Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hang, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry
Speaker 1: over there. Uh, and this is Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: the podcast. How's going It's fine, great. How's it going
Speaker 1: with you? Good? Jerry's distracting me a little bit because
Speaker 1: all I see in my peripheral vision is her practicing
Speaker 1: her new hula fire dance routine. It's pretty dangerous. It's dangerous,
Speaker 1: but it's um it's interesting to see out of the
Speaker 1: corner of one's eye. Performance art, performance hula art. Can
Speaker 1: you hula hoop? I cannot, sir, I'm too self conscious
Speaker 1: too to even try it. Yeah, it's it's a grown man,
Speaker 1: forty four year old man hula hooping. Plus when I
Speaker 1: do it, like as I rotate my hips and make
Speaker 1: the same ro tap my hips, Yeah, it makes the
Speaker 1: sound of like almost congealed jello just slopping around in
Speaker 1: the ball. You know what I mean. I don't want
Speaker 1: to make that sound. Yeah, but um, I did see
Speaker 1: at a the East Atlanta Strut Festivals, one of Atlanta's
Speaker 1: many great neighborhood festivals. I believe the Strut to Me
Speaker 1: is known for having the better music of most of
Speaker 1: the festivals. And our buddy Craig Johnson's band played Space Knife,
Speaker 1: not space Knife O. This one was I can't remember
Speaker 1: the name of this band, but that band is no
Speaker 1: longer now he's got a new band. Even that guy
Speaker 1: is always coming up with new stuff. You could never
Speaker 1: pay him down too good. You should check out Space
Speaker 1: Knife though. People on the web you can find it.
Speaker 1: It's good. It was in our TV show too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's his alter ego. But anyway, Freg's band was playing
Speaker 1: and this I was pretty hula naive hoop naive at
Speaker 1: this point. And a few years ago, and um, there
Speaker 1: was this lady doing uh hula routine to his band
Speaker 1: playing and I videoed it. It was so awesome. So
Speaker 1: she was hoop dancing hoop dancing. Yeah, like the neck,
Speaker 1: the arms, the legs, moving around with it like supremely
Speaker 1: talented hooper. Yeah. If you go onto the web and
Speaker 1: and type in hoop dancing, it's gonna bring up some
Speaker 1: pretty impressive videos. Yeah, and it's quite a workout. I
Speaker 1: could tell. We'll get to that. But just watching her
Speaker 1: I got tired, and so I drank another beer and
Speaker 1: just listen to music. Yeah, and pretended you were hula
Speaker 1: hooping in your head. Yeah, you're like, I'm so good
Speaker 1: at this in my head. But I was like, man,
Speaker 1: that's a thing. Again. I had no idea, but it's
Speaker 1: a big thing, ya, hula hooping. Yeah, but it's been
Speaker 1: around for a while, Yes, it has. For example, Chuck,
Speaker 1: did you know, As Robert points out, Robert Lamb wrote
Speaker 1: this article from Stuff to Blow your Mind. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he says that the hula hoop has been around in
Speaker 1: some form or fashion since before most of the world's religions. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's really saying something. That is saying something. So let's
Speaker 1: get in the way back machine. Oh we're play back time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go back to one thousand b C. My friend,
Speaker 1: we're in Egypt and their little children, Egyptian children with
Speaker 1: dried up grape vines they've made into hoops playing with them,
Speaker 1: and there's some Egyptian news like get off of my
Speaker 1: patch of sand kids, Yeah, you know, instead of a lawn. Sure,
Speaker 1: I get it. That was good. That was all right. Um,
Speaker 1: so they there, they no doubt used them in similar
Speaker 1: ways that we did today, But they what one thing
Speaker 1: they did, which was a big sporting thing to do
Speaker 1: for a long time, which I don't get personally. The
Speaker 1: fun value that is is using a stick to push
Speaker 1: a hula hoop to the road. I think the fun
Speaker 1: and it is that the hula hoop as it's traveling
Speaker 1: down the road, which does seem to be the oldest
Speaker 1: use of the hoop as playtime activity, Right, it wants
Speaker 1: to fall, it wants to follow over, right, So if
Speaker 1: you can keep it um going, then there's probably a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of personal satisfaction that you can carry all
Speaker 1: the way to bedtime with and maybe have good dreams
Speaker 1: because of Yeah, I don't even see if you had
Speaker 1: a plastic polyethylene hula hoop, a modern hoop, I don't
Speaker 1: see how a stick like how you would even push it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you would want a stick with maybe um like a fork, No,
Speaker 1: probably something like a stick with a big wad of
Speaker 1: chewed bubble gum on it to like just have some
Speaker 1: sort of point of contact. Because, as we'll see when
Speaker 1: we talk about hula hoop physics, friction plays a big
Speaker 1: part in making hula hoops. Hula hoop, Yes, around the
Speaker 1: waist that is well in any in this case as well,
Speaker 1: and the stick makes contact with the hoop, you're using
Speaker 1: friction to push it along. Good point. So I see
Speaker 1: your point. Like, if you're going to use a stick
Speaker 1: on a like a plastic hula, who it's gonna slide
Speaker 1: off or it's gonna want to Maybe it scares me.
Speaker 1: That's why I think it's dumb. Maybe I would be
Speaker 1: made a love by the hoop maybe at first, but chuck,
Speaker 1: you would have to hang in there and stick with it,
Speaker 1: and um, pretty soon you'd be rolling hoops like an
Speaker 1: Egyptian kid. Yeah, like an ancient Egyptian child. Hoop rolling
Speaker 1: was a big deal throughout ancient Greece as well and Rome. Um,
Speaker 1: they decorated them with bells and things and toys. Uh,
Speaker 1: fifth century BC. There's you ever heard of ganny Mede? Ganymede.
Speaker 1: He was a handsome hero, Oh he was. He supposedly
Speaker 1: there's an old fifth century BC urn of him, um
Speaker 1: where he's holding a rooster that was apparently a gift
Speaker 1: from Zeus and a whop hula whop, clearly hula hoop
Speaker 1: and apparently this discovery Um, I'm not sure why it's
Speaker 1: called the Berlin Painter urn, but it is again no idea.
Speaker 1: But um apparently they said, well, I wonder if hoops
Speaker 1: played a role in the earliest Olympics. And I guess
Speaker 1: they've discredited that idea now, but for a while because
Speaker 1: of this urn, this picture of ganey Mead with a
Speaker 1: hoop um, they wondered, was it a sport? Yeah, an
Speaker 1: Olympic sport. But the Greeks supposedly did use hoops for
Speaker 1: physical fitness as like a physical activity, in very much
Speaker 1: the same way it's become popular today. I would imagine
Speaker 1: a hulah an Olympic hula hooper would be sort of
Speaker 1: like the you know, the what was the sport the
Speaker 1: curler of today? Are you kind of like an ancient Greece, Like, hey,
Speaker 1: what do you throw the hammer? What do you do?
Speaker 1: I'm a hula hooper, although I would guess would probably
Speaker 1: be more akin to the hula hoopers of today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hooper roller is what the sport would have been.
Speaker 1: That would be more like curling, right, hula hooping. That's tough, man,
Speaker 1: it is tough. Uh. What else? The ancient Briton's um
Speaker 1: they had a game called a battle game called kill
Speaker 1: the Hoop. Yeah, I like this one when they would
Speaker 1: roll the hoop and throw try to throw a spear
Speaker 1: through it. Pretty neat and dangerous. Uh. And apparently they
Speaker 1: also used it and the hula method and it would
Speaker 1: people get injured. Yeah, it's there was a fifteen or
Speaker 1: fifteenth century those are the four hundreds of the fourteenth
Speaker 1: century century hula hoop craze in Britain in that bizarre
Speaker 1: that is weird, and yeah, people were getting injured. There
Speaker 1: was a proclamation by the early physicians. They would pull
Speaker 1: up there like crows, mask their plague mass just long
Speaker 1: enough to be like stay away from hula hoops, steer
Speaker 1: clear of those things. Yeah, the warning was hoops kill
Speaker 1: was I guess what was posted on the church door.
Speaker 1: And this is like in addition to being in the
Speaker 1: way of a spear that was being thrown at a
Speaker 1: rolling hoop, like this is just from hula hooping. I
Speaker 1: would stay away from the hoops altogether if I was
Speaker 1: an ancient Briton. Yeah, because really, if you're like an
Speaker 1: ancient Briton, you're going from like zero to sixty as
Speaker 1: far as like physical fitness goes. Once you're hula hooping.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know, just because you're not just sitting
Speaker 1: around eating uh like lamb's brains, Yeah, drinking meat? Uh
Speaker 1: what else? The Native Americans UM have a long culture
Speaker 1: of using the hoop um in New Mexico, the taos
Speaker 1: Uh Pueblo people, UM, they used them in ritual dances,
Speaker 1: private healing ceremonies. And did you look up this chunky thing? No,
Speaker 1: did you find the chunky reference? I did. The kaho
Speaker 1: Kean Native Americans. That was an unusual way to pronounced that.
Speaker 1: How would you say it kaho Kean? I think in
Speaker 1: Native American would be kaho Kean. That's fine. Uh. Near St.
Speaker 1: Louis apparently is where they played this game Chunky, which
Speaker 1: I just had to look it up because a game
Speaker 1: called Chunky with an E y and um. From what
Speaker 1: I saw, it was more of a small stone disc
Speaker 1: than like a hula hoop looking thing, and you would
Speaker 1: it was like kill the hoop though in Britain, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would throw a stick apparently it looked like a
Speaker 1: combination of like um bocci and and kill the hoop.
Speaker 1: Weird because I think they would try and throw the
Speaker 1: spear where the disc would eventually land and the closest
Speaker 1: to the disc one. That's like they're predicting where the
Speaker 1: where the hoop would fall. I guess this makes sense,
Speaker 1: although that's not really like Bocci at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: I get there's a proximity element that's boc s y Um,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I don't know. Like once I
Speaker 1: saw that and saw pictures, I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: even know if they should be in this article because
Speaker 1: it's like a small doughnut that's a hoop of sorts.
Speaker 1: I guess. So it's a stretch if he asked me.
Speaker 1: But it was a big spectator sport, like fifty acre
Speaker 1: stadiums of people would watch this would go to the
Speaker 1: chunky games and so so there was chunky matches in
Speaker 1: Koho kia Uh, and the pueblo used there. I think,
Speaker 1: as you said, they used hoops, and they weren't the
Speaker 1: only ones. UM. There are other tribes from all over
Speaker 1: North America and meso America. I believe UM that used
Speaker 1: hoops for dancing. And apparently it was in nine thirty
Speaker 1: a guy named Tony white Cloud, who was a Yemez
Speaker 1: pueblo down in New Mexico. UM did like a hoop
Speaker 1: dance in public and basically brought it back like it
Speaker 1: had been virtually lost to the ages, at least as
Speaker 1: far as uh the average American was concerned. Most people
Speaker 1: didn't know this was the thing. Luckily, Tony white Clouds
Speaker 1: like check this out did an awesome hoop dance, and
Speaker 1: then by there were national hoop dancing competitions in New Mexico. Um,
Speaker 1: and they're a big deal still to this day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, I think did he kick off the America crazy? No,
Speaker 1: he didn't. He was strictly native American hoop dancing, not
Speaker 1: hula hooping. Okay, so let's go to well, let's take
Speaker 1: a break actually, because this is this is the big
Speaker 1: revelation here. That's right, all right, Josh, We're at that
Speaker 1: point where mainstream America goes hoop crazy. But to get
Speaker 1: to that point, we actually have to go backward again
Speaker 1: in time for a second, back in the way back machine.
Speaker 1: So let's go it running. Let's go to I don't know, Feediar, Tahiti,
Speaker 1: year Poesia. Yeah, and it's the eighteenth century. See all
Speaker 1: these British sailors drink some rum, oh man, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: in addition to the realm we've already drank today. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the British sailors that you see here, um, are
Speaker 1: noticing a hula dance, right, and they're filing it away
Speaker 1: in their mental catalog. And uh now when they reach
Speaker 1: Britton again, why have we been saying it like that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh, they notice that it bears a
Speaker 1: striking resemblance to what people do with the hula hoop.
Speaker 1: You gyrate every time you'd say that, by the way,
Speaker 1: you can't can't not do it. So the term hula
Speaker 1: became applied to the hoop, especially when you used your
Speaker 1: hips to gyrate to rotate them. When you rotate your
Speaker 1: hips with the hoop. Uh, these British sailors ended up
Speaker 1: applying the word hula to it, and it's stuck. That's
Speaker 1: where it came from, was Polynesia, even though they was
Speaker 1: no hoop involved in Polynesia. Correct, Yes, they just kind
Speaker 1: of ganked that word. You think their own purposes is
Speaker 1: all over again? That was a big nineties sternm wouldn't it.
Speaker 1: Let's go watch some X files. Um, what's actually yeah,
Speaker 1: the movies coming out soon night. Oh yeah, they're doing
Speaker 1: another one, aren't they that thing will never die. I
Speaker 1: don't think it should keep doing movies, That's what I say. Um.
Speaker 1: So we mentioned that the Greeks I believe used it
Speaker 1: for physical fitness, right. Uh. I don't think we said that.
Speaker 1: I think I said it, okay, Um the uh, the
Speaker 1: Swiss actually came to adopt it for the same reasons
Speaker 1: too in the nineteenth century. In early twentieth century, Yeah,
Speaker 1: someone named Emil Jacques uh dal Crose and that was great.
Speaker 1: That's tough. UM had a program called Rhythmics, which, of
Speaker 1: course I started singing Sweet Dreams this morning because of that,
Speaker 1: and I've been singing it all day as a result.
Speaker 1: So that was a special training program. It was apparently
Speaker 1: a big deal. It was a big deal. So Rhythmics
Speaker 1: used hoops for UM basically physical fitness, but also interpretive dance,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. It was a combination of It
Speaker 1: was like dance training is is what I can gather,
Speaker 1: and it used hoops. The reason that we're mentioning this
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the American crazes, that it directly
Speaker 1: led to the American craze potentially because yourhythmics spread from
Speaker 1: Switzerland to UM. Great Britain and it was brought in
Speaker 1: as part of like pe class in Australia. And it
Speaker 1: was in Australia that the founders of Whammo were inspired
Speaker 1: to create the modern hula hoop that we think of
Speaker 1: today boom. So it's possible they watched the rhythmics class
Speaker 1: or heard about the rhythmics class and with Australian kids
Speaker 1: and then said, well, this is a clearly something of
Speaker 1: Australian design and let's bring it to the US and
Speaker 1: started crazy. They said, sweet dreams were made of these. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this was Richard Ner and Arthur spud melon mel
Speaker 1: malin melon sounds like m l o n like Thornton melon. Uh.
Speaker 1: Don't tease me with that movie The Great Back to School.
Speaker 1: I saw a bit of that recently and and the
Speaker 1: only thought through my head was like, man, why couldn't
Speaker 1: I have caught this from the beginning? Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: want to see it all that And man, his son
Speaker 1: is pasty. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought you were
Speaker 1: saying that was a line for the movie. It should
Speaker 1: have been. Yeah, his son Keith Gordon, who became a
Speaker 1: great movie director. H really Yeah, the guy from Christine
Speaker 1: and Back to school. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he'd he gave
Speaker 1: up acting and started directing movies and directed uh a
Speaker 1: bunch of good movies. One called Waking the Dead. You
Speaker 1: should see, I thought, Keith Gordon co starred, and they live.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe I'll have to check that. Uh
Speaker 1: So where were we? Oh? Yes, the two founders um
Speaker 1: of WAMMO. They said, you know what, let's take these
Speaker 1: wooden hoops, let's make them out of polyethylene. Let's make
Speaker 1: them and let's charge a dollar ninety eight for them
Speaker 1: and make them all kinds of fun colors. Yeah, and boom,
Speaker 1: the hulahoop craze in night was born. Like it was
Speaker 1: the definition of a flash in the pancrase, a lot
Speaker 1: of money in a very short span of time, like
Speaker 1: a summer. Basically pretty much in Ninemo released it and
Speaker 1: by the end of nineteen fifty eight these things were
Speaker 1: rotting in the warehouse. But in the meantime they sold globally,
Speaker 1: globally from the summer to the end of ninety eight
Speaker 1: a hundred million. Who who Yeah, more than that, I think,
Speaker 1: dam my brain, Yeah, you forgot what we were talking about.
Speaker 1: I almost said, Frisbee, did we do one on the frisbee. No,
Speaker 1: I thought we had, but we haven't have we No,
Speaker 1: we did one on the boomerang, right, just like a frisbee,
Speaker 1: but it's like a dangerous frisbee. Uh. So they sell
Speaker 1: all these hula hoops. They make a ton of money, um, like,
Speaker 1: you know, over fifty million dollars in a short span
Speaker 1: of time, which I'm sure they weren't happy with that
Speaker 1: that it didn't last, but they were also probably like
Speaker 1: an injection of cash like that is great for any business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they moved on to the frisbee and made
Speaker 1: even more money. Yeah. And they did not secure a
Speaker 1: patent for it. I guess it didn't matter in the
Speaker 1: long run. Well, they couldn't because it was so yeah,
Speaker 1: demonstrably an ancient invention that nobody could patent it. Nope,
Speaker 1: but they trademarked it. They did. They trade marked the
Speaker 1: name hula hoop in the United States, which is why,
Speaker 1: uh we still call it hula hoop today. I guess
Speaker 1: it just became we should probably put the title with
Speaker 1: a are in a certain goal for this. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should do that, like Barbie. Uh. It was named
Speaker 1: the number thirty five toy of all time UM by
Speaker 1: Time magazine and they know toys toys, And then from
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight to nineteen eighty one there were national
Speaker 1: hula hoop contests held and the guess in the early
Speaker 1: eighties people were finished with it. There were also like
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of um music, like musical singles released
Speaker 1: called the hula hoop song. Different people recorded different songs
Speaker 1: about hula hooping. Doesn't surprise me. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: crazy big time And you say that they were done
Speaker 1: with it by the eighties, not true. The national competitions
Speaker 1: there was so if you look at hula hooping records,
Speaker 1: the most recent hula hoop records from two thousand nine, Well,
Speaker 1: but was that part of a national competition probably, or
Speaker 1: just a guy named Aaron Hibbs he hula hooped, just
Speaker 1: hula hooped for seventy four hours and fifty four minutes. Wow.
Speaker 1: He broke the record of I didn't even stand up
Speaker 1: for that long. He broke the record of a girl
Speaker 1: named Kim kob rely um. She held the record twice,
Speaker 1: in nineteen with fifty four hours and in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four for seventy two hours, which is pretty impressive. People
Speaker 1: do like hundreds of them at once. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: guy named Paul Dizzy Hips Blair who set the record
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine with a hundred and thirty two
Speaker 1: hoops at the same time. That's impressive. He's basically probably
Speaker 1: just like like the Michelin man made of hula hoops.
Speaker 1: Ever tell you about the Surface Area Man constant him
Speaker 1: in Athens that was out on Halloween, um in Athens
Speaker 1: in college and those the dude I know. The guy's
Speaker 1: name is Blake. He has You may have seen him.
Speaker 1: He had big red dreadlocks, kind of a short guy,
Speaker 1: just a ubiquitous Athens dude. He lives kind of in
Speaker 1: my neighborhood now. I still see him every once a while.
Speaker 1: We called him Sideshow Blake because of Sideshow Bob. And
Speaker 1: he came in bar and the Georgia Bar, and he
Speaker 1: had these foam disks around his arms, around his legs,
Speaker 1: around his waist and neck that were huge, like probably
Speaker 1: four ft across, and he was Surface Area Man and
Speaker 1: that was just his costume because when he moved around,
Speaker 1: he took up like, you know, probably seventy five square
Speaker 1: feet in space and he would just move through the
Speaker 1: bar and say, I'm surface area man, and I'll always
Speaker 1: remember every time I see Blake. I saw him at
Speaker 1: the grocery store the other day. Was he dressed like that? No,
Speaker 1: but that was like surface He wouldn't fit down the
Speaker 1: grocery aisle. Does he have dread still? Yeah? Does he
Speaker 1: really still rocking the red dreads? He's dedicating? He looks
Speaker 1: exactly the same. Actually, but we weren't friends. I could
Speaker 1: actually like him. Actually, I'm gonna just walk by him
Speaker 1: and go surface area man. I'm gonna do it. All right,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Hudsucker Proxy for a quick moment,
Speaker 1: and then we'll take another break. Did you ever see
Speaker 1: that one? I don't think I made it through that one.
Speaker 1: The Coen Brothers, Yeah, uh not. All of their movies
Speaker 1: are great. I disagree. I love the Cohen Brothers, but
Speaker 1: some of their movies stink. Oh boy that they're part
Speaker 1: of my pcent club where every movie they've made it
Speaker 1: has been great. That is wrong? Which other ones? Don't
Speaker 1: you like? The Man who Wasn't There? Love it? Uh?
Speaker 1: Bob Robertson, They didn't. That wasn't there? Well it was terrible? Okay? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: the Hudsucker Proxy too. I liked it. I would put
Speaker 1: it at lesser Cohen's for sure, you would have to,
Speaker 1: but I enjoyed it quite a bit. Tim Robbins and
Speaker 1: Jennifer Jason Lee and Paul Newman u in a fictitious
Speaker 1: tale of the invention of the hula hoop. Um. It
Speaker 1: is not the true biopic of the invention of the
Speaker 1: hula hoop, but they co opted it for one of
Speaker 1: their movies and it was nothing pretty great. But that's
Speaker 1: just me, okay, all right, go ahead, Well no, that
Speaker 1: was it that I just want to shout it out. Fine,
Speaker 1: Uh well, then let's take a break because are about
Speaker 1: to get into physics in hoop games. Yep. After this,
Speaker 1: no Country for Old Man terrible. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: I love that's maybe the best. Raising Arizon is probably
Speaker 1: the best that It'd be tough for me to pick
Speaker 1: on any given day, but far Ago is the one
Speaker 1: I can watch over and over. Yeah, I would say
Speaker 1: this three year time for first. Did we just come
Speaker 1: back from the break? Just sick? Going right back into
Speaker 1: the car? I don't know. All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1: We'll see how Jerry edits this. Um, so let's it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a Stuff You Should Know podcast if we
Speaker 1: didn't talk about the science behind something seemingly unscientific. Well,
Speaker 1: hula hoops are super complex as far as physics goes,
Speaker 1: you know, super complex, super complex. There's just a few things.
Speaker 1: We are not in agreement on stuff today, are we?
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on. So let's say you
Speaker 1: have a hula hoop, right, and it's around your waist,
Speaker 1: and you take it and you wrote you have it
Speaker 1: up against maybe one hips making contact with your body.
Speaker 1: That you're starting in the traditional way, then sure, and
Speaker 1: you whip it around to one side, and as you
Speaker 1: do you start rotating your hips. Right, I'm rotating my
Speaker 1: hips chests. Uh. And as you do that, when you
Speaker 1: rotate your hips, what you're doing is, first of all,
Speaker 1: you're conserving the angular momentum you gave the hula hoop
Speaker 1: when you pushed it in a certain direction, twisted it
Speaker 1: around yourself. Right, that's right. You are the axis you, Yes,
Speaker 1: you are the excess to and when you move your
Speaker 1: hips around you, when you when you rotate your hips,
Speaker 1: you're applying what's called torque. Yeah, because all this hoop
Speaker 1: wants to do is fall down around on the ground
Speaker 1: and you look foolish. It wants to stop. Well, no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't want to stop because of inertia. It wants
Speaker 1: to keep going, but it can't because of friction. But
Speaker 1: it wants to fall down to the ground like you said,
Speaker 1: and make you look foolish. But ironically, that same friction
Speaker 1: is keeping it from doing that. Who was the fool? Now?
Speaker 1: Whoop the hula hoop? Fool? All right? Did you talk
Speaker 1: about the torque? I did talk about torque, and torque
Speaker 1: is a twisting force where you're twisting your hips. You're
Speaker 1: thrusting the hula hoop around in the circle, and what
Speaker 1: you're doing there is contributing to the centripetal force and
Speaker 1: its centrifical no send trip at all, two different things.
Speaker 1: Move is a force that moves at a right angle
Speaker 1: to the motion of your body, so it keeps that
Speaker 1: thing whatever it is, say, hula hoop or tractor tire, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, someone said a record hula hooping with
Speaker 1: a tractor tire. Yeah, for like seventy seconds of fifty
Speaker 1: four pound tire. How big was a person? I'm sure
Speaker 1: he's ginorm all right, Um, I think he's from like
Speaker 1: bailor roost or something, you know. Yeah, they do that
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. So, uh, with the centripetal forces
Speaker 1: is going at a right angle to the direction that
Speaker 1: you're thrusting your hips, it's constantly going to move around
Speaker 1: the circle on the axis. That is centripetal force, boom,
Speaker 1: tripetal motion. I should say yes. And when this hoop
Speaker 1: wants to fall, of course, we're talking about gravity. Gravity
Speaker 1: wants to win that fight. But um, if you keep
Speaker 1: that pulsing gyration going, then you're gonna keep that hoop
Speaker 1: just a little ahead of the curve. Yeah, that's apparently
Speaker 1: the key, and Robert puts this in here is a
Speaker 1: kind of like a throwaway thing that I think that's
Speaker 1: the key of hula hooping is you want your hip
Speaker 1: to move just before that that I guess wave that
Speaker 1: comes in contact with your body again, comes in contact
Speaker 1: like comes catch and release in a way. Okay, you
Speaker 1: can catching it on your up and then slinging it
Speaker 1: back around. I'm gyrating. There's a lot of gyrating going
Speaker 1: on in this room right now. It's crazy. Um, So
Speaker 1: there's a few different parts of the body at work. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know why in two thousand four they needed
Speaker 1: a fifteen page study in the Journal of Biological Cybernetics
Speaker 1: to figure this out, because if you just look at somebody,
Speaker 1: you can tell that the hips, knees and ankles are
Speaker 1: really what's at play keeping that thing going. And that's
Speaker 1: if you're just doing the the hip hula hoop, notack
Speaker 1: and legs and all that. Of course, it's just the
Speaker 1: standard hooping, right. Yeah. And so another study I think
Speaker 1: four years later, in the Journal of Human Movements. I
Speaker 1: don't know why they needed that. They built upon this
Speaker 1: two thousand four study and said, okay, you use your hips,
Speaker 1: knees and ankles. Everybody uses it, but depending on the individual,
Speaker 1: there'll be different contributions from the hips, knees or ankle
Speaker 1: depends on the motion of your ocean exactly. So it's
Speaker 1: like the individual. Everybody uses the same the same parts,
Speaker 1: but they use them in different percentages to come up
Speaker 1: with the hula hooping motion. Yeah. I've got certain body
Speaker 1: types are better at this than others too. Yeah. Slim, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably so that the one in front of A Craig's band,
Speaker 1: she was pretty slam. I guess she's working that thing. Man.
Speaker 1: It was like, it was pretty amazing hula hoop. So
Speaker 1: that's hoop dancing. When we'll finish up here with some
Speaker 1: other games. Well, we didn't talk about hoop dancing. We
Speaker 1: were just talking about hula hooping. No, we talked about
Speaker 1: hoop dancing at the beginning with that lady. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so that's hoop dancing. Okay, that's when you know it's
Speaker 1: around the neck and then you work it down around
Speaker 1: your hips and then up one arm and then up
Speaker 1: the other arm. It's pretty impressive. Um, your standard hula hooping,
Speaker 1: of course, which we've covered. Uh, speed and endurance depends
Speaker 1: on what you're after, sure, like I want to do
Speaker 1: this for twenty minutes, or I want to do it
Speaker 1: really fast for five minutes. Okay, hooper, that's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite trendling Like you're a little ancient Egyptian kid.
Speaker 1: I'd like to see you do that hoop rolling. Let's
Speaker 1: do it. Let's do a video for that. Okay, we
Speaker 1: could do a periscope of it. Oh yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 1: We're gonna start doing that. We could do at least
Speaker 1: one of me hoop rolling. I think people, Well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get emails, they'll turn out and droves to see that.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of people show up for that. There's one not
Speaker 1: on this list that I want to give a shout
Speaker 1: out to. All Right, what it was invented? Apparently in
Speaker 1: Belgium they call it Belgium skipping. It's called ankle skipping.
Speaker 1: It's where you put the hula hoop on one foot
Speaker 1: around one ankle and you use it to hula hoop.
Speaker 1: You make the hula hoop motion with that one and
Speaker 1: if it comes around, you jump through the hoop with
Speaker 1: the other one. Yeah, I can't believe it wasn't on
Speaker 1: this list. Yeah, that's a solid hooped endeavor. But apparently
Speaker 1: it's a pretty recent invention from like the sixties. All Right,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Um, that's sort of like hoop jumping,
Speaker 1: but not quite know hoop jumping is more like jump
Speaker 1: roping with a hula hoop. Yeah, but that kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of that too. Okay. Hoop jumping is when
Speaker 1: you hold the hula hoop the top of it and
Speaker 1: then you swing it around your body and jump up
Speaker 1: and down. Um, like you have nothing better to do
Speaker 1: in life, right, Like you can't find a jump rope
Speaker 1: you haven't heard of those before. Return the hoop. This
Speaker 1: is the only one I was ever good at. That's
Speaker 1: when you you hold it vertically and you fling it
Speaker 1: out as hard as you can backwards, and it sort
Speaker 1: of spins in place and comes back to you, and
Speaker 1: if you're not expecting it, you're gonna turn and run
Speaker 1: because it's startling. He talked about kill the hoop. We
Speaker 1: don't recommend you use spears to do that, or just
Speaker 1: make sure nobody's in the vicinity of where the hoop is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to combine hoop chundling and kill the
Speaker 1: hoop because you'll kill the hoop chund to lure. And
Speaker 1: I'm not even to cover this last one. I dare
Speaker 1: YouTube though. I like this one. Whop your environment, Yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead. So it's like can put hula hoops around
Speaker 1: and you jump from them like their their islands and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of in between. Okay, what's wrong with that?
Speaker 1: I don't know, too childish, No, I'm very childish, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just didn't there's a dear childlike
Speaker 1: not childish. Big difference. Man. Uh, Well, we talked about exercise.
Speaker 1: It is um legitimate exercise are hula hoop classes now. Um,
Speaker 1: apparently Marissa Tomay, the actor, um, took hoop fitness classes
Speaker 1: to lose weight for or to get in shape for
Speaker 1: her movie The Wrestler in two thousand eight. Uh. First
Speaker 1: Lady in Michelle Obama is very famously hoop worked out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whop hooped the lawn of the White House to say, hey, kids,
Speaker 1: get active and at the US Open, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: still have fun by doing this. Um. And they even
Speaker 1: did another study to see what kind of calories you
Speaker 1: could burn. Lots of hoop studies, um, too many. Um.
Speaker 1: They took women between sixteen at the nine and said
Speaker 1: go crazy and hoop and they yeah. And they were
Speaker 1: weighted hoops too, by the way, Um, which is not
Speaker 1: to say they were super heavy. They're generally still pretty
Speaker 1: light weight. Yeah. But strangely a weighted hoop is easier
Speaker 1: to keep going, yes, which makes sense, I think. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they average a hundred fifty one beats per minute.
Speaker 1: Yeah heart beats oh their heart Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Tripical Quest would be proud. Uh. And that is burning
Speaker 1: seven calories a minute or two ten calories during a
Speaker 1: half hour of hooping. So that's good. Exercise people. That's like, um,
Speaker 1: weightlifting type calorie burn yeah plus also um, like if
Speaker 1: you just break it down to calorie first of all, chalk.
Speaker 1: I want to do an episode and I'm not quite
Speaker 1: sure how to frame it yet. It doesn't have a thesis.
Speaker 1: But there are so many like medical myths out there
Speaker 1: that are just taken as fact, even by the medical establishment,
Speaker 1: even though like if you asked a doctor like is
Speaker 1: this fact, they would be like, no, no, actually it's
Speaker 1: not like drinking eight glasses of water a day totally
Speaker 1: made up and that Like, I think we should do
Speaker 1: one on medical myths sometime. What do you think we
Speaker 1: should have? We not No, Like part of me wants
Speaker 1: to say we have, but I think things to have
Speaker 1: just come up like here there over over the years. Anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: if even if you take the calories out of the equation,
Speaker 1: just hula hooping, the standard hip gyration hula hoop will
Speaker 1: really really work out your core. Yeah, like hoop. No,
Speaker 1: you can just sit in your chair and do what
Speaker 1: I'm doing now, Like I'm getting I'm sweating. Yeah right now,
Speaker 1: my lip, my upper lip is broken out in perspiration. Uh.
Speaker 1: Modern hooping Um burlesque uses hoops. If you go to
Speaker 1: any music uti, well, these days you're gonna see the
Speaker 1: ladies like I was talking about, or they might have
Speaker 1: them decked out with L E D s or even fire.
Speaker 1: Well what's neat is um L E D hula hoops
Speaker 1: in particular are really displaying like the physics of hula
Speaker 1: hoops pretty net through Like, Um, what's that type of
Speaker 1: photography LSD? No? No, uh, what's the what's that photography
Speaker 1: where you like you just keep the shutter open, so
Speaker 1: like high exposure, long exposure. Yeah, you just said it,
Speaker 1: keeping that shutter open. It's like when you see the
Speaker 1: pictures of the cars on the freeway right and it's
Speaker 1: just like a long trail of headlights. Yeah, but there
Speaker 1: are photos out there of L E ed um hula
Speaker 1: hoops there. It's just like you can see they don't
Speaker 1: just keep like a flat path. They go all over
Speaker 1: the place in some way. It's really neat. It's pretty cool. Um.
Speaker 1: What about this lady, the Israeli sculptor Did you watch that?
Speaker 1: I saw a couple of pictures of it. Yes. Her
Speaker 1: name is Cigolette Lendau, and in two thousand three she
Speaker 1: did a performance art um slash clitical statement of peace
Speaker 1: where she did what's called barbed hula and she was
Speaker 1: naked and uh hula hooped with a barbed wire hula
Speaker 1: hoop that just tore her abdomen up. It's really rough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty disturbing, but she said, um she uh.
Speaker 1: It was on then Israeli beach that she defined as
Speaker 1: the only common natural border Israel has. So she was
Speaker 1: making a statement to my friend, Well, she's an artist,
Speaker 1: that's what they do. Um. I got a couple of
Speaker 1: last things in the hula hoop craze of the Yeah, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: not the not the fourteenth century Briton one. Um. It
Speaker 1: was in Japan, it was banned. The hula whoop was
Speaker 1: banned because they were worried was going to lead to
Speaker 1: actual stuff things happening gyrating hips. Yeah. Um. And apparently
Speaker 1: the Soviets said that it was a it was evidence
Speaker 1: of the emptiness of American culture. Hula who crazy, really, yeah,
Speaker 1: leading to the Soviets to be like Americans, come on,
Speaker 1: they hated America. Do you remember when the Iron Curtain
Speaker 1: fell and you were like, oh wait a minute, Like
Speaker 1: everything we were taught about the Soviet Union was basically
Speaker 1: made up and they were like, you know, the average
Speaker 1: Russian was like a good person. Yeah, and the average
Speaker 1: Russian was a lot like the average American, and yeah,
Speaker 1: drunk on vodka. I'm gonna live for it, all right,
Speaker 1: that's it. If you want to know more about hula hoops,
Speaker 1: you can type that word into the search bar at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And since I said search parts,
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