Stuff You Should KnowIn this week's SYSK Select episode, yes, your brain may have just flash-dried from boredom at the thought of learning about maps, but it turns out they are a lot more than just tools for navigation. Maps are two-dimensional representations of how we imagine our world, with imagine being the operative word since every map in existence is riddled with errors.
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Hi, everybody, This is Chuck again with another edition of Stuff you Should Know. Selects are Saturday Classic Edition episodes and uh, as you know, we're curating these one at a time, and this week I got to pick, and I picked How Maps Work? And uh I picked this one because everyone knows I love maps, and so I thought it was a good one to rerun. Plus I get to talk a little bit about my old high school best friend Rad, who was a cartographer and I'm always happy to get the word out about his work. So listen and enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarkin, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and I just had a bunch of peanuts. So it's Stuff you Know Time Circus Edition. Yep. I wonder if we could get R. E. M. S. Maps and Legends to play just subtly behind this entire podcast. I can answer that for you. Nope, No, okay, what album is that one? Where is that an album? Boy? That was the early one? I think maybe like reckoning even No again, people are at home screaming at me because I can't call that to mind. Was that their first one reckoning Let's just move on. I'm afraid to get anything wrong. Yeah, it's cool. People who are in are um are really in ari em maps and legends. Good song um chuck. Yeah. Have you ever used a map? Um? I have? I am a notoriously terrible with my sense of direction, like literally almost all the time. If I say it's left, isn't it? They say, no, it's right. We just talked about this. And because if I try to trick myself and go I think it's left, I'm gonna say right, then it's left. Like it's terrible. I've talked about it before. It's it's really yeah, we we did recently. I can't place why or where. It's just my brain. Man, it doesn't work that way. So yeah, I use maps, and I'm one of those people as to turn the map in the direction I'm facing, and I just it's tough for me. So when you were using a map, you could have also said or that you're terrible using maps. You can say I'm terrible at using two dimensional um contorted, grossly misrepresentative images that supposedly are um. They stand for different data points of Earth. That's right, that's another way you could put maps, because it turns out that they're actually not so great, even though they are extraordinarily useful. They're portable now that you can get them online, they're more portable than ever, and we would be pretty much nowhere without them as far as the imperial colonization of the world went. But um, we still have not licked some very fundamental sick problems with maps. Maps and legends was on fables By the way, So did you didn't even hear what I just said? I heard it all and I agree. Well, the problem is, dude, is the Earth is is not a flat piece of paper or a computer screen. The Earth is uh sort of shape like a pumpkin. Yeah, I didn't realize that. I didn't either. Apparently the middle is getting bigger too. You know what, I just realized what what Tracy who wrote this meant by pumpkin? Like, she didn't mean the tall pumpkin. Well, yeah, pumpkins come in all shapes, right, So which pumpkin was she referring to? I think like the shorter, rounder, round pumpkin. Yeah, but apparently I think the Earth is supposedly getting bigger, expanding at its at its center, not in the center, but it's getting more pumpkiny, I think more pumpkin like. Okay, so maps are getting less and less accurate then maybe because here here's the problem. Map, Like we said, it's a two dimensional representation of something that's three dimensional. It's hard to do. A map is flat and it's representing something that's round, spherical. Um. And if you take like, take a pumpkin, go to your pantry right now and get one of the pumpkins that you have there, and take a piece of paper off of a roll saying newsprint and um, tear enough off to go all the way around the pumpkin, and you will see that if you if you take a pumpkin and mash the paper around it so that the pumpkins completely covered, you're gonna have something that's that's just grossly distorted. That's a map. It's a gross distortion of what's real. So much so that if you see a map that accurately represents what the continents look like and how close they are and the amount of size they each have, you'd probably be pretty startled because it doesn't look like what we're used to, which is called the ma cat projection. Yeah. Um, And it's funny. When I was reading this, I remember thinking to myself, like, you know, if you're gonna make cheats, like make them in the ocean, and I think that's a lot of times what they do. Yeah, these no one would notice, you know, the good hommal homal design. The good homal design good as in somebody's last name with an e. It basically distorts or chops up the world in the oceans, so it's real good for land mass. It would be terrible if you're driving like a an oil tanker across the sea. Yeah. You don't want to navigate by these things. No. And so since there's different ways to distort a map, there's different uses for different types of maps or distortions, which we call projections. We'll get into that a little more later on. Let's talk about the basics of all maps, right. A map is essentially a representation of, like we said, data points on Earth. Yeah, and it can be it can represent whatever. There's different attributes you can if you wanted to show a map um distribution of UM Golden Retriever ownership, you could do that on a map. You totally could. Or the GDP of different countries or land use you know, like it's basically an easy way. It's an easy language to show someone in picture form, various attributes, you know, and uh, maps are created by people called cartographers, which is great and um, like we said there's some there's some basic commonalities to all maps, right, yeah. I kind of collect maps by the way. I know you told me, not like a bunch, but I've got I've got like six right maps, any pirate maps, no pirate maps, but my my entire desk. I made my desk and it is, Uh, I've got a map of the world on it. It's like, you know, four ft by three feet and then I shall act over that and that's like my you know, the base of my desk. Yeah, it's really cool because you know, i'd reference it a lot. Actually, I like the uh yeah, you know I could stand to do that a lot more New England no idea. Well, it's like looking up a word in the dictionary when you don't know it referring to an atlas. If you're like, hey, where's Kuala Lampoor but I don't have a map, and suddenly, oh my god, Miss teen South Carolina's answer has come to pass like I don't have a map, and I'm not I'm not bad with maps, and I think if you gave me like a little time, I would be able to find anything. Sure, but um, because I don't have a map for easy reference, like I use online maps now, but like if I had one for easy reference, I think I would be a lot better at geography. I think everybody forget your computer. That's very handy, but I think everyone should own a globe and or a map of the world just to have it right. It's nice to have frame it, put it on your wall. They're very attractive. It's art, all right. I like the fifties sixties maps, like a kind you'd find at school. Yeah, from that era. I just like the design of them to look Yeah, Kevin Canaine that one of the comedians I saw, Max fun was talking about his pillows and how you unsheathed his pillow, how nasty it is and it looks like an ancient map of the world. You know, it's like brown with those like lines. Yeah, what is that stuff? It's he basically is like you know, this stuff is like leaks from your head like sleep. Uh, it's funny. It's a funny bit. Okay, so the basic commonalities of maps are number one, usually land masses or bodies of water. So you're gonna have an outline of what you're talking about or what you're trying to show. Yeah, um, are you talking about like a physical map? Yeah, well, I mean any map is going to have that, but the physical map is physical maps are more like like the terrain of an area, right, that's what a physical maps concerned with. Yeah, and they use something called hipsometric tents um variations of color to obviously, you know, usually your water is blue and then the land can be green to brown or white if it's like the Swiss Alps, you know. Yeah, have you ever seen a map where the water isn't blue? The one on my desk is it's tan. What Yeah, it's the whole thing is reading in background. Now there's no blue, it's all tan. Um, Yeah, it's tan. I've never seen that, you know, like the Tan globe. No, you've seen like the Tan globe where the globe isn't like blue and green. That's basically what this is. It's like, I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around it. Next time you're in my home office, I'll show it to you. Uh. You can have political maps that display like different cultural information about countries. Um. Thematic maps obviously have a theme like climate or g DP like I said, or you can get really specialized like hey, where's the internet available in the world. Let's draw a map instead of listing a bunch of countries. Got you know? Yeah? Um yeah, thematic maps those are probably the ones you see the most, aside from using a map for street directions. Yeah, thematic maps are the ones you went across. Like it'll be all sorts of things like you just mentioned population density or oil exports, all that. All right, Josh, Let's talk about what they call cartography conventions. And this is not when a bunch of cartographers get together at you know, the the downtown Hilton in Atlanta and talk about maps, although I'm sure they do that. I'm sure there are real cartography conventions. We're talking about conventions in the sense of often used uh techniques, right. Um. One of them, which I have already broken with my map, is that, like we said, water is blue. That's so weird. I don't understand land is screen vegetation screen or brown or tan land masses that's just one of the comic conventions. So what color is the land mask? Then if the water on your map is tan, they're also uh tan and green and and brown and yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. It's really not that big of a deal, you know. I'll go look it up. I will post a photo of this of my map um online on Facebook when we do this, and everyone will go, oh, that doesn't look so weird. All right. I feel like a jerk now because my water is not blue. No, No, it's fine, Okay, I'm just I'm just having trouble understand you. It's all yeah, um, all maps to pick their subject matter from above. Yeah, that's something that you just don't even really think of. It's such a common convention. North is usually at the top, yeah, um, generally, or if it's not, for some reason, they'll point you in the right direction, say this is north, this is southeast and west. They have legends a lot of times. Yeah, maps and legends. Like we talked about with r a M and UM scale is usually indicated, so like it will be like one inch equals a hundred miles, or there's like one to like there's a ratio or something like that. Yeah, and this is all the the gobbity book you find on the outskirts of the map. There's usually lots of stuff written down that you may not look at. That's where you'll find this information. And this should include in the legend that like Hawaii and Alaska are not actually right next to one another in the South Pacific Ocean. Yeah, as it seems it's true. That's just odd. Well, like we said, it's tough, you know, when you got around or a pumpkin like world. Um, coordinate system A lot of times they're not a lot of times. Every time you'll see a map, there's gonna be some kind of a coordinate system. If it's a Thomas Guide, Like before the advent of online smartphone maps, when I lived in l A, the Thomas Guide was your best friend. Um. And that's just a simple grid system. Like you look up, hey, I want to go to to Panga Canyon, Go to page four hundred and look up F six and then you'll just map your way from there. Yeah. The alphabets across the top numbers run down the side and you find F six and sink someone's battleship. Um. If it's like a map of the world they're probably gonna show you, um launch student latitude, but not necessarily something you can navigate with, you know, no, but it should it should be accurate as the point, well accurate, but not like you don't want to take a map of the world into the woods if you're orienteering, you know, you want a topographical map. Tricky to read, by the way, they ever looked at a topo map like been camping and stuff, because you were talking about hip symmetric tents to indicate different changes in altitude right or elevation. Topographical maps use contour lines and yeah, you better know what you're doing because it's not necessarily intuitive. It's not intuitive at all. You just have to learn it and then once you learn it, you can wrap your head around it. Usually the closer the lines are or every time, the closer the lines are together, the more steep the change in elevation is right, and lines that are kind of spread out indicate like a very slow Yeah, I think that slope. Been a while since I'm taking basic orienteering. Is that a word orienteering? Yeah? I've not heard it really, Yeah, are you messing with me on this episode? Now? Orienteering is when, like you, they'd give you a map and a compass and send you out in the woods. Yeah. I thought that was called trailblazing. Sure you can. You're also trailblazing. Okay, well hold on before we go any further. Um, it's time for a message break. Okay. So we're back and we're talking about map drawing conventions, believe it or not. And there's a cool here's a cool experiment you can do if you want to know how difficult it is to draw a map and have it look accurate. Get a balloon, blow it up, Um, draw whatever you want, but draw, you know, the United States in Mexico and South America in Canada, Canada in there, and then deflate that balloon and see what it looks like. And that will give you a little bit of insight into how tough it is to be a cartographer. Right. I mean you mentioned um lines of longitude and latitude. Right, those are coordinates on any map, and since their coordinates on a map, um people use them to navigate by. Right. But since we're going from a sphere to a flat plane, you have to figure out how to adjust for that, and you're basically making a decision. You're gonna say, Okay, am I going to make it so that the angles if somebody draws a straight line, the angles are all going to be the same along that line, Meaning you can follow that line on a compass in the real world and get there. It's called a rum line. Or are the lines of latitude which are called parallels, Yeah, and lines of longitude are meridians. They're going to be equidistant accurately. Like, that's the conundrum. That's the big conundrum with maps typically, Yeah, like where do you want your curiousy two be right? Which is pretty weird. I never really thought about it though, like that, you know, like you have to it's an interesting job, and that you have to know that I cannot you cannot draw a perfect map on a piece of paper. So where am I gonna um fludge? Essentially? And you do this. You figure this out with what they call map projections, and that is basically the method that you choose to project that severe onto a flat surface. Right, So, Josh, you've cracked the code. I have not. This is a This is a very kind of it's tough to to think of because we're talking about now how distortions occur, and um, so there's different ways to manipulate how something's distorted. First of all, let's say you are making a new projection. Okay, right, that's that's a different manipulation of distortion, right as a projection, um, and you're making a brand new one. One of the things, one of the tools you can use is called um tisso's indoka tricks T I S S O, t apostrophe s too. So those are the circles. Yeah, and what you do is you just overlay the equal distant uh exactly the same aka identical circles. It like a grid of circles right over a globe. And then when you make your projection, the circles will distort and you will be able to see where your distortions are on different areas, um, how they distort, like what direction they're going to distort it, and get an exist an idea of how your your projection is distorted. Right. Um. And the reason that maps distort again is because you're taking a three dimensional spherical representation and putting it on a two dimensional flat surface. And the projection that we're all very familiar with the one that we use almost across the board is the Mercat projection. And there is a guy named gerardist Picator who in fifteen sixty nine created a map of the world. And Mark Hater decided that I'm gonna make my maps for sailors, and he made a very important decision. He made it so that rum lines where you measure between two points on this map, and you can follow that angle with your compass in real life and you will get there. He made it so that those were precise, but he gave up lines of longitude and latitude being precise. And he figured out how to represent this very cleverly, where on lines of I'm sorry, not lines of longitude and lolatitude, just latitude since since the Earth gets narrower at the top because it's a ball, and it's widest at the middle, the anything above or below the equator, as you get further away, the lines get the lines between the latitudinal lines get bigger and bigger the spaces between them, so like you would see on the globe. Maybe, yeah, it's a it's a really clever representation of of what happens when you take a piece of paper and put it around a globe. A ball that's the Mercater projection. And the way to figure out how he did this, or to imagine how he did is to take a cylinder like a piece of paper and roll it up into the shape of the cylinder. This is a magic piece of paper cylinder, and you have a balloon, and it's a magic balloon. That's it's the same balloon we've drawn our world on. It can be, but it's a magic version of it because we needed to have our world on it, drawing on it perfectly. And you blow up this balloon until it hits um an edge of the cylinder, right, so it's just touching the inside of the cylinder on two points one on either side. What that balloon has just become is tangent to the cylinder. The sekin is where the cylinder would like intersect the balloon, but right now it's just touching. And you take a Mercader projection, and you've got a perfectly blown up balloon inside a cylinder. And that's what you imagine is the projection. You have to take it a little further. You blow up the balloon until it completely fills up the cylinder. So now all of the information on this balloon is pressed up against the inside of the cylinder, the place where it was tangent, where it touched naturally when the blue was just filled up and it was just a sphere. That's going to be undistorted. Okay, that makes sense. The stuff that you're blowing up until the balloon is no longer a spear but is filling up the cylinder, that stuff becomes distorted. And the further toward the edges you go, the more distorted. Is now we can pop our magic balloon because all that information has been transferred on the inside of this cylindrical paper. And you unroll it and there's your Mercator projection. Pretty good? Yeah, I think I get it? Do you really? I got it more than I did than when I read this like eight times. Yeah, you know, yeah, Uncle Josh coming through for me. But in the center of a Mercator projection, the distortions are going to be the least because it's tangent to the cylinder. That's where it's just naturally touching the edges. It's not distort it's not being forced into the cylindrical shape. Yeah, that makes sense. We should call this one What maps the Sun? Part two? Write. It is really hard to wrap your head around. It is, especially when you're like me and you're bad with maps. To begin with. Um, so we talked about projections. Um. You know, depending on what you want to do, different projections have. You know, they're good points and they're bad points. Um. If you want to have an equal area map, you would make an equal area map. That means you preserve the correct area and it's going to distort the shape of your land masses. It might look weird if you're looking at the entire world, but it's area wise, it's going to be accurate. Um. If you have the pseudo conical Robinson projection, it's gonna that's the map that you're probably most used to seeing that actually looks quote unquote correct. But their distances and direction aren't aren't accurate in that case, right, So it's not good for navigating, it's good for being Oh, so this is how the continents are situation. That's where Russia is Asia or is it Europe? But depending on where you begin, Um, the cartographer has a lot of leeway and deciding, like what is going to be the center of the world in this map. So Russia may not actually be over there. Depending on the map, it can be up into the left a little more in reality, and it may be a little smaller. It just depends on You remember where the balloon touched the inside of the cylinder, and that was the tangent um. Wherever you position the cylinder around the world, where it's going to touch, that's your line of least distortion, And that can be the center of your whole map, but it doesn't necessarily mean that. In reality it's the center of the world. So it's up to the cartographer what they're what choices they're going to make to make what the center, what's where, and then again what they're going to distort. If you want to be accurate with your distances, you're gonna create an equidistant map projection and uh, if you want your directions, if you want like a navigational map, you can actually use That's when you're gonna have to use those rum lines, so you know it's your compass bearings will Actually you can use this map to get around right, you can you you can make a straight line in the map and follow that same straight line, because if your rum lines aren't straight, they're gonna be curved, But if your rom lines are straight, then you're leading. Tude and longitude are curved, so you're sacrificing one for the other. But um, another thing you can do to get around this distortion is to just tear out pieces of your map. Yeah. Um, there's something called gores that they use this to make globes, because the globe can start out as like a flat piece of paper, but then they cut out angles so that when you fold it, it doesn't crumple, it just kind of lays in perfectly, right. Um. Gores usually go on lines of longitude. That's where they separate, and it's just kind of random, so like a part of a land mass will be like completely separated by this another region that doesn't really exist except in two dimensions, right right. Um at the good projection, one of my favorites, and it's also the logo for the U. N Um cuts out these things called um tears, not gores. Oh is that the very famous Um? Yeah, I know which one you're talking about. And they just cut through the ocean because it looks like like a bunch of footballs. Yes, the Arctic, yeah, which itself is a little bit cut up, but um, Yeah, that's the same one. That's that's my favorite. Like it it's very land centric. Yeah, I like land centric me with my tan oceans. Um. So, like we said, maps are visual expressions of measurements. So if you go to make a map, what you're probably gonna be working on is a is all the maps that have come before. Like, it's definitely like an aggregate thing, and you can make your brand new map of course. But over in in antiquity and history, maps were made by going out and measuring things and writing that stuff down, and eventually the more we discovered, the more accurate the maps were, and they were just sort of it was a big group effort basically to land on what eventually was an accurate map took a long time. It did take a long time. The oldest maps date back to I think the Babylonians were making maps and they they're anthropologists and archaeologists disagree. Um, but there may be even earlier maps. But among the drawings. Yeah, but the anthropologists are like, well, is that a painting of an area or is it a map? Yeah, you can't really say what the intention of of I call it a map. I mean it might just be here's took Took's fortress, here is where the fire is, and here's where the dinosaurs are. But that's still a very crude map to me, So I vote for map okay. Um, surveyors are going to come in handy obviously to um take these precise measurements of both land and water. Um. These days they have GPS is gonna make things a lot easier and more accurate. Um. They have something called remote sensing or aerial and satellite photography. They use that a lot now and that actually actually was used back in the eighteen hundreds. Um. Yeah, that was when they first used aerial photography. But it really like came into its own in World War Two when we had all these reconnaissance photos to use that sort of to map out your data. Yeah, cartographers were like, um, can we have those when you're done? Yeah, exactly, and matt Making kind of exploded after that. So chok. We talked about thematic maps, right, Yeah, like where all the trout in the United States. So it's basically like the basis is of physical map. You've got mountains, rivers, all that stuff. You can overlay political maps if you start to carve that rain up by national or state or county or city borders, um. And then on top of that you can lay a thematic map, right like a census or whatever. And that's when you become That's when the cartographer becomes um researcher basically and uses a lot of the same methods at a writer would. Uh. They need accurate information, they need it as up to date as possible. Most maps like that will actually have citations, just like a research paper might like, hey, we got in touch with the the World Bank for this map, or the World Health Organization is who we're siting for these numbers, right, I mean, if you're doing something like, um, smallpox outbreaks from eighteen seventy two to nineteen fifteen, then you could cite World Health Organization statistics and show that on a map just by using some colors. Yeah, that's bam, that's a thematic map right there. Yeah. And the two Frances Guthrie, he was in England and he said, you know what I have is this theorem that all you need is four colors? And everyone said shut up and he said no really, they said shut up. He said you need to blue. Well, I actually don't know the four colors I guess would be blue, brown, green, and apparently, apparently you just need tan's brown. But that became known as the four color theorem. And um, he proposed that you could map out all the counties of England just with those four colors. Why make it more complicated than that? And people say, okay, maybe you're right, and he was, Um, you need skill as an artist obviously if you want to be a cartographer. Um. With computers these days, geographic information systems g i s, they have automated a lot of these tasks. But um, as Tracy points out, the best maps still come from skilled artists. Yeah. Um, and map making is I get the impression that, like it really blew up after World War Two thanks to aerial photography. Yeah, and we had some really great maps that were created as a result. But I feel like the Internet has really ushered in a new era for maps that has not been seen since, like the age of exploration, where it's like people are making maps for everything. They're a lot easier to make. Um, although they still require a great deal of skill. I think what I mean is the tools are there to make a map easier to make. They're more accurate, the more up to date, the time between starting and releasing a map or publishing a map is a lot shorter, and people just I think, tend to use them a lot more and they're having a lot more impact thanks to things like Google Maps. People are discovering entire lost cities thanks to Google maps, like Google Earth. Um. There was a war that broke out over Google Maps, I believe between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Maybe. Yeah. And two thousand eight, two dozen nine there was a skirmish, uh, and I believe it was Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Um. There was this little disputed bit of land, and some rogue lieutenant said, you know what I found. I found a Google map that sites this is ours, and I'm gonna go colonize it. And it started an international incident between the two countries. Yeah. Um, So I mean they still have, like very maps have a huge impact on you know, world and culture, and I think also a lot of people assert that they have an impact on the way people think of a nation or a continent or a group of the people who inhabit that area. Something that's big and in the center of a map that must be an important place. Something that's small and off to the side is marginal, and I think that that has a an impact on the psychology behind maps, and I think probably a good cartographer takes that into consideration. Yeah sure, I think. Um well, something else that you have to cider is like, what what is your purpose of the map period? Like what information you're trying to get across, because that will determine what kind of data they're into. Uh. And then what's the audience, Just like if you're writing a story or a paper, you want to cater your map to who's going to be using it? Right, you know this is for a children's website or is it for getting around the big city? Um? But also I mean, are you asserting the dominate, the domination of Europe over the rest of the world. Then you're Gerardist Mercat and it's the sixteenth century, so you put Europe in the center of your world and make it way bigger than South America, which is actually twice its size. Um. I think these days cartographers fall into their different niches. Um, Like you might be into political maps and so that's what you do, or like, actually, we can just get to this now. One of my best friends, one of my oldest friends is a illustrator and cartographer and he does well. Here, let me show you what he's done. He does uh everything from like ski maps to like like of ski slopes. Oh that's a nice map, isn't it, to like the rivers of Utah or the rivers of this certain part of Africa. It's like really cool maps like that, and yeah, it's very pretty. His name is Rad Smith and we're looking at Raddington rad Key Radford. I told you mentioned him before. Um So I sent Rad a few questions actually, just to spice this thing up, because when you have a cartographer at you're, you know, Beck and call, might as well use them, right, Ben Franklin, I think said that. I think so. So I just threw a few quick questions out him earlier in the day and he was kind enough to respond. And you can see Rad's work by the way. It red Smith Illustrations dot com. If you're so inclined or illustration no as um So I asked him what kind of personality traits, because like what what kind of person becomes a cartographer? And he said, um, patients is obviously a big, big thing because you can't just like whittle off a map in a few minutes or a few days. UM. He says, especially in relation to having the ability to source and seek out existing data, because every county, state, university, federal agency, etcetera. Has our own data clearinghouse and g i S library, so finding the right data for your needs can really be a challenge. UM. It also has become a crowdsourced resource as data libraries are growing every day. I think having a strong mathematical background and understanding of scale and perspective is important too, and enjoying looking at the world from a map perspective as a plus. Um. He said he never gets tired of looking at maps, old and new. And this was a dude that we used to sit around watch the Weather Channel together in high school just for fun. That really panned off for him. Yeah, and he would be doodling and I would be like writing stories and like look at us now, you know, Um, that's pretty interesting stuff. Yeah. He uses the g I S systems and GPS. UM has asked him if, like, how much is actually field work and I think generally he works in in conjunction with people out in the field. Uh, and then asked him how he got started, and he said he always loved maps, but he started painting watercolor maps for magazine. He would paint background textures to suggest terrain, water, and other geographic features. Bet he didn't paint it brown. I bet rat he's all about the blue water. He's a surfer. That may have been when we talked about it. Um oh, and finally asked him, like how long? And that's the worst question ever, like, hey, how long does it take to do a map? But that moonlight base and scheme map I did, he said, took a hundred and seventy hours to create. It looks like Yeah, he said. He worked from dozens of aerial photos, topographic maps, satellite images, building plans to piece it all together. So it's very cool. It's like kind of figuring out a puzzle, I think, and then relaying it in a way that is both accurate and interesting to the user. Yeah, and I like connect maps to um. There's a bunch of cool ones all over the internet. I think if you just search like strange maps, yeah, it'll bring up some pretty cool sites. Yeah, and it's fun to look at too. The old I'm into the what people used to think the world look like and the land masses were shaped like you know, well, if you look at certain projections now that are supposedly very accurate, it looks really weird and nothing like what we think of as well. Maps is done. Uh, you got any more way to add? Uh the cartographer then it's nice. Yeah, thanks d Thanks buddy, thanks a lot. RD. He's pretty excited about this. I think. Oh yeah, well, anytime someone's highlighting your field. He does other illustrations too. He's not just a cartographer. Oh yeah, yeah, exact, that's just what he does on the side. Uh. If you want to know more about maps and cartography, you can type maps into the search bar how stuff works dot com, which means since I said search bar, it's time for listener message, Rick, and how about some listener mail? All right, I'm gonna call this uh fraternity and drag. Okay, all right, this is from Cameron. Hey, guys and Jerry. First off, I'm a big fan of the show, recently listened to the episode on Drag Queens and I thought i'd share a little bit about my organization. I'm the president of the ZI chapter. I think that's right. I think if it's to ZI of Delta Lambda Phi International social fraternity at u C. Davis in California. We're a special interest fraternity for gay, bisexual, and progressive men. For the past almost twenty five years, we put on Northern California's largest drag show called Davis Is Burning. The name inspired obviously by the documentary Harris Is Burning, which you guys mentioned. The show is a night of gender bending fund as many of our brothers dress up and perform and drag for an audience of almost one thousand students, staff and community members. So that's awesome, Like everyone's getting involved in Additionally, we have local celebrity drag performers from Sacramento. Their Sacramento celebrities uh in San Francisco. Okay, there you go. The audience gets involved too in our famous drag king and queen competitions. While the show serves mainly as a fundraiser for the chapter, we donate a large amount of money from the show to the Trevor Project, an anti suicide hotline for at risk l g ptuth Um. I think it's great and you guys that you guys featured this piece on the show about drag queens and had some fun with the lingo. Did a great job. Feel free to check out our website for the show at Davis is Burning dot com. That is from Cameron. Thanks Cameron. We got some good replies. Did you see the guy who Um he and his partner met one of the veterans of the Stone Wall, right, Yeah, done in Puerto Rico. Yeah, he's still in drag and uh just like living history right there. So very cool. So thanks to them. I'm sure she would not like you to refer to her as living history. Hopefully she doesn't listen to this. What living history? What's wrong with that? It just makes her sound old? She is whold, but she's part of history and she's alive. Anyway. I hope she's not listening. He also hit him at the end of the email and the PS oh yeah what he's saying. He's like, y, Chuck, if you ever decided to swing over our way, give me. He's like, Josh is too skinny for me, But that's hilarious. Yeah, I guess he's into the Bears. Yeah, the chubby bearded ones Bears. Yeah. Um, I didn't even notice that. Yeah. To scroll down further AMO emails from now on you should The PS is always riveting. Um, If you've got a ps that you want us to hear, you can tweet to us yeah s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com and uh as always, you can join us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com
