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.

In 2008, just as the film adaptation of "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer was about to hit theaters, Sarah Gallagher was a doctoral student in Boston and saw everyone walking down Commonwealth Avenue with their heads buried in the book with an apple on its cover. Initially, she wasn't interested. But once she inevitably got her hands on the book, she tore through it in one night.

"I can never explain what it felt like to read that book for the first time and to just fall in love with it. I immediately was so obsessed with Edward. There's something in the pages of that book that makes you fall into the world," says Gallagher, now the associate dean of students and operations in Clark's School of Professional Studies.

Vampires don't age, but the series did, and not necessarily gracefully. On this episode of Challenge. Change., Gallagher explains some of Twilight's flaws and why the fandom is still so passionate about Bella and Edward despite the saga's issues. These topics are at the heart of Gallagher's book, "Why We Love (and Hate) Twilight," which is being published in April. Gallagher encourages the fandom to think critically about the kinds of media we love.

"I think if we can start being critical about things that we love, then it will be a lot easier to be critical about terrible things that are happening," she says. "I think it's an exercise in evaluating the things in our life."

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.

Most people aren't thinking about just how many sounds they encounter on an average day. But Professor Matt Malsky, the Tina Sweeney, M.A. '49, Endowed Chair in Music, director of the Alice Coonley Higgins Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and director of the interdisciplinary Media, Culture, and the Arts program, part of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, is immersed in it.

"Our vision is something that we have some control over. We have eyelids, we can close our eyes, and we can stop seeing things," he notes. "But we don't have earlids. Hearing is always on, and there's no way to stop the sensations that come with sounds."

As Malsky teaches his students about soundscapes and acoustic ecology — including walking tours around Worcester to partake in all the noises of nature and traffic — he's also thinking about the intersection of sound and our changing climate.

"Lots of sea creatures depend on sounds to communicate with other creatures and to get feedback about their environment. As the climate changes, as the temperatures rise on the planet and the temperature of the ocean increases, it changes the way that sound is transmitted through water — it speeds it up, it increases the distance that it travels," Malsky says. "Combined with all the ways in which humankind is adding sounds to the ocean with increased traffic of tankers, underwater mining operations, and offshore wind turbines, we're adding an enormous amount of sound to the ocean, and it's changing the way that sea creatures are able to operate — to their deficit."

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.

Professor Christina Gerhardt, Clark's Henry J. Leir Endowed Chair in Foreign Languages and Cultures, Language, Literature & Culture, is an open water swimmer who typically lives near oceans and grew up with a front-row seat to her aunt's political work as one of the co-founders of the Green Party in what was then West Germany.

It created a clear path to Gerhardt's current work as a scholar of the environmental humanities with a focus on sea level rise. Her book, Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean, provides a history of sea rise while telling the stories of frontline communities, with poems and art made by Islanders woven into the volume's pages. The reality of sea change is urgent and daunting, and Gerhardt prioritizes solutions and hope in her book — and in her classroom.

"I'm trying to equip people with all the tools to go into the world and make it a better place," she says, "with the optimism and feeling that they have the tools in their toolbox to accomplish that work."

In this episode of Challenge. Change., Gerhardt discusses why the environmental humanities is at its best when it is interdisciplinary, and explains some of the soft and hard engineering options to address sea level rise.

If you enjoyed this episode, check out "Sea Turtles and the Role Charismatic Creatures Play in Environmental Humanities with Professor Stephen Levin."

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.

Is online influencing just for entertainment? Or does it have a place in the business world? LinkedIn has been a networking platform since 2002, but lately, it has evolved into something more.

So-called LinkedInfluencers are using the platform in the same vein as other social media sites, injecting inspiration into their posts to boost their personal brands and shape conversations about their industries.

On this episode of Challenge. Change., Professors Lawrence Norman and Tim Hally, who teach marketing at Clark’s School of Business, weigh in on whether this kind of content is beneficial and share how one can develop their personal brand messaging to cut through the online clutter to form genuine connections.

“LinkedIn has evolved from a work and internship job hub to a place to post entertainment that's linked to work,” Norman says. “It's become a powerful space where you're able to promote your brand in a way that you couldn't years ago.”

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

How does one write art history when there are no physical objects or archives to study? This is a question at the center of art history Professor Kristina Wilson's latest work.

Wilson came across the names of two designers, Addison "Add" Bates and Perry Fuller, in editions of Ebony Magazine dating to the 1950s. Curious about their work, Wilson tried to learn more and discovered no readily available archives to study.

On this episode of Challenge. Change., Wilson describes sleuthing through newspaper gossip columns, magazines, and more to learn about Bates and Fuller.

"When you're a historian, you get used to looking at evidence and knowing how to put it together. This project has made me consider, first of all, what is the evidence that we rely on, and, second of all, what are the assumptions that I make when I put the evidence together," she says. "There is so much that we gain by learning about their careers — it offers some really interesting perspectives into life in mid-century America that you wouldn't learn about otherwise."

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.

Some people are led to believe that they lack motivation. Wendy Grolnick, professor emerita of psychology, wants you to know that’s just not true.

“Motivation is really a function of what situation you're in, what your interests are, how people are treating you, and what your opportunities are — everyone is motivated,” Grolnick says. “The idea is that environments and people who are trying to motivate others need to tap into people's motivation, which is there.”

Grolnick busts the lack-of-motivation myth and other mistruths about productivity in the book “Motivation Myth Busters: Science-Based Strategies to Boost Motivation in Yourself and Others,” co-written with Benjamin Heddy and Frank Worrell.

On this episode of Challenge. Change., Grolnick explains strategies to boost motivation when you feel stuck, how to set manageable goals, and tips for sticking to New Year’s resolutions.

“The vast majority of people who make New Year's resolutions don't keep them,” she says. “So, as we start to think about what we want to do in the New Year, it would be best to pick something that has meaning to you and value to you. If you're doing it because you feel pressure to — you feel like you should but don’t want to or somebody is pushing you — the research shows it's not likely to last.”

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.

How can you identify the species living in a 38.6-square-mile section of the Amazon rainforest without stepping foot in it? Geography Professor Florencia Sangermano turns to ecoacoustics.

Sangermano was among researchers who competed in the five-year, $10 million XPRIZE Rainforest competition, which challenges scientists to use technologically advanced techniques to rapidly survey the tropical forest’s biodiversity and better understand its ecosystem.

Sangermano was part of the ETH BiodivX team, which was awarded the $250,000 bonus prize for groundbreaking achievements, including co-designing technology with indigenous and local communities.

On this episode of Challenge. Change., Sangermano discusses how many species they identified in the rainforest and what it was like to be recognized as a finalist.

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.