{"id":1820788,"date":"2023-11-22T15:52:21","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T20:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/?p=1820788"},"modified":"2023-11-22T15:52:21","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T20:52:21","slug":"where-comedy-meets-geography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2023\/11\/where-comedy-meets-geography\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Where Comedy Meets Geography’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geographical<\/em> magazine has a profile<\/a> of the Map Men\u2014that is, Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones, who\u2019ve been posting funny videos on YouTube<\/a> that explain some cartographical or geographical silliness since 2016, on and off.<\/p>\n

\u2018As little as ten years ago, maps were something that you just had to live with and everybody had an A-to-Z in the car,\u2019 says Jay, who is the main comedic influence behind the channel, having already found success with a series on London\u2019s architecture called Unfinished London. \u2018But now that everyone has a sat nav, I think maps have become, for want of a better word, more geeky. You get people who didn\u2019t realise that they were interested in maps or geography until they see an episode of Map Men and they\u2019ll say: \u201cOh, yeah, maps are my guilty pleasure.\u201d And I don\u2019t think people would have necessarily talked like that about maps ten years ago, because they used to be something that we depended on. And now they have become something that we enjoy.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(See previous posts<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Geographical magazine has a profile of the Map Men\u2014that is, Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones, who\u2019ve been posting funny videos on YouTube that explain some cartographical or geographical silliness since 2016, on and off. \u2018As… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[936,192,617],"class_list":["post-1820788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-cartography","tag-fun","tag-funny","tag-map-men","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1839277,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2025\/04\/maps-and-games-roundup\/","url_meta":{"origin":1820788,"position":0},"title":"Maps and Games Roundup","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"10 April 2025","format":"link","excerpt":"The GeoFacts Challenge is calling for games that teach geography. How many of us only know where Winnipeg is because we played Ticket to Ride, or Kinshasa because of Pandemic, or Kamchatka because of Risk? None of these games are educational in nature, per se, and yet for many gamers,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Games"","block_context":{"text":"Games","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/games\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1785207,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2018\/03\/art-of-the-spheres-at-the-osher-map-library\/","url_meta":{"origin":1820788,"position":1},"title":"‘Art of the Spheres’ at the Osher Map Library","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"31 March 2018","format":"link","excerpt":"An exhibition of astronomical maps and illustrations opened this week at the Osher Map Library\u00a0in Portland, Maine.\u00a0Art of the Spheres: Picturing the Cosmos since 1600 is, at least in its online version, divided into two categories: Works of Scientific Investigation features chromolithographs of various astronomical phenomena, the moon, planets and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Antique Maps"","block_context":{"text":"Antique Maps","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/antique-maps\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/yaggy-planetary-1024x681.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/yaggy-planetary-1024x681.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/yaggy-planetary-1024x681.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/yaggy-planetary-1024x681.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1785184,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2018\/03\/in-praise-of-inset-maps\/","url_meta":{"origin":1820788,"position":2},"title":"In Praise of Inset Maps","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"30 March 2018","format":"link","excerpt":"The kerfuffle about Shetland being relegated to inset maps (Ed Parsons has taken to calling this \"Insetgate\") is not quite done.\u00a0Kenneth Field shares his thoughts in a post titled \"In Praise of Insets,\" in which he calls Scottish politician Tavish Scott's proposal to ban the use of inset maps to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cartography"","block_context":{"text":"Cartography","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/cartography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1843389,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2025\/07\/the-map-men-visit-the-ordnance-survey-and-also-wrote-a-book\/","url_meta":{"origin":1820788,"position":3},"title":"The Map Men Visit the Ordnance Survey, and Also Wrote a Book","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"2 July 2025","format":"link","excerpt":"Map Men Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones visit the Ordnance Survey in a (sponsored) set of two (vertically aligned short) videos: part one, part two. Complete with map-folding mishaps, gratuitous hi-viz vest wearing, and a Google Maps dig. Meanwhile, they\u2019ve also gone and written a book: This Way Up: When\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Surveying"","block_context":{"text":"Surveying","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/surveying\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/this-way-up-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":942,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/02\/a-form-of-cartophobia\/","url_meta":{"origin":1820788,"position":4},"title":"‘A Form of Cartophobia’","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"19 February 2016","format":"quote","excerpt":"Benjamin Hennig calls on social scientists\u00a0to \"rediscover maps and other forms of geographical visualization\": It is interesting to consider how far the discipline of human geography appears to have distanced itself from maps over recent times, resulting almost in a form of cartophobia. Several papers over the last years showed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Geography"","block_context":{"text":"Geography","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/geography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5246,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2011\/11\/maphead\/","url_meta":{"origin":1820788,"position":5},"title":"Maphead","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"16 November 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Word first came in early 2009 that Jeopardy whiz Ken Jennings was writing a book \"exploring the world of map nuts and geography obsessives.\" That book, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks, came out in September, and now I've had a chance to read it. Maphead isn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Book Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Book Reviews","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/book-reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/maphead-200x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1820788"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1820791,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820788\/revisions\/1820791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1820788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1820788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1820788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}