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 ReasonGot Me Hypnotized
From the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. Emily Ogden’s…
With Good ReasonMeet Your Maker
During the holiday season, it feels like more and more consumers are skipping the department stores and opting for handcrafted goods instead. Ben Brewer says…
With Good ReasonBrand Survival in the Trump Era
In this political climate, do brands suffer or thrive when companies take sides? Also, self expression through purchasing power has gone through the roof for…
With Good ReasonMaking the Decision to Fight
We open the show with part two of the new podcast, American Dissent--featuring a woman who chose to fight the Trump administration decision to rescind DACA…
With Good ReasonInfrastructures of Power
Across the nation, natural gas production has been ramping up. In many communities, this has meant new pipelines, new promises, and new protests. How do we…
With Good ReasonFront Porches of the Dead
Welcome flags, monogrammed door mats, bird feeders, and whirligigs. These are all things you might find on a front porch—or on a gravesite. We're more creative…
With Good ReasonThe Face of Fake News
Love it or hate it (more likely a bit of both) Facebook is worth careful scholarly study--particularly in the field of politics. We hear from political…
With Good ReasonVoices of Vietnam: Women of War
More than 30,000 American women served in some form in Vietnam during the war. From the Red Cross volunteers who boosted morale to the nurses who treated…
With Good ReasonThe Year of the Woman
Women have been making headlines all over the country, running for office--and winning. We hear from some of those women about what it was like during their…
With Good ReasonMoonshine and Prohibition
Moonshiners are often portrayed as lawbreakers and profiteers. But these recorded interviews with former moonshiners and their children paint a portrait of…
With Good ReasonThe Right to Dissent
This week we’re debuting a new podcast series called American Dissent, hosted by Kelley Libby. In Episode 1: Influenced by Colin Kaepernick’s protest of police…
With Good ReasonThe Substance of Addiction
Do we fret too much that we're glued to our cell phones? Trevor Hoag says we should stop using the language of addiction liked ‘hooked on our iPhones” and…
With Good ReasonSocial Mobility Through College
One of the great American beliefs is that a college education gives us a better shot at moving up in life. But some say that social mobility has stalled and we…
With Good ReasonFree the Beaches
In "Free the Beaches" Andrew Kahrl tells the story of activist Ned Coll and his campaign to open New England’s shoreline to African Americans, as northern…
With Good ReasonDo Cells Phones Cause Cancer?
D you ever worry that the radiation coming from your cell phone might be harmful? Researching Deborah O’Dell recently finished a 5-year study that found cell…
With Good ReasonPilgrimage
100 pilgrims journey from Charlottesville to the national memorial to lynching in Montgomery, Alabama to pay homage to a black man who was lynched in 1898.
With Good ReasonAn Outrage
Beginning with the end of the Civil War, and well into the middle of the twentieth century, the extralegal and socially sanctioned practice of lynching claimed…
With Good ReasonMusic That Mends
Can art heal? This week, the redemptive power of language and song. Hear how former inmates use writing to explore their paths to imprisonment and how jazz can…
With Good ReasonVietnam: Fighting on Two Fronts
African Americans who fought for their country in Vietnam often experienced the racism their families endured back home. Plus: Native Americans fought in…
With Good ReasonSummer Reading Recs
Summer reads from the With Good Reason universe! Inman Majors gives us some comedic escapism, Erin Jones is reading about mid-century women artists reclaiming…
With Good ReasonThe Ghost in the MP3
The 1987 pop song “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega is considered the “mother of the MP3.” It was the test track used by German scientists to perfect this new file…
With Good ReasonA Cellular Cure for Diabetes
Jose Oberholzer is a transplant surgeon who lies awake nights thinking about a cellular cure for diabetes. He created the Chicago Diabetes Project so the best…
With Good ReasonBlending Families
More than a hundred years ago, a small group of Russian Mennonites went looking for Christ in Central Asia. They didn’t find him, but they did find a home…
With Good ReasonDo The Right Thing
"Making Peace With Vietnam" is a documentary that chronicles life in that nation as Vietnam vets return to do humanitarian work. Plus, Ludwig Wittgenstein may…
With Good ReasonMoving Pictures
When you think animation you might think the Simpsons or Disney or Spirited Away. But animation artist Anh Do says animation art is everything that moves. He…
With Good ReasonAnimal Intersections
The author of, A Hoot in the Light: Illuminating the Sensory Modes of Animal Communication, says that by recognizing animal voices, we make our particular…
With Good Reason1619: Past and Present
The first captive Africans arrived in the Jamestown settlement in Virginia in 1619. A shipload of women intended as mates for the male settlers also arrived…
With Good ReasonArt's Complicated
Sam Blanchard is a digital artist who uses humor and technology in his work. One of his favorites is a nod to his phobias--including going bald and a fear of…
With Good ReasonGet Rhythm
Bix Beiderbecke was one of the first great legends of jazz, but his recording career lasted just six years. A book by Brendan Wolfe, Finding Bix: The Life and…
With Good ReasonThe Pains of Recovery
"Councilors Without Borders" traveled to Puerto Rico to help people who continue to suffer after the Hurricane Maria disaster. Residents are still feeling…
With Good ReasonCents and Sensibility
Jane Austen novels provide timeless insight into our virtues and vices. It turns out she drew inspiration on how to live a moral life from the great 18th…
With Good ReasonMuggles Abroad!
A few lucky college students who love the Harry Potter fantasy series get to travel to London for 3 weeks of magical creatures, potions, and herbology. And if…
With Good ReasonThrough an Indian's Looking Glass
A story of Native American resilience comes to life in a new biography of Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota medicine man and Catholic preacher. Black Elk was born in…
With Good ReasonReal Love with Sharon Salzberg
In her new book, Real Love, Sharon Salzberg--one of the world's leading authorities on love and meditation--shows us love isn't just an emotion we feel when…
With Good ReasonFuture Farming of America
Southwest Virginia has seen a decline in coal and tobacco—two industries that once boomed in the region. Could hemp be a way to boost the local economy? And…
With Good ReasonMoonshine and Prohibition
South Carolina saw the statewide prohibition of alcohol in 1915. But not before the state established its own dispensary system more than a decade earlier…
With Good ReasonBuilding a Wall
When Thomas Jefferson designed the University of Virginia’s central Rotunda, he set out to build a temple to the book, a stunning rebuke to the Christian…
With Good ReasonPrivatization and Public Universities
With state support shrinking and the dependence on private support increasing for most public universities what does the financial landscape of the future look…
With Good ReasonThe Golden Age of Flattery
Washington has its fair share of brown-nosers. We talk with the authors of Sucking Up: A Brief Consideration of Sycophancy about yes-men, now and through the…
With Good ReasonInvisible Founders
Scholars, historic interpreters, and descendants of enslaved people recently gathered at Montpelier, the home of James Madison. They were there to create a…
With Good ReasonDriving While Black
Poet Kiki Petrosino in her poem, If My Body Is a Text, reflects on a year of tragic outcomes during traffic stops between police and African American drivers…
With Good ReasonLove Me Do
Wine, chocolate, and flowers. We talk with experts about these Valentine's Day essentials.
With Good ReasonCivil Rights and Civil War Monuments
Maggie Walker was an African American teacher and businesswoman and the first woman of any race to charter a bank in the United States. There's now a statue of…
With Good ReasonLethal Doses
America is hooked on opioids—by one count, there are currently more opioid prescriptions than people in the southeastern United States. This week we’re taking…
With Good ReasonThe New Minority
Donald Trump’s election was seen by many commentators as a decisive statement by a marginalized White working class. A new book The New Minority: White Working…
With Good ReasonPeople Count
Today we hear a lot about "blue collar" voters, but it wasn't always the case that the working class mattered. In this week's show, we look at why working…
With Good ReasonGetting to Know the Presidents
After one year in office, can we pass judgement on Trump's presidency? We talk to two experts from the University of Virginia's Miller Center who have made…
With Good ReasonThe Future Of Music
Until recently, Caroline Shaw was uncomfortable calling herself a composer–violin, singer, musician, sure. But not a composer. Then in 2013, her composition…