I Have Always Loved Maps.

There Must Be Something Innate About Maps, About This One Specific Way Of Picturing Our World And Our Relation To It, That Charms Us, Calls To Us, Won’t Let Us Look Anywhere Else In The Room If There’s A Map On The Wall.

When You Make A Decision You Need Facts. If Those Facts Are In Your Brain, They're At Your Fingertips. If They're All In Google Somewhere You May Not Make The Right Decision On The Spur Of The Moment.

You Live Overseas, You See These Exotic Places And You Want To Know About Them. But, Weirdly, It Also Made Me Homesick For All These Very Prosaic Places In America.

You Watch An Old 'jeopardy!' And The Categories Alone Are Very Plain. 'poetry,' Or 'movies,' Or 'physics.' If You Watch It Now, Though, There'll Be A Theme Board Where The Categories Are All Hitchcock Movies. Lots More Jokes, Lots More High-concept Categories And Questions.

I Would Read The Atlas For Pleasure. I Knew It Was Weird. It Was Weird.