Podcast Episode

  • March 25, 2024

    Catherine Read is the first woman and first Mason graduate (BA government and politics ’84) to be mayor of Fairfax City, Va., the university’s hometown, and she isn’t shy about touting a university she says helped teach her how to think critically. Want to know why it’s good to “disrupt the system,” why it’s important to get more women into policy-making decisions, and why our educational system doesn’t reward bold ideas? Read tells you.

  • February 16, 2024

    Rev. Jeffery Johnson, pastor of Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Fairfax, Virginia, and Dr. Vernon Walton, pastor of First Baptist Church in Vienna, Virginia, guide us through some of the history and aspirations of the Black community through the lens of Black and African American History Month and their perspectives as long-time leaders of their parishes, both of which were founded by former slaves.

  • January 11, 2024

    Mary Ellen O’Toole, director of the Forensic Science Program in Mason’s College of Science, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the university’s new “body farm,” an outdoor research and training laboratory on its SciTech Campus that will allow crime-scene research in forensic science and forensic anthropology using human donors.

  • December 1, 2023

    Peter Becker, a professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department in George Mason University’s College of Science explains, talks how a predicted major increase in solar storms could be a prelude to an “internet apocalypse, and how a $14 million federal study he is leading with the Navy could provide better predictive capabilities and help us better understand exactly what’s at stake.

  • November 13, 2023

    Melissa Perry, dean of Mason’s College of Public Health, is an ardent proponent of virtual reality as a tool to help solve the nation’s health challenges. But she also worries that technology has helped create an “epidemic of loneliness” that has heightened the importance of a shared humanity and “being present for each other.”

  • July 8, 2023

    Andrew McCabe, the former deputy and acting director of the FBI, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor, gives a masterclass on the indictment of Donald Trump under the Espionage Act, goes deep into some of the most controversial and important moments in his career, and explains why he so appreciates teaching at Mason.

  • June 2, 2023

    Foteini Baldimtsi, an assistant professor in Mason’s Department of Computer Science, and James Casey, an associate professor in Mason’s Computer Game Design program, help us understand what the metaverse is, or will be, and how the volatile world of cryptocurrency fits in.

  • April 28, 2023

    Paula Sorrell, associate vice president for innovation and economic development at Mason, and Ajay Vinzé, dean of Mason's School of Business, discuss how Mason Enterprise is an economic engine for Northern Virginia, and how the School of Business is changing the way business is taught.

  • February 15, 2023

    Lawrence Jackson says colonialism brought an end to authentic African dance. But the associate professor of dance who in 2011, co-authored a special edition on Black dance in the Journal of Pan African Studies, explains how Black dance keeps those African cultural traditions alive and is an affirmation of identity and independence.

  • January 25, 2023

    Missy Cummings, one of the country’s first female fighter pilots and the director of Mason’s autonomy and robotics center, calls herself a tech futurist, charged with making tech work and helping it get better. She isn’t shy about calling out bad tech either, including the vision systems in self-driving cars and Tesla’s Autopilot.