Vermont Edition

When the gavel sounds, the new legislative session begins. Vermont Edition will be at the Statehouse as the 75th biennial session of the Vermont Legislature convenes, broadcasting live from the Cedar Creek Room.

The state of Vermont will spend millions of dollars on cybersecurity through 2019 to keep the data you share with the state—like at the DMV or when you do your taxes—protected from threats in cyberspace. We're talking with Vermont's new chief information security officer, Nicholas Andersen, about what those threats are and how they're evolving. Andersen works in the state's Agency of Digital Services .

As Facebook and other big social media networks increasingly treat user information as a commodity - and as these networks are having big impacts on the world stage - many users are looking to quit. Or at least, they're talking about it. We're looking at where the push to quit is coming from and what's involved in getting off these platforms, for good and for ill.

Congressman Peter Welch was sworn in for his seventh term in Congress on Thursday. Welch returns to Washington amid a government in shutdown, a House of Representatives now controlled by his party, the Democrats, and a vote for a new Speaker of the House.

The new Congress opened facing the partial shutdown of the federal government. As he returns to Washington for his seventh term, Rep. Peter Welch joins us to discuss his thoughts on the efforts to resolve the impasse.

The U.S. Department of Education is proposing new rules for how sexual assault and harassment is handled on college campuses. The changes could limit the types of complaints schools can investigate and potentially allow live hearings where victims could be cross-examined. The department says it's to protect both accusers and the accused, but victim advocates fear the changes could discourage victims from reporting abuse.

We're starting off 2019 in poetic form. Send us a haiku about your 2018: events, moments, thoughts. Or write one about your hopes for the new year.

What a year in news in Vermont. Home-grown recreational marijuana became legal. Mid-term elections drew many more voters than expected, even in the August primary. Act 46 had many communities concerned. And now the Bernie 2020 guessing is in full swing. We'll talk to some of Vermont's top reporters about the state's big news stories from 2018.

Brattleboro writer Ann Braden became known to many Vermonters when she started the advocacy group GunSenseVT in 2013. Meanwhile, Braden, a former teacher, was raising two small children and writing. And now her debut novel has been published to rave reviews.

Dr. David Toll was a physician who practiced medicine in St. Johnsbury for decades and connected with patients from across the Northeast Kingdom and northern New Hampshire. He saw patients from childhood into middle age and worked until he himself was 90. And over this weekend, he died. He was 93 years old.

One barrier to entry for blind people into science and technology fields4 is the challenge they may face drawing, doing the drafting required for engineering, or even doing mathematics that require graphing. In 2011, with support from the National Federation of the Blind, a UVM student and two UVM engineering professors started a company that makes drawing tablets that create raised lines that blind people can touch. And - critically! - they also figured out a way to make an effective eraser.

When Ken Schatz took charge of the Department for Children and Families four years ago, DCF was still under intense scrutiny after the deaths of two young children under the department's supervision. We're checking in with Commissioner Schatz to talk about what's changed since then. And we'll talk about homelessness, the opioid crisis and the future of the state's only juvenile detention facility.

The past year has held exciting news about space: from a new Mars lander , to important strides in spaceflight , to discoveries of distant exoplanets to observations of 'Oumuamua , the first object from another star ever seen in our own solar system. We're talking about the year in space and what to expect in 2019.

As Springfield Hospital faces serious financial struggles, the CEO and CFO of its health care system have both recently resigned. There is other internal turmoil as well, including attrition and missed payments to contractors and others. What's going wrong and what steps are being taken to turn things around?

VPR Classical has been airing the Timeline series since 2015. The thought-provoking, bite-sized explorations of the development and history of Western music are the brainchild of James Stewart , the afternoon host for VPR Classical. Now, he's producing a series of new Timeline episodes with a specific focus on music.