Former NH Secretary of State (1976 - 2022) Bill Gardner  have a discussion about rigged elections and New Hampshire electoral processes. Gardner has many stories to share from his long tenure as the Secretary of State of New Hampshire.

Interview by Dartmouth student Kyle Mullins '22. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy

#309 Rocky Talk - Trusting Our Elections with Bill Gardner, former New Hampshire Secretary of State

This episode's guest is Lynn Mather, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emerita, University at Buffalo School of Law and here she discusses her experiences teaching at Dartmouth. 

Lynn Mather taught in Dartmouth’s Government Department for 30 years. During that time, she served as Acting Director of the Rockefeller Center, chaired the Government Department, and co-founded the Women’s Studies program. She received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1995 and held the Nelson A. Rockefeller Chair in Government. 

Interview by Dartmouth student Kyle Mullins '22. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy

#310 Rocky Talk – Coeducation at Dartmouth

This episode's guest is Hanover Town Manager, Alex Torpey. He speaks about the role local government can play in reshaping how we govern.

Alex Torpey is municipal manager, entrepreneur, educator, consultant, and speaker who is currently the Town Manager of Hanover, New Hampshire. Previously, Alex was the Business Administrator for the City of Lambertville, NJ and the Borough Administrator for Leonia, NJ. He was elected Mayor of his hometown of South Orange, New Jersey in 2011 (by 12 votes), which at 23 years-old, made him one of the youngest mayors in the United States.

Interview by Dartmouth student Kyle Mullins '22. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy

#401 Rocky Talk – Local Government: The Untapped Innovator

This episode's guest is John V. Kane, Assistant Professor at New York University. 

We hear a lot of talk about budget deficits, but do voters really care about government spending as much as they say? Like many other kinds of political attitudes, concern about government deficits and debt may be, in part, a result of systematic partisan bias. Drawing upon his recently published article, “Deficit Attention Disorder” (co-authored with Ian G. Anson), Kane shows how both partisans and partisan media shift their concern about deficits in response to changes in party control of the presidency. These results corroborate Kane and Anson’s theory of “partisan-motivated issue attention” (PMIA), in which partisans can satisfy partisan instincts by caring more, or less, about particular issues when it benefits their preferred party.  

Interview by Dartmouth student Kavya Nivarthy '25. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy

#402 Rocky Talk – Do Voters Actually Care About Federal Budget Deficits?

This episode's guest is Matt McDonald ’00 is the President of Penta.

Matt will discuss his experience in public relations in Washington, D.C. and ways to navigate the professional field in the nation’s capital. Matt will share current thinking on stakeholder engagement and models for navigating public policy issues. 

Matt McDonald ’00 is the President of Penta and has served as a senior counselor to leaders in the public and private sectors for more than two decades, providing guidance at the intersection of communications and business strategy. Prior to Penta, Matt was a consultant for McKinsey in their New York and Washington offices. Previously Matt had also worked in the Bush White House as well as serving as an advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger, Senator McCain, and Governor Romney. Matt is a Dartmouth 2000 where he was an economics major and he later got his MBA at MIT.

Interview by Dartmouth student Talia Fein '25. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy

#403 Rocky Talk – Public, Private, Politics, and the Press

This episode's guest is Fahim Abed and independent journalist from Afghanistan and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. 

Join us as Fahim Abed walks us through his journey of becoming a journalist. He was a local reporter for The New York Times in Afghanistan until the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021. He was evacuated from Kabul with a number of his colleagues and relocated to the United States. He is studying migration and American history with a focus on Asian migrants to the U.S. and the integration challenges they face.

Interview by Dartmouth student Varun Swaminathan '26. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy

#404 - How I Became a Journalist and What I Need to Survive

This episode's guest is Former U.S. Senator Judd A. Gregg (R-NH).

Once-rare occurrences like government shutdowns and impeachment inquiries now occur with such regularity that it seems the system may be critically dysfunctional. Former U.S. Senator Judd Gregg shares his insight on the current state of the U.S. Senate and whether such apparent dysfunction really poses risks to American democracy.

Interview by Dartmouth student Varun Swaminathan '26. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy

#405 - Is the Senate Broken?

This episode's guests are Democratic and Republic state party chairs, Chris Ager (R) and Raymond Buckley (D)
What happens to New Hampshire and its outsize influence on U.S. presidential elections if the state loses its first-in-the-nation primary? Democratic and Republican state party chairs, Chris Ager (R) and Raymond Buckley (D) discuss the politics in New Hampshire and where they go their start in politics.

Interview by Dartmouth student Varun Swaminathan '26. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy

#501 - The New Hampshire Presidential Primary: A Conversation with State Party Chairs

This episode's guest is Shannon Sullivan who has been with the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) for over 11 years, and is the Chief of Compliance, overseeing the Consent Decree Implementation Unit, the Performance Standards Section, Officer Safety and Wellness, and the Equity Office.  Previously she was the Director of the Consent Decree Implementation Unit (CDIU), a position she held for almost five years.
 
Prior to her arrival at the BPD, Chief Sullivan worked in the federal government, and in the non-profit and private sectors. Originally from Connecticut, she holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Goucher College.


Interview by Dartmouth student Varun Swaminathan '26. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy

#502 Shannon Sullivan - Police Reform in Baltimore

This episode's guest is Carlos Lozada, an opinion columnist at the New York Times and co-host of the weekly Matter of Opinion podcast. He is the author of The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians (2024) and What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era (2020). Previously, he was a book critic and senior editor at the Washington Post and the managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. Lozada has won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and the National Book Critics Circle citation for excellence in reviewing. He has been a Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University and a professor of political journalism at the University of Notre Dame. A native of Lima, Peru, he became a U.S. citizen in 2014.

Interview by Dartmouth student Bea Burack '25. Edited by Laura Hemlock. Music: Debussy Arabesque no 1. Composer: Claude Debussy

#404 - How I Became a Journalist and What I Need to Survive

The Nelson A Rockefeller Center

Related tracks