With Good Reason

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 minds in the country can work together on a cure. He says we're close!

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 among Muslims in Uzbekistan. Sofia Samatar tells their history in her new memoir, alongside her own story of growing up the daughter of a Somali Muslim and an American Mennonite.

"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 be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, but few people know about him.

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 got his start as a boy who emigrated to America from Vietnam with no English skills, so he drew pictures of everything he needed.

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 brand of humanism a little more humane. And: “Honeybee” Brown is planting apiaries in urban community gardens in an effort to save the ailing honeybee.

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 that year. How should we be telling and commemorating this history in 2019?

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 heights!

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 Afterlife of a Jazz Legend, connects Beiderbecke's music, history, and legend.

"Councilors Without Borders" traveled to Puerto Rico to help people who continue to suffer after the Hurricane Maria disaster. Residents are still feeling stressed by the storm and worry about the new storm season to come.

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 century economist Adam Smith.

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 you're impatient for the final season of Game of Thrones, we have your GoT fix--how the women of Westeros gain and lose power in that fictional patriarchal world of dragons and warfare. Plus: Long before there was Black Panther or the Blaxpl...

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 1863 and died at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Another new book illuminates the life of a Pequot Indian activist and author who is little known today, but has been called the Native American Frederick Douglas. William Apess challe...

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 we're in a romantic relationship. It's an ability we can nurture and cultivate. Also, Oliver Hill shares his journey in the 1960's from the segregated south, to black radicalism, to Transcendental Meditation with the Beach Boys. Also: How "The...

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 more.

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. Plus: oral histories of moonshiners in Appalachia.

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 churches that anchored every other college of his day. But Jefferson’s secular utopia didn’t pan out exactly as he planned.

With state support shrinking and the dependence on private support increasing for most public universities what does the financial landscape of the future look like? What makes an institution public? Is it the source of funding? History? Mission? Or something else?

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 ages.

Scholars, historic interpreters, and descendants of enslaved people recently gathered at Montpelier, the home of James Madison. They were there to create a rubric for historic sites who want to engage descendant communities in their work. We share stories and interviews from Montpelier's Summit on Slavery.

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. Plus: Most of us have heard of Negro League Baseball, but there were many other all-black sports leagues and teams across America in the 20th century. David Wiggins shares how African-American athletes built their own place for sports in a s...

Wine, chocolate, and flowers. We talk with experts about these Valentine's Day essentials.

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 her in the former capital of the Confederacy. Plus: A town’s historical markers tell visitors the story of a place. But what do they leave out?

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 a deep dive into the causes of the opioid crisis. And more.

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 Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality explains where this theory comes from and why so many White voters are feeling class and racial resentment. Plus we dive into the immigration debate and why good numbers are hard to fin...

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 class neighborhoods tend to get the short end of the stick, how a British monarch leveraged the working class to extend her reign, and who is responsible for the origin of the census.