Hey, you're listening to Outside In a show where curiosity and the natural world collide.

I'm Nate Hedgy.

The year was 2007, and Christina Phillips was on a road trip with her mom.

They were checking out colleges around Washington, D.C., driving a rental car.

It was a Volkswagen bug, then it was lime green.

Christina, by the way, is a senior producer for our sister podcast, Civics 101.

And this was before smartphones were really popular.

So Christina's mom was using a portable GPS device.

We were relying entirely on this GPS because neither of us really knew how to read maps.

I learned later, like, I'm never going to survive in an apocalypse if I can't read a map well. So they plug in the address and start following the directions to another school, a few hours outside the city. She's, like, entranced by the GPS, and I keep being like, Mom, you have to look at the road. like she's's following the GPS instead of the road because she's just like, my car is moving on this map.

And we go under a bridge and the GPS goes recalculating, turn left.

And my mom, like, puts her left blinker on as we're in a tunnel.

And I was like, you cannot turn left.

We are in a tunnel.

And she was like, oh, whoops, I was watching the GPS again.

Eventually, we get out of D.C.

And we're driving through the countryside.

And the GPS just randomly, as we're on the like a country highway

goes take the exit so we're like okay we'll take the exit we have no idea where we are we take

the exit and the GPS puts us on a dirt road that is parallel to the highway I, Mom, I think we can just get back on the highway.

And she's like, no, no, no.

If we get off this road, I'll never find our way back.

...