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Map Men

Geography edutainment videos

Image credit is listed at the end of this article.

Map Men is a British edutainment YouTube channel which was created, written, and presented by Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones. A mix of comedy and geography, its videos regularly attract 1 to 5 million views on YouTube.

01Premise

The series is created, written, and presented by Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones. Mark Cooper-Jones is a former geography teacher, and the pair met at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where both were performing in 2009 or 2010. The series started in 2016, and has aired on the Map Men (formerly Jay Foreman, then Jay and Mark) YouTube channel for five series, alongside a series of specials relating to Geoguessr and Ordnance Survey. The episodes are a mix of comedy and geography, with each episode answering a short geographical question, often involving maps. The style has been compared to Horrible Histories and the pair cite their inspiration as Monty Python. The videos feature deadpan, split-second visual gags, and comic sketches. The title for the series, "Map Men", was coined by Cooper-Jones as a pun name based on the American drama series, "Mad Men".

The pair have attributed the show's success to the growing redundancy of maps as an everyday item, making them a more "geeky" topic. They attribute the channel's success to its unique mix of comedy and geography. In 2021, the series was nominated under the "learning and education" category for the 11th Streamy Awards, losing to Veritasium. In 2024, an edited version of the video about why some British place-names are hard to pronounce won 'Video of the Year' in the inaugural UK and Ireland TikTok Awards.

In October 2025, the duo released the book This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (And Why It Matters) (ISBN 978-0-3697-7503-0).

02Episodes

SeriesEpisodesOriginally released
First releasedLast released
164 May 2016 (2016-05-04)7 August 2016 (2016-08-07)
2515 April 2019 (2019-04-15)2 September 2019 (2019-09-02)
31116 November 2020 (2020-11-16)13 September 2021 (2021-09-13)
4710 July 2023 (2023-07-10)31 August 2024 (2024-08-31)
Specials313 October 2024 (2024-10-13)30 June 2025 (2025-06-30)
5615 September 2025 (2025-09-15)29 June 2026 (2026-06-29)
Special19 March 2026 (2026-03-09)

03Awards and nominations

Year Award Category Result Ref.
2021 11th Streamy Awards Learning and Education Nominated
2024 1st UK and Ireland TikTok awards Video of the Year Won
Watch videos about Map MenExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Map Men, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Images, from Wikimedia Commons:

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