It’s hard to get lost these days. GPS pinpoints your location to within a few feet. Discover how our need to get from A to B holds clues about what makes us human, and what we lose now that every digital map puts us at the center.

Plus, stories of animal navigation: how a cat found her way home across Florida, and the magnetic navigation systems used by salmon and sea turtles.

Also, why you’ll soon be riding in driverless cars. And, how to map our universe.

Guests:

• John Bradshaw – Director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute, author of Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You A Better Friend to Your Pet and, most recently, Cat Sense
• Kenneth Lohmann – Biologist at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
• Simon Garfield – Author of On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks
• William “Red” Whittaker – Roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University
• James Trefil – Physicist at George Mason University, author of Space Atlas: Mapping the Universe and Beyond

Descripción en español

First released March 18, 2013.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices