In case you missed the fantastic Chicago public radio program last night on This American Life, the NPR-syndicated show did an entire program on “mapping”. It goes well beyond the idea of simply mapping our physical infrastructure and really opens up the idea of mapping to the widest possible definition; using all our senses to create a multi-dimensional representation of our world. Within the vast experience of life, mapping is described as the abstract process of summarizing and synthesizing a singular slice of that experience.

The show is available as a stream and is really worth a listen this weekend.

P.S. The title of this post comes directly from a quote by Denis Wood, the author of The Power Of Maps and geographer who is mapping some non-conventional aspects of his neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina. The first and arguably most interesting portion of the show from a geographer’s standpoint.