The Agency of Human Services will have to contend with some of the biggest challenges facing the state: the Corrections budget, mental health services, the potential for single-payer medicine, and caring for Vermont's most vulnerable people, to name a few. Agency Secretary Doug Racine is our guest on Vermont Edition to discuss how he'll manage these services in the face of $44 million in budget cuts.

Also in the program, reflections on Plato's dialogs. Middlebury scholar Victor Nuovo has just concluded two series of essays in the Addison Independent about the longest of Plato's dialogues, "Laws". Nuovo talks with Jane Lindholm about his goal to talk Plato out of the realm of academia and make the work relatable to laypeople.

And we hear from Vermont's first cartoonist laureate, James Kochalka. Kochalka, who draws the comic "American Elf," will heighten the profile of cartooning in Vermont during his three-year term.