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 ReasonSidelines of the Mainstream
LARP stands for Live Action Role Play. Think of it like Lord of the Rings comes to life, where you get to create your own character and wield foam swords on a…
With Good ReasonHaunted Fun
Ghost stories aren’t just for campouts and slumber parties. Ingrid Johnson shares some of the great writers–from Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde–who have turned to…
With Good ReasonBaby Brains and Little Beats
Jennifer McDonel-Rivers and David Rivers have made children’s music together for years. And it’s led to one happy marriage and multiple albums of educational…
With Good ReasonBlack Studies Under Threat
Black Studies Departments on college campuses nationwide are facing mounting pressures. Shawn Utsey says they need to engage even more closely with the Black…
With Good ReasonThe Rumpelstiltskin Effect
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that America is the “sickest country in the world,” citing that 76.4% of Americans suffer from a chronic…
With Good ReasonUnheard
Sitting in a doctor’s office trying to understand “medicalese” is really frustrating. Suzanne Makarem found forty women who switched to nontraditional medical…
With Good ReasonWomen at Work
At colleges and universities, women professors are doing a lot more emotional work on top of teaching and research. Linda Waldron explains how that happens and…
With Good ReasonLove in the Digital Age
Stumbling into your soulmate while running errands used to be romantic. But Jenny Rosier says this romcom fantasy has gone out of style. She studies the…
With Good ReasonVoices Behind Walls
College classrooms are opening up behind federal prison walls, sparking a massive shift in American higher education. Driven by the return of Pell Grant…
With Good ReasonAmerica After 1619
In late August 1619, twenty or more enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia at what’s now called Fort Monroe. They were the first Africans documented in British…
With Good ReasonRights to Nature
The James River provides drinking water for 1 in 4 Virginians. But it was once the most polluted river in America. Justin Black and Will Gemma’s two-part…
With Good ReasonJazz and Civil Rights
The personal and professional lives of musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane cannot be divorced from the struggle for racial…
With Good ReasonHealing from the Holocaust
After liberation, concentration camp survivors were left a shell of themselves - malnourished, diseased, and traumatized. Children who lost their parents and…
With Good ReasonThe Pursuit of Happiness
What did Jefferson mean by “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? Adam Potkay explains the moral and philosophical world behind the phrase and the…
With Good ReasonCounting Plants
Little babies and potted plants: the stationary, the helpless... the hardest working beings in the room. Peter Vishton found that babies and plants process…
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 ReasonAudacious Women
A new one-woman show tells the story of Virginia’s history through the eyes of ten audacious women. From the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance to the Civil…
With Good ReasonAmerica the Beautiful
From Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial to Marvin Gaye singing the National Anthem at the NBA Finals, the theme of patriotism can be heard…
With Good ReasonStories for the Semiquincentennial
In 1976, the Bikecentennial became the first organized bike tour across the U.S. Around 4,000 bicyclists pedaled to celebrate the Bicentennial, or America’s…
With Good ReasonFraming the Civil War
For nearly a century the National Park Service would tell you all about the civil war battles and tactics, but meticulously avoided the most explosive word in…
With Good ReasonThe Monsters Among Us
A cold, dark summer in 1816 brought an extraordinary group of young writers together on the shores of Lake Geneva—including an eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley…
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 Crack in the System
I’ll admit it, I’m not very good at dealing with conflict. In fact, I’d rather avoid conflict altogether than tackle it head on. It’s not something I really…
With Good ReasonWhat Air is to Fire
A life steeped in literature fueled the rise of the nation’s first Muslim woman elected to a statewide office. Ghazala Hashmi discusses the power of…
With Good Reason2026 Summer Reading Recs
It’s time for our annual summer reading recommendation round-up! From a book that traces the Cold War history of our “Made in China” goods, to a witchy novel…
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 ReasonEye in the Sky
There’re over 10,000 active satellites orbiting Earth. And they do more than just power our phones and GPS, they’re giving us a whole new perspective on who we…
With Good ReasonLove in the Time of Hubots
In the German novel “I’m Your Man” a couples therapist and her robot partner Tom explore the limits of post-human love. Holly Yanacek wrote the English…
With Good ReasonChild's Play
LEGO used to be just for kids. But with the help of the COVID-19 pandemic and plain old burnout, many adults have returned to LEGO. They’ve even got a cool…
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…
With Good ReasonHBCUs Past, Present, and Future
Historically Black Colleges and Universities are powerful American institutions. Cheryl Mango and Lisa Winn Bryan explore the culture, currency, and legacy of…
With Good ReasonHaving a Ruff Day
Dogs have co-evolved with humans for thousands of years. They’re uniquely adapted to us. It’s why our dogs are more than pets, they’re family! Tanya…
With Good ReasonTouring Wuthering Heights
In the world of literary tourism, the Brontë Parsonage Museum in the Yorkshire moors is a heavy hitter. Alison Booth says this small stone house in the town of…
With Good ReasonUltimate Enforcers
Democratic constitutions are social contracts. And sometimes, what’s on the page is more stunning than what comes to life. Mila Versteeg says that citizens are…
With Good ReasonRuling Women
In fascist Italy, resistance took surprising forms. Maura Hametz shares the story of one woman who stood up to the regime–by refusing to change her name. And…
With Good ReasonHungry Black Holes
Einstein theorized the existence of black holes. Then in the 1960’s we observed them for the first time. Anca Constantin says black holes occur throughout the…
With Good ReasonA Miserable Revenge
George Newman, born to free Black parents in 1855, was only 21 or 22 when he wrote the novel, A Miserable Revenge: A Story of Life in Virginia. Newman’s…
With Good ReasonThe Grand Mothers
Lucille Clifton survived cancer four times. She maintained that her mother would not let her die until she had finished her work on Earth. That work? Writing…
With Good ReasonStaggered by the Fact of You
Join us as we bring two nationally renowned Black poets conversation with a new generation of Black poets. This episode features former Virginia Poet Laureate…
With Good ReasonConcrete Jungle
Faedah Totah is a walker. So when she traveled to Damascus, Syria in the 2000’s, she ditched the car and sauntered the streets to really take in the beauty of…
With Good ReasonThe Body Language of Trees
Scientists are using video cameras and glorified fitbits to decipher the body language of trees. Geology professor Dom Ciruzzi says the way trees sway tells us…
With Good ReasonDelicious Predator
The Chesapeake Bay is ballooning with an apex predator that can only be defeated with grease and breading – blue catfish! They were introduced to Virginia’s…
With Good ReasonRecovery
Universities have been trying to curb dangerous binge drinking for years. Today’s students are glued to their phones, and Abby Braitman (Old Dominion…
With Good ReasonHoliday Hand Me Downs
As we age, we come to appreciate the holiday traditions of our youth. Ricky Mullins (University of Virginia at Wise) remembers receiving treat bags at his…
With Good ReasonHoliday Tunes
Music is wrapped up in how we celebrate the holidays. Musician and band director Stephanie Sanders (Norfolk State University) shares some of her favorite…
With Good ReasonGrief Attacks
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ concept of the stages of grief gave people real footing in understanding how we react to loss. But Sherman Lee (Christopher Newport…
With Good ReasonThe Weight of a Whale
A new anthology of poems, including one that reflects on the weight of a whale, gathers voices from science, the arts, and Indigenous communities to create a…
With Good ReasonRadical Acceptance
New-to-this-country students are constantly being asked to adapt. And often, their wellbeing is measured almost entirely by their ability to speak English…
With Good ReasonThe Food That Makes Us
Gumbo, BBQ, and biscuits–what makes Southern food Southern? Caity Finlayson (University of Mary Washington) talks about the fusion of cultures–African food…
With Good ReasonLibrary Kids
At the end of the world, Philip Lorish (University of Virginia) decided to open a bookstore. He says that despite the cultural moment that audiobooks are…
With Good ReasonInto the Sun
Into the Sun is a new musical featuring the poems of British war poets and soldiers who were killed in World War I. Co-author Mike Gubser (James Madison…
With Good ReasonWe're All Gonna Die
Armed with a newly-talking cinema and trying to survive The Great Depression, Universal Studios developed a new genre – horror. For twenty-two weeks, crews…
With Good ReasonAppalachia’s Edible Landscape
In a walk through the forest, an Appalachian landowner and biologist points out dozens of species he and his family sustainably harvest for meals. From…
With Good ReasonSaving Endangered Species
The red colobus monkey is one of the most endangered primates in the world. Found in West, East, and Central Africa, the once thriving species has been…
With Good ReasonI'm Just a Girl
For little girls, princess culture is everywhere. Carlee Bradbury says it’s been that way for hundreds and hundreds of years. And: darlene anita scott collages…
With Good ReasonNurse!
America has a problem. There’s a nursing shortage. And it's not for lack of hopeful nurses. There's not enough clinical space! The Mary Morton Parsons Clinical…
With Good ReasonJackpot!
It’s football season, baby! And that means big upsets, impossible comebacks, nail biting finishes - plus sports betting ads… lots and lots of sports betting…
With Good ReasonLafayette's Return
Lafayette was just 19 when he sailed to America from France and fought alongside George Washington in the Revolutionary War. David Marsich says 50 years later…