Intro: The core idea behind modern countries

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Our world is built on an idea. It’s an idea so powerful that we fight and die for it. We draw our maps around it. It shapes our politics and forms the basis of our very identity, who we think we are. It’s an idea so pervasive that you’ve probably never even stopped to notice how weird it is.

Because here’s the thing: this idea is completely made up. And even though it might feel like it’s been around forever, it’s actually newer than you think.

That idea is called the nation.

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It says that a country is more than just the land drawn into a set of borders. It’s actually a giant community that is united by heritage and identity. It says that the people, the land, the state, they’re all one thing. That thing is called a nation.

You’re not just a person who happens to live in a place called America. You’re American. Or Brazilian, or Japanese, or Mexican, or Egyptian, Nigerian, Dutch, Micronesian.

But let’s stop a moment to learn the story of where this idea came from and how it took over everything. Because once you do, so much about our world suddenly makes sense.

Meeting Max Fisher: Are nations “made up”?

Right, okay, cool. Yeah. Are we rolling?

We sure are. Great to see you. Great to see you.

It feels wrong to call it made up, I know. Like it sort of contradicts everything you’ve ever been told about the world.

That’s Max Fisher, my old colleague who taught me a lot about journalism. Max was a New York Times columnist, he wrote this book, and now he hosts a couple of podcasts. And he recently planted this idea in my mind of just how fake countries really are. So I wanted to bring him on to help me understand it and then explain it to you.

It really does feel like countries are natural, like they’re a fundamental law of humans and human society.

Well, take France as an example. If I tell you France is made up, that feels wrong.

I mean, it does feel wrong because I look at a bunch of old maps, and like even way back in time, there is a shape on the map called France, or the Kingdom of France, whatever, and it’s changed, but like France was there for a really long time.

France: the “eternal people” story and why it doesn’t hold

But, okay, think about it. Is that true?

France, like most countries, is built around a story, and that story says that there’s always been a French people who share a culture and ethnicity and an eternal connection to the land. The borders and the government might have changed over the years, but this land has always been some version of France.

Wrong. It’s not true.

Okay, but show me why not?

Okay. We think that borders like France’s formed because they contained people with the same ethnicity who spoke the same language, right? But when you overlay a map of the actual genetic makeup in Europe, it looks like this. Now, look at France and you’ll see that any given part of the country has closer genetic links with foreigners across the border than they do with their own countrymen.

Yeah, but like you talk to Europeans who see their country as like the home of their unique ethnic group. And I think there’s even studies on this that show that like Germany is for Germans and Italy is for Italians. Like these borders were drawn around groups of people because of their common ethnicity.

So people from certain areas might share certain traits, like red hair, for example, but look at a map that shows the distribution of red hair and you see stuff like this never lines up with national borders.

Okay, so countries aren’t correlated with ethnicity, but what about like language?

So today, sure, people within these borders predominantly speak one language, but this only happened really, really recently. Here’s a map of languages in France as of the early 1800s. Only the people in this one area spoke something close to modern day French. Most people in France spoke something else and had for hundreds of years.

Wow, that’s surprising to me, that there were a bunch of different languages within today’s France.

So people living in this land were culturally and genetically fractured, that’s what these maps show, and they spoke a bunch of different languages, but they still belonged to one big political entity. Like there was a France here. Again, I’ve got this tool and like scroll all the way back to like the 1200s, and I see a thing called the Kingdom of France ruled by a king who was apparently ruling people who lived on all of this land.

So wouldn’t these people be considered French? Like isn’t this proof that countries have existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years?

Subjects, not citizens: how identity worked before modern nations

Actually, no, not in the way that we mean countries today.

For someone living down here, hundreds of kilometers from the king’s palace in Paris, there was no concept of being French. They probably identify with the people in their village or their town, but that is about it.

And like what do you care if another town, hundreds of miles away, happens to be ruled by the same king, who, by the way, is just some guy who levies taxes on you, occasionally?

Okay, so French people at this time were more like subjects who happened to be ruled by the same person living in a faraway capital, as opposed to today where countries are more like one giant club where we all feel unified and we’re willing to die for a national story.

Right. And borders used to fluctuate all the time. If you lived up here and your town switched from the French king to the English king, did your identity suddenly flip from French to English too? No, you’re still just a farmer from a village trying to scrape by.

Okay, so that’s France. There was divided languages and ethnicities, arbitrary borders, and not really a sense of like unified France.

But what about elsewhere? Is this happening everywhere?

That’s everywhere.

China: even ancient “civilizational identity” was limited

Okay, but what about like China? China was a place where you had a powerful imperial government. They were proud of their identity. They saw themselves as the world’s central civilization. Like when I look at Chinese history, there seems to be this cultural identity that lasted and lasted and still seems to last into today.

So that version of ancient Chinese identity that you’re referring to, that was felt strongly among the political elite in the capital, but basically nowhere else. Most people under their rule did not speak Chinese and did not think of themselves as Chinese.

The borders were always shifting and even sometimes split between rival empires, which meant there was no fixed sense of what constituted the Chinese people or Chinese land.

So actually, very similar to the French story.

From loose kingdoms to “France”: empires and the path toward nationhood

So let’s get back to that. If I look at my little time lapse of maps, eventually, the shape of France does turn into France. The France that we know today. How does that happen?

A big step in that direction, and this applies for China too, is by becoming an empire.

Ah, okay. Empires. Yes, I know empires. That’s something that I’ve actually, like, looked quite a bit into, and I want to kind of approach the imperial history of France and Europe and the world, but through this lens of like it was very fractured, and sort of see where it goes from there.

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The national idea takes over: revolution, citizenship, and Napoleon

Okay, so Max has sufficiently convinced me that countries aren’t real, that they’re made up in our minds, and that France was not a real country until recently.

So I’ve been looking into what happens next. Trying to answer this question of when does France start to look like the France of today?

The first thing I thought of here was the French Revolution, the late 1700s. What looks more like national spirit than a bunch of people rising up together to overthrow their king.

Let them eat cake.

But it turns out that we’re not even close. People at this time still basically didn’t speak French. They didn’t share some French identity. In fact, the French Revolution can kind of be seen as the start of the long road of building a French identity. The process of a bunch of fractured communities unifying under one story.

This revolution embodied a fairly new idea that the government actually derives its legitimacy, not from God or some other natural right, but from the people themselves. That all of these people were not royal subjects, but rather citizens. That this country was theirs.

Which turned all of this land, at least in their minds, into a new kind of thing. The soil that they came from and owned together.

But listen, this is all still really abstract. In people’s minds, it’s like a very new idea, and it would remain so until this guy came around.

Napoleon Bonaparte advanced the process of turning France into France perhaps more than any other French person. Remember how France looked like this? When Napoleon started to make it look a lot more like this, he rallied the people around this new idea of patriotism, complete with symbols and songs and art that emphasized French greatness, the idea that we all belong to one giant tribe.

This idea was further cemented when Napoleon recruited men from all around this country to come join his army, to fight for France, giving them the sense that they were all joined in a glorious national fight. And in the process, spreading that nationalistic idea all throughout Europe.

Napoleon did something else that was very important, and you can see it in this painting. Instead of pledging loyalty to the pope, as European kings had always done, here he is crowning himself.

The Catholic church at this time had been declining in power and Napoleon was sidelining it in favor of himself, his imperial cult of personality. This was a pretty smooth power play, but it also helped shift people’s sense of loyalty away from religion and towards their nation.

By the end of his reign, Napoleon’s France was pretty unrecognizable from those scattered, loosely connected kingdoms that had dominated this land for many, many years. It was looking a lot more like one thing, like a country.

Okay, but there was still a lot more to do before France became as unified as we think of it today. The revolution eventually faltered, these Napoleonic wars didn’t really work out, but then something bigger happened: industrialization.

Industrialization: trains, cities, schools, and a shared language

What Napoleon and others previously had done had helped unify France kind of mentally, psychologically. But what industrialization does is it unites it physically with iron and concrete.

Here come all these factories, and factories need trains to bring in raw materials and to send out finished products. So you see all these new train networks that put France’s towns within just a few hours of each other, interlinking communities that had always been separated by distance.

In turn, this brought more people into the cities. Melting pots of people from all over the country now swirling around together, all of their little regional identities were mixing into a new French identity, something they all shared.

Factory work, more and more, required people to read so the government built a national school system. They taught the French language along with French national pride and values. Soon, all the Bretons and the Occitans would become Frenchmen.

The school teachers were kind of like heroes. They were nicknamed the foot soldiers on the front lines of this effort to indoctrinate the next generation in this new national identity.

Rising literacy meant mass media, newspapers. Now people could read about the events of the day, making them feel a part of a community. They could keep up to date on the nation’s politics, making the capital feel within reach to everyone.

Now, remember how Napoleon had built all of those outposts throughout the country? Well, now, thanks to all of these advances in travel and communication, the central government could actually rule over these places, over every corner of the country, through a uniform universal government system rather than through local lords and magistrates.

And, like in the schools, they mandated that all of this was done in the French language and conveying the French national story.

Pride in the nation.

So yeah, when Max says that the nation is a new thing, he’s really right. It wasn’t ’till like 1870 or 1880 that you start to see a modern French identity that kind of looks like the one we know today. And some historians, like the guy who wrote this book, argued that it didn’t really fully happen until the 1910s, like a hundred years ago.

Some beautiful maps in this book, by the way.

Myth-making: making the nation feel ancient

So, countries are a new thing, but here’s the deal: our leaders don’t want us to know that.

In France, the ruling elite at the time didn’t want to admit that France was kind of a new thing. That would sound way too weak and delicate. So they kind of constructed a national mythology that implied that France has kind of been around forever.

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They wanted people to believe that the idea of France was eternal; it was fixed, and therefore so were these borders, this shape.

That was a much more compelling story that created a sense of loyalty and patriotism among the French people.

And it totally worked.

This idea spread not just in France, but throughout this whole continent.

In Italy, it began when an ambitious rabble-rouser set his followers marching on Rome.

And eventually, our entire world would be built off of this idea.

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Top-down and bottom-up: nationalism spreads across Europe

This was happening all over Europe. So France’s nation-building really seems like it was top down. Was it like that everywhere?

It’s a lot of both top down and bottom up. So Napoleon had spread these ideas as he’d conquered across Europe. And as that way of thinking sunk in, more and more people wanted a nation.

People all over Europe staged this wave of revolutions that mostly failed, but got people animated to fight for what they saw as unrealized national homelands. And some fought wars of independence or unification that did eventually create nations.

Okay, like Italy eventually did that, right? It was super fractured, seemingly, and then it all comes together.

Yes, though, even when Italy finally unified in 1861.

Wait, 1861? That’s so recent.

Oh, it gets even wilder. Only two and a half percent of people in the new Italy even spoke Italian, and almost none of them even thought of themselves as Italian.

One of the unification leaders has this famous quote that I love. He said, “We have made Italy, and now we have to make Italians.”

Wow. So how would you do that? How do you make Italians?

It was mostly the same as in France. Schools, national administration, industrialization, and a lot, a lot of national myth-making.

So what I saw was that France doesn’t finish that process until like a hundred years ago, like 1910. Was it the same for Italy?

Italy started even later, and it was not as industrialized as France had been, so it went much slower. Even by 1950, only 20% spoke Italian, and people mostly identified with their regional language or with their city and not with Italy.

That only really changed with the first national TV channels in the 1960s. There was even this famous TV show, “It’s Never Too Late,” that taught people Italian.

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All of which is to say that this process of internal nation-building, of becoming a country, can take like a century, and it’s all really recent.

The dark side: borders, minorities, and war

What’s crazy about this is once you start to really get your head around the national myth, you kind of see it everywhere. And you start to see how much it has influenced our modern history. Identities that have led to war and conflict all over the world.

So let’s go back to Europe really quick and look at a few more, like Germany. Germany unified in like the 1860s and ’70s. Its process was a lot like Italy’s. And it actually inspired other countries to rise up with this ethnic nationalism all across Europe, carving old empires into new countries. Serbia, Romania, Norway, Bulgaria, Albania, a lot of them followed a similar template, but the invention of all of these new countries was kind of like a powder keg that eventually exploded into the 1st World War.

The winners got together and redrew the entire map around the national idea: one nation for one people. The idea is that this would kind of create peace, because if one people were just in these boundaries, then there’d be no need to fight wars, right?

Wrong, because borders were never gonna be perfectly drawn around a people. Like this is Germany’s border, but this is where all the German speakers are. You can see they don’t line up.

So instead, all of this redrawing of borders led to ultra nationalists rising up across Europe on promises to conquer the land that they considered rightfully theirs, which led to yet another world war.

And this gets to the dark side of the idea of a nation. It very naturally breeds the persecution of minorities.

Because if a nation is supposedly defined by its shared ethnic identity, then anyone who is not in that majority identity is an outsider. They’re a threat to the character of the nation.

Now, of course, the national identity, the national character, the ethnic identity, all of this was made up, but boy did people start to believe that it was real.

Fascists would go on to murder millions in the name of nationalism. An idea that was basically invented 70 years earlier.

Global spread: decolonization and the “nation-state” world

So we’ve been talking about Europe, but things like railways and mass media spread around the world, and so did the idea of a nation.

Just like in Europe, communities tied by language or history started to think of themselves as nationalities, ready to fight for nations of their own.

Oftentimes, this happened in places where people were forced together by arbitrary imperial borders, often drawn by Europeans. But even that was a unifying idea that led people to rise up, to kick their colonizers out, and to fight for their own national idea.

And soon, the entire world would be defined by this idea of the nation. Firm borders, centralized governments, flags and pride in your country.

But while this looks neat on a map, it’s not perfect, because the idea of a nation is inherently imperfect.

We have this idea that every person is entitled to a nation of their own, but the way those people identify ebbs and flows and changes and often doesn’t fit perfectly into one box.

We start wars over territory that our national myth says belongs to us. We fight over who belongs in our national community and who doesn’t and who gets to decide.

So much of the conflict and violence in our world today comes from our belief in the nation.

And my question in all of this is, is there a better way, a more peaceful way to organize ourselves?

And yet it feels like we’re stuck in this way.

Nations live on: identity can expand or shift

These identities that seem so firm, and they seem like they’re getting like firmer and more intense every year. Like this is the only way that we can organize our world: by countries and nationalities.

The good news is that it’s not necessarily as fixed as you might think.

National identities can change. Like, let’s go back to France where it’s becoming more accepted that you can be French regardless of your race or religion or your place of birth, but, at the same time, there’s also a rising backlash to that, that clings to the idea of France as just for the French.

You know, like it or not, people need some sort of collective identity to hold onto, and national identity is just the one we have right now.

It seems like one answer is that we still have these identities that are fixed around land and borders, but that they can expand and become bigger and take on different meaning.

Like the idea of European, that feels like an identity that is very real. It’s still collective and it’s still defined, but it doesn’t have the danger of exclusion, ethnicity, competition, and war, at least not within those big borders.

How would you describe a cosmopolitan identity?

Think of people who live in a big global city like New York or Hong Kong or London or Singapore, and this identity that you are a person of the world, that you’re a globe traveler, that you’re taking in many different cultures, that’s kind of cosmopolitan identity, which is ironic. We don’t think of that as an identity, but it absolutely is, and it’s one that’s taken the place of national identity.

What else do you think exists out there that could replace this? And does the nation ever go away or does it just get watered down and become less salient over time?

There are lots of places that you can get your sense of identity and your sense of community from. I mean, I think there are people who find that in religion. You can find that in your profession, you can find that in just your local community, which is the way that a lot of people used to do it.

And I think the fact that we are all becoming more aware and more conscious of the fact that we need to get community from someplace is making us a little more thoughtful about it and, at times, more constructive about it.

Although you still see this push-pull, which is probably gonna go on forever, of do we want a hardened national identity that’s about us versus them and who’s in and who’s out, or do we want to create some sort of a way of thinking about our role in our community and our identity that is more inclusive.

Do humans need an enemy?

I also wonder often if humans need a them, an enemy. Like, I... Or at least in a nationalistic context, there seems to have to be a them in order for there to be an us.

But I do wonder, within our psychology, if these identities that don’t have an enemy are less potent or have less staying power than the kind of embattled sense of like, I’m an American and terrorists are out to get me.

You know, like having an enemy is such a potent way to coalesce people around fear.

I think that’s totally true. I think there’s so much evidence that, psychologically, just our brains are so much more drawn to identities that are defined around fighting and resisting and fearing some out group, some them.

But I think that just goes to show that it is something that we have to be conscious about and really thoughtful about in order to rise above.

Closing reflection: nations as flexible ideas

So this has been a pretty fascinating history for me. And after charting through it, I’m left with this feeling that countries and nations are ideas that we as a world are still learning to live with peacefully.

But ultimately, countries are just that. They’re an idea. They’re flexible. They’re malleable. As malleable as our minds.

We can change how we draw these lines and who gets left in and who gets left out. It’s something that I believe we are slowly figuring out with a lot of bumps in the road.

And even though it feels hardwired and fixed, like this is the way it has to be, it only feels that way until someone comes around with a better, more enlightened way to organize the 8 billion people on this planet.

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Merch outro: borders on a shirt

Wait, before you go, you can buy this shirt. If you’re into this shirt, which I think is pretty sick, you can buy it.

It was designed by our very own Nick, the studio manager who wears a shirt like this into the studio, and it is perfect for today’s video because it’s borders and countries. You can scrutinize the borders and pester me about them later if you’d like.

Borders are made up and arbitrary, but they’re very important to a lot of people because they actually affect people’s lives. Big theme on the channel.

But yeah, check it out. The link is somewhere. And thanks for watching today’s video, and I’ll see you in the next one.

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Nick, we’re done?

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Intro: The United States as multiple “nations”

One nation is how the United States refers to itself. But in reality, this isn't correct. In fact, within the United States, there are 12 competing regions that have their own cultures, values, and priorities. And these regions really act more like independent nations under a single flag.

So, what are the 12 nations of America?

America’s 12 Nations: the framework and what’s been updated

The United States has long been viewed as a single nation, a union of states under one flag and one constitution. But beneath the surface lies something deeper. America isn't one nation. It's 12.

I'm not the first person to notice this either. Journalist Colin Woodard originally proposed 11 American nations in his book, American Nations. But what I've done is expanded his nations to reflect two major changes: the inclusion of Hawaii as its own unique nation and the creation of a Spanish Caribbean nation that includes both southern Florida and Puerto Rico, both areas that are distinct from the nearby regions.

So, with that said, let's get to the nations.

If you were to look at a cultural map of the United States, you'd see something very different from the one you learned in school. Instead of state lines, you'd see 12 fluid overlapping territories stretching across traditional borders and sometimes even national ones. But for this video, we're going to focus just on the nations within the United States.

The 12 nations: a quick map tour

Starting in the Northeast, rooted in New England and stretching into upstate New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota is the nation of Yankee Dum. On a map, it hugs the northeastern part of the US and most of the Great Lakes.

Centered around New York City and parts of northern New Jersey and the Hudson Valley is the nation of New Netherlands.

Moving south in central Pennsylvania and heading westward across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and parts of Iowa and Missouri is the Midlands.

Found along the Chesapeake Bay in eastern Virginia and parts of Maryland and North Carolina is the nation of Tidewater. It resembles the remnant of old colonies along the Atlantic.

West of Tidewater is greater Appalachia, a broad, rugged band that stretches from the hills of western Pennsylvania down through West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee into Arkansas, and parts of Texas.

Moving south once more and dominating much of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and parts of Louisiana and Texas is the Deep South.

In the far south and consisting of southern Florida, especially Miami, and Puerto Rico, is the Spanish Caribbean nation.

Tucked in between the Gulf of Mexico and the Deep South nation is the nation of New France.

Moving westward, spanning from southern California and Arizona across New Mexico and into West Texas is the nation of El Norte.

North of El Norte and covering a vast swath of interior California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, parts of western Texas and the Dakotas and much of mainland Alaska is the Far West nation.

In the far north and west is the Left Coast, a narrow but powerful strip along the Pacific, stretching from the San Francisco Bay area up through Portland and Seattle and into the Alaska archipelago.

And finally, thousands of miles away from the mainland is the nation of Hawaii.

These 12 nations have different politics, cultures, values, and social trends, and they don't follow state boundaries, which were often arbitrarily made at the time and didn't really factor in how actual cultures might develop. For this reason, the American nations expand beyond in ways that we're not really accustomed to.

Which brings us to the geography and history of each nation.

Sponsor break: Ground News and how news varies by region

Before we dive deeper into the 12 nations of America, it's worth asking, how can we all live in the same country and yet see the world so differently? That's where today's sponsor, Ground News, comes in.
Ground News is an app and website made by a former NASA engineer who saw how news outlets and social algorithms often feed false biases. Ground News counters that by gathering all of the world's news in one place, so you can see what's being reported on and how it's being reported across the political spectrum.
Take this headline with 30 different sources: “Walking faster may reduce the risk of abnormal heart rhythms.” Sounds simple, right? What's wild is that even something as simple as walking can become regionally charged. In places like Yankee Dum with denser walkable cities, it might be framed as common sense. In the Deep South, however, it's more of a lifestyle shift.
Ground News helps me explore these coverage divides in real time and understand the bias baked into our national discourse, something that's never been more important in a country this culturally fractured.
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The Land: why geography and settlement patterns matter

Where people settled and how they came to shape the land are at the heart of how each nation came to be. The cultural lines that define these 12 nations don't align with modern state borders because that's not how nations are actually formed.

Look at Europe for example. Each country looks organic rather than the artificial straight lines that make up the individual states. This is because they follow linguistic and cultural borders that were formed over hundreds of years.

Because of this, each nation in the United States similarly grew from a distinct historic route which was influenced by its surrounding landscape. Here's how the geography and history shaped each nation.

Yankeedom: towns, schools, and civic institutions

Yankee Dum emerged from the Puritan colonies of New England. Settlers arrived seeking a religious utopia and quickly organized around towns, churches, and schools.

The geography, rocky soil, dense forests, and harsh winters wasn't ideal for large plantations, but perfect for close-knit, self-sufficient communities. This created a legacy of town halls, universities, and civic institutions that still defines the region today, even as far west as the state of Minnesota.

New Netherlands: trade, cities, immigration, and tolerance

Meanwhile, New Netherlands was originally founded by the Dutch as a commercial trading post and grew in the sheltered natural harbor around modern-day New York City.

Because of its unique geography, New Netherlands encouraged maritime trade, immigration, and urban density. The Dutch legacy of religious tolerance, multiculturalism, and commerce remains central to its character today.

The Midlands: pluralism, family farms, and political “swing” terrain

And then there's the Midlands with its rolling hills, fertile farmland, and navigable rivers.

The Midlands were settled by English Quakers and German immigrants who envisioned a pluralistic agrarian middle-class society, primarily focused on the colony of Pennsylvania, but encompassing places as far west as Missouri and Iowa.

Its geography lent itself to family farms, and its central location helped it evolve into the political swing region of the United States.

Tidewater: plantation society and hierarchy along the Chesapeake

Tidewater developed along the Chesapeake Bay and eastern North Carolina. Its wide navigable rivers and access to the Atlantic made it ideal for plantation agriculture and transatlantic trade.

This region was settled by English gentry and its flat coastal plains supported a hierarchical society based on tobacco enslavement and exporting agriculture for wealth.

Greater Appalachia: isolation, resourcefulness, and independence

The rugged Appalachian Mountains of course define greater Appalachia. This nation is isolated and heavily forested in the east but rich in natural resources.

Originally settled by Scots-Irish frontiersmen, greater Appalachia developed a fiercely independent culture shaped by subsistence farming and clan loyalty. The mountains both isolated the region and protected its traditions. This rough and tough rural mentality extended as far west as northern Texas.

The Deep South: plantations, enslavement, and enduring inequality

Formed by slaveholding elites in the south, the deep south's flat, humid coastal plains and river deltas were perfect for cotton and sugar plantations.

This geography enabled a brutal plantation economy supported by enslavement, which in turn gave it its distinct African-American culture today. Its original aristocratic culture, racial caste system, and economic inequality can be traced back to this colonial foundation.

Spanish Caribbean: Miami, Puerto Rico, and a gateway to Latin America

Southern Florida and Puerto Rico form the Spanish Caribbean nation. This region is tropical, coastal, and deeply influenced by Caribbean migration and trade and the Spanish language.

Spanish colonial roots, Catholicism, and African Caribbean cultural influences are strong here, especially in cities like Miami and San Juan. This geography makes it the prime gateway between the US and Latin America.

New France: French heritage at the mouth of the Mississippi

New France is tucked geographically at the mouth of the Mississippi, making it unusually small, but united by its French heritage.

The Mississippi River and bayous enabled trade and settlement by the French and later Creoles. Because of this historic settlement pattern, Catholicism, language, and cuisine make it distinct from the deep south.

El Norte: borderlands, bilingualism, and resilience in arid terrain

Spanning deserts, mountains, and the fertile valleys from southern California to Texas and into southern Colorado is El Norte.

Because of its geographic location, the Spanish were actually the first Europeans here, establishing missions, presidios, and ranches long before English settlers arrived on the east coast.

Its borderland identity is shaped by bilingualism, Catholicism, and resilience to an overwhelmingly arid environment.

The Far West: low population, harsh environments, and federal land

Dominated by the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin deserts, and Arctic tundras of Alaska, the Far West was the last American region to be settled in large numbers.

Its harsh environment required massive government infrastructure from dams and railroads to military bases and eventual airports to support human settlements.

Even today, it's a land of low population and high federal presence because the federal government actually owns most of its land.

Left Coast: Pacific corridor of reform, experimentation, and innovation

The left coast is where rugged mountains meet the mighty Pacific Ocean and encompasses the coastal areas of northern California, Oregon, Washington, and the Alaskan panhandle.

Settled first by Yankees and later by global immigrants, its culture fuses eastern reformism with western libertarianism.

And its geography, temperate climate, seismic activity, fertile valleys, and vast forests encouraged experimentation, progressivism, and innovation.

Hawaii: an island nation shaped by the Pacific

And finally, as an isolated volcanic archipelago, Hawaii's geography is unlike any other US region.

Settled by Polynesians and later transformed by American missionaries and Asian laborers, its culture reflects Pacific traditions, Asian fusion, and deep ties to the ocean.

The island's isolation helped preserve indigenous identity even amid colonization, meaning Hawaiian is a common language to this day.

Geography and history is embedded within each nation and each continues to evolve because of these lines today.

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The World: how the “12 nations” lens explains modern conflict

The United States has always struggled to define what it is. A melting pot, a patchwork, a union, an experiment. But one thing is increasingly clear: it has never truly been one single nation. It's a federation of cultures, worldviews, and identities that have coexisted, sometimes uneasily, under the same flag.

That reality becomes easier to see when you stop thinking in terms of states or party lines and start thinking in terms of deeprooted cultural regions.

Take a look at the way Americans behave politically. As an example, national elections often hinge on so-called swing states. But when you zoom in closer, it's the swing regions within those states that actually move the needle.

The blue cities of Yankee Dum clash with the red rural counties of greater Appalachia, sometimes within the same state. Southern Florida historically voted nothing like the Florida panhandle, though that trend has changed recently due to shifting political ideologies of Cuban migrants and a growing retiree population. And far northern California has little in common with Los Angeles.

It's this cultural geography that tells the real story.

These nations are not based on modern trends or media bubbles. They're grounded in centuries of history.

And these differences aren't superficial either. They explain why Americans often seem to be speaking past each other, locked in a cultural cold war.

The fights over guns, healthcare, education, and religion aren't just political, they're geographic.

The left coast and the far west may both be part of California, but one is progressive and coastal with a desire to restrict gun rights and advance universal healthcare, while the other is libertarian and inland with a passion for low taxes and less government intervention in their lives.

Meanwhile, El Norte sees the border not as a dividing line, but as a zone of shared identity with Mexico, contrasted with greater Appalachia, which sees the border as something that needs to be hardened and made less permeable.

Meanwhile, the Spanish Caribbean, anchored in places like Miami and San Juan, functions with a bilingual, bicultural, Spanish inspired rhythm distinct from anything in the Deep South or Yankee Dum.

None of this is just a cultural quirk. It affects the governance of each nation. Trying to craft one-size-fits-all federal policy in a country this fragmented is like trying to sew a quilt from 12 different fabrics using a single thread.

You see it in the endless political gridlock, in states suing the federal government over mandates, in regions going their own way on issues like abortion, climate, and immigration.

The culture wars aren't a glitch in the system. They're the system playing out across an invisible map that very few people acknowledge.

But when you do acknowledge that map and see the United States as these 12 nations, it explains so much. It explains why San Francisco, California, and Los Angeles, California look and feel so different, or why New Orleans, Louisiana is so different from Mobile, Alabama, despite their geographic proximity.

It explains why some states feel like they're being governed by outsiders. It also explains why unity is hard and why division comes so easily.

The idea of the United States as a single people has always been more aspiration than reality. What holds the country together isn't shared culture, but shared infrastructure, roads, currency, federal programs, a military.

But culturally and politically, the US operates more like a loosely bound confederation. Not red and blue, but a mosaic of nations that coexist, cooperate, compete, and sometimes clash.

Understanding the country through this lens doesn't solve the problems, but it at least makes them less intimidating. In fact, it offers a way to reframe political conflict not as irrational partisanship, but as the natural friction between fundamentally different regional identities.

The Future: what a split might look like

And so with all that said, if these nations did actually exist, what would they look like today? Which would be most populous and which would be wealthiest?

If the United States were to break apart, not just politically, but culturally and geographically, it probably wouldn't fracture into red and blue states. It would likely splinter along the lines of these 12 nations, or something close to it.

During that time, some would thrive, others would struggle, and a few would quickly seek alliances with the others to stay afloat.

Yankee Dum, with a population of nearly 58 million and a median income close to $57,000, would be a powerful nation. It would inherit much of the intellectual, educational, and technological infrastructure of the Northeast and the Great Lakes.

With elite universities, corporate headquarters, and deep ties to Canada and Western Europe, Yankee Dum would function as a progressive internationally oriented republic.

Yankee Dum would find a natural ally in the left coast, a smaller nation in terms of population, but wealthier per capita and similarly forwardthinking in tech, sustainability, and civil liberties. A Yankee Dum left coast alliance would be a powerful and progressive counterweight to the other blocks.

Greater Appalachia, on the other hand, would be one of the largest nations by population and land, but lower in income and higher in internal division. Culturally rugged and libertarian leaning, it might resist federal style unity altogether, opting instead for a loosely aligned federation or even full decentralization.

After all, how do you tie Appalachia to Oklahoma and northern Texas?

Culturally, it would likely have deep ties to the far west, another vast and sparsely populated nation, and could lead to a rural alliance focused on resource extraction, states rights, and small government.

The deep south, with 45 million people and a median income below $44,000, would likely emerge as a conservative powerhouse with strong emphasis on tradition, religion, and businessfriendly policies. Its historic distrust of centralized government might persist, but its internal cohesion would make it a formidable independent entity.

It would also be the region with the highest African-American population, perhaps shifting it politically in ways not expected. It could easily ally itself with greater Appalachia and parts of the far west on cultural issues, forming a socially conservative coalition.

El Norte would be uniquely positioned with over 34 million people, a relatively young population, and a bilingual workforce. It could become a bridge not just culturally but economically between North and Central America. Its economic strength would come from crossborder trade, agriculture, and a strong labor ethic.

El Norte would likely partner with the Spanish Caribbean, which includes southern Florida and Puerto Rico. Though separated by geography, their shared language, religion, and cultural foundations could build a Pan-Caribbean coalition with strong ties to Latin America and Spain.

New Netherlands, anchored by New York City, would be small in size, but a global giant in finance, media, and international diplomacy. With the highest population density, high income, and global reach, it would likely function more like a city-state such as Singapore.

It would also have close ties to Yankee Dum, though due to its status as a global center for finance and trade, it may wish to remain politically neutral overall.

Speaking of smaller nations, Tidewater with a relatively small and aging population might find itself squeezed between the ambitions of its neighbors. Historically aristocratic and now a region of retirees, it might depend on alliances with either the deep south or New Netherlands for economic and political stability.

The Midlands, straddling the cultural middle, would face a hard choice. Politically moderate with about 37 million people and middling income, it could swing either way. Joining the Yankee Dum Left Coast progressive coalition or partnering with the deep south or greater Appalachia for pragmatic reasons.

Its fate might hinge on leadership and external pressure. Of all regions, the Midlands are the most likely to swing between the different nations.

New France, with only about 3 million people, might also struggle to see where it fits in. New France would likely align with the deep south, though culturally it stands apart in language, cuisine, and worldview. Of all nations, New France would leave the biggest question mark for how it would evolve as a nation.

Finally, Hawaii would be small but uniquely positioned geopolitically. Its high income and strong ties to Asia and the Pacific would make it a diplomatic and military keystone in the Pacific. While isolated, it could remain neutral, non-aligned, or form a Pacific alliance with the left coast.

In raw numbers, the largest nations by population would be greater Appalachia, Yankee Dum, and the deep south, while the smallest would be Hawaii, New France, and the Spanish Caribbean.

The largest by area size would be the far west, greater Appalachia, and Yankee Dum, while the smallest would be New Netherlands, Hawaii, and the Spanish Caribbean.

The wealthiest per capita would be New Netherlands, Hawaii, and the left coast, while the poorest would be the Spanish Caribbean, the deep south, and El Norte.

Finally, the youngest would be El Norte, New France, and New Netherlands, while the oldest would be Hawaii, Yankee Dum, and the Spanish Caribbean.

If the United States were to divide, it wouldn't do so evenly. Power would consolidate around urban cores, ports, and cultural hubs, just like it does with every nation. Border regions might become flash points or bridges. Long, simmering tensions could ignite or be resolved.

But what's clear is this. A split United States wouldn't just be 50 smaller pieces. It would more likely become 12 vastly different nations, each with its own priorities, challenges, and sense of identity. And in some ways, it already is.

The US is a single country, of course, but culturally it is broken up into different nations. And honestly, you can say the same for basically every country that exists today.

Speaking of different countries, this week I'm exploring the ancient ruins of the Khmer Empire's capital city, Angkor. So, if that sounds interesting to you, come join me over on my other channel.

I hope you enjoyed learning all about the American Nations and my unique spin on it. If you did, maybe you should check out this video all about 15 amazing geography facts of the United States.

Thanks for watching. See you next time.