Newly elected Adjutant General Steven Cray discusses issues affecting the National Guard, VPR's Hamilton Davis analyzes Vermont's efforts to establish a health care exchange and we listen back to the voices in the news.

Like the popular children's book said: everyone poops. But what happens to it all afterwards? We'll learn all about septic systems, wastewater treatment, and some innovative methods of dealing with that stuff everyone has, and nobody wants.

We get a peak at the 130 species of ants that roam around New England, meet Vermont's new state entomologist, and reach into our listener mailbag.

A new report from The Wilderness Society looks a range of different renewable energy sources that we might use in New England and details the impacts and consequences of each.

We look at the power and pitfalls that come with holding a supermajority in the state legislature and hear about the Mental Health Law Project. 

Smart meters have already been installed in roughly seventy percent of Vermont homes. These meters will let consumers (and utility companies) monitor their power usage on a daily basis. We'll find out about smart meters in Vermont, and learn about some of the controversy surrounding them.

Summarize 2012 in a haiku and share it with us.

On the last mono-sequential day until January 1, 2101, we'll hear about orbifolds, phyloogenetics and Math-O-Vision as we discuss practical applications of math, hear what the state police are doing to lower the number of traffic fatalities and we head out to find the perfect Christmas Tree.

Tell us what books you're reading, recommending and buying as gifts.

Cooking can be a stressful experience for all of us, especially this time of year. Share your stories of Thanksgiving kitchen disasters.

Vermont is moving towards a single payer health care system, and doctors trying to imagine how an overhauled system will change the way they treat and interact with patients.

Burlington's Jewish community traces its roots to group of immigrants who escaped Lithuania in the 1880s and who established a Yiddish-speaking Orthodox community in Burlington's Old North End. That history is explored in an upcoming Vermont Public Television documentary.

We discuss the lure of meth, why it's so easy to produce and the threat it may pose to your community and we read from our listener mailbag.

Learning to drive is a rite of passage and huge responsibility for the 5,500 or so teens who get junior operator licenses each year in Vermont. Now, a new guide from the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles aims to help parents reinforce safety lessons as their teens get behind the wheel.

Naturalist and bird enthusiast Bridget Butler joins us to explore the fall bird migration.  

For many people, cutting, splitting and stacking the season's wood isn't work so much as a seasonal reconnection with the land.

We examine how the $500 million in investments in the Northeast Kingdom could affect the region, and we look back to the days when the region relied on fire towers on the mountaintops to spot forest blazes.

Horticulturist Charlie Nardozzi joins us for Vermont Edition's annual fall gardening show to share tips on fall lawn care, storing the harvest, saving seeds, fall planting and getting ready for next season.

We explore the cultural questions of homeownership and the issues of owning a home versus renting, hear from last year’s Hackathon contest and learn about a program that provides 10 new books each year to elementary school students.

We look at the nature of the dangerous bacterial infection, C. diff, its causes, symptoms, prevalence in area hospitals and what can be done to stop its spread and we listen to the oral history of Tropical Storm Irene.

Terrorism, technology and the Patriot Act are just three causes for a reduction in our level of privacy. Author Garret Keizer discusses how views on privacy differ across social, political and cultural lines, we get an update on the threat of “bath salts” and we learn how to bowl a cricket ball.

Non-native, invasive plants are one of the biggest threats to the health of our forests. We’ll talk about these plants, from wild parsnip to Japanese knotweed to garlic mustard, and what’s being done to combat them.

When the Car Talk guys announced their retirement, public radio listeners and station managers wondered what will replace that iconic hour on Saturday mornings.

Alison Bechdel is a cartoonist, who for 25 years wrote and drew the much-loved comic strip, "Dykes To Watch Out For." In 2006, she published her first graphic memoir "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic," which became a huge bestseller. Now, Bechdel has a second memoir out, "Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama."

Reporters from Quebec give us a look at the top stories facing the province and we listen to an audio documentary remembering 135 Pearl.