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What is Map Nerd?

A community of explorers over 500K followers & 100M views strong

If you’ve ever found yourself scrolling through Google Maps doing some virtual sightseeing, looking to spot something cool, this is for you.

Map Nerd is all about discovering, exploring, and sharing unique places, cultures, countries, towns, borders, roads, transportation, and other interesting things on maps.

Think of it like a supplement to your own travels and armchair explorations, adding interesting places and fun facts to your worldly knowledge; Fascinating bits about corners of our world that are perfect to share at your next dinner party, inspire a new travel destination, or kickstart an obsession about a new far-off part of our map.

Things like…

• The world’s most remote and unique places 🗿🛖🌋

• Border lines that go right through towns, streets, & homes📍🗺️🧭

• Strange, hidden, & wild International quirks from other countries 🌍🌏🌎

• Answers to burning geographic questions, like… Does anyone actually live in Antarctica? or What the heck is a Commonwealth country? 🧐🤯😲

Map Nerd started in Spring 2022 posting a few TikTok video stories on places that I find fascinating. Now, Map Nerd is now more popular than I thought there were people who cared about maps! The videos eventually made it to YouTube & Instagram too…

500K+ followers and 100M+ views later, I’m so happy to have found a community of fellow map nerds from all over the world.

This Substack newsletter is a natural and highly requested expansion of the Map Nerd videos posted on social. It includes all the map goodness of the social posts plus lots of extras to dig deeper and discover more.

New newsletter posts are published about twice a month, for you to peruse at your leisure (I will NEVER overload your inbox - I hate that just as much as the next guy).

Stories are grouped in these general themes:

• 📍 Bonkers Borders Series: they’re basically made-up lines, but that have drastic consequences to people who live on them.

• 🗿 Amazing Places Series: unique, strange, hidden, remote, wild locations across the globe that most people don’t know exist.

• 🚊 Crazy Transit Series: from bridge with tunnels to Melbourne Hook Turns, transit networks and road rules are wildly different all over the map.

• 🧐 Map Facts Series: fun geography trivia, like why all maps lie or why Burger King is called Hungry Jacks in Australia, and answers to burning geographical questions, like Does anyone actually live in Antarctica?

• 📰 Map News: geography in the news, like when Russia changed its street names to piss of the USA or an decades-old border dispute is finally resolved.

• 🗣️ Convos: Conversations & Q&As with people who live in the unique places we talk about

I look forward to exploring with you!

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Why Subscribe?

This newsletter has exclusive content that my social video posts do not! Like…

• 🧐 Lots more info, fascinating details, & fun facts to learn more about the places and things discussed in the video,

• 🎥 Behind the scenes + Cut for Time,

• 🎗️Ways to support, travel, get involved in the communities I talk about, &

• 🗺️ More map fun, like: maps in the news, a good map to gawk at, a bad map to laugh at, and lots more goodies to add something interesting to the conversation

It’s an opportunity to dive deeper into something if you’re interested in it. Or leave it alone for that week if you’re not. Not all map nerds are made exactly alike :)

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and archive of all the stories, to explore or re-explore whenever you want. Never miss an update.

Stay up-to-date

You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.

Join fellow Map Nerds

Be part of a community of people who share your passion for maps and the interesting, crazy world we live in. We explore together!

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About Me

I love discovering, learning, & sharing fascinating things about world places.

Always have.

I spend more time than I’d like to admit exploring maps, and my attempts to share really cool finds and insightful discoveries with my family usually get ignored 🫤 (they’ve heard enough of my map obsession to last a lifetime!). So…

I began making short videos on TikTok and YouTube about places I find fascinating in Spring 2022. It was (and still is) a way for me to have fun with topics I love. Also a way to blow off steam, get a creative hobby, and to finally have a reason to spend hours researching and learning (yes, nerdy!)​

I studied geography and urban sociology at a prestigious university, but I didn't use that degree as much as I could’ve/should’ve for a career so I guess I'm making up for lost time :) I was a US Park Ranger for the National Park Service, worked conservation in Central America & Alaska, lived in big cities like New York, Los Angeles, & Rome, as well as rural towns from New Mexico to Vermont. I’ve also visited some 30-40 nations around the globe, but there’s so many more I hope to get to. So I have some “cred” (whatever that means to each of us), but much more valuable to me is being able to kickstart an exploration of a place or topic by sharing it and then exploring together with people from all over the world, who have all sorts of unique insights and points of view.

Thanks for exploring with me!

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Suggestions/Comments/ Corrections?

I’m available if there’s something you’d like to see/say/add: email me at me@amapnerd.com.

I try hard to get all the facts right, but we're all human... if you notice a mistake, please let me know! (and provide back-up for your case - I like you, but i’m not gonna just take your word for it ;)

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