National Public Radio's Scott Simon celebrates Gerardus Mercator.

WBUR (a Boston NPR station) host Anthony Brooks interviews Nathaniel Raymond, director of operations for the Satellite Sentinel Project, based at Harvard University’s Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. The project uses satellite imagery to follow the movement of military vehicles, rebel forces, or other activities that might be leading to an attack on civilian populations, in places like Sudan, and most recently, Syria.

On the ground, Tropical Storm Irene floodwaters devastated Vermont's communities, cutting off roads and washing away homes and businesses. Now with a digital bird's-eye-view, the world can see the dramatic statewide extent of Tropical Storm Irene's damage to Vermont's landscape. Google has just updated its maps for Vermont with post-Irene satellite imagery. VPR's Mitch Wertlieb turned to two professors at St. Michael's College, Geography Professor Richard Kujawa and Environmental Studies Professor Laura Stroup to tell us the value of having these images at our digital fingertips.

In this interview with John Palatiello, executive director of MAPPS, the focus is on a bill introduced by U.S. Congressman Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado that introduced the "Map It Once, Use it Many Times Act." Editor in Chief Joe Francica asks Palatiello about the bill's origin and what's next.

On Monday's Fresh Air [3/12/12], John Villasenor, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA, explains what these drones will be able to see and how they work. He also talks about the privacy and national security concerns raised by using drones for surveillance purposes.

Dr. Frank Kelly was recently appointed director of the USGS's EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Editor in Chief Joe Francica spoke with Dr. Kelly on the mission of EROS especially in light of impending budget cuts. Kelly also provided his insights on the relationship with the commercial earth observation satellite providers, and expectations for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission and Landsat 8.

Audie Cornish talks with Thomas Haupt, respiratory disease epidemiologist for the Wisconsin Division of Public Health. He's the lead author of the study that helped uncover the source of a mysterious and large uptick in Legionnaires' disease cases. The study, "An Outbreak of Legionnaires Disease Associated with a Decorative Water Wall Fountain in a Hospital" was published in the online journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.

Looking for that unique Christmas gift for the cartophile? Listen in as Editor in Chief Joe Francica speaks with Ben Sheesley of Axis Maps. Axis Maps' Typographic Maps uses letterpress, a manual process for printing maps of major cities. He is one of the founders of this Chicago-based mapping and geospatial tech company. Francica sought out Sheesley because Axis Maps says that the letterpress printing process hasn't changed much since the days of the Gutenberg press.

The point of the study is to understand why, at the precise moment, an addict decides to use. Epstein says if you ask someone about a relapse after the fact, he or she is going to have trouble recalling it accurately. "People, whether it's someone who's addicted to drugs or anyone else in the world, make up stories that sort of explain their behavior," he says. "But if you could've been monitoring them in real time, you would see that things didn't happen quite the way they remembered."

This podcast was recorded at a press briefing delivered by National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Director Letitia Long at the GEOINT Symposium 2011 in San Antonio, Texas on October 17, 2011.