Brian Ler on WNYC, and now we will revisit one of the questions from the science topics

Pledge Drive quiz we did back on May 17th. We had asked a question about how many continents

there were, and we figured that was a low-hanging fruit kind of question, but it may have been

more complicated than the answer we gave. So we're following up, thorough and accurate,

we hope, and also because this is really interesting. The question was this, true or false?

There are eight continents on Earth,

and the answer that we had as the correct answer was true.

The seven, quote, unquote, obvious continents that most people grew up

learning about Asia, Africa, North and South America,

or Australia, or Oceania, Antarctica,

and Europe, plus something called, more recently discovered, Zelandia, number eight, that was

documented just last year as a new, quote, continent. So we framed it as a science question,

but after a lot of back and forth about it,

it looks like we were actually wrong, or at least wrong, to frame such a simple question

about what turns out to be a complicated topic. Complicated because those seven obvious continents

are really only obvious to those who learn geography here in the United States.

In other places in the world, they treat North and South America as one continent

because they're one landmass, the human-made Panama Canal, notwithstanding.

And some places in the world treat Europe and Asia as one continent, also because it's one landmass.

In reality, there's no scientific consensus on what makes a continent because the question is as much about

human culture as it is about geology or geography.

So joining me now to tell us everything they didn't teach us in

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