With Good Reason

There’s a new robot in town. Nathan Sprague and the JMU X-Lab faculty are in their fifth year of retrofitting a golf cart. The automated machine will ideally transport seniors around senior citizen communities. And: What’s real? A documentarian used AI to generate the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s voice in a documentary. William Little says the controversy illuminates our celebrity worship.

Later in the show: Technology is only as good as the minds that make it. Daphne Yao is improving medical data bias by simply introducing data of more marginalized people. Plus: Google’s “Alpha Fold 2” allows scientists to see what they’re targeting when creating medicine. Amarda Shehu says this dramatically transforms the field of molecular biology, where scientists have worked without this “structure prediction miracle.”

A.D. Carson’s new album, “iv: talking with ghosts,” was written under the heaviness of covid lockdown, the deaths of close friends and family, and the worldwide protests addressing the deaths of Black people at the hands of police. Carson shares the deeply personal place this album comes from and his work to include his family and friends in the historical record.

Later in the show: Africans and their descendants once made up a big part of the colonial Mexican population. But the musical canon from this period is so white. Sarah Finley is uncovering a thriving Afro-Mexican sound culture whose influence can still be heard in present-day Mexican music. And: In recent years, much has been done to reroot genres like blues, jazz, reggaeton, and calypso in African musical traditions. We know that enslaved African Americans played a lot of music and that music was important to their lives. And yet, we know very little about what the music of enslaved people actually sounded like during their own times. Mary Caton Lingold’s forthcoming book aims to account for that music and trumpet the legacy of performers whose names have largely been forgotten, but whose sounds still echo.

The Philippines takes Christmas to another level. From September to December, the island-country celebrates the longest Christmas season in the world. Ken Garcia Olaes and his parents bake some Bibingka, a filipino-style cake, and share fond memories of Christmas time in the Philippines. And: Erica Cavanagh spent two years as a member of the Peace Corps in Benin, West Africa. She says sharing food with her host family helped to shed her long-held values of independence and self-reliance. Plus: Over the last few decades, pumpkin spice has become synonymous with the Fall season. If you’ve never had a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks have you ever truly experienced the glory of Fall? Catherine Franssen breaks down our obsession with pumpkin spice and explains how our brain is hardwired to love Fall.

Later in the show: Ever tried to drink a bottle of hot sauce? That’s what Ray Parrish says his new Signal One beer tastes like. He’s teamed up with Sarah Smith and her student, Val Ebenki, to attempt to create the world’s spiciest beer.

You have Chef James Hemings, who cooked for Thomas Jefferson, to thank for the macaroni and cheese on your plate this Thanksgiving. Setting the Table's Deb Freeman tells us how the French dish became so baked into American cuisine. And: Across troubled waters, enslaved people carried benne seeds and grew them in a new land. Chef Amethyst Ganaway is snacking on benne wafers while thickening the Thanksgiving stew.

Plus: The Lowcountry is always cooking. Chef BJ Dennis says the vast rice plantations of the Lowcountry are visible from outer space. The famed Gullah Geechee chef honors the grain with his smoky tomato purloo.

Cauline Yates was at a family reunion the first time she heard she was a descendant of Thomas Jefferson. In 2019, she was asked to help develop the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia. With Good Reason producer Matt Darroch has the story. And: Clint Smith is the author of the award-winning book, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. He travels to 9 historic sites to understand how slavery is remembered and taught.

Later in the Show: Gayle Jessup White was on a tour at Monticello with her son when she raised her hand and told the guide she was related to Sally Hemings. She says it was a moment that changed her life forever. Her memoir, Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson and a Descendant’s Search for Her Family’s Lasting Legacy, chronicles her journey to uncovering her family’s roots at Monticello. Plus: Descendants recently gained structural parity at James Madison’s Montpelier. James French, a descendant himself, represents the descendant community on Montpelier’s board.

In 19th century American cities, the smell of rapid industrial growth was overwhelming. This was particularly concerning, because at the time, people thought smells actually caused disease. Melanie Kiechle tells us about the official smell committees that were created to track down offensive odors and the lengths cities went to in order to cover those smells up. And: Buried in a folio of a 15th century monk’s writing is a poem about the absolutely annoying noise of blacksmiths–not just the pounding of their hammers, but the gnaw and gnash of their voices. Adin Lears explores the noises of early English voices and writing.

Later in the show: Leonardo DaVinci is often thought of as a painter who later became a scientist. But Francesca Fiorani argues that DaVinci was obsessed from his artistic beginning with the science of sight. Indeed, his paintings were a kind of lab experiment in light, shadow, and perception. Plus: We can learn a lot about cultures through their food. Kara Keeling and Scott Pollard have spent decades exploring the significance of food in children’s literature, from Winnie the Pooh’s honey pot to Ojibwe rice gathering in Louise Erdrich’s The Birchbark House.

Right after the cashier tells you your total, they induce the moral dilemma: Would you like to round up to donate? Adrienne Sudbury says that most checkout charity donors give less than a dollar. And: America has a pay inequality problem. Caroline Hanley says that the age-old advice to get more education to increase income isn’t going to cut it. This is a structural issue.

Later in the show: The future of work is digital. Will robots displace workers? Does automation mean the end of work as we know it? In the digital commonwealth, Sarah Grace Masnki envisions people owning the companies they work for. America has a pay inequality problem. Caroline Hanley says that the age-old advice to get more education to increase income isn’t going to cut it. This is a structural issue. Plus: Grocery prices have been obscene. Chris Herrington has a few ideas why.

Could a centuries-old curse be to blame for the infamous slap between Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Academy Awards? Amanda Kellogg uncovers the long history of a spooky playhouse superstition known as Macbeth’s curse. And: Anna Beecher first encountered the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale, The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn to Shudder, as a young kid and was thoroughly frightened. The story haunted her for years and in 2017 she wrote Skin of the Teeth, a play based on that same Grimm’s fairy tale.

Later in the show: Halloween and Scream are some of the most blood-curdling, panic-inducing slasher movies. But they’re more than just jump-scares and gore. Jennifer McLawhorn says slasher movies open a window into important social anxieties around gender. Plus: If you can believe it, the first horror movies had no sound. Classics like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari came out in the 1920’s, during the silent film era. Jenny Taylor says the roots of the horror movie genre can be traced back to Germany’s Weimar Republic.

In the earlier stages of the pandemic, when many people were still staying as close to home as possible, nearly 1 in 5 American households adopted a pet. Furry cats and snuggly dogs–and some temperamental pigs. Sherrie Clark is a veterinarian who treats and studies pet pigs. She says they make good pets–for the right family. And: Relationships between dogs and humans go back 10,000 years. Nancy Gee says that today relationships between people and pooches improve health outcomes for everyone with two or four legs.

Later in the show: As a kid, Wynne DiGrassie was always bringing lizards and small snakes home in her pockets. After years focused on work as a horse veterinarian, Wynne has fallen back in love with reptiles. She talks about the common mistakes lizard and snake owners make and what it’s like inviting these slithery friends into your home. Plus: Cats rule the internet and they’ve been part of it from the beginning. Dylan Wittkower gets philosophical about why we can’t stop making and sharing cat memes.

The consecutive terrorist attack on two mosques in Churchchrist, New Zealand was streamed live on Facebook. Within 24 hours, an AI tool was able to delete millions of copies of the footage. Ariel Pinto is working to further develop AI tools that find and delete terrorism online. And: Kwabena Konadu says that America is on a cybersecurity spending spree because the bad guys just keep getting smarter.

Later in the show: We’re a society of devices, and we’re all plugged in. Why Hwajung Lee shares the benefits, and why we should slow down before we plug anything else in. Plus: Increasingly, we have smart devices connected to our home. In the face of an impending energy shortage, Murat Kuzlu says the data experts gather from these smart homes shows a clear path forward to being more energy efficient.