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Acquiring physical art for a museum requires a lot of planning and care. But what does it mean to acquire a digital artifact? You might be surprised to learn it’s less like the acquisition of a painting and more akin to how a zoo acquires a living tiger. In this episode, Andrea Lipps shares some insight into the inherent fragility of and challenges in acquiring digital media in her roles as a Curator of Contemporary Design and the Head of the Digital Collecting Department at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

Andrea Lipps & Curating Digital Artifacts

You can tell a good story with words. But a great story compels an audience through thoughtful visualizations. In this episode, Denise Lu walks us through her career in journalism—from her involvement in a student publication in college to her current role as Senior Graphics Reporter at Bloomberg News. We discuss what makes cartography and dataviz unique in a newsroom, the responsibility a journalist has when distilling complex events into a handful of graphics, and how giving a passionate PowerPoint presentation to your friends over Zoom could lead to an interactive article for one of the world’s largest media outlets.

Denise Lu & Telling Stories With Maps

As we emerge from three years of pandemic, social isolation, and political instability, how do we as humans cope with living in an uncertain world? How do we find joy and connection while acknowledging the inevitability and looming threat of climate change? In this podcast episode, Cartographer Jeffrey Linn introduces us to the concept of “Speculative Cartography”, an imaginative outlet for coping with the harsh realities we face through fantastical and satirical creativity.

Jeffrey Linn & Speculative Cartography

Collaborative tools for work and everyday life are more important now than ever before. Cartographer Mamata Akella brings “mapmaking thinking” to Felt, a fresh mapping platform that allows people to create maps together in real-time. With a portfolio of projects ranging from The National Park Service to Esri, Mamata has been a force in shaping the current state of digital mapping through brilliant design and innovative tooling. In this episode, we'll discuss the past, present, and future of collaborative cartography and how Mamata is helping Felt to push boundaries in web mapping for professional and casual mapmakers alike.

Cartography is a powerful tool for understanding the world and our place within it, but sometimes maps conceal more than they reveal. Throughout much of the history of cartography, maps have been used to forcibly claim territory and exploit the land, erasing the histories and claims of the people who lived there before. Native Land Digital is a new organization with the mission “to map Indigenous lands in a way that changes, challenges, and improves the way people see history and the present day.” In this episode we talk with Tanya Ruka, a Māori indigenous multimedia artist and designer who is the new Executive Director of Native Land Digital, about acknowledging the land we live on, how to map uncertainty, and the role indigenous knowledge plays in the fight against climate change.

The modern cartographer needs a lot more than mapping software alone to be successful. Map solutions often require a breadth of knowledge across a team of capable people who know how to speak each other’s language. That’s something Stephanie May learned throughout her career in the geospatial industry. In this episode, the Director of Geospatial at Stamen discusses the nuances of open data and software; shares her philosophies on how a team of cartographers, designers, and developers can effectively collaborate to solve a geospatial problem; and provides an overview the suite of free and public tools that Stamen has created to facilitate such challenges.

In this short bonus episode, data storyteller RJ Andrews discusses the milestones of the "Information Graphic Visionaries" book series about pioneers in data visualization. 

The field of data visualization and information mapping has historical roots that date back far earlier than most people would imagine. Micronesian explorers created navigation charts with sticks and shells for thousands of years before the introduction of electronic navigation technology. Hundreds of years ago, humans had the means to mechanically collect data on everything from the pulse of ocean tides to the pulse of a living heartbeat. Data storyteller RJ Andrews is on a mission to showcase the work of the visionaries who carved the path for those of us working in the field of cartography and information design, and through his latest book series, “Information Graphic Visionaries” he has accomplished this mission with astounding success.

RJ Andrews & The History of Information Graphics

Twice a year, people in every hemisphere of the world adjust their clocks to adhere to Daylight Saving Time. Whether you prefer these biannual changes or you’d rather leave your clock alone, cartographer Andy Woodruff has made an interactive map to help you make your case when complaining about it on social media. In this episode, we discuss how maps can show us what we already want to see, the nuances of temporal cartography, and what our individual opinions on ideal sunset times reveal about how humans think about time itself.

Andy Woodruff & Griping About Daylight Saving Time