Media mentions ...

Three things just dropped, or at least came to my attention.

I was interviewed for the Washington Post re the ongoing resurgence of anti-Mercator critique caused by the African Union’s endorsement of the Equal-Earth projection: Maham Javaid, “Here’s how Africa wants to redraw the world map,” Washington Post (26 August 2025) at www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2025/mercator-map-africa-au-size/. An image I pulled off social media—sorry, no idea who created it—says it all, really:

I was also interviewed re Atlantis for a piece on imaginary places: Jordan Friedman, “8 Imaginary Places People Once Thought Were Real: Legends, Lies and Guesswork Once Shaped the World’s Cartography,” History Channel (15 August 2025) at www.history.com/articles/phantom-islands-mythical-places

And, most exciting, my old friend Jeremy Crampton just told me about a YouTuber who uses a book review I did in a rather interesting video essay that was posted about 2 months ago. The essay has the unprepossessing title, “The Problem with Video Essays,” and was posted by Philosophy Tube — with no less than 1.66 million subscribers, and with almost 1 million views! It’s about Amir Alexander’s book on the US gridded landscape, which I criticized as another pop history based on some “big idea” that is used to explain everything. The philosopher/actress is all aghast that she almost did an entire video essay on the book that would have been wrong, except for encountering a couple of book reviews at the last minute … BUT she did do her due diligence and check out reviews of the book, so the last part of the video in which she complains about the nature of video essays and the need to bedifferent is still perhaps overly self-conscious and forced. Anyway, the video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsiKUsrqFkc.

Enjoy!