Award-winning author Katherine Paterson shares the story behind her much-loved children's book, "Bridge to Terabithia."

Katherine Paterson: Stories of My Life

In the Ideas Matter segment, WAMC takes time just about every week to check in with the state humanities councils in our 7-state region. Today we're talking with Maria Tatar, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.

She's written and translated several books on fairy tales, and she describes how seemingly simple stories like “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” challenge us to think a little harder as we try to decode the cultural contradictions in them. The Vermont Humanities Fall Conference “Why Do Stories Matter?” took place November 13–14 at the Dudley Davis Center at the University of Vermont and our guest, Maria Tatar participated.

Maria Tatar on Ideas Matter Radio

On May 8, 2015, Ideas Matter Radio was joined by Michael Heaney, a retired American History Professor, lawyer, and a wounded combat veteran of the Vietnam War. In 1965 and 1966, he served in Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry Division as an infantry platoon leader. Much of his post-war life has been devoted to working with combat veterans, and to writing, teaching, and leading discussions about war- and veteran-related matters. For 15 years, he led wilderness expedition courses for combat veterans, in a program jointly sponsored by Outward Bound and the Veterans Administration.

Veterans Book Groups on Ideas Matter Radio

Today we check in with the Vermont Humanities Council and documentary film producer Jeff Kaufman. Kaufman directed The State of Marriage, which shows the struggle for same-sex marriage equality in Vermont.

The film will be screened with a special panel discussion in Montpelier, Vermont on February 23, 2016.

Ideas Matter: Vermont Humanities Council Presents 'The State of Marriage' Screening

In 1852, Frederick Douglass, one of our nation’s greatest orators and abolitionists, was asked to speak at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  In his provocative speech, Douglass said, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” And he asked, “Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?”

Douglass’s speech remains emotionally powerful and thought-provoking more than a century and a half after he gave it.

Rick Agran, of the radio program “Bon Mot” on WGDR at Goddard College, hosted a reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech in 2017. Listen to this recording of Douglass’s entire speech, read on the air with guests Amelia Sherman and Hilary Niles. Music by Paul Robeson was recorded in the 1930s and at Carnegie Hall in 1958.

VermontHumanities