What The Frock

What the Frock Is Wrong With It?

A map is supposed to help you find your way. Unfortunately, the latest attempt to “Correct the Map” may tell us more about modern politics than it does about geography.

In this episode of What the Frock?, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod examine the campaign against the Mercator projection, the familiar world map that makes Greenland look enormous, stretches Antarctica toward infinity, and leaves Africa appearing smaller than it really is. The distortion is genuine, but it is hardly a sinister plot. Gerardus Mercator designed his map in 1569 to preserve compass bearings for navigation, not to flatter countries that did not yet exist or insult continents sitting comfortably along the equator.

That raises the question at the center of the conversation: What exactly are we correcting? And… why?

From there, the discussion turns toward our habit of declaring something a problem, identifying a villain, and demanding a solution that may have little connection to the original facts. That pattern leads Dave and Rod into the public reaction surrounding the Lindsay Clancy trial, where social media experts transformed a complicated criminal case into a battleground over victimhood, mental illness, justice, and blame.

The navigational hazards continue with hikers who used artificial intelligence to plan a climb of Mount Shasta, only to discover that Google Gemini is no substitute for preparation, experience, spare batteries, or an actual map. The episode eventually wanders into AI hallucinations, microwave omelet makers, Ryan Reynolds’ peculiar recollection of the “brutal” 1980s, MTV, Christopher Walken, improperly sized Navy shoes, and the long-awaited arrival of What the Frock? stickers.

It is a longer episode, because the listeners have spoken. The destination may be uncertain, but Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod remain confidently off course.

Welcome to a thoroughly Mercator edition of What the Frock?