 And welcome to Moments with Melinda. My guest today is David Goodman. David, how are you? I am great Melinda, great to see you. I am so glad that you're on my TV show today. I want to tell my viewers a little bit about you. David Goodman is the New York Times bestselling author of a dozen books, host of the Public Affairs Radio Show and podcast, the Vermont Conversation, and a journalist for national publications. David's award winning reporting ranges from covering world and national politics to the threat of climate change in Alaska and Africa. The outdoors adventure travel and the impact of a natural disaster on his hometown in Vermont. As a long time contributing writer for Mother Jones, his articles were part of a package that won the prestigious National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Travel and Leisure Ski, The Los Angeles Times and other publications. You are a marvel. Well, thank Marvel. And I am so excited to have you on my show and learn and learn more about you. So David, let's start right up. Tell us a little bit about your childhood and who had the greatest influence on you. Well, I think my parents had the greatest influence on me. I think, you know, they were both very involved in the community. My father was a local ophthalmologist where I grew up in Bayshore, Long Island, but he was very engaged in the community. He headed a task force to integrate the five elementary schools in my community, which was some of my earliest memories were of these raucous, huge community meetings. And he was the mild manager doctor at the head of the high school auditorium trying to reassure people that everything was going to be okay, that people needed a level playing field in education. So, and my mom was a social worker and together they were very involved in the peace movement. So those would be some of my biggest influences. Then I would say my clarinet teacher was a big influence on me. I was going to be a professional musician. I'm supposed to be sitting in some big orchestra somewhere playing clarinet. That's what I thought I was going to do at age 18. And I was deciding between going to conservatory and going to college. I chose college and well, there's a few other things besides music going on when you go to college and I got interested in all these other things. But I still play clarinet in local amateur orchestras around Burlington, which is something I love to do and keeps me sane. But I think from my clarinet teacher, I learned how to be self critical and how to constantly push myself to be better and try and raise the bar and raise the bar, listen to myself. And I've always thought that was one of the great gifts that he gave me when I studied with him. So there you go. Is he still alive and as he followed your career? He passed away about 10, 12 years ago. I resumed studying with him when he was 89. You know, as a dozen years ago when I found out he was still alive. Because I, you know, I took about 40 years off between lessons 30 years off. And so it was really a wonderful few years going back to him. This big figure in my life and taking music lessons again. That must have been such a thrill for him. It was a thrill for both of us. Both of you, but especially for him to have his old students, his young student come back as an older man and want to study under him. I've never heard you play your clarinet, so I want you to make sure that you let all of us know when you're playing, because I would love to come in here you play David. So I want to ask you, what brought you to Vermont? And tell us how you met Sue, your fabulous wife Sue, who you've been married to for 31 years and congratulations on your anniversary yesterday. Tell us how you came to Vermont and how you and Sue got together. Tell us a little bit about that. So I came to Vermont really probably stemming from a pretty failed first date with Sue. This is Sue Minter, my wife, and it was going to, we were going to school. We were both, Sue lived across the hall from me at a big co-op house that we both lived in at Harvard. And we, on a weekend, we came with friends to Killington. And I really had hardly known her and we stood atop an icy mogul field at Killington. And she skied it beautifully. So naturally, as a young man endowed with a lot of ego and little common sense, I assumed it must be easy because she made it look so easy. And I proceeded to somersault down the slope and land at the feet of this young woman who I was interested in with my gear strewn all over the slope. And she uttered the words that are like a dagger to, you know, a young male skier, which was, oh, it's okay, I'll get your gear. So she proceeded to collect all my gear around the slope. But then it went much better from there. I learned never to compete with her again. And we've had a happy life with two fabulous kids. And what brought us to Vermont is love of the mountains. We were weekend warriors from Boston. And Sue got a job in 1991 with the then new office of the Conservation Law Foundation. It was a new Vermont office. And she came up supposedly on a year fellowship that year has turned into 30. We never looked back. So we decided to make our home in the mountains instead of just having weekends in the mountains and we both love to ski. And as you probably know, I've written a number of books about backcountry skiing in the Northeast. So it's really nice to have that backcountry right in my backyard. Well, you're a terrific couple. And we're so, we're so privileged to have you here in Vermont. So share with us a little bit about your collaborations with your sister, Amy Goodman, who since 1996 has been the host of the radio show democracy now she's your sister. And so tell us a little bit about her and the collaboration you have with her and the work that you've done with your great sister Amy Goodman. So I like to think I'm my sister's biggest fan. I listen to democracy now and watch it at 8am most mornings. And Amy and I have written four books together. And it really began our first one was in 2003. We did this we collaborated against our mother's wishes. She said, don't do that because you, you need a sister more than you need a co author. And it was, you know, it was a wonderful collaboration Amy is brilliant she is. She has an incredible mind for what matters for what's important for finding voices as she says for going to where the silence is, you know, who are the voices not at the table. Who are the real forces beat that are making the news. It's not men in suits in Washington, it's people in communities all over the world, who don't have the camera and the mics turned towards them. You know the story the work with Amy has been wonderful and I think the work that democracy now does has been essential in the world for bringing the voices of the grassroots to a larger audience and working with my sister. You know at times we wanted to pull each other's hair out. We evolved over the course of four books to a way to work together co other ships are not easy there's a lot of negotiating, you know, how you do it and it's, we had the good fortune to do enough books together that we managed to figure out a nice way to do it a good way to work together but I consider myself very lucky to have done those collaborations with her. Well I think it's fascinating. I assume that Amy is your older sister. I think it's fascinating that both of you ended up as writers and hosts of your own radio shows I mean you both sort of followed each other's careers in a very simple in a very in a very fabulous way and I think it's fascinating that both of you ended up there. I think it really is an outgrowth of our kitchen table in our family. We would debate the issues of the day around that kitchen table. We had relatives you know we had a very conservative uncle who was a sock salesman in the Lower East side of Manhattan. We had more they were all immigrants they'd all fled Russian Russian immigrants, Ukrainian immigrants actually to be more specific. They had fled persecution in Russia and programs and such. So, you know, there was not necessarily a lot of agreement around the table. And as we went out in the world we kind of recreated that table wherever we went, gathering voices, arguing, pushing each other, questioning the news of the day and how we got there so I think that's kind of where it all began. Well I hope your mother was pleased that it all worked out the way it did. So, let's talk about your career which has landed you on national TV shows including PBS news hour NPRs fresh air see a spancy span and CNN to name a few. So, David what would be your most urgent message to our nation today. I think to be engaged. I think that you know the the tagline of the Washington Post these days has been changed to democracy dies in darkness I think I have that right, but we are at a very perilous moment in our history and you know one of the things really formative experiences for me was I reported from South Africa at the height of apartheid I spent many years going back and forth and then Sue and I lived there for a year when Nelson Mandela was president and I wrote a book about South Africa's transformation from apartheid. I've seen authoritarianism from the inside at its height at the violence, the repression, and the ways that it is justified by good people, you know, intelligent people will explain to you why, you know, government repression violent crackdowns are a good thing that they preserve law that they enable rights. So I've seen you know the banality of evil is the phrase that comes to mind. Good smart people telling me why apartheid in South Africa was a good thing so that experience has really led me to know how fragile democracy is, and to know how it can so easily be normalized. The times we're going through right now are not normal. Half of our population, all women have just lost the right to determine how their bodies, you know, what goes on in their bodies, every pregnancy in half the states of this country is a potential crime scene. So these are dire moments you know when we talk about, I've interviewed on the wrong conversation, people who follow it may know I have a particular fascination with authoritarianism and I've interviewed a lot of the leading scholars of fascism and authoritarianism. I'm Snyder from Yale, Jason Stanley, Steve Levitsky, these are all people written at some length about it and, you know, if you're at home not concerned I can tell you that these scholars are deeply concerned. They feel that the red flags, you know that the authoritarian playbook that they speak about their hearing it being read from night after night day after day. So be engaged, and at this moment now be fiercely engaged. So how, so how does our country deal with the fact that we have the Supreme Court that we have now and then we have a major media outlet that basically is pushing the big lie and and helping us to move closer and closer to fascism. I mean how do we move out of that with the situation that we're in right now I know being engaged is important. And I think there were 20 million people who have been watching these hearings. But I think there are a lot of us citizens who are feeling helpless with the voter suppression that's going on the gerrymandering is the are the elections ever going to be fair again if all of these changes are being put in place. So, so what do you tell the common citizen, who is engaged, what, you know where we are and what's the best thing that we can do to help protect our democracy because I agree with you things are very very dire. And I think that the answer to that is that there's not a single answer, there is everything has to be done grassroots action, electoral action. You know, every kind of engagement and activism that there is needs to be mobilized. Now, it is certainly the answer is certainly not just elect, you know, democratically minded people. We know that's not enough, you know, the, we're in a new reality in as of a few weeks ago, where the Supreme Court has now been where it's come to pass, you know, just as Stephen Breyer who just retired warned a year ago about the danger that the court becomes politicians in robes. And I think we're at that moment. You just you just did a conversation on your show would you talk a few little bit and direct people to that. Yes, so the most recent one I did is with the new president of the Vermont law and graduate school rod smaller, who is a has had a storied career as a civil liberties lawyer. And I asked that question, have the Supreme Court he's argued before the Supreme Court. He's a well known First Amendment lawyer. I asked him, does he believe that the court the justices are now politicians and robes. And he said I believe that we are perilously close to that this is not a guy who's prone to hyperbole by the way. But, you know, the, the Supreme Court courts in general are if the house is on fire, they're the escape route, you know that there's what we've all grown up thinking as where reason would prevail. Where our democratic ideals would be preserved. Right now the house is on fire, and the escape route has been closed off. That's what the Supreme Court has just let us know in the last couple of weeks with the decisions it's it's given handed down on abortion on gun control on separation of church and state on climate change. All of those avenues the courts have now they've sent up a bright flair saying that we there's no help here. So what's your hope for the future. I mean, so hope for the future is to us about what what I know being engaged is important but what's your hope for the future what do you hope happens in the future to help us get through this time. Democracy, you know, I saw in South Africa and entire nation I mean this was a minority rule country, and the black majority had every reason to feel completely dispirited, you know, arms, elections courts, everything was stacked against them. And, you know, at the end of the day, governments rely on the support and cooperation of their people to function. And those people can render governments unable to function. That's what happened in South Africa. White South Africans did not hand over power out of generosity. They were forced to hand over power. Look at what's happening in Ukraine you must have being that your family originated from Ukraine to this country you must have some deep thoughts about that they're fighting desperately for their freedom and I mean that's a worst case scenario, you know where it breaks into open horrific warfare with, you know, the casualty told there is it's beyond words. So happening in our country. Do you see a return to the 60s. Well, the 60s were a reaction by people against, you know, a war that they, you know the Vietnam War, which was illegal unjustified wrong headed and murderous. And we see what happened, you know people took to the streets. And you know in South Africa they talked about making the country ungovernable under apartheid. That happens in a variety of ways. It's sort of what happened in the United States. It's, it's a long road just around and no I hope. So, you know that can work. Yes, it was we were also fighting for, you know, women's rights civil rights, human rights. I mean the 60s revolution was was just 17% of the populace out there fighting for all these rights and so who knows but listen I'm going to move on to something a little later. I'm going to talk about your books and the articles and the book that you just released this year and you won an award for the best back country skiing in the Northeast, and the award was given by the International Ski History Association. Tell us a little bit about your newest book. The best back country skiing in the Northeast is actually the 30th anniversary edition of a book I began in my late 20s that I first wrote, and it's part guidebook part history, and this the skiing history that I write about. When I came into these books very much by accident. I was a, you know, budding freelance writer and that in my 20s. I had just written a story called the Northeastern Renaissance about the revival of back country skiing in the Northeast when I got a call from the Appalachian Mountain Club asked me if I'd like to write a book about skiing and they're hiking organization and they didn't know about skiing so it could be whatever I wanted. And I was a history major in college, and I love the history. So I began traveling around the Northeast, finding the trailblazers who cut the original trails, and trying to go find many of them. Because many of them were no longer had, you know, while they were the only trails of the day, they later had chairlifts put on them. So I went and found the ones that didn't have chairlifts put on them, and they all had a rich history a rich culture and the story of skiing in the Northeast was settled. You know, Vermont was a very poor rural agrarian state in the 1930s and a state forester named Perry Merrill thought, Well, maybe if I send people the Civilian Conservation Court to cut ski trails, it could help this poor little country. So I began going around finding those trails and slowly over these 30 years, a whole subculture rose up and now today back country skiing is incredibly popular, and no I did not time these books to come out during a global pandemic but that didn't hurt the in them. So you know I always try to find at least one silver lining for bad things that happen so there's my silver lining of back country skiing took off. So it's a passion project, but I've always thought and it was quite by accident, but I love doing it and I love that there's a culture of people searching and enjoying and loving being in the white wilderness and if I've had any part in it, I'm very happy. I think you have I think you did have a part suffered my viewers it's called David Goodman's book is best back country skiing in the Northeast. And I'm sure you can get it at your local bookstore support your local bookstores. So tell us what you're working on now, and tell us about your weekly podcast for WD EV. So it's a podcast that's both on radio with WD EV Wednesdays at one the Vermont conversation and but published by Vermont digger, which is where many people see it who are beyond the listening range of WD EV. So it's both an article and podcast twice a week with depending if I have two guests or one. And that has, I have really love doing these conversations I have a very free hand and you know what's wonderful with Vermont digger it's a Vermont based publication but I can cover both international and international topics and local topics and that's what you find there so you know recently I had on the doctor whose case legalized abortion in Vermont Dr. Jack Beecham now 80 years old. And it's why abortion was legalized in Vermont a year before Roe v Wade. That's one of my favorites. I've had famous people Jamie Raskin the congressman was on a last month. Jane Mayer, the investigative journalist for the New Yorker had her on. So, I have on journalists activist Bill McKibbin was my guest last week, talking about his latest book and activism. And I guess our, you know, I kind of the things that interest me in the world and the news. I get to find interesting people to talk about it on the Vermont conversation and share with Vermont and beyond so that I would say is, is the thing that takes much of my time and interest. I'm not working on books and articles as we speak. But I'll, I'll keep it to the to the run conversation here because it's the easiest one to direct people to and you can find it on Vermont ticker so. You have two grown and accomplished children. And I'm sure you think a lot about their future so can you share with us your vision for the future of our world, based on the realities that we are witnessing on the ground. And what advice do you have for humanity, David. I am one of those people who is an eternal optimist, even as dire and dark as the situation we are in now. I've seen light come from darkness. I have seen good things come out of bed. I do believe that every challenge has inside it an opportunity. I saw democracy come from authoritarianism in South Africa. There's always on story fleeing persecution in, you know, Russia and Eastern Europe, and coming to have a life here so I do believe that the road is long. But I do believe that the arc bend towards justice, but it doesn't happen on its own. So, I have faith, I believe that we've left our kids a mess. Generally a lot of their lives they're going to spend cleaning it up. But they are up to the task, it is, and, you know, our kids are the hope. And hopefully we have passed on to them enough of the seeds of goodness and fairness and democracy that they will continue to raise that candle and be sure that it keeps burning brightly even in dark times. Well, David Goodman, you are a gem. To my viewers, you can learn more about David at DGoodman.net. DGoodman.net. I encourage you to visit David's website and learn more about him and about his incredible work. And to you my friend, it's been a delight knowing you all these years. I so honor you. And I love you and I thank you for all that you've done. I'm going to ask you to stay on after the show so I can do that privately. But to my viewers, thank you for joining us today for this great Vermont conversation. Thank you, Melinda. Thank you for joining us today, and I will see you soon.