Hello, and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast, with a programme that looks at the numbers in the news, in life and in odd-shaped maps of the world. I'm Tim Harford.

The global news story of the week has undoubtedly been Greenland, the vast Arctic island

and autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.

This week, it's found itself at the centre of a geopolitical crisis.

It's the United States alone that can protect this giant mass of land, this giant piece

of ice, develop it and improve it and make it so that it's good for Europe and safe for

Europe and good for us.

And that's the reason I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States.

President Trump says he won't go ahead with the trade tariffs he'd threatened to impose on allied countries

that have supported Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland.

Mr. Trump said a meeting with the head of NATO, Mark Rutter, had led to the framework of a potential deal covering Greenland and the Arctic region.

As with any geopolitical crisis, it's always good to remind ourselves of the geography.

And when it comes to Greenland, that geography is more complicated than you might expect.

Greenland is one of the hardest places in the world to show on a map where it really is.

That's Jay Foreman, one half of the YouTube duo Map Men and co-author of the book,

This Way Up, When Maps Go Wrong. If you look up Greenland on a standard map of the world,

as almost all the statesmen and women of the world will have done this week, Greenland seems to be

blunt, absolutely massive, bigger than South America, bigger than China, bigger even than the entire

continent of Africa. It also appears to sit conveniently close to the entire continent of Africa.

It also appears to sit conveniently close to the east coast of the United States and much further away from Denmark.

But it turns out that this is all a bit of an illusion.

So why?

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