With Good Reason

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 acronym – AFOL. It stands for Adult Fans of Lego. Andi Smith says it’s a hands-on, screen-free way to shut your brain off and create. In Andi’s architecture classes, students use LEGO to build everything from model playgrounds to mausoleums. Not the kits – they freestyle! And: Have you ever played with an ouija board? Rhonda Brock and Chris McGee say that the whole game is really to prove that you aren’t scared. And the camera is really one of the players. Because anything spooky must be proven! Later in the show: Many adults are reluctant to talk to children about grief and death. But why? 2026 PEN/Voelcker Award Finalist Gbenga Adesina and two-time National Book Award finalist Amber McBride join each other in conversation about their respective books Death Does Not End at the Sea and The Leaving Room where young adult narrators carry the reader through experiences with death and loss.

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 their judgment, you get punished. David Law says, actually, none of that is required for a court. That’s how the American courts work, but all over the world there are courts that operate very differently. And: The Upper Mattaponi tribe in Virginia has started operating its own courts. Chief Frank Adams explores what tribal justice looks like. Later in the show: Building a court system is difficult under any circumstances. In communities that have suffered intense violent conflicts–like Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, or Kosovo after the war of the 1990s–creating a court system is both essential and particularly fraught. Christie Warren has worked all over the world as a facilitator helping post-conflict zones design legal and justice systems.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities are powerful American institutions. Cheryl Mango and Lisa Winn Bryan explore the culture, currency, and legacy of HBCUs. Later in the show: Canonical works like Huckleberry Finn or The Tempest are still read in English classes across the country–but whose voice is missing from these works? Margaret Cox explores how writers like Percival Everett and Elizabeth Nunez reclaim and reshape these stories from the margins.

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 Mitropoulos studies how dogs can pick up on our workplace stress. Also: If you’re online too much like me, you’ve probably heard of the phrase “Sunday scaries.” But for experts like Molly Sloan, it’s known as affective rumination - or the act of dwelling on work during non-work hours. She says it's one of the biggest drivers of low employee wellbeing. Later in the show: There’s lots of talk these days about the ever-increasing salaries for executives. But Felipe Cabezon says CEO’s aren’t just overpaid, they’re getting paid the same. He found that executive pay structures look similar across a wide range of industries - and it's hurting business.

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 Haworth served as the creative crucible for Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Also: A king’s rage and a murder that changed history. John Adrian dives into the medieval crime scene of Canterbury Cathedral and the centuries of pilgrimage it sparked. Now his Canterbury study semester is opening that world to students from Appalachia. Later in the show: From curating award-winning wine cellars in the Berkshires and Keswick, Virginia to building a new life in the heart of the Iberian Peninsula, Richard Hewitt is the ultimate guide to the soul of Portugal. Join this master sommelier and author as he swaps the classroom for the countryside, leading us on an intimate journey through the sun-drenched vineyards and hidden cultural treasures he now calls home.

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 the ultimate constitutional enforcers.They have to make it expensive for a government to break the social contract. Later in the show: Riddle me this: What’s the first thing that a K-12 principal does in the morning? They decide which law to break! Paul Manna says that it’s not because they’re lawless rebels. It’s because the 14,000 school districts across the United States have state laws, federal laws and local district policy telling them to do things that often contradict. So the question is: who should be making decisions about what happens in schools? And: The Reconstruction Era amendments tried to expand the concept of We the People. Did they really work? Wayne Moore says that that promise was never fully realized, and that's the nature of constitutions.

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: Numbers of Black women legislators have increased dramatically in the last decade. Jatia Wrighten argues that the success and drive of these leaders is rooted deep in history. Later in the show: Joan of Arc wasn’t the only medieval woman to lead an army. Steven Isaac brings us the queens and empresses whose military strategy drove European politics.

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 universe, but we can only see the hungry ones. Also: Mool Gupta was in grad school for Apollo 11 in 1969. He watched with wonder as Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. Now he’s partnering with NASA in the Artemis program - a series of missions that could return astronauts to the moon as early as 2027. He helped develop a rover with laser technology that can identify minerals and detect evidence of alien life on the surface of the moon. Later in the show: 35 million years ago, what is now the Chesapeake Bay was struck by an asteroid as big as Manhattan. Rich Whittecar is part of the team that recently discovered the first terrestrial evidence of the impact. He says the blast was 200,000 times more powerful than an atomic bomb.

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 granddaughter, Ruth Toliver, talks about the just-published novel with Virginia Humanities Center for the Book director Kalela Williams. Also: Mollie Godfrey and Brooks Hefner helped bring Newman’s fascinating novel into digital and print publication. Later in the show: The author of Becoming Belle da Costa-Green: A Visionary Librarian Through Her Letters recounts the accomplishments of the first Director of the fabulous Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. Deborah Parker says Belle da Costa-Green spent her life passing as white, even though she was the daughter of a prominent African American family.

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 poetry. A year before she passed away, Lucille Clifton was honored at the Furious Flower Poetry Conference at James Madison University where she spoke to With Good Reason’s Sarah McConnell about inheriting her mother’s rage and commitment to writing. And: A whole lot can happen in a Southampton County minute. Latorial Faison’s Pulitzer Prize nominated poetry collection Nursery Rhymes in Black animates the education of her rural Virginia childhood. Later in the show: In 1941, Remica Bingham Risher's paternal great-great-great grandmother Minnie and maternal grandmother Mary never met— but they had been within one mile of each other under extraordinary circumstances. Minnie was interviewed for the Works Progress Administration’s Slave Narratives project on her Petersburg front porch. Just down the road, Mary was taken to the Central Lunatic Asylum for the Colored Insane for “water in the brain” – what we know now as postpartum depression. Nearly a century later, in Remica Bingham-Risher’s Room Swept Home, they meet.

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 and Old Dominion University poetry professor Tim Seibles talking with rising poetry star Ariana Benson about alien life, good grammar, and the dreams of Langston Hughes.  Later in the show: Poets Elizabeth Alexander and Nicole Sealey discuss the treasures of archives, the work of a generation, and the resonant truth you feel in your bones. Former Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander is President of the Mellon Foundation and the author of the New York Times best selling memoir, The Light of the World. Alexander and Tim Seibles are Furious Flower Poetry Lifetime Achievement honorees.

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 the old city. She soon came across a neighborhood that sparked her forthcoming book, Palestinian Refugees in the Old City of Damascus. Also: The report card is out for America’s stormwater infrastructure. Spoiler alert: it’s a grade that probably would’ve gotten us all grounded by our parents. Tanjina Afrin explains where America is failing and why effective stormwater management is such an important but largely forgotten public amenity. Later in the show: As the Cold War drew to a close in the 1990s, the Hispanic Caribbean was rocked by what Elena Valdez calls “crisis moments.” She says these “crisis moments” sparked important changes in representations of sexuality and gender in the public sphere - especially in the urban spaces of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.

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 a lot about tree overall health. Also: The location of trees affects home values. A study by Kevin Boyle and the U.S. Forest Service reveals that adding trees can boost home prices but there is a sweet spot where too much canopy can reduce value. Later in the show: Each year David Goodman captivates hundreds of children and families in Appalachia with a thrilling live science show, complete with flames, explosions and interactive experiments and a particular crowd favorite called Puking Pumpkins.

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 freshwater rivers in the 70s and 80s for recreational fishing. Now, the Bay is teeming with 700 million to 1 billion pounds of blue catfish. Michael Schwarz says that we can restore balance to the bay by eating the fresh, white saltwater catfish filet. And it’s best served fried! And: Growing up, Maurica Bynum smelled the funk of the Franklin County paper mill and collected water samples with her parents who were water treatment operators. Now, she brings her childhood experience with public health and environmentalism to the classroom, preparing the next generation of public health experts. Later in the show: Indigenous people throughout the Amazon basin understand themselves to be deeply connected to the more-than-human world. So the pollution of waterways and loss of biodiversity is not just an environmental loss, it’s a loss of spiritual protection and livelihood. Jeremy Larochelle says that indigenous amazonian people honor poets as much as they honor the fishermen. And poets like Juan Carlos Galeans and Ana Varela Tafur are sounding the alarm about the urgent need to save the Amazon by honoring it.

Universities have been trying to curb dangerous binge drinking for years. Today’s students are glued to their phones, and Abby Braitman (Old Dominion University) and her colleagues are meeting them where they are for interventions. And: Meagan Brem (Virginia Tech) says that drinking is intertwined with a lot of the intimate partner violence that happens on college campuses. Later in the show: There’s a psychedelic renaissance going on in Javier González-Maeso’s (Virginia Commonwealth University) biochemistry lab. He’s hoping to develop a new drug using psilocybin, the component found in magic mushrooms, to help people battling alcohol abuse disorder. Plus: How Jasmohan Bajaj (Virginia Commonwealth University) discovered that addiction lives in the gut, not the mind.

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 small, backroads church. The poke bags were stuffed oranges, peanuts, cracker jacks and sometimes even a chocolate bar. Now, he’s passing the tradition along to the youth at the church that he pastors. And: Mary Lou Williams was a renowned jazz pianist and composer. She brought sacred Black jazz music to Duke University’s chapel every year. Gayle Murchison (William and Mary) shares some of Williams’ music with us. Later in the show: How Ryan Stouffer (Longwood University) learned the value of fellowshipping over food from his dad’s rib spot. Plus: Mary Beth Matthews (Mary Washington) walks us through how the American traditions of Hanukkah and Christmas have changed over the years.

Music is wrapped up in how we celebrate the holidays. Musician and band director Stephanie Sanders (Norfolk State University) shares some of her favorite holiday tunes and why they’re so meaningful for her. Later in the show: As a performing trombonist, Dayl Burnett (Radford University) plays the same holiday songs year after year. But he doesn’t get tired of them! We listen to a few of the songs that he’s always happy to hear when December rolls around.

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 University) says grief isn’t experienced in a linear, neat way. Have you ever been driving and suddenly found yourself in tears about a loss, real or imagined? Or maybe you were washing the dishes and suddenly spaced out and started having painful feelings as you anticipate or remember a loss? He calls these sudden, intense experiences “grief attacks,” and says they can happen at any time.

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 portrait of nature in America. Former Virginia Poet Laureate Luisa A. Igloria (Old Dominion University) is co-editor of The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders. Plus: Ana Lang (Washington and Lee and Central Virginia Community College) is the first ever student Poet Laureate of Virginia Community College System. She is torn between her Cambodian family’s expectations of her and her desire to be a free and independent woman. Later in the show: The editor of a new online poetry journal, Steve Knepper (Virginia Military Institute) loves highlighting new lyric and narrative poetry.

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. Alfonzo Perez Acosta (Virginia Humanities K-12 Education Fellow) is an arts educator. In his classroom, he gives students the tools to let their art do the talking. And: Everybody has a story. Not everyone has a place to tell it. Through the Community Media Center, Chioke I’Anson (VCU ICA Community Media Center hopes to solve the problem of the untold story. Later in the show: Education has long been seen as a tool of racial uplift. In the early twentieth century, Phyllis Wheatley YWCA’s across the country served young Black girls and women. Cassandra Newby-Alexander (Norfolk State University) fondly recalls her days at the Norfolk YWCA, and is hopeful about what the old facility could become today. Plus: A generous grant from the Mellon Foundation has changed the game for many Richmond area high schoolers. Janelle Marshall (Pathways to the Arts and Humanities) and her team with the Virginia Community College System are helping get students enrolled, and sticking beside them all the way until the finish line.