Gall--Peters Projection

The West Wing clip on maps is still one of the best ways to teach someone about how different our classic maps are from reality: [VIDEO]

Requisite West Wing scene[1] on the subject (which is probably always going to be my top YouTube search because it’s fantastic). [1]: [VIDEO]

And obligatory West Wing "Gall Peters Projection" clip: "What the hell is that?" "It's where you've been living this whole time" [VIDEO]

I dunno, I like most of Sorkin's work. However I couldn't watch "The Newsroom" past four or five episodes. You're right, it seems like The West Wing's characters all re-hashed into TV news characters and it was too cloying. I still go back and re-watch The West Wing every couple of years. Yes some of it is cringe-worthy, but as a non-US citiizen when first broadcast I learned a few things about US politics and it caused me find out more, especially from a historical point of view. He also does some nice things such as dropping in interesting educational nuggets such as the Peters Projection cartography stuff in the second "Big Block of Cheese" episode (S2E16) [0]. [0]: [VIDEO]

I still remember the first time I learned about this. I was watching the West Wing (Season 2 Episode 16[1] which explains the problem pretty quickly) for the first time in the early 2010's and was absolutely blown away that we'd never been taught about this in public school (U.S.A.). Having graduated High School and a couple of years through undergrad, and just then realizing that my entire perception of the relative size, and in some cases position(!), of the continents is basically just wrong. It was actually a generally useful thought exercise though, because it really forced me to confront the fact that I need to consistently reflect on whether my previous assumptions on even basic topics hold true. I'm not sure it would be worthwhile to advocate for changing the default projection at this point due to the logistics, but at least teaching kids about the issue, which can be covered in no more than a few minutes and is obviously not super complex, just so they're aware of it seems totally worth it! [1]: [VIDEO]

obligatory link to West Wing scene where they point out the political implications of the mercator projection [VIDEO]

I'd like to think you're being ironic here, but I suspect you're not, so no: the vast majority of the world is outside the US and has not, in fact, seen an obscure episode of a TV drama about American politics. For others who haven't, here it is: [VIDEO] Although the projection it proclaims as superior, Gall-Peters, has grievous flaws of its own. [LINK]

I made an interactive WebGL implementation of this without realizing it was a thing: [LINK] I don't really agree with the claims in the articles linked in OP, and don't find it to be a generally useful projection, even for the tool I made using it. It was novel as a representation that included daylight context (instead of just "what time is it there?" it helped express "is it getting dark there?") that preserved area better than a globe and was more intuitive than a day/night waveform on a rectilinear projection. But ultimately, if you're showing anything that has to do with populations (cities, people) pretty much any projection will waste large amounts of space on oceans and unpopulated land regions. That is to say, before choosing a favorite map projection, I think it's probably better to not to use a map projection at all unless you're going for a hike or setting sail. Somebody beat me to the obligatory xkcd, but this West Wing bit is my go-to for map projection discussions: [VIDEO] I like framing map projections by what they prioritize or sacrifice—fidelity in axis, position, size—and what projection is "best" depends entirely on which characteristics are more important. I disagree with OP's claim about this projection being "the most accurate flat map of the Earth yet" though haven't put a ton of thought into the physical, back-to-back definition of "flat" vs on-screen.