Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Why The Map In Your Head Is Wrong

Starting point is 00:00:00 All of us have some sort of mental map inside of our heads of how the world is laid out. North America is north of South America. Europe is west of Asia, etc. However, even the greatest geography minds often have a flawed mental map of the world. Places aren't often where they think they are in relation to someplace else. Learn more about why almost everyone's mental map of the world is wrong and why it's so on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? The Thulein is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:50 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thulein podcast from NPR. Let me start this episode with a simple question. What country is closer to the continent of Africa, the United States or Canada? Most people will think through the problem this way. The United States is south of Canada, and Africa is in the south. Therefore, the United States is probably closer to Africa than Canada.

Starting point is 00:01:23 And if I were to further ask what part of the United States was closest to Africa, most people would probably figure it was Florida. However, none of that is true. Canada is actually closer to Africa than the United States is. And if you don't believe me, just look at a globe. Moreover, the closest U.S. state to Africa is Maine, not Florida. There are a couple reasons why people don't realize this fact. The biggest is that we tend to think of things in relation to each other only by one direction.

Starting point is 00:01:54 So we think of Canada and the United States as being north and south of each other. However, Canada also extends profoundly more to the east of the United States. Likewise, Africa does extend to the south, however, it's located to the east of North America. Canada extends far enough to the east to more than compensate for being low. located further north. The eastern most point of Newfoundland is about 4,000 kilometers from the coast of Morocco, which is about the same distance as it is to Paris. Likewise, the western coast of North America also extends out westward. People tend to think of Los Angeles and San Francisco as being north and south of each other, but they're not. San Francisco is also

Starting point is 00:02:36 much further to the west. Reno, Nevada is actually further west than Los Angeles is. Another one that throws people for a loop is Texas. El Paso, Texas is closer to San Diego than it is to Houston, which is in its own state. Brownsville, Texas, near the southernmost point of Texas, is closer to Guatemala than it is to El Paso. In addition to thinking in terms of relative directions, one of the other major causes of problems with our mental maps has to do with maps themselves. If you remember back to my episode on the Mercator projection, all maps of the world are fundamentally flawed. All of them. Anytime you try to project a sphere onto a flat surface, there is going to be a problem somewhere. Some combination of size, shape, and direction is going to suffer with any two-dimensional

Starting point is 00:03:26 map. The classic example of that, which most people are aware of, is Greenland. On the Mercator projection, the size of Greenland is grossly exaggerated. In reality, it's still pretty big, but it's not the size of a continent. It's about the size of Saudi Arabia. Another way most people's mental maps fail them has to do with the relative locations of North and South America. Most people think of South America as being directly below North America. It is to the South, but it actually isn't directly South. The vast majority of North America does not lie above South America. For example, Mexico and every other country in Central America except for Panama are not north

Starting point is 00:04:07 of South America. South of them is nothing but water until they hit Antarctica. To illustrate this point, the westernmost point of South America is in Peru. If you were to go directly north from this point, you will wind up in Jacksonville, Florida, a city that is on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. South America is indeed to the south, but it is also far to the east of North America. South America is closer to Africa than it is to Houston, Texas. And speaking of Panama, that is another country where most people have a mental mass. that fails them. Most people think of Panama as running north-south, yet the country actually

Starting point is 00:04:46 tends to run east-west in an S-shape. Likewise, we think of the Panama Canal as being east-ships go from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to sail onto the Pacific Ocean in the west. However, the Panama Canal actually runs northwest to southeast. The Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal is further west than the Pacific entrance is. Another misconception is, another misconception people have are the relative latitudes of North America and Europe. Most people think of Europe as being on the same latitudes as the populated parts of North America. Europe is actually much further north. And there are several reasons for this. For starters, Western Europe has much warmer temperatures than the equivalent latitudes in North America. Also, when you travel between North America and Europe,

Starting point is 00:05:33 people usually just think in relative terms of flying east-west. However, Chicago is actually at a similar latitude to Rome. Minneapolis is similar to Venice. Vancouver is at a similar latitude to Paris, and Calgary is about the same latitude as Brussels. The northernmost city in North America with over a million people is Edmonton, Alberta, which is at a similar latitude to Dublin, Ireland. Denver is around the same latitude as Madrid. San Diego is the same latitude as Marrakesh, and Miami is on the same parallel as Luxor Egypt. Why is Europe so much warmer than similar latitude cities in North America? The theory has always been that it was due to the Gulf Stream bringing up warm air from the Caribbean. That might be a contributing factor, but most climatologists think that it's actually due to the fact that Europe simply has a longer coastline and has more points that are closer to the sea.

Starting point is 00:06:26 One continent that people have the most misconceptions about is probably Africa. For starters, most people are not aware of just how big Africa is. If you've ever flown to Cape Town from the north, you have probably been able to experience just. just how big it is. It takes longer to cross Africa than it does most ocean crossings. Africa is larger than China, the United States with Alaska, Western Europe, India, and Argentina combined. Most people also think of Africa as being in the southern hemisphere. While it does extend into the southern hemisphere, two-thirds of Africa actually lies north of the equator. Australia is also a continent with many misconceptions. Those who live in

Starting point is 00:07:10 Australia are well aware of just how far away it is from almost everywhere else. You have the Southern Ocean and Antarctica to the south, the Pacific Ocean to the east, and the Indian Ocean to the west. Getting anywhere from Australia takes an enormous amount of time. If you're in Sydney, the closest place you can fly to outside of the country is in New Zealand, which will take you about three hours. If you want to fly to Bali, it'll take you about six and a half hours. Just to put this into perspective, a flight from New York to Los Angeles takes a lot of little under six hours. I was once in Cairns in northern Queensland, and I needed to leave the country to reset my tourist visa. The shortest flight I could take was to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea,

Starting point is 00:07:50 which was four hours away. Sydney to Singapore is over eight hours, and again, that is one of the closest capital cities. If you happen to live in Perth, you're really isolated. It's a seven-hour flight from Perth to Sydney, and it's actually quicker to fly to Bali. People also underestimate just how big Australia is. Australia is basically the size of the continental United States, but with only 8% of the population. If any of these geographical facts came as a surprise to you, don't be alarmed. It quite literally happens to the best of us. A study was conducted in 1985 on mental world maps. It found that geographers and cartographers had the exact same problems everyone else did. It's very difficult to have an accurate map of the world in your head. We all tend to use relative

Starting point is 00:08:38 directions when thinking of where places are in the world. Also, it's easier for us to think in terms of two dimensions than it is to think of the surface of a sphere. If any of these facts surprised you, I recommend you actually go check out an application like Google Earth. Google Earth, unlike Google Maps, is a digital globe. You can spin it around and zoom in and out. It's actually one of my favorite apps and I use it all the time when doing research for the show. The more you look at the world by using a spherical globe instead of a two-dimensional map, the better your mental map will eventually become. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast.

Starting point is 00:09:18 The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener W.P. Smith over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Great Show. I thoroughly enjoy this podcast. At one time, I prided myself for knowing a little bit of information on a variety of subjects. I thought I could share this information to random people while thrilling them with my witty conversation. Then I ran into this podcast.

Starting point is 00:09:44 I will now refer them to this as it shares random facts and stories while entertaining the mind. I'm very humbled by its ability to keep the listener's eyes from glazing over. Please keep up the great show. Thanks, W.P. Smith. I'm glad you've found the show, and I'm glad that your eyes don't glaze over. It would be really bad if I managed to cause that to happen in an audio program. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it right on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Why The Map In Your Head Is Wrong

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