399: God of Frogtok
42:43 Share

You're listening to a Complexly podcast. Welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or as I prefer to think of it, Dear John and Hank. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you the best advice, and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC Wimbledon. John, one time I saw a Roman walk into a pizza shop and he held up two fingers and said, I'll have five pizzas, please.

I'm sorry not to let you finish your joke before I say, oh, God, but I actually knew about that one because as we're recording, it's Pizzamas, and you released that as a Pizzamas joke. It's true. And it bombed. It bombed. People hated it. I thought that one was good. The one that did the worst was some people see half a pizza, and they think that pizza is half empty, and some say it's half full. But Excel says that it's January 2nd. What? What?

It's just a certain group of people that that one's for. I bet Excel nerds love that. I bet they do. Excel nerds love an Excel joke. I mean, I love myself a spreadsheet, John. I've gotten to that stage in my life. I have not gotten to that stage in my life, and I think it's very unlikely that I ever will. When I see a spreadsheet, my eyes glaze over and I feel anxious. It's like I feel like a wizard. Yeah.

I'm like, I could change this cell and everything also changes? For me, it just makes it hurt a lot right underneath my belly button. You know where that is?

I do. That's where I get a lot of pain. That's where I get a lot of my anxiety pain. And the minute I see a spreadsheet, it's just like, oh, hello, underneath my belly button. You are alive. I mean, there's a lot of spreadsheets that give me that feeling, but not this whole institution of spreadsheets. There's like two kinds of spreadsheets. There's spreadsheets where like I'm uncovering truths about the universe, uh,

And or am like projecting a potential truth about the universe. My favorite spreadsheet is a model of an unlaunched product where it's just like – Oh, yeah. You love that. I can just be like, oh, I can change that number to four million. If we sold four million, what would it look like?

Yeah, then we'd be doing good. We'd be doing great. But my least favorite- You would finally fill up the hole inside of us. Yeah, the spreadsheet that I hate the most is the one that actually tells me about how the product is actually doing. Yeah, and it's like you didn't sell 4 million. Your projections have been crushed and also with it, your spirits. Yeah. Sometimes people who are really good at spreadsheets will show me a spreadsheet and I will think that I-

am deeply incompetent. So that's another kind of spreadsheet feeling I don't love where it's like, whoa, your tabs are all cross referenced. And like the complexity budget is wild because it, it goes out really far to the right. Like, like going down far down. I'm used to, but when it goes so far to the right, it's,

You've got to really scroll to the right a long time on the Complexly budget. Every time I send my tax spreadsheet to my accountant, my accountant writes back, this is not a spreadsheet. This is a Word document that you made inside of Excel. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Yeah, that seems – that is also like how I like to treat them. Yeah. All right, Hank, we got to get to questions from our listeners because this is a podcast where we answer questions from our listeners, not primarily a podcast where we pontificate about our relationship with spreadsheets. And anyway, talking about it is making it hurt right beneath my belly button. So this first question comes from Sam who writes, Dear John and Hank –

Why is it that things can happen at night, but things don't happen at day? Sam has unknowingly unlocked one of my biggest rants. Things happen during the day or in the day. And I guess during the night, although that sounds wrong. But why do things happen at night, but during or in the day? I feel like we have a different relationship with night than day, you know?

I think it's something else, Hank, which is that prepositions are full of it. Prepositions are bad in English. What just happened? Nothing happened. Don't worry about it. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine, John. Don't worry about me. That sounded like a sneeze. Don't worry about me. It's fine. But sneezing isn't normal. Don't worry about me, John. I'll be all right. Leave me behind. I will. I will. No questions asked. Okay.

Yeah, done. I – Got to look out for number one. Am I my brother's keeper as the world's first murderer asked God? Let me finish the question. Okay. Always thinking about Sam Antics. Sam. Sorry, I just really wanted to read his name specific sign off. Oh, okay. Great.

I think prepositions are bad. We have so many bad prepositions. It's not just at night, but during the day or at night, but in day. It's all kinds of prepositions fail. Anytime we have a problem in language, 99% of the time, you can track it back to a failure of prepositions. Think about like when we say on instead of in, that you're on an island, but in a country. Think about how we say- This sounds very annoying to people who don't speak English. One more thing-

Yeah. As if English weren't already a catastrophic language, we have to add in all of this prepositional ambiguity where we're not solving problems, we're creating them. The whole purpose of language is to facilitate the clarity of communication so that my ideas can be transparent to you and yours can be transparent to me.

But prepositions, while they are absolutely necessary, the way that we use them in English, it just – it doesn't make things more clear. It doesn't make things more clear to say that you're on an island instead of in an island. Yeah. When you're in a country, there's got to be some deeper truth here. But not on a country. You're not on a country.

You're on a continent, though. You're on a continent, but not a country. But I think there's like a deeper truth that's being assigned here. No, no, no. This is what preposition fans always say. They always come up with some excuse why the preposition ambiguity is okay, but I completely disagree with you. Let's try to do it with day and night. All right, let's do it with day and night. Let's do the thought experiment.

Great. It is – we do things during the day or in the day and we do things at night. And what that makes me think is that night to us is like a specific moment, like all of night. It's a monolith.

Is a moment. It's one thing. It's one thing. Whereas a day is composed of many things. And that's kind of true because it has the morning, it has the evening, it has the afternoon, and it has- And from a pre-modern perspective, right? Day was almost everything. Yeah. And then night was one thing. Yeah. And one sort of-

terrifying, weird, strange, other side of life. Right, right, right. Yeah. And so it makes sense on that level, of course, but we don't live in pre-modern times, Hank. No, but our prepositions do. I know. And I think that's a failure of language. All right. So we should be able to do things in the night? I feel like when I say in, like when we're doing things- In the night. In the night. That sounds like in the night. Well, what it sounds like is that I belong to the night. Right.

It's like a vampires would say that. Yes. Vampires do things in the night. Humans do things at night. Actually, that's grammatically correct. That's true.

That's right. They do things in the night. Vampires don't do things at night. That makes it sound like they're going out to the club or like you're just watching Netflix. But if you do something in the night, that you're hanging out at the playground at nighttime, you're doing – you're getting up to no good. Yes. You've turned the night into a time of day that has parts because you belong to the night now. Right. I guess that's a good argument. True nocturne.

I'm starting to waver in my belief that these prepositions are merely bad and starting to think that maybe there's something to your argument. Because what if we turn it around and what if we say like we do things at day? I don't mind that. I think we should maybe embrace that. We do things at day. Yeah. I'm awake at day. I'm awake at day. I enjoy doing the laundry at day more than I enjoy doing the laundry at night for sure. Yeah.

There's just some things I like to do at day. Working. I prefer working at day. Yeah. I prefer working during the night. I know you do. In the night for you. In the night. Because you're a vampire. Yeah. Yeah.

I like the way you just said, yeah, it was like a very, like a radio voice. Yeah. My voice is wrecked right now. Yeah. Mine too. We've been doing too much and not sleeping enough. Hank and I have not been sleeping enough. No. Somebody posted an October challenge to get eight hours of a night.

Eight hours of sleep in the night, every night for all of October. I looked at it and I was like, I am not going to get eight hours of sleep any night in October. I'll get eight hours of sleep on the weekends if you include like a daytime nap.

Maybe if you include the daytime naps, yeah. Love a daytime nap in the weekends. I don't do daytime naps. I do. I've gotten really into them lately. Since the second time I got COVID, I find that I almost have to have a daytime nap. But let's not worry about that. Let's move on to this next question. John, this next question comes from Nick who asks, how to heat food during power outage? That's just the subject of the email. It's a good subject. Yeah. Yeah.

Hello, Hank and John. I'm 21 and need help. How did people reheat their food before the microwave eating cold food? Nick, I think they did a lot of eating cold food, but also you wrap it up in something and put it over the fire. Yeah. The way you just said fire. What is up with this new presentation that you've chosen where you take random pauses and then you say fire? Yeah.

It's part of my new in-the-night lifestyle, John. Fire. It's like you're doing one of those late-night radio shows where it's like this next song is for a couple in Missoula, Montana. I hope they're having a real nice night. A lovely night. Ha!

Yeah, that was good, John. Hank and Catherine, wherever you are, I hope that you are warm in each other's embrace. Anyway.

Here's All-Star by Smash Mouth. Just a little late night somebody once told me. Yeah. Somebody. Okay. What was the question? Yeah. I mean, I think we had a lot of ways to heat stuff up. Once you think of All-Star, it's almost impossible not to say somebody. You do have to do it. Otherwise, everybody's at home just like with their brains being all itchy. Yeah.

I think it's easier to heat food up than it is to cool it down. People in the past didn't have cold food. That was the bigger problem. Well, they struggled to have cold food. They had a lot of room temperature food. Yes. But hot food is relatively straightforward as long as you have access to a fire. It's just I'm imagining Nick like in an apartment with a microwave and an electric –

stove top being like, well, what do I do? And fair enough, Nick. We have sort of engineered the open fire pit out of many of our homes, which I would argue is a blessing in a lot of ways, except when there's a power outage, when it is not a catastrophe, but definitely an inconvenience. I would say for sure that all the ways I thought of for how to heat up your food just now are way worse than just having cold food.

What do you mean? Like putting it underneath your armpit to warm it up? Just like – well, you could make a fire, but that seems unsafe and a lot of work. There's a very good chance that your water heater is still working because it's probably powered by natural gas, not by electricity. So you could just put it in a Ziploc bag and lower it into a bucket of very – of like 120-degree water. That's –

That's brilliant. I mean, that solves the problem. Your water heater still works, so just lower it into your water heater. That doesn't seem dangerous at all. Take advice from this podcast. Just knock the top off of your water heater. That's fine and not going to cause any problems in the future. This next question comes from Abby, who writes, Dear Green Brothers, Hi. Hello. I have a question. What are the qualifications for something to be an organ? Why is the skin an organ? Skeletons and skin. Abby. Okay.

Yeah, why is the skin an organ but the skeleton is not? Well, the skeleton is. Oh, it is? Well, bones certainly are. I don't know if you count the whole skeleton, but bones are definitely organs. I don't know if an individual bone is an organ. I don't think of my femur as an organ. Well, that's not the question. It's not about what you think, John. It's about what's true. Wait, you're saying that my pinky toe has like 17 bone organs in it?

I don't – Disagree. So a bone is definitely an organ. Like it fits all of the definitions. So let me – organ definition. It's got different tissue types. It's formed structurally into a unit specialized for a form of particular function. Bones are organs.

Okay. Also, when I Googled it, it said bones are organs. Yeah. Okay, good. So, yeah. I mean – A bone is a rigid organ that constitutes part of the skeleton. The smallest organ in my body is probably in one of my toes. Probably in your ear, actually. Yeah.

It's probably in my ear. And it has malfunctioned many times, which is why I have the labyrinthitis. Yeah. Yeah. The – oof. So you do get to a point. Like there was recently we like discovered a new organ. We did. We kind of did. Okay. There was like a gland where we did not know there was a gland, you know? And so I was like, I guess. But you don't – like when you think organ, you think –

Just like when we think of like a tomato being a fruit, that seems a little bit wrong. But like a bone being an organ seems a little bit wrong. But because we think that it's like the kidney and the heart and the lungs and like these squishy things inside of our body are the organs. But once you start to actually try and create a rigid definition, then you end up with some things being organs that you wouldn't think. Like your pinky toe. Okay. And also your blood. Yeah. I heard you got cancer of that organ. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, kind of. Like it's so weird. Blood cancer is so strange because like most of the cells in your blood cannot become cancerous because they do not have genomes. They don't have any way of controlling themselves because your red blood cells don't have DNA in them. They lose their DNA before being ejected from the bone marrow. And so it's – blood cancers are either cancers of the bone marrow or of the white blood cells, which are –

Basically, another single-celled organisms that just work for you. They're like single-celled organisms that are in your favor. Yeah. I mean, they have your genome, so they are you. But they are independent. They go wherever they want. They're just moving around in there. It's wild.

I have to tell you, you've made my stomach hurt just below my belly button twice in the last minute. First, when you said that there might be undiscovered organs inside my body, which is like being told that maybe we haven't mapped the whole world. Like maybe...

Maybe there is something that we don't know out there, which I don't want to know. People are always like, oh, cryptids, it's so exciting. It's so interesting. I don't want there to be a Yeti. I do not want a Sasquatch. I do not want extant Neanderthals. I don't want any of this business. I want the world that I know to be. Yeah.

And then secondly, when you said that our white blood cells can just kind of go anywhere and have a lot of autonomy. I don't want anything in my body to have a lot of autonomy other than me, other than this guy. Well, I got a lot of stuff I'm not going to tell you about then. Please don't. Okay.

I was going to say something different, but then I changed it for your mental health. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. You got another question for me? Yeah. This question comes from Kristen who asks, dear Brothers Green, does the moonshine, not the alcohol, contain UV rays? I mean, moonlight is a reflection of the sun. How much of its power is actually reflected on a full moon? Constantly curious, Kristen. Nice. Well, it has to, right? Yeah.

It doesn't have to because you can have things that reflect – that you can see that are reflecting only specific wavelengths. So you can have – like for example, my shirt is reflecting green wavelengths and it's absorbing others. So it may not be reflecting any of the UV that is hitting it even though there's probably no UV hitting it because I am in a dark office with only artificial light. But I think that probably there is a little bit of UV radiation that gets reflected by the moon. Got to be.

I mean, it has to be a pretty small amount. I don't think you could ever get a sunburn on a full moon night. No. In fact, we were talking about this recently on an episode of SciShow Tangents. And so we looked into it a little bit and it is a tiny amount of UV radiation. It is certainly not enough. We were talking about how you could get vitamin D if you never go out in the daytime. And someone was like, what about moonshine? And we figured, no, that's not going to do it. It's not enough. Yeah.

Do you know that I thought Moonlight was a literary construct until I was 23 years old? John, I had the exact same experience, possibly at the exact same age. Wow. So I always thought Moonlight was like something that was –

in novels to create atmosphere or I didn't know that the moon moonlight actually like created shadows and everything and that you could actually see differently on a full moon night than on a slivery moon night. I don't know why. I should have known this, but I didn't. We spent time outside, I swear.

Yeah, we would go outside after dark. Yeah, we went to like summer camp and we went on like overnights by ourselves. In dark or on dark or at dark or however you want to preposition it. On the dark. On the dark. We went out on the dark. Of the dark. But you go out on the sea. You don't go out in the sea. You go out on the sea. Well, because I go out in the sea if I go out in the sea, John. Yeah.

You mean if you swim in it? If I'm in there with the sharks, I'm in the sea. If I'm on the sea, then I'm not in it. I'm on it in a boat or a surfboard. All right. I buy it. I don't love it because I don't think we need both in and on. I think we just need one. I...

N, I propose. E-N. Places both in and on. I'm sure that the people are going to be fine with that. One thing I've noticed about us these days is we love a prescriptive language change. Not only do we love a prescriptive language change, we love shifting a norm. We love it. We love to shift a norm. I'm just kidding. We hate shifting norms. We hate shifting norms. Yeah. Yeah.

I stopped eating beef and you would think that I like you would think that I like hurt individual people by not eating beef. Like they take it very personally that I don't eat beef anymore. And I'm like, I'm not telling I'm not telling you to not eat beef. I'm just telling you that I don't eat beef anymore. I am telling you that it'd be great if if overall as a society we ate less beef and I would like to be a part of that.

Yeah. But you don't have to be. I had this experience where I was biking home from grad school. Yeah. And the shadow cast by the moon of me on my bike was so vivid. Yeah.

And I like went home and I wrote an essay about it, about like the moon's shadows. And then little did you realize that this is a universal human experience. Well, yeah, it was, it turned out to be very bad and like nobody liked it because they were like, yeah, no, Hank. Who doesn't know about moonshine? Yeah.

And I was like, I didn't know about it. I was working as a chaplain at a children's hospital and I would often work 24 hour shifts. So I would work all night long and I went outside to do something that you should never do. And we don't have to get into it more than that, but don't smoke. Yeah.

Don't smoke. It's bad for you. And it gives money to corporations. It's like, it's like, it's, it's bad in every way. Just don't smoke. Anyway, I went outside to do something and I was like looking at the playground of the children's hospital, which is always a surreal place for me because it was almost always empty. Right. And I'm looking at this empty playground. It's like three o'clock in the morning. And I'm like, there's so many shadows. Where are all those? Where are the streetlights? Yeah. Yeah.

There's no streetlights. What's causing all those shadows? Then I look up and I'm like, it's the dang moon. It's so bright. Dang. It's a big deal up there. It's the moon. It's a big deal up there. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, if you're looking to enjoy some time in the moonlight with your beloved- On the moonlight. Thank you very much. I recommend this song to go with it. Ladies and gentlemen, Rick Astley is never going to give you up.

No, any more and we get a copyright strike. This next question comes from Kate who writes, hey, John and Hank, recently I've been seeing a lot of YouTube videos of celebrity voices singing songs they never sang before, claiming that they used AI to do that, but they sound really real. Yeah. Yeah. They have AI do it and it does sound really, really real. It sounds so real that when Drake did this, when Drake had Tupac rap using AI, he

It made Kendrick Lamar so mad that Kendrick Lamar ruined Drake's life. Is that how that happened? That's basically – I don't want to oversimplify the whole beef. But like Kendrick Lamar like went from like this is a 30 out of 100 rap battle to oh gosh, I guess it's 100 out of 100 rap battle. Anyway –

Does this mean that we could potentially have John sing Hank's Harry Potter songs in the near future? How do they do this? Is it really AI? I know there are deepfake videos, but this sounds really real. I'm worried that the implications are pretty serious. Like maybe governments can frame someone with evidence of fake voice recording. Please, please prove me wrong, pumpkins and penguins. Kate, I have terrible news, Kate. Yeah, I've got good news and bad news.

Okay. What's the good news? My good news is that I don't think that anybody's going to – I mean, I think that a totalitarian government could use this to frame people.

people i think that in our society it's unlikely to be used in that way but how it's very likely to be used is to make every call everything into question so that if someone does say something then you can just say oh they made him say that or and like we already kind of live in that world where people like over edit people always say like i got hacked to yeah it's just like we like oh that's just a hack oh that's just that's fake you could like every everything can be fake that's one of

I've been working on a video about this. And I constantly see people now see real things and then say, that's AI. And I'm like, oh, great. So now we have no idea what's real or not. And my job becomes very complex because all I have to do all day long is just figure out whether things are true or not and post that. And then I could do that all the time as my job full time.

It's not so much that we can't tell what's fake. It's that we can't tell what's real. Yeah. That's the more disturbing part of it to me. When you can't tell what's fake, you can't tell what's real. Yeah. And that seems to so far be the bigger problem where it's just like no one believes anything and everything can be called into question. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I don't know how it works, of course. Like you basically – it listens to a lot of that person's voice and

And then it can recreate the voice. And there's a thing like you can go do this with John or I's voice right now at character AI. And like, it is so inexcusable that, that they did that and,

Oh, to be clear, you can do it right now, but we in no way gave our permission for it to happen. No. And here's a wild thing. Google bought that company. So they were like, this is okay enough. Like the fact that you set up like a system that like allows for this to happen and did nothing to stop it is not immoral enough for us to not want to acquire your team.

I'm like, okay, I guess. Where are we at that we have to move so fast that you don't care? Well, I think you've identified the issue, Hank, which is that we have to move so fast. If you don't move so fast, then someone else will move fast. There's no regulatory body or anything to stop you from moving fast. This technology gets better very quickly. If you aren't

In the group of people who are helping it get better, then you're getting further and further behind, which is something Google feels like it can't afford to do. And...

That's just the reality that we're living in where corporations have a tremendous amount of power, but they also have a tremendous amount of fear. The fear that they're going to be left behind as new technologies crest wave after wave after wave over us. Or to put it another way, have wave after wave crash on us. In us, over us, under us, above us. There you go. Of us. Around us. Yeah.

The waves of us are crashing into and upon us. I am worried. I've been saying for a long time, and it's such a...

The easiest way I can say it sounds so contrived, but it is simply that the robot wars will be fought by humans. We thought that we would create robots who would have their own goals and wants and they would come and put us in the Matrix or Terminator to blow us up. But what in fact will happen is that the robots will just get good at controlling humans and the humans will be the ones pulling the trigger. Yeah.

at the humans or you know we will also have things we'll also use robots we already are we will also use robots but it will be us using them to kill humans it will just be us being like I just think that we are already in a world where information environments are so segregated and that is being done platform to platform like you like

And so like it's one of the reasons why I feel weird about leaving Twitter is because I feel like I'm just abandoning that place to become its own segregated information environment with nobody pushing back on me and mine and no one pushing back on them and theirs. And then you have – you just have different like people existing being controlled by different algorithms and

That are giving them the stuff that sort of confirms them and makes them feel good and also makes them feel outraged about the things that they're already outraged about. And then you just – The only thing I'd push back there, Hank – Yeah. Is that that is not why you don't leave Twitter.

Sure, sure, sure, sure. That's not important. You don't leave Twitter because you're addicted to it. I think if you were acting rationally, you would leave Twitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for sure. And not because it's bad, but like, sure, it's bad, but also because like I've got better stuff to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just not a good use of your time. But I do like legitimately worry that we're kind of setting ourselves up to have – for each of these little places to have its own little god, right?

That is the algorithm. It was so cute when it was like, I'm on Frog Talk. But now there's kind of like a god of Democrat Twitter and a god of Republican Twitter. There's sort of a god of Frog Talk. And there's sort of a god of Frog Talk. Though I love – I think the god of Frog Talk is probably great. It's probably a frog. Yeah.

Absolutely. And I'm not saying we can't have benevolent gods. We have lots of them. It's just that if we're going to have lots and lots and lots of gods, we're going to have lots and lots of disagreement over which gods to worship and when to worship them. And most of all, we're going to forget that there's a god in control of frog talk. Or you never realize it. Right. Yeah. Right. Anyway, AI freaks Hank and I out, but it's also hard to know if we're old men yelling at clouds.

Yeah. I mean, I definitely feel like I have to engage with it because it doesn't feel like – a lot of recent tech stuff has felt like, hey, Hank, aren't you interested in this? And it's like, no, definitely not. Like, that's silly. You just reinvented gambling. But this feels like it just feels necessary to pay attention to. The moment I had actually was spreadsheet related where I asked –

I asked chat GPT to make a spreadsheet of a bunch of information that I had gathered because I knew it was going to take me forever. And it just made the spreadsheet and it made it better than I could have made it. And then I was like, oh, yeah, no, it's good at certain things. But also you have to check absolutely everything it does, which is annoying. You know who else is good at certain things, but you have to check everything they do. Me.

Me. Which reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by me. Me. Check my work. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Moon Shadows. The shadows of moons. This shadow of the moon goes out to two lovers in Poughkeepsie, Antoine and Pierre. They're French. I don't know how they ended up in Poughkeepsie. And they, I hope that they're just going to have a lovely night tonight. And we're going to play for them now.

Old Blackwater, keep on rolling. Mississippi Moon, won't you keep on shining on me? Whatever that song is. Today's podcast is also brought to you by the inside of your water heater. The inside of your water heater. I mean, technically, I guess. And this podcast is also brought to you by your bones. Your bones, they're organs. They're organs.

So listen, when was the last time you needed to go to the doctor but pushed it off? I know that for me, it was two weeks ago when I severely sprained my ankle while signing my name over and over again. It's a long story, but I should have gone to the doctor and I didn't.

because I'm disorganized and I'm too busy and it'll heal on its own and et cetera, et cetera. We all know the excuses, but now you don't have any excuses because you've got ZocDoc, a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in-network doctors,

and click to instantly book an appointment. We're talking about booking in-network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors across every specialty from mental health to dental health, primary care to urgent care, and more. So stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to ZocDoc.com slash Dear Hank to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash Dear Hank.

ZocDoc.com slash Dear Hank.

I've long been a fan of Roman sundials, not so much for their ability to keep time, but for their darkly humorous inscriptions, which tended to be reminders that time is short and death is, you know, coming for us all. "'Life is but a passing shadow,' one read. "'Time flies,' read another. "'The hour is late. "'An hour passes slowly, but the years quickly. "'Time devours all things.'"

And then there's my personal favorite. The last hour is hidden, so we must watch them all. And that, my friends, is why there's life insurance. Because you may not know the hour, but you can know a measure of security for your loved ones. And with Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage. Some options are 100% online and let you avoid unnecessary medical exams.

PolicyGenius allows you to compare quotes from America's top insurers side by side for free with no hidden fees. And even if you have life insurance through work, it may not protect all your family's needs or follow you if you change jobs. So secure your family's tomorrow so you can have peace of mind today. Head to PolicyGenius.com or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's PolicyGenius.com.

That's not their motto, but it is a motto from a Roman sundial.

All right, Hank, before we get to the all-important news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I want to ask you one more question. Okay. It comes from Rudolph, who writes, Hey, guys, I was doing some reading on the ultimate fate of the universe, as one does, and I read that the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies are on course to collide in 4 to 8 billion years, and the proposed name of this combined galaxy is, distressingly, Milkdromeda. Wow.

No, it's not. It is. I'm very unhappy with this name. If this name becomes established broadly, I will protest violently in the streets. And as a last resort, I will use any available means to prevent Andromeda and the Milky Way from merging. I love Rudolph. Rudolph, you are, you're a bold thinker, man. I'm really, I really appreciate it. If you have any ideas for better names for this combined galaxy, that would be great. Because at some point, these names become impossible to change. Yours, Rudolph.

Well, first of all, I have to say that by the time it happens, the Earth will be uninhabitable. So there is that. If indeed there is an Earth. Yeah. It might have already been swallowed by the sun. Yep. It could have. I think that Andromedilky is also bad. The Andromedilky way. I think that we're using too much milk and not enough whey. It's just the Andromeda way. Okay.

Or Weydromeda. Weydromeda. Weydromeda sounds like something exciting is about to happen. Andwemeda? Andwemeda is real bad. The Andromeda Way is kind of lovely. Andwemelkda? The Andromeda Way sounds like an old Roman road. Oh, it does. It does. It seems like you're on the way to somewhere. Yeah. How did they get to North Africa? Oh, they took the Andromeda Way. Andromeda Way. And also it does sound like there would be camels on it.

Potentially, yeah. Well, because sort of dromedary. That's true. It's got some dromedary in it. Is Andromeda just like a god? Andromeda is an Ethiopian princess of Greek mythology rescued from a monster by her future husband, Perseus, which is totally something I knew before looking it up. That is – I was pretty sure that Andromeda was a person. Andromeda is a person. It was a god. Well, fine line. Yeah. Yeah.

I do. I'm kind of getting stuck on this idea that we now have many gods. We are sort of like a pantheon of algorithms. I can tell. I knew you were going to get stuck on that. I knew you were going to be excited about this whole polytheism of technology. I knew that that was going to get you going. It gets you going. It makes me hurt two inches below my belly button. Yeah.

Because you have like major and minor gods, you know? Yeah. And that means that there's like a frog god. And there's like a basket god. And there's a craft god. Just like there used to be. Oh, my one god. I knew this was going to get you going.

Yeah. Just like there used to be. We're going back to the days, but now it's a, now it's a God made out of an algorithm. They got to figure out what your household gods are. And I'm TikTok probably will eventually just like, let you know, it'll be like, here's your household gods. Right. If you want to buy their merch, go to this link. Yeah. And we own those.

No, that's our merch. That's all ours. That's right. But it's distributed by DFTBA.com. Oh, God. It seems unlikely. It does seem unlikely. Anyway, the point is we're definitely going to call it either the Andromeda Way or – what did you propose? And Dway Milkta. And Dway Milkta.

I love Andouille Milk Dud. It feels like a true merging of two galaxies. What about – wait, what about Milk Dud? What about Milk Dud? Milk Dud!

Milk dud. Milk dud. The milk dud galaxy. Yeah, it's probably going to be a little globby right when it happens. It's not going to have like a perfect spiral. It's going to look like a milk dud. Milk dud. Milk dud. We found it. It took us a minute, but we found it, Rudolph. Milk dud. The milk dud galaxy coming to you not that soon, but coming to you nonetheless. Four billion years from today. Hey, Hank. Yeah.

We got an email from Sonia, who is a geographer at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and longtime listener of the pod. So listen, there is a person whose ashes are already on the moon.

Oh. And that person is Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, regarded as a founder of modern astrogeology. And he had some of his ashes brought to the moon aboard the Lunar Prospector in 1999. I think I remember that. And listen, they accepted an ounce of his ashes were flown with a plaque including the accompanying passage from Romeo and Juliet.

And when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun. It's beautiful. So thank you, Sonia. Thank you for that little bit of Romeo and Juliet, and also for the knowledge that there are already human remains on the moon. Thank you. Hank. Yes.

There's a lot of news from Mars and AFC Wimbledon. Okay. Do you want to do AFC Wimbledon? Sure. So two big things happened since we last potted. First,

First, very excitingly, and it was a pure joy to watch, AFC Wimbledon pummeled the franchise currently plying its trade in Milton Keynes 3-0 at Plough Lane. It has become a fixture that they fear and that we enjoy, whereas it used to be a fixture that they relished and we dreaded.

I love playing those franchise, not going to say the word, at home at Plough Lane and pummeling them. Franchise get battered everywhere they go, the Wimbledon fans sang alongside my all-time favorite football song. Where were you? Where were you? Where were you when you were us?

We beat the holy living heck out of them. It was extremely enjoyable. The boys had a great time. The vibes were good. Life was great. It seemed like Wimbledon were on the up and up. We were in like fourth place in League Two, and we just have been looking great all season. And then what catastrophe should befall us but an unprecedented, literally in recorded history, flooding of the River Wando that led to a catastrophic –

of our pitch such that it resembled, I can only say, a golf course. There was so much sand. There was so much piled turf in various places.

And it was a real catastrophe. I mean, if you're a club like Wimbledon, it's not like there's some secret stash of money that you can use to help deal with a massive flood that also flooded – very low flooded, but flooded the club shop, a little bit of the museum. The museum is going to be out of commission for a little while, although none of the important stuff, the irreplaceable stuff was damaged there.

Same thing in the club shop. About 95% of the stock was okay, but 5% wasn't. And just in general, I mean, this flood was really – it was outside of anybody's expectations. Yeah.

It will make insurance much more expensive in the future, all that stuff. But the footballing world really came together and raised 120,000 pounds. The entire football community came together and raised tons of money to support AFC Wimbledon, which just reminds me that like people are so nice and generous when they are at all proximal to misfortune or suffering. Yeah.

And it reminds me of how generous people can be. I wish that we were that generous all the time in all the directions, but it was still really lovely. And I don't know when AFC Wimbledon are going to be able to play home games again. They're hoping in the next few weeks. But yeah, we'll see. It's a real kick in the pants. There's no doubt about that. But nonetheless, AFC Wimbledon have survived greater challenges, and we will persevere and find a way forward. And hopefully it won't negatively affect the season too much.

Well, in news from Mars, Perseverance headed up a...

to the rim of a crater is starting to find weirder rocks. And it found, I think that you can safely call this an erratic. So a rock that doesn't seem to be from round there. It's the only rock they've ever seen like this. And it looks very weird. Like you can look at it and be like, that's weird. And it's just sort of sitting there and it's stripy. It's like got black and white stripes, basically. It looks like a little zebra, except it's a rock.

And they don't know where it came from or what it is, but it's always very exciting. They think it's probably a volcanic rock. Somehow it might be like a kind of granite or something. But it's just sitting on top. Maybe it got like blasted out by a distant...

somewhere else and landed there. But as they're thinking maybe they're going to find more stuff like this as they get closer to the rim maybe. But always finding more weird things on Mars is the general experience. Is there any chance that it came from somewhere else? Like another planet? No. No, no. I meant like a comet or something. Something that landed on Mars. Something that hit it. Sure.

And I think that it's probably- They probably accounted for that. They probably figured out that it's a Martian rock. It's amazing to me that we know so much- We have a lot of- We get erratics here too on Earth where sometimes you find a rock in a place where it just don't belong. They're like, how did you end up here? It's usually a glacier. Didn't you visit an erratic, a large erratic at some point? I visited an erratic. Or you made a Farbrothers video about one or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You love an erratic. I love an erratic. Yeah. Well, I support that 100%, man. Thanks, John. I love that you love erratics.

I could probably get pretty into geology, but I haven't done it yet.

I got a feeling that's in your future. I feel like that's like your retirement project. But in the meantime, thank you for potting with me. Thank you for potting with me, John. If you want to send us an email, you can do that. It's hankandjohn at gmail.com. And that's how we have a podcast. Without the questions, where are we? Great questions this week, everybody. Thank you. This podcast was edited by Linus Ovenhouse. It was mixed by Joseph Tunamedish. Our communications coordinator is Brooke Shotwell.

It's produced by Rosianna Hals-Rojas and Hannah West. Our executive producer is Seth Radley. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Chakravarti. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by The Great Gunnarolla. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.