What's Your Map?

What's Your Map?

From historians, scientists and writers to creatives and cultural custodians, people have used maps as a source of knowledge, guidance, and inspiration for centuries. Winner of the Gold award at the British Podcast Awards 2025 in the Education category! Join award-winning expert Professor Jerry Brotton, as in each episode he invites a guest to share a map close to their heart - and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it. So if you’re fascinated by history, art, adventure and culture, why not become part of a global community of fellow explorers as we ask - What’s your map? What’s Your Map? is brought to you by Oculi Mundi (‘eyes of the world’), the online home of The Sunderland Collection of antique maps and atlases. For a fully immersive experience, visit Oculi-Mundi.com/podcast to explore each of the maps as you listen.

Episodes

December 2, 2025 29 mins
In this episode, Jerry Brotton meets Dr. Animesh Sinha from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders). Animesh is an infectious diseases specialist who has spent his career caring for people in remote regions with HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and hepatitis. 

Animesh is the principal investigator in a project named Zero TB where his team are using GIS data and maps to treat, and hopefully eradicate, TB in a ...
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In this episode, Jerry takes another excursion to meet with Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and English visual artist, Hannah Claus. 

Hannah is in London exhibiting at the High Commission of Canada in the U.K. as part of their commitment to show work by Indigenous Canadian artists. Her body of work titled tsi iotnekahtentiónhatie - éntie nonkwá:ti [where the waters flow - south shore] tells the story of the Kahrhionhwa’kó:wa ...
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In the first episode of Season 4, our host Jerry Brotton finds himself at one of the world's largest and most active exploration-focused institutions: the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London. He meets with Cartographic Collections Manager Dr. Katie Parker to pore over a mid-sixteenth century treasure that both the RGS and The Sunderland Collection are privileged to own an example of. 

Produced in around 1550, t...
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October 20, 2025 2 mins
From historians, scientists and writers to creatives and cultural custodians, people have used maps as a source of knowledge, guidance, and inspiration for centuries.

Join award-winning expert Professor Jerry Brotton, as in each episode he invites a guest to share a map close to their heart - and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it.

So if you’re fascinated by history, art, adventure and cult...
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Jerry journeys to the Arctic polar region with Dr Djoeke van Netten from the University of Amsterdam, following the attempts by Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz and his crew to reach China via the northeast passage.

Djoeke explains the backstory of the Dutch trade missions that took place in 1594, 1595, and 1596 and how the 1596 mission was stranded in Novaya Zemlya [an island chain in present day Northern Russia]  for...
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Jerry interviews Melbourne based artist-cartographer Anton Thomas, who discusses his latest project: a meticulously hand-drawn world map titled "Wild World." Wild World centres the animal kingdom, showcasing over 1,600 animals across a world without national borders.

This intricate artwork emerged from Anton’s deep-rooted passion for mapping, which reaches back to his childhood. It also reflects his belief in the prof...
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Jerry and University of Denver Professor Susan Schulten delve into the groundbreaking work of Richard Edes Harrison, an artist cartographer whose innovative mapping style emerged in the tumultuous early 20th century, particularly during the lead-up to World War II. 

They discuss two of Harrison’s maps published in Fortune magazine, the business magazine founded by Henry Luce in 1929. Harrison’s maps challenged America...
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Neuroscientist and Harvard Professor Jeff Lichtman walks Jerry through his astonishing work mapping the human brain. In 2024, with the help of Google Research, Jeff’s team developed the most detailed map of a human brain sample ever created, producing 1,400 TB of data from a sample the size of a pinhead. 

Jeff also talks about how he and Harvard biologist Dr Joshua Sanes pioneered the Brainbow process, a breakthrough ...
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In this episode, Jerry visits the Library of Congress in Washington DC to meet senior librarian Iris Taylor, who has nearly five decades of experience in the map department.

Iris shows Jerry a series of beautiful pictorial maps, created in the 1940s by the pioneering geographical storyteller Louise E. Jefferson. In particular, she highlights a map of ‘Americans of Negro Lineage’ from 1946. This map showcases notable A...
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Welcome to What’s Your Map? In this episode, Jerry speaks to Elizabeth Hogan, a marine biologist, Programme Director at the National Geographic Society, and a passionate advocate for marine conservation. 

Having spent over 15 years dedicated to protecting marine ecosystems, Elizabeth shares her experience while discussing a unique map that reorients our understanding of the world's geography.. She explains how this oc...
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May 27, 2025 2 mins
From historians, scientists and writers to creatives and cultural custodians, people have used maps as a source of knowledge, guidance, and inspiration for centuries.

Join award-winning expert Professor Jerry Brotton, as in each episode he invites a guest to share a map close to their heart - and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it.

So if you’re fascinated by history, art, adventure and cult...
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Every society has myths and legends that are passed down through the generations, some of which can be read in features of the landscape. In this episode, Professor Margo Neale guides Jerry around the story of the Seven Sisters: a songline from Australia.  She delves into the intricate symbolism of her map, revealing that it charts not just physical spaces, but also spiritual and ancestral connections within Australian Indigen...
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Mike Yamashita is a distinguished photographer with over 40 years of experience working for National Geographic. Among his stunning collections of works that capture landscapes, peoples, and animals, Mike filmed two documentaries about Marco Polo for National Geographic in 2004 and 2022.

In this episode of What's Your Map, Mike and Jerry explore Fra Mauro’s legendary world map from 1450. Measuring two metres across, t...
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Have you ever seen a shooting star? Did you know that there are different stars in the sky during winter and summer? In this episode, Dr Heidi Hammel takes Jerry on a jaunt around the constellations, and talks to him about the cutting edge of space exploration.

Heidi is an interdisciplinary scientist at NASA and Vice President of Science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). In her role ...
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Matthew Edney, Osher Professor at the University of Maine and Director of the History of Cartography project, takes Jerry to 16th century Amsterdam, where silver from the New World is flowing copiously, and maps have been elevated from the scientific designs to sumptuous works of art. 

Joan Blaeu’s vibrant 1662 world map shows the world in twin hemispheres, surrounded by celestial Roman gods, the four seasons, beasts ...
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Jerry meets journalist and best-selling author Sathnam Sanghera, to discuss the impact of a single line on a map.


Splitting families, communities, and religions, and leading to horrific loss of life and displacement, the Partition of India in 1947 sent shockwaves through Southeast Asia and has been described as the “central historic event” in the region’s recent history.


Sathnam examines a map of th...
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January 28, 2025 31 mins
In this episode, Ed Parsons, digital geographer and geospatial wizard at Google, traces the history of digital mapping. He leads Jerry from its roots in Gerard Mercator’s iconic map projection, to the Google Maps we use today – and beyond….
 
Ed’s chosen map is the “Christian Knight” map, produced in Amsterdam by Jodocus Hondius in 1597. It is the first map to use Mercator’s projection after his death. The projection w...
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January 24, 2025 2 mins
From historians, scientists and writers to creatives and cultural custodians, people have used maps as a source of knowledge, guidance, and inspiration for centuries.

Join award-winning expert Professor Jerry Brotton, as in each episode he invites a guest to share a map close to their heart - and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it.

So if you’re fascinated by history, art, adventure and cult...
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Jerry is joined by self-confessed map geek and wine expert Jane Anson, to talk about the remarkable maps that she created for her book ‘Inside Bordeaux’.

Jane travelled the world as a journalist before moving to Bordeaux over twenty years ago. A passionate connoisseur of French wines, she is a writer, critic, and tutor.

In this episode, Jane unfurls a beautiful map of the chateaux and terroir of the Central M...
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In this episode, Jerry is joined by Adam Lowe, founder of Factum Arte and the Factum Foundation. Factum is a pioneering digital media studio, working to record, preserve, and restore cultural heritage - particularly where it is in a fragile state.

Adam’s map is Factum’s re-creation of the world map produced by Muhammad Al-Idrisi for King Roger II of Sicily in the 12th century. The map is two metres wide, and made from...
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