With Good Reason

When a family is referred to Child Protective Services, they’re often treated a lot like criminals on parole. But, the administrative work required to keep their families together can actually make it even harder to parent successfully. Christa Moore says that our child welfare system should operate more like collaborative care and less like bureaucratic punishment. Plus: How does having a parent...

In March, the Senate approved the Sunshine Protection Act - which, if passed, will make daylight savings time permanent. The bill has been praised by many, but Mariana Szklo-Coxe says not so fast. She studies how permanent daylight savings time will affect our sleep. Plus: Postpartum depression is one of the leading complications of childbirth, but most mothers are never screened for it. Jennifer...

American railroads of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were littered with racial, gendered traps. And from working in the food car to sitting in first class, Miriam Thaggert (SUNY Buffalo) says that Black women are critical to the history of the American railroad. Her new book is Riding Jane Crow African American Women on the American Railroad. Plus: While many European writers desc...

In 2019, Virginia joined just three other states in making Juneteenth a paid state holiday, recognizing it as a holiday for all Virginians. Lauranett Lee says in this country we have parallel histories, with Black and white Americans knowing about and acknowledging different pasts. But community efforts and local activists are elevating the stories of African Americans so that those parallel histo...

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 mock-battlefield. But for many players, LARP is more than just fun and games - it's a lifeline to belonging. With Good Reason producer, Matt Darroch, has the story. And: Climate change, pollution, and development projects are threatening sur...

Whether you’re on foot crossing the street, or behind the wheel -- there are a lot of new technologies to be distracted by. Bryan Porter says that we do not recover from looking at our phones as quickly as we think. Is your brain on the road when you are? And: Screen time is transforming children’s brains. Robyn Kondrad says there are times when it is useful, alongside glaring limitations. Later i...

In recent years, the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII has gotten more attention. But most of that attention focuses on the West Coast, California in particular. Emma Ito studied the racism and incarceration that Virginians and other East Coast Japanese Americans faced during the war. And: Japanese Americans weren’t the only immigrants persecuted during WWII–many German and Italian i...

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 project authority. As a physician and a poet, Laura Kolbe is trying to make room for uncertainty and humility from both sides in the exam room. Kolbe’s new collection of poetry, Little Pharma, explores the messy and human side of doctoring. And...

Formed in the mid 1960’s, The Soulmasters was an interacial soul band from Danville, VA. Jerry Wilson and John Irby were the two African-American lead singers, and the other 8 members of the band were white. Producer Matt Darroch headed over to Danville to hear Jerry reflect on his three years in the band and what it was like touring the South during the height of segregation. And: No matter your...

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 would be inedible. America is littered with battlefields, and abandoned forts. They’re often some of the most pristine sites of Virginia ecosystems. Plus: Todd Lookingbill is a SCHEV winner for his research on the ecological value of battl...

Thomas Jefferson said Patrick Henry “got the ball of revolution rolling.” Historian John Ragosta says Henry was five times elected governor of colonial Virginia, but it was his ability to electrify an audience that made him the idol of the common people. Plus: Before Patrick Henry died, he credited a Presbyterian minister named Samuel Davies with “teaching me what an orator should be.” Kelley Libb...

Many of us are more closely tuned in to the environment around us than ever before. We’re spending more time hanging outdoors, planting kitchen gardens, and taking up bird-watching. In honor of Earth Day and our new relationship with the great outdoors, With Good Reason invites you to walk with us. We traipse around the foothills of Appalachia with Ryan Huish, wade through ghost forest wetlands wi...

The colonial era is usually seen as prim and proper - a time when manners were refined and marriage was sacrosanct. But that period may have been much wilder than previously thought. Liz Elizondo says in colonial Spanish Texas, love affairs didn’t just occasionally happen…they were the norm. And: What does it mean to feel like you belong within a community? Jennifer Bickham Mendez studies that que...

Being a Black girl in a mostly white space can bring stress, frustration, anger, and all kinds of mixed emotions. In Finding Her Voice, Faye and Ivy Belgrave, along with co-author Angela Patton (Girls for A Change), have created a guidebook for Black girls navigating predominantly white spaces. And: Two years on, the covid-19 pandemic is still affecting us in new ways. Although many schools have r...

Student survivors of school shootings have made their voices heard, loud and clear. But the teacher's perspective of school shootings is less common. Megan Doney is an English professor turned gun control activist who writes about her traumatic experience. And: Research suggests that a police strategy called "community policing" benefits those with mental illness. Charlotte Gill rides along with a...

A lot of the day’s popular shows like Lovecraft Country and Watchmen have their roots in Black newspapers. Brooks Hefner says these stories imagined futuristic solutions to issues of Jim Crow and racism. And: Literature influences a lot of how we interpret history. Jonathan Crimmons says the short lived genre of comedic theater, harlequins, opens the door for new historical interpretations. Later...

The first federally registered Black neighborhood in the United States was Jackson Ward, a once-booming economic and residential district in Richmond, Virginia. Through the Skipwith-Roper Homecoming initiative, Sisters Sesha Moon and Enjoli Moon are working to reconstruct the gambrel roof cottage of Richmond’s first known Black homeowner, Abraham Skipwith. And: Kelli Lemon is Virginia’s biggest ch...

Last year, officials and public health leaders across the United States were also talking about a public health emergency besides Covid-19: racism. Jamela Martin says that racism’s direct impact on health is well-documented. What we know less about is how to fix it. And: Cancer is caused by a combination of factors, including genetics, lifestyle, and environmental causes. Li Li studies colon cance...

When Colin Rafferty moved to Virginia in 2008 he didn’t know much about the presidents, so he set out to read a biography of each one. What began as a personal project eventually turned into his new publication - a collection of experimental, genre-bending essays on every U.S. president. Also: In 2016, Eric Drummond Smith guest-curated an art exhibit called The Cherry Bounce Show at the William Ki...

In 1979, members of the KKK shot and killed five labor and civil rights activists in Greensboro, North Carolina. Aran Shetterly, who is writing a book about the incident, says it still reverberates in the racial politics of Greensboro today. Also: The European philosophers of the Enlightenment argued that Europeans were civilized, but Africans were barbarians. Stefan Wheelock describes how radical...

Little kids absorb everything around them–from the words we say, to the way we move and dress. Psychologist Chelsea Williams says that long before we realize it, little kids are also absorbing attitudes about race and ethnicity. She studies how parents can help young Latinx kids be proud of their identity. And: The 1980 Marial Boatlift brought 125,000 mostly Black Cuban immigrants into Florida. Mo...

As technology advances, society becomes more vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. Bug bounty hunters to the rescue! Bug hunters are ethical hackers who help companies fix vulnerabilities in their systems before the bad guys find them. But Daniel Graham says some ethical hackers face a moral dilemma: should they fix the vulnerability for a modest sum or sell it on the black market for much more? An...

Back in the 1950s, the Soviets were eager to follow their Sputnik success with an even bigger milestone: they would send something living to outer space. Amy Nelson says that the pups were easy to rebrand as space pioneers. And: Scientists have reason to believe that Mars has a lot in common with Earth. Joel Levine says the search for life outside of Earth is the driving force of space exploration...

The 1970s saw a renaissance of Black women writers like Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor who told stories of Black women’s pain and healing. Tamika Carey says that just a few decades later, these stories trickled up to a whole Black women’s wellness industry, driven by figures like Oprah Winfrey, Iyanla Vanzant, and even Tyler Perry. And: In the wellness world, “natural” reigns supreme. So much so t...

When Jennifer Malia started researching her young daughter’s behaviors, she realized that both she and her daughter were on the autism spectrum. Malia has a children’s book coming out next year, called: Too Sticky! Sensory Issues with Autism. Also: Leslie Daniel celebrates autism and shares some basic strategies for communicating with children on the autism spectrum. And: Children’s museums can be...