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99 Percent Invisible: Mini-stories

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The 99 Percent Invisible podcast is an excellent one for geography teachers as well as students.  So many episodes deal with the unspoken things that make our world the way it is—unnoticed architecture and design with a heavy dose of urbanism and the built environment.  The particular episode has four “mini-stories” and each of them has some compelling geographic/landscape component to it.

OMNIBUS

Also, here is a another great podcast with some trivia nerdiness from Ken Jennings (the Jeopardy champ who authored Maphead and presented at NCGE) is part of the Omnibus Project, a podcast with some excellent geographic nuggets (disclaimer: the language and content for this podcast is not always classroom-friendly).  Here are some geographic episodes about Cincinnati Chili, Alexander von Humboldt, Induced Demand (traffic), the Qibla, the Blue Men of the Sahara, the Port Chicago Disaster, Bir Tawil, the Sentinelese, and the Darien Gap.

GeoEd Tags: 99pi, podcast.

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Only in Cincinnati will I eat this!  Listen to the Cincinnati Chili episode!
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Hawaiian Shirts

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“There are a few ways to tell if you’re looking at an authentic, high-quality aloha shirt. If the pockets match the pattern, that’s a good sign, but it’s not everything. Much of understanding an aloha shirt is about paying attention to what is on the shirt itself. It’s about looking at the pattern to see the story it tells.” SOURCE: 99 Percent Invisible

An article of clothing is a product of the culture that made it and the place that it is from.  If a place has a complex cultural history, with series of migrations that have shaped the place, then the cultural artifact might have a rich product as well.  Such is the case with the Aloha shirt from Hawaii.

GeoEd Tags: 99pi, podcast, culture, migration, colonialism, unit 3 culture.

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How to Build a Smart City

We are in the midst of a historic (and wholly unpredicted) rise in urbanization. But it’s hard to retrofit old cities for the 21st century. Enter Dan Doctoroff. The man who helped modernize New York City — and tried to bring the Olympics there — is now C.E.O. of a Google-funded startup that is building, from scratch, the city of the future.

Source: freakonomics.com

Urbanism isn’t just the study of urban geography as it is, but it also looks to use ideas of design, architectural, transportation, and sustainability to create better cities.  This Freakonomics podcast looks at ways that New York City has changed, with ideas of how to start a new city being experimented with in Toronto.  This 99PI podcast looks at European urbanist ideas that shaped many cities that were damaged during WWII (part II).  Successful cities bring in more residents which bring higher housing costs–so can a city be too successful for it’s own good?  San Francisco grapples with changing economic issues as it is too expensive to hire workers to fill low-skill jobs. 

 

Tags: urbanism, podcast, architecture, transportation, housing, place, planning.

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How to Train Your Dragon Child

Every 12 years, there’s a spike in births among certain communities across the globe, including the U.S. Why? Because the Year of the Dragon, according to Chinese folk belief, confers power, fortune, and more. We look at what happens to Dragon babies when they grow up, and why timing your kid’s birth based on the zodiac isn’t as ridiculous it sounds.

Source: freakonomics.com

1976. 1988. 2000. 2012.  We often assume that births on a graph in any given year will follow a smooth linear pattern similar to the years around it, but the Chinese zodiac and the mythical standing of the dragon can create spikes in diasporic communities away from the mainland.  This economic podcast offers an interesting glimpse into the looks some of the communal impacts of a mini-baby boom and cultural reasons for these patterns. 

 

Tags: Taiwan, podcast, population, demographic transition model, models, unit 2 population. 

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The Geography of AC

“The modern built environment in the United States is now totally dependent on air conditioning. A lot of our buildings would be uninhabitable in the summer without AC, and all of the electricity needed to keep it running.”

Source: 99percentinvisible.org

Like so many 99 percent invisible podcasts, this blends urban design, social geography, local history in a way that deepens our understanding of place. Air conditioning has powerfully reshaped so many geographic patterns that many of ways.  Some mentioned in this podcast include: a) the rapid expansion of the Sun Belt, b) less climatically and regionally distinctive architecture can now be found in the cultural landscape, and c) an enormous amount of energy is consumed to maintain our hyper-cooled buildings (the U.S. now uses as much electricity for air conditioning as it did for all purposes in 1955). 

 

Tags:  podcast, architecture, housing, landscape, place planning.

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How Dollar General Is Transforming Rural America

“Dollar General stores thrive in low-income rural towns, and the deep-discount chain has opened hundreds of new shops in the past year.”

 

Dollar General is set to open 1,000 locations this year, for a total of more than 14,000 stores. It will have more stores than McDonald’s has restaurants in the entire country. That includes plenty of urban locations, but the chain’s bright yellow and black signs pop up about every 10 miles along many remote state highways. Like Walmart, it has rural roots. Dollar General started in small-town Kentucky. Al Cross, who runs the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky, says Dollar General competes with the world’s largest retailer on price and convenience.

 

Tags: rural, retail, podcast.

Source: www.npr.org

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Why Don’t We All Speak the Same Language?

There are 7,000 languages spoken on Earth. What are the costs — and benefits — of our modern-day Tower of Babel?

Source: freakonomics.com

These two podcasts are great mainstream looks at issues that filled with cultural geography content.  So many languages on Earth is clearly inefficient (the EU spends $1 billion per year on translation), and yet, linguistic diversity is such a rich part of humanity’s cultural heritage.  Listen to the first episode, Why Don’t We All Speak the Same Language? as well as the follow-up episode, What Would Be the Best Universal Language?

 

Tags: language, culture, worldwide, English, regions, diffusion, technology.

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Pakistan’s traditional third gender isn’t happy with the trans movement

For centuries, South Asia has had its own Khawaja Sira or third gender culture. Now, some third gender people in Pakistan say the modern transgender identity is threatening their ancient culture.

Source: www.pri.org

Sometimes our assumptions about a society, and how they might react to cultural issues are just that…assumptions.  I for one was very surprised to learn that Pakistan had a a traditional third gender. 

 

Tags: culture, development, podcast, gender, Pakistan,  sexuality, South Asia, religion.

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Mexico City 1968

“The 1968 Olympics took place in Mexico City, Mexico. It was the first Games ever hosted in a Latin American country. And for Mexico City, the event was an opportunity to show the world that they were a metropolis as worthy as London, Berlin, Rome or Tokyo to host this huge international affair. The 1968 Olympics were decreed ‘the Games of Peace.’ So Wyman designed a little outline of a dove, which shop owners all over the city had been given to stick in their windows. A protest movement, led by students, was growing in the city around [the organizers and designers]. These protestors believed the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) catered to wealthy Mexicans rather than the poor, rural and working class. Although the country had been experiencing huge economic growth, millions of people had still been left behind. The ‘Mexican Miracle’ hadn’t reached everyone.”

Source: 99percentinvisible.org

Few years are as powerful in the minds of Mexican identity as the year 1968.  Like so many 99 percent invisible podcasts, this blends urban design, social geography, local history in a way that deepens our understanding of place. The built environment can be molded to project an image, and can be used to subvert that same message by the opposition.    

 

Tags: sport, Mexico, Middle America, urban, architecture, place, landscape.

 

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