Author and Activist David Bollier explains The Commons, a different kind of economic system that values people over profits and puts cooperative action at the center of society instead of companies or the government. Bollier explains the concept of “enclosures’’ and the misunderstanding of the famous essay “Failure of the Commons.’’ Far from a fringe movement, The Commons is here to stay ..read more

The US Government will declare and end to the COVID pandemic “health emergency’’ this spring. The lead COVID expert for the NY Times explains what that means - for all of us. Follow me @Ellis52K ..read more

Conflict of Interest is a podcast about the world, through a discerning lens of journalism, politics and above all Vermont. Kevin Ellis goes against the grain of today’s politics and celebrity culture to talk about the massive change all around us and how the world actually works. You will hear from Kevin’s Vermont neighbors AND national voices on difficult issues. Vermont is becoming, or always has been, a place, a real place. We are not interested in the Vermont of the tourist guides. Part interview, part history lesson about stuff you won’t see or hear on CNN or NPR ..read more

No event I can think of has defined America since World War 2 than the assasination of President John F. Kennedy. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was murdered while riding in an open car in the streets of Dallas Texas while on political visit there. You know the story so well. Lee harvey Oswald was arrested and accised of the crime. Oswald was then shot and killed while in the hands of police by shadowy underworld figure Jack Ruby. A commission appointed by Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson issued a report that Oswald was the lone gunman, able to fire two shots hitting Kennedy at long range wit ..read more

Author and activist Ward Wilson believes we can eliminate nuclear weapons and not because he is a woo woo liberal. Wilson has talked to the Generals, the diplomats and former presidents of countries. His experience led him to believe that worldwide elimination is possible because the weapons are not “useful’’ and because a nuclear mistake is more and more likely to happen. His central thesis is that since the development of the atomic bomb, a hazy and lazy argument has grown up around the weapons that make it difficult to think clearly about how to deal with them. The result: Wilson’s latest b ..read more

In 2015, Wales (a country) passed a law called the Future Generations Act. And they made Sophie Howe the first Commissioner for Future generations in the World. Her job - make sure all government agencies consider the interest of future generations in everything they do. Doesn’t government always do that? Turns out the answer is No. Howe joined me for a conversation on a visit to Vermont to explain how the Welsh are doing things right - or at least better. When the Welsh government wants to build a new highway, they have to get the approval of the commissioner for Future generations. Howe didn ..read more

Last month the NY Times Wirecutter taste testers wanted to determine the best vanilla ice cream in the world. They tasted all the cool ones. Five tasters tested 16 vanilla ice creams blind. Their conclusion? A 40 plus year old vanilla made by a couple of guys in a Vermont gas station. Yes - those guys. And a short time later, a food guru named Peter Lind joined the company and helped create the big ones - Chunky Monkey, Rainforest Crunch and Cookie Dough - my daughter’s favorite. But before all of them - there was vanilla. Peter Lind takes us through the history. I interviewed him on my VT Vie ..read more

Arthur Ashe would not recognize the U.S. Open Tennis championships played this summer in New York City. He won the tournament in 1968 as a US Army Captain and received NO prize money. Coco Gauff won millions for her victory, which she played in the shadow of Ashe and in the presence of Billie Jean King, not to mention the execs at JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley ..read more

How did America turn from a fairly health democracy into an angry, bitter group of tribes that believe their own stories and reject facts, science, government institutions and intellectual inquiry. Or have we always been this way? Journalist Nina Burleigh has been writing about these issues for years. You can draw a line from JFK’s affairs to the election of Donald Trump and the handling of the COVID pandemic for clues to how it got this way. Burleigh is the author of many books on politics and culture, including our handling of the pandemic and the assassination of Mary Meyer, the mistress of ..read more

Well it happened. Trump has been indicted a fourth time before we could get the podcast out on the first three. But our conversation with former federal prosecutor Jerry O’Neill is still relevant because we explore the two indictments by a federal grand jury for Trump’s handling of top secret documents AND his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. We do NOT discuss the fourth indictment - this week - by a grand jury in Georgia. This one charges Trump with a broad conspiracy to overturn the election. But this time there are 18 additional defendants, including his lawyer Rudy Guiliani. This cha ..read more