Edward McPherson, "Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View" (Astra House, 2025)

Summary

New Books Network
Episode: Edward McPherson, "Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View" (Astra House, 2025)
Date: December 13, 2025
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Edward McPherson

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Overview

This episode centers on Edward McPherson's latest book, Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View. McPherson and host Miranda Melcher explore the cultural, historical, and technological dimensions of the human desire to gain a "long view"—literally and metaphorically. The conversation weaves through topics ranging from 19th-century bird’s-eye maps, the overview effect experienced by astronauts, the ethics of modern surveillance, drone warfare, and the impact of the pandemic on how we see and represent distance. The episode is a nuanced exploration of both the wonders and perils that arise when we seek to look out—across space, time, and perspective.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis of the Book and McPherson’s Approach

[02:56-06:52]

• McPherson describes himself as a writer and creative writing professor whose books come together "a little haphazardly" via obsession with a theme.
• Look Out is described as a "cultural history of the aerial view," embracing topics from drone warfare to ancient mapping, from AI to outer space.
• His research method is largely interest-driven: “I just try to keep it simple and follow my interest without questioning why....it's really only by writing that I can articulate how I think and feel about a topic.” (McPherson, 05:36)
• The process involves lengthy, sometimes obsessive dives into individual topics, “messy, inefficient and probably rather insufferable to the loved ones in my life. But that's the method that works for me.” (05:36)

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2. Structure of the Book: Before, Then, Beyond

[07:32-09:35]

• Book divided into three parts:
  • Before: 4 billion years ago to 2019
  • Then: Pandemic era (2020–2022)
  • Beyond: 2022 to “infinity”
• The structure is both “playfully defined” and reflective of the timelines in which McPherson conducted his research.
• The organization “nods to the kind of storytelling it takes to make sense of the chaotic day to day, these narratives we impose on reality.”
• Multiple short sections with evocative titles and epigraphs serve to "disjoint the narrative in a helpful way... highlight the artifice... to give the reader a little more room to resist or look around or make connections on their own.” (08:58)

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3. 19th-century Bird’s-Eye View Maps & the Aerial Imagination

[09:35-16:08]

• Bird's-eye view maps became a widespread phenomenon in 19th-century America, reflecting the cultural mania for perspective “from above.”
• Despite the aerial viewpoint, these maps were created by artists using classical perspective, surveying towns on foot rather than by flight.
• McPherson discusses both the immigrant creators of these maps and the socio-political implications—maps served civic pride and were also “part advertisement designed to lure new settlement and businesses....But of course...they say just as much about the people who are doing the looking as what was really there.” (13:29)
• Notably, these maps erased indigenous presence and justified colonial expansion: “maps erase as much as they reveal....All that supposedly, quote, unquote, empty, that is stolen land calling for white settlement.” (13:29)
• The craft and detail: “They were done quickly. And then...the artist would send the drawing off to a city where it would be lithographed...and the print run would depend on how many subscriptions they sold in advance.” (14:47)

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4. The Enduring Human Impulse for the Long View—From Bird’s-Eye Maps to Spaceflight

[18:23-23:08]

• The conversation connects 19th-century maps to "selfies" and today's overview technologies. “There's something cheerfully narcissistic about it....We often look out and we don't see something new. We just see ourselves, what we want to see.” (18:23)
• McPherson delves into the "overview effect"—the humbling awe astronauts experience seeing Earth from space, which can be renewing and perspective-shifting.
• However, he cautions: “These maps leave out as much as they show. Essentially, they're stories for better and worse and hopefully for best. They're kind of useful fictions.” (19:12)
• Modern applications: Aerial maps used for urban planning (e.g., St. Louis) can be wielded as instruments for development and erasure, as with neighborhoods labeled ‘vacant’ to justify displacement for new projects.

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5. St. Louis: A Microcosm of Aerial History and Geospatial Power

[23:44-26:32]

• St. Louis is grounded as a key site in the narrative: “It's a city that was built adjacent to and on top of a complex network of ancient indigenous mounds...”
• The “cradle of American aviation,” with history in ballooning, flight, aerospace manufacturing, and government cartography.
• The recent construction of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) massive campus in St. Louis resulted in the erasure of 27 city blocks—an example of aerial views justifying ground-level upheaval.
• The NGA: “produces and analyzes satellite imagery for the military and other spy agencies...They do things like maintain GPS...run the Pentagon's big initiative to harness AI....today the NGA St. Louis campus employs about 4,000 people.” (23:44–26:20)

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6. How the Pandemic Changed Views on 'Distance' and Mapping

[28:15-30:24]

• The pandemic heightened awareness of “capital H history… the derangement of space and time,” says McPherson, and made the metaphorical “long view” newly relevant.
• Digital communication (“the rise of Zoom”) provided the “appearance of moving closer without actually moving your position”—highlighting illusions and realities of connection and distance.

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7. Drones, Aerial Panopticons, and the Ethics of Surveillance

[31:09-33:14]

• McPherson acknowledges productive uses of drones (science, agriculture, photography) but is wary of their ever-growing role in surveillance and warfare, especially when combined with AI and Big Data.
• Distance increases ethical danger: “One of the themes of the book is that with distance comes danger, and with drones, it's quite literal. When you're dropping bombs from afar, yes, you're removed from the consequences. But for whom?...the psychic cost of a drone war is immense....” (31:09–33:14)

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8. Wonder, Ambivalence, and the Call to "Look Out"

[33:38-36:34]

• Surprise and discovery are central to both McPherson’s writing and the message of the book.
• “The big question in the book becomes how might we walk the knife's edge of seeing the big picture without erasing all that's on the ground?” (34:41)
• McPherson advocates for “unstable stereoscope, a kind of doubled sight, both far out and close up,” and cautions: “beware of anyone coming to town trying to sell you a map. And a book isn't a book just like a map. So maybe at best, this one just encourages readers to kind of come up with their own map.” (34:41–36:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On his creative process:
  “With any writing project in the beginning, I just try to keep it simple and follow my interest without questioning why. You know, something in the world has rung a bell in my brain, something out there has run rhymed with my inner life.” (05:36, McPherson)

• On the function of bird’s-eye view maps:
  “The maps were meant to be part souvenir, like a source of local pride...but in some ways, they were also made by immigrants for other immigrants...But of course. And here's the turn, they say just as much about the people who are doing the looking as was what was really there. One of the big themes of the book is that maps erase as much as they reveal.” (13:29, McPherson)

• On awe and the overview effect:
  “And for me, some of these, these pictures, like pictures from space, can indeed send my mind reeling.... It's humbling and renewing, and I've slipped the bonds of my ego and here's where we turn. But I'm also scared.” (19:12, McPherson)

• On the lasting dangers of aerial views:
  “With distance comes danger, and with drones, it's quite literal. When you're dropping bombs from afar, yes, you're removed from the consequences. But for whom? Is that view really safer? Certainly not those on the ground accidentally caught in the crosshairs.” (31:09, McPherson)

• On the book's purpose:
  “The big question in the book becomes how might we walk the knife's edge of seeing the big picture without erasing all that's on the ground?” (34:41, McPherson)

• On skepticism of narratives and maps:
  “One of the moves the book makes again and again is to remind readers to beware of anyone coming to town trying to sell you a map. And a book isn't a book just like a map. So maybe at best, this one just encourages readers to kind of come up with their own map.” (36:34, McPherson)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction & theme: [01:36–04:26]
• McPherson's approach and writing process: [04:26–06:52]
• Book structure and philosophy: [07:32–09:35]
• History and making of bird’s-eye maps: [09:35–16:08]
• Maps as narcissism and self-reflection: [18:23–18:44]
• Long view today: Spaceflight, Google Maps, and overview effect: [18:44–23:08]
• St. Louis's aerial history and the NGA: [23:44–26:32]
• Pandemic, digital distance, and narrative: [28:15–30:24]
• Drones, panopticons, surveillance, and ethics: [31:09–33:14]
• Surprises encountered, author’s ambivalence, and “double vision”: [33:38–36:34]
• Final reflections and next projects: [36:34–38:04]

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Conclusion

McPherson’s Look Out is a richly layered, questioning work that explores not only the thrill but also the ethical ambiguity and dangers of taking the long view—across maps, technology, and time. The conversation is suffused with his affection for awe and curiosity, but also his skepticism about the stories and fictions we tell in the name of perspective. The episode leaves listeners pondering: How do we look out—literally and metaphorically—without losing sight of what is right before us?

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[A]

Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Edward macpherson about his book titled look out the Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View, Please. Published by Astrahaus in 2025. This book does a whole bunch of things. We're probably going to be talking about at least some of these topics. Long distance mapping, aerial photography, top down perspectives, far ranging perspectives. Things that are happening right now with drone warfare, for instance, things that could happen in the future with surveillance going even further than it is now. But we're also going back in time to the United States before the Civil War in the early 1800s. So we're going to be talking about history, we're going to be talking about things that Edward has actually experienced. We're going to be talking about ideas that have not yet been realised. It turns out by looking at this one type of thing of looking out of having the long view, there's actually a whole lot of things to look at, to discuss clearly. I think we're going to have quite a fun conversation. So, Edward, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[B]

Thanks for that introduction. I'm thrilled to be here.

[A]

I'm very pleased to have you. Could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?

[B]

Sure. I'm Edward McPherson. I'm a writer, mainly of nonfiction, as well as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where I teach creative writing. As for the book, like most of my books, this one came together a little haphazardly, as you were saying. Essentially, it's a cultural history of the aerial view or big picture thinking, both very literally and also somewhat more metaphorically. And I admit, thinking about your list at a glance, the book might look like an eccentric collection of topics. Drone strikes, early flight, old map, melting glaciers, pandemic narratives, panopticons, AI, outer space, future societies, spies, and so on. But I was interested in all of it. And for me, books usually come together under the sign of some kind of obsession. I've always stared out of airplane windows and gawked at pictures from space. I love the fever dream of an obsessively intricate map or the way the bottom drops out when you catch a whiff of eternity. I guess I'm a sucker for the sublime and some kind of hope that you can see beyond the self. So all these topics started to revolve around each other in an interesting pattern that wouldn't easily or tidily resolve for me. And I began seeing these questions everywhere. And each strand felt timely and pressing. Even the ancient history, see, you might.

[A]

See, say that those are unrelated to start off with, but that just makes it fun, right? Because then we get to read the book and go, how are they all related to each other? Right? We get to have this discussion with this very helpful introduction. You've just given us, hopefully intriguing, intriguing listeners to keep finding out. Well, hang on a second. How can we make sense of all of these topics? And it's actually on that theme of kind of making sense of things that I'd like us to stay for a moment because you've given us some indication there that this is very much driven by what captivated you, right? What you were finding sort of intriguing and kept popping up. But this is a really massive topic, right? How do we look at things? How do we look at things? From afar, from above? So how did that work? I mean, obviously it's not as simple as like sitting on a plane looking out the window and going, great, now I have a plan for an entire book. Right. So how did you kind of approach putting these pieces together? Did you make decisions about kind of, oh, actually, you know what, 200 years back in time is enough. I could go further, but I won't. Or how did you kind of make sense of the different things that were intriguing you to bring it together into something? I mean, a book is obviously linear by default. So how did that work?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think if you try too early in the game, if I had tried to keep the whole picture in my head, I think I would have just given up. I mean, that's a great way to shut yourself down. So with any writing project in the beginning, I just try to keep it simple and follow my interest without questioning why. You know, something in the world has rung a bell in my brain, something out there has run rhymed with my inner life. I don't overly interrogate the reason, but I, you know, the hope is that the initial fascination moves beyond whoa. Into something deeper. And it's really only by writing that I can articulate how I think and feel about a topic. So I take it one thing at a time. I endlessly obsess over it, research it for as long as it takes, work up a draft of what I found and then move on to the next. Some of these quasi monomaniacal investigations pan out and become an essay, or if I'm really lucky, a book. Others get relegated to the dustbin of stuff I'm going to bore you with at the next dinner party. So it's messy, it's inefficient and probably rather insufferable to the loved ones in my life. But that's the method that works for me. And for me it's a way of keeping the sense of discovery in play, alive in the work.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's a really key part of it. There's nothing worse from my point of view, than speaking to an author who, by the time they have finished the book and are talking to me about it, really don't want to be talking about it anymore. Right. The wonder has gone. So I think that is a really important part of the process and it's helpful to hear you talk about kind of making sure that stays part of yours. So then going to kind of the end result of this, obviously, as I said, we have a book in front of us organised in a linear fashion and specifically organised into part one before, part two, then, and part three beyond why those three sections and what years get grooved into which of them?

[B]

Right. As you said, I mean, it took a long time actually for me to come up with this. And before was, you know, sort of playfully defined as I think stretching back 4 billion years ago to 2019, more or less. And then the second part then was basically a real short. The two years of high pandemic, 2020 and 2022 in the US and then the last part beyond, goes from 2022 to infinity. And partly that just reflects how the book came together in time and space, time and space being a big theme in the book. I've been mulling over this stuff for several years. I'd done some research and reporting by late 2019, and then the pandemic hit and I wrote nothing during those years, though I did manage to take notes. The book really changed during lockdown. And then in 2023, I was incredibly fortunate and received a Guggenheim fellowship that gave me an entire year off from teaching to write. And that's when I fleshed out the beginning and was able to make my way through the end. So I guess that's how it happened. The why of it all is that the three parts before then and beyond were meant to nod to the kind of storytelling it takes to make sense of the chaotic day to day, these narratives we impose on reality. And then, of course, those thirds are themselves then subdivided into many short sections, each getting its own title, maybe an epigraph and so on. So there's lots of braiding going on within what might look like a fairly traditional timeline. And I guess the point wasn't just to mimic the breakdown of time and attention, but to hopefully disjoint the narrative in a helpful way, make the seams a little more obvious, highlight the artifice, with the idea being to give the reader a little more room to resist or look around or make connections on their own. Because for all the high flying in the book, it's one that remains deeply suspicious of its project, that never wants to forget what it's like to be left on the ground.

[A]

That is some, I think, kind of cool, ambitious goals there, as well as lots of practical considerations. So both of those things, I think kind of continue through the book. Right. We're always talking, as you said, about the big picture, about the meta narrative as well as about some actual things that have happened and will happen and are happening now. I admit, though, I am perhaps less good at the kind of constantly questioning all the things. I'm not a creative writer, as I mentioned, I am a historian. Most of the time. The time. So I am going to take us probably mostly chronologically through some of the things you talk about. Obviously the book has way more detail for listeners who want that. But starting sort of in the 19th century in the US I'm a big map nerd. I admit that I've seen a bunch of these maps that you talk about of US cities. I hadn't really however, thought that much about the fact that when a bunch of these maps were made kind of of the aerial, you know, from the high up above bird's eye view of these, USC, St. Louis, etc. They couldn't actually really draw them that way. Like we're so used to birds eye view maps now that I sort of hadn't really realised that like, hang on a second, at some point that would have A, not been possible to do technically, B, would have been a new idea conceptually. So why was there this interest? It's one thing for it to technically one person to like draw a map like that, it's another for it to be a phenomenon. The way that you describe it in the book of loads of people who have never drawn a map before, have never owned a map before, suddenly going, oh, I need a bird's eye view of my, I don't know, Columbus, Cleveland, whatever it is. Why was this a big deal, right?

[B]

And well feel, forget like backing up even further. I mean, I just want to say now that you've made me nervous about getting my history right, that there something this wasn't, you know, something about the aerial imagination does seem to be innate. Like kids as little as three years old can use aerial images to find hidden objects. There's a plaster mural in a late Neolithic village in Turkey that many say is not only the oldest landscape painting, but the earliest bird's eye view. And it was made some 9,000 years ago. So we've. Humans have always seemed to want to fly higher and see farther. But you're absolutely right. In the 19th century this impulse gets jumbled up with art and commerce and political and cultural expansion. And the US is just gripped by this mania for bird's eye view maps from about 1825 to a little past the turn of the century. And they were everywhere. They were churned out by these itinerant artists wandering the country and sketching towns as if viewed from a hot air balloon. But of course they didn't go up in a balloon. They were really just drawn up with good classical perspective after thoroughly walking the ground. And these lithographs were printed and sold by subscription. As you said, big towns, tiny towns, railroad settlements that were just coming into being. Thousands of places imagined, drawn, and then often redrawn a few years later as the country expanded.

[A]

Why?

[B]

I mean, the initial audience was the town itself. You might have to. You might pay to have your business identified on the map or advertised in the margins or buy extra copies, to have your particularly grand home highlighted in great detail on the map. Um, but in some ways, they were also made by immigrants for other immigrants. These, you know, these artists were sometimes anonymous, usually unsung. They were German, English, Swiss or French transplants for the most part. And the most prolific of those would churn out 200, 300, 400 views in their lifetimes. I mean, I think that's who made them. I'm not sure I've actually seen said why, but keep going.

[A]

Tell me more.

[B]

I mean, the maps were meant to be part souvenir, like a source of local pride. I mean, you're literally putting your town on the map, so to speak, and then also part advertisement designed to lure new settlement and businesses. But of course. And here's the turn, they say just as much about the people who are doing the looking as was what was really there. One of the big themes of the book is that maps erase as much as they reveal. And here, obviously, we're thinking about the people who were there first. All that supposedly, quote, unquote, empty, that is stolen land calling for white settlement. Blank spots on a map begging to be filled in. Yeah, this is your classic colonial gaze. But the maps are large, colorful and plentiful. They're. I find them aesthetically striking. They're these delirious visions tied to both commerce and art. I was mesmerized, and I just couldn't stop looking at them.

[A]

Yeah, especially because they're so incredibly intricate as well. So that's helpful to understand kind of who was interested in them and more on how they were made. I mean, you said they do look like they're made from a balloon. You talked about, like, they're not, but they're using perspective and they're walking around. So how exactly are these being made?

[B]

I mean, they were, again, as an artist would come to town and sort of pitch a map and say, well, you know, the next town over is going to have a map, so don't you all want one? Aren't you as good a town? So they're playing on civic pride. And then the artists would just wander the town and take notes. And we have some of those early sketches and drawings. And again, they were trained in just good classical Renaissance perspective drawing. So they made it appear as if they'd gone up in the air, but. But they hadn't. And they're surprisingly, as you said, they're intricate and they're surprised. The details are surprisingly correct. They've done some studies of some of the bigger cities where we have actual data to compare the maps against. To one is Salt Lake City and a wealth of details. Only a few mistakes, actually, in a lot of these maps. So they were very careful, partly because I think the town would be upset if there were just blood, blatant errors because they knew this land better than anyone. But they were. They were done quickly. And then. Sorry. The artist would send the drawing off to a city where it would be lithographed, printed on a. Printed off of a stone, and kind of mass produced as an early form of printing. That could make a lot of the copies. And then the agent would come back to town and distribute the copies. And the print run would depend on how many subscriptions they sold in advance.

[A]

But this wasn't like one or two nerds who wanted a map. Right. These were pretty popular.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, they were. And they hung. You know, you'd hang it up in your house, you'd hang one in the saloon. You'd send one to relatives back east, possibly to try to get them to come out. Yeah, there are archives. And in the book, I'd go to one of the archives in Fort Worth and just look at these collections of maps. My name is Percy Jackson. Getting in trouble is like breathing for me. The hit series returns to Disney plus and Hulu. The danger the camp is under is greater than you can possibly imagine. For the key to our survival, three of you must quest to the Sea of Monsters. Let's go do the impossible. I'm not gonna let some stupid monsters stand in my way.

[A]

Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

[B]

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[A]

Learn [e-mail] what's on?

[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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[A]

They see us.

[B]

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[A]

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[B]

You know, there's, there's something cheerfully narcissistic about it. It's like we want to, you know, look at it, look at ourselves. You know, it's like a, it's a version of the selfie in some ways because that's another theme of the book is we often look out and we don't see something new. We just see ourselves, what we want to see. And so this was, look how great our town is. And look at this expansion we can still do.

[A]

All right, so this is exactly where I wanted us to go to next. Thank you very much for the lovely link because this is a lot more familiar, I think, than we might think. Right? Obviously today we have Google Maps. Like we don't need someone to come and pretend that they're in a balloon. But we do have some similarities to these things, as much as we might go, oh, that's so old fashioned, look at them, they're so cute and naive. But is it really that different to how we talk about like consumer space flight or suborbital flight today?

[B]

No. I mean, no. The short answer is no. And there's so much about this for better or for worse. And I feel like sometimes in interviews I focus too much on the negative. So I mean, I want to, I should back up and say, like, there are some things useful about these kind of maps. And just a nod, before we take a sort of more sinister turn, one of the threads in the book is about awe and its various uses and effects. And a lot of the book is spent chasing this feeling, awe, which turns out to be a separate emotion and comes with its own bodily, mental, chemical responses than from Say, joy or surprise makes us humble, makes us healthy, happy, generous. This is what psychologists say. And for me, some of these, these pictures, like pictures from space, can indeed send my mind reeling. Astronauts who've gone up talk about the, quote, overview effect, this radical shift in personal perspective that comes from seeing the Earth at a distance, floating in the blackest space. They report being sort of flooded with clarity and compassion. And, you know, from my. From my desktop, I can look at a picture of lightning on Jupiter or a sunrise on Mars this morning or our planet, a tiny. From 4 billion miles away, and I'm suddenly made small and in a good way. It's humbling and renewing, and I've slipped the bonds of my ego and here's where we turn. But I'm also scared. And when you look down on Earth, you can see these patterns of, you know, lots of bad stuff going on, climate devastation's made plain. You can see the seas dry up, the glaciers shrink, forests burn and so on. So again, these maps leave out as much as they show. Essentially, they're stories for better and worse and hopefully for best. They're kind of useful fictions. But to your question, and I'll keep it local, in particular, in St. Louis, city planners have used aerial maps quite recently to portray a swath of town, an underfunded neighborhood, as, quote, unquote, vacant, dilapidated, desperately in need of, again, scare quotes, development and renewal, which is a kind of conquest, which was a fiction that was completely at odds with what the people who actually lived there happened to think. But they tore down the neighborhood and built a massive spy agency. So that's one of the ways these maps are still telling stories without even going into, like, drone warfare and things like that.

[A]

Yeah, we're going to get into drone warfare in a moment. We're going to get into spy agencies, I think, also in a moment. But is there anything further we want to say about kind of the space of it all, the space flight, the overview effect, the kind of, in some ways, the going up and looking down at the Earth? Is that so different from looking at a map of Cleveland and going, hey, there's us?

[B]

No, I mean, I think it's a similar impulse and it's a very human one. And again, it's one of the more positive uses, I think, of the overview effect. It's not going up and getting a big picture. It can feel like dropping out in some ways, leaving your problems behind. But I actually think it's a kind of. It allows again, if you're in touch with awe or wonder, then it does allow for a kind of renewal, which then again can sort of give you courage and determination when you're back on the ground, which is where most everyone that I know tends to live. I mean, I think it is one of the more positive uses of the long view. That said, there are these sort of billionaire space tourists where you go up in a capsule for about 10 minutes, you see a little bit of the earth and you go down. I mean, places are selling the overview effect essentially, if you have enough money. And that does seem a little silly.

[A]

But yeah, no, I think it's definitely kind of. It's not 100% one thing or the other. Right. Like so many things. Before we get to the current spy agency in St. Louis, because I definitely want to talk about that. Part of the useful history here is that St. Louis has actually been pretty involved in a lot of things really involving going up high in the sky, aerial things, viewing. That's not just a current thing that goes pretty far back. Right. What are some of the ways in which St. Louis has kind of been involved in this history, in this technological development for decades?

[B]

Right, right. As you say, I tried to ground the book in St. Louis and I mean, depending on how far you want to go back. It's a city that was built adjacent to and on top of a complex network of ancient indigenous mounds that not only towered above, but were plotted to align with the moon and the sun. And then zooming forward, you have the so called Spirit of St. Louis. It's the cradle of American aviation. It's home to so many experiments in ballooning and flight. Charles Lindbergh was backed by money from St. Louis, McDonnell Douglas and Boeing. These, these big aerospace defense contracting companies have built jets and missiles and space capsules here. Government cartographers in town made the maps that astronauts used to land on the moon during the Apollo missions. And for about 80 years since the 1940s, St. Louis has been home to these government imagery and mapping agencies that now form part of an intelligence agency known as the nga, which is the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and basically the nga. It does a lot, but it produces and analyzes satellite imagery for the military and other spy agencies as well as politicians and first responders. They do things like maintain GPS census, not only used to navigate, but also to land bombs on coordinates. They also run the Pentagon's big initiative to harness the power of AI. And here in town, they just moved into a brand new $1.7 billion, 97 acre headquarters on the north side of town. They moved. They had their old headquarters in town, was sort of nestled by the river down by a brewery. And now they've moved to sort of the north side and more central in town. And to do so, 27 city blocks were leveled to make room for this high security complex over as I was sort of alluding to the objection of many of the 200 residents that were still living there. And again, the bitter irony was that the project was sold using aerial views designed to suggest that the neighborhood was vacant. You know, that old familiar story. So today the NGA St. Louis campus employs about 4,000 people. That's roughly a quarter of the agency's workforce. And it's expanding its outreach into local businesses, universities, even K12 schools. Geospatial intelligence is a big business in St. Louis today.

[A]

Can you tell us more about how you investigated this? I mean there's some, definitely some interesting stories in the book about kind of how close you were or were not able to get to, for example, this shiny new campus.

[B]

I mean surprisingly, or maybe not spy agencies have publicists and publicity departments, so. Or communications department. So I, I mean the book before the, I mean in 2019 for the ground. I mean, the story had been unfolding in St. Louis for a while and I'd been following it because there was pretty vocal opposition to this project. But they broke ground, they won. You know, they bid the city bid and made and won the, the contract to build a new campus in the city. And so I just emailed them and asked if I could go to the groundbreaking in 2019. And there wasn't a ton of media interest. So I had a really great seat in a tent sitting in a supposedly quote unquote empty field, these 27 blocks. And I was sitting right behind Adam Schiff, who was currently leading impeachment hearings against Trump at the time. So from there, you know, they start the big construction project and then, and then it takes six years. They just moved in this, they started moving in this fall. And so, you know, I got to watch it over the course of, of writing the book. And I also of course interviewed a resident who had lost their home and to the nga. And I saw talk to some of the protesters at the groundbreaking as they, you know, the city and the agency sold sort of a story about development that was going to come in and you know, the too long didn't read of it all is that very little of what was promised has actually happened for the neighborhood the agency's built. But the it's pretty much sort of an island now, carved out in the middle of the city.

[A]

Thinking about being in St. Louis and kind of watching what's happening around you, I wonder if we can pick up something you mentioned at the beginning around kind of how this book did or did not take shape during the lockdowns. Can you tell us more about kind of how that period influenced your thinking on aerial views?

[B]

Sure. I mean, it's hard to generalize about the pandemic, but I was really interested in, you know, one of the themes of the book is how. And this grew because of the pandemic, how. And this is the more metaphoric use of these sort of distance views, but how history with a little H becomes capital H history. These stories we tell, the totalizing narratives, and I mean, a lot of people are living through history all the time, but the pandemic felt like, oh, we are for sure living through capital H history. And so that plus the derangement of space and time as the social distance seemed to collapse and expand in interesting and unsettling ways, felt thematically relevant to the book. It was weird to be holed up in my office looking at pictures of Vatican City empty of crowds or Tokyo Disney empty of crowds, or I also just thought the rise of zoom, this ubiquitous tech now that we can't avoid, was fascinating in the way that it both connected and didn't connect us. You know, it was a fantasy of overcoming space and time, but even just the name kind of gives it away. It's. It's the appearance. It's an optical trick, a zoom. It's appearance of moving closer without actually moving your position. So many of those questions, more metaphoric uses of long view or big picture thinking, really kind of weighed on me on the pandemic. I wasn't able to write any of it, but I took notes. And so the middle section is. Is a bit literal about sort of what the NGA was doing and tracking the virus from above and all those Covid tracing maps, et cetera. But also a little more about how we tell this story of what's happening to us and what does it mean. And of course, going back to the sort of influenza.

[A]

Yeah, no, definitely lots to think about at that point. And we'll kind of see looking back on it, on the lockdowns, like how our thinking evolves as it sort of recedes further into the past. But of course, one aspect of all of this that has happened is very much in the present and I think will very much continue to be part of the future is, of course, drones. Right. And the idea of like aerial Panopticons, obviously that's big in the news in terms of like the Ukraine conflict and sort of the ability of Ukraine to fight back against like, massive tanks and things like that. But it's not a. It's again, kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier. Like, it's not, yay, it's all amazing or oh, no, it's completely horrible. Right. It's somewhere sort of in the middle. So how do you think about drones and these ideas of aerial Panopticons and the impact that they can have?

[B]

Right. Well, I mean, aerial Panopticon bad, but drones, I mean, there are a few good things about them. They aid with search and rescue, they let us do science in inhospitable places. Drones, they help with agriculture, they make it more water efficient and things like that. They help detect and fight forest fires. As sort of cliched as it's come, I actually like some drone photography. I find it, again, can lead towards awe, a change of perspective. That said, yeah, mass surveillance, not so good, particularly when it's coupled with AI and big data and the chilling effect on freedom as a lot of this moves not even just from governments, but into private hands, these private companies that are doing mass surveillance through drones and other things. And in Ukraine, it's one of those. Well, just in drones in general, I think some people sometimes think on the surface maybe this is safer, but one of the themes of the book is that with distance comes danger, and with drones, it's quite literal. When you're dropping bombs from afar, yes, you're removed from the consequences. But for whom? Is that view really safer? Certainly not those on the ground accidentally caught in the crosshairs. Mistakes are costly and happen a lot in drone wars. And the question there is just how many dead civilians are we willing to stomach as collateral? But even for drone operators, and we're seeing this in Ukraine, the. The cost of the psychic cost of a drone war is immense. And even before we would see that the, the sort of conventional earlier drones like the Predators and The Reapers, the UAVs, the PTSD in the US the PTSD and burnout and suicidal ideation of these flight crews, these drone flight crews was actually higher than traditional flight crews. So there's a tremendous cost to this kind of warfare that we think is perhaps, quote, unquote, safer.

[A]

Yeah, definitely. I think, will continue to be focus of a lot of debate and thinking going forward. Forward, but thinking about kind of putting all of this together, right? We've talked a little bit about the past, a little bit about lockdown, a little bit about kind of the present future, touching on at least all the things covered in the book. Is there anything in the process of figuring all this out or putting it all together that really surprised you?

[B]

I mean, a lot of the book was surprise. And I mean, ideally, that's when the writing is fun. You know, I tried to keep the wonder alive, and that was something I tried to replicate in the text and wonder, like wondrously scary and wondrously sublime, both. But in my reporting, I mean, I came across so many startling snippets of history or fact or place, and I tried to replicate some of that surprise because I think of surprise as being adjacent to awe. You know, it catches you unawares. But of course, yeah, not everything could fit and some of it couldn't get into the book. But, yeah, I tried to include mostly the surprising details if I thought a reader would anticipate it or kind of already know it. I tried to leave that out.

[A]

I like that approach to cutting things. Other authors take note. We like surprises as readers, so thank you for that. Is there anything else kind of big that we haven't talked about that you hope readers take away from this book?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I. I always get a little nervous when I try to nail down the takeaway or because I'm aware I'm. I don't want to pass away, pass along a too easy answer because obviously I think it's clear from this conversation I remain pitched in ambivalence. A lot of these are questions that don't neatly resolve. I like My Way of Sleeping at Night is thinking of the book as a kind of performance. It tried to mirror. It tries to mirror how I see the world, or at least how I did during the years that I wrote it. What it's like to perseverate on these topics, what it's like to trace these patterns everywhere. The big question in the book becomes how might we walk the knife's edge of seeing the big picture without erasing all that's on the ground? So maybe, if anything, the book has clarified how I might want to look at the world, which is. And I say this in the book, and I don't think it's a spoiler, and it's. Some folks probably already saw it coming, is just to hold two restless and contradictory views. I talk about trying to see in an unstable stereoscope, a kind of doubled sight, both far out and close up, because as you said, a lot of these topics keep returning to us in new and immediate ways. So in the end, I end up going back to the title, which is, you know, that imperative you shouted at the beginning, which cuts both ways. It's a reminder to look out both as wishful thinking, Keep your head up, try to see beyond the self, and also urgent warning. Be careful, there's danger at a distance. And again, I have to add a caveat. This might all sound great, but one of the moves the book makes again and again is to remind readers to beware of anyone coming to town trying to sell you a map. And a book isn't a book just like a map. So maybe at best, this one just encourages readers to kind of come up with their own map.

[A]

I mean, there are many worst takeaways. So I think that's a great place to conclude our discussion about the book. But I would love to pick up as a final question that little hint there you gave about how you were thinking about things as you were writing the book. Because, of course you have finished writing the book. It is out in the world now. So what might be on your desk now?

[B]

I mean, first, kudos to you for not going for the easy pun and asking what's next on the horizon. Honestly, I'm fortunate to still be doing some travel and events and interviews for the book, which on top of a busy semester has me pretty much maxed out on time. So I'm not writing much now, but I've certainly begun the wool gathering for my next book, which is possibly my favorite stage to be in. Like I'm sure a lot of your authors, I'm a little superstitious to talk too much about work in its infancy. Very fair for me. You know, kill the excitement by over explaining what feels mysterious. But I will say this book will follow in the footsteps of the two before it, both of which take an interest in the environment. I've always been a writer invested in the idea of place. Nearly all my books are organized around that theme. And right now, as your listeners know, so many places continue to exist under threat. So I'm eager, if that's the word, to dive deeper into our troubled natural world. And yeah, despite all the difficulties of these days, I do love to find myself at the start of a book once again.

[A]

Well, that all sounds very intriguing. And while you are in that exploratory phase, of course listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled the Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View, published by astor house in 2025 Edward, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[B]

Thank you so much, Miranda. I really appreciated your questions.