History Professor Nathan Braccio is a scholar of Indigenous and colonial American history and has a special interest in maps.

"Like many other people, I have a fascination with maps," he says. "A map can be a legal tool that allows you to assert, 'this is where my borders are.' A map could be used to visualize an empire, to visualize a nation."

His forthcoming book, “Creating New England, Defending the Northeast: Contested Algonquian and English Spatial Worlds, 1500–1700,” examines how Algonquian-speaking peoples and Puritan colonists mapped the landscape of present-day New England.

On this episode of Challenge. Change., Braccio explains how maps have changed over time and how English settlers erased Indigenous populations through mapmaking practices.

"One of the things that has changed in maps is the ways that they reflect our different set of values or assumptions about the land, because that is at its heart what a map is doing. It's supporting how we think about the land and the world," he says. "How someone in the 17th century thought about land may have prioritized a different set of things than we do now."

Challenge. Change. is produced by Brenna Moore ’24, MSC ’25, and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

With season two of HBO Max's "The Last of Us," based on the acclaimed video game franchise created by Naughty Dog, hitting screens this weekend, we asked Clark University professors to unpack people's fascination with post-apocalyptic stories and comment on the fictional science of the series.

On this episode of Challenge. Change., English Professor Betsy Huang discusses speculative fiction and the depiction of institutions in catastrophic tales; Becker School of Design & Technology Professor Ulm explains how video games help players explore their fears; and mycologist and biology Professor Javier Tabima Restrepo comments on the depiction of Cordyceps in this wildly popular game and show.

Challenge. Change. is produced by graduate student Brenna Moore '24, MSC '25, and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Geography Professor Asha Best has lived in a handful of cities across the U.S., Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and Atlanta among them. Experiencing each place’s unique culture, transportation, and education systems has given Best insight into how different cities are designed and how they function. A curiosity to understand this more drives some of her current research.

Best, an urbanist who studies mobility and urban informality, is researching how planners and developers can build just cities, where everyone lives equitably. One thing she’s noticed throughout her studies is that there is no common definition of what justice looks like, however.

“We often know what injustice looks like in cities, but we don't often know what justice looks like. I think that equality is a good start. Do we have equal access to shared resources, and are vital resources distributed in a way that's consistent and even — and I'm talking about things like water and food and shelter, the basics,” she says.

Best believes just cities are ones in which planners and officials address current problems and work to right historical wrongs.

“I think it's about how cities deliver vital resources, discovering who doesn't have access to them and how to fix that, and creating a space that's livable, where people have dignity,” she says.

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