Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here tis Zoo, which makes this is
Speaker 2: uh you should know?
Speaker 1: That's right? Ohod Lvia had a good title on this one.
Speaker 2: Did you like it? Go ahead?
Speaker 1: Well, this is about contortionists, and sure Lvia titled what
Speaker 1: she sent us bend it like Gumby.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: I think it's good. It is good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Olivia always comes up with the best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now we know that she listens to some
Speaker 1: of these because she heard you take a dig at her.
Speaker 2: About explaining what a socket and electrical plug does.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's a good sport. Though. Let's see what else, Chuck,
Speaker 2: I guess you already spoiled what this episode is about.
Speaker 2: It's about contor, which I guess we were going to
Speaker 2: have to get into eventually.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, obviously we're talking about bending your body
Speaker 1: right in ways Gumby that are yeah, like gummy, bending
Speaker 1: your bodies in ways that are extraordinary, And as we
Speaker 1: have learned, it's something that maybe you're kind of born
Speaker 1: with and definitely something you can work toward and maybe
Speaker 1: a bit of both.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I always assumed it was just a born thing
Speaker 2: and that like one out of every fifteen million people
Speaker 2: were born as a contortionist essentially, and I figured, yes,
Speaker 2: of course they have to train and everything, and you know, choreograph.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of types of contortionism that are essentially
Speaker 2: contortionist ballets, especially like the ones you see at Circasla,
Speaker 2: which if you say that funny, Yeah, it's a hilarious
Speaker 2: thing to say, it's a good joke. But I guess
Speaker 2: I just didn't realize that it is something you can
Speaker 2: Like you or I could go train to be a
Speaker 2: contortious We would fail utterly, but we could at least
Speaker 2: go train in our fifties and still do a lot
Speaker 2: better than we can right now, because it is something
Speaker 2: you can adapt your body.
Speaker 1: To, yeah, for sure. And it's also something that's been
Speaker 1: around a long long time, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has one more thing. It will help you
Speaker 2: a lot while we're going through some of this stuff
Speaker 2: to just if you can look it up, watch videos,
Speaker 2: but even like just photos sometimes can kind of get
Speaker 2: the point across. It's just one of those things. While
Speaker 2: we were studying this, I was like, this is gonna
Speaker 2: kind of be tough to describe in some cases, but
Speaker 2: we'll do our best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I don't think it's going to be the
Speaker 1: hard to follow. People know what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we are talking about contortionism, and you did
Speaker 2: say that it is very, very old. The oldest thing
Speaker 2: we've found that is pretty much a certainty that they're
Speaker 2: depicting a contortionist was an image that was found in Syria,
Speaker 2: an old old polaroid from twenty three hundred BCE, and
Speaker 2: there's some contortionists and they're holding swords, and the best
Speaker 2: that historians can come up with is that it's possible that.
Speaker 2: So there's some Hittite writings that describe a performance where
Speaker 2: contortionists basically jump through hoops of swords as basically a
Speaker 2: well performance essentially basically say can you do this? No
Speaker 2: you can't?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know that followed, of course, we have
Speaker 1: to talk about all the usual sets backs. Of course,
Speaker 1: China will come in, don't worry. But ancient Egypt they
Speaker 1: found pottery fragments that date to twelve hundred BCE that
Speaker 1: definitely show women dancing in backbinds, like you know, contorting themselves. Sure,
Speaker 1: and the Greeks also did this later on as well.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, the Greeks is where we finally start to
Speaker 2: get to unambiguous descriptions of contortionism. I think as far
Speaker 2: back as well the twenty five hundred years ago, something
Speaker 2: like that contortionists had become like an actual thing, like
Speaker 2: they were part of troops or performers that performed in Greece.
Speaker 2: Like if you went to say a public festival, let's
Speaker 2: say Dionysus was being celebrated that day, there's a chance
Speaker 2: that you might find somebody doing a contortionist act as
Speaker 2: just kind of part of the festivities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you know, I mentioned China, and
Speaker 1: this is one of those cases where we don't know
Speaker 1: if it if people in China and this was like
Speaker 1: two twenty one BCE to two twenty CE, if they
Speaker 1: were influenced by people from other parts of the world
Speaker 1: or not, or whether it developed independently when people over
Speaker 1: there realized that they were bindi. But when they look
Speaker 1: at like some of the clothes that contortionists were wearing
Speaker 1: in China, it seems like it maybe was influenced by
Speaker 1: people in Europe, but also could have been Maybe that's
Speaker 1: just the garb.
Speaker 2: They were all wearing Benatton, Yeah, exactly, stretchy stuff. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's very interesting because usually something came out of China
Speaker 2: and it influenced Europe rather than going the other way around,
Speaker 2: especially that far back. So I'm yeah, as a person
Speaker 2: of European ancestry, I'm quite proud of that.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, you would think India is probably
Speaker 1: a pretty obvious spot for contortionism, and you would be right,
Speaker 1: because there are sculptures in temples from India these date
Speaker 1: to tenth century CE that also show women in contorted poses.
Speaker 1: This time it got a little sexier though.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think a lot of times you think about
Speaker 2: something like the Kamasutra, and there are definitely contortionist poses
Speaker 2: in the Kamasutra. Yeah, but there's the to just think
Speaker 2: of it as like, oh, this is just, you know,
Speaker 2: like you said, just sexy. There's a spiritual aspect to
Speaker 2: that whole thing too. It's like a tantric yoga practice,
Speaker 2: but it is also sexy, just admittedly. But there's this
Speaker 2: that maybe kind of wonder Chuck like did, like yoga
Speaker 2: and Buddhism and Hinduism and the incorporation of all these
Speaker 2: physical movements that include contortionism. Did that kind of come
Speaker 2: out of this contortionist? I guess heritage or whatever that
Speaker 2: dates back to at least the hit Tights, or was
Speaker 2: what the hit Tights were doing essentially the foundation for
Speaker 2: what would later become, you know, Buddhism and Hinduism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to be clear, when we say sexy, we
Speaker 1: mean they're depictions of actual intercourse because oh yeah, thanks.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's really annoying to me about
Speaker 1: all of this, and Lyvia picks us up sort of
Speaker 1: at the end of the article, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and address it now, is that if you
Speaker 1: get you know, one hundred people in a room and
Speaker 1: there's a contortionist, there's probably going to be some dim
Speaker 1: witted man making some stupid sexual reference about somebody being bindy,
Speaker 1: about a woman being bindy, and that's just dumb. So
Speaker 1: that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, actual pictures of sexual positions. In this case.
Speaker 2: I think that was great because you could interpret it
Speaker 2: away where we sounded like thirty old men essentially. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: the guys who like kind of elbow on another like huh,
Speaker 2: check it out. I mean come on, so some people
Speaker 2: have further way to come than other people. You know, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's true. So back to India itself, there's a clear
Speaker 2: like comparison between contortionism and yoga today. And actually it's
Speaker 2: kind of neat because if you go online and you
Speaker 2: look up like contortionism or training or something like that,
Speaker 2: it's essentially people who are into yoga and they're trying
Speaker 2: to figure out how to go even further. So they're
Speaker 2: following ancient practices that have been around for hundreds, if
Speaker 2: not thousands of years, that are contortionists by nature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. England might not be the most obvious
Speaker 1: place to think about men doing contortionist poses, but that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened in seventeenth and eighteenth century there in
Speaker 1: the form of posture master masters. Posture master is what
Speaker 1: they were.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a mattress, a posture master, but that's.
Speaker 1: What was going on. It's a little odd to think
Speaker 1: about now, but there, you know, it might be like
Speaker 1: an actual performance. Maybe sometimes it was something that they
Speaker 1: would do on the street to raise money, like busking
Speaker 1: or maybe to trying instead of like holding a sign
Speaker 1: outside your business. There might be a male posture master
Speaker 1: sitting outside your tavern to try and get people in there.
Speaker 1: But it was kind of a big deal and they
Speaker 1: kind of became sort of famous in England at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this was before TV, radio, internet, even
Speaker 2: newspapers in a lot of cases, and there you could
Speaker 2: as a male contortionist in particular because it was a
Speaker 2: male dominated field at this time, at least in Europe,
Speaker 2: and it seems like basically throughout the world that you
Speaker 2: could become distinctly famous, like a guy named Joseph Clark
Speaker 2: who apparently in the late seventeenth century was a very
Speaker 2: very famous contortionist in England, so much so that his
Speaker 2: last name was Shorthand for contortion in England and then
Speaker 2: eventually would morph into Shorthand for giving somebody something that
Speaker 2: they want.
Speaker 1: That's right, the circus is obviously going to come into play,
Speaker 1: and that is when the circus came into play. And
Speaker 1: that was and you know, we've done quite a few
Speaker 1: episodes on the circus back in the day, but as
Speaker 1: a reminder, this was late eighteenth century when Philip and
Speaker 1: Patty Astley they had a you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: the early circuses were like horse riding tricks like equestrian stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's definitely formed out of that, out of their
Speaker 1: Astley's riding school in London. And you know, once the
Speaker 1: circus started spreading around, it came to the United States,
Speaker 1: and within that circus world contortionists started kind of performing
Speaker 1: on the regular. But you know, it started to get
Speaker 1: and which is like it is today. It gets kind
Speaker 1: of mixed in with other sort of acrobatics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just something back a couple of paces. Once it
Speaker 2: reached Europe in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth century,
Speaker 2: there was no spirituality associated with it. Once it reached
Speaker 2: western Europe, it was performance from that point on, you know.
Speaker 2: And yeah, once it hit the circus, it's really started
Speaker 2: to morph into what we understand is contortionism today. There
Speaker 2: was one trick I have to say that Patty Astley
Speaker 2: did on her horse in the very beginning of circuses.
Speaker 2: She would ride her horse really fast and her arms
Speaker 2: would be covered in bees.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's a wild ride for that's a wild ride for
Speaker 2: everybody involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But you know, maybe she was a beatkeeper.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter what she was doing, Chuck. She was
Speaker 2: riding full throttle on a horse with bees all over
Speaker 2: her arms. I mean, I'm assuming like they changed like
Speaker 2: the shape of her arms because there were so many
Speaker 2: bees that kind of thing, not like two or three
Speaker 2: bees on each arm.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that wouldn't have much impact. I don't
Speaker 1: think that impressed me quite a bit. It's pretty good trick.
Speaker 1: So the actual word contortionists that came around in eighteen sixty.
Speaker 1: Before then, you know, it was just called other stuff
Speaker 1: depending on what culture it was coming from. But if
Speaker 1: you were in the US or if you were in
Speaker 1: England performing as a contortionist, you probably said that you
Speaker 1: were either Chinese or Turkish, or German or French, or
Speaker 1: maybe you were you might have just claimed to be
Speaker 1: one of those things because it had such a rich
Speaker 1: tradition in being BINDI like that. But at this point
Speaker 1: it started to be mainly women who were hired by
Speaker 1: male circus owners and a lot of times performing exclusively
Speaker 1: for male audiences, right.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, it kind of evolves even further. And
Speaker 2: luckily that went from like the point of a contortionist
Speaker 2: act eventually evolving to you know, a couple of dudes
Speaker 2: in the audience like elbowing one another, where most people
Speaker 2: are like getting what the point is. But that said,
Speaker 2: there are contortionist acts today that are very much geared
Speaker 2: toward the sexual nature of the whole thing, and you know,
Speaker 2: they're performed by women who are doing that on purpose,
Speaker 2: so you you know, whatever, more power to them. There
Speaker 2: is like a thread of that. Like you can't just
Speaker 2: be like, no, that doesn't exist. Stop stop saying that.
Speaker 2: But the point of most contortionist performances, it seems like,
Speaker 2: is not that that's a very niche thing these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, there was one, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: notable early contortionist. We got to mention here a name. Well,
Speaker 1: her real name was Beatrice Mary Claxton, but Beatrice Claxton
Speaker 1: isn't the best name for a contortionist, so she went
Speaker 1: by Nna Bertoldi, which is much more of a sort
Speaker 1: of a circusy name. And starting at like age eight
Speaker 1: years old, she was touring around and as we'll see,
Speaker 1: you know, contortionism is is mainly a sport of the young.
Speaker 1: You can age out of it like ballet in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases. But she was a kid doing it
Speaker 1: and she performed all over Great Britain and then eventually
Speaker 1: traveled to the US in eighteen ninety one. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons we mentioned hers because she was very
Speaker 1: famously one of the early people that Thomas Edison filmed
Speaker 1: with his kinetoscope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is pretty cool. I mean, you have to
Speaker 2: be pretty famous in and of yourself to do that,
Speaker 2: but to be memorialized in one of the earliest film
Speaker 2: strips is definitely going to help your fame later on
Speaker 2: in history. As a contortionist, I would think, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: So you want to take a little bit of a
Speaker 2: break and come back and talk about the epicenter ground
Speaker 2: zero of contortionism.
Speaker 1: M where could that be?
Speaker 2: Okay, So we're back and I talked about the epicenter
Speaker 2: of contortions and I'm just gonna reveal it now. It's Mongolia, everybody.
Speaker 1: That's right. It is has long been that sort of epicenter.
Speaker 1: It still is that epicenter. And we're going to tell
Speaker 1: you why. Because one of the reasons it started as
Speaker 1: a big deal there is, or at least we think
Speaker 1: that it, you know, had to do with sort of
Speaker 1: meditative practices and also like a dance, a Buddhist dance
Speaker 1: known as the somme, which is you know, also you know,
Speaker 1: it's very religious, obviously tied to Buddhism, but has to
Speaker 1: do with, you know, training your body and mind to
Speaker 1: work together to do incredible things.
Speaker 2: I also saw that has secret meaning meanings that you
Speaker 2: have to be a very high, highly advanced Buddhist monk
Speaker 2: to you basically be let in on, which is pretty neat.
Speaker 1: Oh cool.
Speaker 2: There's also a folk dance in Mongolia that's indigenous to
Speaker 2: Mongolia from what I understand b LG b I y
Speaker 2: e l G e E. And as far as folk
Speaker 2: dances go, I'm not usually a huge fan of folk dance,
Speaker 2: Like I wouldn't go to a community center to see
Speaker 2: a folk dance performance, but this is a pretty cool
Speaker 2: folk dance to just check out on video, in part
Speaker 2: because of the movements, which include contortionism, including full back
Speaker 2: bends to where the dancer's back is like flat on
Speaker 2: the ground while they're on their knees, but also just
Speaker 2: the incredibly colorful costumes that they wear too. It's really neat.
Speaker 1: What is a folk dance performance? Like, what are you avoiding?
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like when when people from different cultures
Speaker 2: perform traditional dances. Oh okay, it's a folk dance. I
Speaker 2: got you, Okay, I mean, what do you think like
Speaker 2: square dancing? I guess probably a type of float dance. Yeah. No,
Speaker 2: it's just you know, any kind of cultural dancing. For
Speaker 2: some reason, it's never floated my boat.
Speaker 1: But I gotcha.
Speaker 2: I'm not yucking anyone's yum because I couldn't do a
Speaker 2: single step of any folk dance. And I'm usually impressed
Speaker 2: with anybody who can dance in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. So twelfth century is when it starts
Speaker 1: to become a really sort of mainstream thing in Mongolian culture,
Speaker 1: basically at you know, festival's court appearances obviously. And then
Speaker 1: seventeenth century is when there was a Buddhist leader named
Speaker 1: Ondoor Gigeen's and Zavar who inspired these contortionists with these
Speaker 1: I guess there were was it like just art sculptures
Speaker 1: basically the people like in Ul sorts of kind of
Speaker 1: contorted positions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was like do that position, I dare you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he would make sculptures of him. Yeah, that was yeah.
Speaker 2: And the guy was so I guess popular that like
Speaker 2: he actually advanced contortionism by pushing them to their limits.
Speaker 2: I guess as a sculptor. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean you can bend clay in ways you can't
Speaker 1: bend the body.
Speaker 2: That's right. That's why I can bend it like gumby man.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: So Mongolia is and I thought this was pretty interesting too.
Speaker 2: There's like contortionism evolving in different places around the world,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of simultaneously, but Mongolia basically took the mantle.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why is because they became
Speaker 2: a Soviet state in the forties and as part of
Speaker 2: the USSR, the government bankrolled the Mongolian State Circus, which
Speaker 2: became world renowned traveled the world. That's one of the
Speaker 2: ways it became world renowned. But also because they were
Speaker 2: really really good and one of the center pieces of
Speaker 2: the Mongolian State Circus was contortionism, and from that it
Speaker 2: grew in popularity very very quickly because there's a lot
Speaker 2: of funding for it, a lot of publicity for it.
Speaker 2: But that created a mushrooming of contortionist schools in Mongolia,
Speaker 2: some of which are still around today.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure. The first one and the first
Speaker 1: sort of you know, superstar of that circus was a
Speaker 1: contortions name Sendayosh and that was the first school. But
Speaker 1: like you said, there's a lot of them still there.
Speaker 1: And it's not just like, hey, if you're from Mongolia
Speaker 1: and you're a young girl and your parents think you're
Speaker 1: like pretty flexible early on, they may send you to
Speaker 1: this like that certainly happens, but people from all over
Speaker 1: the world, like gymnasts, will go and train. Like anyone
Speaker 1: who wants to sort of increase your flexibility in an
Speaker 1: extreme way, there's no better place in the world to
Speaker 1: go than contortionist school in Mongolia.
Speaker 2: No, they know what they're they're doing.
Speaker 1: In other words, yeah, for sure, their circus isn't nearly
Speaker 1: as big ever since they peeled away from the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union in the early nineties, but it's still like a
Speaker 1: big kind of rich tradition in that country.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, big time. Right now. The biggest school, I
Speaker 2: think the oldest school is owned by a former sumo wrestler,
Speaker 2: and he is Mongolia's most famous, most revered sumo wrestler.
Speaker 2: He got out of the sumo game and bought the
Speaker 2: school for contortionism. The thing is, it's kind of in
Speaker 2: this decline, so much so that Mongolia has been trying
Speaker 2: to get UNESCO heritage protection for Mongolian contortionism because it's
Speaker 2: just not quite as widespread, even though there's more schools
Speaker 2: than ever, it's just become much more diluted. I think
Speaker 2: there's a lower barrier to entry for being like say
Speaker 2: a teacher or a school owner or something like that.
Speaker 2: And then simultaneous to that, a lot of Mongolian contortionist
Speaker 2: trainers are going abroad and so they're taking it with them.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, someone in say like England
Speaker 2: who sees an English contor, they don't are They're not
Speaker 2: regarding the idea that that person was trained by a
Speaker 2: Mongolian contortionist teacher. They are looking at the English contortionists,
Speaker 2: and so in that way, it's becoming less and less
Speaker 2: identified with Mongolia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's kind of a I was kind of
Speaker 1: disappointed that UNESCO turned them down. They try to get
Speaker 1: you know, it added as a list of intangible heritage,
Speaker 1: which it seems very clear that that's the case, but
Speaker 1: they rejected the proposal. This was in twenty eleven, and
Speaker 1: they said that advocates didn't make a strong enough case
Speaker 1: for its significance in Mongolian culture and society, which just
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not on that board obviously, but
Speaker 1: it seems pretty obvious to me as an outsider that
Speaker 1: it's like super tied to Mongolian culture.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, you will be heartened that the Mongolian folk
Speaker 2: dance Bilg is protected under UNESCO heritage.
Speaker 1: I'll just take it one step further UNESCO.
Speaker 2: That's right. One is also, what's the big deal? I
Speaker 2: don't know. I was trying to think about that. I'm
Speaker 2: sure that they have a kind of mentality that's like
Speaker 2: we don't want to open the floodgates or else, you know.
Speaker 2: But I mean, there's plenty of stuff that I'm sure
Speaker 2: deserves protecting that they're turning down. And you know what,
Speaker 2: I'd be interested to know about that. I'm going to
Speaker 2: look into that and we'll do short stuff on all
Speaker 2: the stuff you neesco's turned down for heritage protection.
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to learn about the mechanics, now
Speaker 1: is your time to listen closely. This is the point
Speaker 1: where you were probably talking about maybe looking up pictures
Speaker 1: and stuff. But you know, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have seen a lot of this stuff. If you've
Speaker 1: ever watched when we were kids, that's incredible or America's
Speaker 1: got talent these days, they'll have acts like this or
Speaker 1: certainly if you've ever been to like Circsole or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but backbending, there's like kind of six main sort of
Speaker 1: overall things you can learn, and then within that you
Speaker 1: can do all sorts of stuff to incorporate little side
Speaker 1: tricks and then you know mix these together for you know,
Speaker 1: performative purposes. But back bending, that's sort of the classic
Speaker 1: place that you start the classic back bend. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things is the chest stand, and essentially
Speaker 2: it's where you're on your chest. See, so I'm gonna
Speaker 2: like everybody get in this position. I'm gonna walk you
Speaker 2: through it. You're on your chest flat I guess it's
Speaker 2: prone on the floor, and you bend yourself at the
Speaker 2: waist and you bring your hips back back, back, back back,
Speaker 2: and then you have your feet on either side of
Speaker 2: your head. You can do this everybody just hanging there.
Speaker 2: And then your feet are fat flat on the floor
Speaker 2: on either side of your head. Remember you're still on
Speaker 2: your chest, but now your legs are completely over you
Speaker 2: and your feet are on either side of your head,
Speaker 2: flat on the floor. That's the chest stand. That's the
Speaker 2: most basic one. Anybody can basically do that just jumping
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 1: Well, my only note with that description is when you
Speaker 1: said your waist went back back back, Technically I think
Speaker 1: your waist is going forward forward, forward, So that might
Speaker 1: have confused people.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I think maybe that's why I was like,
Speaker 2: this is this is hard to describe because I knew
Speaker 2: I was going to screw it up just royally.
Speaker 1: Well, you've also got the front bend. If someone has
Speaker 1: got a little humor to their performance, you're probably going
Speaker 1: to use a front bend because that is when you're
Speaker 1: sort of doing the opposite in which you fold your
Speaker 1: head and chest all the way between your legs to
Speaker 1: where you're sort of looking at your own butt. So
Speaker 1: obviously insert joke right there.
Speaker 2: Yes, these are the ones that really get to me,
Speaker 2: Like the there's like some sort of preternatural like zap
Speaker 2: that contortionist poses can do to you, or to me
Speaker 2: at least, and the like the human pretzel one or
Speaker 2: the human knot. Those are the ones that they just
Speaker 2: zap me. It's a very thrilling way. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, I like there's some part of my lizard
Speaker 2: brain that like that ain't right. Body's not supposed to
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we go to Circula every year when
Speaker 1: it comes to Atlanta in the fall. That's kind of
Speaker 1: one of our little family traditions, and there's always some
Speaker 1: kind of contortionists, I feel like. But yeah, this last one,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember which one it was called, but
Speaker 1: they had a guy and it was he was the
Speaker 1: best I had ever seen. It was. I wasn't quite
Speaker 1: sure what I was watching it at certain points where
Speaker 1: you can't even tell which arm was which or you know,
Speaker 1: it was definitely one of those brain breaking sort of performances.
Speaker 1: It was incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, those are. I think one of the
Speaker 2: other things too that I've noted, especially with Search to
Speaker 2: Sola performances, is it's not just like a hey, look
Speaker 2: I'm in this pose and I'm holding this pose and
Speaker 2: now I'm just going to get into the next post.
Speaker 2: Like the transition from one post to another is incredibly important,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of what makes it like a very
Speaker 2: ballet like performance, you know. I think that's just that
Speaker 2: makes the whole thing like even more amazing, but at
Speaker 2: the same time time more exapts me less than just
Speaker 2: like a here's a pose. Check it out. Let. It
Speaker 2: really sink in what I'm doing right now. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like I like it when it's the way that you
Speaker 2: describe it where you can't even tell what's what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think definitely the next part balancing
Speaker 1: is when that comes into play. That's I think a
Speaker 1: lot of like the feats of strength combined with you know,
Speaker 1: I said, they kind of mix things up in circuses,
Speaker 1: and the feats of strength is definitely when balancing comes
Speaker 1: in because that's when you're contorted in a pose and
Speaker 1: maybe you're like lifting yourself off the ground in a
Speaker 1: little ball that you can't even figure out with just
Speaker 1: like your fingertips or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Very famous. One of these is the Marinelli bend,
Speaker 2: and that is essentially kind of like it's like a
Speaker 2: chest stand. It's very similar to a chest stand, except
Speaker 2: that rather than having your weight on your chest, you
Speaker 2: have all of the weight in your entire body on
Speaker 2: your teeth and you're probably biting a pole and that's
Speaker 2: what's holding you up while you're doing your chest stay
Speaker 2: in the middle of the air. It's quite impressive and
Speaker 2: I looked it up. There is a Mongolian contortionist named
Speaker 2: sastral Ordenablig and she holds the record for holding a
Speaker 2: Marinelli bend for four minutes and seventeen seconds.
Speaker 1: That's a long time with her teeth. Yeah, dislocation, that's
Speaker 1: another one that probably might trigger some folks. That is
Speaker 1: kind of one of those deals where it looks like
Speaker 1: you're popping your shoulder or your arm out of joint
Speaker 1: or something like that to achieve the sort of performative effect.
Speaker 1: The shoulder passed through with sort of a classic move.
Speaker 1: That's where you hold a stick with both hands and
Speaker 1: you move the stick all the way, you know, in
Speaker 1: front of your body and then over your head into
Speaker 1: your back, but you're not changing your grip, so your
Speaker 1: arms are twisting and contorting in ways that look like
Speaker 1: they've been dislocated.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The splits too. I always thinking the splits is
Speaker 2: kind of like a cheer Yeah, it's classic. It's like
Speaker 2: a cheerleader thing, or you know your friend in the
Speaker 2: neighborhood can do it. Have you ever done a split?
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not splitty. I mean I used to be
Speaker 1: very flexible, like I could put my ankle, like my
Speaker 1: foot behind my head.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: When I was young and stuff like that, and when
Speaker 1: I was one come close now in Ruby the other
Speaker 1: day was just laughing at me because I was actually
Speaker 1: fairly close.
Speaker 2: But I was never a splitter, all right, fair enough,
Speaker 2: I wasn't either. But one of the basic things that
Speaker 2: you have to learn is the splits, because so many
Speaker 2: of the other kind of movements and poses are based
Speaker 2: on being able to do a split. It's a basic one.
Speaker 2: But if you really want to be impressed, go look
Speaker 2: up over splits, which is doing a split. But say
Speaker 2: one foot is on a chair in front of you
Speaker 2: and the other foot is on a chair behind you,
Speaker 2: and you're a foot or so off of the ground,
Speaker 2: almost making a just the beginnings of a U with
Speaker 2: your legs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that standing split where you're on one
Speaker 1: leg and you have reached behind you and grabbed that
Speaker 1: foot and brought it all the way over. That's always
Speaker 1: because that's also incorporates balance. Obviously.
Speaker 2: I don't remember who did that, but one of the
Speaker 2: I think that one of the American skaters in the
Speaker 2: Winter Olympics did that while they were doing like a spin.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but it was like perfectly ninety degrees perpendicular
Speaker 2: to the ice. It was really amazing.
Speaker 1: Well you got to are you get that half point deduction.
Speaker 2: And then twisting too. This kind of twisting is not
Speaker 2: necessarily in and of itself a pose, although it will
Speaker 2: be impressive, but it's kind of like a fundamental part
Speaker 2: of a bunch of other poses, right where if you're
Speaker 2: twisting yourself around, or if you're moving yourself so that
Speaker 2: you can't tell what arm is, what you're twisting to
Speaker 2: some degree. And what's really fascinating to me about this
Speaker 2: is that each individual vertebra is rotating, and it's rotating
Speaker 2: to a degree that the average person can't do obviously,
Speaker 2: but just the idea of your spine, I would think
Speaker 2: of it as moving in one thing. But it's just
Speaker 2: like think, think, think, think, think. Each vertebra is moving itself.
Speaker 2: I think that's an amazing skill.
Speaker 1: Just that.
Speaker 2: Like if somebody walked up to me and said I
Speaker 2: can twist all of my individual vertebra, can you? I
Speaker 2: would say I don't think I can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I wouldn't know if I am exactly.
Speaker 2: I know somebody's getting right in and be like, don't
Speaker 2: be stupid, Josh. Everyone's vertebra twist individually I get that.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm trying to get across that I'm impressed
Speaker 2: by contortionists. Okay, for sure.
Speaker 1: Should we take another break?
Speaker 2: I think we should.
Speaker 1: All right, We're going to come back and talk about
Speaker 1: sort of the dark side of this right after this.
Speaker 3: Stop stop stop, all right, I promise talk of the
Speaker 3: talk of the dark side, and that is to say
Speaker 3: there are.
Speaker 1: Some some syndromes and some disorders that could lend itself
Speaker 1: to this. Uh So, I guess that's the dark side.
Speaker 1: The first thing we should clear up is that double
Speaker 1: jointed is not a thing. Uh. I know, that's something
Speaker 1: that everyone kind of learned on the playground, like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm double jointed. But what people or people don't have
Speaker 1: extra joints. What people are really talking about there is
Speaker 1: what's called hypermobility. Yeah, and that is something that obviously
Speaker 1: if you are hyper mobile, then you are have a
Speaker 1: pretty good leg up to being a contortionist. And they
Speaker 1: would diagnose that or I guess, rather rate your high
Speaker 1: mobility on what's called the Baiton scale, and nine is
Speaker 1: the highest on that scale. And if you're a contortionist,
Speaker 1: you're probably a nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But also aren't you a jerk if you make
Speaker 2: a scale and you just leave it at nine rather
Speaker 2: than ten.
Speaker 1: I just I feel like there had to be a
Speaker 1: reason for that, but I didn't ask.
Speaker 2: Well, you at a point for each thing that somebody
Speaker 2: can do. So it's things like can you touch your
Speaker 2: thumb to your forearm? And I can do that very easily.
Speaker 2: I'm doing now over and over again. But you want
Speaker 2: to be able to do that with each hand. There's
Speaker 2: like can you does your nee go back a certain
Speaker 2: degree behind itself. There's just a bunch of different ones,
Speaker 2: and you add one point for each limb that can
Speaker 2: do that, and I guess it just adds up to nine.
Speaker 2: He wasn't being a jerk. I was just kidding.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I mentioned early on that genetics could play
Speaker 1: a part, and that's certainly true. You know, if your
Speaker 1: parents were controls or your mom is a contortionist, you
Speaker 1: may be born more flexible, you may be born with hypermobility.
Speaker 1: But sometimes it does correlate, like I said, with the
Speaker 1: genetic conditions. The first one is eds Ler's dan Low syndrome.
Speaker 1: There's really thirteen of those syndromes. So it means that
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a contortionist. You may have one
Speaker 1: of these, not always, but it's possible. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's sometimes called circosolate disease, and there are,
Speaker 2: like you said, thirteen of them. They because the one
Speaker 2: thing they have in common is that they affect your
Speaker 2: connective tissue. So you can have one that makes you
Speaker 2: very hyper mobile, very extendable. Hyper extendable because the connective
Speaker 2: tissue in your joints is not as say, stiff as
Speaker 2: somebody else's, so you can go way beyond the normal
Speaker 2: range of motion. But then there's also other ones that
Speaker 2: keep you from being able to control your own breathing,
Speaker 2: or your teeth fall out of your head because your
Speaker 2: gums are not kind of active enough to hold them
Speaker 2: in there. So there's a whole bunch of different ways
Speaker 2: that this can affect you. It just happens that a
Speaker 2: couple of the forms of EDS, or a couple of
Speaker 2: the symptoms of some types of EDS make you much
Speaker 2: more hyper mobile and hyper extensive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Sometimes if you are hyper mobile and
Speaker 1: you have the EDS, and that's one of I guess
Speaker 1: sort of the pluses. It can have some harmful traits,
Speaker 1: like although it can also help with the skin hyper
Speaker 1: extensibility like having really stretchy skin, or maybe joint instability
Speaker 1: is obviously a bad one because that can lead to
Speaker 1: injury and dislocations and stuff like that. But we should
Speaker 1: point out that there doesn't seem to be any like
Speaker 1: weird high rate of injury for people who are involved
Speaker 1: in contortionism, and definitely not does it mean like you're
Speaker 1: going to die younger. That's sort of a old wives
Speaker 1: tale that contortionists die young, But that may have to
Speaker 1: do with the fact that it could be go along
Speaker 1: with some of these syndromes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also wonder if it has to do with
Speaker 2: just going out of the public eye at a very
Speaker 2: young age, because in Mongoli, I think the average career
Speaker 2: of a contortionist goes from about age six to age thirteen.
Speaker 2: So I wonder if that just kind of helped develop
Speaker 2: that old wives tale over the years.
Speaker 1: Oh, like people think they died and just aged out exactly.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting.
Speaker 2: One of the things that was always kind of obvious
Speaker 2: to me is that women are more flexible than men
Speaker 2: on the whole. There are actually distinct physiological reasons for this,
Speaker 2: one of which I mean body structure obviously, but hormones
Speaker 2: apparently affect your connective tissue and it's I guess strength
Speaker 2: or degree of flexibility. And so when women take progestin
Speaker 2: progestin only birth control pills, they're more hyper mobile than
Speaker 2: when they aren't on birth control pills. Isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 1: Yeah? For sure. And then you know, jumping back to
Speaker 1: the syndromes, the second one is something called marphan syndrome,
Speaker 1: which I feel like we've talked about at some point.
Speaker 1: I know I've heard of it. But that's another genetic
Speaker 1: condition that makes that connective tissue like super flexible. Right
Speaker 1: in this case, it's about sort of like EDS, it's
Speaker 1: about one in four thousand each of them are. And
Speaker 1: you know this one you can cause shortness of breath,
Speaker 1: heart palpitations, ie pain sometimes, and you know those are
Speaker 1: the two main ones. But outside of this, there's an
Speaker 1: umbrella term called hypermobility spectrum disorder that kind of covers,
Speaker 1: you know, other things that lend itself to extreme flexibility.
Speaker 2: Yes, and like like you said, you do have advantages
Speaker 2: to this. So if you're a woman on a high
Speaker 2: level of hormones who has Marphin syndrome and maybe a
Speaker 2: high hypermobility spectrum disorder. You are probably a like what
Speaker 2: I thought all contortions were, essentially a born contortionist. There's
Speaker 2: challenges for all the advantages that offers, and then obviously
Speaker 2: the drawbacks in other ways that it affects your health.
Speaker 2: But as far as contortionism goes, it has just a
Speaker 2: suite of advantages for you. But there's also like drawbacks
Speaker 2: in that, like you will have to probably do more
Speaker 2: strength training than the average person because again your connective
Speaker 2: tissue is weaker than other people's, which makes you easier
Speaker 2: to flex or more flexible, and then also you might
Speaker 2: be more prone to injury, like you were saying, because
Speaker 2: you can dislocate way easier than other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they've you know, they've done studies and it's
Speaker 1: they haven't found it any different than any other sort
Speaker 1: of you know, professional athleticism. They've even put people in
Speaker 1: the Wonder Machine and have been contort in an MRI
Speaker 1: and didn't see anything odd going on. So they basically said,
Speaker 1: it's all good, keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Nothing odd going on here. Yeah, So if you wanted
Speaker 2: to get in the contorting chuck, where would you start?
Speaker 2: That's the question.
Speaker 1: I put to you, now, let's start stretching immediately.
Speaker 2: I think I think that's a good, good plan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you should probably start as a small kid,
Speaker 1: like some people get into this as adults, but much much,
Speaker 1: much more often, like I would say ninety five percent
Speaker 1: of the time, you're starting out as a kid because
Speaker 1: you have a lot more you know, you're flexible as
Speaker 1: a kid, you got more collagen fibers going on, your
Speaker 1: muscles and joints don't have as much calcium at that point.
Speaker 2: So kids are just bendy, they are super bendy. You
Speaker 2: also want to do a lot of strengths training too,
Speaker 2: and you're gonna, like, if you want to be an
Speaker 2: actual professional contortionist, you're basically gonna need to dedicate your
Speaker 2: life to it. You have to train every day for
Speaker 2: hours and hours a day. And that whole stretching thing
Speaker 2: is not just like what you do to warm up.
Speaker 2: There's it's actually part of your training is to stretch
Speaker 2: because there's a really interesting reflex called the myotatic reflex,
Speaker 2: the myostatic but essentially, when you flex a muscle or
Speaker 2: when you press on a muscle, the reflex is that
Speaker 2: your muscle automatically contracts. It's how your body keeps you
Speaker 2: from falling down. Essentially, is this automatic reflex. The problem
Speaker 2: is that keeps your muscles from expanding or stretching further.
Speaker 2: So if you just stretch like normal, like if you
Speaker 2: do a hamstring stretch, your muscles are no longer than
Speaker 2: they were before you did that hamstring stretch. It feels
Speaker 2: better and they're looser, but they're not actually longer, which
Speaker 2: is really important in contortionism. So they've figured out that
Speaker 2: there are certain ways that you can do stretching. They're
Speaker 2: called proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation stretches, and essentially this is how
Speaker 2: you train your body to actually elongate the muscle fibers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you are well on your way at that point.
Speaker 1: You obviously got to be drinking plenty of water too,
Speaker 1: because that's going to keep that spinal support, keep those
Speaker 1: disks nice and cushiony, and that's just a good Obviously,
Speaker 1: when they tell you to drink water every day, there's
Speaker 1: lots of reasons for that, but that's one of them.
Speaker 1: Just as a regular old person walking around not twisting
Speaker 1: themselves into shapes, and you know, they have found that
Speaker 1: it gets Obviously it gets better with time. Like when
Speaker 1: you start training, your muscles aren't going to change that
Speaker 1: much in the first few weeks, but your neurons actually
Speaker 1: shipped in their behavior, and your pain tolerance is going
Speaker 1: to increase, and your range of motion is going to extend.
Speaker 1: And again this is just you know, for contortionism, but
Speaker 1: flexibility and stretching is kind of one of the keys
Speaker 1: to aging. Well, you know, so this advice is for
Speaker 1: a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I was looking up a lot of this
Speaker 2: stuff for contortionism, I ran into tons of videos that
Speaker 2: were just like for that, like just to become a
Speaker 2: more flexible average person. It is a super important agreed. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: so if you want to go see a contortionist, there
Speaker 2: are big is on the web, but it's much much
Speaker 2: different to see it in person. So you know, yeah, maybe,
Speaker 2: like you said, make an annual pilgrimage to sirch to
Speaker 2: so lay like your family. Chuck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Fourth, I think it's fun.
Speaker 2: Well, since Chuck said he thinks it's fun, everybody, that
Speaker 2: means it's time for listener.
Speaker 1: May guys are gonna call this no corrections, just compliments.
Speaker 1: Nice That was in the subject line, so I'm always
Speaker 1: prone to read one of those. It was a nudge
Speaker 1: listening to Jane Stanford episode was a nudge to finally
Speaker 1: write in and thank you guys for what you do.
Speaker 1: And so what Sarah has done here was wrote a
Speaker 1: top sort of a stuff you should know top ten,
Speaker 1: which means it's four things long, five things long, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. No,
Speaker 1: there's ten, but maybe i'll read like six of them
Speaker 1: in truth you shouldow style. Yeah, so here we go
Speaker 1: with number ten. Thank you for your friendly banter at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the episode. Number nine. Thank you for
Speaker 1: the witty episode names. Number eight. We always try to
Speaker 1: make the episode titles.
Speaker 2: Kind of fun most of the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes it's straightforward. You can't, you know, mock something like,
Speaker 1: oh I don't know anything serious or sad. Number eight.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the movie book cocktail, barbecue rice recipe
Speaker 1: recommendations that you share, sometimes topics specific and sometimes not.
Speaker 1: Number seven. Thank you for your obvious desire to not
Speaker 1: show just kindness to different groups of people, but or
Speaker 1: be politically correct, but to actually be kind people. All right,
Speaker 1: that's nice. Yeah. Number six, Thank you for your openness
Speaker 1: about your own lives, pets, and relationships, which makes us
Speaker 1: feel like we can relate to you. It's a good one,
Speaker 1: yeah for sure. Number five, Thank you for being surprisingly
Speaker 1: informative on unique topics, but also admitting that some of
Speaker 1: them are not as tantalizing parentheses. I'm looking at you,
Speaker 1: hard sciences, That's what Sarah said. And can we all
Speaker 1: admit that the true crime and holiday extravagances are the best,
Speaker 1: so serious into those. Number four, Thank you for coordinating
Speaker 1: the intro outro jingle to the overall style of the episode.
Speaker 1: We need to thank one person in another whole set
Speaker 1: of people for that. Obviously, Jerry is the one who's
Speaker 1: picking those out. Sure, so she's doing the coordination, but
Speaker 1: stuff you should know listeners of the people who perform
Speaker 1: and those to begin with and recording.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and Dave and Ben pick them out to
Speaker 2: Jerry's the all time goat. Yeah for sure, she's the
Speaker 2: all time greatest of all time.
Speaker 1: That's right. Number three, Thank you for the mispronunciations and
Speaker 1: the accents, especially in the Halloween episodes. Sarah really gets
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do here. Number two, Thank you
Speaker 1: for creating something we can usually safely listen to with
Speaker 1: kids in the car and still be entertained, or just
Speaker 1: have on in the background so we feel surrounded by friends.
Speaker 1: Number one, thanks to you both for coming to Madison,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin in April. Stay second row seats, so, Sarah, I
Speaker 1: guess we'll be seeing you on the second row there.
Speaker 1: And if you haven't got tickets for Madison yet or
Speaker 1: Akron or Chicago, there are still tickets available.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's stuff youshould Know dot com on the tour button.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: That was really nice, Sarah. That was a great email.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you selected that one. Chuck. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 2: very much for all that, Sarah, and thanks for listening
Speaker 2: as much as you obviously do. And if you want
Speaker 2: to be like Sarah and send us a clever, cool
Speaker 2: neat email, we love those. You can send it off
Speaker 2: to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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