Disagree with a Professor

For our Season 1 finale, Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle welcome Mary Kate Cary — UVA's Assistant Vice President and Deputy Chief of Staff in the Office of the President, founder and director of Think Again (the civic education initiative that created Disagree with a Professor), and a UVA alumna who spent her early career writing speeches at the White House for President George H.W. Bush.

The conversation spans the art and science of persuasion, the existential threat AI poses to education, the timeless power of audience analysis, the Monroe Motivated Sequence, classroom games you wish existed in every school — and one of the more spirited stick-shift debates ever recorded.

IN THIS EPISODE:

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Can a machine have free will? The question sounds like science fiction — but Professor David Danks, who holds a distinguished professorship spanning philosophy, AI, and data science at the University of Virginia, thinks it’s one of the most important questions we face right now.

In this episode of Disagree With a Professor, hosts Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down with Professor Danks to interrogate his central claim: that present-day AI systems possess roughly as much free will as human beings. His argument hinges on a key philosophical distinction — between freedom (the ability to have acted differently) and free will (the foundation of moral responsibility) — and on philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s influential argument that responsibility doesn’t actually require alternative possibilities.

The conversation covers a lot of ground. How much of what we value did we actually choose? Why do we make impulsive decisions we later regret, and do AI systems experience anything like that internal conflict? When a Waymo self-driving car causes an accident, who — or what — is on the moral hook? And what do we do about Silicon Valley’s relentless “can we build it?” mentality when the better question is whether we should?

Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Ever wondered what it's like to disagree with a professor face-to-face?

In this bonus minisode, hosts Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle pull back the curtain on the live events that inspired their podcast. They share memorable conversations from the University of Virginia's civil discourse initiative, discuss why students fear speaking up in class, and explore a controversial debate about marriage that revealed the power of nuanced conversation. If you've ever felt intimidated to challenge an expert or wondered how to disagree without being disagreeable, this episode is for you.

Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

What if every college student had to take a philosophy class? And what if thinking about your own death every single day was actually good for you?

In this episode of Disagree With A Professor, student hosts Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle bring the statements, and Professor Carah Ong Whaley disagrees with them. Join us for two back-to-back discussions on philosophy education and mortality. 

With guest: Professor Carah Ong Whaley — Lecturer, Department of Politics & Executive Director, Better Choices for Democracy, University of Virginia

WHAT WE COVER

- Should philosophy be a required course for all college students?

- How do you maintain curriculum quality when scaling a mandate to thousands of students?

- What does philosophy actually teach — and why does it matter for AI, democracy, and everyday reasoning?

- Is thinking about your own death every day healthy or harmful?

- How mortality awareness connects to religion, risk-taking, and political behavior

- What alternatives exist to death-as-motivation — and do they work as well?

- The difference between individual grounding practices and societal-scale effects

GUEST BIO

Professor Carah Ong Whaley is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia and Executive Director of Better Choices for Democracy, a nonpartisan organization focused on improving democratic participation and decision-making. Her research intersects political behavior, civic education, and electoral integrity.

Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Veganism, Ghosts & the Folding of Time | with UVA Professor Scott Miller

What happens when a certified vegan, trained historian, and finance professor sits down with three students who came prepared to push back?

This week, Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down with Professor Scott Miller -- Assistant Professor of Business Administration at UVA's Darden School, Director of the Democracy and Capitalism Lab, and faculty fellow at the Miller Center -- for a conversation that covers more intellectual ground than we expected.

Professor Miller walks through his "Scott Miller Pyramid" of veganism: three layered arguments, from a Yuval Harari thought experiment about Elon Musk's future super-creatures, to the environmental and animal sentience cases, to a theological argument rooted in the Garden of Eden. Then things get genuinely weird.

Armed with a Sharpie and a folded piece of paper, Professor Miller makes the case that ghosts aren't supernatural at all -- they're what happens when Einstein's malleable time folds two people from different eras into the same space. Plus one of our hosts shares her own skinwalker encounter. 

It's an episode about intellectual humility -- and why dismissing something as irrational might be the most irrational move of all.

Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

What if democracy didn’t require a single vote?

In Episode 5, hosts Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down with Prof. Evan Pivonka — lecturer in Constitutionalism and Democracy at UVA — to debate some genuinely provocative ideas about power, education, and the future of civic life.

First: the case for abolishing elections. Prof. Pivonka introduces “sortition” — randomly selecting local and state officials the way we select jurors. It’s been used across Europe, traces back to ancient Athens, and might be more representative than what elections produce. Or it might be a disaster. The hosts push back hard.

Then: Professor Pivonka reveals he banned laptops from his seminar last semester, replaced all written essays with 30-minute one-on-one oral exams, and calls it one of the best semesters of his career. His students agreed unanimously. But can that policy last?

Finally: should students be learning to write — or learning to prompt? And if AI is the future, is sheltering students from it in the classroom actually setting them back?

Guest: Prof. Evan Pivonka, Lecturer in Constitutionalism & Democracy, UVA Department of Politics

Topics: sortition, democracy, voting, civic education, laptops in class, AI in education, ChatGPT, oral exams, UVA

Timestamps:

[00:00] Introduction

[00:58] Meet Prof. Evan Pivonka

[01:45] The case for abolishing voting — sortition explained

[05:00] Inexperience, legitimacy, and the democracy problem

[09:00] Civic education and who’s actually prepared to govern

[13:00] Fundraising, partisanship, and declining institutional faith

[16:30] Banning laptops from the UVA classroom

[21:00] AI in education: threat or tool?

[27:00] Using AI well vs. using it to coast

[30:30] Closing thoughts

Disagree With A Professor is a student-led podcast from the University of Virginia where students respectfully challenge professors and experts on the ideas that shape our world. Hosted by Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle.

Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

What separates murder from terrorism? When does surveillance technology protect us versus invade our privacy?

In this episode, UVA students Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down with Professor Ashley Waters-Gundersen. Gundersen, a UVA School of Law lecturer and former special counsel for Intelligence Affairs with the New York City Police Department, to tackle two of the most controversial legal questions of our time.

Part 1: The Luigi Mangione Case

Part 2: Facial Recognition in Law Enforcement

Key Moments:

About Our Guest:

This episode demonstrates what civil discourse looks like—students engaging respectfully with expertise while maintaining critical thinking, admitting when they've changed their minds, and proving that "no legal expertise" doesn't mean you can't participate in important conversations.

TIMESTAMPS:

ABOUT DISAGREE WITH A PROFESSOR:

Hosted by Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle.

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Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

In this thought-provoking episode of Disagree With A Professor, UVA students Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down with Professor David Leblang to tackle one of the most contentious debates in American politics: isolationism versus globalization.

Professor Leblang, the Miller Center's Randolph P. Compton Professor and Director of Policy Research, brings decades of expertise in political economy to challenge the growing isolationist sentiment in American politics. His opening statement is bold: "Isolationism leads to political and economic failure."

But the conversation quickly moves beyond simple talking points. The hosts push back with real concerns about globalization's losers—the steel workers in Pennsylvania, the communities left behind by outsourcing, and the domestic workers competing with foreign labor. They explore whether America's government has a duty to prioritize domestic winners over international ones, even if it means lower aggregate prosperity.

Key Topics Explored:

The conversation takes unexpected turns—from debating whether we should "staple H-1B visas to diplomas" to discussing why coding jobs might disappear faster than construction jobs. Professor Leblang makes a surprising prediction: white-collar and blue-collar workers will soon have more aligned political preferences due to technology, not trade.

In a particularly timely segment, they dissect the Trump administration's attempted ban on international students and its practical consequences for universities already struggling with state funding cuts. Leblang reveals how foreign students effectively subsidize in-state tuition—a fact most students don't know.

The episode concludes on a surprisingly hopeful note about education's future, with Leblang arguing that while many of his teaching methods may become obsolete, the residential university experience offers something AI can never replicate: human connection, critical discourse, and the humility that comes from engaging with diverse perspectives.

This is civil discourse at its best—respectful disagreement, nuanced arguments, and genuine curiosity about complex policy questions that affect all of us.

Guest: Professor David Leblang, Miller Center's Randolph P. Compton Professor and Director of Policy Research; Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Endowed Professor of Politics; Professor of Public Policy at UVA's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy

Hosts: Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, Makayla Castle

Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Could mandatory military service unite a divided America—or make things worse?

UVA students debate Professor Allan Stam, former Green Beret and distinguished political scientist, on military conscription, national service, and whether forcing young Americans into uniform would build character or destroy creativity.

In This Episode:

About Our Guest: Dr. Alllan Stam is Distinguished University Professor at UVA's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Before his academic career, he served as a Green Beret in Special Forces. He holds a PhD from Yale and has published five books on war and international conflict.

Keywords: military conscription, mandatory service, national service, draft debate, political polarization, veterans, Green Beret, civic engagement, UVA

Follow Disagree with a Professor: Instagram: @thinkagain.uva Twitter: @thinkagain.uva Website: thinkagainuva.com

Email: [email protected]

Disagree with a Professor is a student-led podcast from the University of Virginia demonstrating how to have intellectual conversations across differences.

Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Are the college years truly the best of your life, or are you being sold an expensive bill of goods? In this thought-provoking episode, UVA students Peter, Lydia, and McKayla sit down with Dr. Meg Jay—developmental clinical psychologist, bestselling author of The Defining Decade, and UVA faculty member—to wrestle with two competing cultural narratives about college.

Dr. Jay challenges the hosts to think critically about what they're really getting from their $250,000 education. The conversation explores everything from the pressure to pick "profitable" majors to the sink-or-swim advising culture at major universities. They debate whether college should be transactional (get degree → get job) or transformational (become a better thinker and person).

The students get refreshingly honest about their experiences: the privilege of independence without responsibility, the anxiety about whether their degrees will actually pay off, and the reality that nobody talks to their advisors. Dr. Jay pushes back with data showing life actually gets better with each decade (despite what that drunk restaurant worker told Peter), and argues that "durable skills" matter more than your major.

Key topics include:

This episode is essential listening for any college student questioning their path, any parent wondering if they're throwing money away, and anyone who wants to understand what this generation is really experiencing on campus.

Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)