We’re now well into the Dog Days of Summer. Pretty much wherever you are reading this, it’s hot (unless you are reading this in Antarctica, which would be pretty fricking cool).

Turns out that the origins of the phrase “Dog Days of Summer” have nothing to do with baseball, summer carnivals, or beach vacations. It dates way, way back to a time before Derek was even born – the ancient Romans dubbed the 20 days before Sirius (the brightest star in Canus Major, or the “Greater Dog”) rose with the sun and the 20 days after it rose with the sun as the “Dog Days.” Seems that they believed the fact that Sirius was brightest in the sky on or around July 20 meant that it gave off heat that added to the sun’s warmth, thereby causing the hottest days of the year on the ground. And here you thought only Derek would give you useless information for your next cocktail party (note from Derek: I can contribute, too! The Harry Potter character Sirius Black was named after this same “Dog Star,” which means his name roughly translates to Black Dog. Sirius Black’s animagus form was, of course, a big black dog. Scott died from boredom while reading this.)

But you know where you won’t find any useless information, but rather extremely useful information? No, no, not on “X” (so weird to write that). We’re talking about CMEpalooza Fall.

I know, I know. Every since we teased the release of our Fall agenda in mid-July, you’ve been frantically refreshing your browser every 10 minutes to see if it’s on our website. You’ve probably let out a few “C’mon guys, is this really that hard?” expletives. I’d tell you to blame Derek and that my sessions have pretty much been locked down for weeks, but that wouldn’t be nice of me to point fingers at anyone else. So let’s just say that we’re both to blame (Note from Derek: Yes, let’s go with that.)

The blame game ends now (well, sort of) as we’re proud to unveil — FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!! – the agenda for CMEpalooza Fall. If you’ve been following our saga for these last 10 years, you probably won’t be surprised that there are still a few “TBAs” with some of our sessions that will be filled in eventually, but there is still a lot of meat for you to gnaw on right now. We’re bringing back some old ideas and introducing some new ones. There will be some faces you’ve seen in CMEpaloozas past and some that will be new to us all. Which is the way we like it.

So check out the agenda, clear your calendar on Wednesday, October 18 (it sounds really far away, I know), and stop poking those needles into your Derek voodoo doll.

Recently, I have been reading physicist Alan Lightman’s Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, which is lovely and thought-provoking and perhaps a wee bit pretentious. However, in the latest chapter I read, things took a turn. Lightman posed the following situation, which he refers to as the Smart Ant Conundrum:

Imagine a colony of highly intelligent ants. Suppose further that this ant colony lasts for a hundred years. Normal ant colonies last only 20 years or so, when the queen flies off to spawn another colony, but let’s assume that a long dynasty of queens have followed each other to replenish this particular colony. Each individual ant lives only a year, so there have been many generations of ants in this colony. This is an old colony. Over the century, these brainy ants create a great civilization. They build advanced structures underground. They compose music. They create paintings and theater. They write books and record histories of their society. They develop science and make theories about the cosmos, both inside the ant hill and beyond. They have emotions and intimate relationships. Then one day, a flood comes and totally destroys the ant colony. Totally. There is nothing left – no ants, no ant books, no ant paintings, no remnants. Nothing. Everything is completely destroyed. There’s no trace left in the universe of this magnificent ant colony. The question I ask myself: Did the ant colony have any meaning? And now, after the colony is gone, with no record of its existence, does it have meaning?

Yikes. I mean, geez dude, I’m just trying to make it to the weekend so I can sleep in for an extra 45 minutes before the cat starts attacking me and demanding his breakfast. I wasn’t prepared for a thought experiment about the meaningfulness of my existence, or lack thereof. This will require another cup of coffee.

One point to consider is that clearly this genius ant colony has never heard of using the cloud for data storage. If the colony of Pennsylvania is ever wiped off the map by a massive flood (thanks for nothing, New Jersey), Scott and I can take solace in that the meaningfulness of our existence is as secure as the structural integrity of whatever building houses the back-up servers on which the CMEpalooza archive resides. Our legacy will live on!

Speaking of CMEpalooza, the agenda for CMEpalooza Fall (Wednesday, October 18, write it down) will be coming out soon, hopefully by the end of the month. Scott would like everyone to know that his sessions are ready to be announced and I am the one holding up the works, which, while annoying, is also accurate. I wonder if any of those brainiac ants knows anything about ChatGPT…

Whenever you have an event as large and prestigious as CMEpalooza, you expect that the masses will come calling when you are celebrating a milestone, as we are right now in the midst of 10 years of our biannual event.

And yet shockingly, The View never contacted us. Silence from the major news network. Heck, we would have settled for a guest spot on Inside the NBA’s pregame show (Derek has always wanted to yell at Charles Barkley for saving his best season once he left Philly) (note from Derek: true.).

Perhaps all of these outlets weren’t properly programmed into my phone, so when they came up as “Potential Spam” or “Unknown Caller” (which always triggers an “Ignore” response), they moved onto the next guest instead of leaving a voicemail.

I even bought a ticket to sit in the audience on Saturday night to watch Bill Maher at one of our local venues. I made sure to remind his booking agent via Twitter several times that I would be in attendance and available to come onstage to talk with Bill about the ways that CMEpalooza has impacted our big, bad, funny world. And yet, the show came and went with nary a wave. Perhaps they just couldn’t see me way up in the bowels of the venue? Yeah, yeah, that’s it.

Frankly, it was all a bit demoralizing. How will America survive without hearing more insight from Derek and I about the many valuable lessons we have learned over this last decade? Surely, a generation of our youth–struggling for sense and purpose in this big, bad, funny world–will be motivated by the story of CMEpalooza’s humble beginnings. But without an outlet beyond our own walls, how would we get this message to them?

Thankfully, our old friends at the Leading Learning podcast series came to the rescue. When they reached out a few months ago asking if Derek and I would do a reprise of the most popular podcast in their history that we recorded back in 2017 (we’re assuming – we didn’t actually ask), we didn’t hesitate to say yes. After several months of editing–you’d be surprised how much Derek can talk once he gets on a roll–we’re proud to announce that this latest podcast is now available. You can access it wherever you listen to your podcasts (but preferably not in the shower–that would be really weird).

If you don’t have the time to listen, or you simply cannot stand our voices, there is even a handy transcript available. I would tell you here about some of the topics we cover, but then you wouldn’t be quite as likely to listen to the podcast, would you? I can tell you that we did not discuss the following topics that are nonetheless near and dear to our hearts:

1. Delis
2. Richard Pryor’s best movies
3. The differences between the Amish and Mennonites (note from Derek: I’m an expert.)
4. Best arcade games in 1980s pizza shops
5. The NBA playoffs (yes, we’re still angry)

Thanks again to the big brains at Leading Learning for making us sound somewhat coherent. I know that ain’t easy.