The New England Sacred Harp Convention is coming up in Burlington on Oct. 4th and 5th. Hundreds of singers will come together to celebrate one of the country’s oldest Christian music traditions. 

But Sacred Harp goes beyond Christianity — all are welcome to sing. And this year, sacred harp aficionados are celebrating a brand new edition of their songbook.

Anya Skibbe and Anna Mays share the history and culture of Sacred Harp, and why it still feels relevant and resonant today. They also demonstrate four songs from the new songbook, alongside Colleen Hayes, Sarah Galper Maika, Jim, Linda, and Dan Coppick, Nicandra Galper, and Sage Chase-Dempsey.

Broadcast live on Tuesday, October 2, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m. Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or check us out on Instagram.

Americans pay more for health care–as a nation and individually–than citizens of any other nation on earth, even as access to health insurance continues to dwindle. And as a state, Vermont's per-person health care spending and health insurance costs are among the highest in the country.

We delve into one of the reasons there’s so much sticker shock–the behind-the-scenes influence of lobbyists on health care legislation as we speak with UVM professor Alex Garlick about his new book Pre-Existing Conditions: How Lobbying Makes Health Care More Expensive.

Then, former Vermont Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Amestoy has written a new legal thriller based on a murder trial in the Green Mountain State from the 1920’s. We hear about Winters’ Time: A Secret Pledge, a Severed Head, and the Murder That Brought America's Most Famous Lawyer to Vermont.

Ever drive past a park n ride full of cars and wonder, what happens there? What are all those people using that giant parking lot for? The team at Brave Little State recently spent 12 hours at the Richmond park and ride, all to answer a listener's question.

The whole Brave Little State team — Josh Crane, Sabina Poux and Burgess Brown — shared some insights from their reporting.

Betty Smith is known as Vermont Public’s founding mother. She’s been with the station since its very first day, and this year, she celebrates her 50th anniversary in public radio. She’ll tell us stories from the early days of VPR, when they weren’t sure the station would survive, and her thoughts on public media's future. 

Then: a new film about the melting ice of Greenland features a University of Vermont professor. 

It's the fourth installment of our annual fall series, School Stories. Every Tuesday this month, we’ve focused on issues related to Vermont schools. For this edition, we discuss pre-kindergarten.

In 2014, Vermont’s governor Peter Shumlin signed a universal pre-K bill into law. Thereafter, 3 and 4-year-olds could get free pre-K for 10 hours a week through their public school system, or through subsidy on tuition to a private or home-based childcare centers. We’re about a decade into the implementation of this law, and there have been some big wins. But the pre-K world in Vermont is far from some stable, done deal. 

Our guests this hour are helping to shape the vision for pre-k education in Vermont. We're joined by Vermont Secretary of Education, Zoie Saunders, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, Janet McLaughlin, executive director of the nonprofit Building Bright Futures, Morgan Crossman, and Executive Director of Turtle Island Children’s Center in Montpelier, Jocelyn York.

Broadcast live on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.

Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or check us out on Instagram.

Some Vermont towns are adopting a new strategy to help people in crisis. It’s called situation tables.

We’ll learn about this initiative that’s underway from Bennington to Burlington. Police and social services groups come together for weekly meetings to help specific community members with housing, addiction and other stressors. We’ll hear from a Vermont Public reporter, and a retired police chief-turned-situation table trainer.

Then: some communities offer a program that pays repeat offenders not to do drugs. It’s funded with settlement money from opioid manufacturers. We’ll hear from a UVM psychiatrist who helped develop this controversial approach.

Over the next year, some of Vermont’s hospitals are going to see less money coming in than they wanted. Their budgets for the year are now set, and they know exactly how much they can charge insurance companies for patient care. 

Green Mountain Care Board chair Owen Foster joins us for the hour. The Board is in charge of approving budgets for Vermont’s 14 hospitals. He explains this year’s decisions, including some major cuts to UVM Medical Center’s rate requests. That’s the state’s largest hospital.

The Green Mountain Care Board also approves insurance premiums in Vermont. All these choices the board makes affect how much you will have to pay for health care. It’s a complicated knot we’ll untangle together.

Broadcast live on Thursday, September 18, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.

Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or check us out on Instagram.

There are two new record holders for fastest supported and unsupported Long Trial hikes. One athlete, Tara "Candy Mama" Dower, is a professional ultramarathoner from Colorado. The other, Tori "Chewy" Constantine, is a nurse from Waterbury. They’ll tell us about the mental and physical preparation it takes to hike the spine of the Green Mountains at top speed.

Plus: Investigators have identified the last remaining victim in the Bear Brook murder case. New Hampshire Public Radio’s Jason Moon hosted a blockbuster podcast about the case. He’s just released an update about this final twist in the story.