Lost Without You

December 19, 2025

AI Summary

5 min read

🎙️ The Voices & The Context

The Format: This narrative podcast episode blends hosted storytelling, Reddit user interviews, and expert segments to explore Google Maps' 20-year impact during crises like Hurricane Katrina and everyday navigation, delivering a nostalgic yet cautionary tone.
The Format: A narrative story with interviews and host banter.
The Key Players:
- Hosts Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson share playful, curious chemistry, riffing on personal map memories and attempting a real-world "get lost" challenge for comedic effect.
- Guests include Reddit users Scooter1021, Wayne, and Laureen, ordinary people sharing intimate Katrina survival tales; plus Map Men duo Mark Cooper Jones (former geography teacher) and Jay Foreman (comedian), famous for their witty YouTube map explainers and new book This Way Up.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Memories of Homes Before Hurricane Katrina**
2 (01:47) **Hurricane Katrina Strikes (August 29, 2005)**
3 (04:12) **Introduction to Google Earth as Lifeline**
4 (06:49) **Launch and Early Wonder of Google Maps/Earth (2005 Context)**
5 (08:14) **Redditors Assess Damage via Satellite Imagery**
6 (14:51) **Emotional and Practical Impacts of Early Google Tools**
7 (17:29) **Broader Cultural Shifts: Dependency and Power Dynamics**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

2025 marks 20 years of Google Maps — a tool that many of us would be, quite literally, lost without.

We hear from New Orleanians who used Google Maps/Google Earth in its inaugural year to survey the damage to their homes following Hurricane Katrina.

We also talk to the internet's Map Men, who ask whether "the best maps humanity has ever produced are simultaneously the worst maps for humanity?" in their new book, "This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (And Why It Matters)."

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