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.

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.