Everything is Somewhere Podcast

Hosted by The American Surveyor

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Latest episode

Nov 2026

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About the show

From the rope stretchers of ancient Egypt to ubiquitous satellite precision, geospatial technology has ever been the bedrock of the constructed world and of civilization itself. Your host, land surveyor and infrastructure writer Angus Stocking, engages in regular conversation with today's location experts to determine exactly where, in space and time, we find ourselves today. Location, location, location; it's not just real estate, it's everything and, Everything is Somewhere.

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48 recent

November 2, 20263 min

EiS Short: Labyrinths

There are four labyrinths in San Francisco and three are set in concrete and made with great care. But my favorite is the fragile Land's End labyrinth, which is made simply of rocks and gravel and depends for its survival on the kindness of strangers. It reminds me of the medicine wheels that appear in presumably sacred sites across vast swathes of North America. These simple rock patterns are referred to as 'Native American,' but in fact they are far older than any existing people and archaeologists tell us that they have existed for several millennia, interacting with the several cultures that washed across their range like oceans receding and swelling. Think about that. Medicine wheels—which, like the Land's End labyrinth, are fragile and easy to destroy—have proven more durable than several civilizations, while also depending on civilizations for their creation, maintenance, and renewal; is it not flabbergasting? Our own civilization protects them carefully, with fences and guards, preserving them for… what? Or who?

October 26, 2026Episode 3736 min

#37 - Brandon Biggs

Most digital maps are completely blank to blind and disabled people. Brandon Biggs is on a mission to change that before a major April 2027 accessibility deadline forces the issue. As the CEO of XR Navigation and an engineer at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, Brandon is building a future where maps are visual, audio, tactile, and interactive all at once—unlocking navigation and entire careers that have been closed off for decades. In this episode, Angus sits down with Brandon to explore why geographic maps remain one of the web's most overlooked barriers. Brandon shares what it's like to encounter a wildfire evacuation map that reads only as a "graphic clickable blank," explains why turn-by-turn directions can never replace a true map, and exposes how inaccessible data shuts blind professionals out of map-dependent careers. This is a powerful conversation about who gets to understand the world—and what happens when we design for everyone.

October 19, 20263 min

EiS Short: Boring Work

I used to work as a land surveyor in Dodge County, Wisconsin. Boundary work in Dodge County was complicated by a legendary courthouse fire that had taken place decades previously; what it meant for me was that original deeds and maps were sometimes missing, which meant that boundary relocation sometimes amounted to guesswork based on minimal field evidence. According to legend, the fire was set intentionally by a crooked lawyer who had gotten himself into trouble over property issues. And, according to legend, it worked; with the disappearance of certain deeds and other documents, the lawyer's troubles also disappeared. I confess, I don't know the historical truth of the story, beyond the bare fact of the fire. But it strikes me as all too plausible; land surveying is an art that balances physical evidence, case law, and recorded documents and the recorded documents are arguably the most important pieces of the puzzle. Without them, nothing definite can be said about the ownership of a piece of land, let alone its precise shape and area.

October 12, 2026Episode 3650 min

#36 - Boyce Upholt

White South Africans are quietly reshaping labor in the Mississippi Delta, and the story is far more complicated than the headlines suggest. In this episode, Boyce Upholt returns to untangle the history, economics, and racial fault lines behind his New Yorker reporting, revealing why these workers are arriving, why Mississippi farms are hiring them, and what it all says about power, immigration, and the modern South. Boyce brings deep research and a place-based perspective to this conversation, connecting his acclaimed book Great River to his new print magazine Southlands and his ongoing work on the Mississippi Delta. Angus pushes the discussion into the uncomfortable but necessary questions at the center of the story: apartheid's legacy, the movement of white labor across borders, and the uneasy overlap between infrastructure, race, and who gets access to opportunity.

October 7, 20263 min

EiS Short: Borders

On occasion I travel outside the country of my birth, and the prospect always fills me with dread. I am a timorous, paranoid traveler and border crossings especially make me faint with anxiety. I understand that my fears are imaginary, but then, so are borders—after all, a border is just an invisible line defined by fearful men. Borders are intangible constructs of civilization; they don't exist but they can be located… and thus, they are real and the consequences for crossing them are certainly real—men are routinely killed when caught on the wrong side of a border. Borders are settled arguments; a border is the line drawn between schools of thought. To cross a border is to become a different person; for humans too are constructs of civilization. On one side of a border I may be law abiding, on the other, a criminal. By one country's standards I may be moral, while next door I am a disgusting pervert. In pre-Civil War America, a man who crossed the Mason-Dixon line might be transformed from slave to freeman or vice-versa.

September 28, 2026Episode 3541 min

#35 - Dustin Gardner

In this episode, Dustin Gardner, land surveyor and folklorist, returns with the latest on his Creatures of the Compass game and Victorian-era book trilogy, offering deep insights into the folk magic and belief systems behind it all. If you love folklore, hidden histories, and speculative worlds, this episode is for you. During the conversation, Dustin explains how surveyors can become mediators "between worlds," why boundary stones matter, and how folklore, numerology, and folk magic shape his universe. Along the way, Dustin shares what recently changed in his day job, why he stepped away from the paperwork burden of running Caritas—a nonprofit benefiting children in foster care—and how he hopes to channel that energy into helping at-risk youth train for careers in surveying.

September 21, 20264 min

EiS Short: Bees—Smart Like Us?

The honeybee hive mind is one of the most sophisticated thinking machines on the planet, and even compares favorably with the thinking machine between our ears. Hives store 50 pounds of honey in a season. To do this, hive workers complete about 4 million foraging trips, flying a total of 12 million miles. They systematically find dozens or hundreds of food patches, exploit them, and move on. This is sophisticated stuff, requiring coordination at a level of complexity approaching that of a human corporation. In fact, bee intelligence is even capable of solving a mathematical series; in one experiment, entomologists placed a bowl of sugar water outside a hive. Bees quickly found it. The next day, the bowl was moved twice as far away. Again, the bowl was found. This went on for several days, with the bowl being moved away from the hive in a geometric , not arithmetic progression. The experiment was supposed to study search efficiency, but after several days something unexpected occurred; when the experimenters went to place the bowl, the bees had anticipated them and were already on the spot! This is astonishing. There are, frankly, plenty of humans who have trouble with geometric progressions. How is it even possible for a hive to make this sort of calculation?

September 14, 2026Episode 3418 min

#34 - Ben Ernst and Kenyon Mossberg

A 911 call now triggers a drone launch in under 90 seconds—and across Southern California, that speed is transforming emergency response in real time. In this episode, Ben Ernst of Octave and Kenyon Mossberg of the Ontario Police Department reveal how intelligent software, CAD data, and a direct API to SkyDio are giving dispatchers a faster, more reliable way to get eyes on scene before ground units arrive. If you care about public safety, smart-city operations, or the future of drone deployment, this conversation shows what happens when location becomes the common language for emergency response.

August 17, 2026Episode 3331 min

#33 - Amanda Manos

Amanda Manos, a pioneering surveyor and CEO of Darling Geomatics, shares her insights on technological advancements, industry challenges, and the future of land surveying. This episode explores how innovation and mentorship are shaping the profession. In a world where technology is rapidly evolving, Amanda Manos, CEO of Darling Geomatics, is pioneering a new era in land surveying. As a progressive firm based in the University of Arizona Tech Park, Darling Geomatics is not only embracing the latest technologies but is also reshaping what it means to be a surveyor.

July 20, 20265 min

EiS Short: Endless Cornfield

I accepted my writer friend Craig Child's unusual invitation to spend a few days in a cornfield—in the middle of Iowa, in the middle of July, in the midst of what turned out to be an historic climax of heat and humidity called a 'heat dome'—not because I was in sympathy with his evident masochism, nor merely because I knew that he needed somebody to provide comic relief. In fact, I had reasons of my own going back to childhood trips with my parents, driving across America's corn belt in the heat of summer thru hundreds of miles of vast green fields, drowsy and bored, hallucinating really, wondering what it be like to wander off into those Midwest jungles, just walk in a dozen feet into corn taller than me and get turned around and disoriented and… be lost forever, I assumed, striking off into a heart of darkness and joining the Children of the Corn in their evil worship of He Who Walks in the Corn and dying there, my bones only found much later when they were ground up by the Reaper of All only to find their way in to a box of corn flakes… Well; I was a strange kid. Still, the fields of corn were scary to me and I stayed out them with superstitious caution. Foolish of me, perhaps—but I lived .