geography

CGP Grey's quick, witty explainer on the differences between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England, and the countries that make up the UK.

A short clip from The West Wing in which staffers meet a group advocating the Peters projection and challenge the Mercator map. It was shown as geography humor at a Salt Lake GIS user group meeting.

A one-minute clip of Slavoj Zizek showing what he calls the official geographical limit between the Balkans and Central Europe, standing at a river in Ljubljana. It is a short, absurd and funny piece of cultural geography.

CaspianReport explainer arguing that Russia's geography, especially its vast size and indefensible Moscow core, shapes its political behavior. It frames Russian security thinking through the lens of geographic determinism.

CGP Grey explains that postal codes are routing instructions for mail rather than geographic regions. He looks at the quirks and problems this causes.

The Map Men explain why British place names are so hard to pronounce, tracing it to layers of Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norman influence, with a pronunciation guide.

CGP Grey walks through the odd history and quirks of the US-Canada border, including how it was surveyed and its irregularities such as exclaves.

WonderWhy surveys complex international borders, including enclaves like Vatican City, San Marino and Lesotho, the enclave-within-enclave town of Baarle, and the India-Bangladesh Cooch Behar region.

A one-minute clip from the film Bernie in which a Carthage, Texas resident describes the five 'states' of Texas. It is a folksy bit of regional geography humor.

A short CGP Grey explainer on why 'Holland' is wrong as a name for the whole country of the Netherlands. It covers the country's provinces and its constituent territories.

An animated map of the territories of Chinese dynasties from 1000 BC to the present, compressed into about a minute.

Wendover Productions explains why US passenger rail lags behind other countries. It covers freight companies owning most of the track, geography and population density, and the economics of competing with flying.

Trevor Paglen's 30C3 talk on photographing and documenting the secret state, including CIA flights, spy satellites and military sites, to reveal the geography of covert programs.

A 2-minute clip of US Representative Hank Johnson telling a congressional hearing he feared Guam would become so overpopulated that it would tip over and capsize. Johnson later said he was joking.