WEBVTT - The Map-addled Brain 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:14.120 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:16.960 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:21.400 what is the worst map that you've ever created or had? 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:26.840 Do you use m oh man? I don't know. I 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:30.200 love to draw maps, and so I feel like all 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:37.839 the maps that I've created have been brilliant and places. Yeah, yeah, 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:40.159 I'm not like a cartographer on the side or anything, 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:41.919 but no, I don't I don't feel like I've done 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:47.200 anything too crazy. My daughter recently created a map, and um, 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:51.040 I was pretty impressed. She had China, the United States 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:55.440 is like a blue blob, um, Europe as a yellow blob, 0:00:55.600 --> 0:01:00.600 and then butterfly Land. But yeah they had little wings. Um. 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:02.160 So I don't know. I want to say that's the 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.600 worst map, but I don't think it was very practical. Still, 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:06.960 it's it's interesting, and we'll have to think about butterfly 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:09.600 Land if we uh as we dive into this podcast, 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:13.720 as we talk about brains, our brains and maps and 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:18.280 how this map ends up informing the world around us. Um, 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:20.840 when I think of bad maps, I've had to use 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:26.039 probably the worst was when is that Yosemite National Park. 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:27.880 There's like just a map that was handed not an 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:30.320 official map, it was like handed out like maybe by 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:33.840 somebody at the hotel that had to show different locations 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:38.280 around this little uh town, different trails, and none of 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:40.240 it was really to scale. So you've got to really 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.679 warp sense of distance when you tried to go out 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:47.360 and introverse any of this. I will say, map or 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:49.600 hotel maps are pretty bad because they just want to 0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:52.520 show you the landmarks and they just are like that's 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.000 all that tourists really care about. They'll they'll figure it out. 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:58.520 Don't worry about the distances, don't worry about whether it's 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.520 walkable or you need to set aside a day to 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:04.560 travel this distance. Just just take our word for it 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:06.600 that it's there. Yeah, yeah, you'll see it just like 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.839 on the map. Is huge thing just on the horizon. Um, 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:12.040 so of course, yes, we're talking about maps today. We're 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:16.040 talking about how we have our own sort of autobiographical 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:20.200 element to maps that we'll talk about and um, we 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:24.840 should probably kick this off with allegorical maps. Yes, allegorical 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:29.120 maps maps that are not so much of places. I mean, 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:31.400 they can be of places. But they're they're about much 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:33.440 more than that. When when you when you put in 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:36.640 a location into Google Maps or Apple Maps or whatever 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:42.760 you're using, generally you're getting a pretty ironed out idea 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.639 of where point A is in relation to point B 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:51.040 between two physical locations with an allegorical map. Point A 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:54.680 and point B may not be things that are precisely real. 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:58.160 They might be states of mind, states of being. Uh. 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:00.880 They might one point A might exist in this world, 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:05.960 point point B might exist in some mythical other world. Yeah. 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.240 I was actually thinking about this in terms of Dante, 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:11.680 particularly when I when I thought back to our previous 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:15.120 podcast that dealt with the sins and his sort of 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:19.320 allegorical map of how you are traversing this mountain until 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:22.240 you can you know, scale all these different sins and 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:26.440 wash yourselves of them. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly, with his his 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:29.800 map of Hell, he relied on a lot of older 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:32.399 maps and models that people have been sort of trying 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:34.680 to figure out what the what what a hell might 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.080 look like and mapping that up for some time. Uh. 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:40.440 The Purgatory is certainly more of a purely allegorical map 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:43.280 because it's about it. It's it's more precisely about this 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:47.720 journey from a state of of sin, but you know, 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:51.760 acceptable level of sin through cleanliness up the mountain and 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:54.440 into heavens. So it's about the journey of the human soul. 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:58.840 And there's another allegorical map I wanted to mention, and 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:01.960 this one is called a Road to Success, And apparently 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:06.200 this was really popular circa nineteen ten. I love this map. 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:09.480 It is in a book called map Head by Ken Jennings. 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:14.560 Yes that Ken Jennings, Jeopardy, jeopardy um. And it depicts 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.599 an actual road winding up a mountain in a similar 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:22.479 way that that Dante considered the landscape. And success is 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:25.760 depicted as a leer at the very top, but at 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:27.400 the bottom all these different things you have to go 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:31.120 through that might prevent you from having success, including boheman 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:34.600 is bohemianism. At the base of this mountain, it looks 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:36.720 like a beer garden. Yes, it looks like a fun 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:39.120 place you might stop in. But his his whole arguments 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:41.080 you stopped in there, he might never leave, right you might. 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:43.000 I mean you can't even get up to the you know, 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:45.440 halfway up the mountain, right, it looks a lot more 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:49.360 attractive than the pit of illiteracy, the pit of a literacy, 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.799 which feels like tiny figures plumbing and it is dark abyss. 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:57.040 There's also the mutual admiration society, in which and this 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:58.640 is what I love, because it really is in the 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:01.440 spirit of the times. People are telling each other things 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:06.080 like you'll set the world on fire, You're a wonder 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:08.520 my boy. Um. So you know you can get caught 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:10.839 up in that. But anyway, you go up and up 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:14.320 and up, and you go through true knowledge. Um. But 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.839 you of course have to traverse lack of preparation until 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:19.800 you go through the gate of ideals and finally you 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:22.280 have found success. It should be a board game because 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:24.279 it reminds me a lot of the game of Life, 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:26.640 which in in its in its its own sense, it's 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:31.279 kind of an allegorical map transformed into a board game. Well, 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:32.919 and that's what I think is interesting about this is 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:35.440 it is instructional. It is, of course, as you say, 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:37.279 not going to tell you how to get from you know, 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.920 point A to point B in terms of uh, you know, 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:43.880 day to day, like how do I just navigate the world, 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:45.839 But it does tell you in some sense this is 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:48.120 the direction that you should take here of the pitfalls. 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:50.000 But of course a lot of people are like thinking, well, 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:52.520 an allegorical map. Again, this is a map of something 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:54.919 that is not real. It's a map of something that 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:58.599 is not a physical location. It doesn't really deal with geography. 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.400 It's dealing with abstract ideas and things that exist only 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:04.080 in our heads. But the crazy thing is when you 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.040 start looking at maps in our history with maps and 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:11.039 even our future with maps, that same description applies to 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:15.800 to even are more hard boiled um maps that deal 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:18.560 with physical locations, we're still bringing in all of this 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.800 mental junk uh and and laying that out as part 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.640 of the map making process. It's true, Like, think about 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:27.440 the last time that you just jotted down a quick 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:30.280 map for someone and gave them directions. As you were 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:32.320 doing that, and you're saying, here's the gas station on 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:35.880 the left. Um, you know, there's all these different memories 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.320 that you have flooding your brain about that gas station, 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.200 or here's the school I went to or so on 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.080 and so forth. So you might be putting landmarks on there, 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:48.400 but it's all informed by your past experience. Yeah, and 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:51.039 even as you just find yourself like driving around town 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.640 or taking the train to work, Inevitably, you're you're crossing things, 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:56.839 You're you're passing by things that have some sort of 0:06:56.839 --> 0:07:00.080 significance to yourself, and they start ticking off in the 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:02.520 in the in the background, you know, you're kind of like, Oh, 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:04.080 that's the place I had that really good sandwich at 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:07.520 that time, That's that place where that that spider leapt 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.200 out of my suit. I don't know, whatever the memory 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:13.800 may be, we can't help build an informal map out 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:16.320 of those experiences. Yeah, I was thinking about the writer 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:19.320 Pat Conroy as well. He's a Southern writer in the 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:23.800 United States, and a lot of his fiction draws upon 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:26.560 the landscape in the sort of stories it tells, and 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:29.960 he has a some of my famous quote that says, 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:32.960 my wound is geography. It's also my anchorage and my 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:36.200 port of call. So if you think about this map 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:40.120 is really storytelling, um, it's you know, drawing from our 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:44.200 experience but also our imagination of what could be. And 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:46.320 this is probably what we're all trying to get to 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:49.239 you right now, is you know, the million dollar question, 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:52.080 what is happening in our brains when we are considering 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:57.840 maps in terms of our own personal autobiography but also um, 0:07:57.880 --> 0:07:59.920 just trying to navigate the world. I can. So when 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:02.400 you think about ben is m is the brain and 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:04.720 absence of the map. You know what happens when the 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.800 map is is almost entirely internalized. And one of the 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:10.600 best examples of that, the one one that we've we've 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.880 actually studied scientifically, um, has to do with the London 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:16.400 cab drivers. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of people out 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:19.040 there have heard about this, the fact that their hippocampuses 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:23.800 are larger than non cab drivers in London. But before 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:25.920 we talk about that a little bit more, I wanted 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:29.520 to just sort of lay out the landscape of London 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:32.839 for everyone. Um, the streets that comprised the city. They 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:36.600 sprawl beyond Greater London and they are a tangle of 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:38.960 ancient streets and people have actually referred to them before 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:41.280 as a plate of spaghetti. Yeah. This isn't like a 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.959 modern US city where somebody came out, laid out a 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:46.560 bunch of grid work and said, all right, you're gonna 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.439 put streets here, going down, streets here, going across the 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.640 park here, and that's going to be the city. Boom. Yeah, 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:55.480 this is a place that it's more like sediment city. 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:59.800 A sediment like over the years, different layers have accumulated, 0:08:59.840 --> 0:09:02.280 and if you walk through London, you're looking over here, 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:05.760 here's this modern skyscraper that looks like a pickle. Uh, 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:09.320 Here's here's some ancient Roman ruins. Here's some sort of 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:14.640 like mid um mid twentieth century sort of communist looking 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.120 building that looks like just an ugly box. And it's 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:19.880 all just a complete it. It's like history through up 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:22.720 this city and you have to sort of navigate the 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:25.480 chunks and have to adjust to debts that is London. 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:29.840 It's true you have names that change just you know, suddenly, 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:32.560 and there's not a lot of consistency with with the 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:35.840 way that the names go and are um going through 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:39.000 the actual city. And then you have a lack of 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:41.959 house numbers on some streets that doesn't seem to be 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:45.600 important to everyone um in every location. And it can 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.160 take a London Cabby two to four years of training 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:51.200 to master the twenty five thousand streets that dart out 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:55.040 in the six mile radius from trying cross area all 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:59.959 the knowledge that's right um. This training is a culmination 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.920 and of what they will finally sit down and be 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:07.200 tested on called as you say, the Knowledge, which I 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.720 love because it just sounds like so mysterious and wonderful, 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:13.360 like you're about to go through a portal um. But yeah, 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:15.800 the Knowledge is basically a series of sit down test 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:18.600 with an examiner who tells the cabby where she or 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:21.280 he wants to go, and then the cabby has to 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:24.280 tell the examiner the exact turn by turn route that 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:27.640 here she will take, including the side of the street 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:29.880 that the journey begins on. He reminds me a lot 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.440 of Mark Clain's Life on the Mississippi, which I remember 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:35.679 reading as a child and being dreadfully bored by it 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:39.040 because it's a lot of Mark Clain talking about being 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:42.400 on on the Mississippi and and about how one navigates 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.560 the Mississippi. But it's but it was really similar in 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.040 that you had these, uh, these guys that had to 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:51.080 just memorize, just had to commit to memory all of 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.200 these details of the river and about its depth in 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:57.760 which and how navigable different portions of the river we're 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:00.679 going to be at a given time, right, And that's 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:02.680 actually what all of us are doing all the time. 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:06.320 But Lendon cab drivers in particular are really paying attention 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:08.760 to Yes, they're dealing with a very complex street system. 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:11.800 Like you said, numbers not not aren't necessarily where they 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:13.920 need to be. You're you're dealing with the with the 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.160 various flow and flux of traffic. And as a result, 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:20.600 their hippocampus, which is located in the brains temporal lobe 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:24.800 and is responsible for uh navigating, starts to get bigger 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.080 and bigger. And the more years that they're on the job, 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.040 the bigger the hippocampus. Alright, so most people who have 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:31.880 a job that involves sitting and might think, well, your 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:35.480 your rear end might grow over time. The rear end 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:39.120 of the hippocampus grows over time, swells with this knowledge 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:41.480 if you will. Yes, it does. But when you retire, 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:46.800 it shrinks back down to normal. That's the thing. Um So. 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:49.720 And also this is interesting too when they found when 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:51.760 they actually did a couple of more follow up tests 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:54.960 because the hippocampus. It was a two thousand study and 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:56.520 in two thousand and eight they did a follow up 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.199 and they found that the hippocampus was really only activated 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:01.079 at the beginning of a trip, and then other parts 0:12:01.080 --> 0:12:03.200 of the brain started to take over. And there have 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:05.840 been there have been some studies to that have suggested 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:09.679 that there's a trade off in cognitive talents that as 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:13.200 a taxi driver becomes more and more equipped to navigate 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:16.920 this complex road system, there their their other modes of 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:20.560 memory kind of kind of dim just a little bit, really, 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:25.280 so the backswells, the front portion shrinks a little Okay, well, 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:28.319 there you go. UM. I wanted to also talk about 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:33.120 neurons and how they are influencing the way that we 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:38.520 actually are able to follow directions. According to Barbara Trusky 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:42.840 in her article Distortions in Memory for maps, UM, we 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:45.679 have neurons in our brains that are biased towards horizontal 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:49.080 and vertical arrangements, which I think is trippy in and 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:52.960 of itself. In fact, the neurons greatly outnumber the neurons 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:57.160 that are dedicated to diagonal arrangement. But when you start 0:12:57.200 --> 0:13:00.680 to think about our planet, which is biased on this 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:02.920 X Y access, it begins to make sense because we 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:06.560 have really strong verticals in the trees that we see right, 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:09.760 and then the ground provides a flat horizon, and even 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:11.760 when you look out, you see the horizon. So it 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:14.880 makes sense that we evolve to have more neurons that 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:18.439 would appreciate this X y axis. So yeah, so we're 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:21.920 more in line with the rook on a on a chessboard, 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:27.719 just up and down, yes, and think right and think 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.880 about those trees. This sort of proto landmarks for for 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:34.839 all animals really, And then I was reminded of that 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:37.640 sleight of hand trick that we discussed when we talked 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:42.440 about the science of magicians, and um, the fact that 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:46.960 not just magicians use this trick, but pickpocketers also will 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:48.960 take advantage of the fact that we have this x 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:52.679 y axis, and they do this by moving their hands 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:56.880 uh in an arc rather than horizontally. And the reason 0:13:56.960 --> 0:13:59.280 for that is that we have cicades and these are 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:02.480 the fast just movements in the human body, and it 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:06.679 occurs in our eyes right, and they automatically move their 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:10.040 gaze to the endpoint um of what they think is 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:12.960 going to happen. So if you were to move your 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:19.240 hand horizontally, then you could track it really well. But pipocketers, uh, magicians, illusionists, 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:21.600 they all do this sort of arc because it's very 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:25.120 hard to track it accurately and you're distracted. It also 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:27.800 reminds me of zigzagging, like the whole deal and alligators 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:30.840 chasing you, Right, what do you do? Run bag? That's right? 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:35.000 Mess with their ability to determine when something is actually 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.760 moving sideways. And if you think that that's not enough 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:40.960 of a case to say that we prefer this sort 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:44.440 of x Y access, think about the London Tube map. Yes, 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:48.040 back to London, the the fabulous London Tube Map. Where 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.720 it's really and I'm fairly new to all of this, um. 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:55.160 I mean I've been to London, you know, I've certainly 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:58.360 used that tube map to get around before, but but 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:01.600 I really never stopped to realize how how important it 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:04.240 was and how groundbreaking that map design was. And certainly 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:06.640 you see its influence everywhere. You see various versions of it. 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:10.160 You see other public transportation systems that mimic that style. 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:15.160 It's it's become sort of something of a modern art motif. Yes, 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:18.440 it's definitely iconic. Um And the reason why it works 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:20.360 so well is that it plays again to the x 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:24.400 Y access. Harry Beck is the person who designed this 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:26.800 map in nineteen thirty three, or rather he did it 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:28.520 a couple of years before that, but they didn't adopt 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:31.280 until ninety three. And what he did is he took 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:34.640 all the squirrely lines that played a spaghetti and tried 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:38.080 to make sense of it by only delineating all the 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:41.720 stations and that connecting stations in forty five degree angles. 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.320 So the effect, while being really modern to the eye, 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.480 I think um is that it really cleaned up that 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.360 space and it made it much more logical for people 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:55.359 to understand the system, and it really becomes one's understanding 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.720 of the city. That's what what really fascinates me. I mean, 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:01.800 you tend to sort of the fine your space based 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:04.440 on the roads and paths you have to travel. Like, uh, 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:08.560 here in Atlanta, we live in a pretty pretty uh 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:12.160 non complex city as far as public transportation goes. We 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:15.240 got north and southeast and west, We've got we've got 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:17.360 eight and seventy five going up the center, We've got 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:19.600 twenty going through in the middle. So it's it's it's 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.360 pretty it's pretty simple. And then you have the Highway 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.640 to eighty five looping, yeah, looping around and trapping everybody 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.440 inside because that's our plan is that you just roar 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:30.720 enough traffic through there and the zombies can't get in 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:33.520 or out, depending on what the scenario is. But but 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:37.080 but it's difficult to not think about one surroundings in 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:39.200 those terms, like thinking about where are you in terms 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:41.600 of the perimeter. I mean, I'm here in Atlanta. People 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:44.560 tend to talk about things being O t P outside 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:46.800 the perimeter, like you do not want to go O 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.400 t P even if you have a friend that lives 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:51.560 out there. God bless them, but they're O t P 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:53.360 and they just invited you to dinner. You might have 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:55.400 to make up an excuse that kind of thing. Uh. 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:58.400 And then inside the perimeter is is the preferred distance 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:00.920 of travel? Um? And then you think of it in 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:03.840 those those different sections. That's right. The mental map does 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:07.320 actually map to the system that is in place. And 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:10.280 apparently this London tube map was so important to so 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:13.320 many people that when they made changes to it, there 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:15.480 was a big oh, like whoa, what are you doing? 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:18.800 You've changed our reality. Basically, you've changed the thing that 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.320 forms the world that we live in. Even though this 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:24.359 map is inaccurate, right because it's not nothing that the 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:26.720 forty five degree angle that has picked it in, it 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:28.920 was still like, that's how I see London, at least 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:32.359 for some people. Other people sort of said this is fine, 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:35.040 it's more inaccurate, but you know, that's that's what happens 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:37.440 when something becomes iconic. I suppose, Well, I think that's 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:40.760 what's ultimately at heart when when people have this reaction 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:45.480 to Pluto losing its planet status, you know, like ultimately 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:49.160 nobody really cares about Pluto. Really, it's it's it's out there, 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.199 it's not really really has a stake in Pluto's a 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:55.399 long ways off and and pretty insignificant compared to the 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.600 other planets. But it was part of that map that 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:00.320 we grew up seeing. It was in that app was 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:03.439 how we defined our place in the Solar System and 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:05.840 in the the universe at large. And suddenly that changed 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:08.760 and people are like, whoa, that changes everything in a 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:11.919 small and perhaps in significant way to to normal life 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:14.199 and the way you live your daily life. But he's 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:17.879 still shifted your universe. Yeah. And it's funny because even 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:22.320 though we know life is uh something that is constantly 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:25.280 changing that we're just transience here, really, all of us, 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:28.040 we still can't help but try to nail things down 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:29.879 and say this is not going to change. So we're 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:32.200 gonna map it. Yeah, We're gonna look up at the 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:35.040 night sky and say that is belongs to us. And 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:37.520 you know, anytime sort of those things are tinkered with, 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:40.920 it reminds us of this transient quality of life. Yeah, 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:43.600 anyone who has a GPS device that's not attached to 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:46.199 their phone knows this steel because like like with me, 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:47.840 I know that there is a way to take it 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:50.040 and hook it up to a computer and probably pay 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:52.760 some stupid sum of money to get the maps updated. 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:55.400 But that's a lot of trouble and money I don't 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:57.800 want to spend, so I end up with old maps. 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:00.880 So you know, it'll occasionally send us in a direction 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:03.879 that towards the street that is no longer there, or 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:06.280 will ignore a street that it doesn't know exists yet 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:09.040 and there, but there's there is something troubling about it. 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:11.639 You're like, why are the roads changing? Why is the 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.679 world changing around me? The map should have kept it 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:17.600 as it is. Yeah, that happened to me recently. And 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:21.320 the road just dead ended and it was supposed to 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.840 go for like another twenty miles. And nothing makes you 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:27.800 feel more helpless than relying on, you know, a clunky GPS. 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:30.080 Uh to feel like a rube in the middle of 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:34.560 nowhere and appreciate maps, at least the written ones. So um, 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.399 I did want to bring this up about Americans and 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:44.160 their apparent ability to excel at directions. Okay, geographer hom 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:49.280 Debuge has made the claim that we Americans and he's Dutch, correct, 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:52.800 he's German, we have a better sense of direction than 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:56.639 our European counterparts that live in these sort of spaghetti 0:19:57.200 --> 0:20:02.639 streeted cities, be because we have exercise that part of 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:05.840 our brain, because we are so used to this grid 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:09.080 like system in the United States, where most major cities 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.440 are very logical and planned out on this x y acxis. 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:15.159 I think you can make a case for that, certainly 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.240 in something like when you go to a city like Savannah, Georgia. 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:20.960 You know where they have to like it's pretty laid 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:23.399 out on a grid, or the main part of the 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:26.199 city is anyway, and you have here's a street, and 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:28.600 here's a street coming from the other direction, here's a park. 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:30.120 Here is I mean, it's just it's like a grid 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:33.280 where it's like a it's like a board for a 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:37.000 card game. Yeah, And even though they have the parks, 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:39.439 they have successive parks, and so there's a pattern of that, 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:40.879 and so you know that you're going to have to 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:46.200 go around these parks and x y Z configuration. So yeah, 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:48.120 there you go. But I think it's surprising to people 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:51.520 because when you think about Americans and you think about maps, um, 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.920 and our ability to actually find other countries on the map, 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:57.800 it's pretty dismal. Well, you know what we've talked before 0:20:57.800 --> 0:20:59.680 about how much our brain likes to find patterns and 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:04.040 recognized patterns with these pattern recognition engines. So there's something 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:08.480 comfortably comforting about knowing that, all right, well in another street, UM, 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:10.359 I know, what about what's gonna happen. There's gonna be 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:12.600