 Good morning Hickets Tuesday, but this video isn't for you, it's for your son who recently asked, why do things exist, which, buddy, is a really good question, and a really big one? One of the strange things about being a human is that big questions occur to us, even if they don't seem to affect our day to day lives. Like, your question is about why the universe exists, and why there's so much stuff in it, and why some of that stuff happens to be zinc and iron that we dig under the surface of the earth to pull out and transform into 1987 US mail truck hot wheels. But regardless of why zinc exists, the hot wheel is still fun to play with, right? And this is one of my very favorite things about humans. We don't need to know why zinc exists in order for hot wheels to be fun to play with, or for us to survive, or whatever, but we still want to know. And I think this urge to know, even if we don't necessarily need to know in order to survive is kind of the human superpower. Okay, so let's begin with us. I'm not sure if this is news to you, but it continues to be weird to me. We are made out of the universe, even our thinking parts. Like you may hear that people and cats and the earth are mostly made of star dust, and that's actually very true. We are made out of stuff that stars produced a very long time ago as they burned. But while thinking about stars transforming into humans and US mail truck hot wheels is very interesting and important, it tells us more about how things exist, and what exists, than why they exist. Like we know that our planet, which we call Earth, is rotating around a star, which we call the Sun, and that star is just one of billions in our Milky Way galaxy, which is itself just one of billions of galaxies in the universe. We also know the universe, like good five-year-olds everywhere, follows a set of rules that shapes how it behaves. And we know that the universe is expanding, that everything is getting further away from everything else at an accelerating rate. And we know that things are made out of atoms, which are themselves made out of subatomic particles like protons and electrons. But why? Why do things exist? Hold on, I have to go feed the chickens. By the way, did you know that after you make coffee, there's this stuff left over called coffee grounds that you can use as garden fertilizer, or as a kind of like kitty litter for your chicken coop? It's true. Say hello to the chickens. Greetings, chickens. It is I, your humble servant, here to exchange food for your eggs. So coffee gives us energy, and then its remains give us happy chickens and gardens. Now, I know what you're thinking, but where can I get amazing coffee that's good for the people who drink it and for the people who farm it and for the chickens? Awesomecoffeeclub.com. So why do things exist? We don't know. We don't know why things exist. We are reasonably sure that a little less than 14 billion years ago, everything currently in our universe was in an unfathomably dense point of matter and then exploded into being, which we call the Big Bang, but we don't know why, and we don't even know why there is stuff in the universe at all, at least according to our current models. It is just as likely, maybe even more likely, that the same universe could be created but without any matter in it. So yeah, we don't know. We don't know why there is as much stuff in the universe as there is instead of more or less stuff, and we don't know why the universe exists, which of course also means that we don't know why we exist. So that's weird, but it's also kind of exciting because that means that the big questions, maybe the biggest questions, are still out there waiting to be answered and you are one of the people exploring those questions, which I think is awesome. We are made out of the universe. We are not observers of it. We are participants in it. And that's why I think your question is so beautiful because you, my five-year-old nephew, are the universe trying to understand itself. Orrin, I'll see your dad on Friday. P.S. Orrin, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to mark it directly to you, but fortunately you don't drink coffee. AwesomeCoffeeClub.com. Learn more about our new coffee subscription there. It's great coffee that you can feel great about.