There's No Place Like No Place

As nationalism sweeps much of the West, it brings into bold relief the question of what really constitutes a country. Some argue that it’s about borders, language and culture. Others argue that they have to be a defined or sanctioned by the United Nations or some other international authority.

The fact is that there are sovereign nations that don’t meet any of these criteria. Yet they still are countries, at least in the eyes of those that live there.

These unique places on the map are the focus of a new look by my guest Nick Middleton in An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist: A Compendium of Fifty Unrecognized and Largely Unnoticed States

My conversation with Nick Middleton: