Ridiculous Maps: That Time Everyone Thought California Was An Island

Ridiculous History

iHeartPodcasts

History, Society & Culture

4.3 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nowadays, pretty much anyone can easily find an accurate map of a city, a country, or the entire world. But this wasn't always the case. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore baffling cartography of old, when well-intentioned mapmakers, working with the best info they had at the time, often got things wrong. Our first episode in this continuing series: that time everyone thought California was an island.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Ridiculous History is a production of IHeart Radio. Welcome back to the show.
0:27.9	Fellow ridiculous historians.
0:29.7	Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
0:32.9	Let's hear it for The Man, the Myth, the Legend, the map maker, super producer, Mr. Max Williams.
0:41.3	Gobble, gobble, he's the map.
0:44.7	He's the map.
0:45.4	He's the map.
0:46.3	He's the map.
0:48.2	Don't sue us, Nick Jr.
0:50.5	Ah, Nick.
0:52.3	Everything's going fine.
0:53.6	Now, that's Mr. Noel Brown right there.
0:56.7	And that's, they call me Ben Bullen in this part of the world.
1:02.2	Guys, before we get into our history of ridiculous maps of yesteryear, I think we owe it to our fellow listeners to talk about
1:13.6	a slight kerfuffle we had. A lot of us were tuning in to ridiculous history recently and saw a
1:23.4	description of Doc Holiday as a deadly dentist only to hear a pretty in-depth exploration of the
1:34.0	ridiculous history of dog food.
1:36.1	The classic bait and switch.
1:37.9	The RHBNS.
1:39.0	So we love this, by the way, because, guys, we got some hilarious and supportive comments from
1:47.9	our fellow ridiculous historians who were weirdly, and no offense anybody, weirdly super on board
1:57.6	with that bait and switch you described, Noel.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 9 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.