My name is Johnny Harris and I make videos here at Vox.
For the past year, I've been focusing on making documentaries about
how people live around the world.
For next set of videos I want suggestions on
where I should go next, and I'm looking
for ideas surrounding a single topic:
Borders
I'm going to go to 6 different borders around the world and look at the
human outcomes of what happens when you
draw lines on a map.
And I haven't picked out these six places yet I'm looking for suggestions.
So you can go to vox.com/borders to submit an idea.
Look at the border between Brazil and Bolivia
Brazil is clearly harvested it's forest
very aggressively leaving few trees
while Bolivia hasn't.
So this random looking straight line on the map
actually determines where a forest end
and affects the people and animals living there
Between Haiti and Dominican Republic,
Haitian women cross a muddy river every morning to sell goods
in a guarded Dominican market for the
day before trekking back at night all
because someone decided to draw a line
at some point on this island.
Interesting borders are everywhere so if something
comes to mind I want you to tell me about it.
Borders aren't always lines between two countries.
Sometimes as interesting state borders,
or borders within a city or even a neighborhood.
Regardless of what kind of border it is I want to go to these places to help humanize the map
and show what borders look like in real life, and the effect that it has on people.
The six documentaries about borders
aren't going to publish until the Fall
but while I'm going to these places and
making these videos I'm going to be up
keeping a travel log on my Facebook page where I'm going to publish
little video dispatches of what I'm seeing and what
I'm learning along the way and
you can follow along if you want to keep up to date
on the progress and hopefully help me out as I'm doing this.
I'm not really sure where I'm going yet or
what's going to happen along the way but
I'm pretty sure it's going to be an adventure