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:

• Season 1 finale welcome and host introductions
• Meet Professor Mary Kate Cary: UVA administrator, founder of Think Again, and the architect of the Disagree with a Professor concept
• From UVA undergrad to the White House: her third job out of college was as a speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush
• The two courses Professor Cary teaches at UVA — Political Speechwriting and Greatest Speeches in American History — and how student feedback during COVID reshaped the curriculum
• Why oratory — not term papers — is the most transferable skill in higher education: audience analysis, persuasion, and lifetime application
• AI as an existential threat to education: why oratory is harder to outsource than a written assignment
• Can AI still write a speech? Professor Cary's test: cover the top of the page and identify the speaker
• Makayla pushes back: attention spans are shrinking — is great oratory a lost art?
• Monroe's Motivated Sequence: the five-step framework used by every great persuader since ancient Greece — and why the human brain hasn't changed even as platforms have
• Soundbite wars, "Give Me Back My Stuff," and other classroom exercises that teach rhetoric by doing
• The Stick Shift Debate: Professor Cary argues every new American driver should learn manual — and defends the position against three skeptical college students
• Driverless cars, grid vulnerability, and the national security case nobody expected
• Wrapping up the season: a final reflection on what it means to disagree with respect
• Season 1 farewell — and a look ahead to Season 2

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Speaking of America — docuseries on the greatest speeches in American political history (produced through Think Again / UVA)
• Monroe Motivated Sequence — developed by Professor Alan Monroe at Purdue in the 1920s
• Peggy Noonan — speechwriter and author, referenced in discussion of soundbites
• Obama's 2008 election night speech, "Yes We Can"

Music: "Dispersion Relation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License Disagree With a Professor is created by Think Again at the University of Virginia, with production support from Awkward Sage Media. Connect with us: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkagain.uva/

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) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License Disagree With a Professor is created by Think Again at the University of Virginia, with production support from Awkward Sage Media. Connect with us: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkagain.uva/

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) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License Disagree With a Professor is created by Think Again at the University of Virginia, with production support from Awkward Sage Media. Connect with us: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkagain.uva/