You're listening to a very spatial podcast, episode 760, May 11th, 2025. Hello and welcome to a very spatial podcast. I'm Jesse. I'm Sue. I'm Barb. And this is Frank. And this week we're gonna be talking about various things including. So we're gonna be talking about we're in feed spots, top 15 geography podcasts, along with many other great podcasts that you should check out, and many that aren't on that list, but there's so many more now than there used to be, even within the past year.
We enjoy watching across the whole variety of what's geography and geospatial. So check them out. So some really cool podcasts on that list. And and. If, if you haven't had a chance and you're a podcast person, obviously listening heart, so you are at some level, there's some great stuff and there's a lot of different perspectives on there. Interesting enough, Esri's podcast, which a lot of people I think, in my opinion, falsely assume is like a, you know, sales thing. Mostly it isn't.
There's a lot of great stuff there, but there's, you know, geography coffee and geography, which I love. And you know, it's lots of stuff. Please take a chance take some time to go out and listen and give these, these different podcasts a chance. I would say these one, these are all great. There's also lots of specialty ones. That's what always was.
One of the great things about podcasting even when we got started, right, is that there might be a little niche that you're super into and there's likely a cool podcast out there for that as well. And, and I also wanna make a, a shout out to anyone that has a Geography podcast to apply for the Signal Awards. Frank and I are judges again this summer to, you know, go out there and put yourself out there to get recognized on to the news.
First up in the news, a milestone for a very famous documentary filmmaker, huge career at the BBC David Attenborough. So if you've not heard of David Attenborough you've been on Rock, his great series, the Life Collect. You, you need to get out of underneath the rocks. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. His just tons of series over the, his career and amazing, amazing cinematography and all of them, but the different life on earth collections and all kinds of other things as well. So 99 years.
Wow. Amazing. So 70 years in broadcasting. And, and, and so just to give you an indication of how important he is we didn't actually say his proper name. It's actually Sir David. That's correct. Borough. He is a, a knight of the, of the crown. Very important. I was thinking about this, I was thinking about how long he's been introducing people to, you know, just the, the wonders of the earth. And I thought, I wonder.
What is impact is when you compare it to what people talk about when they say, you know, the, the impact that seeing the earth from space had on people. And I would imagine that they both had a, a huge impact on how people view the world around them. Makes me wanna go back and, and watch a few. Next up in the news, a little bit of remote sensing news. So, NASA's been giving updates on their next mission in the very storied and successful Lancet series.
So that mission is Lancet Next, which I believe is still on track for a 20 30, 31 launch. But there's some things that are gonna be different from previous LANsat. So, LANsat of course, has been evolving throughout its missions. Currently eight and nine are orbiting and, capturing imagery with their OLI, I think is in both of them. The operational land imager and seven is TM plus.
I don't, I've, I was like not finding references to, to seven, so I have to find a status that maybe it's, it's you know, been pulled offline again. But in any event some of the information that's been coming out recently about the new sensors that's gonna be on Lancet Next, and also Lancet Next, I believe they're planning to launch three. On the same launch vehicles, so they're gonna have kind of a mini constellation going on.
But the, the kind of interesting thing that they've been highlighting in recent updates is that the sensor's gonna have an additional 15 bands from the 11 spectral bands that are currently on eight and nine. So that means they're gonna cover more of those parts of the spectrum that help us understand a certain phenomena on the surface of the earth.
So. If you know a little bit about it, I'm not gonna go into it too much, but some of the bands they're highlighting is first of all, they're gonna kind of revamp some of the existing bands. The sensor course will have higher resolution, so I think it's down maybe 10, 20 meters from the traditional Landsat 30. And then they're looking to. Try to help provide data for loss of different phenomena on surface of the earth.
So for example they highlighted their band six and seven that will be in the new sensor and they're looking at water and looking at things like the color of pigment and algae blooms and stuff. So that's one example. Any other good ones? Bands five, nine, and 10. So near infrared is also really important one.
So they'll have band five handling near infrared, and then they're also gonna have some others relating to vegetation and being able to look at issues related to plants like stress and stuff like that. And then some shortwave infrared on 19 to 21. So, remember. 26 bands total. 15 new ones. So lots more stuff to do. So now bands that will look at soil and plants and things like that. So check out the article and, and if you wanna go look at the mission status for Lance Set next.
I think just amazing updates. Oh, also in the the, what they're gonna be looking at is snowpack. And it's been really exciting over the past few years how much more we're learning about snowpack and things like glaciers. So it'll be interesting to see what this more look at subtle variations is gonna reveal that we didn't know before about what's happening there. So we have a sensor, right?
Going from oi, L-I-O-L-I can't say it today, as Sue said, going from OLI to whatever this one will be called. I'm curious. Think it's Landi? Yes, I think I saw that somewhere. So, LIS so we'll see what it's called. But it's, it's one of those things that really, like OLI really annoyed whenever I had to go from knowing which bands things were in the TM to the OLI. So this'll be annoying as well, but really good reason to be annoyed. 'cause more data better. Well, yeah.
'cause OLS got used to seven bands and then like, oh wait, it's 11 and OLI and now 26. Right. So, and some of them are, I think the numbering is gonna change slightly for some of the existing bands. Just like it did with Yeah, just like it did TM two LI, yeah. I had to, I had to like think what was seven Or is was five enhanced thematic map two or. Was that just seven? Because of course the early ones were multi spectrum. Four and five were tm and seven was ETM.
Yeah. So learn the names, but yeah. So I don't know. Next up in the news the saga around the Gulf of Mexico slash Gulf of America continues. Nope, nope, nope. There is no slash. You can keep going though. Fair enough. The Mexico has sued Google over changing the Google Maps to say Gulf of America. Their argument is that this was a decree by the United States that really only affects the geographic, geographic names, information system, or service, depending on who you ask.
And it really only affects those pieces of the Gulf of Mexico that are right up against the United States and the Gulf of Mexico is much. Bigger than that. And in fact, much more of it covers Mexico. So they're erroneously renaming this on a what amounts to an international system. That's the. Too long to read bit of it. The Mexican president says she has already filed a lawsuit.
I'm not sure it, it was unclear in the article and I think it's 'cause I think it's unclear from the president where with who is like, is this a in the Mexican legal system, US international court? I dunno. But the point is, is that these name changes have political ramifications and. They are oftentimes contested and they will continue to be contested.
So we may end up with a, a, unfortunately, according, to, I agree with Jesse, but unfortunately we may end up in certain context, having the slash because in the official document, official geographic names system, it would be Gulf of America erroneously, but it would be, and therefore, and everywhere else it'd be Gulf of Mexico. It's really interesting because there are a lot of legal ramifications, even at a, a local level.
And you know, this will be interesting in a court of law, just because we're seeing more cardiographic lawyers, people with a background in cartography map making and survey that you see in specialty areas within law firms, whether it's at a local level, national or international level that, you know, as a profession. It's, it'll be kind of interesting.
This will be I think we're fair, fairly familiar with this when we're talking about globes because, and, and particularly big, this big maps you used to see when you're in, in, you know, school K through 12, at least in the United States, that very expensive to purchase and, and schools don't have the resources and necessarily buy them on a, you know, ever basis. So some of these, some of these maps sit around for decades hung on the wall.
And you can date kind of when things, when the map was produced based upon those things like names and and whatnot. It's always kind of fun if you're a geography nerd to look at this. Oh yeah, this is probably from the seventies or whatever it may be. It, it's gonna be interesting that this, that if Jesse's right, I, I sincere agree with him. I sincerely hope he is we both are, that this is a blip of three years. I wonder how many maps get produced with this weird.
What would hopefully in the future be an anomaly. I was also wondering how long it will take for AI to catch up with it or to change things, you know, if anyone wants to, to test that out, it'll be, be interesting to see you know, how long AI takes to adapt to a name change in, in a map in what it produces. Just a quick note, France 20 four.com suggests or states that the president of Mexico did not say where. Or when the lawsuit was submitted.
Yeah, I think the BBC reported that as well, that, that the where and when was not, was not shared. I. Yeah, it, it, I mean it raises an inter a different interesting geography question of when it comes to things like this, what's the jurisdiction? Where are you sued, where are you not sued? You know that that's an interesting for really, really nerdy geographers who are also really, really nerdy legal people. Interesting.
Little question. It it's, I, I was thinking about phishing rates, that this is where it would come in. Shipping, logistics, blue economy. Well, I mean, its impact. Well, its impacts may be on that, but it's just again, a question of how that gets worked out. Mm-hmm. How a government sues a private company, you have to have standing. So it's a question of what, what court can you go to where you would've standing? Do you have to have standing?
Okay. Anyway, it's an interesting case study going on in the real world, jumping up to the moon. A Spanish company, GMV is working on Project Lupin, which is going to use existing moon orbiting satellites to aid navigation on the moon surface. So basically creating a, well, the article says GPS, but it's, if it's using existing satellites, which aren't of course, time-based satellites, then it's gonna use some other signal based system. But still.
Fun to think about the fact that we have enough satellites orbiting the moon at this point in time between the various countries that we can do differential calculus between signals from them. To get our locations, I suspect a significant percentage of our, our listenership just went, wait a minute. There's satellites ordering the moon.
It's just, you know, it's just, it's, it's one of those things that happens you just don't think about, like, and it's one of those what, and then you think about it for four seconds, you go, well, I guess that does make sense. But I just, all the, the landers, just the landers alone, each have a, a base that they were sent down from. Then of course you have LRO and, and things like that that are mapping the moon. Makes sense once I read it one? Yeah. This is like one of the next steps.
It's a pretty big step. And will it be an LPS, will it be an LPSA lunar positioning system as, as opposed to an NPSA Mars positioning system? Not quite as many satellites there. But just, you know, the, the this is it, it's kind of cool and neat that this is a, a naming convention we just haven't had to grapple with. 'cause GPS global positioning system, you know, obviously. What else would it be? Well, it's the Globe and then of course you have the whole fact that that's the US is named for it.
Right. And then others have their own names for their own systems, which they do. Maybe they would've called it GPS if they had the option, but they won't have the names. Well, yeah, I mean, it was the worst, most straightforward. So. But, but, but even if, even if we back off the name Right, they're all gnss. Right. Which is Well, it's still a globe, isn't it? Yeah, it is. But would it be an L-N-S-S-I mean, this is, I mean this is an interesting, it's, it's a globe semantic.
It's a semantic geogra geography naming thing in a way. Yeah. It's tough in English. When we say global do, and when we say global, do we mean, you know, earth or do we mean anything that's a sphere? Those are, those are future questions, right? When, because of course, earth is Earth and there are other plants potentially maybe centuries from now that we'll be going to and other moons. But the moon is the first moon, yeah. To to be very nerdy. They're calling them planets, not of earth.
There you go. So, and one last little note as we, as we roll out of this since we've talk about remote sensing, is that as we think about the con, the idea that there's, there's multiple satellites, orbit the moon, right? And all the ones here. So we just had one come back to Earth. Cosmos 4 85 a, a satellite launched long ago, like in the seventies, I think it was, that came back.
But one of the, the reason why I mentioned this, we're closing this out, is because with our capabilities to live track things now on sites like N two YO and all these other places, people were, we're watching it orbit as every time and then they were narrowing down the orbits. On which it would actually hit. And they were pretty good at it too. So I happened to watch a couple of them and, and watch the number of orbits.
Like started off, they were tracking like, I don't know, a dozen as they were zeroing in on the day. And then it was down to like three or four. And they were pretty good. I mean, they, it splashed down they think in the Indian Ocean. And so that's one of those things, right, that we think about with remote sensing is eventually something has to happen to those things. Either they just kinda orbit around or they come back. And just our ability and in the interest, right?
Lots of people were like, oh, I'm gonna follow this. And the comments were very good and like, oh my gosh, it's gonna go over my house, right? Because it was something that was not gonna burn up in the atmosphere. So anyway, kind of a little, a little aside to, to some of our, our news on the, on remote sensing and stuff is, you know, the, what happens when they're done?
Yeah, Emily Re, the spa Space gal did a special just to tell people if it's not something you were worried about before, you don't need to be worried about it now. It's gonna likely land in the ocean since, you know, yeah. Earth the ocean. But she also sparked an interest in it. And finally this week in the news a happy belated birthday to the National Science Foundation. It gave, it was created on May 10th, 1950, so it to 75 years old.
For those who are not aware are, are non-US listeners, the National Science Foundation's, a federal agency whose primary mission is essentially to. Promote support largely historically speaking, fund the development of basic scientific and technology research. So these are the kind of things that we all do that not necessarily you won't see an immediate return on investment, or won't be, you know, necessarily obvious. Out of the gate, how that's going to, you know, benefit a company.
And so that's sort of the baseline stuff for humanity. And then from there, many other agencies run with it and try to figure out, okay, what do you do with it? But also do companies and sort of help get research continuing so that we're on the cutting edge. So. It's, it's pretty important in the United States and has been historically.
I think it's fair to say that most of the people on this podcast would agree with a statement that it is grossly underfunded and always has been, but it is still very important. And that danger including specific areas including the SBS, is that right? The Social Behavioral sciences division is. I seeing a lot of issues right now, and that's where geography, anthropology sociology, political science, all is actually, maybe PoliSci not in that one, but the others all are.
And since that's a, you know, a huge part of our understanding of us and our interconnections so that human environment, geography, that human portion of it yeah. Let your Congress folks know that you would like to see. Geography continued to be funded by the National Science Foundation. And, and for their celebration, NSF is asking for people, organizations, scientists, people who have been involved with NSF to basically join in and talk about what they've done and the impact NSF has.
Has had on their lives. Also, several of the associations like the Association of American Geographers and A GU are also asking for geographers and geoscientists to get involved to, you know, showcase how NSF has impacted your field and the work that you've done. Data they've collected, technologies they, they've used or provided. So. That will be very exciting to see. 'cause NSF is one of those organizations that just always has cool things.
It's, it's where you go to if you are a small business or media, some sized business and you are trying to get an idea that's. Pie in the sky off the ground. That's one of the agencies you could go to that really understood what you were doing. And I talked to an NSF panel last year as part of a professional development. And it was really nice because they said they love geographers. 'cause geographers, you know, you know who we are, we like everything. We know a little bit of everything.
We're a holistic. So they really were asking for geographers to be involved in all aspects of NSF because we just. Get it, you know, we're, we just understand the, the world and how it's connected. So happy birthday NSF and to keep going with it. To connect it back to the previous thing we were talking about with nasa.
These are two of the places that you go to whenever you talk about basically any of the things that get us to today in terms of, not just in the US but around the world in terms of the technologies, our understanding, the world. Basically everything short of what NIH covers NASA and NSF have, have really kind of been there as the backbone to make sure that we get there.
We get everything from microwave ovens, from NASA to, I don't know, there's, I've already forgotten the whole list that I was just looking at yesterday of NSF things. Yeah. I mean, really it's world leading science and has been Yeah. For decades. Yeah. But I'm blinking. I hate blinking. Great things. And that's it for the news. In the web corner keeping the theme of NSF. NSF posted a facilities coloring book.
And I think it is awesome, not just for young people, but also for any, you know, adults out there because it really goes through the types of facilities they have. And a lot of them are geospatial, therefore collecting data. And so, you know, if you've had an interest in doing something fun and relaxing, that also. Talks about the, the different facilities, including like the McMurdo station and the, their very large arrays, different places around the world. Give it a look.
It's, it's a fun way to promote what they're doing. And I'd also encourage people, coloring pages are pretty easy to make. Think about making ones for your own organization to promote what you do. If, if I had one critique of their very nice coloring book is, they really should have put a map. 'cause they have all these great facilities all over the, the globe and different states and stuff like that.
And it'd been really cool to have a map you could color in too, with all the dots for each of the facilities. Yeah, right. Of course. We want you to head out and check out any events that you might have in your neighborhood or online. I dunno, do we have any events for this week? No events, but we have a whole bunch of the summer events coming up that will be be going on soon.
So if anyone's wanted to do the Geotech conference or any of those, now's the time to get registered in, get Ready to Attend in June. It's the Geotech Conference being the National Geospatial Technology Center of Excellence, which is still in Kentucky. It's in Kentucky, but the conference is going to be in Gettysburg, I think, or around that area.
And the U-S-G-I-F conference, geo Went conference going on in St. Louis this summer as well, you know, along with the course ESRI, user conference and many others. Others, but we're in the, in between times before the ones that are putting out calls for, for papers. Of course. If you'd like us to add your event to the podcast, send us an email to podcast@veryspatial.com. If you'd like to reach us into, if you'd like to reach us individually, I can be reached at sue@veryspatial.com.
I can be reached at barb@veryspatial.com. You can reach me atFrank@veryspatial.com, or you can follow me on any of the social medias at no par that I belong to. You can reach me at kindaspatial, and of course, you can find all of our contact information over at veryspatial.com slash contacts. As always, we're the folks from very spatial. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in a couple weeks.