Interplace
123 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 days ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsInterplace explores the interaction of people and place. It looks at how we move within and between the places we live and what led us here in the first place.
interplace.io
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Nature, Nurture, Math, Art and Virtue
July 31, 2021 07:53 - 20 minutesHello Interactors, My family and I are safely back home in Kirkland, Washington. It feels good to be home and dry and mosquito free. Reflecting on our visit to assorted colleges and the words uttered by students giving campus tours and admission counselor pitches, I imagined my kids embarking on their collegiate journeys. It’s a grand opportunity to pattern-match what you know and what you love with what a school can offer. The trick is finding a pattern that is close and then adapting to t...
Muggy Conditions, Buggy Coalitions, and Collegiate Ambitions
July 23, 2021 12:26 - 23 minutesHello Interactors, This week’s post is coming to you from Avon, Connecticut as we’re about to head north to Maine. We’ve experienced some unseasonably humid days (and nights), a waiter serving bug spray in Cape Cod, and a hot and sticky college campus visit in Rhode Island. I can hear the locals now, “Welcome to New England.” As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your part...
Big Science Meets Big Ecology under the Big Sky
July 17, 2021 20:55 - 21 minutesHello Interactors, This week I’m coming to you from Cape Cod. Yesterday we saw “red tide” algal plumes stretching a quarter of a mile along a flat sandy beach against a receding tide. This is a common occurrence in Massachusetts, but the frequency of occurrences of “red tide” are increasing worldwide. The last couple weeks have seen extreme weather events in unsuspecting places worrying even the most conservative climate scientists. Perhaps it’s time we put less attention on the drama of th...
Ruckelshaus and Hickel Get us Out of a Pickle
July 10, 2021 00:25 - 25 minutesHello Interactors, After enduring a few days of record heat that burnt my drought tolerant plants to a crisp and likely claimed the lives of two of our favorite wild birds that would frequent my daughter’s window feeder, my new pair of shoes arrived I had ordered from Canada. As did a new monitor and other odd consumer goods. And soon I will be boarding a plane that will spew another chunk of the estimated 22 tons of CO2 our family will contribute to the atmosphere this year. That’s four an...
A New Chapter to Behold as the Network of Life Unfolds
July 03, 2021 07:25 - 23 minutesHello Interactors, Today’s post happens to land on my last day at Microsoft. After twenty-nine years of incredible good fortune – that has given me much – it is time I give back. I’ll be spending more time and energy on Interplace and advocating for sustainable transportation and land use policies that enable better interactions between people and place. I’ll also be helping nurse some local native plants and trees back into our parks. Nature has given me much, it is time I give back. As i...
The Obscene Man
June 25, 2021 23:33 - 18 minutesHello Interactors, Today we begin the summer series on the environment. I didn’t seek learning about the physical world intentionally; I was more interested in maps. But as a geography major it’s unavoidable. Now I’m glad I was exposed to the workings of the natural world as we’re confronted with its wrath on a daily basis. Which begs the question, When did this calamity all start and what should we call it? As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolut...
Cul-de-sacs, Caucasians, and the Kansas Garden City
June 19, 2021 09:40 - 21 minutesHello Interactors, This is the last post of the Spring 2021 cartographic portion of Interplace. My recent trip to Kansas City got me thinking about the role land use mapping and planning played in the formation of select surrounding suburbs. It’s also a bit of a teaser for the Summer season as Interplace moves toward the environment, physical geography, and its role in urban planning and design. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journ...
Spring 2021 Cartography Review
June 12, 2021 03:21 - 10 minutesHello Interactors, This week I’m coming to you from Kansas City. My plan was to avoid the hot and humid Midwest summer to visit family, but instead I’m battling a heat wave and soon a thunderstorm. It made me wish I’d done a post on weather maps. As a result, this week’s installment is a review of my spring posts on cartography as we approach the last week of the season. Next up is summer and the role the physical environment plays in the interaction of people and place. This spring I’ve...
Maps as Logos; Atlases that Impose
June 04, 2021 20:48 - 34 minutesHello Interactors, The shape of national maps are no accident. They’re not even natural. They’ve been created with intent. Yes, they represent political boundaries, but they also sell a brand. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation. Please leave your comments below or email me directly. Now let’s go… LOCO FOR LOGOS Close your eyes and imagine the shap...
Winning Over the Windy City with Watercolors
May 28, 2021 23:15 - 23 minutesHello Interactors, Chicago was bursting at the seams at the turn of the century. People were stressed, companies were panicking, and something had to be done. They needed a plan; a map of a 20th century city. They needed someone to draw a picture, ease their minds, and persuade Chicago’s industrial elite. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation. Please...
Boomtown Maps
May 21, 2021 23:16 - 22 minutesHello Interactors, So far this spring I’ve chronicled the spread of cadastral mapping across America. It was all part of Jefferson’s gridded agrarian vision. But by the middle of the 1800s immigrants started flooding in, the industrial age was taking hold, and cities were the thing to map. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation. Please leave your comment...
The U.S. Census: Mapping a Sense of Us
May 15, 2021 02:08 - 28 minutesHello Interactors, We’re learning every day just how embedded racism is in the workings of American polity. My recent posts have picked on the history and influence of America’s cadastral and topographic cartography. Today I weave together European scientific determinism, early ‘big data’ authoritarianism, and White supremist cartography. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welc...
You Are What You Map
May 08, 2021 01:31 - 17 minutesHello Interactors, Today we’re branching into topography and the role western colonial expansion plays in the creation and articulation of our naturally occurring geography. Most of us are not very skilled at critiquing the role maps have played in shaping how we see the globe and the people on it. But I’m optimistic that when we do we can better confront the boundaries that maps have created between people and place. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of...
Make Your Own Survey in Under a Day
May 01, 2021 00:13 - 16 minutesHello Interactors, Today I’m wrapping up this April series on the role large scale surveying played in determining how people of the United States of America interact with each other and the government. Jefferson had a vision for the country that combined his desire for agrarian expansion west, tax revenue for building a world dominating military, and his fascination with astronomical, nautical, and terrestrial mapping. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part ...
Guns, God, and Gold
April 24, 2021 01:42 - 18 minutesHello Interactors, Welcome to the third in a series on the role surveying and cartography played in the establishment of the United States. Today we continue further west into Ohio in the lead up to the 1800s. The U.S. government needed money to fulfill their dreams of being a global superpower. And it all hinged on Jefferson’s plan to extract money from neatly surveyed squares of land occupied by sovereign Indigenous nations who had been here for thousands of years. They were not going to ...
Miami Priced, Ohio Diced
April 17, 2021 01:30 - 18 minutesHello Interactors, This week we continue to explore how maps played a major role in the shaping of America. Thomas Jefferson had a vision of a neatly portioned empire, just as the globe was neatly partitioned into a grid of latitude and longitude lines. Sure he wanted land for farmers, but he also needed to extract property tax revenue to fill the newly formed government’s coffers that had been emptied by the Revolutionary war. The task of surveying and mapping fell on the shoulders of Ame...
A Nation Squared
April 09, 2021 23:07 - 25 minutesHello Interactors, This week we pick up where we left off with Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had appointed Thomas Hutchins to be Geographer of the United States in 1781. In 1784 Jefferson was preparing for expansion west and was combing over Hutchins’ descriptions of what lie west of his beloved Virginia. Jefferson was dubious of Hutchins’ mapping facts and took it up with him in a personal correspondence. What follows is the unfolding of a cartography project of Roman scale. And the birth of...
A Groma from Rome Finds a New Home
April 02, 2021 23:56 - 17 minutesHello Interactors, This is week two of Cartography. The next few posts will serve as a series looking at how the map of the United States came to be and its role in charting our history. This post looks behind the origins of those neatly organized polygons that enable the choropleth maps I talked about last week. Mapmaking’s history dates back to ancient times – as do the motivations behind them. While maps help us to better understand and interact with the world, they also help establish ...
I'd Rather Be Spinning Logos
March 26, 2021 23:04 - 17 minutesHello Interactors, Welcome to spring. We now transition to cartography. This post weaves the story of how I came to study cartography as an undergrad, the challenges of drawing maps, and how a spinning logo led to a mapping feature in Excel. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation. Please leave your comments below or feel free to email me directly. Now...
Take Your Head for a Walk
March 20, 2021 00:49 - 14 minutesHello Interactors, We’re coming up on spring in the northern hemisphere so this post eases us in to cartography — via the brain. Cognitive maps play an integral role in our ability to interact with place. We don’t even give it much thought, but our brains are amazing cartographers. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation. Please leave your comments belo...
Bill and Brad's Excellent Adventure
March 13, 2021 23:10 - 17 minutesHello Interactors, More Microsoft history and it’s role in the growth of itself, other companies around the world, and our pervasive connections to each other and the internet. I was lucky to play a small part in this transformation. I did my best to understand the behavior of people using the software that fueled these expansions. It taught me lessons I’m now applying to understanding behavior of people interacting with place. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to ...
A Computer on Every Desk and a Car in Every Garage
March 07, 2021 00:24 - 11 minutesWelcome to March, Interactors! Despite the daffodils blooming here in Kirkland, it’s still winter. And I’m still focused on Behavior. This post bridges interface with interplace through the one thing they have in common: Cognition. Weaving past and present, I look at how our rational selves can do irrational things. Or at least it seems that way. As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community. ...
WASPs and Weeds Gone Wild
March 04, 2021 02:07 - 22 minutesHey Interactors! A mid-week surprise. I’m experimenting with recording select episodes for those who would rather listen than read. I recorded my final February post, WASPs and Weeds Gone Wild — Complete with amateur voice acting. 🙄 It’s my first attempt at this kind of content, but I look forward to seeing where it goes. Let me know what you think! And If you haven’t already, please check out the other three February posts. * Raccoons Destroyed My Lawn: “Some White folks have a way ...