Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Cherry over there.
Speaker 1: And this is Stuff you Should Know, the podcast about
Speaker 1: ping pong. I'm excited about this one. I'm glad. I
Speaker 1: love ping pong. Are you any good? I don't think
Speaker 1: we've ever played, have we? I don't think we have. Crazy.
Speaker 1: That was that one time we were at that ping
Speaker 1: pong bar and we just stared at each other for
Speaker 1: an hour, but we never played. I remember that as
Speaker 1: being air hockey. I remember the staring. Uh. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: I love ping pong. I'm pretty good for you know,
Speaker 1: just a recreational pong er. Uh. And and I finally
Speaker 1: got a table. I'll get an outdoor table. Oh nice,
Speaker 1: and an outdoor table, fancy? I love it. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: I don't have room inside. Well yeah, if you have
Speaker 1: an outdoor table, it doesn't matter. Yeah. I got one
Speaker 1: under the deck. Very nice, and it's just the best.
Speaker 1: I'd love. I have had many times in my life
Speaker 1: where and now it's just kind of when I can
Speaker 1: get someone over or family, and I have a window.
Speaker 1: But um, at various points in my life, I have
Speaker 1: played a lot of ping pong, including when I lived
Speaker 1: in l A my buddy John Pindell, chef John, you
Speaker 1: know John. Um, he was I think living in a
Speaker 1: place that had an outdoor table. And this was outdoor
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, so it's kind of great. It's just
Speaker 1: out there in the backyard. Um. And then my brother
Speaker 1: and I have had epic, legendary ping pong battles at
Speaker 1: his house. Oh yeah, fund basement, like like matches, like
Speaker 1: a single game that went on forever kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Just I mean, not that, but like two out of three,
Speaker 1: Like every time family is over there, at one point
Speaker 1: we will disappear and everyone's like word Scott and Chuck o,
Speaker 1: and we're down there and at it. That's awesome. It's
Speaker 1: just so much fun. I love ping pong. I love
Speaker 1: ping pong too. But my eyes are kind of open.
Speaker 1: I realized I'm not quite as much the ping pong
Speaker 1: officionado as I once thought I was. Yeah, between you
Speaker 1: and this article, I realized I'm a total schlub when
Speaker 1: it comes to ping pong. Yeah, I'm not bad. O good. Um,
Speaker 1: So we're talking ping pong today and chuckle, you can
Speaker 1: just phone this one in. I had to do a
Speaker 1: lot of extensive shoe leather research on this one. Um.
Speaker 1: But the the idea of ping pong when you think
Speaker 1: of it, especially in this the twenty one century, most
Speaker 1: people think of um, China when they think of ping pong,
Speaker 1: especially here in the US, but really worldwide, because China
Speaker 1: is nuts for ping pong, and there are plenty of
Speaker 1: other countries too that love ping pong. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: Sweden is known as one of the major homes of
Speaker 1: ping pong. The Japanese love ping pong. It's basically almost
Speaker 1: every country except a Erica really has a thing for
Speaker 1: ping pong. Here it's just you know, fun recreational stuff.
Speaker 1: In other countries it has taken very very seriously, and
Speaker 1: there are pockets that take it seriously here too. There's
Speaker 1: the US Table Tennis Association, which has been around since
Speaker 1: the thirties. But I think what I mean, as far
Speaker 1: as the public goes thinking about table tennis players, we
Speaker 1: don't exactly like put them hoist them on our shoulders
Speaker 1: and carry them around the room after a match like that,
Speaker 1: Like might what might happen to them? In other countries.
Speaker 1: That's a very good point. But but it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of more of a recreational Like you said, there are
Speaker 1: some competitive players, to be sure, and organizations, but it's
Speaker 1: a it's a sport you can play while you're drinking
Speaker 1: a beer. You know. Sure, now you don't want to
Speaker 1: do that if you are actually competitive pro table tennis player.
Speaker 1: But I say all that chuck, because, um, while we
Speaker 1: think of China's like the home of table tennis, it
Speaker 1: actually is a British um invention. Did you know that
Speaker 1: I did? Well, of course you did your table tennis pro. No,
Speaker 1: I mean I knew that just because it was a
Speaker 1: variation of tennis, which the Brits also gave us. Um,
Speaker 1: it is a racket sport, which, um, you can include
Speaker 1: things like bad mitten and uh, smosh ball and smash ball.
Speaker 1: What are those things they played down at ben As Beach.
Speaker 1: What is that called pickle ball? Is that what it is?
Speaker 1: It's basically like a miniature tennis court. I think it's
Speaker 1: called smash ball. Okay, I don't know. People are yelling
Speaker 1: at in their car right now at me. I mean
Speaker 1: I've heard I think you're talking about pickleball. Is it pickleball?
Speaker 1: It's just sort of like a shrunken down tennis court. Um,
Speaker 1: But obviously they're playing it looks like tennis with oversized
Speaker 1: ping pong paddles, right exactly, Okay, yeah, that's pickleball, all right.
Speaker 1: It might be called smash ball too, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a regional difference in the grinder hero that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I think pickle I think smashball is something else entirely.
Speaker 1: Are you thinking of smash mouth? God? That again, um,
Speaker 1: reference to our lives show that we just did. Okay,
Speaker 1: But what I was saying was it is a known
Speaker 1: as a racket sport or a racket game wherein you
Speaker 1: have a racket, you hit something over a net to
Speaker 1: another human or maybe a robot even uh as we'll
Speaker 1: get to. But uh, and there's a there's a court,
Speaker 1: there are boundaries of some kind that you need to
Speaker 1: hit it in. It's not just a crazy fee for
Speaker 1: all right exactly. You can't just like win a point
Speaker 1: by crushing it over your opponent's head. That would be fun.
Speaker 1: It takes skill and finesse, and it even takes more
Speaker 1: skill in finesse than like tennis does. Like lawn tennis
Speaker 1: because lawn tennis well so, so there's a difference. There's
Speaker 1: royal tennis, which is played like I'm trying to remember
Speaker 1: what movie it appeared in. Um, maybe it was even
Speaker 1: down to Nabby, I'm not sure, but whether you play
Speaker 1: it indoors, it's like tennis indoors and there's like the
Speaker 1: ball is hard and wrapped in cloth and squash. No. No,
Speaker 1: there's royal tennis, and then um there's lawn tennis or
Speaker 1: modern tennis is what it's called. And ping pong is
Speaker 1: a variation on modern tennis, but it takes more finesse
Speaker 1: because yes, you can smash the ball and that is
Speaker 1: a way to go aggressive attacks style um playing. But
Speaker 1: there's also a really good way to play too, which
Speaker 1: is is strictly defensive and it's all finesse and spin
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll see like there's a lot of thought
Speaker 1: that goes into it, which is why if you notice,
Speaker 1: if you start to look around at who plays table tennis,
Speaker 1: you'll find that there are table tennis um tables and
Speaker 1: in places where they're very smart people like m I.
Speaker 1: T has a table tennis club, and CERN has a
Speaker 1: table tennis club and one of their one of their cafeterias.
Speaker 1: Like smart people like this because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: physics involved into it, UM and there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of running around either. Yeah, you don't see him. Uh,
Speaker 1: you don't see dumb dumps because they're just like I
Speaker 1: don't get it, yeah, like smash ball paddle. But we
Speaker 1: do know that the although we don't know like the
Speaker 1: the inventor. There's not one person that is credited with
Speaker 1: its invention um. But the story goes that British soldiers
Speaker 1: in South Africa or India, we're board and you know,
Speaker 1: the weather wasn't so great and they were probably drinking,
Speaker 1: and so they came up with this little, smaller version
Speaker 1: of tennis played on a table um, as the story goes,
Speaker 1: using cigar box lids, using sabar o lids and a
Speaker 1: whittled down champagne cork to make it round. Which you
Speaker 1: know that that wouldn't be a bad little first first
Speaker 1: go I saw that exact same story was attributed to
Speaker 1: some wealthy UM British aristocrats who were bored one day.
Speaker 1: That sounds about right, but there seems to be unanimous
Speaker 1: UM agreement that it was on a table with some
Speaker 1: cigar box lids and a cork whittled down. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so you know, it grow from there, it grow it growed.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, uh, I think he's still got another try left.
Speaker 1: It growed from there into wait wait, wait you mean
Speaker 1: grow right? You're kidding, right, okay, okay, that's the first
Speaker 1: time I knew you were kidding. The second time I
Speaker 1: was like, chuck, looking straight man, Um, you really are
Speaker 1: It grew from there and the names changed various times.
Speaker 1: The first UM manufactured, actually put out and sell ping
Speaker 1: pong tables was the Jacques Games Company and they called
Speaker 1: it Gossama. Um. There was another trademarked name with whaff,
Speaker 1: which was the Slayinger Company's h name, and the world
Speaker 1: was like, you got another try there. That was one
Speaker 1: called flim Flam. I don't know if that was trademarked
Speaker 1: from a company or if that was just a nickname.
Speaker 1: And all these with with the exception of Gossama, they
Speaker 1: were meant to to um emulate the sound the ball
Speaker 1: made going back and forth. Right, really yeah, yeah, whiff
Speaker 1: whaff It didn't sound like whiff waff at all. What
Speaker 1: about flip flam? Nope, maybe the sound of the paddle.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a whiff win, a whaff, but not
Speaker 1: the ball. Okay, fine, but gossima meant it was like
Speaker 1: after gossamer, which was kind of fine and thin and
Speaker 1: um elegant, which was like the ball play. It was
Speaker 1: what that was describing. They were all terrible, terrible names.
Speaker 1: I can't believe we just said that. So. Uh. They
Speaker 1: did use cork at first, but they didn't bounce great.
Speaker 1: Rubber wasn't good because it had too much bounce. Um.
Speaker 1: The rackets were really kind of crazy looking at first.
Speaker 1: Someone had really long handles, kind of look like a
Speaker 1: bad mitten racket um with a vellum stretched over a
Speaker 1: wooden frame. But they were not Uh, they broke on
Speaker 1: the table and stuff. So they were really kind of
Speaker 1: refining it in those early years as far as the
Speaker 1: equipment goes, right, Um, and I think it was that
Speaker 1: was it Jaque, No, you know, it was Jacques the J. J.
Speaker 1: Jackuin's son who um were the ones that were selling
Speaker 1: those like what you just described, just kind of cheap,
Speaker 1: not well made, not really well thought out equipment for
Speaker 1: ping pong, which it wasn't called ping pong at the
Speaker 1: time until the late eighteen nineties when that same company,
Speaker 1: Jay Jacques and Son, who were a sporting goods outfit,
Speaker 1: started calling it ping pong in their catalog. It just
Speaker 1: converted from gossima over to ping pong through these guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was um before that. In eighty five, there
Speaker 1: was an attempt to patent it as table tennis by
Speaker 1: guy named James Debonshire. But uh, two years later he
Speaker 1: abandoned that pursuit. I don't know if it was just
Speaker 1: taking too long or if he saw the writing on
Speaker 1: the wall, but he he left that behind and then
Speaker 1: it would be um. Like you said. Nineteen o one
Speaker 1: was when Jean Jack trademarked at ping pong name yep.
Speaker 1: And then Parker Brothers bought the North American or at
Speaker 1: least American rights to use ping pong exclusively and they
Speaker 1: brought ping pong to the United States with that um.
Speaker 1: And this is the reason why if you you know,
Speaker 1: look up any professional association or any um competitive like
Speaker 1: ping pong group, they always refer to as table tennis
Speaker 1: because ping pong is a trademark, table tennis is not. Plus, also,
Speaker 1: over the years, ping pong has gotten an association with
Speaker 1: people like me. Yeah, just people having fun playing it,
Speaker 1: where table tennis has been the route that you know,
Speaker 1: most competitive. Um that that that it did notes competitiveness,
Speaker 1: competition pro kind of thing. But I think if you're
Speaker 1: just hanging around the locker room or whatever with some
Speaker 1: table tennis pros, they'll refer to it as ping pong
Speaker 1: and no one's like, oh, I can't believe you just
Speaker 1: called it that, and you were like, no, that's locker
Speaker 1: room talk. So uh. The same year that ping pong
Speaker 1: was trademarked, in nineteen o one, there was an Englishman
Speaker 1: named James Gibb. He found these celluloid balls when he
Speaker 1: went to the US that were just it wasn't for
Speaker 1: table tennis. It was just a toy and novelty toy.
Speaker 1: He's like, this is pretty great. Actually, it's pretty lively.
Speaker 1: It's light, uh, just the right amount of bounce. And
Speaker 1: so I think celluloid is kind of like the route
Speaker 1: we should take. And everyone seemed to agree and that
Speaker 1: sort of became the de facto ping pong ball, right,
Speaker 1: did say that way forever. Celluloid is a type of plastic.
Speaker 1: It's super flammable, like it's what film stock, like camera
Speaker 1: film was made from forever um. But like I said,
Speaker 1: it's very flammable and your ball is gonna go up
Speaker 1: in flames if you pass it over a candle, like
Speaker 1: if you're lighting your game by candles. So that's not
Speaker 1: very good. But that was an enormous change that pushed
Speaker 1: ping pong way forward, because up to that point, a
Speaker 1: corkball didn bounced very well. Rubber ball bounced too much.
Speaker 1: You couldn't really play ping pong like we see it today.
Speaker 1: It was more like, oh, sir, oh sorry, here's another service.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, here's another service. My point, it was just boring.
Speaker 1: When that guy came along with the celluloid balls and
Speaker 1: introduced him for ping pong play, that was it made
Speaker 1: it fun. Finally, ping pong finally became fun. Yeah. Just
Speaker 1: a year after that to the paddle, and this is
Speaker 1: all sort of aligning perfectly. The paddle underwent a big
Speaker 1: change um over the years proceeding. They had used cork
Speaker 1: to cover them and leather sometimes. I saw that you
Speaker 1: can still buy leather covered ping pong paddles, and Tiffany's yeah,
Speaker 1: I could totally see that pearl handled leather, leather facing. Uh,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't land on the right materials, and then
Speaker 1: Attwo at a tournament, a man named ec Good found
Speaker 1: this dimpled rubber coin mat wrapped it around his paddle
Speaker 1: and he's like, this thing is pretty boss. I can
Speaker 1: get a little spin on it. We got this ball
Speaker 1: from the year before, and everything sort of clicking at
Speaker 1: this point, right. That was so you've got the great ball,
Speaker 1: You've got the great covering, um, and now Ping Pong
Speaker 1: is ready to explode, and it started to and then
Speaker 1: it just stopped. Let's take a break, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: that's a good cliffhanger and find out what killed Ping
Speaker 1: Pong right after this. Well, now we're on the road,
Speaker 1: driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
Speaker 1: two from Josh camp Chuck. It's stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, So Ping Pong's finally coming into
Speaker 1: its own limbs, finally getting good. And then right as
Speaker 1: it is, it just it just drops off as a
Speaker 1: fad that craze, especially in the United States, and I
Speaker 1: think in Europe too. It just kind of went away.
Speaker 1: Um And there's no real obvious reason why. But our
Speaker 1: old pal ed dug up an example that he thinks
Speaker 1: might be behind it. There was an ad for the
Speaker 1: National Guard in nineteen fourteen, where one of the major
Speaker 1: generals in the National Guards said that they don't want
Speaker 1: any ping pong warriors, which implies that the sport was
Speaker 1: seen as um effeminate or that you were kind of
Speaker 1: a whimp or something if you play ping pong. So
Speaker 1: it's possible that like that kind of um uh, the
Speaker 1: warlike masculinity rose above it and ping pong got pushed
Speaker 1: down as a result. Well. And also World War One
Speaker 1: in the Spanish flu um probably put a dent in
Speaker 1: in fun games like this overall, I would say, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just a guess. But they had more important, more
Speaker 1: important fish to fry than playing ping pong. But came
Speaker 1: back right after the war, right right after the war.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that it is coincidental that this
Speaker 1: was also a time when people started smoking pot a
Speaker 1: lot in America, the jazz age UM. So you had jazz, marijuana, cigarettes,
Speaker 1: and ping pong. Those are the big three of the
Speaker 1: jazz age. Quite a mix, yeah, And then so Parker
Speaker 1: Brothers still had their their trademark on this whole thing.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, great, hallelujah, it's the jazz age UM
Speaker 1: and they started throwing these competitions with cash prizes, and
Speaker 1: celebrities showed up. It was a big deal. Yeah. Imagine
Speaker 1: during the marijuana craze too, they were like, this is
Speaker 1: great for what we're doing, but we gotta keep score.
Speaker 1: And that's a problem, right, somebody's gotta stay sober for this,
Speaker 1: Like who what was it? Who served? Was it? No way?
Speaker 1: Is it? Seven six? Man? You're way too uptight for this.
Speaker 1: So I believe in the twenties is when they started
Speaker 1: having these big tournaments Parker Brothers with prizes. Celebrities were
Speaker 1: coming out. Um, the i T t F. It was
Speaker 1: officially founded in the mid twenties. That's the International Table
Speaker 1: Tennis Foundation. Yeah, and they start having world championships in
Speaker 1: nineteen six, Yeah, like right off the bat. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. Like obviously they stopped during
Speaker 1: World War Two for a peer period of time, but
Speaker 1: pretty much every couple of years since ninety six, aside
Speaker 1: from the war, Um, they started holding these Uh I
Speaker 1: guess would it be bi annual or over two years?
Speaker 1: Well that could be, yes, bi annuals over two years,
Speaker 1: that's not twice here, I think it can be. That
Speaker 1: was one of those things I think you would use
Speaker 1: semi semi annual, might even be quarterly. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I think it can be neither one, just like with weekly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but those first years, uh, Hungarians were the dominant country. Um.
Speaker 1: They won eight of the first nine. Um. Four of
Speaker 1: those went to the same guy, a guy named Victor
Speaker 1: Bara one, thirty two, thirty three, thirty four, and thirty five. Man,
Speaker 1: that's good. Yeah, so he was doing pretty good. But
Speaker 1: the United States was not. No, they, like I said,
Speaker 1: the U s t t A didn't form until nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three. And even then, if you wanted to go
Speaker 1: play really like hih level table tennis, you went to
Speaker 1: one place in the entire country, Lawrence's Broadway Courts in
Speaker 1: Manhattan Town. You gotta go to New York if you
Speaker 1: want to play ping pong. See if you can make
Speaker 1: it there. You can make it anywhere in the US,
Speaker 1: but don't even try it in Hungary. Yeah, it just wasn't. Uh,
Speaker 1: it just didn't catch on like it did in Europe. No,
Speaker 1: it didn't. And this is like this is the same,
Speaker 1: like there's never I think it was kind of big
Speaker 1: in the seventies to again POT in the United States,
Speaker 1: but um, it's never been like ex like explosively sustainably
Speaker 1: popular like it has in other countries and in particular. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the Europeans are dominating table tennis from about the mid
Speaker 1: twenties to almost went to the early fifties. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then from thirty to fifty the Soviet Union banned it
Speaker 1: for twenty years. That left of Soviet vacuum. Okay, so
Speaker 1: so the Hungarians, well, the Hungarians would have been an
Speaker 1: Soviet control then, huh. I don't know the answer to
Speaker 1: that question. Yeah, I guess they would have been, So
Speaker 1: that would have I guess. I wonder if that's when
Speaker 1: it moved over to Western Europe. Northwestern Europe, like Sweden
Speaker 1: in Germany. Yeah, supposedly the best all time players a Swede.
Speaker 1: That's what I've heard too, the Mozart table tenants U
Speaker 1: Jean Jean ov Waldner. Oh you with the oh the
Speaker 1: gen part, I'm like, I don't know if he's Swedish
Speaker 1: and then the ove really got me. Probably not John,
Speaker 1: it's probably yahn yn Ova Waldner. Yeah, nice, supposedly the
Speaker 1: best ever. So is he contemporary? M hmm, I don't know. Okay, So, um,
Speaker 1: so you've got this, You've got Europe dominating America's like,
Speaker 1: we're not even trying right now. And this is basically
Speaker 1: from the twenties to the early fifties. And then in
Speaker 1: n Asia steps in and says, don't forget Asia. UM
Speaker 1: in the form of a man named hiro Ji Sato
Speaker 1: and Uh. He showed up at the World Championship in
Speaker 1: ninety two, UH in Bombay or Mumbai, and he said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know how there's no rules about what kind of
Speaker 1: paddle I can use or what size it is, or
Speaker 1: there's not really a lot of a lot of guidance
Speaker 1: on the paddle. Check this out. He had put foam
Speaker 1: around his paddle, and boy did that make the ball
Speaker 1: bounce back. It increased the speed of the ball tremendously
Speaker 1: and he just dominated that that tournament and became world
Speaker 1: champion in nineteen fifty two. By the way, that guy
Speaker 1: is totally contemporary. He's in his fifties, he's retired now.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you would retire from table tennis.
Speaker 1: So one thing I read, I read an article about
Speaker 1: a kid who is one of the best in the world,
Speaker 1: who is actually from America's an Indian American. Um. He Uh,
Speaker 1: he trains like he has to train to move around
Speaker 1: the table fast off. Well, supposedly, if you're an advanced player,
Speaker 1: you can burn up to five calories an hour playing
Speaker 1: table tennis. Is that right? That's what they say. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a Snickers bar and a half. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I work up a sweat. That's that's me as well, though,
Speaker 1: So take that in consideration. Yeah, I can sweat playing chess.
Speaker 1: I can't wait till you reach the age where you
Speaker 1: just walk around in public with a hand towel around
Speaker 1: your neck. Who does that? What's his name from the office, Robinson?
Speaker 1: Is that his name? Oh Craig, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I think he's famous for sort of just draping a
Speaker 1: sweat towel over his shoulder. Yeah, why not, you know,
Speaker 1: good for him. I'm gonna follow that lead. So there's
Speaker 1: worse leads you could follow, for sure. Yeah. So, um
Speaker 1: Heirogi Sato showed up with his foam paddled um paddle
Speaker 1: or foam covered paddle and just dominate and became the
Speaker 1: the hero or the champion of that tournament and of
Speaker 1: the world. But there's two legends that happened to him afterward.
Speaker 1: One he returned home and was hailed a hero and
Speaker 1: a champion by Japan, and two he returned home and
Speaker 1: was scorned as a dishonorable winner because he used an
Speaker 1: unusual paddle and never played table tennis again. And um,
Speaker 1: it turns out that he doesn't show up in any
Speaker 1: other tournament after that one. So maybe he was like, well,
Speaker 1: I achieved it, I'm gonna go do some other stuff.
Speaker 1: Or um, maybe he really was like, this was this
Speaker 1: everyone's right, this was dishonorable. I'm never going to play again. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I hope there wasn't some nefarious action taken. I hope
Speaker 1: so too. So Over the years, uh, a lot of
Speaker 1: changes have taken place to make it more um playable
Speaker 1: and more and this is like the official rules in competition.
Speaker 1: To make it more playable and to make it better
Speaker 1: for people watching it. Um, they lower the net by
Speaker 1: about an inch over the years, um to make it
Speaker 1: guess a little zippier and more fun. Uh, they increase Actually,
Speaker 1: not too long ago, in two thousand, they increased the
Speaker 1: size of the ball by two millimeters to slow it
Speaker 1: down a little bit. Um, because it was getting so
Speaker 1: fast people couldn't even follow it. It was like Forrest
Speaker 1: Gump up in there and people like it doesn't I mean,
Speaker 1: it has to be a I mean it's not a
Speaker 1: big TV sport here obviously, but it's a big TV
Speaker 1: sport in a lot of the world, Like people watch
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, I mean the camera has to be
Speaker 1: able to see where the ball is going, which isn't hockey.
Speaker 1: You know, people want to see what's going on. They
Speaker 1: could do the glowing ball like they did in hockey
Speaker 1: for a while. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, same
Speaker 1: company that did the ten yard line or the first
Speaker 1: down line. Oh right, yeah, was it really yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: it was. I think Pat did glowy things, right. Um,
Speaker 1: I think we talked about I can't remember what episode
Speaker 1: we talked about that one before. But okay, so you
Speaker 1: have the foam paddled padded paddle, you've got um balls
Speaker 1: that work really well, and um you had have uh
Speaker 1: what else, chuck, you have a lowered net. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have a bigger ball you have and and then probably
Speaker 1: the cream of the crop. That's not what I'm looking for, man,
Speaker 1: am I just no, that's the death below, um the
Speaker 1: uh well, the pinnacle. They made it an Olympic Summer sport. Ah, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: Which now it's like, okay, now you're not just wasting
Speaker 1: your life being a pro table tennis player just just
Speaker 1: in it for the pot. You know, you can actually
Speaker 1: train to go to the Olympics for your country. That's right,
Speaker 1: pretty monumental. Um, should we talk about playing styles a bit?
Speaker 1: I think we should. I like where you're I like
Speaker 1: where you're going or not going with this next? Well,
Speaker 1: uh so the point is made in this article that, um,
Speaker 1: table tennis is is a game all about the style
Speaker 1: of play, sort of like boxing. You can come out
Speaker 1: swinging hard, you can come out with the rope a dope.
Speaker 1: You can play defense in boxing, and you can kind
Speaker 1: of do that in tennis. You can be really aggressive
Speaker 1: and try and set up for the big smashes, or
Speaker 1: you could be what's known as a chiseler or a
Speaker 1: pusher and just be really fundamentally sound and wait for
Speaker 1: your opponent to make a mistake. Right, And that was
Speaker 1: Chiseling was huge, um back before the phone paddles, because
Speaker 1: that's all you really had. You couldn't you couldn't attack
Speaker 1: with a huge, super fast return. I mean you could try,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't going to really work. Um, But once
Speaker 1: the introduction of foam came around, chiseling became like a decision.
Speaker 1: You could also be an attacker as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think now you've got to have all of
Speaker 1: the weapons in your ping pong arsenal right, exactly. You
Speaker 1: know you can play the spin game. You can be defensive,
Speaker 1: but you also gotta hang fifteen feet back off the
Speaker 1: table and hit those big loop shots, right. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: want to be able to do both for sure. So
Speaker 1: with the chiselers though, the defensive minded uh people in
Speaker 1: this legendary match took place the World Championships between two
Speaker 1: of the greatest chiselers of all time, um, a Polish
Speaker 1: player named Alex Rlick and a Romanian named Penneth Farcas.
Speaker 1: This was such a like, I mean, I've read into
Speaker 1: this too. It just doesn't seem like it's possible that
Speaker 1: the following took place. Okay, well, that's this is how
Speaker 1: it was recorded in nine and Sports Illustrated. All right,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of little points here. By the way,
Speaker 1: Did you say that the most epic part of this
Speaker 1: is it was the first point? Um? Supposedly, the very
Speaker 1: first point took two hours and twelve minutes to complete,
Speaker 1: so they just kept hitting it back and forth. It
Speaker 1: was a two hour and twelve minute volley. It was
Speaker 1: zero zero at two hours in twelve minutes. That's how
Speaker 1: good these guys were at chiseling or just playing defensively.
Speaker 1: Like somebody his do you hit it right back? Somebody
Speaker 1: has do you hit it right back? You're not trying
Speaker 1: to smash it down their throat. You're just patiently waiting
Speaker 1: for them to make a mistake. It's a fast game still,
Speaker 1: It's not like playing with a six year old, right,
Speaker 1: But the thing is is it's a fast game, but you,
Speaker 1: as the player and probably as a spectator, are like
Speaker 1: start to feel like you're about to go insane because
Speaker 1: you're locked into this zero zero like this. For at
Speaker 1: the time ping pong was played to twenty one. Whoever
Speaker 1: got to twenty one first, and then you had to
Speaker 1: still win by two points. So if this was zero
Speaker 1: zero for two hours and twelve minutes, the ball cross
Speaker 1: the net twelve thousand times, I just don't know if
Speaker 1: I buy it. That's a problem time wise. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: here's all the things that supposedly happened. Um a referee
Speaker 1: in the match his neck locked up and had to
Speaker 1: be replaced. Midpoint, his neck had to be replaced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Orlick switched hands because he got tired and played with
Speaker 1: his left hand for a little while every now and then.
Speaker 1: I believe that um during ring the point, the I
Speaker 1: T T F got together to negotiate shortening the match,
Speaker 1: the game to five points instead of twenty one. Right,
Speaker 1: But they had to have the proper representatives from the
Speaker 1: different countries there, and it air Like was the representative
Speaker 1: from Poland, so they couldn't have this meeting without him.
Speaker 1: So they had the meeting table side during the match,
Speaker 1: like during this point as it was going on, Supposedly
Speaker 1: Airlic had a chessboard set up table side and during
Speaker 1: the match was also playing chess and saying what move
Speaker 1: to make? I don't know about that, That's what he said.
Speaker 1: That's why I don't believe any of this. This all
Speaker 1: sounds like tall tale. Well there are other people there,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, then he played chess, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know about that one, but I do think that
Speaker 1: there are definite elements to that. I believe that there
Speaker 1: was a two hour and twelve minute period where there
Speaker 1: were zero to zero I don't know. Um, at least
Speaker 1: that's that's true. Well, there's so much stuff attached to
Speaker 1: this it makes me doubt the whole thing. Um. Austrian
Speaker 1: players suppose he went to a movie, came back still
Speaker 1: during the first point um, and then finally the Romanian
Speaker 1: paneth Farcas Mr return erlic goes up one oh, and
Speaker 1: then they started on point number two. They get twenty
Speaker 1: minutes into that one, and supposedly other members of the
Speaker 1: Polish team pulled out knives and bread and a two
Speaker 1: ft sausage, thinking that they were going to be there forever,
Speaker 1: and this made Farcas basically lose his mind. He lost
Speaker 1: his marbles. Like Burger King, he went on the attack.
Speaker 1: At that point, he went from being a what do
Speaker 1: they call the chiseler to going hard on the attack.
Speaker 1: Hit it twice, erlick returned both and then he basically
Speaker 1: lost it. Supposedly just blasted the ball over his head
Speaker 1: and ran out screaming. I love that story. That's one
Speaker 1: of the better ping punk stories around. Yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: about it all right, But even if the only thing
Speaker 1: you believe is that they were zero zero for two
Speaker 1: hours and twelve minutes. Now you keep saying I believe that.
Speaker 1: I'm saying even if that is the only thing you believe,
Speaker 1: then that's good enough. I don't buy any of it.
Speaker 1: What do you think, like that there was a match
Speaker 1: between these two and then that's it. Everything else is
Speaker 1: made up? No, I think I think Laura has taken
Speaker 1: over and that it has been enriched over the years
Speaker 1: to where people were going to movies and the dude
Speaker 1: was playing chess. Sure, sure, yeah, I just I don't
Speaker 1: I don't buy it that it went down like that.
Speaker 1: But do you believe that they were zero zero for
Speaker 1: two hours and twelve minutes. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: believe that or not, because I haven't seen a verified
Speaker 1: source other than this guy telling the story. Okay, where
Speaker 1: did you see it other than this guy telling the story? Nowhere?
Speaker 1: But I mean, like that takes a lot of goal
Speaker 1: to just make up that story, tell it to Sports Illustrated,
Speaker 1: have it printed in Sports Illustrated, knowing that anybody could
Speaker 1: go behind you and say, well, let's look at the
Speaker 1: records for that night and see and just say, well,
Speaker 1: this guy is totally lying. Is people have goal? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: you and I are going to agree to disagree, just
Speaker 1: to keep things moving, because I think at the very
Speaker 1: least they were zero zero for two hours and twelve minutes.
Speaker 1: I buy that. Here's what I think. I'm definitely not
Speaker 1: gonna say. Well it was in Sports Illustrated what so
Speaker 1: it had to be true? Alright, alright, So enough for
Speaker 1: waging on Sports Illustrated from you. Hey, and I got
Speaker 1: that magazine for many many years. You know who's on
Speaker 1: my first cover? Giselle Bunching Muhammad Ali. Oh wow, I
Speaker 1: started getting it when I was a kid. Jeez, wow,
Speaker 1: do you still have that one? I'll bet it's worth
Speaker 1: like seven ten dollars now, I do. I think my
Speaker 1: mom kept all the like many many years in a box.
Speaker 1: It's kind of fun to go through and look every
Speaker 1: now and then. Oh yeah, for sure. All right, so
Speaker 1: this fake match happens uh in the nineteen thirties, um
Speaker 1: Jewish table tennis players, and we should point out that
Speaker 1: many of the early world champions were Jewish men. Um.
Speaker 1: They fled Germany for England and then uh Erlick, who
Speaker 1: we just mentioned the Polish player was threatened. Obviously, he
Speaker 1: was in Poland when the Nazis invaded and he was
Speaker 1: sent to Auschwitz and he was literally being led to
Speaker 1: the gas chamber when a German Nazi guard recognized him
Speaker 1: and spared his life. Yeah, like he was about to die.
Speaker 1: And he got moved around from concentration camp to concentration
Speaker 1: camp until the Allies liberated him and others from the
Speaker 1: concentration camp he was in. And then right after the
Speaker 1: war he went right back to table tennis. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty crazy, all right. I think we should take a break,
Speaker 1: okay and go talk about Sports Illustrated some more, alright,
Speaker 1: that the bastion of and journalism, and we'll be back
Speaker 1: right after this. Well, now we're on the road, driving
Speaker 1: in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two
Speaker 1: from Josh M chuck It stuff you should know, all right,
Speaker 1: all right, So Chuck Um, we were talking about like
Speaker 1: chiselers and attackers and all that. And at first, if
Speaker 1: you played ping pong up until the fifties, up until
Speaker 1: Sato showed up with his phone paddle, um, you're basically
Speaker 1: just chiseling. Everybody was chiseling. This is a patient, back
Speaker 1: and forth game. Once the phone paddles came up and
Speaker 1: change the game so radically, like you said, they actually
Speaker 1: enlarged the size of the ball to increase the air
Speaker 1: assistance to it to slow it down, which was a
Speaker 1: huge change for everybody to get used to as well.
Speaker 1: I think that was in the two thousands that that
Speaker 1: change was made, But from the fifties to the two
Speaker 1: thousand's people were just crushing the ping pong ball. It
Speaker 1: got really fast and really fast paced. It was fun,
Speaker 1: but it got too fast. So um, the the I T.
Speaker 1: T F stepped in and said, now we got to
Speaker 1: make some changes. And that's some of the other things
Speaker 1: that they've done too. They've made changes and rules over
Speaker 1: the over the lifetime of ping pong to to make
Speaker 1: the game hard and interesting, but also to make it
Speaker 1: fun to watch too. Yeah, they now you play to
Speaker 1: eleven in competition play um used to be twenty one
Speaker 1: for most, uh, just sort of backyard fund players. It's
Speaker 1: still twenty one, but these people are these people are
Speaker 1: so good though that twenty one. It's just way too
Speaker 1: long of a game. You can play a point for
Speaker 1: two and a half hour, right, two hours and twelve
Speaker 1: minutes to be precise. Uh. They change sometimes the serve rotation,
Speaker 1: like how many times you serve in a row before
Speaker 1: you switch it up. Um, which side do you play on? Um?
Speaker 1: You can't hide the ball when you serve, because you know,
Speaker 1: trying just trying to make the game as fair as possible. Um.
Speaker 1: The dimensions of the table are kind of interesting if
Speaker 1: you're looking at it in meters. Uh. And if you're
Speaker 1: from the United States, it's a nine ft long table,
Speaker 1: five ft wide, two and a half feet high. But
Speaker 1: that's two point seven four meters one point five to
Speaker 1: five wide, seventy high. Um. The net is six inches high. Uh,
Speaker 1: but that's after they lowered it a bit. Have you
Speaker 1: seen how they make balls? Uh? Yeah, like the little factory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you saw like video of it being made. I can
Speaker 1: watch that stuff all day long. I know. Same here. Um.
Speaker 1: If you if you look at ping pong balls before
Speaker 1: their armed into balls, to actually start as little flat
Speaker 1: plastic circles, and that that was that is one half
Speaker 1: of a ping pong ball. And they take it and
Speaker 1: they form it. They press like a like a ball
Speaker 1: bearing ping pong ball size ball bearing in hot water
Speaker 1: to mold it. And they take two of those two
Speaker 1: halves and put them together and seal them. And then
Speaker 1: they trim off the fat and there's your ping pong ball.
Speaker 1: But that's not the end of the life of the
Speaker 1: ping pong ball manufacturing process because the the companies that
Speaker 1: make ping pong ball specifically, there's one that's like a
Speaker 1: globally dominant, dominating ping pong equipment company called Double Happiness,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about later. But they do so much
Speaker 1: quality control it's astounding. Before they settle a ping pong ball. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, Like there's there's a to measure bounce. There's
Speaker 1: like a specific amount of bounce that the I T.
Speaker 1: T A requires for a ping pong ball, and so
Speaker 1: a company will will measure it by dropping it a
Speaker 1: set height I think like three millimeters and it has
Speaker 1: to bounce back up like two forty two sixty and
Speaker 1: they measure it with the digital camera. It has to
Speaker 1: have a specific hardness, so that use a robot with
Speaker 1: a needle to test the pressure it takes to puncture
Speaker 1: it with a needle. Um It's like Casper mattresses, but
Speaker 1: they drop a human exactly, they drop, they roll it
Speaker 1: down and incline to see where it veers. I mean,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot going on there just to make
Speaker 1: a ping pong ball that's that's usable in a game.
Speaker 1: I think that. I mean, I just think it's top
Speaker 1: notch that they take it that seriously, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean any competition, uh, sporting ball undergoes incredible testing, right,
Speaker 1: Like they just don't throw out an NFL football or
Speaker 1: a basketball either or a tennis ball. What it's pretty amazing,
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. But ping pong, ping pong balls, That's
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about here. I think you, I think
Speaker 1: you secretly are kind of making fun of ping pong.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to be. I'm just my pong. My
Speaker 1: idea of ping pong has changed as a result of
Speaker 1: UM researching this. How about that? So the paddles themselves,
Speaker 1: they are laminated wood. When you look at him, you
Speaker 1: can tell it's sort of pressed together of different woods. Um,
Speaker 1: some of them are fire fiberglass. There are carbon fiber paddles,
Speaker 1: which I would love to give that a whirl. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I saw that of the thickness has to be
Speaker 1: would does that mean there's like carbon fiber in the
Speaker 1: middle of it, maybe just to make it like slightly lighter,
Speaker 1: would be my guests. Um, there are all kinds of materials,
Speaker 1: like from just the regular you can still get like
Speaker 1: the sand paper paddles very low fi. But those that
Speaker 1: padded rubber on one side, uh, and the textured little
Speaker 1: rubber dimples on the other side, which have to be
Speaker 1: two different colors, by the way, because the other players
Speaker 1: supposedly needs to know which side you're hitting it with
Speaker 1: so they know what's coming or you know, to a
Speaker 1: varying degree what might be coming. Right, But that's sort
Speaker 1: of like the classic paddle that most people have settled
Speaker 1: on right now. Yeah, and the the smooth, padded side
Speaker 1: would be for chiseling, and the um the dimpled side
Speaker 1: would be for attacking and for probably the most important
Speaker 1: part of ping pong spin to add spin to the ball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a pretty good spinner. Oh you are, huh, Like,
Speaker 1: not just one kind of spin? Can you do multiple
Speaker 1: kinds of spin? Yeah? I've got a good batcan spinner
Speaker 1: shot that's very fast and then sort of a flick
Speaker 1: of the wrist that it just shoots off the paddle
Speaker 1: and then has a nice little top spin to it.
Speaker 1: And I try to angle that to like that farthest
Speaker 1: corner than I can. That's really impressive, Chuck, Well, I
Speaker 1: didn't say it was great. At it, But that's the aim.
Speaker 1: This is what's going on in your head at least, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm not like a great uh, I mean, what
Speaker 1: do you can call it a smash or a slam
Speaker 1: an attacker? Well, just the big you know, Oh that's
Speaker 1: ash mouth. Yeah, the smash mouth. I'm not a good
Speaker 1: smash mouth or I'm not great. I mean and get
Speaker 1: lucky every once in a while, but I still try
Speaker 1: because it's such a boss move. It really is pretty cool. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's sort of the variation of the loop stroke,
Speaker 1: which is what you see on TV when someone just
Speaker 1: throws a big hay maker. Uh. It's all in the
Speaker 1: hips and the legs, tons of top spin, and that's
Speaker 1: sort of like that main shot for what would be
Speaker 1: a big smash to me is sort of the regular
Speaker 1: shot that people volley back and forth on in competition, right.
Speaker 1: And when you when you're doing the loop, it's like
Speaker 1: from what I saw, it's an upward chopping motion where
Speaker 1: you're just basically bringing the paddle up really quick as
Speaker 1: it comes in contact with the ball, which, like you said,
Speaker 1: because it tons of top spin. And there's this thing
Speaker 1: called the Magnus effect with fluid dynamics. Whereas this ping
Speaker 1: pong is moving through the air, the bottom or the
Speaker 1: side of it that's spinning into the air is generating
Speaker 1: more resistant so there's higher air pressure there then there
Speaker 1: is on top and I'm sorry, on the bottom, which
Speaker 1: makes the ball fall because there's less air pressure there.
Speaker 1: So when you put spin on the ball, depending on
Speaker 1: which direction it's going, you can make it go left, right, up, down,
Speaker 1: and depending on the type of um the type of
Speaker 1: what's it call when you hit the ball, not the grip,
Speaker 1: the depending on this, I guess it's the stroke. Depending
Speaker 1: on the stroke you use, you can apply different spin
Speaker 1: to the ball. But that's the big reason why, like
Speaker 1: one side of a ping pong paddle is dimpled so
Speaker 1: that you can make contact with the ball and really
Speaker 1: kind of grip it while you're giving it that spin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're all kinds of grips. Um. The shake hand
Speaker 1: grip is sort of if you don't play a lot
Speaker 1: of ping pong, it's probably just the standard little grip
Speaker 1: that you would want to use. The pinhole grip is
Speaker 1: what you see. My brother and Asian players use that
Speaker 1: Scott's move, the one with the thumb on the back
Speaker 1: side of it. Yeah, it's uh, basically, your thumb and
Speaker 1: forefinger kind of wrap around the handle and almost touch
Speaker 1: each other, and then your other three fingers are resting
Speaker 1: on the back of the paddle itself, and it sort
Speaker 1: of sort of looks like you're holding the paddle upside down,
Speaker 1: well because you kind of are. Yes, but that's my
Speaker 1: brother is a total uh pin holder. Got you? What
Speaker 1: about the c Miller grip? Do you ever do that?
Speaker 1: That's Danny c Miller. That's I didn't really quite get then.
Speaker 1: That's like the shake hand. But what I saw was
Speaker 1: like the thumb and forefinger are kind of resting on
Speaker 1: the face of the paddle. Sometimes the finger forefinger is
Speaker 1: wrapped around sort of on the side of the paddle.
Speaker 1: What I saw was that, so you've got your three
Speaker 1: your pinky finger, your ring finger, and your index finger
Speaker 1: that's on the paddle. Your middle finger are all rap Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's on the handle. Your forefinger and your thumb are
Speaker 1: like control. They're like up against the edges of the paddle,
Speaker 1: and it makes it easier to spin the paddle and
Speaker 1: control it. That's what I saw as the c Miller grip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well it's easier to flip the paddle to use both
Speaker 1: sides of it right exactly. So you want to chisel
Speaker 1: here and then maybe a little attack there, put some
Speaker 1: spin on, and then just push it back. You just
Speaker 1: flip it back and forth. Thanks to Danny C. Miller. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I love the next part of this article, which is, like, um,
Speaker 1: if you want to know all the rules of ping pong,
Speaker 1: go look them up, right, because it will be kind
Speaker 1: of boring just to read all those out. But there
Speaker 1: are um, I mean, if you're playing in someone's house,
Speaker 1: you play house rules, just ask what they are. Be
Speaker 1: a good guest, to be a good guests and say
Speaker 1: what are the house rules? Because people play differently. Um,
Speaker 1: some more not obscure rules but sort of sort of
Speaker 1: nitpicky rules that casual players might not know. Um And
Speaker 1: depending on on where you play the house rules, it
Speaker 1: may take effect or not. You're supposed to toss the
Speaker 1: ball at least sixteen centimeters into the air before you serve, right, Um,
Speaker 1: My house rule is you just have to have some
Speaker 1: air between the like you can't just hold it in
Speaker 1: your hand and hit it off your hand. Like, we
Speaker 1: don't say it has to be sixteen centimeters, but there
Speaker 1: has to be a little bit of air between your hand.
Speaker 1: The ball has to be suspended before you serve it.
Speaker 1: So what happens if someone violates your house rules? Are
Speaker 1: they like tired, tired and feathered? Now you say, dude,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Not cool? Here's a smash mouth
Speaker 1: for you. Uh. And you have to serve behind the
Speaker 1: in line. Um, that's a pretty standard even and for
Speaker 1: house rules, like you're leaning over the table. Oh, I
Speaker 1: see what you mean you can't lean forward a couple
Speaker 1: of feet because I was going to say, I thought
Speaker 1: you were saying, like you have to get it inside
Speaker 1: a square? Do you get it to the other square?
Speaker 1: And I saw that that's that only applies in doubles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can serve it to either side when you're playing singles. Right,
Speaker 1: and then if you if it touches your hand that
Speaker 1: you're holding the paddle with. Apparently according to the I
Speaker 1: T T F, your hand is part of the paddle
Speaker 1: as far as they're concerned. So if it if it
Speaker 1: bounces off of your hand, that's there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always get the thumb hit though, and it it
Speaker 1: always sends it off in a bad direction and I
Speaker 1: always go, ah, I'm hit. You need to do more
Speaker 1: c Miller more see Miller less thumbsies. The pimples, believe
Speaker 1: it or not, those are regulated, Um, they cannot be
Speaker 1: larger than two millimeters, But astoundingly, the size of the
Speaker 1: paddle is not at all regulated. You could show up
Speaker 1: with them a pickle ball paddle if you wanted to,
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, yep, it works. Um. But the
Speaker 1: foam padding on either side. If you're a competitive table
Speaker 1: tennis player, you glue your own foam on and you
Speaker 1: can cheat it too, right. Yeah, For a lot of
Speaker 1: until the Beijing Olympics, you could from I think the
Speaker 1: sixties until the Beijing Olympics, they would use a specific
Speaker 1: kind of glue that UM would would it would expand
Speaker 1: but at the same time soften the foam underneath the
Speaker 1: exterior um of the phone padding. So you've got like
Speaker 1: the the layer that like the rubbery layer, and then
Speaker 1: underneath that is foam like a spongey material. It would
Speaker 1: get into the pores of that spongey material and it
Speaker 1: would make that ball bounce even faster, and UM would
Speaker 1: just give it an enormous amount of speed. But just
Speaker 1: for a short amount of time though, right, right, So
Speaker 1: if you were in a tournament, you were pulling off
Speaker 1: and then regluing your um your phone pads on multiple
Speaker 1: times over the course of that weekend, because you get
Speaker 1: about three or four hours of good um um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, ricochet return off of those things, um, and
Speaker 1: then they would dry up and and it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: quite as as useful cheaters. I love the article you
Speaker 1: sent and where they were basically like everyone was doing it. Everybody.
Speaker 1: They called it doping. Table ten is doping. But the
Speaker 1: problem is that it had a lot of volatile organic compounds.
Speaker 1: So the International Table Tennis Foundation said, no, we don't
Speaker 1: want people getting cancer, so we gotta ban it, and
Speaker 1: they actually test paddles now in a little machine that
Speaker 1: tests for volatile organic compounds. Ye, get those rats out
Speaker 1: of the game. Get about uh, you gotta win by two,
Speaker 1: like we said, generally played at twenty one at home
Speaker 1: eleven in competition, I think we said. And then um,
Speaker 1: obviously you just anything as a point. If you get
Speaker 1: the point. It's not like volleyball. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be serving to get the point, right, which I love
Speaker 1: that too. It makes the game go a lot faster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just my whole problem is keeping up with that score. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why you want a sober person. They're taking keeping
Speaker 1: score for you. Uh. And I guess we should finish
Speaker 1: with this well a couple of things. But um, you've
Speaker 1: heard the term ping pong diplomacy. Yeah, there's a big
Speaker 1: story there. Yeah, that came from a real thing that happened. Um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: China live um in isolation for decades and decades from
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. And then during the Cold War,
Speaker 1: of course we were on the US was on the
Speaker 1: opposite side of China. Not a lot of travel going
Speaker 1: back and forth or allowed between the countries until the
Speaker 1: International Competition of nine where the Chinese table tennis team
Speaker 1: went to the championships in Japan. Uh met some Americans,
Speaker 1: and in particular one American named Glenn Cowen, and he
Speaker 1: was like, hey, man, like, we're all the same, really,
Speaker 1: we all love table tennis regardless of our grip. Let's
Speaker 1: shake hands. And he rode the bus with him on
Speaker 1: the way back to the hotel. So so let me
Speaker 1: let me just interject here. He got on the bus accidentally,
Speaker 1: he had missed his own bus and these were busses
Speaker 1: that were taking the teams to the hotel, and there
Speaker 1: was like the first ten minutes of this fifteen minute
Speaker 1: bus ride were silent in tents because these two enemy
Speaker 1: groups were on the same bus and no one knew
Speaker 1: what to do until Juang Zedong stood up and said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go talk to this guy. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: they got along great. Like I said, they had more
Speaker 1: in common than they thought. And table tennis or ping
Speaker 1: pong is literally what brought them together, and it was
Speaker 1: seen as a sort of an emblematic thing. Uh. Flash
Speaker 1: forward a bit to the press covering this, it becomes
Speaker 1: a big deal. The US table tennis UH competition team
Speaker 1: said we want to go to China, uh and like
Speaker 1: because they're the best of the best over there, and
Speaker 1: mal Z Dong said, sure, come on over. They did
Speaker 1: so in April one. They spent a week there. It
Speaker 1: was big in the news and it literally kind of
Speaker 1: thawed relations between the US and China. I mean it
Speaker 1: paved the way for a trip by Richard Dixon. Like
Speaker 1: the the U S table tennis team went over there
Speaker 1: before Nixon did UM and just shared love of table
Speaker 1: tennis and this this um, this kind of international exposure
Speaker 1: of these two enemy countries, like getting along. Whatever it
Speaker 1: takes to build common ground and consensus. If it's table tennis, awesome,
Speaker 1: so much the better. So um that it led to
Speaker 1: um to normalized relations between the two countries very quickly,
Speaker 1: like within a year after after the or the beginnings
Speaker 1: of normalized relations within a year after the thing. Where
Speaker 1: all because Xiang Zadong came over and said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I just want to say thank you for playing table
Speaker 1: tennis and gave him a scarf, and Glen Cowen had
Speaker 1: a comb on him, and He's like, this isn't a
Speaker 1: good enough reciprocal gift. So he he later gave Ziang
Speaker 1: ze Dong a m a T shirt with a peace
Speaker 1: symbol on it, which is pretty cool. Man Richard Dixon,
Speaker 1: well known lover of session in cuisine and marijuana, Yes,
Speaker 1: and peace symbol t shirts. He was a reared one
Speaker 1: of those in public. Uh. We should also talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about ping pong robots. Um. They built a
Speaker 1: table tennis robot. Um. It was okay, Um, you could
Speaker 1: program it to to imitate different styles, um, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't like when when you played again, when it played
Speaker 1: against the human being um. It was what what what?
Speaker 1: What would happen there? It was just shooting them all
Speaker 1: to the same place at the same exactly where it's
Speaker 1: going to go. Yeah, there wasn't a lot of training
Speaker 1: from it. But then they started inventing robots. I could
Speaker 1: like add spin to it and pick its own moves
Speaker 1: And that was in like the early nineties when they
Speaker 1: first came out with those and the ones they have today.
Speaker 1: One came out in six two thousand and sixteen called
Speaker 1: uh four FEUs f O r p h e U.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is and it can play some mean ping
Speaker 1: pong um, but it's a it like actually plays you.
Speaker 1: It's a an ai that plays you in ping pong.
Speaker 1: But it's like a giant mechanical spidery kind of looking thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really creepy looking. It looks like a Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like a big spider sitting high above the table
Speaker 1: across from you. And Uh, I saw the video the
Speaker 1: guy playing it at ces and he he was I
Speaker 1: felt bad for the guy because you cannot beat the thing. Well.
Speaker 1: Plus he also goes, we'll pus some kind of nervous
Speaker 1: because all these people are watching. Well in the ass
Speaker 1: at one point, He's like, is there literally, like nothing
Speaker 1: I can do that this thing won't returning. They're like nope. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then he was like, well, why I'm even here? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an ai. It's it's it's um tracking the ball's
Speaker 1: velocity and trajectory and like making calculations about how to
Speaker 1: best return it. It's you're not gonna win against it, Nope,
Speaker 1: but you can train really well to beat other human
Speaker 1: socks off with it. That's right. So I don't have
Speaker 1: anything else, do you. I'm looking at my fun facts
Speaker 1: I got in three of the four. The last one
Speaker 1: here is the world record was set between two players who, um,
Speaker 1: if you're doing like speed ping pong, they hit it
Speaker 1: back and forth one d and seventy three times in
Speaker 1: sixty seconds. Oh my god. That is some serious speed play.
Speaker 1: That is. That's an amazing fact. But it's got nothing
Speaker 1: on the two hour and twelve minute point. Fake news.
Speaker 1: All right, Now, you got anything else? I got nothing else?
Speaker 1: All right? Well, if you want to know more about
Speaker 1: ping pong, go start playing. It's the greatest thing you
Speaker 1: can ever try to do with your life. And since
Speaker 1: I said that, it's time for listener and mail we
Speaker 1: should have a totally have a ping pong table here
Speaker 1: at work. I agree. I don't think we have room
Speaker 1: for it anymore, but at one point we probably did.
Speaker 1: I know now where it's all this like production space,
Speaker 1: production space, and we're like, where's ping pong? I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this. Uh, well, we've been getting a lot of
Speaker 1: heat lately for two errors, one of which was sort
Speaker 1: of a joke by me which I'm gonna read now.
Speaker 1: But we should also say about figs and dates and
Speaker 1: same things are all the same thing. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like pork ham and bacon. Now we we heard from
Speaker 1: a lot of people about that and we understand now, yeah,
Speaker 1: we I mean, I got it flat out wrong. So
Speaker 1: sorry about that everyone. Uh, you can stop telling us
Speaker 1: now right. This is about average life expectancy, which I
Speaker 1: was kind of just kidding about. I can't It was
Speaker 1: I think Spanish Flu episode. I made a joke about
Speaker 1: the life expectancy being like fifty or something, and I
Speaker 1: was like, so I'd almost be dead. Um, so I'll
Speaker 1: just read this, Hey, stuffers, I hope this doesn't come
Speaker 1: across being snarky or trolley, but I think you should
Speaker 1: try and clear up the difference between average actual life
Speaker 1: expectancy and average life expectancy. UM chuck more than once.
Speaker 1: So I guess I've said this before. You've made it
Speaker 1: sound as if people in the past could only expect
Speaker 1: to live into the thirties or forties. But that is
Speaker 1: not the case. People live well into their sixties, seventies, eighties,
Speaker 1: and nineties, just like today. UM. And he gives some
Speaker 1: prominent examples of old people back in the day, and
Speaker 1: then he says what drove the average life expectancy down
Speaker 1: was the insanely high rate of infant and childhood mortality.
Speaker 1: People had huge families back in the past just to
Speaker 1: try and ensure this. Some of their children survived into
Speaker 1: adulthood because so many died his infants and others never
Speaker 1: made it past their second or third year due to
Speaker 1: mom's measles, influenza, etcetera. Uh, the absolute horror of whooping cough.
Speaker 1: Let's not forget polio and any number of plagues that
Speaker 1: modern medicine has managed to render vastly less lethal, thanks
Speaker 1: mostly to our friend of vaccines. So more and more
Speaker 1: children are surviving the battlefield called childhood, growing into adults,
Speaker 1: and the average life expectancy has become much longer. This
Speaker 1: is a great email, Thank you Western Medicine. That's from
Speaker 1: Joseph Catrell and Joseph, I was kind of just kidding
Speaker 1: about that which time, well every time it was a
Speaker 1: recurring joke. But um, that was very kind email and
Speaker 1: it was fun and funny and you you did it right,
Speaker 1: So thank you for sure. Plus also, you gave you
Speaker 1: a chance to tell everybody that you know that that's
Speaker 1: the case. Yeah, and it gave everybody. It gave me
Speaker 1: a chance to let everybody know that I was totally
Speaker 1: wrong about dates and figs. Um. Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to correct us like Joseph did, that was an a
Speaker 1: plus correction email. Joseph, you can get in touch with us.
Speaker 1: You go to stuff you shao dot com and check
Speaker 1: out our social links, or you can send us an
Speaker 1: email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com