Mark Rank is the Herbert S. Handley Professor in the Brown School of Social Work and The Department of Sociology at Washington University. Professor Rank is an expert on poverty studies and the author of notable books, such as One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All and Chasing the American Dream: Understanding What Shapes Our Fortunes.
His most recent book, published in March of 2021 by Oxford University Press, is POORLY UNDERSTOOD: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty, which he co-wrote with Professors Lawrence M. Eppard and Heather E. Bullock. In it they identify and analyze common myths about poverty, compare poverty levels in the United States with other developed nations and propose ideas of how to reduce it.
We spoke with Professor Mark Rank on May 14, 2021.
Jessica Watkins is a stand-up comedian, actress and producer, whose documentary, SPECIALish, is being released on May 11, 2021 through Random Media. Combining her love of standup and adventure, SPECIALish follows Jessica’s 2014 walk across America. She spent over 8 months on a solo walking comedy tour beginning at Lewes, Delaware and ending in Oceanside, California. She performed standup in a dozen states along the way, pushing a running stroller full of gear and living off the kindness of strangers. She filmed over 300 hours of footage chronicling her experience, recorded a comedy special upon return to tell her story, and combined the two to create the award winning documentary, SPECIALish, which was the winner of Best Film at The Broad Humor Festival and Best Film at New Filmmakers Festival NYC .
You can find out more about Jessica Watkins and SPECIALish by going to her website:
University of British Columbia Professor of Forest Ecology, Dr. Suzanne Simard, is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence. Her decades of in-the-field-experimental research have revolutionized our scientific understanding of forests, elucidating how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they perceive one another, learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors and remember the past; how they have agency about the future; elicit warnings and mount defenses, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies–and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them.
Suzanne Simard’s book, FINDING THE MOTHER TREE: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, was published by Knopf on May 4, 2021. We spoke together on April 27th.
We end the program with a recent piece commissioned by the Intermountain Opera Company composed by Eric Funk, Requiem for a Forest, Op. 168. It is performed by Roots in the Sky. A video adaptation by Thomas Thomas is available on https://bozemanarts-live.com/event/requiem-for-a-forest/
Requiem for a Forest
In summer heat And warming world Storms whip up, Lightening rolls, Sparks run to earth. The wind turns Through the mountains, Forests burn.
Fire ends, Yet fire begins. As mountains die, Cones open. Mors stupebit et natura Cum resurgent Creatura.
Now we must learn How to live here, Where fire season Burns all year. Blackened earth With green renew, May the fires wake us too.
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