0:00

Hey, it's Jane. Before we start the episode,

0:02

I want to give you a little tease.

0:06

It's winter right now in the Northern

0:08

Hemisphere, and it's cold outside for many

0:10

of us. And some

0:12

animals are sound asleep. Or

0:16

are they sleeping? Here's a

0:18

question from Jack. Why do animals hibernate?

0:20

Stick around for the answer after this

0:23

episode. But

0:25

Why is supported by Progressive, home of the

0:27

Name Your Price tool. You say how much

0:29

you want to pay for car insurance, and

0:31

they'll show you coverage options that fit your

0:33

budget. It's easy to start

0:35

a quote. Visit progressive.com to get

0:37

started. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and

0:39

Affiliates, price and coverage match limited

0:41

by state law. This

0:44

is But Why, a podcast for curious kids

0:46

from Vermont public. On this show... Why

0:51

are kittens cute and do

0:53

they play the glockenspiel? That

0:55

sounds kind of cool. What

0:58

makes up the moon and

1:00

can I go there in

1:02

a hamster wheel? That doesn't

1:04

sound very safe. But why?

1:07

What if? It's But

1:09

Why If World. But

1:13

Why If World.

1:16

This is But Why If

1:18

World. From Vermont Public and

1:21

Kids Imagination, this is But

1:23

Why If World. Hey

1:28

there folks and welcome back to

1:30

What If World, the show where

1:32

your questions and ideas inspire off-the-cuff

1:34

stories. I'm Mr. Eric, your host,

1:36

and today our theme song sounded

1:38

a little bit different, because we

1:41

are teaming up with one of

1:43

my favorite educational podcasts for kids,

1:45

But Why. And of

1:47

course, that means we get to answer questions

1:49

with the host of But Why, Jane

1:52

Lindholm. Hey, Jane,

1:54

it's me, Mr. Eric. Hi, Mr.

1:56

Eric, it's such a pleasure to meet you. I've been wanting to do this

1:58

for a long time. time. Me

2:01

too! I'm so excited

2:03

and I just have

2:05

to give a big shout out to

2:07

my producer Miss Lynn who mashed up

2:09

our theme songs in a wonderful way

2:12

and also helped to make this happen

2:14

alongside Melody as well. So

2:17

special thanks to you all and

2:20

I want to play a couple of quick questions.

2:22

We have so many questions today we're really

2:24

packing them in. Yeah what are we even doing here? We'll

2:27

find out soon. I'm just gonna play

2:29

this one it'll give us a little taste. My

2:31

name is Safe. I'm five

2:33

years old. I live in

2:36

the UAE and

2:38

what if what if world became

2:40

why if world? Safe!

2:43

You you might not be familiar with

2:46

Safe but Safe has been sending questions

2:48

to what if world for ages and

2:50

I'm really happy that we're getting to

2:52

do this mash-up now. I

2:54

like the idea of thinking about why

2:56

if world. We do a lot of

2:58

science and serious thinking on but why

3:00

but we really like to use our

3:02

imaginations too so this is gonna be

3:05

really fun. Yeah I mean I think

3:07

imagination is like the beginning of science

3:09

you know like then you have to

3:11

put it all to work which is

3:13

definitely not by forte so that's why

3:15

I'm so happy there she was like

3:18

yours. Now we do have

3:20

one more question from

3:22

a listener named Bo. Hello

3:25

my name is Bo and I have

3:27

a new character say Justin. What

3:30

if there was a character named

3:32

Smolsy Folsy he was super small

3:34

and could walk and talk. Goodbye

3:36

I love your show. Hello yes

3:38

I will be I will

3:41

be taking over but as a host

3:43

and now right there and answering all

3:45

the questions I presume sorry it's smart

3:47

you know you're just you are one

3:49

you and Jane will be answering the

3:51

questions I'm gonna be helping out like

3:53

as a facilitator. Well hello Jane it's

3:55

very nice to meet you. Well hello

3:57

Smolsy do I call you Mr. Fartsy

3:59

or Smolsy? Fartzi or Smartzi, okay? You

4:01

know, some people call me a

4:03

doctor Fartzi. Oh. I do have

4:05

a doctorate in smartology and smartography.

4:08

Wow. But really, also Smartzi is

4:10

fine. I mean, we're on the

4:12

first day basis here. Okay, okay.

4:14

And now I can see you, but

4:16

not all of our listeners can. You're

4:18

a pretty interesting looking dude. Yes, indeed.

4:21

I am an echidna. You see, echidnas

4:23

don't have teeth. We just have a

4:25

very long tongue that comes out of

4:27

our snout, with a 15 centimeter, by

4:29

the way. You know, just to

4:31

show off how smarty fessy I am,

4:33

you know. So that's why my

4:36

voice sounds like this. And some

4:38

of our listeners in Australia may have

4:40

met some of your friends and family

4:42

members, and I have met an echidna.

4:45

They're pretty interesting creatures. That's true.

4:47

That's true. And there are the

4:49

long-nosed variety in

4:51

New Guinea. Oh. Anyway,

4:54

Mr. Rarik, aren't you gonna do your job?

4:57

Whoa. Yes. Thanks,

4:59

I guess. Sure. So

5:01

how this is gonna work is, I'm

5:03

just gonna try to stand back and

5:05

let you two answer these questions, and

5:08

sometimes actually get the help of

5:10

other experts as well, I imagine. Yeah, we brought

5:12

some along from But Why. That's

5:15

so cool. So let's find

5:17

out. What if World became Why

5:19

If World, and what if there

5:21

was a character named Smartsy Fartsy?

5:27

Jane Lindholm. Smartsy Fartsy, are

5:29

you two ready for your first

5:31

question? Can I ask you a question,

5:33

Mr. Eric, before we do? Oh yeah, sure. Smartsy

5:35

and I are living in Why If World now,

5:38

though, right? Right. No, yes, you are

5:40

definitely in Why If World, which, yeah,

5:43

is sort of an offshoot of

5:45

What If World and But Why,

5:47

and it is existing in an extra

5:49

dimensional space, somehow connected to the two I'm

5:51

presuming. Oh, that sounds very Smartsy Fartsy, I'm

5:53

sure. Something like that. Good. All

5:56

right. Great. And You know

5:58

what?? This is a write-in question, so... It

6:00

will just read it lot when asked.

6:02

What! his cereal could talk

6:04

to us? June. What

6:06

do you think? Oh Laughlin, you

6:09

know, serial kind of. Can talk

6:11

to you. Have. You ever heard

6:13

it may be when you're just pouring your

6:15

mail. Can use a good is my cereal

6:17

talking to me. What? Kind

6:19

of. There are cereals that make

6:21

noise when you pour in milk

6:23

and one serial actually made the

6:25

same as the company that makes

6:27

a serial called Rice Krispies has

6:29

been hyping up the had cereal

6:31

since Nineteen Thirty two which is

6:34

almost a hundred years now And

6:36

they talk a lot about how

6:38

their serial snacks crackles and pops.

6:40

They even made some elves who

6:42

like to sing songs on their

6:44

advertisements about snap, crackle and pop.

6:46

You wanna know what's actually happening.

6:48

Though smart, see when your cereal is

6:50

talking to you, I would love that.

6:53

Know? Okay, so Rice Krispies and some

6:55

of the other cereals that make noise

6:57

are made from rice. The rice is

6:59

cooked with sugar, salt, and a few

7:01

other ingredients and then dried and rolled

7:04

out and it's passed up. In.

7:06

An oven. so when you bake the rice

7:08

to pass it, you're creating a lot of

7:10

air pockets in. Each grain of rice. Then

7:13

when you add milk to that

7:15

puffed up rice, all of those

7:17

little air pocket start to. All.

7:20

Says sometimes if you look closely at the

7:22

ball you can even see them popping and

7:24

they burst open so you cereals actually talking

7:26

to you Do know what to say that

7:28

I don't speak serial so I don't know

7:30

what the cereal is saying but it sounds

7:32

like smart. see you. might while that about

7:34

what that where i wanted a job if

7:37

you seats and what if world the we

7:39

do alva a particular talking serious they're called

7:41

might krispies we'll see what of the things

7:44

that a kid of love using as carbide

7:46

we get up to forty thousand did of

7:48

the day as as though he also sometimes

7:50

i just get a bowl the by krispies

7:53

i pour all of them out as i

7:55

say paid turbines are you doing and as

7:57

a blue though the me and i I

7:59

say, sorry, it's what I do, and so

8:02

on and so forth. So

8:04

your cereal really is talking to you. That's

8:06

right, yes. Well, now I'm getting hungry for some

8:08

mite Krispies. I think I'm going to have to

8:10

try that tomorrow for breakfast. You know, I'm

8:12

kind of curious, too. They have lots of

8:14

protein. Protein's good. We

8:17

have another question. This is another one of

8:19

our what if questions, and this is one

8:21

we get to listen to. Hi,

8:24

my name is O'Hampkins, six-year-old. And

8:26

my what if question is, what

8:28

if my source didn't lay eggs? Bye, I

8:31

love your show. Now, Smartzy,

8:33

it would be your turn to answer this

8:35

one first. Well, I,

8:37

as you may have already heard,

8:39

am in an echidna. We

8:42

are a very, very rare

8:44

breed of monotremes, an egg-laying

8:46

mammal like the platypus. So

8:49

I think that if dinosaurs didn't

8:51

lay eggs, then they wouldn't be

8:53

like me in echidna or like

8:55

a platypus or like a reptile.

8:57

Then they would probably be more

9:00

like space beans.

9:03

You know, I met a rare

9:05

species of space beans that reproduced

9:07

by bumping their heads together and

9:09

then another space bean would just

9:11

pop out right there. Ooh, I kind

9:14

of like that idea. I'm liking imagining

9:16

dinosaurs looking like that. You

9:18

know, it's interesting to think about what

9:20

if dinosaurs didn't lay eggs. And that's

9:23

one of the questions scientists have been

9:25

asking for a very long time as

9:27

they've been trying to learn more about

9:29

these creatures that lived way before humans

9:31

existed. You know how we kind

9:34

of learn a little bit about dinosaurs though, Smartzy?

9:37

Uh, reading. Reading, that's absolutely

9:39

right. But also looking

9:42

at animals today that are

9:44

alive that evolved from

9:46

dinosaurs and resemble dinosaurs

9:49

like birds or

9:51

even crocodiles. Oh yeah,

9:53

because they have those scoots on their

9:55

backs which kind of look like

9:57

stegosaurus and just have the really big version.

10:00

So they're sort of like related alligators or

10:02

crocodiles? Yeah, and both crocodiles and

10:05

modern birds lay eggs. So scientists

10:07

are pretty sure that dinosaurs laid

10:10

eggs. They have found fossilized dinosaur

10:12

eggs and evidence of dinosaur nests

10:14

to prove it. But

10:17

here's the cool thing and why

10:19

I love Alex's question, because

10:22

scientists are pretty sure

10:24

that most dinosaurs laid eggs, but

10:27

they've recently found one ancient

10:29

relative of the dinosaurs that may

10:31

have given live birth to babies

10:33

instead of laying eggs. That's amazing.

10:35

Wow, Jane, I really didn't know

10:38

that about there being

10:40

a potentially non-egg laying dinosaur.

10:43

Well, and you know, it's still really

10:45

unclear. So scientists were studying this one

10:47

ancient dinosaur that lived in the water

10:49

in what is now China, and they

10:51

found evidence that it was carrying an

10:53

embryo inside the fossil.

10:55

So being scientists, they were like,

10:57

what's happening here? We can't just

10:59

assume. So they thought, well, could

11:02

this embryo actually have been the

11:04

last thing a dinosaur relative ate?

11:06

Like they weren't growing the embryo,

11:08

they had eaten it. But

11:10

then they said, well, probably not. And

11:13

listen to this, because the embryo was

11:15

facing the wrong direction. It sounds silly,

11:17

but animals usually eat other animals headfirst

11:20

and this skeleton was facing the other

11:22

direction. So they were like, maybe not.

11:24

Maybe it wasn't in its stomach.

11:27

Wow, and they ruled out

11:29

space being, right? I mean,

11:31

I haven't seen any evidence that they even

11:33

considered space being. So maybe we should call them

11:35

up and see if they've thought about that.

11:37

Okay, I'll get on the floor as soon

11:39

as I figure out how to lick all

11:42

the numbers. You know, one

11:44

of the most amazing things about this

11:46

is that it's a reminder that science

11:48

is always evolving and changing, that it's

11:50

always shifting. And so we have scientific

11:52

theories, we have ideas and some of

11:54

them have a lot of evidence. So

11:56

we're pretty sure about it. But

11:59

when we discover... physically

16:00

attached to the earth. So the

16:02

air, the water, all of that

16:04

stuff would suddenly go flying at

16:07

about a thousand miles per hour.

16:09

And that's really too fast for

16:11

most things on the earth. So

16:13

if the earth suddenly stops spinning,

16:16

everything else on the surface and above the

16:18

surface would keep going for quite a while

16:21

and it would be going way too fast.

16:24

Which isn't really good. Now the good news

16:26

is that this way wouldn't

16:29

happen. This can't happen to the

16:31

earth. In fact, you know

16:33

that this can't happen to something as

16:35

big as the earth if you've ever

16:37

played with something like a

16:40

spinning wheel or anything like that. It

16:42

takes a lot, a lot of energy

16:44

to slow that down. And so the

16:46

good news is that you can't suddenly

16:49

stop the earth from spinning. But

16:52

you could ask the question, well say

16:54

what happens if we could

16:56

slowly stop the earth from spinning around?

16:58

And that's a very, very different question.

17:01

Because if you were to be able to do

17:03

that and suddenly stop the earth from spinning over

17:05

maybe a long period of time so that you

17:08

don't have to worry about things going a thousand

17:10

miles per hour, then the earth

17:12

would look really, really different. Part

17:14

of the earth would have the sun

17:17

on all the time and another part of the

17:19

earth would have the sun off all of the

17:21

time. Or if the earth

17:23

was spinning really slow, you would have very,

17:25

very, very slow seasons where a

17:27

day was a really, really

17:29

long time instead of just being 24 hours.

17:33

And things like the seasons would

17:35

be totally different. And things like

17:37

hurricanes wouldn't exist anymore because the earth

17:39

wasn't rotating. And parts of the

17:41

earth would be much, much colder than

17:44

they are today and other parts

17:46

of the earth would be much,

17:48

much warmer. Wow, it would

17:50

turn into a pretty much uninhabitable

17:52

planet before long. Yeah, I

17:54

mean you would either be on the part with all sun or

17:56

no sun and neither of those are good. We kind of need

17:58

both. We need day out. and night,

18:00

right? That's what I love about

18:02

your silly planet. Somehow

18:04

it all works. There's a million

18:07

little factors, you know, your moon and

18:09

your tides and your sun, and they all

18:11

work together and somehow this life is

18:14

amazing. Well, you know, actually we got another

18:16

question that's kind of a similar one

18:18

to the one we got from Oliver. Do you

18:20

want to kind of think about that one too, Smartie?

18:22

Oh, well, my thinker is still

18:24

ready and rare enough, yes. Okay,

18:27

so here's a question from Ira. I'm

18:29

nine years old and I'm from India,

18:31

but I'm living in Bahrain. My

18:34

question is, what will happen

18:37

if the Earth starts spinning

18:39

backwards? Wow. I

18:42

think I need a minute to think about this.

18:44

Well, I mean, no, I know the answer. I

18:46

just want to hear what you think the answer

18:48

would be. Well, I talked to John

18:51

O'Meara about this too, and he reminded me

18:53

that if the Earth was spinning in a

18:55

different direction, there are some obvious changes, like

18:57

the sun would rise in the West and

19:00

set in the East instead of what it

19:02

does now, which is rise in

19:04

the East and set in the West. So

19:07

all our sunglasses would have to

19:09

be backwards. Well, I'm

19:11

not sure about that. Me

19:14

neither, Smartie, but you

19:16

could do that just for fashion sense, I

19:18

guess. Yeah, I mean, I like the idea, Smartie. You

19:20

can do it anyway right now and see what

19:22

happens. You know what? Now I'm

19:25

wearing them upside down and I think

19:27

it's very fashionable. You look great. Fantastic.

19:29

Thank you. So some other things that

19:31

would happen if the Earth was spinning backwards,

19:33

the seasons would be different over different times

19:35

of the year. And in fact, our whole

19:37

climate would change because the ocean currents would

19:39

reverse, some weather patterns would

19:41

change, the direction the wind tends to

19:43

go in would change, it would probably

19:46

go the opposite way. So that

19:48

means if you can picture it, we would see

19:50

deserts disappear in some places and crop

19:53

up in other places. And

19:56

then the seasons would appear where there are now deserts, you'd

19:58

see ice where there isn't ice now. Oh

22:01

good, well I know I have to take mine

22:03

off, I was gonna mail them to you but-

22:05

Just toss them to me. Okay here, whoa! Whoops!

22:08

Oh, much better thank you, here, here's my

22:10

sweater. Oh, oh it's so cuddly

22:12

warm, I hope you don't mind a bunch

22:14

of echidna spine holes in it. I

22:16

was hoping for that fashion statement. Wow,

22:22

I have learned so much

22:24

about astronomy and dinosaurs, food

22:26

science and food science, and

22:29

that's just answering four questions.

22:32

How many questions do you usually answer and

22:35

but why? Sometimes we tackle just one

22:37

and sometimes we tackle as many as 20 or 30. We've

22:41

gotten about 13 or

22:44

14 thousand questions since

22:46

we started the show. I'm so

22:48

grateful to all of your

22:51

curious listeners and all of ours,

22:53

all those thousands of questions, I

22:55

wish I could answer them all! Same,

22:57

I want to know the answers to all

22:59

of them. Well you two have a lot of

23:01

work in front of you that you're gonna only

23:03

make about 13,000 more

23:06

episodes so you should probably get back to

23:08

it. Yeah, you're right, it's about time to

23:10

get started researching some new ones. Jane,

23:13

thank you so much for bringing

23:15

butt-Y into what if world or

23:17

vice versa, I'm not really sure.

23:21

I already told you the science

23:23

behind the extra-dimensional imaginary linkage. You

23:25

need a degree in smartography I

23:27

think. I'll

23:29

get working on that. Yeah, I think I'm gonna

23:31

enroll in a new school. Where

23:34

do I go to get a degree in smartology?

23:36

You gotta go to the observatorium, there's

23:39

a wizard named Abacus P. Grubler who

23:41

will try to teach you magic but

23:43

you gotta say no because he's not

23:45

very good at magic. I just enroll

23:48

in my classes where I'll teach you

23:50

how to think the deepest thoughts like

26:00

heart rate from the usual

26:02

250 to 300 beats every minute. Their

26:06

little hearts are going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They

26:09

lower that rate down to 10 or 15 beats

26:11

a minute. Their breathing

26:13

slows down to two or three

26:16

breaths a minute. So

26:18

they are very calm and

26:20

soundly asleep. Now

26:22

bats also, unlike bears, often

26:26

spend the winter together in large

26:28

groups. Yes, sometimes

26:30

tens of thousands in

26:32

large groups. And when

26:34

they're in a large group, they huddle together so

26:37

that they conserve as much body

26:40

heat and energy as they can.

26:42

Do you want to actually see the bats

26:45

Barry was talking about? Encourage your teacher

26:47

or educator to get our

26:49

new video and curriculum series,

26:51

But Why? Adventures. In

26:54

these monthly adventures, we learn more about

26:56

what's happening outside, and we have curriculum

26:58

and activity guides for students. You

27:01

can find out more and encourage

27:03

your adults to sign up at

27:06

butwhykids.org slash nature. From

27:12

PRX.