Disagree with a Professor
What happens when students who’ve done their homework sit down with the people who literally wrote the textbook — and disagree? Disagree With a Professor is a podcast from the University of Virginia where student hosts do exactly that. Every episode, they sit down with an academic expert who has spent their career on one of the hardest questions in politics, psychology, law, history, or culture. The hosts come prepared, come curious, and come ready to push back. Not to be provocative. Not to score points. Because they genuinely believe that’s how you actually learn something. We’ve been told since grade school that disagreeing with an expert is rude. Maybe even arrogant. This show is built on the belief that it’s actually the opposite, that asking hard questions is a form of respect, and that changing your mind in public is a sign of intellectual courage, not weakness. Episodes have covered: • Terrorism law and the line between ideology and crime (former NYPD special counsel) • Whether American isolationism is an economic and political dead end (political economist) • Military conscription — and a former Green Beret who spent 25 years arguing for the draft, then changed his mind • The psychology of your defining decade — and why life actually gets better with every decade, even if that’s incomprehensible to anyone in their 20s The hosts don’t always walk away agreeing with the professor. Sometimes they don’t even agree with each other. But they always walk away with a new perspective. Disagree With a Professor is created by Think Again, with production support from Awkward Sage Media. New episodes drop regularly. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Find us on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thinkagain.uva/
Episodes
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 t...
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 cen...
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 th...
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...
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 La...
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 w...
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 ou...
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 th...
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:
- Professor Stam's journey from college dropout to Special Forces to ...
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'r...
What do terrorism law, American isolationism, the military draft, and the psychology of your 20s have in common?
They’re all things a University of Virginia professor has spent their career on — and three UVA students were brave enough to disagree with them, respectfully, on microphone.
Welcome to Disagree With a Professor. Hosts Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down each episode with a lea...
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