Dear Hank & John - 399: God of Frogtok

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Why do things happen “at” night but “during” the day? How do you heat food during a power outage? What is an organ? Does moonlight contain UV rays? What are the implications of AI song covers? What’s a better name than Milkdromeda? Hank and John Green have answers! If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

You're listening to a Complexly Podcast. Hello and 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. 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. And it bombed, it bombed. 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 it's January 2nd. What? It's just it's just a certain group of people that that one's for. I bet I bet Excel nerds love that. I bet they did. 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. I feel like a wizard. I'm like, I could really sell and everything also changes. I for me, it just makes 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 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- We 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 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 goes out really far to the right. I get like going down far down, I'm used to but when they go so far to the right. I really scroll to the right, you can 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.

Yeah, that seems 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. In any way, 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? Sorry, that was not, nothing happened. Don't worry about it. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine, John. 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. Yeah, done. Gotta look out for number one. Am I my brother's keeper as the world's first murderer ask God?

Let me finish the question. Okay. Always thinking about Sam Antic's Sam. Sorry, I just really wanted to read his name-specific sign off. 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 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. Alright, let's do it with day and night. Let's do the thought experiment. Great. It is, we do things during the day, 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 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. Yeah. And from a pre-modern perspective, right? Day was almost everything. Yeah. And the 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, that sounds like in the night. Well, what it sounds like is that I belong to the night. You know, it's like a vampire's would say that. Yes, vampires do belong to the night. You know, it's like a vampires would say that. Yes, vampires do things in the night. Well, 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, you're hanging out at the playground at nighttime, 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. A true nocturne. I'm starting to waver in my belief that these prepositions are merely bad. I'm 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. 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. 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. 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. We've been doing so 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, Yeah. Yeah. Eight hours of sleep in the night, every night. Yeah.

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 on 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- It's a good subject. 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, what is up with this new presentation that you've chosen,

where you take random pauses and then you say, fire. I'd wrap it up and put it on the- 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.

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. I think we had a sneeze. Like 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. 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 in an apartment with a microwave and an electric stove top being like, well, what do I do?

And fair enough, Nick. Like 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 you could make a fire but that seems unsafe and a lot of work you it there's a very good chance that your your water heater is still working because it's probably powered by natural gas, not by electricity. Yeah.

So you can just use the power, use the little pilot light. Put it in a Ziploc bag and lower it into a bucket of like 120 degree water. 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. 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 an organ. 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 look at the organ definition.

It's got different tissue types. It's formed structurally into a unit specialized for a particular function, bones or organs. OK, and also when I Googled it, it said bones or organs. Yeah, OK, 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. It's probably in my body is probably in one of my toes. Probably in your ear, actually. It's probably in my ear. And it has malfunctioned many times, which is why I have the labyrinthitis. Yeah. I, yeah. The, the, oof. So, I, there, you do get to a point, like there was recently we like discovered another, a new organ, but we didn't. We did. Kind of did. Oh, okay. Like there was recently we like discovered another a new organ, but we didn't we did kind of did There okay, they they there was like a a gland

They 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 there'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. OK. And also your blood. Yeah. I heard you got cancer of that organ. 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 can't, 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, like 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. 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 Neandrotals. I don't want any of this business. I want the world that I know to be. 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 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 moon shine, 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. It has to right? 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 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. 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. Someone was like, what about moonshine? 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. I always thought moonlight was something that was used in novels to create atmosphere,

or I didn't know that the moonlight actually 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 summer camp and we went on 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. That's what I am. You go out on the sea. You don't go out in the sea where 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.

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 need both in and on. I think we just need one. I – N, I propose. E-N. I propose both in and on. She's fine. 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. That's just – 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. I stopped eating beef and you would think that I – you would think that I hurt individual people by not eating beef. They take it very personally that I don't eat beef anymore. 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 overall as a society, we eat 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 and the shadow cast by the moon of me on my bike was so vivid. And I went home and I wrote an essay about it, about the moon's shadows.

And then little did you realize that this is a universal human experience. Well, yeah, it turned out to be very bad and nobody liked it because they were like, yeah, no, Hank. It turned out to be very bad and nobody liked it because they were like, yeah, no, Hank. Who doesn't know about moonshine? 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. I would work all night long and I went outside to do something that you should never do. We don't have to get into it more than that.

Sneeze, he had to go sneeze. Don't smoke. It's bad for you and it gives money to corporations. It's bad in every way. Just don't smoke. Anyway, I went outside to do something and I was looking at the playground of the children's hospital, which is always a surreal place for me because it was almost always empty. 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 the streetlights? 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 the moon.

It's a big deal up there. Yeah. 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 gonna give you up. Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh- that they used AI to do that, but they sound really real. Yeah, yeah. They have AI do it and it does sound really real. It sounds so real that when Drake did this, when Drake had Tupac rap using AI, 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 Kendrick Lamar went from this is a 30 out of 100 rap battle to oh gosh, I guess it's a 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 deep fake videos, but this sounds really real.

I'm worried that the implications are pretty serious. 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 gonna, I mean, I think that a totalitarian government could use this to frame 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 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 in that world where people like over and 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 everything can be fake. That's one of the I've been working on a video about this.

Like you can. And I constantly see people now see real things and then say, that's AI. And I'm like, oh great. So now we can't, 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 like figure out whether things are true or not and post that. And then like 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. 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. 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.

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

I'm like, okay, I guess, are you like, 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 and there's no regulatory body or anything to stop you from moving fast and 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. 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, of us. Around us. The waves of us are crashing into and upon us. I am worried. I've been saying for a long time and like it's it's such a like a. Like it's 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

like 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 at the humans. Or we will also have things. We will also use robots. We already are. We will also use robots.

But we will be us using them. We will use robots to kill humans. But it will be us using them. 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. 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 just have different people existing being controlled by different algorithms 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 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, 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 because 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. Yeah. 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. That is the algorithm. Right. That like, it was so cute when it was like, I'm on Frog Talk, but like now there's sort of like, there's kind of like a god of Democrat Twitter and a god of Republican Twitter. And-

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. Absolutely, and I'm not saying we can't have benevolent gods. We have lots of them. It's just that if we're gonna have lots and lots and lots of gods, we're gonna have lots and lots

of disagreement over which gods to worship and when to worship them. And like, and most of all, we're going to forget that there's a God in control of frog talk. That like, if you- Yeah. Or we never realize it. Like I think that. 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.

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, uh-oh. Yoinks.

Yeah. Noah'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 gonna have a lovely night tonight and we're gonna play for them now. Old Black Water, 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. This podcast is also brought to you by your bones. Your bones, they're organs.

They're organs. 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 4-8 billion years, and the proposed name of this combined galaxy is, distressingly, Milkdromeda. 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're a bold thinker, man. 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.

There is that. If indeed there is a Earth, it might have already been swallowed by the sun. Yeah, 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. Is this the Andromeda way? Or Weydromeda.

Weydromeda. Weydromeda sounds like something exciting's about to happen. And Dwaymeda? And Dwaymeda is real bad. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha 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 away. And also it does sound like there would be camels on it. Potentially, yeah.

Well, cause it's sort of dromedary. But- 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, but I-

Andromeda is a person. Well, I thought it was a god. Well, fine line. 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 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. Because you have major and minor gods, you know? Yeah. It makes me hurt two inches below my belly button. 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 now it's a god made out of an algorithm. You got to figure out what your household gods are. And TikTok probably will eventually just 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, those are 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 gonna call it either the Andromeda way, or...

And what did you propose? Andway Milkda. Andway Milkda? I love Andway Milkda. It feels like a true merging of two galaxies. What about, wait, what about Milk Duh? What about Milk Duh? Milk Duh! Milk Duh.

Milk Duh. The Milk Duh 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 Duh. Yeah. Milk Duh. Milk Duh. 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 Sonja who is a

geographer at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and longtime listener of the pod. Uh-huh. 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. 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, Sonja. 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. Two big things happened since we last potted. First, very excitingly, and it was a pure joy to watch. AFC Wimbledon pummeled the franchise currently plying its trade in Milton Keynes three to nothing

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 fourth place in League Two and we just have been looking great all season. Then what catastrophe should befall us but an unprecedented literally in recorded history flooding of the River Wandal that led to

a catastrophic drowning 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. It was a real catastrophe. 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. Same thing in the club shop, about 95% of the stock was okay, but 5% wasn't. Just in general, this flood was really – it was outside of anybody's expectations. 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 people are so nice and generous when they are at all proximal to misfortune or suffering. 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. 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 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. Um, 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 stripey. It's like got black and

white stripes, basically. It looks like a little zebra, except it's a rock. And, and they don't know where it came from, or what it is. But it's also 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 blasted out by a distant impact somewhere else and landed there. But they're thinking maybe they're gonna 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. Wow. 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. I think that it's probably- They probably accounted for that. Probably a Mars rock, yeah. 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 you just don't belong, they're like, how did you end up here? It's usually a glacier. Well, didn't we visit an erratic, a large erratic at some point,

or you made a vlog where there's 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 Ovenhaus. It was mixed by Joseph Tunamettish. 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 Deboki Chakravarti. The music 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.