Oh What A Time... - #152 Maps 1 (Part 2)
Episode Date: December 9, 2025This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we’re here with the first of two episodes on the history of maps! We’ve got 27,000 year old maps carved onto tusks, maps in ancient Egypt and, ...the big one, the Mappa Mundi.Elsewhere this week, we’re discussing that great underrated invention: the coat. Get ready for a potted history of the humble coat. If you’ve got anything on coats that we’ve missed, you know what to do: hello@ohwhatatime.comALSO! The comedy history podcast that has spent as much time talking about the invention of custard as it has the industrial revolution is here with its first ever live show! Thursday 15th January at the Underbelly Boulevard in London’s Soho. 🎟 Tickets are on sale now: https://underbellyboulevard.com/tickets/oh-what-a-time/On our Patreon you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Hello and welcome to part two of Maps
Let's get on with the show
First bit of business
Before we crack on with part two
However
I have to mention the fact
that one of the bonuses
of being a know-what time
All-timer is that you get
to have your name
postulated upon
as to where it may have been
in history by all of us
and congratulations to Lloyd Hughes
because you're up first this week
Lloyd Hughes
where in history
I think the L has to take that
because that very much to me
feels like a Welshman from the past
non-conformist
non-conformist
chapel
preacher in sort of the late Victorian era
and my God he was charismatic
people would come from miles around
to watch him preach
and Aaron
incredible voice and an absolute mastery of his audience.
And what were these sermons have been about? What's the vibe?
Oh, well, he would take a passage from the Bible, pontificate about it, but just the voice
and the oratory. Is it a rich oaky baritone by an oaky baritone in a really, really pious
plain chapel? And everyone in there is a cold chapel and everyone in there is cold chapel and
Everyone in there is cold, and his sermons are about suffering.
But it looks lovely at Christmas.
Oh, it looks lovely at Christmas.
But the snow settles around it and the red berries are in the trees.
Oh, what a place to be.
Oh, another lovely sermon, Lloyd.
Oh, another lovely sermon.
And then Jesus walked to Galilee.
Oh, he's still going.
Incredible.
Well, there you go.
Thank you, Lloyd.
And congratulations on your walk.
wonderful Oki Baratone.
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What are you waiting for?
Stop dawdling.
Okie Baratone is a lovely name as well.
I'd love that.
I'd love to be called Oki Baratone.
That was my name.
What's your name?
Oki Baratone.
Very nice to meet you.
I'll have to check the all-time list, see if O'K Baritone's on there.
Good stuff.
This week we're chatting maps.
This is part two.
I'm going to tell you about maps in the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.
Brilliant.
It's interesting because in part one, Tom, you were discussing how prehistoric people used maps to understand their surroundings, rivers, hills, hunting grounds.
But by the time we reach Mesopotamia and Egypt, the purpose of these maps have changed completely.
because now maps aren't just about where things are.
Now it's about who owns what.
Maps become instruments of power, territory, taxation and control.
So whereas people are scratching onto your tusks, Tom, in the prehistoric world,
they're effectively saying, this is where we are, this is us, this is our world.
In ancient maps, they're increasingly saying, this land is ours, it belongs to us.
Interesting.
And this is the start of the agricultural revolution, really, isn't it?
This is like claiming land.
I remember this from Sapiens.
This is the movement towards civilisation becoming sort of more problematic.
Some more issues sort of cropping up as we move towards possession and land grabbing.
It's interesting point, Tom, because it does basically get more and more problematic from here on now.
Yeah.
Right up until the invention of social media.
Which sorted it all out.
It's a straight line of problems.
Through the earliest maps and Instagram and the Infinite Scroll.
I suppose a map was an infinite scroll, I suppose.
Very good.
Thank you, Elef.
So let's go to the second millennium BCE,
and we've got empires like Egypt and Babylon,
and they're employing specialist land surveyors.
So these are trained officials who use maths, standardised measurement and geometry to map land accurately.
What are you in this?
Sorry, this is when?
The second millennium BCE.
Okay.
Yeah, they're using, they're mapping the land accurately, but they're doing it for taxation, quarrying, irrigation, and to settle property disputes.
It's mad to think of property disputes back in the second millennium BCE.
Yeah.
Whose fence is that?
Yeah.
Are you encroaching?
Well, look.
When we had the survey done, your dry stone wall didn't actually show up on the survey,
so I'm not actually sure you're allowed to build that there.
Spear in the chest.
Yeah.
In the prehistoric world, the maps on the tusks were like symbolic doodles of where things were.
But these maps now are increasingly, in the second millennium BCE, technical documents,
they're used to run states and extract wealth.
And one of the most remarkable ancient maps ever discovered,
Now sits in the Museo Igizio in Turin, Italy, and it is known as the Turin papyrus map.
And dates to around 1,150 BCE.
And this shows roughly 15 kilometres, about 8 miles, of the Wadi Hammamat, a desert valley that links Thebes to the Red Sea.
So this route was vital for international trade with Arabia, East Africa, Persia, even India.
But this map wasn't made to guide travellers.
it was made for industrial exploitation.
Pharaoh Ramesses the 4th commissioned it to locate sources of greywax sandstone.
This is the stone that was used for monumental royal statues.
Wow.
So the map was created to identify the different rock types,
where the quarries were, the hills and the wadis, the transport routes,
and it's topographically accurate.
And it may stretch over two to three metres in length,
but crucially, we don't really know
because we can't measure its original length
exactly because if there's a map survives in fragments.
But experts estimate it would have stretched
to around two or three metres when fully unrolled.
Quite tantalising, isn't it?
Amazing.
You know when it became fragments?
Whose fault is that?
Yeah.
I always wonder this.
There'll be these amazing documents,
but they'll only have a fragment of it.
And I think, who chucked the rest out?
Who was having a clear out?
I mean, you know, your receipts from, like,
I guess the equivalent would be old tax receipts from five years ago.
Eventually, you're like, I don't, the storage of that isn't that important.
So why aren't they checking all of it out?
And also, yeah, at the time you're not aware that something's going to become
historically important, are you, I suppose?
Why do you think Izzy is so unhappy all the time?
I am creating not a home but an archive.
We don't look after everything in our house now
or the hope that in 2,000 years
someone will go, why do you throw those adidas out?
Our attic is an archive that I live under.
I mean, no one will ever want to write my autobiography,
but should they want to,
my house is an absolute treasure trope.
You've basically just got to edit your house
to get to the autobiography.
So the Turin Papyrus map
is effectively the world's oldest surviving
geological survey map.
sadly it's also the only Egyptian papyrus map ever found
as we mentioned papyrus doesn't tend to live very long
it doesn't stay in one piece for any amount of time
however land ownership records from as early as 3,000 BCE
strongly suggest that many others once existed
they obviously just haven't survived
but Babylon gives us even
you say that though Chris I made some in primary school in the 80s
my mum still got it it's still looking perfect
I made a papyrus at primary school actually
It's one of the main things you do in primary school
Is it?
Is that?
Was that in the curriculum?
Everyone did that.
For overseas listeners, you should know that's my experience in primary school was
sort of 50% country dancing, 50% papyrus.
That's what life in the cost was, basically.
How do you make a papyrus?
Is it?
Like you're laying down leaves like cross stitch and then you wax it or something?
I don't know.
I have a feeling that maybe it was sort of like mock papyrus.
It may have, I think it involved tea bags,
which I don't think is exactly what the Egyptians would have done.
aged the papyrus.
It might have just been the browning
of actual, just normal A4.
Oh, we browned A4.
To make it look like an old treasure map.
Give it tea bags.
I give it a go under the grill.
That was dangerous.
Under a grill?
Yeah, I did that.
Yeah.
That's not okay.
Yeah, set it.
A light, panic, fire alarm goes off,
chuck it in the sink.
Yeah, yeah.
Congratulations, you've passed primary school.
Dad, another tea bag, please.
Amazing.
But let's move on to Babylon,
because it gives us even richer cartographic evidence.
So now these maps are being created on clay tablets,
which, as you will imagine, last far better than papyrus.
We've got an architectural ground plan of a palace at Larsa near modern Basra,
dating to about 1850 BC.
And this shows rooms, doorways, corridors in clear details.
See, if they can do it, well, I can't Westfield.
If they can show you how to get around the planet,
Alice. Why can't they do that now? It's insane.
Yeah, how have them up's got worse?
That is the conclusion.
Archaeologists have also found an iPad from 2000 BC which will allow you to locate J.D. Sports to within five meters.
They also found a field map from around 2000 BCU used to define...
Loads of sandals in J.D. Sports, that read.
Just row upon row.
Yeah, robes.
Antidast robes.
Yeah, so they found a field map from around 2000 BCE
that is used to define the land of a specific owner,
a man called Abu Inimmaran.
And this tablet literally shows what belonged to him and what didn't.
Like an early kind of boundary map.
Love that.
We also get irrigation and canal maps from the region around Nipur,
around 200 kilometres south of modern Baghdad,
dating from 1,500 to 1,400 BCE.
But the canal maps weren't abstract exercises.
They're listing, you can get your safe drinking water here.
This is marshlands where reeds grow, crop, field, settlements.
But it also delineates clearly who owns what piece of land.
And the reeds as well were not just decorative.
They were essential for if you want to go out and make yourself a basket, some furniture, a roof, even writing tools.
So these maps doubled as economic blueprints as well.
And then interesting when it comes to land ownership, they're dividing the land ownership between the crown.
what's priest and temples, what's wealthy elites
and the municipal land for the general population.
There was even the Mesopotamian equivalent of Glebe land
land specifically set aside to feed non-productive institutions like temples
and medieval European universities would later operate in exactly the same way.
Amazing.
They really step it up, the Babylonians.
It makes you feel it's almost something like a board game.
That's what it makes me think of.
You know, there's sort of like civilization-type board games
where there's different areas for crops
and you can kind of sort it all together
is all really demarked.
I'm not articulating it very well,
but it's really making me think of those sort of games.
Like when I used to play a game called Civilisation
back in the day on my computer.
Yes, I remember that, yeah.
And you'd have your sections where the crops are grown
and all the, this is the, it's all very just clearly marked
and in a way that life is not that anymore, is it?
I reckon being a cartographer must be quite a nice job, actually.
But what about when the boundary disputes start booted off?
Yeah, good point.
Who drew this map?
Oh, it was Ellis of Babylon.
Right.
It's his fault.
Yeah, yeah, good point.
Yeah.
Also, now I suppose we know what Norway looks like, don't we?
You're not going to improve on it.
Yep, that's definitely Oslo.
Do you think anyone has the job of cartographer anymore?
There's a question.
Well, I mean, it's like done on GPS and stuff, because obviously roads change.
Yeah.
We've discussed this before in this podcast.
I know that this is a discussion we should really have had many, many, many years ago.
But Satnav still blows my mind.
How could it know where I'm meant to go?
That was absolutely incredible to me.
The modern cartographer is the driver of the Google car, isn't it?
Oh, yeah, I suppose.
Not the Google, the Google Map car, that thing that sort of goes around.
That's sort of the closest thing to cartographer.
And also cities are changing.
Cities are changing all the time.
So you've got to do that.
Yeah, absolutely.
That'd be a fun game.
Like, who'd have the more accurate map of the world
if we were just to draw it freehand now?
Yeah.
I reckon I could do a good African South America.
Ellis would do a massive Wales.
Wales would be huge.
Like the size of Russia.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My Australia would be all right.
My Japan would and New Zealand would be okay.
My Italy would be superb.
My Italy would be superb.
My Indonesia would be appalling.
Yeah, I reckon I could do a pretty good Ireland.
Yeah.
I could do Africa as a continent, but I'd struggle for the demarcation of countries.
Oh, yeah.
In an exact way.
But if we're just looking at the outlines,
areas of land masses, then maybe they'll be, I'll be do all right.
I also think that we should agree, never to put this to the test.
It could be the most humiliating thing we've ever done.
Absolutely.
That's quite a good game for the live show.
Yeah, go on there.
It's draw Ireland.
Oh, okay.
Yell out a country and then give it a bash.
See how close it is.
Okay.
Yeah, you can get tracing paper.
Yeah.
And you can get the actual map of the country and then we've got, yeah.
What an embarrassing thing to revise
Look at all the shapes
I need to learn the shape of Ethiopia
Just in case
Another night in with the globe
Pitch dark living room
And just a glowing globe
And you're sat in the corner
Turning it slowly
Trying to memorize it
Yeah
Don't abed is he okay
I'll follow you up
I'm trying to memorize Iceland
Yeah
Greenland is massive
But currently that's all I know
Oh dear
So back to the ancient Babylonians.
To reinforce the maps they were making on the ground,
the Babylonians installed stone boundary markers called Kudurus,
dating from roughly 1,600 to 1,200 BCE.
And the Kuduru recorded the owner of the land,
past owners, the size of the territory,
and the surveyor who mapped it.
That's good, isn't it?
Yeah.
Like, if you've got an issue with this, speak to him.
And together, the map and the stone marker formed a legal system.
I guess it's kind of like your door number on your house, isn't it?
Yeah.
So the map would show like ownership on paper, the other enforced it in the landscape.
And this is the birth of mapped property law.
And then let's go on to the most famous ancient map of all,
the Babylonian map of the world, or Imago Mundi, which is now in the British Museum.
And it dates to around 800 to 900 BCE, and it shows the Euphrates River at the centre,
the city of Babylon, the city of Susa, the Zagros Mountains,
great surrounding ocean called the Bitter River, believed to encircle the world.
Wow.
And the map is accompanied by a creation text describing how the god Marduk separated land from sea
and instructions on the reverse telling the reader how far different places lie from one another.
Oh, that's interesting.
It isn't just a geographical object, it's religious, political and educational all at the
same time.
But I love the fact they put themselves in the middle of the world because you frankly would, wouldn't you?
If you're in ancient Babylon.
But to be honest, that has happened ever since.
much more recently than that, maps give a biased view of your place in the world and the size of, you know,
wherever you buy it from the world.
Yeah, of course.
It's only pretty only recently, it's become reflective of what the world is actually like.
But what's most striking about the Amargo Mundi, the map of ancient Babylon, isn't just what's on it, but what isn't.
So they don't mention the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks.
In fact, there are no neighbouring civilisations at all.
Babylon knew those cultures existed
but the map chose to ignore them completely
Baller move
Very annoying if you ever got lost
Where are we then
Ah yeah
Decided not to do this bit
Yeah
So this is what's intriguing about the Babylonians
Putting themselves at the centre of the universe
They knew there were others around them
But they're just on the map
They're just unknown out to regions
So it wasn't really a navigation tool
It's not a practical travel map
It's purely a statement of identity and power
Basically saying
This is our world
Everything else beyond this is a waste of time
You don't need to know what's outside of this map
So when you put all this evidence together
The Quarry Maps, Field Maps, Canal Systems
Kuduru Stones, the Cosmic World View
tablets, a clear pattern emerges
which is that ancient maps had three purposes
Economic to extract resources
Territorial to define ownership
Political and religious to assert
who actually matters. And these were the tools of empire, not just instruments of geography.
And although the Babylonian world map looks crude by modern standards, it sits at the peak of a
tradition that was actually technically sophisticated, legally binding and administratively
central to how ancient states functioned. And long before maps guided travellers,
they guided tax collectors, stone quarriers, priests and kings, they didn't just show the world,
they decided and demonstrated who controlled it.
Fascinating.
Genuinely, fascinating.
That's great.
Yeah.
Ancient Egypt is great, isn't it?
Yeah.
It is one of the best bits of history.
Ancient Egypt and ancient Rome.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And the Greeks.
Great days out.
Great days out for the one-day time machine.
Absolutely.
Right.
takes me back because we're going to be chatting about the Mapper Monday in this section,
which I remember studying when I was probably in year eight or year nine, I would say.
So I don't know anything about this, which is probably no great surprise because it's me,
but I'm excited to find out.
Now, many of us would have seen medieval maps and been confused by them because of the image
they portray. So there's the famous goth map.
No one's quite certain when that was made, but at some point in the road,
reign of England's...
And that shows you around Camden, does it?
To all the shops where you can buy leather jackets.
No, Gough. Not goth.
In the 13th century.
I'm not disappointed.
They'd had amendments and copies made to it in later decades.
So that map shows the entire landmass of the island of Great Britain
from Northern Scotland and Wales to the south coast of England
and fits with Edward's creation of the first English empire.
So Pembroke, Pembroke Castle, of course, is on there.
So is Bristol and Gloucester, the River Avon,
Oxford and Abingdon, even Basingstoke, Hull, the Humber, Dunblane, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Wick are all on there.
So the geography's familiar to us, but the map doesn't look like modern Britain.
So for one thing, it's viewed with the island to 90 degrees west.
So Scotland points to the west, not the north.
Right.
Wales is in the south, and England dominates all.
So that is, basically, it's royal power being projected outwards.
Interesting.
So the map purposefully draws the eye to the centre of power on the island.
in and around London, of course.
You know, just like when I lived in Wales
and they would do the weather
and they would concentrate on London.
And you'd think, yeah, but I don't live in London.
So tell me if it's going to rain in Haphaford West
or come after, you complete goon.
But if you look carefully, you'll see churches,
castles, towns, rivers,
basically the most important features
of government in the medieval landscape.
So again, it was a reminder that this is a portrait of power.
These are the important things.
These are the things we need to notice.
So part of the map for the...
the time are cartographically accurate. Others are less so. Northern Scotland is just
wrong. Right. I'd be sorry, lads, it's just wrong. I'm having flash forwards, by the way,
to our live show now. Yeah, yeah. An indication that the original cartographer was probably English,
not Richard Goff, by the way, who was the 18th century procurer of the map. There's some speculation
that the artist was from Yorkshire or Lincolnshire, since these areas are well drawn. So whoever did it,
They nailed Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.
I love that.
It's super detailed.
Leeds, Bradford, Doncaster.
They're all perfect, right?
Now, other areas of accurate detail include Oxfordshire.
Was it you, by the way?
Or was it your friend?
Maybe it's my wife's friend who, in her arts A-level exam,
you had a certain amount of time.
It was a life-drawing class, and you had like two hours,
and she had spent far too much time on the penis and balls.
And completely lost track at the time.
And then the teacher was like, okay, you've got five minutes left.
And then basically had to quickly do the rest of this person.
Oh, my God.
Her A-level art piece was just like the most detailed penis and balls you've ever seen.
And it's just a vague outline of something else.
Do you know what she got?
I don't know what she got.
I just know about this.
Because if it's a good penis and balls, surely you're in A territory, are you not?
Yeah.
Well, I think if your job is to draw the whole person.
The penis and balls have really got to work hard on that score.
Yeah.
I reckon I could draw a penis quite quickly and then there's nothing else I'd do to it.
I reckon it would take me about a minute to draw penis.
You can only go into so much detail, can I?
Now, other areas of accurate detail include Oxfordshire
and those where Edward's forces have been in military occupation.
So hence the appearance of Harlech, Cunarvon and Boumaris in North Wales on the map,
although sometimes, as in the case of Anglesey,
that association with military ownership led to an exaggeration in size
because after all who wants to own something tiny
so Anglesey on the map is too big which is quite funny
so the Goff map was produced in much the same
late medieval context as their other great guide to the English mind
the map of Mundy which is in Hereford Cathedral
made in around 1300 AD or CE
this details a known world with Jerusalem at its centre
do you study the map of Mundy at school Chris have you seen it
I've seen it but I don't I don't
remember studying it at school? We studied it at school. We didn't. There was a sort of slight
tongue-in-cheek rivalry between the geography kids and the history kids because you couldn't do
both for GCSEs. We had to choose in year 9 whether you were history or geography. Right.
I remember a friend of mine who was doing geography GCSE. It was like, what is the point of
history? Because when you see the map of Monday, it's like it's hilariously inaccurate.
I remember her saying, you know, in geography, we study accurate maps. And in history, you study
inaccurate maps, by what I want to spend my time.
get a map that is just completely wrong.
So it's a picture not only of Christendom and its neighbours,
but also of faith as a form of power.
So Jews and Muslims, the latter portrayed as Saracens,
the enemy of the Crusaders,
are shown in a negative light.
So attitudes to Muslims are explained by the Crusades.
Edward I've been on Crusade in the Holy Land as a young man.
And Jews had very recently been expelled from England
by Edward I in 1290.
And before that, I'd been compelled by the crown to wear yellow badges
to identify them as different from the wider Christian population.
So once again, the orientation, when you see it,
is very confusing to modernise.
The east is the Levant and the wider Middle East
occupies the northern part of the map,
so that the Iberian Peninsula
and the mouth of the Mediterranean is at the south.
The eastern part of the map is therefore representative of North Africa,
and the western part brings us to the British Isles.
Hereford is on the map.
I love the idea that Herford's on him
Or just now
Left for the idea that
You're like
Oh my God
If you're doing them up of the world
We've got to put bloody Hereherford on there
Three clocks on the wall
New York
London Herrifford
Put Herriffon on there
For crying out loud
Love it
There's also so little sea
That's what I remember
Yeah
I'm just look at it now
There's like
There's the hardly
It looks like a canal land
It is all land
That's what I remember from the Map of Mundy.
Like there's laughably little water on Earth
according to the Map of Monday.
I'm just looking at us now.
When you zoom in as well,
I don't know what this says about,
like certain places will have like two devils in a sword fight
or like two rabbits eating a man.
Yeah.
Or like a lizard deer thing like an upside down mermaid.
That's all just a night out in Hereford.
If you live in the medieval world
and someone hands you this map, where do you want to go?
You're looking at all this stuff thinking, I'll stay here, thanks very much.
Yeah, yeah, this is fine.
It's kind of beautiful, though, isn't it?
I'm looking at it now.
It really is a real, it's a proper work of art.
So Paris, Rome, Babylon are there.
London isn't, here if it is, of course.
Other mistakes include the suggestion that the Caspian Sea was open and all enclosed.
Yeah, that information was already available in Western Europe
and had been for about half a century when the map was drawn.
Given quite distant information is shown, including the river Ganges, the Indus, the Tigris,
the Euphrates, the Nile, it's Delta Crimea and the Ukrainian Don.
Such a big mistake is quite surprising.
But then again, not all of the inspiration for the map was scientific
nor is the idea to show the world as it truly was.
This was a religious illustration, not a secular one.
The most important information was derived from the Bible.
So Eden is on there.
So is the landing point of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat in Armenia.
And Moses appears too.
And because it's a medieval map, we also get the cultural hinterline
land of myths and legends, stories, romances and ideas that were current in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.
So Greek myth points us to the location of Jason's golden fleece.
He had a Patagonia golden fleece.
That was the first coat, actually.
It was the first coat, wasn't it?
You're wondering what it was.
A napapedgerie golden flee.
And the pillars of Hercules, that is the rock of Gibraltar and his opposite, either Jabamusa or Montiatcho, both of which flank the mouth of the Mediterranean.
Alexander the Great, who we've done a long series on,
if you're a no-waters-time full-timer,
also on the map because the Alexander Romance was a medieval phenomenon.
People were absolutely obsessed with Alexander the Great and still are.
Yeah.
But in particular at this time.
So the shape of the map of Monday is notable
because it recalls the O and the T design of the ancient Babylon map of the world,
a cartographical projection that survived through ancient Greece
and Roman on into medieval Europe.
And it's important that this projection is not confirmed,
with medieval Europeans thinking the earth was flat because they didn't.
Interesting.
Knowledge of a round earth was again in general circulation by this point.
Indeed, the map of Monday says as much in its description of Rome as the head of the world
in the city which holds the reins of the round globe.
So, you know, we haven't thought the earth was flat for a very long time.
So the map of Monday may not be ideal as a road map.
Like, you know, you're not going to use it on a stand-up tour.
Sorry, I'm running.
I'm using the Map of Mundry.
There should be a Map of Mundy setting on Google Maps or Ways.
The Goff Maps is a little more useful in that respect,
but like it's ancient and prehistoric predecessors,
it's a very medieval illustration,
and it tells us a very great deal about our ancestors' perceptions of the world
and their place in it.
Genuinely fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.
Yeah, we did a long time on the Map of Monday.
I remember that vividly those lessons.
Have you ever seen it?
No, no, no, no. It's still in Hereford, I think, but I've never been.
You ever seen the Mapper Tuesday?
Haven't that?
Very good.
That reflex, it's just always there.
It really is.
How do I get rid of it?
That's a genuine question.
Hereford United on Mappen Monday 9 football.
Genuinely fascinating.
And it's a beautiful. It's a beautiful piece of art as well.
I love the, you know, the, you know, the.
The artistry and care in it, it's amazing.
The thing I will not forget from this episode is your wife's friend ticking ages on a penis in her A-Level art exam.
I'm going to go downstairs and say that to Izzy straight away because that's really, really funny.
Super detailed.
And if I could make one request of you, please just take away from this episode everything you learned about Bobby George's house.
Yeah, exactly.
There we go. That was Maps. Thank you so much to Yvonne Jackson, who's a member of the
Oh What a Time patron who suggested that idea. It's one of the benefits. Sign up at patron.com
forward slash oh what a time and you can suggest an idea. But the greatest gift you can give this
Christmas is not just an O What Time patron. It is tickets to see us tread the boards at the
Underbelly Boulevard on Thursday the 15th of January, 2026. We'll be there. In London's
Trendy Soho, we should say that.
Oh, boy.
And will Jeremy Bentham be there?
Well, if there's only one way to find out, buy a ticket,
or go down to University College London, wherever he is,
and drag him there yourself.
Show you really care.
Tickets are now on sale on the Underbelly Boulevard website,
or you can go to Owatertime.com,
or click on the link in this episode description.
We'd love to see you there.
It's going to be a great night.
But that's it for this week, so we'll see you again very soon.
Bye.
Bye.
I'm going to be able to be.
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