Shows / With Good Reason
With Good Reason
Each week on With Good Reason we explore a world of ideas with leading scholars in literature, history, science, philosophy, and the arts. With Good Reason is created by Virginia Humanities and the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium.
Episodes
With Good ReasonREPLAY: Melting Futures
Polar bears are no one’s prey, except for climate change itself. John Whiteman says our human fate is tied up with the fate of the polar bears. And: Birds have…
With Good ReasonCorn Tortillas and Harvest-Your-Own Oysters
This week we’re returning to Virginia’s Eastern Shore with Virginia Folklife Director Katy Clune. She explores how newcomers to the Shore are adopting and…
With Good ReasonEducation for Everyone
They say around 20% of students in K-12 schools are considered gifted. But identifying giftedness isn’t exactly a precise science. Chandra Floyd breaks down…
With Good ReasonBarbie's Plastic World
Margot Robbie brought Barbie to life with the 2023 Barbie movie. It was successfully “femvertised” to women and girls across generations. And not only did they…
With Good ReasonMapping the New World
After the long French and Indian War, British surveyors fanned out to create maps of their new frontier territories so they could better control the unruly…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: Winning NIL
NIL sent shockwaves through college athletics when it was signed into law in 2021. Now student-athletes could earn money off of their name, image, and…
With Good ReasonFatherhood
George Tzamaras fancies himself as a “connoisseur of fine dad jokes.” I have him rate a few of my own dad jokes as a rite of passage as I start my journey into…
With Good ReasonA Saint's Song
What makes Taylor Swift one of the most compelling songwriters of our time? Chelsea Hamm says it's her relatability. With bright, upbeat pop anthems like “22”…
With Good ReasonCorporate Greenwashing
From 2009-2015 Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests to convince customers to buy 11 million VW cars they thought burned clean diesel. Kimberley Kinsley says…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: Banned Summer Reading
Summer is here and with it comes our annual With Good Reason summer reading list. From the hills and hollers of Appalachia to Egypt, we’ve got so much to keep…
With Good ReasonMow Lawn, Mo' Problems
What if a well-manicured lawn isn’t the end all be all? What if it’s actually harming the local habitat? Doug Tallamy is the co-founder of Home Grown National…
With Good ReasonBrightness
Many have viewed O'Keeffe's abstract oil paintings as erotic. She blithely dismissed those assumptions in her lifetime. And while her work was praised by women…
With Good ReasonRanked Choice Voting
Advocates of “ranked choice voting” say it makes our elections better by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Others say it’s too…
With Good ReasonBeyond the Embargo
The golden age of American comics spanned from the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Superheroes like Batman, Captain America, and Superman captivated audiences in the US…
With Good ReasonAfter Service
Engineering is often misunderstood as stoic and fixed. But Col. Jim Squire says that it's creative. He’s learned from his military service and years of…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: After They've Served
No matter how they served or where or when, for veterans, returning to civilian life is a big transition. Eric Hodges is researching what it was like for…
With Good ReasonMake Us
During WWII, the government created the National War Labor Board to regulate labor and control inflation. Instead, says Bryant Etheridge, the Southern regional…
With Good ReasonUncharted
Take your flashlight and grab a compass - let’s go exploring! Peter Berquist lives and breathes boats. He captains the R/V Investigator, a 24 foot Carolina…
With Good ReasonDreams and Shadows
Dr. Emma Violand-Sanchez has dedicated her life to supporting immigrant and refugee students in the American public education system. Emma immigrated from…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: Medicines Messiness
The patient-doctor relationship is complicated and fraught. Patients often feel confused and talked down to, in part because doctors feel like they need to…
With Good ReasonRoot Down to Move Forward
Virginia’s Eastern Shore has a distinct way of living–and eating. And looking at the environment and economy of the Eastern Shore, there are some big changes…
With Good ReasonShellfish Unfiltered
The Clinch River in Southwest Virginia is one of the oldest rivers in the world. And it’s home to 50 different mussel species. But many of them are endangered…
With Good ReasonAdd an Emoji
We as humans need connection. So we often slip into the chameleon effect. We mimic others’ tone and mannerisms in conversation to empathize and connect…
With Good ReasonThe Game's Afoot
For more than a century, bestseller lists have been full of mysteries, thrillers, and detective stories. Alice Kinder takes us back through the history of…
With Good ReasonTrapping the Genie of Trauma
Awful memories from war often hang around long after the bullets stop flying. And writing can be a powerful tool to get a handle on past trauma. David Robbins…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: The Many Indias
As India celebrates 76 years of independence - Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has drawn criticism for promoting a kind of hindu nationalism that’s rooted in…
With Good ReasonCall 9-1-1
For the past nine years, Hans-Peter Plag has taken on the perspective of an alien ecologist coming to Earth. And when he looks at Earth, he sees a crisis of…
With Good ReasonI Hadn't Planned on Making it Sing
Join With Good Reason for a series of conversations that bring Furious Flower Poetry Lifetime Achievement honorees in conversation with a new generation of…
With Good ReasonStaggered by the Fact of You
Join With Good Reason for a series of conversations that bring Furious Flower Poetry Lifetime Achievement honorees in conversation with a new generation of…
With Good ReasonLove Languages
Grace Flores-Hughes was shattered when her husband passed away after a long illness. She rushed into dating, hoping to fast forward past the grief. But she…
With Good ReasonCelebrating Nikki Giovanni
When Nikki Giovanni passed away in December at the age of 81, she left a legacy that will continue to be a beacon of light for generations to come. We first…
With Good ReasonPrecarious Work
For centuries, we could measure the health of our economy in terms of employed versus unemployed. But that’s outdated now. Victor Tan Chen says that the…
With Good ReasonWhat's Your Name Again?
We’ve all forgotten someone’s name at a party or social gathering. It can be a special kind of embarrassment. One that makes you want to disappear and crawl…
With Good ReasonDry Janurary
For the last decade or so, more and more Americans have taken part in a new New Year’s tradition: dry January. You probably know somebody doing it right…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: Music For Life
Growing up in Southwest Virginia, Tyler Hughes has been steeped in the traditions of mountain music and dance from a young age. For him, music is about…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: Piping Up For Community
Brian Donaldson is one of the most accomplished pipers in the world - winning many of the major awards and even performing in front of the queen of England…
With Good ReasonChristmas Stories
Christmas is really all about the stories we tell. From early classics like A Christmas Carol, The Nutcracker, and The Gift of the Magi to new traditions like…
With Good ReasonMore Than My Mistakes
The Inthrive Film Festival is a one-of-a-kind event that features films directed by formerly incarcerated people. Kenneth Hunter performed spoken word poetry…
With Good ReasonRagged Island
The biggest migration happens every night in the ocean. Plankton come up from the twilight zone to eat, safe from daytime predators. And then they go back to…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: Dinner Theater
Michael Carter Jr left America looking for home in Ghana. Now, on his fifth generation farm, he’s growing farmers through what he calls Africulture. And: How…
With Good ReasonA South You Never Ate
The distinctive foodways of the Eastern Shore of Virginia bring together influences from Indigenous peoples, European migrants, enslaved and free West…
With Good ReasonBeating Alzheimer's
The FDA recently approved a number of medications to treat Alzheimer’s disease. But while these new drugs are far from a cure, Lana Sargent says they’re…
With Good ReasonSorry
For twenty years, Jason Moulenbelt has asked his students to go back in time and decide whether to do something differently. Most of them say that despite the…
With Good Reason32 Blocks Of Music
On this episode of With Good Reason, Technical Director Jamal Millner hosts and we explore how some musicians interact with the communities they inhabit. The…
With Good ReasonDestination Mars 2035
NASA recently announced they’re preparing to send humans to Mars as early as 2035. It’ll be a huge undertaking that will require a big budget and massive…
With Good ReasonBorder Crossing
The borders of Jordan have changed over and over in the last century. And each time they shift, Jordanian immigration policy–officially or unofficially–shifts…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: Spooky Season
Could a centuries-old curse be to blame for Will Smith’s infamous slap of Chris Rock at the Academy Awards? Amanda Kellogg uncovers the long history of a…
With Good ReasonEarly Voting
In America, presidential primaries don’t officially begin until February of the election year. But we all know that presidential campaigns go on for years…
With Good ReasonWicked Problems
We usually reserve the word “wicked” for the worst things in life. But at Radford University, being a wicked student is a badge of honor. Every year, Paige Tan…
With Good ReasonCoexist
There’s an AI arms race. And anyone can compete. But AI doesn’t have moral judgment; it only sees patterns. Atin Basu says that military education needs to…
With Good ReasonMusic That Speaks
If you’re looking for new music, you might turn to youtube, spotify, social media–basically, the internet. In Cuba, internet access is so limited that music is…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: Terrapins And Terriers
In the early 20th century, terrapins–a kind of turtle–were a culinary delicacy. Then humans nearly hunted them to extinction. While Americans don’t eat much…
With Good ReasonFailing to Succeed
Failure is a key part of the scientific process. But Gertrude Fraser says women in STEM aren’t often given the same leeway to fail as their male colleagues…
With Good ReasonREPLAY: The Attack Of The Zombie Crabs
There’s a parasite inhabiting the bodies of crabs and making them infertile. Amy Fowler says that if that parasite entered the Chesapeake Bay, 90% of our crabs…
With Good ReasonUnheard
Sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to understand medicalese, is familiar for most of us. And really frustrating. Suzanne Makarem found forty women who pursue…
With Good ReasonBaby Babble
Babies come into the world ready to learn and all those coos and grunts that they make–and that their parents make at them–are stepping stones to fluency. Rory…
With Good ReasonProtesting the Pipeline
Many pipelines have been protested, but few have been defeated. Jonathan Mingle says the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline in 2020 is a story of…
With Good ReasonIn Translation
In the '80s and '90s, many Puerto Rican poets who lived in the contiguous United States wrote within a fixed aya and aca/mainland vs. island story. The island…
With Good ReasonMaking Justice
What makes a court a court? Most people might answer something like this: there’s a judge with legal training, who makes a judgment, and if you don’t follow…