Vermont Edition

Parts of our region are experiencing a very wet and muddy spring. For some, the rains bring up tough memories of the flooding of recent years. For some towns, the floods of 2023 and 2024 caused immense damage and upended lives. While we all hope 2025 doesn’t make this list, it’s better to be safe than sorry. 

Here to to talk flood preparedness is the director of Vermont Emergency Management, Eric Forand. His office is working to improve communication with individual towns when a disaster hits. We also talk with volunteer organizers about their plans to help Vermonters weather this years storms. Megan Mathers of Northeast Kingdom Organizing and the Kingdom United Resilience and Recovery Effort, and Jon Copans of the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience join us. 

Today is Vermont Edition’s annual spring gardening show. Our guest is Charlie Nardozzi – gardening consultant extraordinaire, speaker, and TV and radio host. You can hear him on Sunday mornings right here on Vermont Public for All Things Gardening. This year's show was in front of a live audience at Vermont Public’s Colchester studio. 

Vermont’s only law school is the heart of South Royalton. Many residents wonder if the school will stay there, or if it’ll leave town.

Today on Vermont Edition, we share a recent episode of Brave Little State. It digs into this listener question about Vermont Law and Graduate School: “Do South Royalton and the surrounding towns actually have to worry about the Vermont law school leaving, or is it just a recurring rumor?” Produce Sabine Poux learns about the law school’s footprint in that part of the state.

Plus, a live discussion with Vermont Supreme Court Justice Karen Carroll and lawyer Andrew Cliburn on how the law school shaped their careers.

First, Leading arts organizations in Vermont are reeling, after finding out they’ve lost grant funding from the federal government. The Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Flynn Center, and Northern Stage are just a few of the local groups that face significant cuts. The head of the Vermont Arts Council, Susan Evans McClure,  explains the role of federal funding in Vermont’s cultural landscape.

Then, The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against Vermont and three other states for legislation that allows them to sue oil companies for damage caused by climate change over the last 30 years. Vermont was the first in the state to pass such a law, called the Climate Action Superfund. Pat Parenteau, a professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Environmental Law Center, tells us about this lawsuit and the two other lawsuits coming from outside of the state and how they may play out. Independent State Rep. Anne Donahue tells us why she thinks Vermont's law should be repealed. And Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak explains his office's work to determine the specific amount that the state aims to collect from oil companies. 

Broadcast live on Monday, May 12, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.

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We’re excited to present a new podcast created by the nonprofit Vermont Folklife. It’s called The Arts That Shape Us. It’s devoted to exploring the state’s cultural heritage and what different local artforms say about the past and present of Vermont. This podcast is one of ten projects funded by Vermont Public’s Made Here Fund, created to support Vermont media makers. Vermont Folklife’s Director of Education and Media, Mary Wesley, hosts the show.

In this first installment, she takes us to Barre. As Mary explains, the city had a booming granite industry, and this industrial tradition birthed an artistic one.

Then, we meet a Tibetan musician and dancer who has infused his cultural heritage into Vermont's. 

Broadcast live on Thursday, May 8, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.

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There’s an effort underway by the Trump administration to defund public media in America. Vermont Public's CEO Vijay Singh will  answer listener questions along with our own to get a clearer view of public media’s mission, its message, and future if financial support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is eliminated.

Plus, Quebec's Eastern Townships may be overshadowed by the glamour associated with the city of Montreal, but the editors of a new book called "Quebec's Eastern Townships and the World" argue the collection of towns just north of the border have their own historical and cultural footprint that reaches far beyond the province.

Vermont author Bailey Seybolt used marvel at the beauty of one old Burlington building. Her research unearthed a dark history. Seybolt sits down with Mitch Wertlieb to discuss her true-crime novel, Coram House, and the notorious real-life abuses at St. Joseph's Orphanage it's based on.

Then; the story of Vermont's founders like Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold has been told ad nauseum. But Vermont State Representative Conor Casey found something inherently funny about these men and their relationship. So, he wrote a satirical take on the events surrounding Vermont's early history, provocatively titled Founding F***ers: The Story of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. It began it's weeks long run at The Greater Boston Stage Company earlier this week and runs until May 18th. Casey sits down with Mitch to talk about why he finds Vermont's founders so funny and how the stage play came together. 

Broadcast live on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.

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