With her latest film, she is taking a different approach: She is inviting audiences on a feel-good journey about resilience and joy. “Every Day: Big and Small” is about the unsung ways that Vermonters show up for each other in good times and bad to create change. O’Brien introduces us to a writers group for people in recovery from substance u...

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark has had a busy summer. Since late June, she has sued the Trump administration an average of twice per week. That brings to 67 the number of lawsuits — as of midday Wednesday — she has filed or joined against President Donald Trump since January 2025. They include lawsuits defending birthright citizenship and challenging cuts to medical research funding, the dismantling of the Department of Education, voting restrictions and tariffs. Clark said her office h...

Is technology killing democracy and destroying communities? Yes, argues acclaimed historian Jill Lepore in her new book, “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State.” She writes that the artificial state is “the rule of humans by machines manufactured by corporations.” It is the fantasy of tech billionaires. And its goal is the end of liberal democracy. The artificial state is a “replacement of the liberal nation state, a constitutional democracy in which we are governed by our own consent, wit...

Journalist Nat Winthrop has been covering Vermont for a half-century, reporting stories that have surprised, infuriated and enlightened readers. From 1978 to 1990, Winthrop was publisher of the pioneering alternative weekly the Vanguard Press, and later the Vermont Times. These publications were launching pads for many journalists and were forerunners to Seven Days, the Vermont weekly that is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. He was also executive producer of “Freedom & Unity,” a six-...

Vermont-born rock star Grace Potter releases her seventh studio album on Aug. 21. “Trespasser” is the latest offering from the four-time Grammy nominee. Potter burst onto the music scene in 2002 with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Since that group disbanded in 2015, Potter has gone on to tour with some of the country’s top musical acts, including the Rolling Stones, Kenny Chesney and country star Chris Stapleton, with whom she is touring this fall. Potter will bring her act to Burlington on ...

As President Donald Trump intensifies his campaign of retribution against his political opponents and unleashes masked federal agents on immigrant communities, many American citizens are asking: What can I do? For answers, we can look to dissidents who have stood up to authoritarianism. “Authoritarianism is about stealing your rights and stealing your money,” said Ami Fields-Meyer, co-author with journalist Julia Angwin of “On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear.” The authors spo...

Few people have turned adversity into opportunity as dramatically as Kelly Brush. Brush was on the Middlebury College ski team when she was paralyzed in a ski racing accident in 2006. Twenty years later, Brush is a leader of a national movement to empower people with spinal cord injuries. “I'm so glad that I'm able to do that and support … thousands of other people that I don't even know and their families and create things that just feel a little bit better,” Brush told me. I asked Brush wha...

A teen golf prodigy launches a powerful drive that kills a golf caddy at a tony New York country club. Investigations and hidden scandals soon follow. So begins best-selling Vermont author Chris Bohjalian’s spellbinding new book, “The Amateur.” His 26th novel is classic Bohjalian: a riveting tale told by a female protagonist that weaves together mystery, intrigue, romance, betrayal and secrets that had me frantically turning the page to find out what happens next. Bohjalian is among Vermont’s ...

President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is intensifying. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained over 10,000 people just in the last week of June. This month, ICE agents killed two men in less than a week, including a young Columbian father in Maine who reportedly had legal status. Despite the Trump administration’s insistence that it is only arresting “the worst of the worst,” most of the people arrested by ICE have no criminal convictions. Fear is now a constant in immigran...

Summer reading is often about traveling to far-away places and meeting fascinating people. But for two Vermont authors, the exotic destination for their new books is their home state. Hardwick author Brett Ann Stanciu’s latest book is “Call It Madness.” It features a young protagonist, Avah Lavoie, who journeys to a remote village in northern Vermont to salvage an old farmhouse that offers answers to mysteries about her family. The book’s title is taken from a David Budbill poem and “reflects t...

In 2016, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was an insurgent candidate taking on Hillary Clinton, the heavily favored pick of the Democratic establishment for the presidential primary. As Sanders barnstormed the country and brought out millions of people to hear his message, the Clinton machine’s operatives and super-PACs swung into action to stop him by any means necessary. Tad Devine was deep in the trenches of this fight. He is a veteran Democratic political consultant and was chief strategist...

The Supreme Court ended its term with a series of blockbuster decisions on birthright citizenship, immigration, transgender rights and campaign finance. I spoke with U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., who is the vice ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. “It's shocking to me that we ever got to this place that we were having the Supreme Court weigh in on birthright citizenship,” Balint told me, sounding incredulous about the decision. “It's so clear that white nationalism has absolutely...

In the early 1800s, Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake spent 44 years as life partners living together in the small Vermont town of Weybridge. They are one of the earliest lesbian couples in America whose story is documented, thanks in part to a new graphic novel by Tillie Walden. Walden is a rising star in cartooning. She served as Vermont’s fifth cartoonist laureate from 2023 to 2026, following cartoon luminaries such as Alison Bechdel and the late New Yorker cartoonist Ed Koren. In 2018 at th...

For 30 years, journalist Amy Goodman has been “going to where the silence is” to report stories that the powerful would rather you not know about and the corporate media have often ignored. She has stared down armed soldiers in Nigeria, survived a massacre in East Timor, documented dogs attacking indigenous pipeline protesters in North Dakota, and been manhandled and arrested while covering the 2008 Republican National Convention. Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of “Democracy Now...

The birth rate in the U.S. has dropped by an astonishing 22% since 2007. Are smartphones to blame? Yes, according to a groundbreaking new study by Middlebury economist Caitlin Myers. Her smartphone study is garnering national attention this week, confirming an idea that people have long speculated about but until now have lacked data. Myers and co-author Ezekiel Hooper showed that from 2007 to 2011, after the iPhone was introduced, there was a sharp decline in births, up to half of which can be...

As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, two veteran activists are celebrating one of the country’s foundational principles: the right to protest, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence. But they warn that this right is under attack. “Our ability to protest is key to moving forward on a whole range of environmental and social issues … which is why I'm so terrified at the thought of losing this democratic right,” said Annie Leonard, who spent 17 years with Greenpeace USA, serving ...

When Ben & Jerry’s ice cream held its annual Free Cone Day in April, it had to contend with an unlikely protester: Ben Cohen, the company’s co-founder, was standing on the site of the original scoop shop in Burlington, urging customers to Free Ben & Jerry’s. “Ben & Jerry's itself has not given up on” its values, Cohen told me, but its current owner “has prevented Ben & Jerry's from acting on its values and has destroyed the governance structure” of the company. Cohen founded the ice cream comp...

Vermont journalist Jasper Craven has spent a decade investigating and exposing the culture of toxic masculinity that pervades the American military. In 2018, he wrote a multipart exposé for VTDigger about sexual misconduct and abuse in the Vermont Air National Guard that resulted in hearings at the Vermont Statehouse, reforms in the Guard, and the departure of the adjutant general. His writing on the military and veterans has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, Politico and Mother Jones, ...

The documentary "Best Day Ever" features the world's first adaptive mountain bike trail network and the athletes who are changing lives. In 2022, Allie Bianchi, a 23-year-old outdoor enthusiast and special educator from Richmond, broke her neck while mountain biking. She is now paralyzed below her chest. In 2025, Bianchi was rolling again, this time on a specially adapted mountain bike. Now, she is the star of a new film. “Best Day Ever” follows the story of several adaptive mountain bikers —...

When Helen Whybrow isn’t herding her flock of Icelandic sheep or in the paddock with a ewe that’s giving birth to lambs, she can be found writing. This week, this shepherd was awarded Vermont’s highest literary prize. Whybrow received the 2025 Vermont Book Award for creative nonfiction for her memoir, “The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life.” The book has also been long-listed for the National Book Award and named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker. “The Salt Stones” tells the story ...