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In a year that’s taken us for an uncertain ride, public transportation services in Vermont have remained accessible, reliable, and most of all, safe.

Vermont reporters provide a roundup of top news takeaways about the coronavirus and more for Friday, May 14.

Young-adult author Jo Knowles works closely with students at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction. That may be surprising, given that Knowles is not a visual artist and has no experience in cartooning. But she draws on her experience as a writer to help others tell good stories, whether through prose or a good cartoon.

Former Governor Madeleine Kunin is out with a new book of poetry. Plus, a potential task force to address sexual violence on college campuses, Medicaid funds used for police in schools, and the world’s largest marble exhibit.

Vermont reporters provide a roundup of top news takeaways about the coronavirus and more for Thursday, May 13.

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VPR Midday Newscast for Saturday, May 15

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VPR Morning Newscast for Saturday, May 15

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Rewards-based digital coaching for those who misuse alcohol and want to quit is now open to Vermont Medicaid members . The program is part of a research study. Participants are recruited and can remain anonymous. Once selected, they will have access to digital coaching and information and will be given monetary incentives for staying sober. VPR’s Mary Engisch spoke with Scott Strenio, Chief Medical Officer for the Department of Vermont Health Access, about the study, its implications and how the pandemic provided a sort of silver lining in terms of participants' willingness to engage with health care platforms online. Their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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In a year that’s taken us for an uncertain ride, public transportation services in Vermont have remained accessible, reliable, and most of all, safe.

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VPR Evening Newscast for Friday, May 14

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Lawmakers are coming down the homestretch of the 2021 session and there seem to be some significant budget issues dividing legislative leaders and Gov. Phil Scott. This hour, we talk with Vermont's legislative leaders about this and other issues.

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New reporting from VPR's Abagael Giles examines the critical role community organizers have played in helping shrink the vaccination gap between BIPOC and white Vermonters. In our weekly health update, we talk with Giles. We also hear from two of the visionaries behind Burlington's BIPOC clinics and consider how their recent efforts might serve as a model for building health equity in Vermont.

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Thousands of false unemployment claims have been filed with the Vermont Department of Labor during the pandemic. This hour, we talk with the Labor Commissioner about this fraud, and the reinstatement of the work requirement to receive unemployment benefits.

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State health officials are concerned that many young people are choosing not to get a COVID-19 vaccination because of what they've read on the internet. In our weekly health update, we take a look at the state's efforts to reach out to younger Vermonters, plus other COVID-19 news.

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President Joe Biden has outlined plans to spend $4 trillion on a massive infrastructure package and a proposal to provide paid family leave, expanded child care and free tuition at community colleges. This hour, we talk through these issues with Congressman Peter Welch and answer your questions.

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Recreational Forecast by VPR

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Morning Forecast by VPR

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Evening Forecast by VPR

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Midday Forecast by VPR

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Farm & Garden Forecast by VPR

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Normally you hear a mixture of VPR reporters on this show, and that’s not gonna change -- but you’ll also be hearing a lot from our new producers, Myra Flynn and Josh Crane.

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What if you had to choose between working full time and keeping your benefits? We take on a question from Matthew LeFluer of Alburgh about the conundrum facing some Vermonters with disabilities who rely on federal benefits.

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It's an aspect of Vermont history that some say is overlooked.

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More than 200 Vermonters have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. How did they live?

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How did Vermont end up with so many small, one-room schools? And why don’t we use them anymore?

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Millions of people in the U.S. left the workforce as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. A majority of them were women. This week on NEXT, we hear from women who left their jobs and talk with an expert about the stressors  — and what recovery might look like. Plus, high school English teacher Takeru Nagayoshi on what he’s learned in this past year of hybrid teaching. And we remember trans activist and ballroom icon Jahaira DeAlto. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Alison Bechdel’s new graphic novel depicts her life through fitness. This week on NEXT, we talk with Bechdel about ‘The Secret to Superhuman Strength,' which is more about a state of being than six-pack abs. Plus, advocates make the case for colleges to hire more diverse financial firms to manage billion-dollar endowments. And scholar-activist Katharine Morris reflects on her experience at the intersection of racism, environmental justice and public health, and her framework for moving forward. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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When Professor Laurie Santos first offered a course about psychology and happiness at Yale University, over a thousand students signed up. This week on NEXT, Santos gives us tips  on how we can be happier in our lives. Plus, we’ll hear dream experts discuss the evolution of COVID-19 dreams. And we talk to author, illustrator and TV writer Jonny Sun about his relationship with work and free time — and the things he’s unintentionally inherited from his family. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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By the time today’s teenagers are fifty, they’ll be living in a very different New England. This week on NEXT, we hear from young climate activists around our region about how they’re responding to the threat of climate change. And after a year of no travel, why some climate researchers are reconsidering how much they fly. Plus, listeners reflect on their experiences with electric vehicles, and we talk with an expert about the future of EVs. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Erin French’s ascent to rock star chef almost didn’t happen. Before becoming the owner of The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine, she lost nearly everything that mattered in life. This week on NEXT, we talk with French about her journey and new memoir “Finding Freedom.” Plus, as a way to diversify staff and address inequality, more employers are dropping degree requirements for certain jobs — and gaining a market advantage. And we hear from Mardi Fuller, a volunteer leader with Outdoor Afro, about enjoying nature despite the prevalence of the “white colonial imagination.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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How do people whistle? How does whistling make a sound? Why does your tongue change a whistle higher or lower? Can you get a trophy for whistling? Can people with laryngitis whistle? Get ready, we learn all about whistling with musician and champion whistler Emily Eagen and musician Yuki Takeda. And who whistles our theme song? We'll hear from musician Luke Reynolds, and a kid whistling chorus from our listeners! Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slide | Transcript How do you whistle? - Aurelia, 6, New York Emily says the first thing you should do is lick your lips or use lip balm. "If your lips are dry when the air passes it doesn't feel good," she says. Then you'll make your lips kind of into a pucker, circle your lips tightly. Next, stick your tongue touching your bottom teeth.  Then you make kind of a yuh, yuh, yuh sound. "But instead of saying the words, make it with a little stream of air. You want to let air pass over the top of your tongue and out your lips. You're making a tiny little instrument by curling your tongue." "I like to think about between your nose and your lips, that's a little body part called a philtrum. I like to pretend that my whistle is coming out of that. That helps me make the sound have a little focal point," she says. Emily says it helps to make little sounds when you practice.  "Pretend your sipping tea with that little tiny space there. You don't want to push too much. If you blow too much air it won't work. You have to be really gentle." Once you find your first whistle, it's all about practice and playing around to see what sounds you can make. "If you move your tongue forward, the notes go up, and if you move your tongue down, the notes go down," she says. If you can make a variety of notes, then you can start putting them together to make music!

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How are rocks made? Why are some rocks hard and others soft? How do rocks shine? How are geodes and crystals made? Why do some rocks have gems in them? Answers to your rock questions with Hendratta Ali, rock doctor! Ali is a geologist who studies and teaches at Fort Hays State University in Kansas. Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slide | Transcript

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Is it OK to do something that you were told not to do and then never tell anybody? In this episode we tackle that thorny question from 10-year-old Finn from Seattle. We'll also wrestle with the question, "Why do people make really bad choices and want other people's lives to be harder?" Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slide | Transcript We're tackling some ethical dilemmas in this episode and we're letting kids give the answers! We also get a response from ABC Radio's Short & Curly, a podcast devoted to ethics for kids. Here's how some of our young listeners answer the question about whether it's ever okay to break a rule and lying about it: "No, because it usually just means you get in trouble." - Juniper "I think so. If you're protecting somebody or keeping a surprise." - Camille "It depends who told you. Like if your parents told you, then you shouldn't do it. Or if you do it, you should tell them you did it. But if it's like a mean person you met on the street it's ok. And it depends what it is. Because if it's a bad question, you shouldn't do it either way if it's a bad thing. If it's a good deed you should do it. And if you did that, why wouldn't you tell anyone?" -Sylvie "No, not really. If you don't tell anyone about it. It's mostly the doing it and then not telling anybody about it. Mostly what isn't the good thing about it. It's a little bit worse, if you don't tell someone you might get a feeling where you feel kind of embarrassed. And you don't tell anybody and it just sticks with you the rest of your life."  - Piper

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Have you ever felt competitive with a friend or a sibling? Competition comes up in a lot of different ways in life. Maybe you're running a race with a friend and you want to beat them! Maybe you're trying to play a song without making a mistake and you're competing against yourself. Sometimes competition feels good and fun. It can make you want to do better, and make a game more enjoyable. But not always. Sometimes competition feels bad. Like it's too much pressure, or takes away from the fun of being with your friends. Some people really don't like competition at all. 3-year-old Kai from Tokyo, Japan asks: "Why do we need to compete with other people, especially friends, for example on a sports day or at gym class?" In this episode we discuss competition with anthropologist Niko Besnier. And we'll hear from 12-year-old Harini Logan, a competitive speller from San Antonio, Texas, and 10-year-old Del Guilmette, an athlete from Monkton, Vermont. Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slide | Transcript We put Kai's question to Niko Besnier, anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam.  One of his books is called The Anthropology of Sport, written with Susan Brownell and Thomas F. Carter. He says there are two reasons that people take part in competitions: "One is that sports are fun. It's fun to play with your friends and classmates, to run, jump, play ball. We've all experienced this rush of pleasure and fun doing these things. But the other aspect that's contradictory to the fun part is that it enables us to measure our strength, our speed, our physical ability against those of other people. It's the competition part of sport, and competition can become extremely serious. Frequently, the fun part of sport gets lost." Besnier says when competition gets out of hand it can lead to hurt feelings, and on a larger scale, competition can lead to things like war and inequality. But with the right attitude, competition, especially when we compete against ourselves, can help us get better at sports and academics. That's how it is for Harini Logan. She's a competitive speller who has made it to the Scripps National Spelling Bee twice! "Competition teaches you a lot, whether it's the preparation leading up to that competition or the outcome," Logan says. "It can teach you a lot about not only your abilities, but also new things that can change the way you look at life. When you're preparing for a competition you can learn how to work hard, and how not to give up on something. And during the competition you learn teamwork. That's one thing you learn in spelling bees, because you want to be with your community, your friends. One thing to learn if you win: sportsmanship! You don't gloat about it, you still appreciate yourself but you don't overdo it so others don't feel bad. And if you don't win it doesn't matter. [You just say:] I'm going to try harder next time." Competing also helps us get better. That's how 10-year-old Del Guilmette views it. He likes to play against tough teams when he plays sports, because that's how you get better. "The best players at the game, whatever sport it is, they didn't get better because they played teams that they knew they were going to beat. They played those teams that were better than them. They got better and they practiced!" Listen to the full episode to hear more about how these mature young competitors think about the value of competition.

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In the ice age, megafauna roamed North America: mammoths, saber-toothed cats, even giant land sloths! What happened to them? In this episode we answer questions about the ice age: What was it? Did birds live during that time period? How about giraffes? Did people live with woolly mammoths? Why did mammoths go extinct? We'll answer your questions with Ross MacPhee, senior curator at the American Museum of Natural History and author of End of Megafauna: The Fate of the World's Hugest, Fiercest, and Strangest Animals. And we'll hear from Nathaniel Kitchel, a Dartmouth researcher who used carbon dating to discover the age of a mammoth rib. Plus, John Moody, of the Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions in Norwich, Vermont, on how mammoths appear in the oral history of the Abenaki people. Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slide | Transcript "What was the ice age?" -Karen, 5, Wilmington, Delaware In the Pleistocene era, which lasted from 120,000 years ago to 15,000 years ago, ice covered the landscape in much of the northern hemisphere. Ice covered all of Canada down into the Northern United States and all of northern Europe. And there were smaller ice sheets in Russia. How did this happen? Scientists think it was a buildup of ice over time. "The theory is that the winter never ended," explained Ross MacPhee. "You would have snowfalls in the winter and it never really got warm enough to get rid of it completely. The next year that would be built on, built on and built on. And the thing about snow is that it kind of makes its own weather. If you have snow it gets very cold! And that preserves the snow pack for a very long time." The weight of that snow would compact into ice, eventually covering parts of the world in great sheets of ice. It might help to think of the process as a little bit like what happens when you have a favorite sledding hill: the snow is light and fluffy when you start, but if you sled down it enough times (and walk up the hill, too), eventually the paths get icy from the footsteps and sleds continually packing the snow down. It wasn't just ice sheets that were a feature of the ice age. All of that water caught up in the ice made sea level drop 300 feet lower than it is now. That exposed lots of land that is now covered in water, including a land bridge connecting Alaska and Russia! This land bridge allowed a number of species to move into North America from Asia, like bison. And some North American animals went into Asia, like camels and horses! Bear species traveled in both directions. Humans also used the land bridge to migrate into North America, though scientists think some early humans probably used boats too. Mammoths also migrated over that land bridge! They originated in Asia and came into North America. But there were other species of megafauna that roam the landscape as well, like giant condors, saber toothed cats and even giant sloths. These species went extinct at the same time as mammoths, as the ice age was ending. Listen to the episode to learn more about the theories of why so many large animals went extinct around the same time.

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Zebra Mussels are an invasive species in Lake Champlain. Not only do they consume a great deal of the food supply in the lake, but they also attack native mussel species by sticking to them and robbing them of fresh water and food. The Zebra Mussel can reach a density of 100,000 per square meter, covering exhaust and intake pipes for water treatment and power plants.

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There are 19 species of worms in Vermont. Three of them are considered invasive; they are known as snake worms or jumping worms. These busy, invasive worms change the forest floor and the content of the soil, making it difficult for new growth to take root. This affects the habitat and food source of wildlife and the future of the forest itself.

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Fen grass-of-Parnassus has a beautiful white flower that blooms from mid-August to mid-September in Vermont. It is the sole food source for a rare species of bee, which are only referred to by their Latin name, andrena parnassiae.

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In these times of social distancing, when people can feel disconnected from one another, it's important to realize that nature is just outside your door. From bird songs to green frogs' croaking chatter, stay connected to the outdoors by exploring your own "backyard biodiversity."

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Birdwatchers know that when they see the Red-winged Blackbird return, spring is on its way. These birds are numerous and everywhere. The males are stark-black with a red epaulette, a striking flash of color on their wings, that they use to attract mates and ward off other competing males.

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Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian guitarist, cellist, composer and conductor. He’s not just one of the most celebrated South-American composers of all time, but also one of the most prolific. Villa-Lobos composed over 2000 works, and his music is the soundtrack for a period of great upheaval and change for Brazil in the 20th century.

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The Renaissance was a time of re-birth as science and the arts changed the face of culture. However, some old ideas persisted in the midst of this change; especially beliefs about the roles and intellectual capacity of the genders. Even though the Renaissance saw many female heads of state it was still held as common knowledge that women were inferior to men, physically, mentally and artistically. As a result we have very few examples of female composers during this period of music history. There is an exception though, the work of Maddalena Casulana.

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Maria Grever was the first Mexican, woman composer to earn international attention. You’ve probably heard her melodies and lyrics sung and performed by so many popular musicians from the United States and Latin America. We know her tunes, but very few of us know her name.

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Originally aired on June 1, 2015 Hildegard of Bingen was a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, abbess, polymath and a literal visionary of the 12th Century.

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Manuel Ponce was the first internationally recognized Mexican classical composer. Ponce’s music bridged the gaps between categories like popular, classical, folk and orchestral. He was called the “creator of the modern Mexican song.”

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How the events of last year changed Vermont schools and law enforcement. Also - where's Jack?

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How do you know if a young person is plotting a school massacre? And what do you do then?

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How a Republican governor who had been rated "A" by the NRA decided that Vermont, one of the most gun-friendly states in the nation, needed gun control laws.

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When does planning a school shooting become attempted murder? The question went all the way to the Vermont Supreme Court.

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Who is Jack Sawyer, and why did he want to kill his former classmates?

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What role does storytelling have in addressing the opioid crisis? In March, Vermont Public Radio hosted a gathering at the Turning Point Center of Burlington to talk through that question with the team behind My Heart Still Beats .

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"When you have anxiety, or chronic depression, your mind is constantly going. And I tried opiates and realized that my brain was just quiet for a little bit."

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"When you're told over and over, 'Your child's a problem child — he's bad, he's bad, he's bad, he's bad!' ... You believe your kid's bad."

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"There were three things you could be good at: fighting, drinking or sports. So, I stink at sports. I can't fight. But I guess I can drink."

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"You’re right, I probably do deserve to be in jail the rest of my life. Or, I do deserve to give my life for hers. But since I can’t, let’s save somebody else’s life."