With Good Reason

The Alaskan wilderness is experiencing a major meltdown, but not all will be lost. Thanks to a musician in Virginia, the sounds of Alaska’s glaciers are being recorded for posterity and woven into haunting compositions. From With Good Reason, the Short Listen combines short-form storytelling and compelling interviews to bring you the best of each week's episode in under 5 minutes.

Stories of massive student debt and for-profit school scams make it clear that the post-secondary system can be an unfriendly place to many disadvantaged students. But how are America’s universities and colleges hoping to use their institutions to reduce inequality? We look at how affirmative action is being justified by today's white educators and how HBCUs are getting the short shrift by governments. Plus, we take a look at who is hit the hardest by ballooning student debt, and ask what do students really get at for-profit colleges and universities?

Are for-profit colleges and universities worth the money? Research shows that for-profit colleges are not only costing students more… but they’re giving them less in the long run. From With Good Reason, the Short Listen combines short-form storytelling and compelling interviews to bring you the best of each week's episode in under 5 minutes.

We explore two new technologies that hope to help patients navigate cancer -- an that app tries to ease the pressure on patients making tough decisions, and new gene manipulation technology that could cut risk for developing breast cancer dramatically. Plus, we examine the hidden AIDS epidemic among elderly African-Americans and talk the physician training thousands of surgeons to prevent blindness in developing countries.

About 1 in 8 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lifetime. Some of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer come from an inherited gene mutation, but new research is looking for ways to fix that mutation. From With Good Reason, the Short Listen combines short-form storytelling and compelling interviews to bring you the best of each week's episode in under 5 minutes.

Money makes the world go 'round, but does it make the heart a-flutter? This week, we take a literary look at some of the most lasting problems in economics, from using vampires to study irrational behavior in the market, to searching for the soul of Adam Smith in the writings of Jane Austen. Plus, we take on the challenge of James Joyce's Ulysses just in time for #Bloomsday2017.

We don't normally think of the free market as a very sentimental place. But a new book suggests that Adam Smith's classical economics may be less heartless than we once thought. From With Good Reason, the Short Listen combines short-form storytelling and compelling interviews to bring you the best of each week's episode in under 5 minutes.

This week, it's all about writing with a message -- from the letters of friendship that sustained the British Empire to German fairy tales that threatened children with violence. Plus, we take a look at how managing your social media missives to the world might not be enough in today's job market.

With graduation ceremonies wrapping up across the country, it's time for that dreaded next chapter: the job hunt. But purging your social media of party photos might not be the best place to start. From With Good Reason, the Short Listen combines short-form storytelling and compelling interviews to bring you the best of each week's episode in under 5 minutes.

In the third episode of our special series on education, Degrees of Separation, we examine how inequality is at work in the high-stakes world of high school, from who we discipline, to the way we sort high-achieving students. Plus, we look at new techniques in engaging students and preventing conflict in classrooms.

Black students are suspended up to six times more often than their white peers. But what if a simple workshop could lessen suspensions overall? The Short Listen combines short-form storytelling and compelling interviews to bring you the best of each week's episode in under five minutes.

This week, we explore the lesser known histories of the Civil Rights era, from a personal story about a family's turn to militant activism and the black entertainers who supported the movement. Plus, we look at how one professor tried to respond to D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, more than 90 years after it devastated race relations in America.

All across the country, racial tensions are on the rise. Some are even talking of a "race war." But for one professor of history, this isn't anything we haven't heard before. The Short Listen combines short-form storytelling and compelling interviews to bring you the best of each week's episode in under 5 minutes.

Foreign policy might be the hardest part of a president's job. But the way the US conducts itself overseas may be making things harder. We talk to two scholars who believe they have the fix for America's woes in the Middle East -- a hard dose of realism. And we get an update on the far right's takeover of Eastern Europe. Plus, where our foreign aid dollars are going. And: the games we play at the end of civilization.

While Marine le Pen failed to win the recent French presidential election, her increased popularity is just the most recent example of how far right nationalism has spread. Allison Quantz reports on what the right wing populist surge looks like in Eastern Europe. From With Good Reason, the Short Listen combines short-form storytelling and compelling interviews to bring you the best of each week's episode in under 10 minutes.