On this week's On the Media, we continue our probe of the American frontier

with a look at how the map of the U.S. we grew up with has never shown us our true selves.

If you looked up at the end of 1945 and you saw a U.S. flag flying overhead,

it was more likely that you were living in a colony or occupied zone

than you were actually living on the U.S. mainland.

And the origins of the American Empire

lie in the so-called guano islands in the Caribbean.

I asked some historian friends,

what do you think is the worst job in the 19th century to have?

And I think I can now say with confidence,

guano mining's the worst.

America's holdings then expanded to include Samoa, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and elsewhere,

despite the claims of many a U.S. president.

We do not seek for ourselves one inch of territory in any place in the world.

An exploration of empire after this.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

Last April, Brooke embarked upon a journey to chart some key

differences between America's founding notions of itself and reality. Last week, we re-aired

part one of that series where the subject was the frontier, the official idea of frontier as the

birthplace of rugged individualism versus the revisionist view of it as a safety valve

...