The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman

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The Vermont Conversation is a VTDigger podcast hosted by award-winning journalist David Goodman. It features in-depth interviews about local and national topics with politicians, activists, artists, changemakers and ordinary citizens. The Vermont Conversation is also an hour-long weekly radio program that can be heard on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. on WDEV/Radio Vermont.

  1. 4d ago

    ‘Going to where the silence is.’ Journalist Amy Goodman on 30 years of speaking truth to power

    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 award-winning independent daily news program that she co-founded in 1996. She is also my sister, and we co-wrote four bestselling books. She is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.”   Now a new documentary film called “Steal This Story, Please!” traces Amy’s career and the growth of “Democracy Now!” from a radio broadcast on nine stations into one of the leading U.S.-based independent daily news broadcasts in the world on television, radio and online. The film is directed by Oscar-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin. This week, “Steal This Story, Please!” is showing in Vermont in Burlington, Brattleboro, St. Johnsbury and Montpelier. Amy has gone to some of the places around the world where the light is dimmest, often putting herself in danger, and has been persistent in her belief that our freedom of the press is critical to a meaningful democracy at home.  “The idea that movements matter, that we have to go to where the silence is as journalists. … It's often not silent. It's raucous, it's rowdy, people are organizing, but it doesn't hit the corporate media radar screen,” she said. “That's where ‘Democracy Now!’ lives, and that's really where the hope is.” Last week came the development that the U.S. Department of Justice is closing its antitrust investigation into a merger that would allow Paramount Skydance to buy Warner Bros. Discovery for $110 billion, and with it countless media properties that include CBS and CNN. “People who care about war and peace, climate change, reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, racial and economic equality are not a fringe minority, not even a silent majority, but the silenced majority — silenced by the corporate media, which is why we have to take the media back,” she said. “The media can be the greatest force for peace on Earth.”

    54 min

  2. Jun 10

    Are smartphones birth control? Economist Caitlin Myers on sex, abortion access and talking across divides

    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 attributed to the smartphone. They say that smartphones have led to “reducing in-person interactions, increasing pornography use, and reducing sexual frequency.” Myers says a declining birth rate is not necessarily bad, but that there are “many aspects of it that really concern me, aspects that relate to economic growth and supporting older generations, but also questions of what does this mean for humans.” “Everybody's just doom scrolling on their phone alone and isolated and not forming relationships.”  Myers is the John G. McCullough Professor of Economics at Middlebury College and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is well known for her research into the effects of abortion policy on people’s lives. She has testified in the U.S. Senate about the economic consequences of the 2022 Dobbs decision ending the constitutional right to abortion, and she spearheaded the amicus brief in the Dobbs case that was signed by over 150 economists, highlighting the negative impact of limiting abortion access. Myers also runs a national database of abortion providers. Myers said the Dobbs decision has resulted in about 30,000 additional births “concentrated among people who are younger, have less education and have really limited financial resources.” “The post-Dobbs era is an inequality story,” she told me. “There are parts of the country like ours where the Dobbs decision almost paradoxically expanded abortion access” due to increased availability of telehealth and medication by mail. But in states like Texas, Louisiana and West Virginia that have enacted near-total abortion bans, only 80% to 85% of people who want an abortion are getting one. That leaves up to one-fifth of people who want an abortion “trapped. They aren't finding the means, the information, the resources, the safety and security to travel long distances or to order pills through the mail, and they're giving birth as a result.” Myers grew up in rural West Virginia and Georgia. She empathizes with those who don’t think like her. “As a Southerner it breaks my heart when I hear people dismiss the people I grew up with, the places I'm from, the beliefs that they have.” “We all know it's not just about dismissing far-away Southerners. There are divides within our own state.” Myers wonders “whether we could potentially bridge these divides rather than saying, ‘Yeah, I just don't think this is going to work out,’ like we're never going to agree.” She wants to do her “tiny little part to create a world where we give each other more grace.”

    46 min

  3. Jun 3

    Celebrating and defending protest, America’s founding principle

    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 as executive director from 2014 to 2023. She and André Carothers are co-authors of “Protest: Respect It, Defend It, Use It.” Carothers spent 13 years with Greenpeace USA and co-founded and led the Rockwood Leadership Institute. The two have direct experience of the power of the protest and the ferocity of the pushback. Anti-protest laws are spreading and becoming increasingly repressive. Nearly 400 anti-protest bills have been introduced in 45 states, according to the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law. Activists are now being charged with felonies and accused of terrorism. One of the most draconian anti-protest tools is known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, as was filed against Greenpeace by Energy Transfers, builder of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The company accused Greenpeace of inciting violence and spreading misinformation during indigenous-led protests in 2016 and 2017 that delayed construction. Last year, a North Dakota jury awarded Energy Transfers $660 million, later reduced to a still-staggering $345 million. SLAPP lawsuits “are designed to intimidate, silence, scare, distract and bankrupt critics,” Leonard told me. “It's a kind of corporate legal bullying” intended to prevent people from protesting. Forty states, including Vermont, now have anti-SLAPP statutes. “Protest” describes creative and successful acts of resistance from around the world. Among these are the 2015 protests by “kayaktivists” in Seattle aimed at stopping Shell Oil from drilling in the Arctic. Hundreds of people in kayaks, sailboats and tribal canoes took to the water to block an oil drilling rig, Shell’s Polar Pioneer, as it was being moved to Alaska. The boaters held up signs saying, “Save the Arctic,” “Oil-Free Future” and “Shell No!” After spending $7 billion on Arctic oil exploration, Shell ultimately canceled the project, citing high costs and “the challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment,” which protesters took credit for. Leonard said that what made the Seattle protest successful was that it was “part of a long intentional escalating campaign” that included family kayak training each weekend and free kayak rentals. “There were community meetings and art builds. It was a very inclusive and participatory set of activities for a couple of years leading up to filling the actual bay with kayaks to try to stop the Polar Pioneer from moving forward.” Carothers noted that “a lot of these protesters are not honored at the time.” Rosa Parks and her husband lost their jobs and had to leave town after her refusal to give up her seat for a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. It took nearly 40 years before Parks was honored by President Bill Clinton with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. “There are so many ways to get involved,” said Carothers, highlighting how citizens have protested the federal immigration crackdowns in New Orleans, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. He said he counted 27 different ways that people in Minneapolis resisted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “from people driving their neighbors' kids to school because they didn't want to leave the house,” to lawyers offering their services in cars, to people delivering food to their immigrant neighbors, to others “who went to the detention center with a blanket and a cup of hot soup when someone was released.” Leonard and Carothers want their book to be both inspirational and practical. They are speaking at the Patagonia store in Burlington on June 5 and offering a training in nonviolent resistance the following day. “If you're feeling alone and if you're feeling isolated, don't be alone,” Carothers said. “Find a neighbor, find a mailing list that is describing what's available to you in your community … and do what it takes to support the universe of people who are perhaps more inclined to go in the street, or perhaps more inclined to be arrested because they have the social capital (or) the economic flexibility to risk arrest in a way other people don't.” “There's lots of ways to be involved,” Carothers added, emphasizing: “Protest works.”

    42 min

  4. May 27

    ‘Action is the antidote to despair.’ Ben Cohen fights to save the soul of Ben & Jerry’s.

    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 company with his friend Jerry Greenfield nearly 50 years ago. The two men ran the company until 2000, when it was acquired by Unilever, a multinational company that owns Dove soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Vaseline, among other global brands.   Ben & Jerry’s succeeded in getting Unilever to agree that the iconic Vermont company could continue to pursue its social mission, which would be overseen by an independent board. Cohen and Greenfield remained as employees of the company, but they had no management authority. The company continued to be a strong supporter of racial justice, LGBTQ rights, the Occupy Wall Street movement, climate activism and other issues. But relations between the ice cream company and its corporate masters began to sour, then curdled in 2021 when Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop selling ice cream in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Unilever opposed the move, then sold its Israeli business to an Israeli-owned company that has continued to sell the ice cream in Israel and the occupied territories. Ben & Jerry’s sued Unilever in 2024, accusing it of muzzling the company’s support for Palestinian rights and silencing its criticism of President Donald Trump. In March 2024, Unilever spun off its ice cream businesses to Magnum, which is now one of the largest ice cream companies in the world. The hippy-themed Vermont brand may be associated with peace and love, but that does not characterize its current relations with its owners. In March 2025, Ben & Jerry’s CEO David Stever was ousted, allegedly over the company’s progressive activism. In September 2025, Greenfield quit the company in protest. Cohen, who is 75, is now waging a battle to save the soul of Ben & Jerry’s and possibly buy it back, though Magnum says the company, which is valued at over $1 billion, is not for sale. “They've prevented the company from calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. They prevented the company from supporting the student [Palestinian solidarity] protesters, and they've prevented the company from using the word ‘Trump’ in its posts,” said Cohen. “Magnum has become Trumpified.” “The very thing that has built the brand, this values-led way of doing business, is the very thing that they're destroying. So they're taking this investment and reducing the value of it,” Cohen said. When I asked him whether Ben & Jerry’s might leave Vermont, he replied, “It’s possible.”  He said that Ben & Jerry’s independent board had earlier prevented Unilever from closing the Waterbury ice cream plant. But Ben & Jerry’s could be moved to a central factory where other Magnum ice cream brands are made. “I don't know what's in Magnum's mind, but I don't think there would be anything to prevent them from doing that.” Cohen urged concerned consumers to boycott other Magnum ice cream brands, but not Ben & Jerry’s, which he said “would be harmful to the people who work at Ben & Jerry's.” “We want to support Ben & Jerry's — that's the issue — but to stop buying the other stuff that Magnum makes.” Cohen continues his brisk pace of activism. He was arrested last year at a U.S. Senate hearing featuring Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., accusing Congress of slashing Medicaid for poor children in the U.S. to pay to bomb children in Gaza. Cohen said he has given up on the Democratic Party. “Both parties have presided over this system that drives all this money up to the top. The system is working the way it's designed, and both parties are guilty of that.” But he remains hopeful. “Action is the antidote to despair,” he said, quoting folk singer Joan Baez. “When you're confronted with situations of injustice, you can ignore it, you can complain about it, or you can work on changing it. And personally, I prefer to do that.”

    37 min

  5. May 20

    Journalist Jasper Craven on the toxic mix of militarism and masculinity

    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, among other publications. Craven’s investigation into the Vermont Guard showed him how “the military holds unique elements that can make these problems worse than in civilian life, and also that many of the systems developed to combat that behavior are themselves flawed and easily exploited and can leave women in particular really feeling betrayed by an institution that they've given their lives to.” Craven, who is 33, has a new book, “God Forgives, Brothers Don’t: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood.” He argues that the U.S. military shapes American masculinity, especially through military schools, academies, and programs such as Junior ROTC in middle and high schools and ROTC in colleges. But the form of masculinity that these institutions advance has taken a heavy toll, as evidenced by a suicide crisis throughout the military. “The idea that the military is the single and most effective reform program for boys is just completely untrue,” said Craven. “Since the 1800s there are many stories of mostly young boys who have been deeply damaged while under the care of military school officials — some have died, some have committed suicide, some have been hospitalized for psychiatric crises.” Craven points to the chest-thumping hypermasculinity of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as emblematic of how some men are responding to the growing diversity of the military, including the rising status of women. “Women are being elevated for the first time into senior roles where they are often outshining men in both physical and academic pursuits, and that is majorly threatening to people like Hegseth,” Craven said.  “The military response to that is violent subjugation, and that is what we see with Hegseth. … He is just psychically hung up on all of these old school ideas around manliness and military service.” Craven’s reporting on the military earned him an unexpected visit from the U.S. Secret Service. After he covered protests at West Point during a speech by President Donald Trump for a story for Politico, a Secret Service agent paid a visit to his parents’ home in Vermont. The agent was “alleging without merit, completely falsely that I was acting suspiciously on campus and that I had been asking around to meet the president — again, not true — though if I had been doing that, (I was) certainly well within my rights as a journalist.” Craven quickly concluded that “it was a pretty clear-cut act of intimidation from West Point.”  Craven has not been deterred. He is moving back to Vermont to continue his work in journalism. He hopes that his work leads to “alternative ideas around shaping American masculinity and aiding American men.”

    37 min

  6. May 13

    Going fast and breaking barriers

    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 — including Bianchi, Greg Durso and Ryan Manning — as they rediscover a sport they love. Central to their return to biking is the story of the world’s first adaptive mountain bike trail network, which was built with the help of volunteers from Richmond Mountain Trails. The Driving Range opened in Bolton in 2024.  Last week, the Vermont Land Trust signed an agreement with the DesLauriers family, the owners of Bolton Valley resort, to conserve the land where the Driving Range is located. Richmond Mountain Trails and the Catamount Trail Association will hold recreation easements. Berne Broudy, a veteran Vermont outdoor journalist who is also president of Richmond Mountain Trails, produced and co-directed “Best Day Ever” with filmmaker Ben Knight. The 48-minute film has been winning awards at film festivals around North America since its release last fall. The film and the trail project it chronicles show how a community can not only open the outdoors to people with disabilities. It can change culture. Broudy recalled that when a group of local teenagers came to help build the trails, they didn’t know how to interact with people with disabilities. “Within one trail night of digging together, riding bikes together, eating hot dogs together, hanging out together, that dynamic totally changed,” Broudy said. “It's not so much about the trail as it is about changing the mindset to include everyone and being inclusive and allowing for these small changes that make huge differences in other people's lives,” said Manning, who works as an account manager at Burton Snowboards and has quadriplegia. Bianchi has seen how her participation in adaptive sports has changed attitudes. “When you spend time with someone with a disability, you learn that there is no difference,” she said. “It's just normalized. And I think we need more of that in this world.” One of the film's most powerful moments features Bianchi returning to the scene of her accident. She is riding an adaptive mountain bike and accompanied by the two friends she was with when she was injured. Returning to ride the trail again was a milestone for her.  “You're continuing to conquer and do even greater and better things,” she reflected. “It hasn't really stopped you. And I think that is really cool."

    35 min

  7. May 6

    Shepherd, farmer and award-winning author Helen Whybrow on life, death and belonging

    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 of tending sheep on a 200-acre farm that she and her husband, Peter Forbes, began restoring after acquiring it a quarter-century ago. Whybrow lyrically weaves a tale about the rhythms of life on the farm and how the lessons that she has learned there have informed every aspect of her life. The time span of the book juxtaposes one season of a sheep’s life with 20 years of Whybrow’s life, during which she gets married, has a daughter and cares for a mother with dementia. For Whybrow, farming has enabled her to fulfill her desire for belonging, which she says has preoccupied her for much of her life. “I've wrestled all my life with this tension between wanting to be a nomad and wanting to deeply root in a place,” she told me. “What I've come to understand here at Knoll Farm is that the more you participate in your place and your life, the deeper your sense of belonging becomes. It's not something you just step into that was ready made and you have to keep searching until you find it. It's something that you actually create by doing it on your own.” Whybrow grew up on a small farm in Plainfield, New Hampshire, the daughter of a physician and a social worker. She left home to attend Amherst College and travel the world, and landed back in New England to pursue a career as an editor for W.W. Norton, Orion Magazine and Milkweed Editions, the nonprofit independent press that published “The Salt Stones.”  She is the author of two other books and editor of several anthologies and has been a visiting professor at Middlebury College. She and her husband run Knoll Farm in Fayston, an organic farm and home to purebred Icelandic sheep, and also a retreat center for social and environmental justice. Whybrow concedes that farming is “a blessing and a curse,” with many farmers struggling to survive and Knoll Farm itself constantly scrapping to make ends meet. But she said, “There's also something incredibly beautiful and rich about staying in one place. And like Richard Nelson says in one of my favorite books, ‘The Island Within,’ ‘There's more to be learned from climbing the same mountain 1000 times than 1000 different mountains.’” Whybrow’s life as a shepherd helped her deal with the grief of losing her mother. “When you're a sheep farmer, you lose a lot of animals,” she said. It helped her see death “as just part of the cycle and part of the seasonal turn.” “Having gone through that for so many years helped me let go of my mom and realize she's still there. She's kind of everywhere.” Whybrow concludes “The Salt Stones” by musing, “You don’t have to become a sheep farmer to cultivate shepherd’s mind, which is about finding a way to listen, to tend, and to immerse in the living world.”

    39 min

  8. Apr 29

    What happens when law enforcement is lawless?

    When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents launched an immigration raid in South Burlington on March 11, they ran into a wall of resistance. Neighbors linked arms in an attempt to stop the masked agents from entering a house in their effort to arrest and deport a Mexican-born man. Protesters blocked an ICE vehicle and hurled insults and objects. ICE agents deployed flashbang grenades. Vermont State Police and local police shoved, dragged and even choked some protesters, according to public testimony at the Statehouse. Three occupants of the house who were not named in a warrant were arrested by ICE. Outside, six protesters were arrested — three by VSP and three by Burlington police. Resistance did not end on the streets of South Burlington. Last week, Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George announced that she would not charge the protesters who were arrested. She stated that they did not have criminal records and it was not solely protesters who “bear the burden of all the harm caused that day.” George also blamed police officers “who agitated, who escalated, and who responded in a way that may be ultimately deemed legal, but was also unacceptable.” George told me that “there were some protesters that absolutely escalated the situation and made things a lot more dangerous than necessary.” But she added that after watching the police body camera videos, “there was a lot of behavior on both sides that was not necessary and made the situation a lot more escalated than it needed to be.” George has called for an independent review of the law enforcement response and referred three of those arrested to a restorative justice program. State police leaders have criticized George in unusually harsh and personal terms, blasting her for “a disheartening decision that sets a dangerous precedent.” Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Morrison and Vermont State Police Director Col. Matthew T. Birmingham wrote in a statement, “The state’s attorney’s failure to bring charges in this matter is likely to embolden people at similar events in the future to cross the line into criminal behavior, placing the public and law enforcement at greater risk of harm.”   George countered that the situation “was very emotionally charged, and our local law enforcement participated in the unlawful arrest of three of our community members, and I think that there has to be a bit more accountability shared in what happened on March 11.” In the end, the entire ICE raid was found to have been triggered by a case of mistaken identity. The three occupants of the house who were arrested have since been released. Asked if she believed that federal agents were breaking the law and not being held accountable, George replied, “Yeah, absolutely. From my perspective, March 11 is an example of that.” She noted that the ICE officer lied on his affidavit to obtain an arrest warrant and “there was no impact on that agent for falsifying a warrant.” What role should local law enforcement play when federal agents are conducting an immigration raid and community members are protesting? “I don't know,” George replied. “Ultimately, it's up to communities to decide.” She suggested that local police chiefs ask their town officials for guidance on “what do you want us to do when this happens.” George added that local police felt that “if they hadn't been present on March 11, that ICE agents would have significantly harmed, if not killed, protesters. That is a terrifying thought.” “I'm terrified for every brown person in our community,” said George. “I'm terrified that it is OK for ICE agents to do what they did on March 11 and essentially kidnap three people in our community, because they just rounded up the brown people in the house, instead of taking the time to make sure that they were even on the slightest bit of legal ground.” “We have a lot of people in our community that contribute to our community in an incredible way and are afraid to leave their houses. And that, to me, is an enormous threat to public safety.” George said her refusal to charge protesters is “about standing up for the three people who (were) unlawfully arrested that day by a federal administration that doesn't care about the law.”  “It has to be more important to every single person in our community and to our law enforcement officers that that be held accountable more than the three people locking arms to try to keep those three people from being kidnapped.”

    38 min
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About

The Vermont Conversation is a VTDigger podcast hosted by award-winning journalist David Goodman. It features in-depth interviews about local and national topics with politicians, activists, artists, changemakers and ordinary citizens. The Vermont Conversation is also an hour-long weekly radio program that can be heard on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. on WDEV/Radio Vermont.

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