Unscripted interview with Thomas Wartenberg, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Mount Holyoke College, author of “Big Ideas for Little Kids: Teaching Philosophy Through Children's Literature” and “A Sneetch Is a Sneetch and Other Philosophical Discoveries: Finding Wisdom in Children's Literature.”Along with maintaining a popular website for teaching children philosophy, Wartenberg teaches an innovative course in which his students teach philosophy to elementary school children.

On a weekend voyage 80 miles off the Georgia coast, oceanography professor Patricia Yager and UGA undergraduate and graduate students collected phytoplankton, water and CO2 samples along a vertical route in the ocean and shared details about the effects of climate change and ocean acidification on marine life in ocean and estuarine habitats.

Interview with UGA professor of statistics and Fellow of the American Statistical Association Nicole Lazar. One of three co-authors of an editorial published in a special issue of The American Statistician in March 2019 that addressed a compelling issue effecting research and clinical trial results across the sciences, Lazar speaks with Alan Flurry about the use of statistical significance in research findings. The entire issue, “Statistical Inference in the 21st century: A world beyond P,” contained 43 papers by statisticians around the world calling for an end to using this specific probability value.

The very idea there is such a thing as the internet is an invention of science fiction. When William Gibson coined the term cyberspace in 1984 in the book Neuromancer, he described it as “a consensual hallucination." In this Unscripted interview, Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland Sebastian Kaempf explains why it is important not to think of the internet as a special kind of magic. Kaempf's general expertise lies in the areas of international security, the transformation of violent conflict, ethics and the laws of war, and the role a transforming global media landscape plays in contemporary conflicts.Kaempf is the author of ‘Saving Soldiers or Civilians? Casualty-aversion versus Civilian Protection in Asymmetric Conflicts’ (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Interview with three-term former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Chad Smith on the rise of hard-edged populism going back to Andrew Jackson, leading to Cherokee Removal from their homeland in Georgia and elsewhere in the Southeast. Smith relates that example to what it tells us about the current political situation in the United States.A major figure in Indian affairs, Smith has advocated on Native issues nationally and internationally, including at the United Nations. Smith served as a professor at Dartmouth College teaching Cherokee History and Native American Law. He is an author of books on leadership, art and Native American worldviews, including “Leadership Lessons from the Cherokee Nation: Learn From All I Observe.”

Is the system of higher education still capable providing real opportunity for young Americans, as well as reinforcing the societal stability on which American democracy depends? In this interview, New York Times bestselling author Paul Tough talks about his new book, THE YEARS THAT MATTER MOST, which delivers fresh insight on how the American system of colleges and universities helps and hinders young people, especially low-income and first generation students.

On August 6, 2019, the great American writer Toni Morrison passed away at the age of 88. Her extraordinary achievements in fiction – a Nobel Prize in Literature and multiple best-selling novels exploring black identity in America – established a new benchmark not only in American arts and letters, but in literature worldwide.Alan Flurry spoke with UGA professor of English Barbara McCaskill by phone the day of Morrison’s passing for an article, and now the two expand on that conversation in this episode of the Unscripted podcast.

A.G. Steer Professor of German and associate dean in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Martin Kagel is co-director of the Berlin Seminar in Transnational European Studies. A joint initiative of the University of Georgia Franklin College and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the week-long residency in Berlin each June is in its second year of expanding the understanding of transnational Europe among U.S.-based scholars and advancing the discourse on campus on issues related to Europe, the E.U., and Germany's role in the European Union.Alan Flurry and Kagel discuss political, economic and human rights issues from the most recent Berlin seminar including climate change, Brexit, Immigration, nationalism, populism, film, photography, the media, migration, and more.

Professor Nik Heynen is the co-director of the UGA Cornelia Walker Bailey Program on Land and Agriculture on Sapelo Island. Georgia. One of the natural treasures among the barrier islands along the Georgia coast, Sapelo is the home of the only remaining Gullah-Geechee community in America. The island and its people face threats from rising seas as well as exurbanization. Heynen explains the Cornelia Walker Bailey Program and reflects on the island's past, present and future, including a variety of fascinating subjects, from sugar cane to one of the earliest Islamic texts found in North America.