Dr. Larsen's World Geography

If this podcast were a Buzzfeed article, it would be a list of reasons why most Westerners are wrong about Africa. We will explore the various kinds of kanju (Yoruba for ‘to hustle’) in African society, and how kanju logic has transformed the continent into a hub of creativity.

In this exploration of South America, we consider the many ways memento mori, remembering our death, manifests through death rituals, Napoleon Chagnon’s Darkness in Eldorado conspiracy, and the end of nature. What becomes clear is that life contains a myriad of ends. But with that comes an array of new beginnings.

This episode, we will look at how rebellion takes place in the modern political and economic realms: through reggae music, the story of Pancho Villa, Banana Republics in Central America, and the Cuban Revolution. We build upon the idea that rebellion is a multifaceted form of place-making and place-destruction, involving not just political ideologies, but also culture and economics.

Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean represent arguably some of the most misunderstood regions to Americans. This episode, we will explore rebellions against common colonial narratives, as well as the first slave-led rebellion in the New World. Much of this episode’s discussion will be centered on the island of Hispaniola, which will gain much more significance as we move forward.

This week, we will dive into the American worldview and examine the theme of interdependence with the natural world and one another. We will identify strategies for how to slow down our thinking about hot-button issues, interpret information we receive from news outlets, have impossible conversations, and understand how democracy works.

Synthesis involves the ability to link information together to create new knowledge. We will explore synthesis as one of geography’s capabilities and why it is central to your life.

Range is the first capability we will explore in this podcast. Range reflects the breadth of geography. We will briefly explore how cultivating range in geography can help your career.

Have you ever felt like an outsider or an outcast? Human history is filled with tales of these people. Places of exile and confinement are products of society’s fear of disorder and desire for control. In this podcast, we will explore what it is like to be an outsider, outcast, or outlaw Southeast Asia and Oceania.

For this episode, we will talk about how paradoxes, insideness and outsideness, and boundaries can help us better understand the dynamics of East and South Asia.

The Middle East, or Southwest Asia, will be our main region of focus. Dr. Richard Haass (2020) is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and was the Middle East advisor to President George H.W. Bush. He mentions three themes that distinguish the Middle East from other world regions: religion, energy, and violence. I will expand on each of these themes to give us a better sense of the Middle East.