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A podcast from the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University about play and pop culture. Professors Haeny Yoon and Nathan Holbert talk with educators, parents and kids about how they play in their work and their lives, and why play and pop culture matter.
The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speaker to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the faculty, administration, staff or Trustees either of Teachers College or of Columbia University.
Nathan Holbert:
Welcome to Pop and Play, the podcast all about play and pop culture and how it shapes our lives. I'm Nathan Holbert and with me as always is Haeny "Jolly Green Giant" Yoon.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay, great. Okay. I'm Haeny Yoon and today we went on another play date, and play dates are our name for our Pop and Play episodes where Nathan and I go out into the wild and experience a form of play guided by an expert. And a few weeks before the episode release, we let you know what we're doing. So if you want to join us, you can.
Nathan Holbert:
You have to check our socials though, because that's the place that we tell you-
Haeny Yoon:
We have socials?
Nathan Holbert:
We have a social maybe.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
But yeah, this time we actually went into the wild in the truest sense, right? We traveled to the far off land of Brooklyn. We put on our wellies, grabbed some spades and sheers and we did a bit of gardening with our guest here, John McCann Doyle. John?
John McCann-Doyle:
Yes, yes. Hello. Thanks for having me. I'm looking for the expert. I have not found him yet.
Nathan Holbert:
Right between us.
Haeny Yoon:
He is the expert. He's actually quite modest, definitely expert.
Nathan Holbert:
Yes. For sure.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. I mean, I've watched Zach Galifianakis show about gardening. I felt like I did not learn that much about gardening, okay? So let's be real. If he can make a whole show about gardening, then John is the expert.
Nathan Holbert:
For sure.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. So John is an outdoor learning specialist at Community Roots Charter School. He is one of the kindergarten teachers there and works with them on maintaining an outdoor space that is cultivated and lived in with the kids there. So it's a really cool space. He is also a former kindergarten and fifth grade teacher, a graduate of both Hunter and Bank Street, go New York. He was a pizza delivery boy at Two Boots in Brooklyn.
John McCann-Doyle:
Yes. Two boots.
Haeny Yoon:
I give it up for Two Boots. Also, a horticulture intern at the Brooklyn and Botanical Garden and was a plate worker at the yard at the adventure playground in Governor's Island. He has quite the very long resume.
Nathan Holbert:
Long and illustrious career.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I love it. Two Boots is the best one.
Nathan Holbert:
I'm very hungry now that you've mentioned that. Well, last week Amy and I took a visit to your garden at the community roots school to see what you've been up to see what your students have been up to and what they've been creating. We saw things, we touched things, we smelled things. We saw sprouts of radishes, lettuce, herbs, shrooms, and some wild flowers. We saw the giant tetradactyly egg and I believe moose horns. There were cozy spots for kids to gather and discuss. There were exciting mazes and secret pathways for the dirt and the greenery. It was really just an exciting space of play and exploration. And so we're going to take you back briefly to our little visit to the garden.
John McCann-Doyle:
These radishes were the first thing the kids put in the ground. We do them every year.
Haeny Yoon:
I do remember I had a couple.
John McCann-Doyle:
In between all the radishes, I had sprinkled the feathery looking things. Those are California poppies. These are all micro-greens. We had them in a hoop house trying to get the season going a little early.
Haeny Yoon:
And then you take it off?
John McCann-Doyle:
Yeah, I took this off maybe four or five days ago, end of last week. It's good now they're young enough to go. And you can nibble on them. It's a mix. We give them to the chickens.
Haeny Yoon:
Like any of them?
John McCann-Doyle:
And then they'll also flower. Kind of give off like a wild flower vibe. It's like real thick and small flowers. It's like kale mix and radish in there, some different types of mizuna.
Haeny Yoon:
That looks good.
John McCann-Doyle:
[inaudible 00:03:49].
Nathan Holbert:
Okay. So John, we're going to have a conversation with you about your experiences gardening and teaching and how to grow things. But before we do that, we always like to start our conversations with a little bit of play.
John McCann-Doyle:
Okay.
Nathan Holbert:
So we're going to play a little bit of a game. Is that all right with you?
John McCann-Doyle:
Ooh. Do I get to choose the game?
Nathan Holbert:
No. No.
Haeny Yoon:
No. This podcast is about putting other people on the spot.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. When we say game, it's more like torture.
Haeny Yoon:
Just kidding.
Nathan Holbert:
Okay. So in our conversation when we were at your school, you said to us, you used this phrase, you were talking about what the kids were planting and you said they planted some radishes and they're a very playful vegetable, is what you said. And I loved that and it got me thinking if radishes are playful and if there are vegetables that are playful, is there serious vegetables? Are there business-like vegetables? And so that's our game today is I'm going to name a disposition and invite you to identify a vegetable that might fill or best represent that disposition. Okay? Does that sound good?
John McCann-Doyle:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's go.
Nathan Holbert:
Let's start easy though. You've already thought about playful vegetables. Other than radishes, what are some other playful vegetables?
John McCann-Doyle:
It's got to be edible?
Nathan Holbert:
No, it doesn't have to be edible. No.
John McCann-Doyle:
On the train ride up here, I was remembering ... Do you know Sticky Willy?
Nathan Holbert:
No.
John McCann-Doyle:
Sticky Willy is a weed that's growing right now and it's got these little balls on it and it's kind of vine-y, but it's like Velcro and you grab it and you can throw it at people and it sticks to their clothes.
Nathan Holbert:
There's like the round burrs or ...
John McCann-Doyle:
There are like little burrs on it. Yeah, very tiny ones. It's like pea sized.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
So that's a fun one.
Nathan Holbert:
That's a fun one.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh wait, so you could actually pick it and then throw it against the wall and it sticks.
John McCann-Doyle:
It sticks to clothing so you can have like a war with it.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
You can also like, you could cover yourself in it and make yourself into like a swamp thing, if there's a lot of it.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes, that's a great answer.
Nathan Holbert:
My experience with those, and we didn't call them Sticky Willies. I like that very much was that you would be walking through like a forest or a field and then you get to the other side of it and you look down and like your shoes and your ankles were just covered in them. You're like, "Ah, crap."
Haeny Yoon:
I do not recall such a thing.
Nathan Holbert:
You don't know these?
Haeny Yoon:
No. Is Sticky Willy the official name?
John McCann-Doyle:
No. Shout out to Jen who is my mentor at Montana Gardens. She's the person who first introduced me to that.
Nathan Holbert:
Sticky Willy.
Haeny Yoon:
Got it.
Nathan Holbert:
I do love the fact that like plants in particular, but other things too end up with these like highly local naming conventions. And then you go somewhere slightly different and people are like, "What? Sticky Willy, what are you talking about?"
Haeny Yoon:
But then they have a different name for it.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes.
Nathan Holbert:
I love that. Okay, that was great. That was a very playful vegetable, playful plant. How about mysterious? Mysterious vegetable or plant?
John McCann-Doyle:
Mysterious. I mean, this is a stretch, but I showed y'all that wild ginger that's growing.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes.
John McCann-Doyle:
I think I wouldn't call it mysterious, but it's got that secretive flour underneath that you kind of got to dig around for.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, nice.
Nathan Holbert:
That's right.
Haeny Yoon:
That is mysterious actually. You're very good at this game.
Nathan Holbert:
I need more categories. Yeah. So describe for the listeners. So it's not the ginger you eat, right? It's the wild ginger.
John McCann-Doyle:
It's the wild ginger, it's like a woodland plant likes to grow in a shady area and it's got the leaves kind of grow, what would that be? Parallel to the ground, maybe like an inch and a half, two inches, and it can kind of carpet. It spreads out. And if you lift up the leaves underneath it, kind of sitting against the ground is like a flesh color, like a meaty colored, like a raw steak-y colored flour that are just kind of fun.
Nathan Holbert:
Just secret and hiding down there.
Haeny Yoon:
That's cool. Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Up to no good, I'm sure.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
Without a doubt. Plotting.
Haeny Yoon:
Mystery and intrigue.
Nathan Holbert:
That's great. Very mysterious. What about athletic?
John McCann-Doyle:
Probably got to go with some sort of like climbing vine.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh yes. Very good.
John McCann-Doyle:
Bindweed.
Nathan Holbert:
Bindweed.
John McCann-Doyle:
We're talking a lot about weeds.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
Bindweed it grows very quickly.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
It goes high. It's got a pretty white flower.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
That's a good one.
John McCann-Doyle:
It's a super pain in the butt.
Haeny Yoon:
Those are different from the ones that grow on the side of the building, right?
John McCann-Doyle:
So any of them, right? Virginia Creeper is maybe what you're thinking of.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay.
John McCann-Doyle:
Which is also a good one. It's super vigorous.
Haeny Yoon:
I was thinking about ivy and Taylor Swift.
John McCann-Doyle:
But also like beans and stuff, like pole beans and stuff are great.
Nathan Holbert:
Hops do that too, right?
John McCann-Doyle:
Hops are very cool.
Nathan Holbert:
Hops, they grow really fast and they grow on vines.
Haeny Yoon:
Is that how you grow beer?
Nathan Holbert:
So you grow hops, which you do put in beer.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. Got it. Okay.
Nathan Holbert:
All right, John, thank you for playing the game. You were very good at that game, I got to say.
Haeny Yoon:
Expert level.
John McCann-Doyle:
That is generous.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
That's very generous.
Nathan Holbert:
I was impressed. I was very impressed. I wonder if maybe just to start us out, can you say a bit about how you got into gardening? What brought you to this? How did this all start for you?
Haeny Yoon:
Did you have a grandma who taught you how to garden or like ...
John McCann-Doyle:
But no, my pops has always liked gardening. My father and one of the few images that I have of my grandfather, his dad, who I never met because he died before I was born, but is him in the garden. So it's there. And then when I was a kid, also my mom had like a little community garden plot. I mean my mom and my dad both, but I remember spending time up there a lot with my mom. Yeah. So I think that's where some of it comes from.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
Well, I'd be curious to hear from y'all. I mean, when I first started getting to play work, one of the questions that always comes up at these play work trainings are like when you're talking to families about how to support kids play, it's always like, all right, raise your hand if like ... Or it's like think of one childhood memory that stands out to you of playing. They do that. And then you're like, right, raise your hand if that memory happened outdoors. And more often than not, the vast majority of people's memories are from outside. Outside.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. No, all of my most cherished memories happen behind a desk in a classroom.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. We were talking about play and plants. We got so distracted by play and plants, trying to commodify that.
Nathan Holbert:
That's true. Yeah, yeah. You got to buy it. No, I like that though. I mean, as you were asking the question before you gave us the punchline, I mean, I thought of like a couple things and definitely one of them was very much an outdoors experience. It was, I had these like very small bit of woods behind my house and I would just go wander and explore and build forts and that was just like, it's just what I did, every chance I got. And then the other was like sitting in my basement with my friend playing video games, which was also really meaningful and important to me, but you know, one out of two ain't bad. How about you?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I feel like a lot of my memories will go to outside as well because I feel like now I like the outside and I go outside a lot, but I also stay inside a lot too. But it's interesting how a lot of my childhood memories have to do with like the alley behind my house, right the big parking lot where I learned how to roller skate and broke my ankle, right? Yeah, the different places that we used to go to with our bikes.
Nathan Holbert:
So, okay. So you were talking about that though and you were asking a question about, or maybe you're kind of setting the stage for this question about the importance of the outdoors and has that been kind of like part of how you think about this connection between play and gardening? It's just that like to you play is an outdoor ... I mean, I don't mean that putting you in a box here, but I mean like when you think of play, is it pretty much like land in an outdoor space most of the time for you?
John McCann-Doyle:
I think one of the reasons I gravitate towards the outdoors for myself and why I appreciate it using it, having kids in the outdoors is it does offer a degree of freedom and just because there's more space and you can be loud in a different way than indoor spaces oftentimes do. Young kids can then also find a sense of like privacy, which is like as adults we're really hesitant to give kids a lot, right, freedom. Because it comes with this also sense of like trust.
And so in our setting, in our garden, that comes in a way where like they can feel that even if there's an adult on the other side of the garden who's got an eye on it, but they're far enough away. And then it allows for a lot to develop a lot of these skills or just knowledge about themselves when it comes to like managing risk or what they like and what they don't like, digging and exploration, discovery, wander, not wander, well wander but also wonder. Yeah. So tree climbing, that's a good one.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Do you feel like, do you notice that the kids have a different relationship to maybe the environment, the earth? Are you finding things like that?
John McCann-Doyle:
One of the things we talk a lot about is this idea of a priority being giving the kids the opportunity to develop a relationship with the natural world, right? Yeah. Before you're going to take care of something or care for something, you have to love it or respect it or have a relationship with it. And so I feel like that's kind of the baseline in kindergarten. If that's happening, then I feel like we're doing something right.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
And so yeah, in addition to like kind of the vegetables we talked about and some of the edible plants, we also prioritize planting a lot of native material that kids can interact with, whether it's hide under or use the bits of or build with or make potions out of.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I mean, I don't want to under-
Nathan Holbert:
Potions, sorry.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay. I was trying to say something serious and then you're like potions. Okay.
Nathan Holbert:
I love a potion.
Haeny Yoon:
I mean, I don't want to undersell that point though that to expect children or even later to become adults that really care about the earth and care about the world around them and the natural world, like you have to kind of cultivate a love for it, right? I think so many times we think of we don't prioritize that. I think in school where going outside, having a relationship to earth, like even going outside is not enough, right? Just spending time outside because its fun, is one thing. And it's helpful, right? But then to think about what your relationship is like to that land and to that environment.
Nathan Holbert:
It's making me think of ... I have one of my former students, Dr. Isa Correa, did some work looking at how kids design with other living organisms. So design as a collaborative activity with other living organisms and so she was having kids make with mycelium, the roots underneath mushrooms and very cool stuff. But one of the findings of her work was that it's not just that you're spending time in nature, it's not just that you're designing with an organism that has its own agency, but that there are these moments where when you're designing with something that has its own agency, where it is doing things that you have no control over and that was this epiphany for the kids that she was working with that, oh, this actually is alive. This actually does have its own needs, its own goals, you know, its own set of experiences and that I'm just here along with it. And it really sort of changed their relationship.
And it also makes me think a lot about just gardening in general being like that. And you talked about using kind of native plants and wild plants. I mean, do you see that kind of thing happen with the kids too and that like they planted this and yes, sometimes it comes up just like you expect, but other times it like goes rogue and it's doing its own thing.
John McCann-Doyle:
For sure. I can answer that question, but do you say they were making stuff with mycelium?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
That's cool. Can you give an example?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's this whole kind of area of bio design where you can cultivate strains of mushrooms or mycelium and then basically kind of putting it in different kinds of materials, adjuncts food and you can kind of put it in, for example, a mold or something like that and let it grow and then it grows in the shape of the mold. But oftentimes it grows in sort of the shape of the mold, but then it kind of keeps growing or it breaks the mold and it goes its own direction. And so these young people were actually kind of spending their time in Riverside Park actually and they were trying to figure out like, what is a thing I want to build that can live here now as an actual like living organisms. And so they were building cool things like, I'm building a living bridge for the ants to cross this log or I'm going to build this kind of hanging tree birdhouse.
Haeny Yoon:
They interact with each other and kind of create these ecosystems.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. And then they would grow them with the mycelium and then again, the mycelium would sort of do its own thing sometimes kind of like what they had mined, but oftentimes something else and then they would bring it out into nature and let it live and eventually it returned to nature.
John McCann-Doyle:
Yeah, that's hella cool.
Nathan Holbert:
It was very cool.
John McCann-Doyle:
Definitely. I think this idea of not having control and like you're not, it's not building. And actually I think one of the reasons why it works for me is because I'm not good at planning down the road. So this idea of like you can like work alongside something, you can cultivate it, but ultimately plants are making the decisions for themselves on some level. So it's fun to see, right? You get their surprise something like that or you watch it do something and it gives you an idea. We grew some honeysuckle. It's taken a while to develop and it finally did. It reached the top of our fence, which is right near the entrance to our garden where the kids hang up their backpacks and like it's like trying to go higher, higher, higher.
And so we were like, "All right, let's let it go higher." So we're trying to build a tunnel.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, nice.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, that's cool.
John McCann-Doyle:
We've run wires, so it's-
Nathan Holbert:
Just going to go over.
John McCann-Doyle:
If it works out, the kids will have to go underneath this honeysuckle tunnel to get into the garden.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's such a delightful little pivot that you make because nature told you to.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
And then it also like laughs in your face and there's tons of failures.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. But that's because it can, right? It's its own thing.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
That's cool.
Haeny Yoon:
Very much so.
Nathan Holbert:
Okay. I'm curious, you told us about a few really cool kind of experiments and experiences that you've done. I wonder, what are some of the things that you would think of as your greatest accomplishment in the garden maybe with the kids or maybe on your own and then I'm also curious about some of your failures.
John McCann-Doyle:
That is a big word, greatest accomplishments. That's crazy.
Nathan Holbert:
How about some tiny accomplishments?
John McCann-Doyle:
Things we're excited about.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
I don't know. I mean, it's satisfying to plant trees and see them actually take root. So we put a couple trees in the ground recently and also like, not to be overly seriously, but I like this idea of like planting trees is like a practice in hope or in like caring for the future because you don't get to see like ... Yeah. We get to appreciate these ancient trees that people planted 100, 200 years ago or that group didn't get planted and just like are doing their own thing.
Nathan Holbert:
Did it on their own, yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
And we'll never see the full life of them.
Haeny Yoon:
So if you plant a tree at the beginning of the year, like what do you expect will happen by the end of the year? I don't know anything.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
Sure.
Haeny Yoon:
Is it going to grow to ...
John McCann-Doyle:
Plants live on a very different timescale than we do. Or I'm sorry, trees specifically, and they also grow, they have their own like different species grow differently, but the first few years of a tree is when you plant it is a little bit dicey, right? You got to take extra care of it, whether or not it's going to like establish itself and you do have chosen the right location, give it the right care, have a good ... But yeah, you don't see a lot of growth for a while and then at some point it takes off, but we're talking-
Haeny Yoon:
Years.
John McCann-Doyle:
Yeah, decades.
Haeny Yoon:
Decades.
John McCann-Doyle:
Sometimes decades.
Nathan Holbert:
Wow.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah. So it is really like planting for a future, which is kind of nice.
Nathan Holbert:
That's very nice. Yeah. So that's something you're excited about and I love that. What's something that's frustrating or a recent encounter that just didn't quite work out and it was a bummer.
Haeny Yoon:
I feel like you showed us the fig tree-
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, the fig tree.
Haeny Yoon:
... as your kind of failure.
John McCann-Doyle:
Well, I guess you would call that, but that's cool because it doesn't bother me, but yeah, we're not getting the figs. A parent, shout out to Big Sue, she planted that the first year we had our kindergarten program out there.
Haeny Yoon:
Which was when?
John McCann-Doyle:
Six years ago. First year then pandemic, that's how we ended up out there. It's kind of not, again, not planned at all. Just like, how do we deal with this situation? And it was tiny and maybe I want to say two years ago it got its legs and it's grown a lot and we started getting figs on it. But yeah, fig trees, like it's a marginal environment, climate.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
So we get all these figs but they never ripen. The squirrels eat a bunch of them, but more often they just stay there and they get to a certain size and they just poop out. Squirrels. Yeah, but the plan's hella cool. The flowers are good. I mean, not the flower. The leaves are like big and lush.
Haeny Yoon:
I mean, I thought it looked pretty cool too, like right in the center.
John McCann-Doyle:
Oh yeah right now it's a bit of a Charlie Brown tree.
Nathan Holbert:
[inaudible 00:22:19].
John McCann-Doyle:
It's just a sticky.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
Other failures. Yeah. We did a whole planting in the back and I just had chosen the wrong plants. It was too shady. It wasn't wet enough. I put too much compost so the soil was actually too rich with nutrients and everything just pooped out. Everything died. That was one stinky one.
Nathan Holbert:
I'm curious because like whatever disappointments and failures is just part of like existing, right? But I'm curious like any situations where you've seen or worked with kids where there was a plan and there was an intent and it just didn't quite work out. How do they respond? How do you help them respond to those kinds of moments?
John McCann-Doyle:
Well, so kids don't ... It's the first time for a lot of them, they don't have any expectations. We did all these mushrooms this year in a fruiting block indoors in the winter. We're trying to like figure out ... And we talked to the kids like, "Man." I was like, "Man, it's cold, winter's ... I'm impatient. I want to grow stuff now. What could we do?"
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
So we set up a little poly tunnel outside to try and get some heat and grow some plants.
Haeny Yoon:
What's a poly tunnel?
John McCann-Doyle:
Sorry, like a greenhouse.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay.
John McCann-Doyle:
So, covered, traps the sun, warms up. But then we also got these fruiting blocks, which are like a shoebox sized grow medium that's already inoculated with mushroom spores and basically you just keep it wet and moist at the right temperature and mushrooms come up at fruits and last year we had a lot of success and this year for one reason or another, we just didn't get much fruit. Didn't get much mushrooms. Yeah. So that was inside and they were just like ... No, actually you know how they responded? I was like, "I'm done with this." They're like, "Well, we got to just keep trying, John."
I was like, "What do you think we should do? " They're like, "Just wait. Stop being so impatient. Why so negative?"
Haeny Yoon:
Why so negative? I love that. Wise. Wise club.
John McCann-Doyle:
But Nathan, to your point earlier, I was like, "Whatever kids." And I just threw it in the compost bin and sure enough, two weeks later, we got all these beautiful oyster mushrooms.
Nathan Holbert:
This is delicious food in here.
Haeny Yoon:
They showed you.
John McCann-Doyle:
Both the kids and the mushrooms. Yes. All the time, all constantly shown up by the children and the plants.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
They keep you humble.
Haeny Yoon:
I know. I love when that happens. Yeah. Okay. I feel like we should look at this artifact.
John McCann-Doyle:
Oh, we got an artifact.
Haeny Yoon:
... that John-
John McCann-Doyle:
I thought you were going to forget. I was going to remind you.
Haeny Yoon:
No, of course not.
John McCann-Doyle:
All right. A couple weeks ago I was walking and I looked down. And in the crack of the sidewalk there's this little, little tiny yellow plastic thing. And immediately I knew what it was. It was like Pavlovian like, oh my God. I reached down and pick it up. So I've been like informal investigation. I've been asking everybody-
Nathan Holbert:
Those are keys.
John McCann-Doyle:
To find-
Nathan Holbert:
That's an ID.
John McCann-Doyle:
What is this? I want to see if other people know what it is. So I've got it.
Haeny Yoon:
That has a lot of things in it. Okay.
John McCann-Doyle:
It's tiny.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay.
John McCann-Doyle:
I'll let you guys describe it. But whoever can identify what it is first wins.
Nathan Holbert:
Okay.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay.
Nathan Holbert:
Now I really want to win.
John McCann-Doyle:
This is a winning game.
Haeny Yoon:
What do we win? Do we win a basket of radishes?
John McCann-Doyle:
Half a dozen radishes, yes. But you got to come pick them up before I can send them home to a gym. And if you know the jingle that goes with it, you get extra points.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh my God. Okay.
John McCann-Doyle:
Ready?
Nathan Holbert:
Just sing it.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Can I see it from ...
Haeny Yoon:
Wait, it's a game that goes into a thing.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. So this is like a little yellow plastic. It's got a tiny little nub to hold onto. It's sort of backwards S shaped spiral.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. It's kind of like a tiny version of those topple things.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. I don't know.
John McCann-Doyle:
I don't know. You would know already.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. I don't know.
John McCann-Doyle:
Shoot. All right, good. More information, more data.
Nathan Holbert:
What is it?
Haeny Yoon:
What is it?
John McCann-Doyle:
A data point. I'm shocked. Perfection.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh yeah, the little board game thing.
John McCann-Doyle:
Perfection.
Haeny Yoon:
There's like a million of them, right?
John McCann-Doyle:
Yeah, it's a square.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
John McCann-Doyle:
And you push it down and it's tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and you got to get them all in the right spots before it pops it up.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes, yes. It's kind of like Topple.
Nathan Holbert:
Topple?
Haeny Yoon:
There's other game topple that has bigger ones and it does that too. What's the jingle?
John McCann-Doyle:
I don't know, but Jane knew it. I was shocked.
Haeny Yoon:
No way. Because I wanted you to say the jingle.
Nathan Holbert:
Perfection.
John McCann-Doyle:
No, I was like, "What are you singing?" And I was like, "Oh my God, you really win."
Haeny Yoon:
Oh my gosh.
John McCann-Doyle:
All right. Well, that was anticlimactic. My apologies.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, that's okay. I mean, a little artifact of play though from a different era. I do know the game. I did not get it though. Yeah. The last thing that we like to do is invite you to tell us a bit about what stuff you're interested in, what stuff you're into right now. We call this What's Popping. And so this could be TV shows that you're into. It could be movies. It could be books that you're reading. It could be a particular vegetable or plant that you're super into right now.
Haeny Yoon:
Music.
Nathan Holbert:
It could be music. It could be Perfection, the game that we just talked about.
Haeny Yoon:
It doesn't have to relate to gardening. It's just a way for you to tell us what's hopping.
Nathan Holbert:
Just stuff you're into.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. What are you listening to? What are you watching? What are you reading? I know you read a lot.
John McCann-Doyle:
You know what I just watched? It's an older show that I was like, whoa, this is really good, is Dark. You know this one? It came out a few years ago, I guess.
Nathan Holbert:
It was on Netflix.
John McCann-Doyle:
It was Netflix. It's a German show.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
I didn't see it.
Haeny Yoon:
I didn't see it either.
John McCann-Doyle:
It deals with space-time and time travel. It's wild.
Nathan Holbert:
Is it good?
John McCann-Doyle:
Yeah, but it takes a lot of focus, especially as you get deeper in it. It just winds this knot of time travel and upon all these characters and you've got to try to keep things straight.
Haeny Yoon:
I feel like time travel and time space is having a moment.
Nathan Holbert:
It's Having a moment.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Time is having a moment.
Haeny Yoon:
Time and space are having a moment.
Nathan Holbert:
Dr. Who would be proud.
Haeny Yoon:
Time travel. Time travel.
Nathan Holbert:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We're all into time travel. I think maybe because we're all horrified by the state of the present.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, maybe. It could be that.
Nathan Holbert:
That's cool though. I've seen it and I've thought about watching it multiple times. So the fact that you were into it is good praise.
John McCann-Doyle:
It's a little bit of a commitment. I also was talking to someone who watched the first season and then this was when it came out and then when the second season came out, they couldn't watch it because they forgot everything. It made me really glad to be behind the curve.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Well, that happens to me all the time and what happens is I just watch the first season again.
Nathan Holbert:
Again.
Haeny Yoon:
Then watch this.
John McCann-Doyle:
Again. Again.
Nathan Holbert:
Another binge.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, exactly.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Dark. Okay, great. Yeah. Anything else?
John McCann-Doyle:
What have I been reading? I enjoyed Michael Pollan's new book, A World Appears. It's all about consciousness. Actually, there's a whole section in there about plant consciousness or plant intelligence, but also explorations of the self and yeah, it was interesting. Good stuff.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness.
John McCann-Doyle:
Oh, you popped it up on the machine.
Nathan Holbert:
Popped it up. Thank goodness for the interwebs.
Haeny Yoon:
Nice.
John McCann-Doyle:
Yeah. It's all not fun stuff.
Haeny Yoon:
That was not disappointing at all.
John McCann-Doyle:
Not light. It's not light.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Those were great.
Haeny Yoon:
Those were great. Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Well, thank you, John. It's very fun to have you here.
John McCann-Doyle:
Wait, you're not going to tell me what y'all ...
Haeny Yoon:
Oh, what's popping for us?
Nathan Holbert:
No one ever asks us.
Haeny Yoon:
Has anybody watched Mom Talk?
Nathan Holbert:
Mom Talk?
Haeny Yoon:
Secret Lives of Mormon Wives? I'm not kidding.
Nathan Holbert:
No, you're not kidding.
Haeny Yoon:
I'm not kidding. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to disappoint anybody who thinks I'm a serious person.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh my goodness.
Haeny Yoon:
I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Nathan Holbert:
The Secret Wives of Mormons, what?
Haeny Yoon:
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Okay, fine. I watched Devil Wears Prada today. So there's that.
Nathan Holbert:
That's good. That's good. Yeah. I did watch that Zach Galifianakis gardening show.
Haeny Yoon:
Gardening show, yes.
Nathan Holbert:
I had fun with it. I don't know that I learned a lot, but I had a great time.
Haeny Yoon:
I learned a lot more in this whatever conversation we've had with John than I did in that gardening show.
Nathan Holbert:
Wow.
Haeny Yoon:
I felt like it was a platform for his comedy.
Nathan Holbert:
Shots fired. And that's true, I think.
Haeny Yoon:
It's a platform for his comedy.
Nathan Holbert:
That's true.
Haeny Yoon:
Gardening was just the vehicle.
John McCann-Doyle:
That's not a bad thing.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
He's funny. I like ... Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, he's funny. I didn't say he's not funny. I'm just saying I expected a gardening show and I didn't get that.
John McCann-Doyle:
It wasn't that, all right.
Nathan Holbert:
All right. Hey, Zach, if you're listening.
Haeny Yoon:
Call us.
Nathan Holbert:
Step it up for season two. Alrighty.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay.
Nathan Holbert:
Well, thanks again, John, for being here. This was a lot of fun.
John McCann-Doyle:
Thank y'all. Appreciate it.
Nathan Holbert:
We learned a lot. All right. Well, thanks everybody. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you later. Bye.
John McCann-Doyle:
Yes, yes. Thank you.
Haeny Yoon:
Bye.
John McCann-Doyle:
Peace.