Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

This episode of Maine Policy Matters explores Frank O’Hara’s commentary from Maine Policy Review’s special issue on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the article, O’Hara uses historical accounts from a 5-year-old survivor of the London Plague of 1665, Daniel Defoe, to compare the experiences of that plague and the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. […]

This episode of Maine Policy Matters explores the key to helping retirement-age business owners who have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The episode offers data and strategies from Rob Brown, the director of Business Ownership Solutions at the Cooperative Development Institute based in Northampton, Massachusetts. Business Ownership Solutions works throughout the Northeast states with […]

This episode covers an article in Maine Policy Review by JG Malacarne, Jason Lilley, and Nancy McBrady, entitled “The Response of the Maine Food System to the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic,” which argues that reflecting on how the Maine food system weathered shocks early in the pandemic can help us prepare for future crises. […]

This episode is an interview with Liam Riordan, Adelaide and Alan Bird Professor of History at the University of Maine, where he has been on the faculty since 1997. Riordan was the past director of the University of Maine McGillicuddy Humanities Center and is a past board member of the Maine Humanities Council. To celebrate […]

In preparation for election day on November 8, 2020, this episode presents William D. Adams—the tenth chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities—reading his essay “The Urgency of Democracy.” [00:00:00] Eric Miller: In preparation for election day today, we are hosting William D. Adams, the 10th chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For a […]

In commemoration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day on October 10, 2022, this episode features Gail Dana-Sacco reading her article entitled “Indigenous Voices Charting a Course Beyond the Bicentennial: Eba gwedji jik-sow-dul-din-e wedji gizi nan-ul-dool-tehigw (Let’s try to listen to each other so that we can get to know each other)” from Maine Policy Review’s special issue commemorating Maine’s […]

In this second episode of Maine Policy Matters Season 2, Eric Miller interviews Amanda Rector, the Maine state economist since 2011. Rector describes what it was like to be the state economist during the pandemic, how things turned out compared to how she originally thought they would turn out, the effects from the federal response […]

What’s a state economist to do in the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic? When everyone is asking for answers, but they are hard to find? In this episode of Maine Policy Matters, Amanda Rector, the Maine state economist since 2011, shares her thoughts on the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic’s economic […]