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Fairpoint, a North Carolina based telecom company, will soon take over Verizon’s land-based telephone and internet network in northern New England. Vermont and Maine agreed to the deal earlier in the year but New Hampshire’s Public Utility Commission didn’t agree until Monday. Opponents worry the acquisition is too financially risky for the state, but those who supported the deal think it will do a lot for New Hampshire, especially in the struggling North Country. We’ll break down the deal and how it may affect the state.

Guests

• Jeff Feingold, editor of the New Hampshire Business Review
• Jim Roche, president of the New Hampshire Business and Industry Association
• TBA

Twenty years ago there were only eight organic farms in the state. Today there are 130 organic crop producers, nine organic dairy farms, six organic egg producers, a few organic beef producers and 18 organic food processing plants. But as the organic movement grows and grows up, new challenges present themselves, like cost, quality and if smaller farms can play with the big boys and still adhere to its strict standards. We’ll look at where the organic movement is in New Hampshire and how it's dealing with these new challenges.

Guests

• Larry Pletcher, president of the New Hampshire Chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association and owner of The Vegetable Ranch, LLC, a certified organic farm in Warner
• Vickie Smith, Coordinator for the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture's Organic Certification Program
• TBA

The arts has always been a source of revenue, whether it’s the small community theatre or the Music Hall in Portsmouth. Now new efforts are underway to harness the creative economy, especially in the North Country, a place looking for a boost with the closings of the area’s paper mills. We’ll look at what’s being done, where it’s being done right and where advocates hope it can be done better in the future.

Guests

• Ann Markusen, Director of the Humphrey Institute's Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the University of Minnesota
• Joan Goshgarian, Executive Director of the New Hampshire Business Committee for the Arts
• Frumie Selchen, Executive Director of the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire
• Chris Dwyer, Portsmouth City Councilor and Former Chair of the State Council on the Arts

Author Charles Barber says that Americans obsessed with the quick fix are abusing antidepressant drugs more than ever - and he has the numbers to back his claim up. Psychotropic drugs from Ritalin to Prozac are now the number one category of dispensed medicine in the country, with the U.S. accounting for two-thirds of the global antidepressant market. We’ll explore how we got here, and the consequences of a nation on antidepressants.

Guest

• Charles Barber, Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and author of “Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation”

What does it mean to love one’s country? Does it mean that you’d make the ultimate sacrifice for it? Serving in the government or volunteering for your fellow citizens? To criticize your country when you think its heading in the wrong direction? Nationalism? Patriotism? Today we kick off our monthly series we are calling “The Socrates Café”. where we use the Socratic method of inquiry to gain better understanding.

Guest

• Chris Phillips, author of several books on philosophy including “Socrates in Love”, “Socrates Café: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy” and “Six Questions of Socrates: A Modern-Day Journey of Discovery through World Philosophy”. Chris Phillips also leads “Socrates Cafes” across the country which engages groups by using the methods of the ancient Greek philosopher.