This week on Maine For Keeps, Jonathan goes solo from North Haven Island to share why he’s still a raging Maine optimist and why it’s time for our state to stop dividing a shrinking pie and start making more pie.Part personal story, part blueprint for Maine’s future, this episode digs into what makes Maine unique, and what’s possible if we unleash our natural strengths.

Highlights from the episode:

- Why Maine’s workforce is perfectly suited for the AI-driven economy ahead.

- The idea of Maine as America’s national strategic housing reserve — building homes with our 6 million acres of forest and exporting cross-laminated timber.

- How Maine could become a green protein export powerhouse by growing bottom fish instead of just catching them.

- Why tourism and our parks are still an underdeveloped superpower for the state.

- What Jonathan learned about resilience, community, and optimism from his own story in Belfast and North Haven.

- The problem with dividing handouts vs. building ownership and why that system poisons belief in fairness.

- How reminders of Maine’s past dominance, from shipbuilding to farming, are signals of what we can become again.This is a wide-ranging, candid reflection on what’s broken, what’s possible, and why Maine’s best days can still be ahead.

Maine’s rural communities have a healthcare problem — too few providers, too much distance, and too many people falling through the cracks. But what if the solution was already parked in your town, sirens off, waiting for the next call?

In this episode, Jonathan Bush sits down with Dr. Jonathan Busko (emergency physician and EMS innovator), Dr. Charles Burger (primary care pioneer), and Jeff Brown (systems safety consultant turned healthcare reformer) to talk about a game-changing idea: community paramedicine.

It’s a model that trains EMTs and paramedics to do more than respond to emergencies — from checking meds and following up after hospital visits to spotting home hazards and facilitating telehealth. The result?

• Lower costs per patient visit

• Earlier intervention for high-risk patients

• New career pathways that keep healthcare talent in rural towns

They dig into how Maine is making community paramedicine legal, what it will take to make it normal, and why the collapse of primary care might be our chance to build something better.

This isn’t just about saving rural hospitals — it’s about designing a system that keeps people healthier, closer to home, and out of the ER. And if Maine gets it right, the rest of the country will be watching.

Listen to the full conversation now on Maine For Keeps, available wherever you get your podcasts.

What does it really take to bring a city back to life?

In the latest episode of Maine For Keeps, I sit down with Mayor Tom Koch, the longest-serving mayor in Quincy, Massachusetts — and the man behind one of the most impressive downtown transformations in New England.

When Mayor Koch took office in 2008, Quincy’s downtown was full of empty storefronts and faded promise. The shipyard was long gone. The malls had pulled shoppers away. The local institutions were thinking about leaving.

So what did he do?

He fired the master planner. Rewrote the zoning code. Took bold, early bets on infrastructure. And started lining up capital and community support before he was even sworn in.

Eighteen years later, Quincy has:

• Over $250M in new public infrastructure

• A booming, livable downtown with housing, parks, and culture

• A reputation as one of the best cities in the country to live and do business

We talk about the whole journey, from firing the first developer to convincing the state to stop holding up a seawall repair for 10 months. We also dig into lessons for other towns: how to move faster, build smarter, and make space for new growth without losing local character.

Whether you’re a mayor, developer, planner, or just someone who loves watching cities come back to life — this one’s for you.

🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

Ohad Maiman is one of the most visionary figures in modern aquaculture. After successfully launching The Kingfish Company in the Netherlands (one of the world’s most sustainable land-based aquaculture operations) he set his sights on the U.S. market. His goal: bring clean, tech-enabled fish farming to rural Maine. His promise: a $200M investment, 80+ jobs, local hiring, low emissions, and zero impact on wild fisheries.

He had the permits. He had the support of the community in Jonesport. He had capital ready to deploy.

And then, the appeals began.

In this episode, Ohad joins Jonathan Bush to tell the full story: how a green project with local backing and global relevance was delayed, discredited, and ultimately derailed not by policy, but by process.

You’ll learn:

• Why land-based aquaculture could transform Maine’s rural economy

• Why land-based aquaculture could transform Maine’s rural economy

• Who really stood to lose from Kingfish USA—and who worked to block it

• What other states and countries are doing right that Maine is getting wrong

• What policy reforms could help Maine compete in the future

It’s a cautionary tale (and a roadmap for future Maine entrepreneurs).

Ohad has since launched new ventures, as the Founder and Managing Partner at AquaFounders Capital, aimed at solving the aquaculture bottleneck globally. But his story in Maine still holds powerful lessons for what’s possible (and what’s holding us back).

Because if we want Maine to lead, we need to make “yes” mean something again.

Listen now on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What started in the basement of a YMCA is now one of the most innovative community centers in the country.

In this episode, Jonathan Bush sits down with Barrett Takesian, founder and executive director of Portland Community Squash, a one-of-a-kind community hub that blends sports, youth development, immigrant integration, and economic mobility under one roof.

Barrett shares how he turned a few squash courts into a multigenerational, multicultural home for over 1,000 families in greater Portland — and why it works.

We cover:

• Why programs that try to “pick a lane” fail — and what happens when you build for everyone

• How squash became the vehicle for something much bigger

• The business strategy behind belonging, and why it’s twice as effective as traditional models

• Why he runs tournaments by skill, not age or gender — and how that creates connection across class and culture

• What Barrett sees as Maine’s greatest untapped advantage

This is an episode about sports, yes — but more than that, it’s about community, entrepreneurship, and a radically hopeful vision for Maine’s future.

Listen anywhere you get your podcasts.

How do you fix a government system that punishes truth-tellers, hides behind confidentiality laws, and fails the very people it’s supposed to protect?

In this episode, former Maine Secretary of State and longtime legislator Bill Diamond joins Jonathan Bush for a sobering look at what’s really happening inside Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) — the agency responsible for child protection.

Bill shares the heartbreaking case that changed the course of his life, the culture of fear that’s silencing frontline workers, and why so many foster parents are walking away from a system that’s supposed to support them.

This episode covers:

• How 148 children have died under DHHS involvement in just 5 years

• Why foster families are quitting—and what it’s costing Maine

• The massive failures of OCFS, Maine’s Office of Child and Family Services

• What Bill learned from attending child homicide trials across the state

• Common-sense reforms that every future Maine governor must act on

• Why Walk a Mile in Their Shoes is fighting to bring transparency to DHHS

• The broken technology system (Katahdin) wasting time and jeopardizing safety

• And why simply admitting there’s a problem could be the first step toward fixing it

It’s one of the most important and revealing conversations we’ve had on Maine For Keeps.

Listen now on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sarah Lemonick is a U.S. Navy veteran and now a product manager at Atomic Canyon, where she’s helping shape the future of nuclear energy with AI. In this episode, she joins Jonathan Bush to talk about what Maine — and the country — can learn from her experience operating nuclear reactors aboard U.S. Navy aircraft carriers.

Together, they explore:

– What small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) actually are

– How nuclear stacks up against solar, wind, coal, and natural gas

– The safety lessons we’ve learned since Three Mile Island and Fukushima

– Why nuclear waste is more compact (and less terrifying) than people think

– How AI can help cut costs and regulatory bloat across the nuclear sector

– The surprising role tech giants like Microsoft and Google are playing in nuclear’s comeback

– What it would really take to bring small-scale nuclear to Maine—and why it’s worth considering

Sarah also shares how a background in literature led to a career in nuclear ops, how the Navy shaped her leadership style, and why she believes the biggest energy opportunity for Maine isn’t wind or solar — but fission.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone curious about energy independence, climate policy, and the real future of clean power.

When athenahealth opened a small office in Belfast, Maine, no one expected it to become one of the state’s largest private employers. But under the leadership of Jonathan McDevitt, that office grew from a couple hundred people to nearly 1,000—creating real career paths in a rural community that had long been overlooked.

In this episode, Jonathan Bush sits down with Jonathan McDevitt, former Senior VP at athenahealth, to talk about:

• What it really takes to scale a high-growth company in small-town Maine

• Why word-of-mouth—not headhunters—was their most powerful recruiting tool

• How Maine’s “hidden talent” could become its greatest economic asset

• The workforce challenge no one can solve: 9% of young men not working, not in school, not even looking

• Why the next economic boom may come from the people already here—if we know how to activate them

If you care about innovation, rural revitalization, or building companies in Maine that actually last, this is one you don’t want to miss.

Subscribe for more unfiltered conversations about Maine’s future.

What happens when a seasoned CPG operator and Liquid Death investor comes home to launch her own brand in Maine?

Jen Millard is no stranger to growth. She helped take Bed Bath & Beyond public. She sold startups to Mastercard and DoorDash. And after decades of success, she returned to her home state to launch mainelove — a fast-growing canned water company that taps into Maine’s most undervalued natural asset: its water.

In this episode, Jen joins Jonathan Bush to talk about:

• What makes Maine’s water the best in the country

• Why our 20-year economic plan doesn’t mention water once

• What it’s like to scale a consumer brand in a state with no startup infrastructure

• How we can build a real entrepreneurial ecosystem in Maine

• Why most of our natural resources still leave the state unprocessed

This is a conversation about optimism, frustration, and the untapped economic potential right under our feet.

Listen in, and then ask yourself: why hasn’t Maine built the water economy yet?

What happens when the boats disappear, the buyers retire, and the next generation doesn’t come back?

In this raw and revealing conversation, Jonathan Bush sits down with Martin Molloy—a Navy vet turned legendary lobster buyer—to unpack what’s really happening to Maine’s working waterfront.

They talk about the hard truths behind the decline in young lobstermen, the quiet collapse of Matinicus and North Haven’s fleets, and why labor shortages, pricing pressure from Canadian seasons, and outdated state policies are making survival harder than ever.

But they also spotlight what’s still working—and what might save the fishery.

Key themes include:

• How Matinicus went from 20 boats to 10—and what that says about the future

• Why Maine lobstermen are struggling to find crew (and how “Probation Point” became a labor pool)

• The market dynamics driving lobster prices from $9.50 to $5 in weeks

• The cultural tension between stewardship, competition, and survival

• What aquaculture and bait diversification are teaching us about adaptation

This isn’t just a story about lobster.

It’s a story about rural economies, generational handoffs, and whether Maine can hold onto the soul of its coastal identity.

⏱️ Chapters:

00:00 – Matinicus memories and how they met

04:00 – What a lobster buyer really does

06:00 – The Navy, the transition, and family legacy

13:00 – The decline of the island fleets

16:00 – The labor shortage no one’s solving

22:00 – Why Canadian supply crushes Maine’s lobster price

27:00 – The lost opportunity in processing and exports

32:00 – The case for diversification (bait, mussels, aquaculture)

35:00 – Reflections on stewardship, policy, and the fight to stay in business

Subscribe for weekly conversations on the real challenges and future of Maine’s economy.

🎧 Search Maine For Keeps wherever you get your podcasts.