HAVE HEART

"The heart was once thought of as a very soft nut," said Dr. Hermples.
"Oh wow," said Donovan.
"Yes," said the doctor. "For centuries, tribes the world over would remove the heart and wait months, sometimes years, for the organ to turn a perfectly kind of hard nutty consistency."
"Well, I certainly didn't know that," said Karen.
"Yes," said the doctor. "Now that we've done away with big stuff like the cancers, the AIDS, and the other stuff --"
"-- and mental retardation is at an all time low," said Karen.
"Yes," said the doctor.
"-- and syndromes have just kinda gone away on their own," said Donovan.
"Yes," said the doctor. "Since all that happened, the eyes of the world's greatest doctors turn to other stuff. Stuff that was important to people before the bad stuff came along."
"Before everything became a disease," said Karen.
"Before everything became an emotional affliction," said Donovan.
"Yes," said the doctor. "We did not truly understand the heart, the diseases, the afflictions – until the visitor came. And now we are free again to look back & look forward, pioneering through the worlds of popcorns, horsies, wooden dentures, the physics of rubber balls, nuts. This is the kind of work yours truly and other experts in the field can focus on today."
"Experts in the nut field?" said Karen.
"I have to LOL at 'nut field'," said Donovan.
"We were lucky when the visitor came, weren't we?" said Karen.
"Yes," said the doctor. "As predicted many hundreds of years ago, the citizens of the world did not know how to react to a visit from an alien lifeform when it appeared on Earth. But we weren't only ‘lucky’ that the visitor came – we were really very lucky."
"I wish I could speak to plants," said Donovan.
"Yes," said the doctor. "But without the visitor, we did not know that the plants had brains and feelings, could talk – could move like humans move. Because the plants were afraid of us. The plants were shocked into immobility."
"It’s amazing how long plants & humans have coexisted but never learned how to speak each other's language," said Karen.
"Yes," said the doctor. "Until the visitor."
"It's different than other cultures, isn't it?" said Donovan.
"Yes," said the doctor. "That's one thing humans are great at: figuring out languages that other humans have created."
"Why is that?" said Karen.
"Well," said the doctor. "Humans have hearts and the universal language is love."
"Plants don't have hearts?" said Donovan.
"No," said the doctor. "They don’t have hearts – but they love people and music – the biochemistry angle is super messed up when you think about it."