Conflict of Interest
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. We are not going to talk to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. We will talk to them about what it is like to sell the company and do something new - and the frustrations, fear and uncertainty that comes with changing your life. Part interview, part history lesson about stuff you won’t see or hear on CNN or NPR.
Episodes
March 27, 2024 • 37 mins
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.
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December 8, 2023 • 36 mins
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 ato...
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November 9, 2023 • 31 mins
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 ri...
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October 27, 2023 • 42 mins
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...
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October 19, 2023 • 37 mins
The strike. The future of streaming. The future of theaters. What makes a great film. What is your favorite film and why? It’s all here with writer, editor and producer Keenan Ellis, who joins his Dad to talk about the same stuff they usually talk about at dinner.
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October 12, 2023 • 40 mins
Public defender Robin Steinberg couldn’t accept that people without money are housed in jails all over the country, not because they are guilty, but because they can’t afford bail.
So she started the Bail Project, an organization dedicated to eradicating the use of cash bail. The Bail Project actually pays the bail of the accused so they can be free from prison while the charges against them are dealt with by the criminal justice s...
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October 5, 2023 • 6 mins
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.
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September 22, 2023 • 45 mins
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 go...
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September 11, 2023 • 30 mins
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 ...
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August 25, 2023 • 50 mins
Come with us to a bygone era when a U.S. Senator from Idaho undertook a sprawling investigation of the CIA and its secrets. Drugging U.S. citizens, assassinating foreign leaders, overthrowing foreign governments. It all happened in this country and it was all revealed by the so-called Church committee in the 1970s. The details are all in the new book by Pulitzer Prize winner James Risen. At the NY Times, Risen wrote stories about C...
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August 17, 2023 • 25 mins
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. Th...
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August 10, 2023 • 7 mins
It’s been three weeks since the Winooski River jumped its banks during a torrential rain and flood Vermont’s state capitol. There is still garbage in the streets. The iconic corner of State and Main is still dusty. No lunch crowd from state offices. The entire downtown is ghostly. And despite the determination and pluck of store owners and landlords, there is a growing anger and bitterness about how this could have happened and why...
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July 20, 2023 • 7 mins
When floodwaters raged through the tiny state capitol of Montpelier, everyone was tested. Business owners, workers, homeowners, renters, government officials. Everyone is still being tested a week later. And the results of the test are coming and will determine whether the moniker of Vermont Strong is real - or a slogan for social media and fundraising.
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July 13, 2023 • 18 mins
After 25 years of searing Vermont’s northern bogs, the naturalist and writer Bryan Pfeiffer made the discovery of a lifetime. He spotted the shy butterfly that had eluded him and raised questions in his own life about life and death, nature and moving slowly. A former newspaperman who covered everything from fires to health care and politics, Pfeiffer is Vermont’s leading naturalist, spending much of his time searing bogs and fens ...
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June 23, 2023 • 7 mins
Robert Kennedy died by assassination 55 years ago. It was an event that altered the nation’s history forever. Whenever I think about it I go down a deep rabbit hole of sadness thinking about what might have been. Ever so strangely, Kennedy’s son Robert Kennedy Jr. is now running for president. Both campaigns were and are quixotic efforts that bring all the sadness and tragedy back to a generation that were so young when Kennedy was...
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June 15, 2023 • 39 mins
A growing field of ecological economics sees the world through a more collective, shared prosperity that values human beings over never-ending growth that destroys the planet. University of Vermont Professor Jon Erickson is driving this change from the University of Vermont. He calls our current system “fairytale economics,’’ and urges us to understand the ecological reality that can no longer withstand the human onslaught of unend...
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June 8, 2023 • 49 mins
Two men, one black, one white, collide on the streets of this midwestern city in the wake of the George Floyd killing with tragic consequences. What happened tells us a lot of about modern America and how it is to separate fact from fiction. Author and former NY Times Editor Joe Sexton tells us how the truth is obscured by tribalism and social media in a way that damages communities and pits us all against each other.
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June 1, 2023 • 39 mins
Ashley Moore and Conor Kennedy are not elected to anything. But they make sure the Vermont House and Senate stay on schedule and their bosses can carry out their agendas. They spend more time on their IPhones than anyone! They join me to talk about how the Vermont legislature works. Biggest surprise of the interview? The high level of idealism they bring to this work.
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May 18, 2023 • 21 mins
Vermont’s lone member of the House of Representatives is known for upbeat optimism. But in her first 100 days she has seen the dark side of Washington - the debt ceiling, Majorie Taylor Greene and the Republicans who know better. Hint: It is as bad as you thought.
Follow me @Ellis52K
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May 10, 2023 • 36 mins
When Vermont schoolteacher and quilter Jen Ellis sent Sen. Bernie Sanders a pair of mittens, she has no idea what would happen when he wired them to the inauguration of President Joe Biden in 2021. Instant fame and scrutiny followed an Internet explosion of memes with Bernie wearing Jen’s mitten from the moon to Buckingham Palace. What followed was a dizzying journey of grappling with a good kind of celebrity and a memoir of her ex...
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