00:00:00
Speaker 1: The world map changes from time to time. We get new countries, we get new borders and things change. What hasn't changed in some 500 years is the overall look of it. Continents look like continents and they generally remain in the same place. But over the weekend, a vote was taken at the United Nations that will see world maps change significantly. So the short history of this is that historically we've used what's been known as the Mercator Projection, which is Solving this conundrum we have where you've got a sphere that you want to put onto a two-dimensional space. So it sort of stretches out in parts. And the part it's stretched out in historically is in the Northern Hemisphere, in Russia, Greenland, the United States. at the expense of places near the equator or in the southern hemisphere that look smaller. And so what you end up with is this curious scenario where a place like Greenland looks significantly bigger on a map than it actually is in reality. And it was not because there was an error in the way in which they did it. It was very useful for navigating the Atlantic if you're on a sailing ship 500 years ago. Well, our next guest was part of a team that said, well, there's not too many people on sailing ships that are navigating the Atlantic in the 2000s. What would a world map look like if we made everything, the relationship between all these spaces, countries and continents, their actual size? It became known as the Equal Earth Cartographic Projection, and its co-author joins us on 5AA Breakfast. Now, Tom Patterson, good morning to you.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: Good evening from Virginia.
00:01:34
Speaker 1: Good evening there in Virginia. Tom, when you guys set out to create this cartographic projection, was the idea that it would replace Mercator, or were you doing it more as a sort of an educational tool to say, this is actually what the world looks like?
00:01:50
Speaker 2: Well, actually, the Mercator projection has been replaced a long time ago by MapMakers. Everyone hates the Mercator because it makes Greenland the same size as Africa, and Africa is actually 14 times larger, etc., etc. You explained it very well in your introduction. But most world maps for the last 50, 60 years have not been in the Mercator projection at all. People love kind of dishing on it a lot and denouncing it, but it really hasn't been that prevalent in schoolrooms and on walls everywhere. What we did is what inspired us was in 2018, Boston Public Schools came out and said, henceforth, we're using the Peters map projection, which is equal area, which is a good thing. And it's going to be replacing the Mercator. And the problem was the whole cartographic community has been dealing with the Peters map projection for decades. It's had some very strong proponents out there. And the problem is the Peter's map projection is really, really ugly. It's an equal area, which is a good thing. But when you look at it, the continents are stretched out. They look like wet clothes hung up on a clothesline, just stretched out. And if you're viewers don't believe me, Google the Peter's map projection. You can see for yourselves. So what we decided to do was come up with an antidote to the Peter's map projection, and we set about creating the equal earth projection.
00:03:27
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the Peter's map projection now. It looks as though if you've got your TV or computer screen in the wrong resolution. And yeah, everything's artificially stretched in a way that actually doesn't resemble Earth. the Earth as we understand it. So this is a sort of a kind of middle ground, Tom. So at what point are you even made aware that the UN are considering adopting your map to become the official one?
00:03:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, going back to your original statement, yeah, it is kind of a middle ground. We set out to create an equal area map projection that showed all the continents and countries proportional to one another, but that also looked good. And we modeled it after another map projection called Robinson, which looks very, very nice, but it's not quite equal area. Our map is. And so I got together with two buddies, Bernhard Genny, who's over at Monash University in Melbourne, and Boyan Savage, who lives in California. Bernie is a computer programmer, and Boyan's a mathematician. was my idea, but I could not have created this thing without two very smart colleagues to work with. So we worked for maybe three, four months iteratively and came up with the Equal Earth Map Projection and put it out there. Now, we're basically researchers, and we created the projection, the mathematical formulas were out there, we put the map online, we built it, and then we just waited to see if anyone would come. And that's what happened in the last couple of years. There was a group in Africa, the Correct the Map campaign, and they had an online petition. They lobbied for the adoption of the Equal Earth Projection. They finally persuaded Togo to introduce that resolution in the UN, and the rest is history.
00:05:25
Speaker 1: And so, Tom... It was overwhelmingly supported. 164 voted for it. The only country to vote against it is your country, the US. Were you surprised by that? And what did you think?
00:05:37
Speaker 2: Oh, I was afraid you were going to ask this question. Okay. You know, what I say about politics privately and publicly are two different things. And I will just say that I was disappointed with the US vote. Can we... Leave it at that?
00:05:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, we understand.
00:06:00
Speaker 2: I'm trying to be diplomatic.
00:06:02
Speaker 1: No, fair enough, fair enough. That's perfectly fine. 164 states, six abstained and the US voted against it. Tom, it is a much more useful look at the world and it does look nice. It resembles what we understand in terms of the shape of the continents and their positioning and I think it's a wonderful contribution that you guys have made and we really appreciate your time. Thanks for talking to us.
00:06:27
Speaker 2: Oh, you're more than welcome. Take care. Thanks, Tom.
00:06:29
Speaker 1: Tom Patterson, the Equal Earth Map co-author.
Speaker 1: The world map changes from time to time. We get new countries, we get new borders and things change. What hasn't changed in some 500 years is the overall look of it. Continents look like continents and they generally remain in the same place. But over the weekend, a vote was taken at the United Nations that will see world maps change significantly. So the short history of this is that historically we've used what's been known as the Mercator Projection, which is Solving this conundrum we have where you've got a sphere that you want to put onto a two-dimensional space. So it sort of stretches out in parts. And the part it's stretched out in historically is in the Northern Hemisphere, in Russia, Greenland, the United States. at the expense of places near the equator or in the southern hemisphere that look smaller. And so what you end up with is this curious scenario where a place like Greenland looks significantly bigger on a map than it actually is in reality. And it was not because there was an error in the way in which they did it. It was very useful for navigating the Atlantic if you're on a sailing ship 500 years ago. Well, our next guest was part of a team that said, well, there's not too many people on sailing ships that are navigating the Atlantic in the 2000s. What would a world map look like if we made everything, the relationship between all these spaces, countries and continents, their actual size? It became known as the Equal Earth Cartographic Projection, and its co-author joins us on 5AA Breakfast. Now, Tom Patterson, good morning to you.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: Good evening from Virginia.
00:01:34
Speaker 1: Good evening there in Virginia. Tom, when you guys set out to create this cartographic projection, was the idea that it would replace Mercator, or were you doing it more as a sort of an educational tool to say, this is actually what the world looks like?
00:01:50
Speaker 2: Well, actually, the Mercator projection has been replaced a long time ago by MapMakers. Everyone hates the Mercator because it makes Greenland the same size as Africa, and Africa is actually 14 times larger, etc., etc. You explained it very well in your introduction. But most world maps for the last 50, 60 years have not been in the Mercator projection at all. People love kind of dishing on it a lot and denouncing it, but it really hasn't been that prevalent in schoolrooms and on walls everywhere. What we did is what inspired us was in 2018, Boston Public Schools came out and said, henceforth, we're using the Peters map projection, which is equal area, which is a good thing. And it's going to be replacing the Mercator. And the problem was the whole cartographic community has been dealing with the Peters map projection for decades. It's had some very strong proponents out there. And the problem is the Peter's map projection is really, really ugly. It's an equal area, which is a good thing. But when you look at it, the continents are stretched out. They look like wet clothes hung up on a clothesline, just stretched out. And if you're viewers don't believe me, Google the Peter's map projection. You can see for yourselves. So what we decided to do was come up with an antidote to the Peter's map projection, and we set about creating the equal earth projection.
00:03:27
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the Peter's map projection now. It looks as though if you've got your TV or computer screen in the wrong resolution. And yeah, everything's artificially stretched in a way that actually doesn't resemble Earth. the Earth as we understand it. So this is a sort of a kind of middle ground, Tom. So at what point are you even made aware that the UN are considering adopting your map to become the official one?
00:03:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, going back to your original statement, yeah, it is kind of a middle ground. We set out to create an equal area map projection that showed all the continents and countries proportional to one another, but that also looked good. And we modeled it after another map projection called Robinson, which looks very, very nice, but it's not quite equal area. Our map is. And so I got together with two buddies, Bernhard Genny, who's over at Monash University in Melbourne, and Boyan Savage, who lives in California. Bernie is a computer programmer, and Boyan's a mathematician. was my idea, but I could not have created this thing without two very smart colleagues to work with. So we worked for maybe three, four months iteratively and came up with the Equal Earth Map Projection and put it out there. Now, we're basically researchers, and we created the projection, the mathematical formulas were out there, we put the map online, we built it, and then we just waited to see if anyone would come. And that's what happened in the last couple of years. There was a group in Africa, the Correct the Map campaign, and they had an online petition. They lobbied for the adoption of the Equal Earth Projection. They finally persuaded Togo to introduce that resolution in the UN, and the rest is history.
00:05:25
Speaker 1: And so, Tom... It was overwhelmingly supported. 164 voted for it. The only country to vote against it is your country, the US. Were you surprised by that? And what did you think?
00:05:37
Speaker 2: Oh, I was afraid you were going to ask this question. Okay. You know, what I say about politics privately and publicly are two different things. And I will just say that I was disappointed with the US vote. Can we... Leave it at that?
00:05:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, we understand.
00:06:00
Speaker 2: I'm trying to be diplomatic.
00:06:02
Speaker 1: No, fair enough, fair enough. That's perfectly fine. 164 states, six abstained and the US voted against it. Tom, it is a much more useful look at the world and it does look nice. It resembles what we understand in terms of the shape of the continents and their positioning and I think it's a wonderful contribution that you guys have made and we really appreciate your time. Thanks for talking to us.
00:06:27
Speaker 2: Oh, you're more than welcome. Take care. Thanks, Tom.
00:06:29
Speaker 1: Tom Patterson, the Equal Earth Map co-author.
