Communication scholars and passionate nerds Nathaniel Stoltz and Annie Laurie Nichols discuss topics they're passionate about, from cupcakes to progressive metal to trees to art movements. Each episode centers on a randomly selected adjective (seriously,
Nathaniel Stoltz/Annie Laurie Nichols
We venture into musical territory in this episode as Annie Laurie informs us about a monument that plays itself and the album she wrote her entire dissertation to, while Nathaniel discusses the sound of the 1980s and the complicated legacy of one of his musical icons. *NOTE*: We will be moving to a biweekly schedule temporarily due to the rigors of the teaching semester. Also, Nathaniel's computer died, taking the old theme music with it, so you may notice some slight differences in the mix of it.
In Episode 8 we take some time to consider things that are all around us, from white-tailed deer to surveillance, nitrogen to logos -- we're talking ubiquitous!
What do curated botanical gardens, leafy symbols of authority, grassy blocks of Minecraft, and green paint have in common? They're all verdant!
Have you ever seen a pitch that makes you wince in sympathy? Do you wonder why people get so worked up over laptops in the classroom? Do sports debate shows annoy you? Are you curious about the history of barbed wire? It's time to talk prickly topics!
This week we get numerical, considering the strengths and limits of quantifying athletic performance, student performance, samples, and populations. How much data is too much? How do researchers narrow in on the relevant aspects of a data set? What can numbers tell us -- and what do they leave up to us? Join us as we talk big data, baseball, rubrics, and percent variance explained! (Don't worry; the rhetorician half keeps it more wordy than numbery.)
Which animal do you consider to be most energetic? What food requires the most strenuous effort to make? Does a very long, slow walk require one to be more robust than a short, steep climb? Join us as we discuss these questions and more with vim and vigor!
Flexible enough to bend and not break, this week we discuss the strengths and limits of being supple. Join us as we wend our way from silly putty to weeping willows, shred guitar to millennials, and try out having two actual microphones!
In which Nathaniel tells happy stories about how he discovered progressive metal and the rewards of the scouting trail and Annie Laurie tells less happy stories about acoustic interludes and the smell of libraries. *Apologies for the intermittently poor audio quality; we were dealing with some mic bleed. Future episodes will not have this issue.
Our inaugural episode tackles the biting wit of mordant, discussing satire, comedy as a remedy for disagreement, when witty retorts are seen as playful rather than harmful, and--for some reason--beet soup.