3 Takeaways - How a 500 Year Old Map Still Distorts Our World (#322)

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

The world map we grew up with makes Greenland and Africa look the same size. The problem?  Africa is actually an astonishing 14 times larger.The even larger problem? There's no such thing as an accurate map. They all distort how we see the world. Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones are comedians, writers, and YouTubers with millions of followers where they are better known as Map Men. Their new book, This Way Up, explores how maps shape our understanding of the world and what happens when they inevitably get it wrong. They discuss:Why a 500-year-old deeply-flawed map became our standard picture of the worldWhy Greenland and other northern regions appear much larger than they really areWhy creating a completely accurate flat map is impossibleWhy north being “up” is simply a conventionHow a country’s apparent size and position may shape how important we believe it isWhy Google Maps can display different borders depending on where it is viewedWhat London taxi drivers reveal about navigation, memory, and the brainHow relying on GPS is weakening abilities we once took for grantedWhat GPS and AI have in commonMaps look objective, but they're actually very subjective and flawed. Where and how are they misleading us? And if you're looking for a more topical take on Greenland, Trump, and the recent security deal -- be sure to tune in next week for my conversation with security expert Heather Conley. 

Few things seem more objective than a map, but the world map many of us grew up with makes Greenland look almost as large as Africa, even though Africa is about 14 times larger. It can make Russia look larger than Africa, even though Africa is actually much bigger. So why does the world's most familiar map get something so fundamental, so wrong? And if we've misunderstood something as basic as the shape of our world, what else might we be seeing incorrectly? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynn Toman, and this is three takeaways. On three takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even our a little better. Today, I'm delighted to be with Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper Jones, better known as Mapmen.

They're comedians, writers, and creators of one of YouTube's most beloved educational channels. Through their videos, they've helped millions of people see maps and the world in completely new ways. Their new book, This Way Up, explores how maps shape the way we see. the world and what happens when they get it wrong. Jay Mark, it's wonderful to have you both. Welcome to three takeaways. Thank you very much. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much. My pleasure. The familiar rectangular world map many of us grew up with makes Greenland look almost as large as Africa, even though Africa is about 14 times larger. Why did such a distorted map become the world's standard picture? Well, it was interesting in the introduction there that you said that maps which

appear so objective. And that for us really is probably at the heart of so many of the videos we make and so many of the stories we tell because that's absolutely right. They appear to be so objective. They look like they are just innocently showing you the world as it is. But of course, as anybody who's sort of studied some geography or has spent a lot of time or any time thinking about maps or read a few books will know, maps are horrendous liars. And we live in an age now where I think a lot of people have become very used to the idea of dissecting bias in different parts of life. Maybe that may be in the media or in a source that you're reading. But for some reason, we're always playing catch-up with the idea that maps contain many of these same types of bias,

that there is a map maker who has an agenda and you cannot avoid that. And even the most banal mapmaker, even the mapmaker who really wants to present the world exactly as it is, they simply cannot do that. There's a famous much quoted line by an American geographer called Mark Monmoniae. Not only is it easy to lie with maps, it is essential. And that is because the three defining features of maps, which are that it has a scale that is different to the real world, that it uses symbols to represent things on the world, and to your point, that it has a projection, a way of creating the sphere on a flat surface, those three things are lies. And that's the big one. The fact that the world is actually round, but needs necessarily to be represented on a flat map so that you can

put it on a poster or on a classroom wall or on an in-flight map. That's the biggest lie that it tells. It has to squish it flat. And that's exactly why some kind of distortion is necessary. So, Macator, to your question about Macator, he's one of many people to try to do that thing. I think sometimes the analogy that's used is like if you try to peel an orange perfectly, got a sort of spherical covering of the orange, if you like. And then if you try to flatten it on a table, you can't create a rectangular flat. You'll end up ripping it. You're pulling it this way and that way. And so there are different mathematical solutions to trying to represent the world on a flat map, even though it's actually a sphere. And McCatus was just one of those versions.

And his became very popular. And the reason Macator became so popular was because it was essentially very useful for navigation. What was a straight line on his map also equated to a straight line navigationally in a boat if you were sailing somewhere. So it made it just much easier to get from A to B if you were a sailor. So it really cottoned on. I think it probably helped that it made parts of the world where the map was being printed and reproduced look bigger than other parts. So it distorts area at the end of the day.

And so Europe was generally quite happy with how it ended up on the map. It looked maybe a bit chunkier than it could have been. Norway and Greenland were especially pleased with it because they look absolutely massive. Exactly. And so it became this standard map of the world. And now more recently, you know, we're starting to become a bit more aware of the criticisms that in particular places like Africa, other equatorial regions are made to look a lot smaller than other more northern and polar regions do.

And a lot of people's view of the world has been completely shaped by this map. And so there is something that maybe needs to be undone there. And there's been a lot of discussion about how we best do that. Well, that's the interesting thing, is how it went from looking quite radical and weird to becoming the standard, normal, no-nonsense, default way of looking at the world. And that's what's making it so surprising now when people go, oh, Greenland is smaller than I thought. Africa's bigger than I thought. And the reason it became so standard is, like Mark said, is because it's so useful for the rum lines for navigation. One of the best examples I've

seen of what's wrong with Mercator is someone has represented a human head stretched and flattened out the same way that a Macata map has done. So it's a big rectangle with someone's eyes and nose in the middle. And then their ears are stretched out and facing the camera. And it's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. But it's a very powerful image because it reminds you, you can insure it, this is not what a human head looks like. This is how you should feel about a flat Mercator map of the world. This is not what the word looks like. Greenland and the top of your head are both smaller than they look. So every flat map essentially has to distort something. That's right. I will admit, I've looked at the map, the Mercator map all my life, and I

never questioned it. Let's talk about some of those distortions. Greenland is only the beginning. Russia often looks larger than Africa. What are some of the major distortions of the Mercator map, the map that we are all familiar with? The Mercator map does one very simple type of distortion. It distorts the size of land or water. It distorts area. And the way it does that is the further towards the poles you get, the north and south poles, the more stretched the land becomes, and the more towards the equator, the more relatively shrunk it appears. So the result of that is that anywhere that's up towards the Arctic Circle, for instance, Canada, the Nordic countries, Russia as well, northern Russia, Greenland, really famously, these all start to appear much,

much bigger than they would on a globe. Whereas anywhere that is equatorial, so Indonesia and you've got Kenya and East Africa or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern part of South Africa, these areas are relatively shrunk compared to them and look much smaller than they should compared to some of those polar regions. And can you give some comparison of how large some of these countries like the northern countries actually are? So if you look at a Mercator projection map, it makes Greenland look absolutely enormous. It's about the same size as the whole of Africa, whereas in real life, if you look on a globe,

or a map that's got a better projection, Greenland is about the size of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is about the same size as Greenland. So you could fit Greenland into Africa 14 times on a globe, but on a Mercator projection map, you can fit it into it once if you squeeze it upside down. And how about Canada and the Nordic countries and Russia? Canada, the Nordic countries and Russia also get massively stretched.

Not only are they a lot bigger on the Mercator projection than they are in real life, But their shapes are all wrong too because, of course, Canada stretches right the way up to the North Pole. So the closer to the pole it is, the more stretched it will be. And that means that it's not just the size that's wrong, but the shape as well. And it also has a massive effect on Alaska, which is already huge, but it makes Alaska absolutely enormous. I think the best thing to do is to try and familiarize yourself with how big the countries are relative to each other, if the Mercator projection is confusing, is to look at a good globe or fly up into space and look down.

Most Western maps split the Pacific Ocean in half, while many Japanese and Asian maps split the Atlantic instead. How does simply changing the center of a map change the story it tells? It changes how you think about the world. So if you live in, for example, New Zealand or Japan, then splitting the map in the Atlantic is a very sensible way of looking at the world because it puts you in the center of it. And it shows you where the other countries in the world are relative to you. However, the majority of the world has chosen to use the Pacific Ocean as the best place to split the map in half. It's completely arbitrary, but the Pacific is a clever place to do it for a few reasons. First of all, the Pacific is enormous.

So having that be where you split the map is a great way to reduce the impact. And it also means that you're left with a map that shows countries relative positions based on how most people are going to travel between them. So it's a sensible way of looking at the world if you're thinking about how people travel, whether it's planes or shipping or internet cables. And then the third thing is the international date line. If you have a map that's split by the Pacific, it means that you don't need to worry about the international date line. The time zones go from left to right. What this means is most maps do the Pacific split, and some maps, if it's published in Japan

or New Zealand or Chile or wherever fancy is being in the middle for a change, they'll split it somewhere else. In fact, there are maps used very rarely that split China in half in order to put the United States in the middle. Very rare, but also very IOS. So the result is a completely misleading sense of the relative size and importance of different parts of the world. If the Mercator map is so wrong, why doesn't someone just make a correct map? It's impossible to have a correct map at the end of the day. And your projection is either going

to distort the area, which is what Mercator does, or the shape, which is what Gull Peters does, or the relative distances between places, which can be just as misleading and increasingly. convenient depending on the use of the map. And so it's just about what the least worst option is for you. I mean, if you're looking for a map that is truly accurate and has no distortion whatsoever, I'm afraid it's going to have to be a scale photo of the world with no labels at a scale of one to one, which is a very limited way. You can't even print out a scale photo of the world in a rectangle, so. So interesting to me that the real question isn't, is this map accurate? It's accurate for what? And that completely,

changes how I think about maps. What's the funniest example you've ever seen of someone trusting a map instead of reality? Well, the funniest story that I've come across is actually quite a recent one, as recently as 2019. IKEA, the big furniture giant, had to issue a great big apology because they had published a great big, colorful world map, and they'd sold quite a few copies of it before somebody noticed New Zealand was missing. And the thing that made this so funny, I mean, New Zealand going missing from maps is a time on a tradition that we've been doing for centuries. New Zealand always goes missing. But the reason it was particularly funny that IKEA managed to miss New Zealand out is because this happened just a few weeks before they were supposed to be opening their

first store in New Zealand. It's not impossible that IKEA might have done it on purpose for the fantastic PR they generated from missing New Zealand off their map and everybody talking about it and what an embarrassment it was. Many, many maps make mistakes just like this and many places go missing from maps all the time. But New Zealand going missing is probably the funniest because they've made it their thing. Has GPS made us worse at understanding where we are? Absolutely, no doubt. Yes, it has.

I mean, I think the fact that these days, even if you know your neighborhood like the back of your hand, you are still compelled to use the satina of the GPS because it tells you where the traffic is, it means that we've all become quite lazy. And there's a generation of whippersnappers that they know their area, quite well, but because they use their GPS the whole time, where instead of looking at a map

and working out which way is north, they look at a blinking blue dot where the world moves around them and just sort of tells them without having to think, turn left here, turn right here. I don't think we can just blame whippersnappers there. I think we're all guilty of it. I think it's very easy just to say, oh, the young people these days. But even Jay and I, we call ourselves the mapmen and we celebrate paper maps all the time. We are. just as guilty. And is it having an effect? It's hard not to think so, isn't it? It's one of those things where so many new technologies that come across, they're intoxicating, they're great, they make our lives easier in all sorts of ways. You can't really resist them, but there's often

this trade-off that something that we were having to do by ourselves, we no longer have to do, and therefore is there a sense that humans are slowly devolving as we let other devices or machines take over various faculties that we were once responsible for. After spending years studying maps, has it changed the way you think about truth itself? So what has changed for me is like Mark and I spent a while doing research and writing all about this notion that the GPS is damaging our brains and we all should be quite worried. And I think it was because we did the research for that chapter, it's changed how I feel about how much AI is creeping into how we work and how we do things and how we think. And all the logic that we applied to, we're not using our brains for

navigation anymore because of GPS. It's exactly the same logic that applies to we're not using our brains anymore for problem solving or creativity because of AI. And that's the sort of thing that keeps me up at night. And perhaps if I hadn't been focused on how maps have changed, I wouldn't be thinking about that quite so much. I think that's probably the most profound world-changing thing that I've taken from how maps have changed. How about you, Mark? For me, it's just, I think the more you look at maps and the more you sort of try to unpack them as stories and try to understand what's behind them and their history and their ownership, it just makes you hyper aware that you need to be so critical of anything that pertains to

truth. I think it's just so important to be deconstructing a source, whatever it may be, whether it's a publication, whether it's somebody speaking, whether it's a map, whether it's an image of any sort. Or a podcast. Or it's a podcast or the map men on a podcast and what I'm saying right now. Is any of this real? Is anything true? Yeah, if you hear a couple of slightly authoritative-sounding British voices, do not trust them. I know. I have admitted that we are not experts. Yeah, for me, it's understanding the limits of certainty. Exactly. I think that's a good way of putting it. So we always end each episode the same way with three takeaways. Mark, what are the three takeaways you hope people remember about maps?

My first one would be get a globe, because you cannot perfectly project the spherical world onto a square map. And I think if so many people are imagining the world as this Mercator projection, the best way to resolve that is to look at a globe and compare the two. My second one would be possibly slightly counterintuitive, but I think more people need to get lost. we need to sometimes take the plunge, turn off the blue flashing locating dot and decide that actually it might be worth our while risking getting lost. Not very lost. I'm not saying trudge off into the Sahara Desert without any kind of map or compass or anything like that. But just as lost that you need to use your brain, to think about where you are, use your sense of direction and try to navigate your way back to where you started. My third one is we're all very familiar with Google Maps. We use Google Maps all the time and every day.

There are some really good other maps still being produced out there. It's not like everyone else has given up. You know, obviously there's Apple Maps, there's open source maps. They are worth checking out. Loads of them are digital. Loads of them are just as convenient as Google Maps, and you can get them on your phone if that is the way you want to consume your maps. But expanding your worldview of how the world can look,

how it can be represented, and even just seeing a new color coding system, can be revelatory at this point. Interesting. Because no map is objective. Exactly right. My three takeaways are every map is wrong. There is no such thing as an accurate map.

It doesn't matter what the map is trying to do. Every map is necessarily wrong in some way. My second thing is, I think you benefit a lot from putting a map on your wall. I highly recommend it. It really brightens up the place. And the third and final thought I'd like to add is that the worst maps are the best maps.

The more wrong it is, the more mistakes there have been, the more confusing it is, the more fun it will be to pick apart and to look at and to get lost in. Thank you both. This has been a pleasure. Thanks so much. We've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having us on. If you're enjoying the podcast, and I really hope you are,

please review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps get the word out. If you're interested, you can also sign up for the Three Takeaways newsletter at Three Takeaways.com, where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook. I'm Lynn Toman, and this is Three Takeaways. Thanks for listening.