Episode 15 of Map Men

So I learned something interesting and presumably annoying on my course today. Apparently convection currents have always been bunk. Some day they just snuck their way into our textbooks and we've been learning something false ever since! I haven't uh, put in any research to verify my lecturer's claim, but the "real" reason for continental movement he presented is twofold, slab pull and ridge push. Basically, 90% of motion is from the weight of the cool, dense, subducting plate pulling the rest of the plate along with it, and 10% of the motion is from the plate "sliding" down the ridge from whence it came. 7 minutes of Googling didn't land any big winners where a plucky journalist has already uncovered the lie of Big Convection. In fact, the only place I could find something that said "Scientists don't think convection currents are what move tectonic plates" is the Wikipedia page for Slab Pull: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_pull I'm aware that only suffering can come from a comment that says "Ha ha your video that you slaved away for hours and hours to get right and has been safely out in the world for weeks contains F A C T U A L I N A C C U R A C Y". But I thought it was a neat piece of information that I'm definitely going to be sharing wherever relevant and as often as I can. There's definitely a good Youtube video for a more sciency channel in there.

Theo Higgins

I only noticed this now - but really love that you are using the Fossils piece from Carnival of the Animals of Saint Saëns!

As a youtube author, you can also upload caption files that have timing information or not. If you don't have timing information, youtube will do its best to match the timing of the spoken words with the captions. It's generally pretty good.

Craig P Steffen

Ah, excellent. Nice, thanks!

Craig P Steffen

Who's the human-shaped dinosaur?

Asaf Sagi

11th is Jamiroquai

Asaf Sagi

I noticed too, and thought it was absolutely hilarious

Probably, they might take random clips like these when on other trips to use for these videos, great idea.

I'm a little disappointed that Marie Tharp didn't make it into the video. Her contributions to prove that Wegener was right get overlooked so often... Nonetheless: Great video! Watched it twice, as always, to fully appreciate all the small things you put in there! :D

You get subtitles? I only get offered the YouTube machine-generated ones

Martin Deutsch

if it's got 'saurus' in the name it's a dinosaur, that's how it works

Cliff Excellent

Yeah; that was good. I presume that was from another episode?

Craig P Steffen

“Like here in India” It’s the little effort for those types of little clips that made me want to be a patron haha. Such good content guys

Also, I love the 11 supercontinent shapes. 4th is the shape of Greater London? 7th is Scotland/England on its side? 9th is a pineapple, and 10th is the batman symbol. Which is perfect because if you don't notice the others it points you to that the others might be easter eggs too.

Craig P Steffen

Eyebrow gag had my kids & me in stitches 😀 also “New all the earth” we did chortle 😊

Grant

I admit that I only noticed the last change on my first watch-through, but on my second, noticed every one. (which is ideal for an easter-egg-type gag) I hope you can keep that as you patch the centimeters/millimeters thing.

Craig P Steffen

Hopefully you can just splice in a single-word voiceover change. Failing that, I hope that if you have to completely get rid of weatherman Mark in the early bit, he still stays for forecasting the coninental drift slightly later. It would be a terrible shame to get rid of that part. Can't wait!

Craig P Steffen

But whatever you do, please keep Professional-Looking Weatherman Jay, since that is the stuff of powerful nightmares.

At 4:22 you describe the Nubian and Somali plates as being in the Western Hemisphere. I think they're actually in the Eastern Hemisphere. Great episode and such eye-catching eyebrows!

Paul Neubert

Good grief! Oops. Well spotted! We're fixing that now. It sadly means getting rid of the Mark weatherman and replacing him with a Mark voiceover, but it'll be accurate now. Thank you thank you thank you!

Jay Foreman

I'm so glad you noticed! :D That took such a long time between takes!

Jay Foreman

Getting slightly out of fact-checking territory, but "overpopulation" being listed first of the problems faced by humanity felt a little lazy because (1) forecasts for world pop growth are being reduced as birthrates decline faster than expected, with the most up to date estimates saying that world pop will stop growing by 2100 and (2) whether the real problem is overpopulation or a mix of unsustainable lifestyles and access to resources is a fraught question, as I'm sure you know.

At 3:35 there's a math (or probably units) mistake. Mark states "Austrailia has moved 35 cm in the last 50 years" then in the next sentence says it's moving "7 cm per year", which probably is supposed to be "7mm per year".

Craig P Steffen

But great episode as always!

At 1:54, are you talking about Lystrosaurus? Because it a) lived before the dinosaurs and b) was a synapsid and thus more closely related to us than dinosaurs.

I am scared that Mark and Jay's eyebrows are going to achieve sentience and take over the world