With Good Reason

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 this current “third wave” craft renaissance we’re experiencing is tied to politics. We visit mOb, an innovative design studio at Virginia Commonwealth University, where students help solve design problems in the city of Richmond. We stop in at the Virginia Center for the Book, where Kristin Keimu Adolfson is printing a collaborative book called Bird Talk. Plus: Craft brewer Gabe Mixon shares a lesson in making beer.

Later in the show: Chef and food activist Alice Waters argues that every child in America should be fed free, organic food at schools.

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 African Americans.

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, and the story of the high school students whose protest helped lead to school desegregation.

Also, journalists and authors discuss the opioids crisis and the effects of economic decline on rural communities—and the vital role of local journalism to an informed citizenry.

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 balance environmental concerns and the public good?

Environmental engineer Andres Clarens (University of Virginia)explains the science.

Jaime Allison (Christopher Newport University) argues that we can better understand pipelines by looking back to the early days of railroads.

Economist Sarah Stafford (College of William and Mary) argues that pipelines require people to weigh environmental costs and economic benefits, and the results aren’t always what you’d expect.

Sociologist Travis Williams (Virginia Commonwealth University) takes us to Union Hill, a historically African American community in Buckingham County, Virginia, where a natural gas compressor station is being planned.

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 now in our cemeteries. Plus, millions of Americans have had near death experiences and there are startling consistencies in the accounts.

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 scientists who argue that the sins of Facebook are built into the platform itself and congress needs to break up Facebook using antitrust laws.

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 injuries, women were a major part of soldiers’ experience of the war. The war also upended the lives of millions of wives, widows and girlfriends back home.

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 first week on the job. And scholars reflect on what it takes to get more women on the ballot.

Moonshiners are often portrayed as lawbreakers and profiteers. But these recorded interviews with former moonshiners and their children paint a portrait of close knit poor families in Appalachia helping each other keep food on the table.

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 brutality during the National Anthem, a high school volleyball player initiates her own protest, and not without consequences. And a historian tells the story of a religious minority who helped win the American Revolution and the fight for religious freedom in America.

American Dissent is a production of James Madison’s Montpelier and With Good Reason at Virginia Humanities.