Challenge. Change.

Max De Faria ’20 can remember what it was like to not have enough food at home as a child, an experience that has empowered them to dedicate their life to anti-hunger work. De Faria strives to create an equitable food system — the process from which food starts as a seed, ends up on your plate, and returns to the ground. This mission steered De Faria’s work last summer, when they interned at Harvard Law School's Food Law and Policy Clinic and helped prepare a brief for the White House Conference on Hunger and Nutrition.

“I draw on my own experiences of hunger and poverty to encourage other folks to think of food as an incredibly powerful tool we can use to tell our own stories and to create change at the same time,” De Faria says. 

Tomatoes are De Faria’s favorite food. They recommend “Who Really Feeds the World?” by Vandana Shiva to anyone interested in learning more about food justice and sustainability.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Geography Professor Max Ritts has listened to whale song on the north coast of British Columbia, using the sound to document species abundance and protect the area from the shipping industry. He’s gone behind the scenes with an indigenous heavy metal band, which used lyrics to address social, environmental, and political concerns in their community. Ritts discovered that acoustics are an avenue to research the areas that interest him most, such as capitalism, colonialism, social rights, social justice, environmental rights, and environmental justice. 

“Sound is a gateway into those issues,” he says. “The prevailing political concern that I have as a geographer is indigenous rights and indigenous justice, and how we can use unusual tools and processes to think about those relationships.” Ritts recommends "Earth Sound Earth Signal" by Douglas Kahn and "Aurality" by Ana María Ochoa Gautier to anyone interested in exploring these topics.

This episode features the track "Prepare for War" by the band Gyibaaw.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Happy Holidays! We're taking a few weeks off to enjoy the Holidays and recharge. We'll be back in January for Season 3. Have suggestions for us? Is there story we're not covering? Reach out and let us know. Email producers Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart with your feedback.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Determining whether extractive industries are an opportunity or area of concern requires a social and political discussion. Anthony Bebbington, the Higgins Professor of Environment and Society at Clark’s Graduate School of Geography and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has spent years researching the gains and losses that come with extractives, and the impact on communities across the globe. Though Bebbington grew up in a mining community, his path to researching extractives was indirect.

Bebbington also acts as the International Program Director, Natural Resources and Climate Change at the Ford Foundation.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Clark entrepreneurship and innovation professor John Dobson believes entrepreneurship can break the cycle of recidivism. Nate Bethancourt is an example. Nate is taking classes at Clark as part of a new program called Liberal Arts for Returning Citizens. LARC is a tuition-free educational program for formerly incarcerated individuals to become Clark students with a chance to matriculate.

Nate has found his passion in entrepreneurship and runs a small business called Health Ya’Self, which sells freshly made cold-pressed juices. Check out Health Ya’Self on Instagram.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Mushrooms are having a moment. Biology professors David Hibbett and Javier Tabima say a desire to connect with nature is fueling a trend among young people who enjoy foraging for mushrooms and studying fungi. Hibbett and Tabima discuss the mysticism around mushrooms, why its unique to have two mycologists on a college campus, and the excitement of discovering a particular fungus, basidiobolus, in Massachusetts for the first time. 

“People are really interested in mushrooms and other fungi — maybe even a little too interested,” Hibbett says. “There's a lot of hype around medicinal mushrooms and the use of fungi for bioremediation. A lot of people are just ready to believe that mushrooms are the solution for all of humanity's problems, so we need more critical thinking.”

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.  

We're taking a two-week break and will be back in December with fresh, weekly episodes. TTYL!

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

In Professor Tyran Grillo’s classroom, students analyze Hollywood remakes of Japanese films from “Godzilla” to “The Ring” to “Shall We Dance.” They evaluate the ways these remakes erase Japanese culture or tokenize it with weak attempts to retain a connection to Japan. Grillo explains what makes a film adaptation worthwhile — or not. 

“It’s more than simply looking at Hollywood as a profit-making machine and capitalizing on these stories that already performed well in their home culture, but also looking at what kinds of processes needed to happen for the films to be relevant to American audiences,” Grillo says. “I want students to look beyond what is being presented on the screen and find those hidden meanings they might not normally look for because they're just viewing it as passive entertainment.”

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Setting children up for success starts before they’re even born. Ellen Darling, Ph.D. ’16, developed the Before Baby Relationship Checkup — adapted from the Marriage Checkup created by Clark psychology Professor James Córdova — to strengthen relationships between parents who are expecting a child. Darling explains how bettering a birthing parent’s mental health improves social, emotional, and cognitive outcomes for babies. 

“You're influencing a whole system. By improving mom's health, she's more able to attend to, and be attuned to, the developing infant,” Darling says. “You're impacting a whole other generation and getting that generation off to a good start.”

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

The economy and inflation are among the top issues bringing voters to the polls for the Nov. 8 midterm election amid a debate on whether democracy is in danger. Clark Political science Professor Robert Boatright examines a link between polarization in Congress today and the political conflict of the late 19th century.   

“That’s an era where the country is almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and we see some of the same problems we have now: Contested elections, arguments over fraud and elections. Parties start arguing about democracy itself at the same time,” he says. 

“The striking thing about it is we solved that problem with the election of Theodore Roosevelt and the rise of the progressive movement … I don't know that it's likely to happen anytime soon, but American history suggests that we do have a precedent for solving problems like what we see today.”

Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.