When floodwaters raged through the tiny state capitol of Montpelier, everyone was tested. Business owners, workers, homeowners, renters, government officials. Everyone is still being tested a week later. And the results of the test are coming and will determine whether the moniker of Vermont Strong is real - or a slogan for social media and fundraising.

After 25 years of searing Vermont’s northern bogs, the naturalist and writer Bryan Pfeiffer made the discovery of a lifetime. He spotted the shy butterfly that had eluded him and raised questions in his own life about life and death, nature and moving slowly. A former newspaperman who covered everything from fires to health care and politics, Pfeiffer is Vermont’s leading naturalist, spending much of his time searing bogs and fens (there is a difference) for the life that makes our own lives worth living.

Robert Kennedy died by assassination 55 years ago. It was an event that altered the nation’s history forever. Whenever I think about it I go down a deep rabbit hole of sadness thinking about what might have been. Ever so strangely, Kennedy’s son Robert Kennedy Jr. is now running for president. Both campaigns were and are quixotic efforts that bring all the sadness and tragedy back to a generation that were so young when Kennedy was shot and now retired or dying today. Remembering Robert Kennedy is to grapple with what might have been.

A growing field of ecological economics sees the world through a more collective, shared prosperity that values human beings over never-ending growth that destroys the planet. University of Vermont Professor Jon Erickson is driving this change from the University of Vermont. He calls our current system “fairytale economics,’’ and urges us to understand the ecological reality that can no longer withstand the human onslaught of unending growth. Erickson’s new book is the Progress Illusion: Reclaiming Our Future from the Fairytale of Economics.

Two men, one black, one white, collide on the streets of this midwestern city in the wake of the George Floyd killing with tragic consequences. What happened tells us a lot of about modern America and how it is to separate fact from fiction. Author and former NY Times Editor Joe Sexton tells us how the truth is obscured by tribalism and social media in a way that damages communities and pits us all against each other.

Ashley Moore and Conor Kennedy are not elected to anything. But they make sure the Vermont House and Senate stay on schedule and their bosses can carry out their agendas. They spend more time on their IPhones than anyone! They join me to talk about how the Vermont legislature works. Biggest surprise of the interview? The high level of idealism they bring to this work.

Vermont’s lone member of the House of Representatives is known for upbeat optimism. But in her first 100 days she has seen the dark side of Washington - the debt ceiling, Majorie Taylor Greene and the Republicans who know better. Hint: It is as bad as you thought.

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When Vermont schoolteacher and quilter Jen Ellis sent Sen. Bernie Sanders a pair of mittens, she has no idea what would happen when he wired them to the inauguration of President Joe Biden in 2021. Instant fame and scrutiny followed an Internet explosion of memes with Bernie wearing Jen’s mitten from the moon to Buckingham Palace. What followed was a dizzying journey of grappling with a good kind of celebrity and a memoir of her experience.

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How do we understand the indictment of a former president? How did it happen? Why did it happen? And what happens next? We break it down with Bianca Scheer, former assistant district attorney in Manhattan at the very office that brought the indictment. She is also a former Vermont journalist and press secretary. So she brings it all to the table.

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Some 1800 families live in motels throughout Vermont. Come June, most of them will be evicted. The governor and the legislature believe that the state should no longer pay the bill for the shelter program. Advocates like Brenda Siegel and motel resident Rebecca Duprey call that decision a death sentence.

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