You're listening to a very special podcast, episode 766, August 3rd, 2025.
No one really cares what you say's, long as you mean it.
What's the point in w
Hello and welcome to our very spatial podcast.
I'm Jesse,
I'm
Sue,
and this is Frank.
So thanks for joining us and uh, we hope you'll come back next time.
Okay, so we've been doing this for 20 years.
That's true.
Uh, we have lots of things that we've talked about also.
True.
There's lots of things we haven't talked about.
I That's also true.
I'm, no, the, the pause is, I'm still trying to figure out which thing to talk
about, whether it's one that we have talked about or not talked about in 20
years, and, you know, it's, I don't know.
Uh, were there any, go ahead.
What have we not
talked about?
They're, they're like, we haven't really, I'm not saying I'm, I'm not
saying we've talked about everything.
I agree with that.
I'm just trying to think, well, what, what, and I think it's, you know, you
see where you from, where you sit.
So for me, I'm struggling to think of things we haven't talked about
that we would know anything about.
Like we haven't talked about Marxist geography for the most part.
You know, that's something we haven't.
I think we've mentioned it before.
We, we have, but it in general, it's the various isms, right?
It's, yeah.
Uh, that's, that's more of what we not have not talked about are
the more theoretical approaches.
We tend to focus more on the, the day-to-day or something that someone
has done or is doing more often than not is our, our conversation topics.
And so as we look at that.
And, and given our, our conversation last time with Willow and Eden about Geo Zone.
And if you haven't had a chance to listen to that one, please go
back and take a, listen to the, the 20th anniversary episode.
AKA episode 7 65 AKA.
Uh, the awesome conversation that Sue missed out on.
I did
cause work, stupid day job.
Yeah.
But you know, as we look at those type of things, as we look at ways that we.
Talk about, well, anything in general, but for us, of course, more
specifically, spatial perception, conception, reflexivity, whatever
other term we want to use that we're trying to to understand right now.
There's lots of ways that we could, and it, I think it's getting better
and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing sometimes.
Uh, in terms of the.
Breadth of potential ways of discussing geography as we'll.
We'll call it
it, yeah.
I, I, I don't disagree that it's getting better in the, um, I wanna use the
word inclusive sense, maybe not the way a lot of people mean inclusive.
By that I mean for expanding to include lots of different things that.
Go well beyond what we think of geography, what often the United States, we think
of a geography, which is just, you know, regional studies or atlas studies.
So yeah, I think we are definitely being more inclusive in that sense.
But I do struggle with relevance.
I guess that would be the word I would gravitate towards is that I feel like
we, as a discipline struggle a bit.
To articulate and demonstrate our relevance as that discipline.
Now, there's lots of things we do that are sort of many times under the scenes
or behind the scenes or, uh, you know, like the geospatial technology that
underpins us, the data that we have, navigation services, GPS remote sensing.
All those things, but I think that as a discipline, those isms we mentioned
earlier and stuff like that, that inclusivity, I think we sometimes
struggle a bit to show that this is important to just to the world, not
necessarily to this just geographers.
I think whenever we look at this, uh, it is.
It it, well, it, it is a question.
It's not a question.
I think there is a recognition that geography as a discipline and a
set of thought processes around the idea of location and where in the
five themes or whatever we wanna, uh, kind of pin it to is important.
But is it important to others as an independent entity, or is it
just important in the way that they can utilize the spatial.
Um, perceptions, but that leans us into a much broader conversation,
uh, about whether or not there are such things as disciplines as well.
So it's kind of a, a two-headed thing if we start heading down that road.
That's fair.
But you know, by the same token, as somebody who currently works
on the rubber hits the road piece of that in higher education it's
very hard for us to conceptualize.
A non-disciplinary approach.
I mean, there are people who do it, like Brown University famously does this that
you kind of fashion their own curriculum.
But, you know, we think in terms of programs and, and set bodies of knowledge
and, and all that sort of stuff like that.
So for good or bad, should we, uh, we certainly debate that,
but that's how it happens.
And if that's the case, then how do we.
How do we demonstrate our relevance for being at that, having a seat
at that table as a discipline, not as a body of information.
If, if you understand the distinction I'm making,
I mean, it's not a, it's not a new problem, right?
So if we think about in the 20th century, it's always weird to, we
say in the 20th century, like it's kind of ancient history, right?
Where geography is discipline.
Went away in many places in the United States and had to,
to kind of make a comeback.
And in some places as a distinct discipline, never did.
And you know, the importance of those concepts
are often, so how are they passed on, right?
So as educators, all of us, right?
We have to think about this is, this is the question.
How do we pass it on?
How do we present it and pass it on And, and.
The paradigm or model that we've been working under for the last, you know,
century or more further back for some disciplines has been this, right?
That within this body of knowledge, mathematics, philosophy, history,
geography or whatever you pass on elements of, of whatever it is, and more modern.
We'll call it modern, uh, disciplines, anthropology, sociology, right?
Social sciences, we'll call it whatever it is, right?
That's, that's the thing.
What goes with it and who should have the knowledge?
And we would argue, course, everybody.
Uh, and it's interesting 'cause I just had a conversation with a
potential student coming into our university who is you know, what we
would call non-traditional, right?
Has already had a career and is changing tack, wants to do something
else, but has a background, uh, and, and became interested in some of the
things that, our discipline does.
And, and, uh, our university has a program that's combined anthropology
and geography, and it's combined around the theme of human landscape, right?
So again, it's, it's what are in many places are two different disciplines,
but they have crossover and sharing.
And the concepts that you learn in either or both, uh, can
apply in lots of different.
Areas of your life, uh, but the traditional kind of what
is it is always a struggle.
And so, uh, this, this student, you know, sat down and said.
What his past career had been and, you know, kind of done all
the things he was born, uh, in Australia, uh, came from there.
And he talked about like, things he was interested in.
I said, well, you know, we have geography classes about that.
And he's like, yeah.
Uh, and anthropology classes, he interested in archeology.
So I think that, that, as you know, you guys are, are kind of
you know, chatting back and forth.
I was thinking back to that conversation in this.
This very question, right is when he brought up things he was interested
in, said, yeah, we have anthropology classes that talk about those topics.
We have geography classes that talk about these other topics.
But even he himself, while he was beginning to realize that he was
interested in things that seemed to cover this discipline, he just wasn't,
you know, really completely aware yet.
So once he had those questions answered, is this the place for me?
He, you know, came out of that with a, Hey, you know, I, I might
be coming here to complete a degree, but, but that's it, right?
The, the way we define that body of knowledge as geography or, you
know, anthropology or whatever it is doesn't necessarily speak to, to
everybody to say this is what's in it.
But yet if, when we pointed out, right, and this has been 20 years
of the podcast and all kinds of people working in this area, um,
saying, you know, this is geography.
Uh, and you should have this knowledge.
And so you look for that word in, in your educational program,
maybe to get those concepts.
But it's always, it's always tough.
It, it's always tough to figure out how I think, to organize and transmit
on these various bodies of knowledge and as things are evolving, right?
Because those traditional discipline names I don't think are necessarily.
As relevant for helping the next generation figure out this is, this
is the the knowledge I wanna get and this is what I wanna do with it.
I think that looking at the traditional disciplines, you know, just keeping,
continuing to look at our department which just grew, but on our campus.
We have geographers in anthropology and geography.
We have geographers in, uh, sustainability.
We have, uh, geographers in places that are crossover, like
human, uh, sorry, honors college and women's and gender studies.
So we, we have geographers as people with disciplinary knowledge
in lots of places that are then in other disciplines, which kind of.
Speaks to both, which, and this,
you know, maybe is a, is sort of a higher education organization
thing, which are in departments that often have the discipline's name.
Yeah.
Right.
But it's also the fact that it's in disciplines that don't
have those traditional names.
Things like sustainability is, you know, it's something that is ubiquitous now.
But if you look.
10 years ago, you know, there were very few programs that
were looking at sustainability.
They were looking at sustainable development.
They were looking at some of the things that sustainability includes
now, but sustainability as it exists is as a degree at most
universities, a relatively new thing.
So, yeah, it, it kind of feeds to what you were saying.
Y you know, it's kind of interesting.
I was thinking about, you know, uh, West Virginia has the distinction of
being, I think the highest per capita number of, of 18 year olds being
raised by grandparents, which is not.
Something you really wanna have distinction in, but that's true when,
when parents and grandparents show up on our campus with their kids, you
know, they're thinking in terms of job professions because, you know, they
wanna make sure their kid has a good outlook and the ability to, you know,
sustain themselves and, and, and eat and all that other fun stuff like that.
So they, they understand, oh, I have a degree in accounting.
I'm gonna be an accountant.
Despite the fact that something, I just recently found this out, something
like 30% of people who get a degree in accounting go into accounting.
So statistically speaking, no, they won't be an accountant, but it's something
they understand my, you know kid's gonna go into nursing, so they'll be a nurse.
I get that.
And I was just thinking about.
Two questions, which is you said we have geographers in this discipline.
We have geographers in that discipline.
We have geographers in the other discipline, which I, I agree with,
but it's just interesting to me that one, what, what is the geographer?
What is the job of geographer?
Which sort of relates to some of the stuff we're talking about.
I call myself a geographer, but I've got absolutely no degree in it.
Right.
So yet,
well, A A BD counts.
I mean, come on.
Yeah.
But, but the point is, is that, you know, reasonably, you could argue I'm
a software engineer, I'm a computer scientist, I'm a political scientist,
you know, but if we look at things like disciplines and obtainment and
stuff like that, economists, but not.
Uh, not yet, uh, geographer.
But then I was thinking of, what the hell is a job title for sustainability?
You know what?
Sustainability, ologist, I mean, what's, what, what is that?
What's the word?
Right.
And it's, it's not, and I'm not saying that we need to have
a job tied to a discipline.
I don't think that's true whatsoever.
And I think that the benefit of higher education is that in fact, what you.
What you studied and what you do don't necessarily have
anything to do with each other.
You take what you learned and apply it to a much broader universe in some capacity.
That, to me, is the real power of higher education.
But getting back to what this parents and grandparents were asking is
like, what, what is a geographer?
What do they do?
How could they get, make money?
I think that's, there is an element of, despite thinking about all the
ways that we can think about spatial.
Stuff.
There needs to be an element of, you know, at least a toe on the ground saying,
well, what the heck is the geographer?
Yeah.
Well, I think that that plays into, and, and again, conversations that have
been going on for quite a while now.
Right.
As we try to try to figure out.
All kinds of challenges in, in how we identify ourselves, right?
How we present ourselves, and I'm saying ourselves, uh, as geographer.
'cause your last question, right?
What is a geographer?
But how we fit into sets of knowledge and as a geographer
who is in education, right?
I'm, I'm trying to pass on geographic concepts and methods.
So that others can apply them in theory, right.
And do them myself.
But I think it's interesting, right, to give the parent and grandparent
example because a couple years ago I may have mentioned, not the
podcast, but I sat at a table during orientation sessions for our university
and it, it just so happens that.
Through a series of, of coincidences.
I was the only academic department that happened to be at this particular event.
So all of the parents were like looking at other things that the university offered,
but when they got to my table, they're like, this is like an actual department.
And they began to ask all kinds of questions, just like you're talking about.
They're like, well, you know what, what would you do if you took these classes?
And so it's an interesting thing, uh, to tie into something
like sustainability, right?
Is that I think seeing students.
Who, who also are saying, you know, they have these questions from other
people, like, what are you gonna do with your degree when you get out?
And they're saying, what do I want to do with my life?
Right.
And a lot of them actually I think, and, and it's really heartening for me, for,
uh, heartening, for me, there's a lot of them want to make a difference, right?
They wanna carve out something.
And so when we look at, uh, traditional disciplines, right?
They're like, okay, so if I'm that, how can I, how can I make a difference?
Right?
But they see, a word like sustainability.
Like they say, well, sustainable future.
Right?
I can do that, but that's not traditional in the sense of
how we think of disciplines.
But it's made up of that.
The things that you would need to know are made up of sets of
knowledge that come from traditional disciplines, quite a few of them, right?
And when you have the, those sort of newer ways of organizing a, a
plan of attack for your education or a curriculum, then you're helping.
The student get what you think is that right body of knowledge, but Right.
But you as a geographer thinks X, Y, and Z would help you understand how to
get a job that relates to sustainable development or futures, right?
Or working for a nonprofit and preserving green spaces, whatever that might be.
You as a geographer will say these, these are the pieces.
I think that geographic knowledge is important for.
Then you might get someone else to say, yeah, but you know, if you're working
in local government to do these things, then you need to know about policies.
So over here is political science going, Hey, what about these things?
And if you're trying to think about maybe sustainable businesses or
recycling or something like that, then you're like, well, you know,
some market marketing and business and some economics might help you out.
And so I think one of the interesting things in defining disciplines, 'cause
then I mean like we're, we're kind of, for me, I've kind of taken the
conversation a little bit, but it's something that I think about, right, is.
As an educator, how can I help the students that come and want an education
get knowledge that I think they can apply?
Right?
And so that's one of the things though, is, is the traditional disciplines are
important and they're important sets of knowledge, but the student isn't yet
ready to figure out which pieces of those knowledge am am I gonna pull on later on.
So, you know, they're just getting.
Geography and then later on they'll say, well, these pieces
of geography are important to me.
And so I think it's a challenge and something that I think about and struggle
with is right, is how can I maybe help and say, look, these bits of knowledge
for something you wanna do, which is make a difference and, and hopefully
help the future be more sustainable.
'cause we're using that as an example.
So I might say then you might not know it's geography.
But it is because we're learning about the world.
So to come full circle back in a, in a long route to, to phrase the
question, right, what makes a geographer to me, it's like understanding the
world and how we live in it, right?
So that's part of it.
And that section of it is what's relevant to these other things.
But I feel like I have to be the one to say, you know, this is, this
is why this piece goes in here.
I would go back to an earlier statement that I made that there's that other side
of things of there is no discipline.
We're all looking at the exact same things from slightly different perspectives.
And as we get more literature, as we get more people, um, creating
new approaches and new theories and new methodologies, we're creating
quote unquote new disciplines or more programs or whatever it is.
But we're really all.
Trying to largely address the same issues of keeping the planet going.
And so the disciplines are good for those people who are in the positions
that we're in, where we're looking at it from a PhD level or something like that.
Those people who wanna get a degree so they can do something, so they
can make a living so they can make a little bit of a change, make
whatever it is they wanna make it.
The disciplines are far less important to them for the most part.
Um, for instance, I'm the whatever it's called for two of our honor societies, and
whenever we had our initiation this year.
Um, a lot of people were doing both the geography, gamma theta, epsilon and
geospatial technologies, gamma theta, but they were also in other honor societies
for other portions of the degrees that they were working on, whether it
was something like sustainability or environmental science or, um, marine
science or whatever other degree it is.
So it's, they don't necessarily feel that they have to be attached to
one discipline and I, I. Don't know.
I don't, I, I, it's been too long to say whether or not I felt that I was
an archeologist or an anthropologist.
Whenever I was graduating from undergrad.
I, I probably did, but it, it was less important.
I definitely had an identity tied to my discipline.
I can say that categorically,
I I will say back in the day you often introduced yourself as an archeologist.
Did
I?
Well, okay.
But that was, to be fair, that was in the Department of Geography and well, geology
and geography events where I, I was.
Largely tug and cheek saying I'm an archeologist coming into geography.
So yes,
for me it was about this stupid.
I think it's stupid.
I think a lot of people think it's stupid, so I'm not unique, but we have
delineation between STEM and not stem.
Uh.
That's what we articulated.
It wasn't even called
that at that at that time.
It just, I say what, that's what we call it now.
But yeah, then it was, you know, stem, I'm a real, you know, hard science
versus one of those social science or
humanities peoples.
Right,
right.
Yeah.
It's just, you know, anyway, so for me it was a point of pride
to say I'm a social scientist.
Suck it.
You know, it's kind of so, it, it was about that in opposition to all the
engineers I was hanging out with, and so.
I had an identity, but I wouldn't say that it was an identity necessarily
embodied in the notion of a discipline.
You know, it was really about in opposition to being looked down on.
So it comes from a different place and a different purpose, I think.
And then you complicated all by saying, you know, like, because I mean some
of this comes back to Right again, uh, as educators, we think about,
you know, how are we going to trans.
Knowledge on and what knowledge is it?
But, uh, the stuff I keep coming back to are the humanities and literature
stuff that I got as undergrad in the current research I'm doing right.
I come back to that more often than not.
So if I'd never had that grounding, I would really be struggling with
some of the things I'm doing.
And also I think that they're valuable.
So, so beyond saying, you know, I'm doing my science, my geography, whatever,
there's also other knowledge sets that turns out are really important
and we, we try to understand that.
So to Jesse's point, right there, there, uh, you know, the disciplines, should
there really be any, I guess it's order out of chaos and we have to do, we have
to create containers and boundaries 'cause it's just natural, right?
But it is that struggle to try to, you only have so much time and to
try to put together some education.
That will be both useful.
Um, but you can see sort of how it's gonna apply to you.
Yeah.
But moving on beyond the classroom, right?
We still perpetuate this nonsense with, you know, having these different.
Stove pipes Yeah.
Of departments and disciplines and, and how information
doesn't carry across at all.
I keep, so I've gotten really into the AI thing of late and a lot of context,
and I'm gonna be on a panel next week after next about AI and higher
education, uh, here at Fairmont State.
And.
The thing that keeps, I keep getting struck by, in all the stuff I'm reading
about AI right now is that, look, if you just took the GIS and Society debates
and put a line through GIS and put AI underneath it, it's all the same.
It's pretty much exactly the same.
Issues, context complaints, pushbacks arguments, the whole
nine yards that's happening.
But that Gi s society, if you are not in GIS, I'm not even talking about geography.
'cause there's hundreds if not thousands of geographers that have
no idea what the Gi S and society debates were or what was about.
If you're not in that sub-discipline of that discipline, you have no idea
that this stuff has already been hashed through at some level already.
But now we've just dropped AI in there to have the same arguments
over and over and over again.
That one I know really well, but I have to think that there's dozens of these,
thousands of these, maybe even that this, some disciplines are sitting around
going, we've already talked about this.
I dunno why you're bother.
I don't know why you're barking up this tree.
But we don't do a good job even moving beyond the, you know,
typical college education of saying.
Your college education is 120 credit hours, ballpark of for an
undergraduate degree in the United States, what 30 or 40 is your quote
unquote major, which do the math.
That means the overwhelming majority of what you're doing is not your major.
It's other stuff, but we don't do other stuff after we get done.
It's, as you can see, soapbox, angry.
Well, but the, the other stuff also gives context for the general knowledge.
For us to be able to build into the specific knowledge.
That's a whole liberal arts conversation, which probably don't
wanna go down that rabbit hole.
No, I'd,
that's probably a bit bit more of a, a, a bite than we wanna swallow today.
Yeah.
But, uh, N-C-G-I-A-G-I-S.
Yeah, that's what you want to search for on whatever your
preferred search engine is.
And you will find white papers, the entire conferences that
were discussed Friday Harper.
Yeah.
And multiple places.
That's, I remember that.
That's one of them.
But there are others as well.
Yeah, so that's it.
It is a,
I don't know, maybe a conversation we should have of going through.
The initiatives and just kind of paralleling what was discussed.
And again, it's not like GIS was the first technology to face these issues.
It's just.
Through the N-C-G-I-A funds, um, from NSF and others that led to
these conversations being hashed out.
It's some of the best documented, I think, representations of what came outta that.
Yes, you have, um, journal articles or conference papers
that came out of the conversations and other technologies as well.
But this just gives you this very rich, set of easy to point to white
papers that look at, you know, what does it mean to be society?
What is it something, uh, in terms of community, what does it have
to do with, uh, economic output?
What does it have to do with this, that, and the other?
And I dunno, our, our main initiative that we heard the most about was initiative 19.
Um, which was GIS and Society, A AKA participatory treat part.
Well, okay.
Participatory.
Participatory, GIS and community integrated GIS.
Uh, and that's just because two of the leaders of that area were at WVU.
Um, so it was Trevor Harris Dan Wiener, and Craig, who was not at WVU, so
I can never remember his last name.
I can
never remember Craig.
Go look at the book, look at the community, the editors of
the book, GIS book, the third.
Yeah, actually he was the lead author in the book.
Yeah.
He was the third of the crew, but yeah.
But since he wasn't at WVU UI just don't have his last name memorized.
Um.
So, yeah, I mean there's, that's just one, and that wasn't the
last initiative by any means.
So it was like 24, 25 different initiatives and yeah, I mean they all, in
many ways speak like Frank is saying to those conversations that are going on now
in terms of ai, which is breaking down disciplinary boundaries in and of itself.
It's kind of generational, right?
Because that was what, 30 years ago?
Roughly when it first started.
Yeah.
So,
so that a lot of that Well, okay.
Was a debate of its time.
So, uh, good on you for remembering.
The editor's last name is actually William Craig.
Oh, oh, that's
fine.
Okay.
Yeah,
I remembered the name.
So
I did the index, got the, I award one.
Craig, that book,
it's William Craig, Trevor Harris and Daniel Wiener.
So yeah.
And of course, lots of other people who provided chapters, uh, if not in
the book, than in many of the, um, workshops that led up to the book.
There was a brief time when I knew it, like by heart.
Yeah, because I doing the well, and it's
not like we don't remember most everything that's in there except
for maybe some of the specific case studies at this point, but.
It's, well, the big themes, you know, is that, how does this technology
j talking about GIS, like you said, there was lots of other things going
on, but yeah, just focusing on GIS, the big themes were, you know, what's
the purpose of this technology?
How does it fit within a civil society?
You know, who should own it, who should control it?
Who, who gets represented, who doesn't get represented?
How do we decide those things?
All those sort of.
Big questions.
Again, just scratch out GIS and put ai and it's the exact same conversations
we're having right now about AI and, and like you said, this is probably, I
mean, maybe one of the fa most famous ones I could think of that happened
would be the A bomb right is after.
The atomic bombs dropped in the end World War ii.
There was these conversations happening as well, just not nearly as well documented.
And I'm sure they had this about the computer.
I'm sure they had this about transistors and all, and radio and tv and everything
we can think of is big technology.
This happened since 1945, so it's not anything new.
But going back to our original sort of talk about geographer.
And the stove piping is, it's very frustrating to me that we keep having
to rehab these conversations and say the same things, but somehow it's
all new because we didn't bother to pick up a book and look at somebody
else's way of thinking about things.
Well, I think that could be fair
to, uh, to, it is not, there's some of that, but also, right, and I meant in the
generational sense, we think about how we.
In scholarly work, pass things on, right.
Is that, uh, a work that's like, because I remember this joke, like somebody
posted on one of the social medias, right?
That a student, uh, asked them if it was okay for them to cite
literature from the 19 hundreds.
And he said, you know, and the joke was that the professor, like, you
know, it was, felt like a hundred years old when they heard that.
Uh, but, but I think one of the things, right, is why we
rehash these things is also in.
How we pass on knowledge and reference it, right?
If it doesn't get referenced in the next generation of scholarly work,
a lot of that stuff fades away.
We're now, we're back to, you know, the findability arguments,
things that we've hashed out, but but that's part of it, right?
Because we can only, we can only stuff in so much knowledge at any given time.
And, and I think that.
It's the, the choices that get made for those who continue on references
and discussions of particular things.
Right.
And if it gets passed on.
So those debates, right.
If, if you happen to, I mean like it got brought back up, the Abom example, right?
When we saw the movie, Oppenheimer brought a lot of that stuff back up, that there'd
been a lot of discussion and debate.
And it's the same thing with some of these other technologies as if
you go back and say, well, you know.
Uh, just even you saying it right, that we had this debate already,
uh, or a similar form of it, uh, when we talked about GIS right.
One example of many.
Uh, and now it's, it's being revisited in ai, but it wouldn't necessarily be that
there would be a chain, uh, of people being able to go back and say, oh, yeah.
And so, so it's, it's in some cases just not looking for background.
But in other cases, it's just the way we do things is that we, we want the.
The more recent stuff, so
Well, and that's, that's somewhat a problem, right?
Is Yeah.
Uh, whenever you do submit to a journal you are expected to ignore everything
that is more than two or three years old.
I am being hyperbole, hyperbolic there, but unless it's something
seminal
Well, yeah.
Two,
two or three years old.
And also not in your discipline, you know?
Yeah.
Unless you wanna bring it in as a, as a way to sort of like, oh, borrowing from
this discipline's methodology of doing, you know, red triangles, we're gonna do
this and you can do that, that's okay.
But for the most part.
You know, you're making your, like you could say exactly what they said just in
geography and boom, that's a publication.
Like what?
That's not,
I mean, and you know, that's a whole other conversation as they all are of,
whenever we look at the things we were reading whenever we were an undergrads
or grad students still, um, you know, they were looking at decades worth of.
References not something from the last decade.
So now we're just relying so much on the summarization of previous
work as our references that it's just whole other things.
Yeah.
To put in GIS
terms, we're, we're, we're, you know, scrubbing up to fuzzier pixels
and expecting to get the detail, which we just are gonna miss things.
Yeah.
But yeah, it's, there's a lot of things that we have talked about, a
lot of things we haven't talked about.
This is something we kind of have, but kind of haven't.
So I guess we straddled the line a little bit on that one.
I'm, I'm kind of torn as to whether I want to start going back and finding
specific content that we've talked about that just needs refreshing
or start looking for things that we just haven't, because again.
We've never taken on conversations about, you know, reflectivity or reflectivity
or some of the more, I dunno, feminist approaches to the way that we do things.
We, I think, incorporate a lot of those ideologies in what we do, but
we haven't really talked about them.
You know, those kind of things.
It would be interesting, but that we haven't touched on.
I think it'd be interesting.
But the challenge I think is of course is uh, this often happens.
I don't mean to call out Sue, but she rightfully sometimes says,
look, I feel like I need to do some background on that, whatever topic
it is, you know, that we bring up.
And I go, that's fair because you don't, you don't wanna make sure you understand.
The landscape a little better.
So I think we'd have to do a little bit of that.
So it'd have to be planned a bit, but I think it would be a very interesting to
tease at some of those things that aren't necessarily are are explicit wheelhouse.
But I also think it would be fun to go back and look at some of our
old stuff and see what's changed.
And in the end we won't do either of those.
We'll just keep,
I don't know.
Or has it changed?
Yeah.
Going
forward we have things.
I mean, I, I think it would be fun to talk a little bit about the, you
know, the isms or to talk about some of these, these reflexivity and, and
all that sort of stuff a little bit.
And I think also we did a little bit of critique of geography
as a, as a. Discipline today.
And even disciplines as disciplines, uh, today.
So think it could be fun to talk a little bit about that.
So maybe, you know, I, I'm gonna, I'll push for it.
Okay.
Sure.
Uh, if you have any ideas of what we should be discussing
or wanna be interviewed and have a chat,
well Okay.
The people who wanna be interviewed, apologies.
I am terrible at replying.
But maybe I will eventually reply to you.
Uh, we do have an interview coming up in the near future.
I don't remember if the next episode or not, but I'll be talking to the
folks from World Pop about their new dataset that they're about to put
out, um, in the next two episodes.
I've got two on the horizon.
I haven't got 'em scheduled.
Scheduled because they're two very busy people, but that'll be fun too.
But do feel free to, to reach out to podcasts@veryspatial.com 'cause
I might actually be looking at email that day and it may not get buried,
but I'm not gonna put money on it.
Maybe I should.
You start using an AI driven mail.
We should have
a form, we should have an online form.
Yeah.
But the problem is, is with an online form, somebody still has to check it.
That's fair.
And well actually no, it could email you, but you know.
Yeah.
But then we're back to Sure.
Still check it, they thing.
So right back where we started, yes.
Something has to.
Another part has to happen that is human based and that's where it all goes wrong.
Um, yeah, of course if you do have an event, let us know about
it, and we will hopefully share it over@podcastresearch.com
as I mentioned before,
and I would like to not only, you know.
Go to events in geography, obviously related to our disciplines, but you know,
go to things that are tally related, even like sort of local politics related.
Next week I'll be at the West Virginia Municipal League, which will be
a lot of fun because they're not normally thinking about either GIS or
geography in West Virginia at least.
But it's gonna be fun to sort learn how they think about these concepts.
So there's lots of other opportunities out there, you know, branch out
a little bit, stretch yourself.
We're gonna be coming up a click on Earth Science Week.
In the middle of October, geography Awareness Week, November the Fall,
AG Regional meetings.
Yeah.
The a a G in, uh, San Francisco this year.
So
this coming year?
Yeah.
Amusingly both the A A G and the A SAA, which is Society for American Archeology,
are both gonna be in San Francisco.
They're just gonna be like a month and a half apart.
Oh, you have to stay there whole time.
Yeah.
Can't do That's, that's two plane tickets.
That's, yeah.
That's pricey.
Well, there, there was one year that they were, that.
Well, A a G and something else.
Were back to back.
And I almost stayed for both, but didn't, I don't remember what it was anymore.
That was a long time ago.
Maybe that was the P-C-A-A-C-A that we missed one year.
But yeah, let us know if you have an event.
And of course if you'd like to reach us individually, I could be
reached at sue@veryspatial.com.
You can reach me atFrank@veryspatial.com and you can reach our missing member
today at barb@veryspatial.com.
I'm available at jesse@veryspatial.com and of course, you can find all
of our contact information over at very spatial.com/contacts.
As always, we're the folks from very spatial thanks for
listening,
and we'll see you in a couple weeks.
No one really cares.
What you say is long as you mean it.
What's the point in wearing a face if you don't believe it?
It's honestly, it's best to be.
True to who you are and try to be a version of something that you not
close your eyes and let it all just wash away and it, you don't have to change.
You'll see that perfect is imaginary.
You don't have.
To carry.
Hey, just be yourself.
No one has it all figured out.
One day you'll see it even when your head's filled with doubt.
Your heart's underneath it.
Honestly, it's best to be true to who you are.
All you need is there to breathe, to give it one more shot
and just close your eyes.
Let it all just wash away and give it time.
You don't have to change.
You'll see.
Imaginary, you don't.
Close your eyes.
Let it all just wash away it time.
You don't have to change a thing.
Soon you'll see that perfect imaginary, you don't have.
Just be and close your eyes.
Let it all just wash away in time.
You don't have to change thing.
Soon you'll see that perfect imaginary, you don't.