Geography Now Explained

Geography Now!
Nationality:	American
Creator:	Paul Barbato
Years Active:	2014–present
Genre:	Education
Subscribers:	3.35 million
Views:	459.3 million
Silver Button:	y
Silver Year:	2016
Gold Button:	y
Gold Year:	2018
Stats Update:	July 12, 2024

Geography Now (also stylized as Geography Now!) is an American educational YouTube channel and web series created and hosted by Paul Barbato, profiling UN recognized countries in the world in alphabetical order as well as covering other topics regarding physical or political geography. The channel was started in August 2014 and has gained over 3.35 million subscribers.

Team

Main hosts, co-hosts, and crews

• Paul Barbato (born in Minnesota), sometimes nicknamed as Barby or Barbs – creator and host. He started Geography Now! because he felt there were no channels with the specific goal of profiling every country, and thus decided to create one himself. He has stressed the importance of geography education and criticized the lack of it in American curricula.
• Keith Everett – music segment
• Hannah Bamberg, also known as "Random Hannah" – culture segment.
• Noah Gildermaster – food segment
• Kaleb Seaton, formerly known as "Gary Harlow" (a “knockoff Steve Irwin”) – wildlife segment
• Arthur "Art" Napiontek – sports segment
• Bill Rahko – theme music composer
• Vincent Kierkels – graphics designer/ animator
• Peadar Donnelly – graphics designer/animator
• Jared Stevenson – graphics designer/ animator
• Jason King – graphics designer (formerly)
• Ken O’Donnell – animator (formerly)

If the specified co-host doesn't show up for their segment, then it will either be covered by Paul or filled in by another crew member of Geography Now!. Whenever possible, the channel will also feature guest contributors from the country being profiled.

Channel

Geography Now!

The channel series started on October 15, 2014, with the country of Afghanistan and will conclude with the country of Zimbabwe in October 2024. The member states of the United Nations are covered in alphabetical order with few exceptions, such as when the country formerly named Swaziland changed its name to Eswatini after E had already been passed,^[1] or how the North Macedonia episode was released under F because, at the time, the UN listed its name as "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" and in order to prevent controversy from Greek viewers who identify the name "Macedonia" as purely Greek. English names are also used, so an episode is titled "Ivory Coast" and not "Côte d'Ivoire". Barbato has said he ensures his videos keep a fairly fast pace while including visual graphics for accessibility.^[2]

• Flag Dissection, about the meaning and symbolism behind the country's flag. After signing with Studio 71, this segment was moved to a separate video known as Flag/Fan Fridays, later changed to Flag/Fan Days at the Cuba episode. These were accompanied with opening of mails and packages sent by the fans. In current format, flag segments are separated into a separate shorts format video and a separate live stream for fan mail openings.
• Political Geography, giving a closer look at the country's borders, enclave and exclaves, territorial disputes and anomalies, administrative divisions, overseas territories, notable places found inside the country and more.
• Physical Geography, about the country's land makeup, demarcations, landscape, arable land, climate, biodiversity, and food.
• Demographics, about the country's population, plug type, driving side, people, diversity, traditions, culture, government, notable people, and a quick history of the country (if it wasn't covered already in a past segment).
• Friend Zone, an analysis on the country's positive or negative relationship with other countries.^[3]
• Conclusion, wrapping up the entire episode into a 1-2 minute segment.

Over the course of the channel's history, the duration of the country episodes have steadily increased, with more topics and information about the countries being included in each episode. While the episodes for the first several countries usually only lasted 7-10 minutes, episodes toward the end of the series usually lasted around 30-40 minutes. As of August 13, 2024, Zambia is the newest episode and the second to last UN listed country episode. Viewers have also noticed a steady increase in production quality and animations included in the episodes. Barbato's home country, the United States of America, lasted 65 minutes, making it the longest episode by far.

Flag/Fan Days

Flag/Fan Days, previously known as Flag/Fan Friday are companion videos to the main episodes. A country's flag and coat of arms are explained in these videos. Barbato also sometimes uses this as an opportunity to discuss topics he did not get to in the original video, or correct and clarify details. After that he calls crew members and opens fan mail. There is a recurring animation for most episodes of Flag/Fan Days where the red stands for the "blood of those who fight for their freedom", which has since became a running gag if the red on the country's flag represents the blood of those who fought for the country in the past.

Following the release of the Venezuela episode, Paul Barbato has decided to turn the last 5 Flag/Fan Day videos into YouTube shorts due to the long time it took to research, film and produce the videos.

Paul Barbato Heritage

As part of an interesting filler week video uploaded in May of 2022, Paul Barbato took an DNA test using the MyHeritage website to determine where his heritage comes from, here are the results as followed from first mention to last:

25.2% Japanese and Korean

17.8% Chinese and Vietnamese

9.2% Central Asian

6.6% Italian

8.8% Irish, Scottish and Welsh

6.5% English (England)

11.0% Scandinavian

13.6% North African

1.3% Native American (USA)

Geography Now! episodes

The countries discussed in each episode follow the United Nations alphabetical list of members and go through them in the respective order.

Episodes

	Country	Date published
1	Afghanistan	October 15, 2014
2	Albania	October 21, 2014
3	Algeria	October 30, 2014
4	Andorra	November 12, 2014
5	Angola	November 26, 2014
6	Antigua and Barbuda	December 17, 2014
7	Argentina	January 5, 2015
8	Armenia	January 16, 2015
9	Australia	January 24, 2015
10	Austria	February 6, 2015
11	Azerbaijan	February 26, 2015
12		March 16, 2015
13	Bahrain	April 10, 2015
14	Bangladesh	April 18, 2015
15	Barbados	April 25, 2015
16	Belarus	May 15, 2015
17	Belgium	May 20, 2015
18	Belize	May 25, 2015
19	Benin	May 31, 2015
20	Bhutan	June 26, 2015
21		June 30, 2015
22	Bosnia and Herzegovina	July 9, 2015
23	Botswana	July 18, 2015
24	Brazil	August 15, 2015
25		August 29, 2015
26	Bulgaria	September 6, 2015
27	Burkina Faso	September 15, 2015
28	Burundi	October 1, 2015
29	Cambodia	October 10, 2015
30	Cameroon	October 21, 2015
31	Canada	November 10, 2015
32	Cape Verde	December 12, 2015
33	Central African Republic	December 21, 2015
34	Chad	January 8, 2016
35	Chile	January 17, 2016
36	China	February 7, 2016
37	Colombia	February 27, 2016
38	Comoros	March 9, 2016
39		March 29, 2016
40		April 14, 2016
41	Costa Rica	May 7, 2016
42	Croatia	May 11, 2016
43	Cuba	May 18, 2016
44	Cyprus	May 25, 2016
45		June 1, 2016
46	Denmark	June 15, 2016
47	Djibouti	June 22, 2016
48	Dominica	June 29, 2016
49	Dominican Republic	July 6, 2016
50		August 3, 2016
51	Ecuador	August 10, 2016
52	Egypt	August 24, 2016
53	El Salvador	August 31, 2016
54	Equatorial Guinea	September 21, 2016
55	Eritrea	September 28, 2016
56	Estonia	October 5, 2016
57	Ethiopia	October 12, 2016
58	Fiji	November 15, 2016
59	Finland	November 23, 2016
60		November 30, 2016
61	France	December 7, 2016
62	Gabon	January 18, 2017
63		January 25, 2017
64	Georgia	February 1, 2017
65	Germany	February 8, 2017
66	Ghana	March 22, 2017
67	Greece	March 29, 2017
68	Grenada	April 5, 2017
69	Guatemala	April 12, 2017
70	Guinea	May 10, 2017
71	Guinea-Bissau	May 17, 2017
72	Guyana	May 24, 2017
73	Haiti	May 31, 2017
74	Honduras	June 28, 2017
75	Hungary	July 5, 2017
76	Iceland	July 12, 2017
77	India	July 19, 2017
78	Indonesia	August 2, 2017
79		August 9, 2017
80	Iraq	August 16, 2017
81	Ireland	August 30, 2017
82	Israel	September 20, 2017
83	Italy	September 27, 2017
84		October 4, 2017
85	Jamaica	October 11, 2017
86	Japan	October 20, 2017
87	Jordan	November 1, 2017
88	Kazakhstan	November 15, 2017
89	Kenya	November 22, 2017
90	Kiribati	November 29, 2017
91		December 13, 2017
92		December 20, 2017
93	Kuwait	January 17, 2018
94	Kyrgyzstan	January 24, 2018
95		January 31, 2018
96	Latvia	February 7, 2018
97	Lebanon	February 28, 2018
98	Lesotho	March 7, 2018
99	Liberia	March 14, 2018
100	Libya	March 21, 2018
101	Liechtenstein	March 28, 2018
102	Lithuania	April 25, 2018
103	Luxembourg	May 2, 2018
104	Madagascar	May 23, 2018
105	Malawi	May 30, 2018
106	Malaysia	June 6, 2018
107		June 27, 2018
108	Maldives	July 4, 2018
109	Mali	July 11, 2018
110	Malta	August 15, 2018
111	Marshall Islands	August 22, 2018
112	Mauritania	August 29, 2018
113	Mauritius	September 5, 2018
114	Mexico	September 26, 2018
115		October 10, 2018
116		October 17, 2018
117	Monaco	November 7, 2018
118	Mongolia	November 14, 2018
119	Montenegro	December 5, 2018
120	Morocco	December 12, 2018
121	Mozambique	December 19, 2018
122	Myanmar	January 9, 2019
123	Namibia	January 16, 2019
124	Nauru	January 30, 2019
125	Nepal	February 6, 2019
126	Netherlands	February 27, 2019
127		April 3, 2019
128	Nicaragua	April 10, 2019
129	Niger	April 24, 2019
130	Nigeria	May 1, 2019
131	Norway	May 22, 2019
132	Oman	June 12, 2019
133	Pakistan	June 19, 2019
134	Palau	July 31, 2019
135	Panama	August 7, 2019
136	Papua New Guinea	August 28, 2019
137	Paraguay	September 4, 2019
138	Peru	September 25, 2019
139	Philippines	October 2, 2019
140	Poland	October 30, 2019
141	Portugal	November 6, 2019
142	Qatar	December 4, 2019
143	Romania	December 11, 2019
144		January 15, 2020
145	Rwanda	January 29, 2020
146	Saint Kitts and Nevis	February 19, 2020
147	Saint Lucia	March 11, 2020
148	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	March 18, 2020
149	Samoa	April 15, 2020
150	San Marino	May 6, 2020
151		May 18, 2020
152	Saudi Arabia	June 3, 2020
153	Senegal	July 1, 2020
154	Serbia	July 22, 2020
155	Seychelles	August 12, 2020
156	Sierra Leone	September 2, 2020
157	Singapore	September 23, 2020
158	Slovakia	December 30, 2020
159	Slovenia	January 6, 2021
160	Solomon Islands	January 20, 2021
161	Somalia	February 24, 2021
162	South Africa	March 17, 2021
163	Spain	April 21, 2021
164	Sri Lanka	May 26, 2021
165	Sudan	June 23, 2021
166		August 4, 2021
167	Suriname	September 1, 2021
168	Sweden	September 22, 2021
169	Switzerland	October 28, 2021
170		December 8, 2021
171	Tajikistan	January 19, 2022
172		February 23, 2022
173	Thailand	March 27, 2022
174	Togo	April 29, 2022
175	Tonga	June 9, 2022
176	Trinidad and Tobago	July 6, 2022
177	Tunisia	August 4, 2022
178	Turkey	September 3, 2022
179	Turkmenistan	October 19, 2022
180	Tuvalu	November 23, 2022
181	Uganda	January 18, 2023
182	Ukraine	March 9, 2023
183	United Arab Emirates	March 30, 2023
184	United Kingdom	May 30, 2023
185		July 4, 2023
186	Uruguay	September 4, 2023
187	Uzbekistan	October 31, 2023
188	Vanuatu	December 7, 2023
189		February 6, 2024
190		April 3, 2024
191	Yemen	June 19, 2024
192	Zambia	August 13, 2024
193	Zimbabwe	October 2024^[4]

Other content

Filler week videos happen when the team is in the process of researching and creating scripts for the next few videos. Topics discussed include states or sub regions of countries, current or cultural events, physical geography, specific ethnic group of peoples and infrastructure innovations.

Geography Go is the channel's travel vlog series. Countries visited include Qatar, Finland, Estonia, Greenland, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Ukraine, Turkmenistan,Indonesia, Singapore and many more. Paul also later started posting YouTube Shorts on his channel about his travels to other countries like Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Croatia, the Central African Republic, Togo and many other countries.

A Geograbee is the geography equivalent of a spelling bee in which people are tested on geography. He has so far hosted them in Hargeisa in Somaliland, Somalia, and Alaska.^[5]

For April Fools' Day, Geography Now! uploads videos profiling fictional countries made up by Barbato. These include:

• Bandiaterra (2015), a Danish-speaking island nation in the Indian Ocean.
• Limberwisk (2018), a Nordic country whose language consists entirely of whispers.
• Patch Amberdash / Datcsh (2019), a confederation of islands spread across three continents.
• Qitzikwaka (2020), a former Russian colony situated mostly underground in the Sahara.
• Sovonthak (2021), a country situated on eight shallow reefs with a legally-recognized and taxed bartering system.
• Volanca (2022), a country with no territory founded by UN interpreters with citizens' residences serving as legal lodging.
• Ululiona-Linulu (2023), a sovereign Native American country created as a buffer between Mexico and the United States after the Mexican–American War.
• Geolandia (2024), a federation comprising all previous April Fools' countries, which united in the "April Union". Citizenship is acquired by subscribing to Geography Now, and buying merch on the Geography Now website (including clothing, accessories, and a figurine of Barbato).

Reception

Geography Now! generally receives positive feedback from newspapers and magazines in the countries covered, such as Japan Today,^[6] Télérama,^[7] Dutch Metro,^[8] RTL,^[9] Nezavisne Novine,^[10] Life in Norway,^[11] Lovin Malta,^[12] and Zoznam.^[13] It also receives endorsements from educators and travel writers.^{[14] [15]} The channel has appeared on several lists of recommended educational YouTube channels,^{[16] [17] [18]} including one by the Van Andel Institute.^{[19] [20]} The few criticisms are usually to do with tone and pronunciation, particularly in earlier episodes.^[21]

The top 15 country episodes with the most views as of June 2024 are:

1. Germany (8.524 million)

2. Japan (7.309 million)

3. Indonesia (7.198 million)

4. Israel (6.262 million)

5. China (PRC) (6.157 million)

6. North Korea (DPRK) (6.133 million)

7. India (5.489 million)

8. Russia (5.041 million)

9. Denmark (4.892 million)

10. Philippines (4.486 million)

11. Italy (4.109 million)

12. Canada (3.974 million)

13. Netherlands (3.839 million)

14. Afghanistan (3.795 million)

15. Ireland (3.707 million)

External links

• Official website

Notes and References

1. Geography Now! Night Thread. The Avocado. Sam. Aronow. June 22, 2018. May 21, 2019.
2. Episode 19 - Geography Now!. The Lost Geographer. September 23, 2021. January 23, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20220123155907/https://www.thelostgeographer.org/podcast.php?ep=Episode%2019%20-%20Geography%20Now!. dead.
3. Web site: Educational YouTuber Covers the Philippines. DG Briones. 3 October 2019. 23 September 2021. 23 January 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20220123155858/https://dgbriones.home.blog/2019/10/03/educational-youtuber-covers-the-philippines/. dead.
4. https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx2BU_CwkLt0CzyFHyUrtRwCH5hEC98w2f Community post by Geography Now on YouTube
5. Youtube star hosts GeograBee at Gruening Middle School. Cassie. Schirm. KTVA. March 3, 2018. May 21, 2019. October 19, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181019210311/http://www.ktva.com/story/37639263/youtube-star-hosts-geograbee-at-gruening-middle-school. dead.
6. Informative video condenses everything about Japan into 16 minutes of pure gold. Japan Today. Koh. Ruide. February 17, 2018. June 12, 2019.
7. La France vue de l'extérieur. Télérama. December 9, 2016. June 12, 2019. fr.
8. Geography Now lanceert uitlegvideo over Nederland. Metro. Jemel. Visser. February 27, 2019. June 12, 2019. nl.
9. Kako nas Amerikanci vide: pogledajte što sve znaju o nama. RTL. May 16, 2016. June 12, 2019. Croatian.
10. Kako stranci vide BiH: Icar konzerve, piramide i tri jezika. Nezavisne Novine. July 10, 2015. June 12, 2019. Bosnian.
11. Geography Now Comes To Norway. Life in Norway. David. Nikel. May 23, 2019. June 12, 2019.
12. WATCH: Malta Featured On Popular Youtube Series About Countries And Geography. Lovin Malta. Chiara. Micallef. 19 August 2018 . June 12, 2019.
13. Státisíce videní za pár dní: Toto video o Slovensku je absolútnym hitom!. Zoznam: Hashtag. 4 January 2021. 23 September 2021. sk.
14. YouTube Excellence #2: Geography Now. Tome of Trovius. March 27, 2018. May 21, 2019.
15. Web site: Geography Now Videos. Laddingford St Mary's C of E Primary School. February 20, 2021.
16. 82. Geography Now with Paul Barbato. Nothing Exempt. Nicholas Pardini, Brian Peotter. September 15, 2018. May 21, 2019.
17. Lights, Camera, Action….Geography Now!. Tania. Stoyanof. Black Label. December 14, 2016. May 21, 2019.
18. 7 YouTube Channels Everyone Should Follow, According To Reddit. Bustle. Georgina. Lawton. February 2, 2017. June 12, 2019.
19. Web site: 5 Useful (and Fun) YouTube Channels for Your Classroom. Van Andel Institute. 28 February 2020. 21 February 2021.
20. From maths and science to liberal studies, these are the 7 best YouTube channels that will improve your grades. Joshua. Lee. YoungPost. South China Morning Post. January 12, 2018. May 21, 2019.
21. My thoughts about Geography Now. Medium. January 26, 2019. June 12, 2019.