Lured by the promise of sudden wealth, strategic defense, or free real estate, we have established cities in scorching deserts, atop active supervolcanoes, and along sinking river deltas. To maintain these metropolises, we’ve constructed elaborate engineering marvels—from mountain-piercing aqueducts to giant robotic sea walls—creating an illusion of permanence while expecting the planet to bend to our will.

But as climate change accelerates and seismic activity grinds on, the age of out-engineering our environment is rapidly drawing to a close. Join Geoff Gibson on a global journey to explore our magnetic attraction to catastrophically dangerous landscapes—and the consequences that arise when human hubris is met with unstoppable planetary forces.

From the blisteringly parched sprawl of Phoenix to the rapidly collapsing, flood-battered megacity of Jakarta, Gibson uncovers the fragile lifelines keeping our greatest urban centers alive. Journey through Naples, where half a million people sleep inside the active crater of the Campi Flegrei supervolcano. Climb the cliffs of La Paz, a high-altitude metropolis that liquifies into rivers of mud during every rainy season. And discover how Mexico City's historic destruction of its natural lakebed resulted in a sinking, thirsty megalopolis fighting a war against its own soil.

Equal parts gripping narrative, historical deep-dive, and sobering reality check, Bad Lands asks the provocative question: When the land itself turns against us, can human ingenuity outrun disaster—or are some cities living on borrowed time?

Geoff Gibson is a writer, geographer, and content creator based in Portland, Oregon. Geoff is perhaps best known for his popular YouTube channel, “Geography by Geoff”, where he creates videos that show geography’s impact on the way our world works. To date, “Geography by Geoff” has over 1 million subscribers and more than 250 million total views. He also co-hosts the channel GeoLex with his partner and wife, Alexa Diaz, where they travel in person to places around the world to get up close and personal with the geography of the world. In the past he has co-hosted the podcast “Geography is Everything”, with Portland State University professor of geography Hunter Shobe, and was a lead contributor to the book Upper Left Cities: A Cultural Atlas of San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle (2021, Sasquatch Books). Geoff received his bachelors in geography and master’s degree in urban and regional planning from Portland State University. Prior to writing and creating content about geography, he was a city transportation planner in Portland, as well as an instructor of geography at Portland State University.

2027 Geoff Gibson (P) 2027 DK Audio