Latest Long form Podcast Episodes

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Kaldellis on Byzantium - part 2

Subject to Change - May 02, 2024 21:00 - 38 minutes ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
We cover the miserable tale of the 4th crusade, the Latin Empire and Anthony gives advice on how to write a Byzantium based historical novel. We had fun with this one and I hope you enjoy it.

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How to Map Mars (to Land Rovers) - Fred Calef III - MBM#66

Minds Behind Maps - May 01, 2024 14:50 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Dr Fred Calef III has the unofficial title of "Keeper of Maps" at NASA JPL, he's the Lead Mapping Specialist for most of JPL's Mars Rover missions, most recently that being Perseverance & Curiosity. But to land -and navigate- a rover, one needs maps, and Fred makes them. Sponsor: Nimbo by Kerma...

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Anthony Kaldellis on Byzantium (Part 1)

Subject to Change - April 30, 2024 19:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
If you have any interest at all in Byzantium or in the Roman Empire generally I think you should really enjoy this episode. Professor Kaldellis is one of the leading scholars on Byzantium (East Rome?) and his book The New Roman Empire - A History of Byzantium takes you all the way from the found...

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#161-Thomas Kincer

South of Scruffy with Ben Fields - April 29, 2024 15:00 - 40 minutes
Most people don't know that Louisville, Tennessee manufactures more aftermarket Ford Bronco chassis than anywhere else in the world. Starting from tinkering in his own garage, Thomas Kincer built the industry leading company for those who want to build an early year model Ford Bronco or convert t...

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Creating the most used map animation tool: GEOLayers - Markus Bergelt - MBM#65

Minds Behind Maps - April 15, 2024 17:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Sponsor: OpenCage Use OpenCage for your geocoding needs with their API Geomob Shownotes Note: Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy any of these books. GeoLayers geolayers.app Johnny Harris Markus’s cameo in a recent video Search Party Felt Pro...

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#160-The Wilson Springs Hotel

South of Scruffy with Ben Fields - April 12, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour
The Wilson Springs Hotel is an Americana Folk quintet from Richmond, VA. While passing through Knoxville during Big Ears Festival, TWSH found their way to the South of Scruffy shop to chat through their rapid rise as new stewards of the sounds of Appalachia.

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Hampton Sides - the last voyage of Captain Cook

Subject to Change - April 08, 2024 18:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
Hampton has been on the podcast before and if you haven't yet found his books of narrative history I urge you to seek them out. Absolutely thrilling stories but told with real historical skill. Today we talked about Captain Cook's last voyage which ended in 1779. Hampton's book is called The Wid...

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Volodymyr Agafonkin: The Story of Leaflet, Building the Simplest Mapping Library & Life in Ukraine

Minds Behind Maps - April 01, 2024 15:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Volodymyr Agafonkin is the creator of Leaflet, an open-source JS mapping library started in 2008 that is used pretty much everywhere on the Internet today. We end up nerding out on what makes building simple open source software & rendering maps online tricky but also so endlessly interesting. V...

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Qiusheng Wu: Building & Sharing Open Source Software - MBM#63

Minds Behind Maps - March 15, 2024 17:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Qiusheng Wu is an Associate Professor in Geography, an active open source contributor behind projects like geemap, leafmap or segment-geospatial also sharing tutorials on his popular Youtube channel. Qiusheng has a desire to teach, share and lower the barrier to entry to geospatial, all things I...

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#159-Dr. Tore Olsson

South of Scruffy with Ben Fields - March 11, 2024 09:00 - 1 hour
Tori Olsson is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in American History at the University of Tennessee. Tore takes Ben on a thorough tour of many regionally and nationally relevant topics. The TVA during Jim Crow; how Tore garnered national attention by using a video game to te...

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The Sin Eater

Subject to Change - March 01, 2024 20:00 - 48 minutes ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
I am a huge fan of Mike Dash's books. We have talked about Batavia's Graveyard and Tulipomania in past episodes. But Mike also has a fascination for weird semi folkloric stories and in this episode he unearths the truth about that remarkable creature, the Sin Eater.

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Ryan Abernathey: Taking Scientific Computing to the next level - MBM#62

Minds Behind Maps - March 01, 2024 13:15 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Ryan Abernathey is a Climate Scientist, open-source software developer and the CEO & co-founder of Earthmover, a company trying to simplify how scientific computing is done. Ryan also co-founded the Pangeo project in 2016, one of the major efforts to build better tools for scientific computing t...

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Gilberto Camara - Brazil's Fight Against Deforestation; Politics & Open Data - MBM#61

Minds Behind Maps - February 15, 2024 14:00 - 2 hours ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Gilberto Camara was the director of INPE, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research from 2005 to 2012, working there 35y in total and leading the use of satellite imagery to fight deforestation in Brazil, leading to what Nature declared “One of the biggest environmental wins of the 2000s” ...

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Ed West - From the Romans to Alfred the Great

Subject to Change - February 08, 2024 10:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
Most people know Ed West for his journalism and in particular for his substack The Wrong Side of History. If you haven't found that yet then check it out - it is one of the best things of its kind out there. But Ed also writes book and in particular a series of short introductions to various per...

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Thomas Ager: The Essentials of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) - MBM#60

Minds Behind Maps - February 01, 2024 16:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Thomas Ager worked for 30y at the National Geospatial Agency on Radar satellite images and recently released ‘The Essentials of SAR’ a book breaking down Synthetic Aperture Radar for, as he puts it, “non electrical engineers” Sponsor: Planet Find more about accessing Planet's high resolution &...

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John McWhorter and Scott Sumner - talking movies

Subject to Change - January 21, 2024 18:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
I am a huge fan of John McWhorter and have come to have great respect for Scott Sumner's knowledge and judgement when it comes to movies. It was a real pleasure to get them together to chat about favourite movies, directors and genres. 

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Brian McClendon: The Story of Google Maps, Pokemon Go & Keyhole - MBM#59

Minds Behind Maps - January 15, 2024 15:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Brian McClendon was one of the earliest investors & later VP of Engineering at Keyhole, which got acquired by Google in 2004. Brian become VP of Engineering and led Google Geo, overlooking the development of Google Earth & Google Maps. He also worked at Uber & is now at Niantic, which you might ...

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Dikötter on Dictators

Subject to Change - January 07, 2024 21:00 - 50 minutes ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
Frank Dikötter returns to the show to talk about dictators and in particular how they use the cult of personality to crush friends and enemies alike. HIs book on dictators is an elightening tour of some of the worst men of the 20th century - horribly enjoyable!

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Ariel Seidman - Taking on Google Maps, Crowdsourced mapping & Crypto - MBM#58

Minds Behind Maps - January 01, 2024 15:45 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Ariel Seidman is one of the co-founders of Hivemapper, a company building a map through selling dashcams & paying contributing drivers with the aim of competing with Google Maps. Ariel has a long history of mapping, working on Map & Search at Yahoo in the mid 2000s. Sponsor: Planet Find more a...

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Best of 2023: 12 Conversations About Maps, Satellite Images & Tech - MBM#57

Minds Behind Maps - December 15, 2023 17:20 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
It's the end of the year, so time for Christmas sweaters & looking back on the year through 12 conversations ranging from advice for people wanting to build things, discussing academia & companies, thinking about the roles of maps in the world and many others. Support the podcast & my work on P...

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The Lives of East Germans - Katja Hoyer

Subject to Change - December 09, 2023 22:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
If, like me, your idea of East Germany is dominated by spy movies and and you think that perhaps it was nothing more than a open air prison with the Stasi round every corner then Katja Hoyer's remarkable book Beyond the Wall is an ideal corrective. Katja blends personal tales (some happy and som...

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Introducing: DERELICT

Facing Fate - December 04, 2023 07:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 29 ratings
Today's episode is an introduction to Derelict. Something has been found at the bottom of Earth's ocean. An ancient artifact that can only be described as a giant door, inset into the sea floor. It becomes known as the Vault. A gigantic enigma, buried and forgotten...nineteen thousand feet down. ...

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Jason Boone: Animating Maps for a Living, Working with Johnny Harris & Joining a Tech Startup - #MBM56

Minds Behind Maps - December 01, 2023 14:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Jason Boone runs the Boone Loves Videos YouTube Channel with nearly 100k subscribers, teaching people visual effects & map animations. This led him to work with some of the biggest YouTubers out there, including Johnny Harris. We talked about running an online business teaching people map animat...

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Javier de la Torre: From Biologist to Entrepreneur, How Maps Help Preserve Biodiversity & Hosting Conferences - MBM#55

Minds Behind Maps - November 15, 2023 14:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Javier de la Torre started a Biologist Researcher, went on to start Vizzuality and later Carto where he is now. Javier works at the intersection mapping, software based companies & geospatial. He is also one of the founding members of the Tierra Pura Foundation focused on mitigation and adaption...

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Hongwei Liu: What It Takes to Actually Map the Indoors, Hard Work & Finding the Right Things to Work on - MBM#54

Minds Behind Maps - November 01, 2023 14:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Hongwei Liu is the CEO & Co-Founder of MappedIn, a company focused on indoor mapping. I know a lot about what it takes to map the outdoor world, but little about what’s required to map indoors. That’s what this conversation is about. Episode Sponsor: SkyFi Get high resolution imagery easily, w...

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Britons never will be slaves?

Subject to Change - October 25, 2023 14:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
Giles Milton is one of my favourite authors producing narrative history today. The stories he tells are just jaw dropping. We talked about his book White Gold which tells the stories of Thomas Pellow who was seized and taken off into slavery in 1714. Looming large in the story is the remarkable ...

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Sean Gorman: Startups, Coding Isn't for Everyone, Finding What (& with whom) to work on - MBM#53

Minds Behind Maps - October 15, 2023 10:40 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Sean Gorman is currently on his 4th start-up, Zephr, working on improving smartphone location. Previously he worked on 3D mapping (acquired by Snap), mapping fibre optics infrastructure (and caught the NAS's attention as a grad student). I was recently in Colorado and got to spend a few days wit...

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Italy, a ruin - part 2 of the Adventures of Belisarius and Antonina

Subject to Change - October 06, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
David Parnell and I wrap up the story of Belisarius and Antonina. We are now on to the liberation of Italy and by the end I felt the Romans there might have preferred to have been left alone.  It is a huge subject and we couldn't do more than give an overview. If you want more David's book is ...

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Italy, a ruin - Part 2 of the Adventure of Belisarius and Antonina

Subject to Change - October 06, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 19 ratings
David Parnell and I wrap up the story of Belisarius and Antonina. We are now on to the liberation of Italy and by the end I felt the Romans there might have preferred to have been left alone.  It is a huge subject and we couldn't do more than give an overview. If you want more David's book is ...

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Harold Goddijn: The Full Story of TomTom, Selling Millions of Devices, the impact of the iPhone & mapping today - MBM#52

Minds Behind Maps - October 01, 2023 14:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 13 ratings
Harold Goddijn is one of the co-founders & the CEO of TomTom. TomTom has pivoted many times, from it's beginnings making PDA software in the early 90s, stumbling onto map applications, building its own hardware to millions of devices sold in a day, to its current form today. TomTom is a fascinat...