Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast on Josh Clark with me as always this
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, and we are going to sit
Speaker 1: still for this episode of Stuff you Should Know, not me, buddy,
Speaker 1: Yes you are. I'm gonna do some cong vaulting. Hey, um, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you watch The Office right? Yeah? Okay? Love it? UM
Speaker 1: in season six, which I guess was last year. Second
Speaker 1: episode starts out very funny, UM with Michael, Andy and
Speaker 1: Dwight all engaged in a little something called Parkour um
Speaker 1: and they shout parkour like every couple of seconds and
Speaker 1: then Um. What struck me as funny, especially after we
Speaker 1: decided to do this UM episode, is that Jim explains
Speaker 1: what Parker is for anybody who doesn't know, and he
Speaker 1: he cites it as the Internet sensation of two thousand four.
Speaker 1: So it took you know, Michael six years to finally
Speaker 1: catch onto it, taking us seven to finally start podcasting
Speaker 1: on it. Yes, yeah, we've been had calls for this one,
Speaker 1: uh for since we started the show. People have written in,
Speaker 1: so what about Parker, dude, Yeah, I love it Parker,
Speaker 1: and we know it's old, but we we've not just
Speaker 1: discovered this. It's and this article clearly has been on
Speaker 1: the site since about two thou six or seven, because
Speaker 1: there's actually a date sited in it um as like
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. And from the extra research that
Speaker 1: we did on this, it seems like this community has strengthened, expanded,
Speaker 1: and gotten more legitimate. Whereas you know, I'm sure with
Speaker 1: a lot of the rest of the world it's like
Speaker 1: the awe and an amazement of it, or the newness
Speaker 1: is worn off. But I was I was hartened to
Speaker 1: see that the people who do Parker are like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't really care if you like it or not.
Speaker 1: We're gonna keep doing this, and and they've grown and
Speaker 1: gotten better. Yeah. I think most people that I know
Speaker 1: have the same reaction though, when they see the Parker
Speaker 1: videos for the first time, which is this is pretty cool. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's very cool. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not saying like
Speaker 1: anybody's like this sucks. It's like the newness is worn
Speaker 1: off for the general public. Yeah, but people are generally
Speaker 1: knocked out, uh, and then board right, so, Chuck, I
Speaker 1: think we should begin to begin, right, great song? Uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen two on the little island in the Caribbean
Speaker 1: known as Martinique. Have you ever been there? No? Yah?
Speaker 1: Do you think I would tell you every couple of
Speaker 1: days like, oh I've been to Martinique, you probably would. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's got a pretty interesting history in some trace the
Speaker 1: birth of park. We're back to then French naval officer
Speaker 1: name Lieutenant George Herbert. I don't think that's how you
Speaker 1: say his name. What would you say Georgebert? Or Jabert?
Speaker 1: H he? Uh? What happened was ofvolcano blew up in
Speaker 1: nineteen o two there and heed Martinique, yea and Martinique.
Speaker 1: He coordinated the rescue of locals and Europeans there and
Speaker 1: had a chance to watch people fleeing this and saw
Speaker 1: a decided difference I take it between some of his
Speaker 1: European comrades and the local Caribbeans. Well, people are like
Speaker 1: trying to get around obstacles, like you know, chunks of
Speaker 1: flying rock that had landed right in front of them,
Speaker 1: and running for their lives. Something about that scene struck
Speaker 1: E Bear, like, Wow, this is really amazing. Well, he
Speaker 1: saw a great deal of athleticism going on around him,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know what, you combine that with
Speaker 1: some courage, and what you have is what we're gonna
Speaker 1: call in America to be strong and useful. How would
Speaker 1: you say that in French? Dog strong? And that's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And that's the basis of the natural method, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: the natural method um, which in French would be what
Speaker 1: method natural? And that inspired French military training. That became
Speaker 1: the basis for French military terry training. Apparently they were
Speaker 1: the first people to use obstacle courses or or what
Speaker 1: the path of the warrior parkour dick combat town. So
Speaker 1: you hear that word Parker with the C I heard it,
Speaker 1: that's where it came from. Yeah. So and this basically
Speaker 1: this guy is like this French um physical fitness guru
Speaker 1: that you've never heard of, but really has inspired a
Speaker 1: lot of the probably cleaner cut quarters of France. Right yes, um,
Speaker 1: So that formed the part of the basis for the
Speaker 1: philosophy of what came to be known as Parker because
Speaker 1: it inspired this kid named David Bell right. Well, first
Speaker 1: it was his father, Raymond Bell, was a soldier in
Speaker 1: French Special Forces. He learned all this stuff, passed it
Speaker 1: on to his son David and said, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I wanna learn this. Yeah, and we left out a
Speaker 1: very important point. Um. The natural method is basically like
Speaker 1: physical fitness is um. All you need is what you
Speaker 1: find in nature. Do you want to do some chin ups?
Speaker 1: Could find a tree branch jerk? You want to like
Speaker 1: work out your upper body, push a huge rock up
Speaker 1: a hill and isometric and push against the wall. Right,
Speaker 1: And then the point of that, this is the other
Speaker 1: big point. The point of being physically fit is, like
Speaker 1: you said, so you can be useful to society in
Speaker 1: case of an emergency, in case an old lady needs help,
Speaker 1: like you can pick her up and carry her across
Speaker 1: the street with one hand. That kind of thing. There's
Speaker 1: something be said for that. Okay. So David Bell is
Speaker 1: fifteen years old. It's he lives in Liza's, France, which
Speaker 1: is a suburb of Paris Um and his dad's been like,
Speaker 1: check this dude out, and he is just inspired. But
Speaker 1: not only e Bear but also again named Bruce Lee.
Speaker 1: That's right, Bruce Lee's fluid movements um not not as
Speaker 1: rigid as a lot of martial artists were before him.
Speaker 1: It's about adaptability, adapting to the situation. Somewhere in that
Speaker 1: um in in David Bell's brain, he'd put that together.
Speaker 1: He put Bruce Lee, Georgie Bear, and a mailbox in
Speaker 1: front of him all together and decided to leap over
Speaker 1: it with his hands rather than walk around it. Boom, Parker.
Speaker 1: That's the Parker he changed. He added a k instead
Speaker 1: of a sea, got together with his best buddy, Sebastian
Speaker 1: Foucam and they established a group um. They were called
Speaker 1: themselves tresseurs, which means to leave a trail in French.
Speaker 1: Tray ser is slang in Paris for hurry. Well there
Speaker 1: you have it. Yeah, hurry up and make a trail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you're doing. So they organized a group, the
Speaker 1: first group of parkour enthusiast basically called the Yamakazi, not
Speaker 1: to be confused with yamazaki, which is san tori time.
Speaker 1: It's Japanese single malt whiskey. Yeah, it's good stuff anyway.
Speaker 1: I had it in an Econo Miaki station. Chances are
Speaker 1: if you type in Yamakaze on the Internet, it'll bring
Speaker 1: up the other Yamasaki and you'll be buying liquor before
Speaker 1: you know it, and then you can watch some cool
Speaker 1: parkour videos while you and bud. That's right. Uh. Luke Bisson,
Speaker 1: famous French filmmaker, made a film called The Yamakazi Um
Speaker 1: definitely kicked up the awareness about what park war was, right,
Speaker 1: and prior to that, he included it in his UM
Speaker 1: film Taxi Too. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that was the
Speaker 1: first time parkour was introduced to the general public in
Speaker 1: mass media. And because Luke Bisson apparently was a huge
Speaker 1: uh DE vote very early on. So in two different
Speaker 1: movies in two successive years, he made you know, Parker
Speaker 1: part of the theme. Yeah, and if you recognize Bells
Speaker 1: Buddy's name, Sebastian fu Kan, he was the dude who
Speaker 1: was chased in Casino Royale, the opening awesome parkour chase
Speaker 1: that Daniel Craig chases this dude. Yeah. So it starts
Speaker 1: to kind of percolate into um to the public consciousness
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, the late nineties, we should say,
Speaker 1: by the late nineties, there's already uh rift in the
Speaker 1: um in the Parker community. Yeah, the communities like this
Speaker 1: always like the battle, like there's always purest it seem
Speaker 1: like and then people who want to change it and
Speaker 1: take it into what they feel like the next level,
Speaker 1: like skateboarding. Same thing happened back in the seventies. So
Speaker 1: with parkour. The the point is, if you're a purest
Speaker 1: with parkour, you don't you never moved backwards. Everything is
Speaker 1: for utility and you get from point A to point
Speaker 1: B most as efficiently as possible, which often includes jumping
Speaker 1: over a mailbox. Yeah. The main rule, and this is
Speaker 1: what's cool in parkour is that obstacles are used to
Speaker 1: increase your efficiency. It's not like this is something I
Speaker 1: gotta go around. It's let me use this to vault
Speaker 1: forward faster and possibly gain some momentum, maybe twade a
Speaker 1: little little kinetic energy for a little potential energy, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then turn that into more kinetic energy. And the
Speaker 1: the Red Bulls, well, Red Bull actually sponsored one of
Speaker 1: the what was it called the the Red Bull Art
Speaker 1: of Motion Tournament competition. Yeah, and we'll get into that
Speaker 1: in a minute, because the purest don't like the competition aspect.
Speaker 1: But the motto of the w fpf UM, which is
Speaker 1: the World Free Running in Parker Federation, I think that
Speaker 1: was established an oh seven, it is no obstacle, no
Speaker 1: freedom K and O W for both get it? I
Speaker 1: do now, I didn't until you have told me about
Speaker 1: the K. You know your freedom. Um, so that's so
Speaker 1: part court A to b using obstacles, never going backwards.
Speaker 1: Free running huge huge difference. You can go backwards. Now
Speaker 1: going backwards? Does that mean like you, I get the
Speaker 1: idea from park Ers that you you're running toward the
Speaker 1: wall and you don't stop and go all right, let
Speaker 1: me see, I should probably go like here here, you
Speaker 1: just attack the wall, don't you. I think that's the
Speaker 1: case with both of them. But really, honestly, one of
Speaker 1: the main differences is like free running allows for movement
Speaker 1: backward to continue going forward, where park cour is like, no,
Speaker 1: you have to keep going forward all the time. And
Speaker 1: free running also allows for movements that are purely aesthetic
Speaker 1: and nature right and not necessarily just the efficiency of
Speaker 1: moving forward. Those are the two differences between free running
Speaker 1: and um park court. And if you think that's stupid, well, um.
Speaker 1: The the reason behind it is that there was a
Speaker 1: rift or separation and ideals between David Bell and his
Speaker 1: as the UM uh the f P Wait what is it? W?
Speaker 1: F p W w f PF. Yeah, yeah, as the
Speaker 1: w f PF puts it, um his then best friend.
Speaker 1: So that seeing fou Kong, yeah, they know they fell out.
Speaker 1: I guess I think they're still buddies. But basically foukan
Speaker 1: is like, no, you can move backwards, and Bells like,
Speaker 1: no you can't. And they were like, well, it looks
Speaker 1: like we have a problem here. And that's where free
Speaker 1: Running came from. It split off from Parker. I bet
Speaker 1: you there was a little bit of well I founded
Speaker 1: it in you are in Casino Royale. Well that came
Speaker 1: after So that split within the late nineties, so that
Speaker 1: really cemented. And then yeah, and then a lot of
Speaker 1: people are like, you know, food con is a big sellout.
Speaker 1: He's an ads he uh, he's all flash and everything.
Speaker 1: Um and that that Apparently that um argument doesn't hold
Speaker 1: much water because David Bell has been has done quite
Speaker 1: a bit to bring um parkour into the public consciousness. Specifically,
Speaker 1: he introduced it to Britain in two thousand two, I
Speaker 1: believe right with a BBC short Yeah, rush hour, Um
Speaker 1: that did you see it? Huh? It's pretty awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's on you know, he's sitting at it's much like
Speaker 1: an ad. He's sitting in his apartment and his clothes
Speaker 1: and then he gets up you know it, takes his
Speaker 1: shirt off of course, and strips down to the like
Speaker 1: the running pants, and then just climbs out his window
Speaker 1: and takes off and there's you know, traffic going below,
Speaker 1: and he's zipping all over the place like a you know,
Speaker 1: Parker expert that he is. And then he eventually gets
Speaker 1: back in his apartment and sits back down the couch.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I'm done. And so they showed that
Speaker 1: on BBC one and everybody was like, what was that?
Speaker 1: That was awesome? And then they found out, well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, the people actually do this. This guy is
Speaker 1: real and that was the birth of Parker I think
Speaker 1: a year later UM Urban Free Flow, which is like
Speaker 1: the the fact though British wing of UM Parker and
Speaker 1: free free running, free running. Yeah. And for some reason,
Speaker 1: my brain just glitched and I was like, that's not right.
Speaker 1: Well and almost immediately kids started getting hurt because they
Speaker 1: didn't uh, I don't know if they didn't realize, but
Speaker 1: Bell had a decade of training of learning this craft.
Speaker 1: We're creating it, creating it and then UM, teenager saw
Speaker 1: a rush hour and like let me go out and
Speaker 1: like let me try to scale a wall. And there
Speaker 1: were a couple of deaths. Um. Yeah, that was one
Speaker 1: recently actually in California, right in Sacramento in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: The kid was into park Corps and he died from
Speaker 1: falling off of an eighth story UM parking deck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is we should have frontloaded this. But this
Speaker 1: is where we say park course very can be very
Speaker 1: dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, can be
Speaker 1: very dangerous even if you do know it. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: requires a high degree of skill with like gymnastics, possibly
Speaker 1: martial arts. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at Sebastian food con,
Speaker 1: the dude is ripped like he's he's probably going to
Speaker 1: be able to hang on to allege with one hand
Speaker 1: if he really needs to. I can't. The average twelve
Speaker 1: year old doesn't have that kind of upper body strength exactly.
Speaker 1: But I average twelve year old the one who's like
Speaker 1: really fascinated with this. Yeah, and if you are fascinated
Speaker 1: in UM, there are a lot more It's been legitimized
Speaker 1: to the extent that there are a lot more training
Speaker 1: facilities indoor, padded things where you can practice this kind
Speaker 1: of thing, so you don't just go out and hit
Speaker 1: the streets and start jumping off of buildings. That's right,
Speaker 1: we would not advise that. No, all right, so Chuck,
Speaker 1: there's a I think in UM the public imagination, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of comparisons with skateboarding, right, Others kids like
Speaker 1: they're they're right there in front of the courthouse, so
Speaker 1: and they're they're they're skateboarding and they're not using a skateboard,
Speaker 1: but they like to be doing the same thing. Apparently,
Speaker 1: especially parkour purists, find this very very offensive. That's not offensive.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of offensive either using buildings, you know,
Speaker 1: the same deal. They're basically like, no, skateboarders are bad kids.
Speaker 1: We're good kids if we're doing this so we can
Speaker 1: be useful to society when the time comes. Skateboarders are
Speaker 1: great kids, agreed and Josh like skateboarding in the seventies, Um,
Speaker 1: once the popularity increase, it started to be thrown or prostituted,
Speaker 1: if you will, onto like ads and TV shows and
Speaker 1: corporate events. They listed that I did not know corporate
Speaker 1: events hired parker people. Corporate event if you've got enough
Speaker 1: money to do everything. Okay, there's this great show of
Speaker 1: Bruce Hornsby playing for the food JITs corporations like Christmas Party,
Speaker 1: and it's awesome. It's like an hour and a half
Speaker 1: long Bruce Hornsby show and he gets increasingly drunk er
Speaker 1: to where like he does a little ditty and improv
Speaker 1: diddy about his scotch. Yeah, it's really great. It's really great.
Speaker 1: If you can never get your hands on the bootleg,
Speaker 1: it's it's worth it. Well. And then up in the Air,
Speaker 1: which I know you didn't care for, but when they
Speaker 1: had hired young MC, you know that one corporate event
Speaker 1: to perform those pretty funny us to move alright, Yes,
Speaker 1: like skateboard, um also like skateboarding. Once competition started to
Speaker 1: be mentioned, UM Purist said, no, no, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: not about competition. We compete all the time against each
Speaker 1: other on the streets. Man. But we don't need no metal,
Speaker 1: we don't need no judge word. But you know, like anything.
Speaker 1: Red Bull was like, oh you know what about this
Speaker 1: stack of money? Red Bull in Barclay World Free Running Championships.
Speaker 1: MTV has a show now, of course, called Ultimate Park
Speaker 1: or Challenge um. The purists still aren't too happy about
Speaker 1: most of that. To be honest, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: complaining going on on parker boards. And here we are
Speaker 1: representing both coasts, east and west. Let's talk about the moves.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. You want to talk about the cat
Speaker 1: leap first. Yeah, there's a few standard moves. So the
Speaker 1: cat leap is basically like, say you're clut your eyes
Speaker 1: unless you're driving right now. Uh. Say you are on
Speaker 1: a the edge of one five foot parking deck. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, it's five ft off the ground, and then
Speaker 1: there's another there's a gap five ft gap in between
Speaker 1: it and the edge of another parking deck which is
Speaker 1: seven ft off the grounds the wall in front of you.
Speaker 1: So let's say you are um, you You're like, well,
Speaker 1: I think a cat leap would be best for this.
Speaker 1: What you do is you run off of the first
Speaker 1: parking day, jump the gap, grab the ledge of the
Speaker 1: um first of the second parking deck, and hit it
Speaker 1: with your feet. Just plan it right there on the
Speaker 1: wall and basically you're just hanging off the side for
Speaker 1: a nano second before you you use the momentum to
Speaker 1: pull yourself up with your arms and jump the rest
Speaker 1: of the way onto the next parking you very cat like.
Speaker 1: It's used to get onto a higher object than you're
Speaker 1: currently on and it's a good way. That's much much better.
Speaker 1: The role very common. You've seen stunt guys do this forever.
Speaker 1: They jump off a building onto a lower building, and
Speaker 1: they always you know, to absorb the shock on their legs,
Speaker 1: they tuck and roll. They observe it in their shoulder
Speaker 1: instead exactly tuck and roll, cover the head, pop back
Speaker 1: up and keep going. Because it's all about forward movement
Speaker 1: with Parker. Yeah, whereas I would jump off, I would land,
Speaker 1: probably break my ankle, vomit, and then like later until
Speaker 1: somebody found me. That's what Chuck would do. My favorite,
Speaker 1: as you know, is the cong vault. Well, the cong
Speaker 1: vault is the coolest. It's the coolest. It It looks
Speaker 1: like what apes do in the jungle. Uh. You run
Speaker 1: up on let's say a wall, and you leap forward
Speaker 1: and you push yourself off with your hands, play with
Speaker 1: your hands and don't let your legs touch at all
Speaker 1: and just follow on through. And there's double cong rolls
Speaker 1: where you tap twice. There's triples there. We saw a
Speaker 1: quadruple in a gym. So basically, when your hand is
Speaker 1: touching that wall, your your body is laid out behind you.
Speaker 1: It's like you're diving toward it, almost exactly, but you
Speaker 1: have like your two hands about just a little ahead
Speaker 1: of your shoulders, and then right when your hands touched,
Speaker 1: you bring your legs up basically through your chest in
Speaker 1: the wall, and then you you just bound away. You
Speaker 1: vault away. Hence the name cong vault looks very animal like,
Speaker 1: and one of the early practitioners said that he noticed
Speaker 1: that it's it's like witnessing an animal in the jungle aggressive.
Speaker 1: That's one of the goals of park Corps is that
Speaker 1: you can basically move as quickly and fluidly as an
Speaker 1: animal and instinctually too, is what I understand. I will
Speaker 1: never know that sensation, but it's it's what I understand.
Speaker 1: Is the goal. You got the precision jump, which is
Speaker 1: pretty easy. It's basically like a standing broad jump. Just
Speaker 1: jump from one place to another. Yeah, but that's if
Speaker 1: like I want to jump on that little two foot
Speaker 1: section of wall, like you don't have the benefit of
Speaker 1: a role because there's nothing else there. And then the
Speaker 1: speed wall, Yeah, that's easy. That's basically to do that.
Speaker 1: How any kid has ever jumped like a chain link fence.
Speaker 1: You just put one hand down and throw your throw
Speaker 1: your feet the opposite side over and uh, I guess
Speaker 1: with part core the differences that you're doing this much
Speaker 1: more quickly. Yes, and you keep running and uh, those
Speaker 1: are just a handful of moves or many many more
Speaker 1: Jim Kota like moves that you can do like side
Speaker 1: wall runs and sliding, and people now are doing those
Speaker 1: little half flips adding a little flare to it. I
Speaker 1: guess the free runners are pretty cool. So, Chuck, let's
Speaker 1: say that you are listening to this, You're like, I
Speaker 1: have tons of upper body strength, I'm eighteen or older, um,
Speaker 1: and regard for my own well being, right, and I'm
Speaker 1: really interested in this. Where would one go to find
Speaker 1: out more about parkour or to learn parkour? Uh? You
Speaker 1: get a jam. Well that's one place. That's when they
Speaker 1: get together and hit the streets. But if you want
Speaker 1: to learn, like I said, you can go to the
Speaker 1: there's gems all over the country. Now there are there's
Speaker 1: academies where you can sure you can pay. If you
Speaker 1: go to Parker dot com slash groups, you can look
Speaker 1: up basically people who are doing it in your area,
Speaker 1: and that's probably one of the most recommended ones if
Speaker 1: especially if you don't have any cash to shell out,
Speaker 1: because you're going to learn in the context of other
Speaker 1: people who know Parker no more than you do and UM,
Speaker 1: so you'll you'll learn, you'll learn safety as well, but
Speaker 1: you'll be challenged to UM. And then yes, there's academies
Speaker 1: as well. There's videos everywhere everywhere. YouTube has UM at
Speaker 1: least six different channels according to parkour dot Com of
Speaker 1: just parkour videos and UM basically, you want to wear
Speaker 1: a helmet at all times. You want to wear knee
Speaker 1: pads and one of those big sumo guy suits. To
Speaker 1: see a park where people wearing any of that stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm okay, CEO and yeah, beginners, you should always do that.
Speaker 1: Oh also, I should have probably mentioned at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this that by UM downloading this episode impressing play,
Speaker 1: you immediately forfeited any rights to sue US or any
Speaker 1: of our parent companies. You'll be careful out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to. I'm gonna you know, my goal in
Speaker 1: life should be I want to do a successful Kong leap.
Speaker 1: That's not gonna happen. I want to do that, dude.
Speaker 1: I will watch you try. I'm fast. I will watch
Speaker 1: you try anytime. I'm a lot faster than you would think.
Speaker 1: Let's go right now. I get these little legs pumping
Speaker 1: and I can. I get my upper body leaning in
Speaker 1: the right direction, and it's it's pretty funny. And remarks
Speaker 1: about my my cat like speed for a guy with
Speaker 1: a few extra pounds on him. I want to see this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna learn this. Okay, we're gonna want to. I
Speaker 1: don't want you to see the final results. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: perfect it. I want to see everything leading out to that.
Speaker 1: Now you're not gonna do I'm gonna learn it in secret.
Speaker 1: And then next time we're in New York, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna bust it out. One day You're gonna be like leaf.
Speaker 1: That would be very surprising. I look forward to that
Speaker 1: day too. If you want to learn more about parkour
Speaker 1: type than P A R. K oh, you are now
Speaker 1: at the sea, because then it wouldn't be down with
Speaker 1: the street into the search bar at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com and I said search bar, I didn't say
Speaker 1: handy um. Either way, it still brings up listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's right, Josh, We're gonna call this and the winner
Speaker 1: is because you and I have to decide. Did you
Speaker 1: get this from Matt from England? He and his wife
Speaker 1: twisted couple. You know when you put me on the spotlight,
Speaker 1: it's okay, I know you read it. Um, Hey, guys
Speaker 1: for up in great podcast. I love it. I'm a
Speaker 1: watch commander in the fire service here in Leeds, England,
Speaker 1: and my wife is an A and E nurse. Um,
Speaker 1: it's an entertainment there. I think that's emergency room in England.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm guessing because you see some weird stuff right now.
Speaker 1: We have always tried to tireslee one up one another
Speaker 1: at the end of each shift, which with the worst
Speaker 1: story of the day, because they both see odd things,
Speaker 1: odd and horrific. Generally we tie on things like car
Speaker 1: x fires, uh burn victims, suicides and by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm acutely aware of how sick this is, but it's
Speaker 1: the spice that keeps our particular chilli going. That's what
Speaker 1: he says. The only ones he's talking shop about work. Basically,
Speaker 1: the ones we really compete with are the extra disgusting ones.
Speaker 1: So here's a conundrum um. On the last tour, I
Speaker 1: was sure I had a winner. We had to assist
Speaker 1: a morbidly obese gentleman from his house onto an ambulance journey.
Speaker 1: Upon moving his portly frame, I felt something land on
Speaker 1: my leg. I couldn't initially Jerry, he's getting grossed out already.
Speaker 1: I couldn't initially see what it was because my hands
Speaker 1: and face were pressed firmly into the mushy flesh at
Speaker 1: the time, but I could hear the intakes of breath
Speaker 1: and gipping noises from the firefighters on my shift. I
Speaker 1: don't even know what a gipping noise is. On inspection,
Speaker 1: it turned out that nine inches of this man's intestines
Speaker 1: were draped over my wet legs. Stuck for what to
Speaker 1: do in such an instance, should I push it back in,
Speaker 1: carry it with me, tuck it into his pocket. I
Speaker 1: opted to shuffle with him to his to the ambulance,
Speaker 1: and then gently peel it free from my leg and
Speaker 1: said it beside him, making sure to break with the
Speaker 1: awkward silence with here you go, mate, you better take
Speaker 1: this with you. Regardless of this incident, I was sure
Speaker 1: I had my wife beat and then she hits me
Speaker 1: with this. A guy walked into her triage department, pulled
Speaker 1: his pants down and had the tail of a fish
Speaker 1: sticking out of his rear end. Evidently it had been
Speaker 1: frozen and then thought out. I get the feeling this
Speaker 1: is one of those docket was a million to one
Speaker 1: chance the type of things, and when it thought out,
Speaker 1: the bones splayed out and it became stuck inside of
Speaker 1: his butt. Uh. The boys that need your help, which
Speaker 1: one wins? Which is worse? H? Chuck? This as much
Speaker 1: like comparing apples two oranges. Um. In some ways they're similar.
Speaker 1: They're both roundish, they're both fruits. But then they have
Speaker 1: many distinctions. The apple skin is smoothed, the oranges is speckled. Um.
Speaker 1: The oranges orange colored. The apple is generally red, although
Speaker 1: it can be yellowish or green. You never see an
Speaker 1: orange apple. I guess it's my point. I'm going to
Speaker 1: say that, Um, while they're both extremely interesting, both entirely gruesome,
Speaker 1: the fish story, yes, is far too comical to win
Speaker 1: this one. In my opinion. I think the man's intestines
Speaker 1: coming out and having to be put back in by
Speaker 1: hand with a gentle here you go, mate, is by
Speaker 1: far the winner. I agree. I feel like Judgejohn Hodgment.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden we render our verdict and uh,
Speaker 1: we're going with you, Matt, you are the winner. Matt
Speaker 1: and Leads England congratulations, were enduring the Intestine on your leg? Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: And he said anytime if we want to, if we're
Speaker 1: ever in Leads, he will let us ride on the
Speaker 1: fire truck. Awesome. So I would take him up on that.
Speaker 1: I would too. Um. Yeah, so we really should have
Speaker 1: put that one after the Decapitation podcast if you asked me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have been fitting either way. Um. If you
Speaker 1: ever accidentally stumbled upon something, say in your attic or
Speaker 1: at a yard sale that turned out to be extremely valuable,
Speaker 1: we love those stories and want to hear him send
Speaker 1: them to us. You can post him on Facebook, Facebook,
Speaker 1: dot com, slash stuff you should know, Twitter right uh
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast or email it to us.
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
Speaker 1: of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
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