Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck, Brian, there's
Speaker 1: Jerry over there, and we're just bouncing around with giddiness
Speaker 1: about this episode on trampolines. That's all that coming from
Speaker 1: a mile away. You did not. I knew there would
Speaker 1: be some jumpy, bouncy metaphor. Well, you know me very
Speaker 1: well after these eleven years eleven years, good, you didn't
Speaker 1: disappoint good. I don't like disappointing you, Chuck. It feels
Speaker 1: really rotten. Yeah, especially since I'm wearing a T shirt
Speaker 1: that says You've disappointed me again, Josh. And it's got
Speaker 1: that pointing finger right at me. Oh my, Josh. Yet
Speaker 1: actually is three dimensional. It comes out of the shirt
Speaker 1: just so you know I'm pointing at you. I can
Speaker 1: see it. It's like a magic Guy poster. Oh goodness.
Speaker 1: So speaking of goodness, Chuck, we're talking about trampolines. But
Speaker 1: it's funny that I would say goodness, because it turns
Speaker 1: out trampolines have a lot of badness to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're danger pits. Yeah, they are big time pits. If
Speaker 1: it's one of those built into the ground things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: trampoline in a pit. Have you ever been on a trampoline? Sure?
Speaker 1: I had one in in high school. Really you owned one.
Speaker 1: It was inherited from the people who previously owned the house.
Speaker 1: That old move and they took they took maybe half
Speaker 1: of the springs with them when they moved, apparently because
Speaker 1: you could make contact with the ground pretty easy on
Speaker 1: that one. And um and actually, if you go onto
Speaker 1: my Instagram josh um Clark, you can see a little
Speaker 1: photo spread of me bouncing around a trampoline park, totally
Speaker 1: oblivious to the amount of danger. I was actually in
Speaker 1: what what do you mean? What I mean I got
Speaker 1: to look that up. I didn't know that existed. I
Speaker 1: talked to you about my Instagram account like every every
Speaker 1: couple of days. Well, I mean pictures of the trampoline
Speaker 1: A and B. I'm not on Instagram at all, so
Speaker 1: I gotta like, you know what you have to what? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, how do you find something
Speaker 1: on Instagram if you're not on Instagram? Can you? I
Speaker 1: think you have to go? You gotta know you can?
Speaker 1: You can? You can just Google it, I believe. I'll
Speaker 1: show you later. I'll show you after this, but anyway,
Speaker 1: it's pretty great. You're gonna love it. But there was
Speaker 1: one point in time where I landed flat and this
Speaker 1: is in the photos, flat on the back of my head,
Speaker 1: upside down and there was a crack and everything, and
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, that was crazy. But after researching
Speaker 1: this chuck, I was like, I can't wait to die
Speaker 1: and go to heaven. There is such a thing in
Speaker 1: a place. Um so I can be like, I've got
Speaker 1: to know how close was I to full body paralysis
Speaker 1: that one time at that trampoline park. And I guarantee
Speaker 1: when they tell me, I'm gonna shut her with just
Speaker 1: um uh, I don't know, some sort of proximity fear maybe,
Speaker 1: I don't know what else you would call that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Or what if they say, uh, here, I'm
Speaker 1: going to issue a ticket number and you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to go down that wing where they handle near death experiences.
Speaker 1: That's fine, I'd go. I go spend the time. It's eternity.
Speaker 1: After all, I've got time to kill. It feels like
Speaker 1: it would be very bureaucratic. I could see that. Sure.
Speaker 1: A lot of pencil pushing. I haven't you know I
Speaker 1: had trampoline experience. In My only trampoline experience really was
Speaker 1: elementary school. Uh when we had a you know how
Speaker 1: an elementary school, at least at mine, they would have um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you do like one sport for a
Speaker 1: month or something. Yeah, we did trampolines for a little while.
Speaker 1: And our our gym teacher was a legit um gymnast
Speaker 1: of some kind, and he could do all the things.
Speaker 1: And we and we had the uh nineteen eighties you
Speaker 1: know rectangular Uh, they weren't even the mats, as we'll learn.
Speaker 1: We'll learn all about the trampoline a minute. But the
Speaker 1: little bouncy part you bounce on it was not solid.
Speaker 1: It was like a a checkerboard. I don't understand. Well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a solid piece of of fabric. It was invisible.
Speaker 1: It was a weave, okay, but I mean like a
Speaker 1: little tiny with with little squares in between, so like
Speaker 1: a net. Yeah. I have never seen what you're describing. Wow,
Speaker 1: but tokud go through it. So Chuck, let me ask
Speaker 1: you this thing. When did you in that when you
Speaker 1: would rotate out for new things like every month, did
Speaker 1: you guys ever do the thing where like everybody, you'd
Speaker 1: have a parachute and everybody would pull and lift the
Speaker 1: parachute up at once, and it would be somebody's turn
Speaker 1: to run underneath, and you had to make it to
Speaker 1: the other side before the parachute covered you. I remember
Speaker 1: that sort of yes, okay, Now, had your gym teacher
Speaker 1: done the opposite of that, where you put somebody in
Speaker 1: the middle of the parachute on top and everybody pulls
Speaker 1: it taught so that the person has launched in the air.
Speaker 1: The Lebowski. Yes, yeah, the Lebowski. You would have been
Speaker 1: doing what is one of the only things that somebody
Speaker 1: can point to as a predecessor to the trampoline, because
Speaker 1: it is almost virtually its own invention. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: I love how you brought that around. Thank you. Um
Speaker 1: the Grabster wrote this for us, and he he does
Speaker 1: make a point that even before that, people just liked
Speaker 1: anything that could bounce on. It's just sort of, uh,
Speaker 1: it seems intuitive as a human that that's fun and thrilling.
Speaker 1: Whether it's like, hey, this this log that fell across
Speaker 1: the creek has some spring to it and that's fun,
Speaker 1: what you know? Sure, or this board that spans an opening.
Speaker 1: What was the opening called in that horror story? Have
Speaker 1: you lost your mind? I remember the horror Halloween horror
Speaker 1: thing that we did with the creek in the what
Speaker 1: was that called? I don't oh, oh remember there was
Speaker 1: a word and you looked it up. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: was a specific place anyway on the board spanning that
Speaker 1: you're talking about bridges, we're talking about trampolines today you
Speaker 1: realize we're talking trampoline like hallucinating. So it's coming through
Speaker 1: loud and clear, buddy. UM. So so there's the the
Speaker 1: cloth or fabric that you could launch somebody up in
Speaker 1: the air. There was the log apparently that people jumped on. UM.
Speaker 1: But there was this kind of people figured out that
Speaker 1: it was kind of fun to get up into the air.
Speaker 1: And I saw it was one of those things. You know,
Speaker 1: we're always warning people when they ask us how to
Speaker 1: research that. If you see the same thing everywhere on
Speaker 1: the internet, it's probably wrong. I saw that about how
Speaker 1: there was there's UM in China, Iran and Egypt. There's
Speaker 1: depictions of people using trampoline like devices. Didn't see anything
Speaker 1: beyond that, so it's probably made up. But UM we
Speaker 1: can point to when the trampoline was vented, and it
Speaker 1: was actually fairly recent like what we think of the
Speaker 1: tram plane came about, and I think like the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: over the period of a few years. Yeah, Now, are
Speaker 1: we gonna tell people what a trampoline is? First? Are
Speaker 1: we going to talk about the history and then tell people? No,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you did this, Chuck, because yes, not only
Speaker 1: do we have what a trampoline is. I got a
Speaker 1: little a little bit of physics to to throw into
Speaker 1: I had a feeling. Okay, so a trampoline. If you've
Speaker 1: never driven out into rural Georgia, um, that's where I
Speaker 1: see them. Yeah, the people in the rural areas like
Speaker 1: the trampolines. There's not a lot to do out that's
Speaker 1: the deal. I was kind of wondering, like why do
Speaker 1: I see those when I drive out to you know,
Speaker 1: the country, But I don't see him as much in
Speaker 1: urban areas, and I think of space A and B.
Speaker 1: It's just a very cheap way to be like here
Speaker 1: you go, kids, knock yourself out for the next ten
Speaker 1: years literally literally. Alright, So, trampoline is a frame, uh
Speaker 1: that has a bouncy surface in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: The frame is a very rigid usually steal frame um
Speaker 1: and then the matt as it's called, is held together
Speaker 1: with these tight coiled springs are not held together but
Speaker 1: strapped to the frame. And it's not you know, it's
Speaker 1: those springs is where you get the bounce. It's it's
Speaker 1: not the actual material, although that could have a little
Speaker 1: bounce to it. It's got a little give because it's woven.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a seatbelt. Yeah, so super tightly
Speaker 1: woven that that um fabric. That matt is right, and
Speaker 1: that's the larger trampolines. They do have the little smaller
Speaker 1: like I guess people used to use them to exercise
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Did you not have one of those? Now?
Speaker 1: We never had one of those. I think I had
Speaker 1: to do with jazz or size maybe or something. So
Speaker 1: I've seen those more often at like NBA games when
Speaker 1: they bring the guys out in between the time outs
Speaker 1: or whatever and they do the high flying dunks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are awesome to see. Do you like those? I
Speaker 1: love watching this shot. I never get up during halftime
Speaker 1: because of that. Yeah, all right, I'm strapped to my
Speaker 1: seat you know what they should do to me, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, at every sports game ever during the halftime,
Speaker 1: the only thing they should do is have the little
Speaker 1: league teams play. Oh that gets you, huh. It's just
Speaker 1: the cutest thing ever. Like, I don't need to see
Speaker 1: a dance routine or some corny anything. But whenever they
Speaker 1: have like the five year olds out there playing basketball
Speaker 1: in the big court or football, that's that's all I need.
Speaker 1: What about the guy who's who climbs an increasingly high
Speaker 1: stack of chairs. I like that guy a lot. It's
Speaker 1: not bad spinning a plate. No, no, he just sometimes
Speaker 1: he'll do handstands on the top. It's really thrilling. You
Speaker 1: need you need to watch more halftime shows. But um, okay,
Speaker 1: So so that's basically what you described as a trampoline.
Speaker 1: That's a trampoline. There's like variations to it, for sure,
Speaker 1: there's competition trampoline's they tend to be rectangular. Um. They
Speaker 1: actually have specific dimensions because their competitions, so they have
Speaker 1: to all kind of have like a universal size, but
Speaker 1: usually something like ten feet by seventeen feet um. I
Speaker 1: think the ones that they use in college are a
Speaker 1: little smaller, but not too much. Um, did you watch
Speaker 1: any of that stuff? Yeah, it's and it's it's entrancing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool because it's it's in It's not
Speaker 1: slow motion when you're the one doing the bouncing, but
Speaker 1: when you're watching it from afar, because the mind kind
Speaker 1: of makes the point from when you bounce to when
Speaker 1: you next bounce again is kind of like one complete cycle.
Speaker 1: It it does kind of take a second, so it
Speaker 1: does kind of seem like the whole thing is happening
Speaker 1: in slow motion to the mind. Is very Maybe that's
Speaker 1: why I'm tired. I think it is because you're lulled
Speaker 1: to sleep by trampoline watching. So yeah, the rectangular ones
Speaker 1: are the competition, but when you go out to the
Speaker 1: country is when you'll see the round ones, the octagonal ones,
Speaker 1: and the hexagonal ones. Yeah, and the ones that you
Speaker 1: see like that people have bought for their home use,
Speaker 1: they're very frequently they're going to have um nets around
Speaker 1: the sides so that if you start to go off
Speaker 1: the side of the trampoline, the net catches you and
Speaker 1: throws you back into the center the mat of the trampoline,
Speaker 1: which we did not have when we were children. No,
Speaker 1: we did not. It was it was your off. It
Speaker 1: was it's called thinking the herd I think was the
Speaker 1: model I had the herd thinner. Yeah. In fact, they
Speaker 1: even had a landmoat full of nails and sharp glass
Speaker 1: surrounding the trampoline. That's right, And Armadilla is with leprosy um.
Speaker 1: But the ones in competition they don't have nets. And
Speaker 1: there's a really good reason why. Not because they're they're
Speaker 1: they're devils and thrill seekers, but because the people in
Speaker 1: competitions tend to jump so high that the nets wouldn't
Speaker 1: do any good. They just go right over the side
Speaker 1: unless they had super tall nets. I guess so. But
Speaker 1: I mean, once you get into nets that are too tall,
Speaker 1: it becomes kind of cost prohibitive, you know. Yeah, Plus
Speaker 1: it looks it ended up looking like one of those
Speaker 1: uh indoor skydide tubes, right, which we've done. That was fun.
Speaker 1: It was kind of fun. And that that footage is
Speaker 1: lost forever. I can't find it anyway. Oh thank god.
Speaker 1: Oh I like that one. It wasn't me or you
Speaker 1: that got thrown against the side at the end. It
Speaker 1: was me. For those of you that don't know we're
Speaker 1: talking about, we did some Toyota commercials years ago. It
Speaker 1: was funny. We were much more marketable early on than
Speaker 1: we are now. Yeah, but yeah, they flew us out
Speaker 1: to California and we did Toyota commercial and as we
Speaker 1: were both indoor skydiving, and it was pretty interesting and fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think my line was, you're just telling me that now,
Speaker 1: and then I lose control and bump into the side
Speaker 1: of the wall. That's it's harder than it looks. You
Speaker 1: don't just you know, it's very taxing on the muscles,
Speaker 1: really is. It was fun though, too. I had a
Speaker 1: good time. Should we take a break? Uh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: because we're not We're not done with this part yet. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're ready, Yes, we're We're getting there, Chuck, we're gonna
Speaker 1: By the way, I should probably explain to everybody, Chuck
Speaker 1: thinks that this is going to be like the The
Speaker 1: jackhammera episode which he and I agree is our worst
Speaker 1: episode ever. I think that that's patently wrong, So let's
Speaker 1: prove him wrong, everybody. Okay, So, um, there's one other
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to talk about before we go to
Speaker 1: break chalk, aside from where the trampoline is, which I
Speaker 1: feel like we've done a pretty good job of defining
Speaker 1: it to this point, right. The physics of a trampoline
Speaker 1: are actually pretty fascinating because if you look at the
Speaker 1: outside of the trampoline, it's like you said, that matt,
Speaker 1: that fabric that you actually jump on has a little
Speaker 1: bit of give, But where the trampoline gets the most
Speaker 1: give is from those springs that are attaching the fabric
Speaker 1: matt to the frame. Correct. Okay, So what that means
Speaker 1: then is because there's all these springs working together, the
Speaker 1: trampoline itself is actually, physics wise, a giant spring. And
Speaker 1: the reason why when you jump on a trampoline it
Speaker 1: shoots you back up into the air is because you're
Speaker 1: combining two kinds of energy. Kinetic energy, which is the movement,
Speaker 1: the energy from you jumping up and down on something,
Speaker 1: and then there's also potential elastic potential energy, which is
Speaker 1: the stored energy those springs have when they're extended and
Speaker 1: they want to go back to their normal shape. And
Speaker 1: so as all of this energy gets stretched out and
Speaker 1: then goes back to its normal tension, uh, it directs
Speaker 1: all that stored energy and that energy that's turned into
Speaker 1: actual energy towards the center, which is where you happen
Speaker 1: to be, and it launches you back up into the
Speaker 1: air somewhere. Tracy Wilson is smiling right exactly. One more
Speaker 1: thing mouth parts. So, uh, I think now we can
Speaker 1: take a break, don't you. Yes, Okay, So all right, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we're back, and I think it's time to talk a
Speaker 1: little history of trampoline. Yeah. So earlier you t s
Speaker 1: that this was sort of, um an invention of its own,
Speaker 1: like there was no predecessor really to the trampoline, aside
Speaker 1: from Inuit people tossing people up in the air Lebowski style.
Speaker 1: Uh So the credit for the trampoline is is roundly.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anyone that disputes us, right, No, No,
Speaker 1: it's it's George Nisson, for sure. Yeah. George Nisson and
Speaker 1: a man named Larry Clark Griswold, right, um, And and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll get to their story and how Larry figured in.
Speaker 1: But it was really George Nisson's brain child, um, between
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty six. Like you said earlier,
Speaker 1: it took a little while to get it just right.
Speaker 1: But when George was a little boy in nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: He was sixteen, I guess, medium sized boy, and he
Speaker 1: was watching the trapeze artist and you know how they
Speaker 1: have that net and they leap off the trapeze at
Speaker 1: the end and they do a flourish and they land
Speaker 1: on the net, and then they usually do a couple
Speaker 1: of little flips and then land on the net again
Speaker 1: and then that cool move where they hold onto the
Speaker 1: net and flip out and land on their feet very gracefully.
Speaker 1: Right right. Little George saw this and was like, everyone's
Speaker 1: wild about this trappeeze. He's like, the best part is
Speaker 1: that end when they get on that net. I should
Speaker 1: make one of those. Yeah. He wanted one where you
Speaker 1: didn't just bounce once basically get one bounce, but that
Speaker 1: you could just keep bouncing and bouncing and bouncing. And
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm going to go home and make something
Speaker 1: like this because he was a he was a gymnast
Speaker 1: at the time already. Yeah, that makes a lot more
Speaker 1: sense once you know that. I think exactly, he was
Speaker 1: a gymnast who went to circus performances and then was
Speaker 1: inspired by that net, and so he actually went home
Speaker 1: got I guess spare metal parts from like a junkyard
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, got his hands on a
Speaker 1: canvas mat and fixed the two things together, and um,
Speaker 1: he broke his ankles. Basically, it did not work very
Speaker 1: well at first. I mean, it had some bounce to it.
Speaker 1: It was as far as like an early proof of
Speaker 1: concept goes. It worked in that respect, but that was
Speaker 1: about it. And he called it a bouncing rig and
Speaker 1: he put it down in his parents basement, I believe,
Speaker 1: and then went off to the University of Iowa to
Speaker 1: study business and joined the gymnastics team. And joining the
Speaker 1: gymnastics team at the University of Iowa turned out to
Speaker 1: be pretty faithful because it was there that he met
Speaker 1: who the man who would become his co inventor in
Speaker 1: the trampoline, Larry Griswold. Yeah, I wonder if he if
Speaker 1: leaving that trampoline prototype and his parents basement was it
Speaker 1: had to be the first instance of what would be
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of many trampolines left in their parents basements. Yeah, apparently,
Speaker 1: um uh. George Nisson's dad was not all that happy
Speaker 1: about the trampoline. He was not a true lever as
Speaker 1: far as the trampoline was concerned, all right, so he
Speaker 1: goes to school, Like you said, he met coach Larry Griswold. Uh,
Speaker 1: we call him Clark around here, and I guess he
Speaker 1: thought this was a good idea. He shared it with
Speaker 1: his coach and he's like, you know what, I'm a
Speaker 1: little older, have a little more experience. Why don't you
Speaker 1: let me help you with this thing? And they built
Speaker 1: a different prototype. This time. They had a nylon matt.
Speaker 1: They used groments, which obviously made a little sturdier, and
Speaker 1: the springs they subbed in bicycle inner tubes. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure that he used springs. He just
Speaker 1: somehow attached the canvas to the frame. So when they
Speaker 1: added bicycle tubes, that gave it way more give and
Speaker 1: and it worked a lot better. And they knew that
Speaker 1: they were onto something just with this they I'm sure
Speaker 1: they knew that could be improved, but they this was
Speaker 1: a pretty good first start that they worked on at
Speaker 1: the University of Iowa. Yeah, so between then and I
Speaker 1: guess nineteen thirty seven, Um, they introduced the steel coils
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four, and they really had the trampoline
Speaker 1: going at this point. Um, although it was not called
Speaker 1: the trampoline until uh Nissen in nineteen thirty seven, traveled
Speaker 1: all over North America performing routines under the name with
Speaker 1: two of his friends under the name the Three Leonardo's,
Speaker 1: which is very ninety seven thing to do. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they went to Mexico and they learned that there was
Speaker 1: a a name, a Spanish name for this bouncing rib
Speaker 1: rig like the springboard called a trampoline or I guess
Speaker 1: lean without the E on the end. And he said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna add an E on the end trademark
Speaker 1: that thing. And uh, I've appropriated something from another culture.
Speaker 1: I read I read on educator pages dot com that
Speaker 1: he while down in Mexico he learned the Mexican word
Speaker 1: for springboard was trampoline. Yeah, the Mexican word. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: what they said on educator pages dot com. I was
Speaker 1: just disappointed enough that I wanted to point it out. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, sure, there are Mexican specific words, this is
Speaker 1: not one of them. Okay, this is the Spanish word.
Speaker 1: I got you. I was just trying to make that clear. So,
Speaker 1: um so, George, this is like, this is great. I've
Speaker 1: been calling this thing a bouncing rig, but this tramplin
Speaker 1: word is way better. I'm going to call this a trampoline,
Speaker 1: like Chuck said, and um in trade market. And that
Speaker 1: was a huge, huge improvement for this thing because they
Speaker 1: had something. By this time, they had a really great
Speaker 1: invention going. But now they had a name and kind
Speaker 1: of a catchy name and one that even made sense
Speaker 1: as well. A springboard, by the way, is one of
Speaker 1: those you know those little um things you jump on
Speaker 1: to get onto the pole or the pommel horse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a springboard, yeah, or or what's it called the vault?
Speaker 1: Is that what they used for the vault? Yes? Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is kind of what what inspired him to
Speaker 1: say that is somewhat tied to this is a great name.
Speaker 1: I'll probably never sell one of these in Mexico. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna take it and like you said, appropriate it.
Speaker 1: So now he had a great invention, he had a name,
Speaker 1: and he and griz Wald founded the griz Waldniss And
Speaker 1: Trampoline and Tumbling Company UM in nine two and started
Speaker 1: selling these things, not exactly like hot cakes at first.
Speaker 1: I believe they sold ten in their first year, and
Speaker 1: George Nisson's dad suggested that they had satisfied the world's
Speaker 1: need for trampolines by this time. In the first ten
Speaker 1: I'm telling you he wasn't really on board. He's but
Speaker 1: his son ended up really rubbing the dog poop in
Speaker 1: his dad's face because trampoline started to take off pretty quick.
Speaker 1: So they both agreed though, the two partners, Griswaldnis and
Speaker 1: that in order to sell this thing, they had to
Speaker 1: demonstrate it. It's not the kind of thing you can
Speaker 1: just it was so revolutionary, my friends, that they couldn't
Speaker 1: just throw an ad up. But at the time, Griswald,
Speaker 1: the former coach, had a little touring routine a diving.
Speaker 1: They were both divers. I don't think we mentioned that, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, competitive divers. George Nisson was too. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Thissen well, not a competitor or not a professional, but
Speaker 1: he was. He did two things he would did gymnastics
Speaker 1: and diving. So Griswald was touring the country doing a
Speaker 1: comedy act, a diving board comedy act, uh called what
Speaker 1: was it? The drug the diving fool, The diving fool.
Speaker 1: It has to be seen to be believed. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I kind of do the same routine every summer at
Speaker 1: neighborhood pools. Uh. He'd stagger around pretending to be like
Speaker 1: drunk at a pool and falling off the diving board
Speaker 1: and doing all these tricks and things like that. The differences.
Speaker 1: You're not pretending, right, I am a drunken diving pool.
Speaker 1: Get a couple of bloody Caesar's in you, that's right,
Speaker 1: although you just calling bloody Mary right. Well, what was
Speaker 1: the caesar apart the cremato? Oh? Yeah, I never knew that,
Speaker 1: Yes you did. I told you that. I mean I
Speaker 1: never knew it until you told me years ago. Oka. Um.
Speaker 1: But in any case, the drunken or the diving fool
Speaker 1: was something that that Griswold was actually making a little
Speaker 1: bit of money at. And I guess he was, you know,
Speaker 1: touring the country and wooing the ladies. So he was like,
Speaker 1: I kind of like this over trampolineing and so what
Speaker 1: you are you interested in buying out the shares of
Speaker 1: this company? Uh? And Thisison said sure, yeah, said thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, chump, Yeah, I will take over this company myself.
Speaker 1: And then thisis and started touring around and this is
Speaker 1: when the demonstrations really took hold. He and his wife,
Speaker 1: who was an acrobat name any debris. She's like a
Speaker 1: Dutch high high wire artist, I believe, um. And you
Speaker 1: have to like you have to understand like now in
Speaker 1: the world we live, in the world we were born into.
Speaker 1: Chuk like the trampolines are are there's a thing that
Speaker 1: seems like they've always been around this set a time
Speaker 1: where you had to go take them places to demonstrate them.
Speaker 1: Or when um, when uh, Larry Griswold was doing his
Speaker 1: his diving fool thing, when he gets to the end,
Speaker 1: it looks like he's going to dive into a pool
Speaker 1: and when he dives in, it turns out there's a
Speaker 1: trampoline hidden behind this thing that looks like a pool.
Speaker 1: So he bounced back up. That's probably pretty great if
Speaker 1: you're a kid. Yeah, but also I think even adults
Speaker 1: at the time, we're like, what just happening? He's just
Speaker 1: produced magic so' and you can actually see it. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a bit of him doing it on the Sinatra
Speaker 1: Show in nine and you can hear the crowds going
Speaker 1: berserk over this kind of stuff. Um. But anyway, so he,
Speaker 1: like you said, he decides that that's that's he's better
Speaker 1: off doing that sells out to Nissan and then Nissan
Speaker 1: starts touring to demonstrate the trampoline, and he had a
Speaker 1: real flair for this. He studied business, like I said,
Speaker 1: at University of Iowa. Um, I don't I'm sure the
Speaker 1: trampoline probably he would have taken off regardless, but thanks
Speaker 1: to um, George Nisson like it. Really he really did
Speaker 1: a good job at promoting it and making it catch on,
Speaker 1: especially in the sixties and the fifties. Yeah, he went
Speaker 1: around the world actually, and he would do things like, uh,
Speaker 1: in Central Park, he would bounce with a kangaroo. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that got some pretty pretty good attention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he rented a kangaroo for this photo shoot and then
Speaker 1: basically shared shared the war, shared the photo with like
Speaker 1: the Associated Press who spread it around the world. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: he went to Russia. Um, he went to Egypt and
Speaker 1: did tricks a top of the Pyramids. And as a result,
Speaker 1: and of course, because it's the nineteen fifties, that's kind
Speaker 1: of when something like this would really it just makes
Speaker 1: sense that it took hold then and that's when they
Speaker 1: became a legit fad and there were people buying trampolines.
Speaker 1: There were trampoline bounce centers, which apparently are big now again,
Speaker 1: which I didn't know. Have you ever been one of those?
Speaker 1: I told you that's where my Instagram photo spread was.
Speaker 1: I thought yours was just a regular trampoline. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's at one of those bounce centers. So what are
Speaker 1: They're just trampolines everywhere, every whole floor trampoline. No, they're everywhere,
Speaker 1: built into the floors. There's places that you kind of
Speaker 1: walk in between them. But for the most part, it's
Speaker 1: like these giant um you know, the bags that like
Speaker 1: a stunt man falls onto from from high above. They
Speaker 1: have those built into the floor. They have trampolines everywhere,
Speaker 1: trampolines and the walls at angles. It's I would say
Speaker 1: you gotta go, but don't, or if you go, just
Speaker 1: poke your head in and just leave. Yeah, I don't,
Speaker 1: I've got uh. I don't want to say weak ankles
Speaker 1: because that makes me I don't know how that makes
Speaker 1: me sound. Something makes you sound like a thoroughbred horse.
Speaker 1: But I don't like it. Okay, well thanks, but yeah,
Speaker 1: if I step off a curb wrong, it's it's not fun.
Speaker 1: So you don't need to be trampoline trampoline, not at
Speaker 1: this age. You shouldn't. But earlier, UM, I guess we
Speaker 1: should mention that his his idea was, like all good
Speaker 1: business people, wasn't just so singular, like, hey, maybe we
Speaker 1: can sell these two kids. He thought, you know, because
Speaker 1: he was a gymnast, we can use these for training,
Speaker 1: uh in gymnastics, um, anything anything where there's tumbling or falling.
Speaker 1: We can we think we can like sell these, sell this,
Speaker 1: including to the military into NASA. Yeah. Two there were
Speaker 1: two things that he really saw early on that they
Speaker 1: could be used forul for training, um, like you said,
Speaker 1: tumbling or that kind of thing, but also like diving,
Speaker 1: where you have where you're doing aerial tricks and it's
Speaker 1: not like you just know how to do those tricks.
Speaker 1: It takes a ton of practice. Well, it really sucks
Speaker 1: to have to go get out of the pool, climb
Speaker 1: back up the ladder, walk down and try it again
Speaker 1: every time. Dry off, have a smoke, right, if you
Speaker 1: have UM, if you have like a harness on, you
Speaker 1: can practice this stuff in mid air just from a trampoline.
Speaker 1: With every bounce, you don't have to climb back up
Speaker 1: the ladder. You can practice bounce after bounce, and then
Speaker 1: you could take it up onto the diving board. So
Speaker 1: that was one and then the other, like you said,
Speaker 1: the military and eventually NASA to get pilots adjusted to
Speaker 1: disorienting UM body positions like tumbling head over heels, yeah,
Speaker 1: through the air um and and learning how to keep
Speaker 1: their orientation even when their body is flipping all over
Speaker 1: the place. And the military bought into they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really good idea. So much so that when
Speaker 1: UM George Nisson was assigned to a pre flight center
Speaker 1: in the Navy, I think St. Mary's College outside of Oakland,
Speaker 1: he found that they were already using trampolines for training
Speaker 1: before he even got there, So it had caught his invention,
Speaker 1: preceded him before he even showed up to to uh
Speaker 1: proselytize it. Yeah, And like if you think about getting
Speaker 1: on a trampoline, if it's been a lot of years,
Speaker 1: you probably remember like, yeah, it's easy to just get
Speaker 1: on it and jump, dumb, dumb. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: if you're like seriously trampolining we were doing in elementary school,
Speaker 1: like we would learn tricks and stuff like that. It's aerobic,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it improves your agility and balance. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like muscle work going on, so it's
Speaker 1: not you know, sure, you can just jump up and
Speaker 1: down like in uh like Tom hankson Big, But if
Speaker 1: you want to do tricks and things like that and
Speaker 1: jumps and spins, there's there's athleticism involved for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get really good at it. In other words, Um,
Speaker 1: there's one other thing then you want to take a
Speaker 1: break in a second, So um, trampoline is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things. Now it's a proprietary eponym, right, which
Speaker 1: means it's generic. But it used to be a trademark name,
Speaker 1: like you said, um, and then it got so popular
Speaker 1: that by the sixties George Nissen just got tired of
Speaker 1: trying to fight unauthorized use of it, so he stopped
Speaker 1: enforcing his trademark and it became generic. But up to
Speaker 1: the sixties, anytime somebody in the news was describing a trampoline,
Speaker 1: they had to call it like um, bounce, tumbling, or
Speaker 1: just make up some words to get the point across
Speaker 1: without using the term trampoline because it was trademarked at
Speaker 1: the time. Rebound tumbling. That's a pretty good one. I thought,
Speaker 1: it's not bad. So how about that break Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. And I thought you're gonna get me
Speaker 1: back and say no, all right, let's do it, all right, Chuck. So,
Speaker 1: trampolining is an actual sport, like you said, it requires
Speaker 1: a lot of like fitness and you can get really
Speaker 1: good at and there's a lot of tricks you can
Speaker 1: learn and do. Um And although it's not technically a
Speaker 1: UM an n c A A sport, you can find
Speaker 1: it competitively and colleges enough colleges so that there are
Speaker 1: colleges that compete against one another in trampoline matches. It's
Speaker 1: just not sanctioned by the the n c a A
Speaker 1: like say basketball or softball or football. Is Yeah, I
Speaker 1: get the feeling. It's it's one of those fringe sports
Speaker 1: that if enough people and in this case it's probably
Speaker 1: uh gymnastics or gymnasts, they would say Hey. They go
Speaker 1: to the school and say, hey, we got like twelve
Speaker 1: people here who want to get on the trampoline and compete.
Speaker 1: Can we do this? And they'll say sure, we can
Speaker 1: allocate you like six dollars a year, and I've got
Speaker 1: trampoline at my house, right, But yeah, they compete and
Speaker 1: that's great. Um. However, early on this was actually, uh,
Speaker 1: like that seems like something that would have happened more recently.
Speaker 1: All the way back in they held the World Championship
Speaker 1: in London at Royal Albert Hall of all places, and uh,
Speaker 1: this was when this one was still like still trying
Speaker 1: to you know, the fifties they really sold well, the
Speaker 1: sixties they were selling okay. But like all fads, I
Speaker 1: think he saw the writing on the wall. So things
Speaker 1: like the World Championships and trying to get sports, legitimate sports,
Speaker 1: UM leagues or whatever going was pretty important at the
Speaker 1: thing to him. Yeah, I guess from that first fad
Speaker 1: though in the sixties, like the real heyday of trampolines, UM,
Speaker 1: it did become it started to become a sport. But
Speaker 1: rather than people saying like this is a thing, let's
Speaker 1: get together, it's like you're saying, like one one school,
Speaker 1: Like one one group of gymnasts went to their school
Speaker 1: and said, hey, we want to do this, and that
Speaker 1: happened to other schools and other schools, and before you
Speaker 1: know there are enough schools to compete against one another
Speaker 1: UM and so there there is actual UM events there.
Speaker 1: There are now like collegiate trampoline events that again aren't
Speaker 1: sanctioned by the n c a A as far as
Speaker 1: they know, or they didn't used to be. They maybe
Speaker 1: now because beginning in two thousand, like the biggest of
Speaker 1: the big happen of trampolining, and what started out is
Speaker 1: just a training thing became an actual Olympic event. There's
Speaker 1: now a trampoline event in the Olympics starting as of
Speaker 1: two thousand in Sydney. Yeah, which uh Nisson lived to
Speaker 1: see that, which was kind of cool. The little kind
Speaker 1: of silly invention that he had so many years earlier
Speaker 1: became an Olympic sport and that was I'm sure very
Speaker 1: very big day for him, Yeah, because I mean, not
Speaker 1: only was he the inventor, he was like a tireless
Speaker 1: um uh what is it called when people yes, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, Chuck. You're not very good at that part either, now,
Speaker 1: So he was a tireless now that's or talking. He
Speaker 1: was a tireless promoter of it too. So I think
Speaker 1: it meant quite a bit to him to see like
Speaker 1: his invention become an actual Olympic sport because he was
Speaker 1: a trained gymnast, like this was his this his thing.
Speaker 1: He wasn't you know, like the inventor of the atch
Speaker 1: just sketch or something like that, whereas he just accidentally
Speaker 1: happened to like come across this idea. This is like
Speaker 1: really important to him, and it became an Olympic sport,
Speaker 1: this thing that he invented. That. I think that's really cool.
Speaker 1: Plus also he was such a gymnast through and through.
Speaker 1: I read that he was still able to do handstands
Speaker 1: in his eighties and head stands into his nineties. Wow,
Speaker 1: maybe they just couldn't tell his head from his butt
Speaker 1: at that point and they thought he was doing a headstand. Maybe.
Speaker 1: So that's usually how it goes by then. Oh boy.
Speaker 1: Uh so, if you're at a collegiate trampoline event, you
Speaker 1: may see synchronized tramping. Did you watch that? Yeah, it's cool,
Speaker 1: Like any synchronized event, it's all about trying to exactly
Speaker 1: mirror one another doing the same thing side by side
Speaker 1: on two different trampolines. It's very I'm such a brad.
Speaker 1: I was watching them like, oh, they're not in sink
Speaker 1: on the whole game. Think again, you know I how
Speaker 1: to sink yep, And you're like, maybe I'm not watching
Speaker 1: the synchronized I'm looking at it from the wrong angle. Um,
Speaker 1: it's my internet working because uh, these guys are not
Speaker 1: on the same page. UM in the Olympics, so they
Speaker 1: don't have that. They have two events. Uh, and you're
Speaker 1: not likely to see these on TV. This is not
Speaker 1: um burning up the airwaves. You probably have to have.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can get some Olympic package where you
Speaker 1: get everything. But Olympic trampolineing has two events, the men's
Speaker 1: and the women's individual. And like most sports like this,
Speaker 1: there's a compulsory routine where they say, all right, you've
Speaker 1: got to do these predetermined tricks, and then the voluntary
Speaker 1: routine where you really let your creative juices as a
Speaker 1: trampoline or show and shine. Uh, and you get ten
Speaker 1: bounces and you can do whatever you want. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know about whatever you want, but you do, you
Speaker 1: know these fancy combinations of tricks in those ten bounces.
Speaker 1: I also noticed on the Olympic trampoline that was like
Speaker 1: a target in the center and another box around that.
Speaker 1: And I didn't look it up, but I got the
Speaker 1: feeling that you kind of had to stay with and
Speaker 1: that unless that's just for the benefit of the jumper,
Speaker 1: because I saw them land outside of it a couple
Speaker 1: of times, and I heard the announcers go, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a penalty deduction like vaulting
Speaker 1: off the matter or something or yeah, no, I could
Speaker 1: totally see that for sure. Yeah, I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: But they are judged on uh, flight time, which is awesome,
Speaker 1: execution and difficulty, right, and then if they bounce, if
Speaker 1: they go through a bounce and and don't do a
Speaker 1: trick in on that bounce there, they lose points for
Speaker 1: that too. Yeah. Was they're like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: What do you the rec center? It was a waste
Speaker 1: of everyone's time. Uh. And of course it's you know,
Speaker 1: highest cumulative score wins yep. So originally it looked like
Speaker 1: Russia was going to be the big trampolineers in the world.
Speaker 1: The Russians won the men's and women's gold in Sydney,
Speaker 1: so the first ever gold for trampolineing the Russians one,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, China comes out of
Speaker 1: nowhere and they start dominating. Um. I believe Dong Dong
Speaker 1: is the world's most decorated trampoline athlete, with gold, silver,
Speaker 1: and bronze to his name, not bad. But if you're
Speaker 1: talking women's trampoline, you want to go to Canada because
Speaker 1: they are as good as it gets um starring Rosanna
Speaker 1: McClellan and Karen Cockburn, who are Canada's too big trampolinets, trampolineists,
Speaker 1: n't seeing trampoline or oh I think it's whatever you
Speaker 1: wanted to be. It's only very recently an Olympic events,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of a free for all to call
Speaker 1: it whatever you like. Yeah, So before we get into
Speaker 1: the downer, which is injuries and and sadly deaths from trampoline, uh,
Speaker 1: we will mention a few other um kind of crazy
Speaker 1: sports that you know, like the NBA during halftime or
Speaker 1: time outs. People have tried to incorporate trampolines into other
Speaker 1: sports or maybe just invent it's it's out of whole
Speaker 1: cloth and they're always a little goofy a little So spaceball,
Speaker 1: which I had never heard of before, just YouTube this
Speaker 1: and check it out. It's it's much less impressive than
Speaker 1: it sounds when you finally watch it. Yeah, because I mean,
Speaker 1: spaceball has nothing to do with anything other than the
Speaker 1: fact that it was like created during the height of
Speaker 1: the space race. It's the only reason I can possibly
Speaker 1: come up with it. It's called spaceball, yeah, and I said, uh,
Speaker 1: and here it says spaceball had teams of two. I
Speaker 1: only saw one person at a time, So what they
Speaker 1: sub in and out I I don't know because I
Speaker 1: only saw I think we saw the same video, really
Speaker 1: off putting lee lighted black and white video. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's almost like I think one guy checks his watch
Speaker 1: in the middle of the match. Well, they were goofing
Speaker 1: around and one guy hid the ball under his shirt
Speaker 1: and was like, what what happened? Yeah, but they're all
Speaker 1: bouncing this whole time. The point is, so there's like
Speaker 1: a trampoline. There's two different trampolines. Each guy's on a trampoline.
Speaker 1: In between their two trampolines, the thing they're facing is
Speaker 1: a net. In between the net is a tunnel, and
Speaker 1: that's where the ball goes through. And the point is
Speaker 1: to try to get the ball through the tunnel to
Speaker 1: hit the other guys backstop trampoline, which is from what
Speaker 1: I saw on that video and I guess you did too,
Speaker 1: is utterly impossible to get it past the person. It's
Speaker 1: not a great game, no, but this is I don't
Speaker 1: know if George Nisson created it or helped develop it
Speaker 1: or what. But it was one of those things where
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the fads starting to wane, let's
Speaker 1: come up with new uses for the trampoline. So spaceball
Speaker 1: didn't catch on, but then years later other people have
Speaker 1: been like, hey, hey, let's not give up the ghosts.
Speaker 1: There are other things you can do with the trampoline,
Speaker 1: like slam ball, which actually is kind of awesome to
Speaker 1: watch now. See, I didn't find slam ball that all
Speaker 1: I saw was people doing dunks. I didn't see like
Speaker 1: real four on four basketball game. It's not exactly like
Speaker 1: four and four basketball in that you can like it's
Speaker 1: more like rugby mixed with basketball with trampolines. So you're
Speaker 1: not dribbling probably right, No, you're not, and somebody can
Speaker 1: just knock you right off your feet, um and and
Speaker 1: stop the ball from moving. But the point is, and
Speaker 1: what everybody comes to see is right in front of
Speaker 1: the net, there's a big, you know, ground level trampoline
Speaker 1: that you jump on and do like an amazing dunk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan, it's not bad. Um. Then there's
Speaker 1: boss a Ball. This is crazy, like literally it is crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is um one part volleyball, one part soccer, ten
Speaker 1: parts trampoline. Well, and there's trampoline, but also the whole
Speaker 1: imagine well you should just watch this one too, um,
Speaker 1: but imagine a big inflatable volleyball court. So instead of sand,
Speaker 1: let's say the whole thing is like a big sort
Speaker 1: of bouncy inflatable area, and then the center part of
Speaker 1: that and around the net are actual trampolines built into that, right,
Speaker 1: So people are bouncing around the outside, they're doing sets
Speaker 1: and stuff. And then if you're on the trampoline part,
Speaker 1: you jump up and you can use your feet. That's
Speaker 1: where the soccer comes in. Yeah. So you can do
Speaker 1: like bicycle and rainbow kicks. Yeah, or you can use
Speaker 1: your hands. Um, so you can spike it really hot
Speaker 1: hard from high up above the net. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: get the impression that using your feet just gets you
Speaker 1: extra points or something. Yep, And otherwise why would you
Speaker 1: there's also well just to show off. I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of glory involved there. But also the reason
Speaker 1: it's called Bossa Balls because it's named after Bossa Nova
Speaker 1: type of samba music, and it's like you have to
Speaker 1: play to Szomba music, so it's not an official boss
Speaker 1: A ball match. So yeah, it's like you said, you
Speaker 1: just have to go watch it there and this in Spain,
Speaker 1: by the way, I don't think we pointed that out Spain.
Speaker 1: I think also Brazil to Yeah, well of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's fun to watch. It's great. It's a it's
Speaker 1: another thing you can do with trampoline. It's the coolest
Speaker 1: of all of them, I think. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: like my slam ball. No one likes spaceball though. You
Speaker 1: know what I don't like about slam ball is it's
Speaker 1: the same thing at the NBA games. These guys do
Speaker 1: these big dunks and they're all they're like beating their
Speaker 1: chests like yeah, and I'm just like, dude, like you
Speaker 1: used to trampoline. It's not like I mean, it's still impressive.
Speaker 1: I couldn't go out there and do that right off
Speaker 1: the bat, but take you two three try. I don't know.
Speaker 1: They're just acting like their ballers and stuff, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure the players in the court are just like, God,
Speaker 1: get these guys out of here. Yeah, no, I know
Speaker 1: what you mean. So that's my gripe. I'm with you.
Speaker 1: I feel you man, but you're like, but it's just
Speaker 1: so fun. I like watching it, have you? How about this?
Speaker 1: This is why? This is how you'd like it. If
Speaker 1: they had elementary school basketball, it'd be into that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you would never want to put an LM. Menory
Speaker 1: school player on a slam ball trampoline or trampoline at all,
Speaker 1: at least according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I want to just puck my shirt
Speaker 1: lapels a little bit here. My segways are killing it
Speaker 1: in this episode. I don't know if you've noticed. I
Speaker 1: know you have, but um, yeah, okay, so and I
Speaker 1: just stumbled all over my my segway just now with that. So, um.
Speaker 1: The American Academy of Pediatrics, get this, says, do not
Speaker 1: let kids six or under on a trampoline. Just don't.
Speaker 1: That's what they open with their guidelines for trampolines. If
Speaker 1: you're under six or six or under, don't go onto trampoline.
Speaker 1: Your bones are too underdeveloped and a trampoline is too dangerous.
Speaker 1: And until I researched this, I had no I I
Speaker 1: knew trampolines are dangerous, but they're like funny haha. Dangerous
Speaker 1: like that one episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets
Speaker 1: a free trampoline and turns his backyard into a tramp
Speaker 1: lean park and every kid who jumps on it like
Speaker 1: breaks an arm or breaks their back or something like that.
Speaker 1: So it's it's funny like that. No, actually it's it's
Speaker 1: like dangerous and about It's like law and Dart level
Speaker 1: dangerous basically. Yeah, I mean, nothing will drive that home
Speaker 1: like some eighteen year old statistics. Um. But in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, this is what we have. I've got
Speaker 1: newer ones. Well, I imagine it's about the same. Over
Speaker 1: a four year period, there were ninety three thousand emergency
Speaker 1: room visits and I guess this is the United States
Speaker 1: over a four year period. And here's the thing. Like
Speaker 1: a broken arm, that's not great, but it's not the
Speaker 1: worst thing in the world. But over two thousand of
Speaker 1: those nine thousand were traumatic brain injuries, and those are
Speaker 1: pretty bad. Yeah, between children between the ages of five
Speaker 1: and eighteen, and the American Academy pdat Eatrics basically says,
Speaker 1: it's the risk, like the risk of catastrophic injury. It's
Speaker 1: the differentiator between this and just like playing baseball or whatever, Like,
Speaker 1: if you get hurt on a trampoline, it's it's a
Speaker 1: very good chance that you might really really be hurt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because i mean, like nobody trampolines with a helmet on
Speaker 1: or with shoulder pads on. You're getting you know, you
Speaker 1: can't be that kid at the park. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't your your parents should just be like, I'd rather
Speaker 1: get a brain injury than have to look like that
Speaker 1: kid on the trampoline at the trampoline park. Um. The
Speaker 1: padding that you put on the trampoline that goes around,
Speaker 1: like the springs and the frame and everything that's supposed
Speaker 1: to be replaced like every year too. No one ever
Speaker 1: does that. Um. So it's actually like a really dangerous
Speaker 1: in mention, like much more dangerous than than people realize.
Speaker 1: And some people will point to it and say, you know,
Speaker 1: actually bike like bikes, swimming, these things put more kids
Speaker 1: in the hospital every year than trampolines. True, but it's
Speaker 1: much more likely that kids are going to be biking
Speaker 1: or swimming than they are going to be trampolining. And
Speaker 1: so it's possible that comparatively speaking, trampolines are the most
Speaker 1: dangerous activity kids can engage in. It's possible. It's not proven,
Speaker 1: but it's it's the statistics are there that it would
Speaker 1: be not surprising to a lot of people if that
Speaker 1: panned out to be the case. Yeah, and by far
Speaker 1: the most dangerous thing uh as far as trampolines go,
Speaker 1: that you can let your kid do is get on
Speaker 1: there with five or six other kids and it's fun
Speaker 1: and it looks like a big party and kids love it.
Speaker 1: But eight percent of these injuries are when there are
Speaker 1: multiple users on there at the same time. Yep, because
Speaker 1: you bounce into one another. Crack heads, you can get um.
Speaker 1: There's that you know, that errant bounce that you aren't
Speaker 1: expecting and it shoots you off in a direction that
Speaker 1: you want to try to do that as a kid exactly,
Speaker 1: you try and like double jump people so they'll jump higher.
Speaker 1: And you know, kids don't understand angles in physics. They
Speaker 1: understand physics enough that they can they try to counteract
Speaker 1: and other kids bounce in time it perfectly so that
Speaker 1: the frequency is the opposite, so that the kid who's
Speaker 1: coming down and rather than bouncing, they're just hitting the
Speaker 1: upward momentum of that of that trampoline match. Just so
Speaker 1: that it's like hitting the ground. Right. And there's actually
Speaker 1: something called trampoline ankle where um, in kids the growth plate,
Speaker 1: the plate where their um their ankle bones are growing
Speaker 1: together still. Um if that gets fractured, and it can
Speaker 1: get fractured from that kind of that very same kind
Speaker 1: of thing where um, the the bounce is going, it's
Speaker 1: coming back as they're coming down. Apparently it can be
Speaker 1: like hitting, like landing on the concrete from a nine
Speaker 1: ft dropped Yeah, and these little fragile bones that are
Speaker 1: still growing can be broken, and when they they are
Speaker 1: um start to grow again, their development can be all
Speaker 1: kinds of messed up. So there's something called trampoline ankle
Speaker 1: that I think, um physicians in Ottawa and Canada have
Speaker 1: identified that as an actual thing. Well American of me
Speaker 1: A pediatrics does have a list of things you already mentioned.
Speaker 1: No kids under six at all, Uh, safety netting of course,
Speaker 1: all that padding padding on the ground. Um, this is
Speaker 1: a good one. No ladders near the trampoline, people, because
Speaker 1: the little kid's gonna find that and climb up. Um.
Speaker 1: Don't try flips in big tricks like that unless you're
Speaker 1: trained to do so. And only one person at a time.
Speaker 1: That's the big, big, big rule. Get on there with
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids. It's just you're just asking for it, right,
Speaker 1: which is why some people point to these trampoline parks.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, wait a minute, a lot of the
Speaker 1: kids here under six. The whole point is to stuff
Speaker 1: as many kids under a trampoline or bounce pit or
Speaker 1: whatever is possible. That's where most of the fund comes from.
Speaker 1: And UM, there have been a lot of I don't
Speaker 1: want to say a lot, but there have been some
Speaker 1: very high profile deaths of mostly adults at these places
Speaker 1: where UM, like grown grown men have like broken their necks,
Speaker 1: suffered traumatic UM spinal injuries, injuries, UM have become paralyzed
Speaker 1: and died. UM. A New York Yankees picture had a
Speaker 1: compound fracture of his ankle and almost died from blood loss.
Speaker 1: So UM. There was an advocacy group that that went away.
Speaker 1: I think their last post is two thousand and sixteen.
Speaker 1: But they're called UM Think before you bounce. But UM,
Speaker 1: even without looking them up, it's like, go to research
Speaker 1: this before you go to your next trampoline park, and
Speaker 1: I guarantee you will second guess it. I thought that
Speaker 1: group was for recommendations before you decide to leave a party. No, Nope,
Speaker 1: interesting dad joke. Alert. They're coming harder and faster these days.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed. Uh, by the way, I said, I
Speaker 1: had more up to date statistics. Get this in Indiana
Speaker 1: University study found that between two thousand two and two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven, not ninety three thousand and four years,
Speaker 1: a million plus e er visits in the US and
Speaker 1: nine period nine years, that's a lot of er visits
Speaker 1: from trampolines. Well, hopefully that number is going down because
Speaker 1: trampoline sales for people in homes have been going down
Speaker 1: since two thousand four. Uh so maybe people are just
Speaker 1: realizing it's it's too dangerous, who knows, or at least
Speaker 1: sink them into the ground so you don't have as
Speaker 1: far to fall. That's that's one thing. It is one
Speaker 1: thing to Uh, Well, if you want to know more
Speaker 1: about trampoline's I guess go read up on it. I
Speaker 1: would say go jump on it, but just don't. Um
Speaker 1: And since I said just don't, it means it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Yeah. This is a two parter. Uh.
Speaker 1: The first part is just gonna be uh us issuing
Speaker 1: sort of retraction slash apology during the Michael Dylon episode
Speaker 1: recently transpioneer Michael Dillon, we decided, um, which was not
Speaker 1: a good idea to mirror Dylan his own experience in
Speaker 1: life and his own transition using the pronouns that he
Speaker 1: himself used, trying to make a point that there weren't
Speaker 1: even names for this stuff back then. And we had
Speaker 1: quite a few trans listeners that wrote in, all very
Speaker 1: kind about it and said, hey, listen, what you do
Speaker 1: now is you refer to that person from their moment
Speaker 1: of birth, like it doesn't matter about their journey and
Speaker 1: and even what pronouns they used at the time, Like,
Speaker 1: what you really need to do is just refer to
Speaker 1: that person by the gender they identify with from conception
Speaker 1: on or not conception, but you know, from birth on. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, like you said, everybody who wrote in was
Speaker 1: very um nice and gentle about it. Yeah they know
Speaker 1: we meant well right exactly, So um, thanks to everybody
Speaker 1: who wrote in to let us know for sure. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's part two? Well, Part two is along the same lines.
Speaker 1: And this is just a good tip. I always love
Speaker 1: getting these um just sort of nudges about like current
Speaker 1: best practices for language. This is from Anne. Hey, guys
Speaker 1: and Jerry. I've been listening for at least a decade,
Speaker 1: and I've really enjoyed learning so much over the years.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate how you handle language. I'm an English teacher,
Speaker 1: and you're always trying to use the most appropriate and
Speaker 1: sensitive term for any group. Recently, I listened to the
Speaker 1: Black Loyalist episode and was reminded of something I read
Speaker 1: a little while ago, which recommended using the term enslaved
Speaker 1: person rather than slave, to help express that the state
Speaker 1: of slavery was not some quality of these humans, but
Speaker 1: the result of an action by enslavers. She said, I'd
Speaker 1: never thought of that, but had been trying to use
Speaker 1: that language in my classroom, and I thought i'd pass
Speaker 1: it along. Keep up the good work, and thanks for
Speaker 1: all the knowledge. And that is from Anne. Thanks Anne.
Speaker 1: That's a good one and it really goes to the
Speaker 1: heart of like you know, h language does so much
Speaker 1: to like justify things, legitimize things, to to diminish people
Speaker 1: like It's it's crazy how how important language is. So
Speaker 1: that was a good tip too. Yeah, so uh to
Speaker 1: the people out there that think big deal, it's not important,
Speaker 1: like language is important. It's more than just words. That's
Speaker 1: how we communicate chump. Yeah uh. You really shouldn't use
Speaker 1: the word chump though, because nowadays we say you chumped
Speaker 1: person a chumped person? Um, thank you, what were you
Speaker 1: going to say? I didn't have one. I'm glad you
Speaker 1: came through. I swooped in at the last moment. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch of this, like
Speaker 1: and did or like all the people who let us
Speaker 1: know what we got way way wrong on the Michael
Speaker 1: Dillon episode and again thanks for that, you can go
Speaker 1: to our website. It's called stuff you Should Know dot
Speaker 1: com and there you will find all of our social links. Um.
Speaker 1: You can also send us all an email to stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite ships. M