By Lauren Francis
There are a lot of moving parts behind every episode of With Good Reason — especially when our guests are co-producing their stories with us. Since the pandemic, we’ve asked many of them to record from home instead of in a studio. They record themselves into their cell phones while chatting with Sarah on Zoom.
It works, most of the time. But the recording cannot block out what the brain can. Once we hit record, the fridge droning on or a dog barking down the street becomes a real issue. Sometimes, things don’t go as planned.
That’s what happened with Dr. Emma Violand-Sánchez in producing our April 26th episode. Too much background noise meant we had to re-record her interview.
Between that first recorded conversation and the second, the federal government announced sweeping cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities. I walked into the studio that day not knowing if I’d ever get to produce another episode of this show.
Emma is someone who has lived through the moments history books separate into neat chapters. She came from Bolivia to Virginia as a high school senior, unaware that she had been placed into a segregated school. She became the first Latina teacher hired by Arlington Public Schools.
Then, after losing her husband in the Vietnam War, she taught refugee students from that very war. And she led her district’s English As a Second Language program during a time when federal policy banned the use of the term English as a Second Language. Her memoir, Dreams and Shadows: An Immigrant’s Story, is a Virginia story. And Virginia’s story has always been the nation’s story.
I am grateful to still be producing Virginia stories through With Good Reason and working with Virginians to tell our stories.
We’re excited to bring you a quarterly With Good Reason newsletter, your curated guide to the most thought-provoking conversations from the past few months. Each edition features a roundup of standout episodes as well as our Producer’s Pick — a behind-the-scenes look at a producer’s favorite episode, sharing insights on what made it special and how it all came together.
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