Hey there, I'm your host Jacob Pinter.

And I'm your host, Patty Boyd.

You're listening to NASA's Curious Universe.

This is the third episode of our series about how we study our favorite planet, Earth.

Now, we spent some time on the water last week exploring what makes our world an ocean planet.

This week, we're back on land, which is where I belong, honestly.

Now, Patty, I don't know about you, but at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was at home.

I was really, really bored.

And I picked up a new hobby. It wasn't sourdough,

like a lot of people. But what I did is I would take out my phone. I would open one of the

map apps and I would just find some random place somewhere on the world where I had never

actually been, a place I didn't know anything about. And I would just zoom in and see what I could see.

You know, it wasn't as good as actually traveling, but it wasn't bad. It was like the next best thing.

I love that because the whole world was experiencing that at the same time, right? So you're kind of looking at the global earth,

looking at us all in that same blue marble. I go in the opposite direction, Jacob. I love maps, too.

I love thinking about where things are, but I also love zooming out and getting that big,

broad picture of the earth as a single place, looking at what it looks like over the poles or at

the tropics. So, you know,

maps are so important and cool. The thing that hit me, I guess, is that we just take it for granted.

Like, you have this thing in your pocket that can zoom in on any part of our globe or zoom out

and see the entire thing. You can see what it looks like on the ground pretty much anywhere.

NASA satellites power those mapping apps on our phones,

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