Geography Matters

In this podcast Klaus Dodds and I go back to a topic we discussed in the first series - how, when and where does geography matter. We start by arguing that everything that happens in the world happens in both time and space. In that sense geography is everywhere. But we argue that the role and importance of geography varies over time and across societies. In the Age of Discovery sailors from Weste...

Oceans are very important. They cover 71% of the worlds's surface and, as well as their importance for fishing, trade and transport they play a major role in climatic and environmental stability. They absorb a very high proportion of the C02 we produce and without their absorbtion capacity the world would be heating up much faster. They also transport the heat received from solar radiation from th...

Regional inequality is an important issue in almost every country. There are almost always more prosperous or more developed regions and less prosperous and less developed regions. The reason is simple. Although it is theoretically possible to have such things as education and health care distributed relatively equally over space, it is impossible for economic resources to be equally or evenly dis...

Strategic minerals are minerals which countries deem to be particularly important for various reasons - it could be for energy needs, for exports or for defense or high tech industry. What makes a mineral strategic can change over time. Arguably, coal was an important strategic mineral during the industrial revolution and during the steamship era. Before it was replaced by oil, navies had to have...

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has become an increasingly hot issue in the last year or two. There are major debates about its potential impact on the labour market, on society and on human beings themselves. In this episode, our focus on more restricted, looking solely at the geographical distribution and concentration of AI, and its implications for power supply, for cooling and space. We look...

In this episode we follow up on the implications of the American capture of President Maduro of Venezuela and President Trump's anouncements about the nature and future of American foreign policy. We apologise if it seems we are paying undue attention to this but it is very important and is radically reshaping the world we live in. President Trump has also announced (again) that the USA needs Gree...

This episode looks at the geography and geopolitics of oil and gas - its distribution, its production and consumption. Energy, and particularly oil and gas, are crucial to making the modern world go round and they have been for well over 100 years. Big US oil companies emerged in the 1920s and BP became a major player in Persia (now Iran). Together they account for just over half of world energy u...

The world is undergoing a process of rapid urbanization - the movement of population from rural to urban areas. This is very important because it means that an increasing share of the world's population now live in cities The UN estimated in 2007 that half (50%) the world population now lives in cities and maybe 70%+ by the end of this century. This is a dramatic change from the world of our ances...

At the end of November 2025 the US government published America's New National Security Strategy. This punchy, hard hitting, document did not mince its words. The basis of America's new security strategy is very clear:America first. To keep the USA at the forefront of the global economy , technology and defense. It was also clear that the current administration thinks that previous post war Americ...

In this episode we discuss some aspects of how and why geography matters. If we go back a hundred years or so there was an intellectual argument about the extent to which geography determined the future of a country or a region. Those who argued that it did were 'geographical determinists'. A recent example of this is the fascinating 2022 book by Ian Morris entitled ' Geography is Destiny: Britain...

This episode has a slightly different format. I discuss with Klaus Dodds, my co-host, and Mia Bennett of the University of Washington, their new book 'Unfrozen: the fight for the future of the Arctic'. It starts by asking both Mia and Klaus how they got interested in the Arctic and how it is defined. As they note, the Arctic is often defined as those areas north of 66 degrees of latitude (the Arct...

Global population changes are complex but it can be argued that many countries, but not all, fall into one of two groups, each with very different problems. First, there are the relatively poor, low income, developing countries with high birth rates and rapidly growing populations. Most sub Saharan African countries fall into this group. Second, there are richer, developed, countries with low birt...

Global population change is important and it has a distinct geography. But first its important to note some general changes. Global population has increased dramatically over the last 200 years. In 1800 the global population was estimated to be about 1 million. There were high birth rates, no modern medicines or health care, and high death rates. Most people died relatively young if they survived...

Geopolitics has a long history but it can be defined as how, where, when and why geographical factors, physical, economic and social influence the influence of political power, the shape of international relations and the strategic decision making of states and other entities, including both private companies and other non state actors. Where and when to invest is increasingly important globally a...

Geopolitics is, as its name suggests, where geography and politics intersect. The geopolitics of food focuses on how food production, trade, and consumption are influenced by and influence political relationships between nations. Traditionally, geopolitics tended to focus on questions of strategic conflicts between states. but in the modern world issues of food security and sustainability hav...

This episode follows on from the previous one 'Where does our food come from?' This episode focuses more on food consumption but also touches on food production. Our starting point is the global food supply system from which most people in the developed world now get their food. The main distribution network are the supermarkets which all have integrated food supply chains. This means that whether...

The geography of food production is an important topic. We all need to eat, and at some times and in some places many people have not had enough to eat - millions of -people have starved. But there are big global variations in where our food comes from, and how it is produced and distributed. Two of the major influences are soil and climate both of which set limits to what can be grown or produced...

The recent election of Pope Leo, an American, who had worked most of his life in Peru, replacing Pope Benedict from Argentina, raised debates about whether the new Pope might be from black Africa or South East Asia. It hightlighted the geography of religions. There are an estimated 5.5 billion people in the world with religious beliefs: the three biggest being Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. But...

The South China Sea is a region of growing international importance and growing conflict. It occupies an area of about 3.5 million sq km and it is bounded on the north by Southern China and Taiwan, on the east by the Philippines, on the south by Borneo and Malaysia, and on the west by Vietnam. It constitutes the only sea which China has direct access too after it lost direct access to the Pacific...

Whatever the arguments about causes, there is no doubt that the world has been getting considerably warmer over the last 50 years and much warmer over the last 20 years. Mean average global temperature has risen by 1.4 degree C over the last 100 years and it has now speeded up and almost all the hottest years in the last 100 years have been in the last 20 years. Mean annual temperatures are now in...

Suggesting that America is an empire may seem a bit bizarre as America does not have any colonies at present but if we take a wider perspective, America has a large number of overseas territories and possessions (American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands), and even more overseas military bases: in South Korea, The Philippines, Japan, Okinawa, Germany, Turkey and of course the UK where,...

European empires have a long history and can be traced back to the late C15th when Spanish and Portugese explorers were pushing further and further south down the west coast of Africa. Eventually in 1492 Columbus discovered the New world and the scene was set for Spain and Portugal to divide it up between them. But around the same time Cabot navigated to Newfoundland (the name gives it away) and L...

British and European listeners will probably be familiar with the fact that many European countries developed extensive overseas empires from about 1500 onwards. First the Spanish and Portugese, then the Dutch, then the British, French, German etc. We will discuss these European empires in the next episode. But empires have a much longer history - think back to the Romans, 2000 years ago. At its m...

Most developed western countries have got some form of welfare state or welfare support for their population. These started in some countries in a rudimentary way in the late 19th century or the interwar years, but most countries saw rapid development in the years after WWII. This was when Britain saw the start of National Insurance, the NHS, free secondary school and university education etc. But...