I have a few questions about geography that I like to ask people. A good one to ask people in the US is "what is the capital of Canada, a country on our own border." It is surprising how many people cannot answer that. The capital of Australia is another one.
This one is fun: By land, what is the minimum number of countries you have to cross to get from Norway to North Korea.
Some questions do not have a single answer and depend on definitions that are not always clear. Like, how many countries in Scandinavia are not in the EU. Also, apart from Mexico and Canada, which the US shares borders with, what is the closest country to the US geographically.
Most people can tell you right away what the two largest countries are by population, China and India. However, people often have a hard time saying what the third and fourth largest countries are by population. Think about it for a moment.
Okay, I'll give away one of the answers. Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world by population. A surprising number of people (and not just Americans) cannot even point to Indonesia on a map. The common language, Indonesian, is one of the easiest languages to learn. How many people do you know that have studied Indonesian? Can you take this as a class in schools in the US? I suspect Indonesia will become a larger international player in the future, definitely in an economic sense. We should plan ahead to capitalize on this.
Bonus questions: Which country has the largest Christian population in the world? What country has most of the world's Muslims?
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