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August 27, 2022 41 mins

Sure knives can cut through a steak or slash through jungle vines, but probably the coolest thing you can do with a knife is throw it. At a person mounted to a wooden wheel. Spinning around. While you’re blindfolded. Learn all about the impalement arts in this classic episode.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey, everybody, it's Josh and for this week's select,
I've chosen a member of our surprisingly extensive circus art suite,
our episode on knife throwing, thanks to Laverne and Shirley.
I always thought it was a gimmick, not actually real,
but boy, did this episode open my eyes. I hope
it opened your eyes too, to the awesomeness of knife throwing. Enjoy.

(00:26):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles Chuck Bryant, and there's this stuff you should

(00:46):
all right, this bears some explanation. So I was doing
my Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle of Impression, which
one is Stevie. He was the kid in the wheelchair
who's like breathed like that, who talked like that because
he he had serious asthma. Yeah, he remember him. Was
he just like a classmate? Yeah? He was like his
best friend, I believe I remember. I like, I like

(01:08):
that show that. Yeah, well that's not what I was doing. Really. No,
we're slightly out of breath because we just had a
fire alarm. Yeah, we had to walk down four stairs
four flights of stairs and not like this, the one,
the kind of flight where it's like down, landing down again,
the two flights. Yeah, so we walked down eight flights
of stairs and then walked back eight more. Right when

(01:31):
we got down, stopped and immediately turned around to go
back in. It was ridiculous. It was the kind of
thing that makes you say, maybe I will only next time.
It was a fire alarm. I was prepared to hide
in the studio and keep working. Yeah, we thought about it,
but there's a fire marshal who works here, so you
can't can't run a foul him. Man, he got on
that orange best quick changes everything. So I ever heard

(01:55):
of those guys that sneak into places with those vests? Yes,
I have, I don't is there a name for what
I think these? I'm sure more than one person has
done this, But there's these two guys in particular who
uh kind of got I don't know about famous, but
made a name for themselves for putting on the orange

(02:16):
vests and saying basically like, if you wear one of these,
you can get in anywhere you want. Amost, if you
have orange vest on, you look like you're supposed to
be there. Well, yeah, you gotta have that steely sense
of nerve and Alwaukie talkie is probably a good thing
to have to Yeah, but they can go anywhere because
the orange vest guy that means that's something's wrong in
the orange vest guy has to take care of it. Yeah,

(02:39):
Like they showed pictures in the in front of a
I can't remember what show it was, but a big,
big concert where they were in that buffer area between
the people in the stage, right, yeah, and fred Durst
is like, oh, there's an orange guest, the best guy.
Something must be going on. What year was a h

(02:59):
This would been two thousand two maybe the fred Dorst
ears Great Years, the Wonder Years. Right, Well, man, I'm
hot now too. I'm I feel good. I got like that,
got the endorphins fall and this is gonna be a
cool episode, buddy. Well the irony is I so grossly

(03:20):
out of shape. I started getting on the peloton yeah
last week, so I've been and this is not a
plug for pellets, I guess it is, but it's not
an ad, but I've been getting on that thing. So
my legs are ham rubber rubber band hams right now. Anyway, Yeah, Hey,
y'all prepare yourself for the rubber band ham. That's hey,

(03:45):
will you indulge me for one moment? Oh man, I've
been waiting for you to ask me that for a
long time. Alright, So I've got the old side get
going with Movie Crush, my podcast where every Friday I
sit down with someone awesome and talk about their favorite
movie and kill it. Thank you. But I have now
added a second weekly episode that publishes on Monday called

(04:09):
Mini Crushes, And that's where I just sit in here
with producer Noel. He's sort of the omniscient voice of God, uh,
and he sort of chimes in, and I source a
lot of questions from Facebook to the Movie Crush Facebook page,
um listener mails, I do recommendations. It's just a really
interactive fan based experience. So I want to plug the

(04:30):
Mini Crushes and let everyone know that. Yesterday I dropped
a very special mini Crush, which was The Chuck and
it's Emily's podcast debut. Oh congratulations, man, that's right. It's
called The Chuck and Emily drink wine uh and talk
about the Oscar nominations. Oh yes, yeah, So we recorded

(04:53):
this thing at home. We put the kid to bed
and broke out some nice wine and did our pre
Oscar round up, So that dropped yesterday, and then next Monday,
the day after the Oscars, we're going to have our
post Oscar round up where we talked about who won
and what the speeches were like and who wore it best.
That's awesome, man, Emily is going to be a star. Chuck. Yeah,

(05:16):
she was actually pretty great. And if you want a
little peek behind the merrital curtain, uh, this is this
is your chance. So yeah, if you could check out
movie Crush on Apple podcasts or where we get your podcasts.
Nice man, do you feel indulged? Very much? Good? All right,
let's talk about knife throwing. So I'm a little psyched

(05:36):
about this because knife throwing taps into my ninja training
that I did under Tommy Roper as I'm sure I've
mentioned before, uh reading about this researching it. I never
threw knives. We never made it that far, and maybe
now I'll be I'll be hang gliding throwing knives at
the same time. I'm going to get into both at once.

(05:59):
But I did a little throwing star stuff. Throwing star
is like the dummies, Uh, knife throwing because that thing
always sticks, right, Yeah, I mean, depending on how many
spikes you got coming off of it, and how many
beers you've had, um, and and whether the tree is
actually like a metal pole or not, you're probably gonna

(06:19):
stick a throwing star. Throwing a knife is an entirely
different endeavor, and it's something that anybody can do. That
Nicholas Jerbis or Gervous never met him yet. Um, he
points out, this is actually kind of like a low
hanging hobby that you could. You can get a set
of knives for ten fifteen bucks apiece. You probably one

(06:42):
about five is well, we'll explain why, um, maybe six.
You just practice, get yourself a good block of wood,
and practice, and anybody can do this. It's not like
you're born to throw knives. You practice and if you
like it, you keep going and you just get better
and better at it, and you can impress your friends
and neighbors. Yes, and here's the point in the show
where we issue our c o A. Kids, if you're

(07:06):
out there, do not go get a steak knife from
your drawer and start throwing it at your dog. That
is not a throwing knife. And never throw anything at
your dog. Kids, I will come find you. Yeah, never
throw anything at anybody that's sharp. But um, throwing knives
are built to throw. They're weighted and balanced to throw.

(07:27):
They're not like regular old knives. And we'll get into
all that. But just if you really want to try
throwing knives, go ask mom and dad or Tommy Roper
and get ready, get ready for a no, and then
and then play them this podcast where it is an
actual um circus art. And please, for the love of God,

(07:48):
tell me this is the last one. I don't think
of the circus arts. No, it's not. What else is?
There's a bunch we've done the Globe of Death, flame
swallowing lions, aiming swords, swallowing sword swallowing. H we did
circus families, just straight up circus families. Human cannonball has
got to be it. I don't think so, man. I

(08:09):
think it's going to keep going into clouns clowns for sure. Yeah, um,
they haven't. Don't want to p T Barnum though, No,
you mean Hugh Jackman, what is it, Chuck Stradomas, I
don't know something like that. I make one lucky casting
call predict, one sexual predator and one bad Lifetime movie

(08:33):
or what what was shark Nato sci fi sci fi movie?
Three Little Things? That's all. That doesn't make me Nuxtra
Domans haven't won the lottery yet. I think of all
the things I have said that didn't come true right
way more. Yeah, I guess that's true. You know, yeah,
whatever writes in and well that didn't happen, right, you
really got that. Actually, they do right in to tell
us we got stuff wrong a lot. That's so we're

(08:56):
gonna take this seriously because we want you ten year
olds out there who want to get your parents to
let you do this, to to see that you're taking
this seriously by listening to this podcast. First. Okay, that's right.
So what we're talking about specifically is known as uh
somewhat ironically as an impalement act um, which is really

(09:17):
weird thing to call it. It's well, it's um, yeah,
it really is. I think it's a little tongue in cheek,
you think, because the point is to not right, The
point is to not impale somebody with this kind of thing, right,
that's right. And and impalement acts are an umbrella term
that cover not just knife throwing but bull whip cracking, oh, shoot,

(09:38):
sharp shooting, archery, William tell kind of thing. All of
those fall under the the umbrella term of impalement acts.
Jerry's undressing over there to our left, she got very
hot in the fire drop. Um. All right, so this
goes back if we can get back on the way
back machine, Um, all the way back to the late

(09:58):
nineteenth century. We to go back here further than that.
Are you gonna go like to ancient times? No? No,
We'll still will just go to the nineteenth century because
I'm sure Chinese people in ancient times through stuff that's
stuck in walls. Well, I looked at I looked up
the oldest knife and started everything. Apparently they did. Apparently

(10:20):
they found the oldest knife five thousand years ago. Oh,
the oldest knife knife. So we've been using knives longer
than there have been modern humans, yeah, for sure. And
then we at some point, probably about four hundred and
ninety nine thousand years ago, we started throwing knives because

(10:41):
it's stabbing is okay, but throwing a knife is when
you really can come to appreciate what a knife does, okay,
And there was nothing better in it, like an eighties movie.
Then when like James Bond through a knife and I
got a guy or American ninja. That's what I was
trained on. Um. All right, so wild uh wild West shows,

(11:02):
Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Shows travel throughout the
United States, throughout Europe. Um knife throwing became a big
spectacle at things like this, as well as obviously sharp
shooting and ye probably archery. They probably did all the
impalement arts. They definitely did um and they really brought
it to the world, um to the to the point
where you can just basically say that's where it started,

(11:24):
was Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Yeah. And this is
one of those things where, through a modern lens, it
it is incredibly misogynistic to think about the fact that
you say, hey, let me take a scantily clad woman,
a target girl, yeah that's what they call him, a
target girl, and throw knives at her. Yeah, just stand there,
throw knives near her. It's always a lady. She's always

(11:47):
got on like a bikini or something. She's just like
almost like wild West steampunk renaissance fair thing, right, you know,
just to cover all of the all of the geek
boys dreams and desires. Right, But when you look at
it to the modern lens, it's like, man, that that
is totally misogynistic to Uh, that is the act. Um,
it's got a burlesque thing going on. Yeah sure, I

(12:09):
mean you can see what they're trying to do is
is toillate to the young boys in the audience. They're
trying to sell tickets, and it probably wouldn't have sold
as many tickets if they just had build a farmhand
with a balloon in his mouth getting popped, you know.
I mean, it's still pretty cool. You're still seeing the
same thing. But yeah, it's just basically tradition and customed
to have a scantily clad woman as your target girl. Again,

(12:32):
that's what they call him, is the target girl, and
that is the one of the two people involved in
this impalement act. That's right. Um, we mentioned the balloon
in the mouth. That was one of the big tricks.
There was a German husband and wife named the Gibsons
who introduced the very famous wheel of death in at
the Ringling Brothers show at in Madison Square Garden. Have

(12:55):
you seen this? Oh yeah, okay, So I had seen
stuff like with knife throwing before, and I thought Flee
Circus was another one. Do you remember our Flee Circus
episode where it turns out that Flee Circus has actually
involved real fleas. That was the best of the circus arts,
and everybody thought it was like, no, it's magnets or
just your imagination power of suggestion, and that's just not

(13:15):
the case. The same thing applies to knife throwing impalement acts.
Like I always thought, did you really? Yeah? I thought
I think there was like a Happy Days or something
like that where somebody gets volunteered. There's definitely an I
Love Lucy with a knife act where she's the target girl.
But there's some show where maybe Laverne and surely not

(13:38):
I think about it. Anyway, the guys throwing them and
like the knives are coming out of the backboard around them,
So it's all an illusion, right, That is not true.
In knife acts, you're if you're the target girl, a
dude is throwing twelve inch long, extremely sharp, pointy knives

(13:58):
right at your head and it's trying to get his
close as possible to you without hitting you. And again
it's not just that's just the profile where they're throwing
knives around you and making like a chalk outline of
your of your body. That's the profile. But there's other ones,
like holding a cigarette in your mouth and knocking the
ash off with a knife, or you're holding a flower

(14:19):
in your mouth and they slowly like cut the stem
off piece by piece. There's some some pretty interesting things
that people have done with knife acts. Yeah, sometimes, and
this is the riskiest of all moves. Riskier even more
so than the Wheel of death is when they do
the and they covered the target over with paper. Yeah,
the veiled wheel of death, so you can't even see

(14:40):
that spinning who is behind there? You just have to
have it timed completely perfectly right. But if you take
a step back and think about this, there is nothing
about that act that should allow you to say, oh,
if I throw like this, I will I will miss
the person because they're spinning, so you have to know

(15:02):
where their body is at every second. But you've taken
away how you know that, which is your vision because
they're behind a big sheet of paper that you're throwing
knives through. And there's this guy who will talk about
it a little further. His name is the Great throw Denie.
I love this guy. Uh he he has done something.

(15:22):
It's probably the most dangerous, most impressive knife throwing act
anyone's ever done. He did the veiled wheel of death
with two target girls on it. So he has two
girls strapped to a board, spinning behind a big piece
of paper that he can't see them through, and he's
throwing knives at them. Yes, very fast. The guy threw

(15:44):
him on an average of a knife every point five
nine seconds, UM, and he didn't hit either one of them. Amazing.
It is amazing. It's so amazing. I think we should
take a break and re regroup. We're back. We just

(16:22):
watched uh one hour of grade thirteen even videos. Uh.
He apparently caught on like in its fifties. Yeah. I
was like, hey, I'm pretty good at this. Back in
just I guess somebody was like, maybe have you tried
throwing knives? And he said no, I haven't, And they
were like, well, tried throwing knives and he said, well, fine,
I will. A couple of weeks later, he tried throwing

(16:43):
knives and he said I really like this. Um. He
said it felt natural and right. So he started throwing
knives and entered competitions and UM started winning. I think
he became world champion. With him like two years he
beat the other four people. Uh, and then he said,
you know what, this is fun and all like these competitions,
but I think I want to try and act like

(17:06):
an old throwback impalement act. So we started one when
by tuxedo and basically bought his wife Barbara target girl.
Get up that his uh target girl one of them. Yeah,
I think she may have been the original one. Uh.
Taught her to smoke cigarettes so he could knock the
ash off of the end of him. And there you go.
Impalement act achieved. But not only that, Chuck like the

(17:29):
guy is like legitimately the best knife thrower on the planet. Well,
he's one of them. He holds a record for fastest.
But boy, you go down a YouTube rabbit hole and
to like people like Ralph Thorne and better than Great Thordini. Huh,
well Great Thordini does the impalement act as in the
Circus art. Ralph Thorn is like, if you're running through

(17:51):
the woods chasing somebody, I haven't seen this guy and
this is well that's the Thorn style. We'll get into
those styles later, okay, but um yeah, he will like
bunch himself off of a tree stump in the air
and throwing behind his back. And see now that's basically
the training I was. Yeah, yeah, like martial arts, real world,
suburban neighborhood dangers. There's a raccoon. Oh no, no, no, no,

(18:18):
you're not throwing a raccoons. Um, alright, so the raccoon
comes at me. Well sure, okay, Um, here's what you
need if you if you're gonna throw a knife, you
need a throwing knife. Throwing knife. Like I said, it's
not a steak knife. It is very much made to
be thrown. It is balanced so that you throw it.

(18:38):
And we'll talk about the different ways that they're balanced.
But one thing they're not is sharp on the sides.
Yeah they're very pointy, but um they're dull on the
edges because you're gonna a lot of times to be
throwing it by that blade. Um, so get a knife
for throwing. The old saying, Um, sharp of point, sharper

(19:01):
point is the point, sharp of edge? It doesn't It
does you no good? That old Yeah, that's a great thing.
Like that should go on a T shirt. You should so. Um, yeah,
you want a sharp point. But there's there's nothing about
a sharp edge that's going to help you in any way,
shape or form, because the whole point again is the

(19:22):
point that's gonna stick into that end of whatever that
target is, which is usually a block of wood. Right. So, um,
depending on where how you're going to throw it, you
want to throw the heavy end first. And there's a
reason for this. The reason is is that, if you
want to get technical about it, velocity equals um distance

(19:46):
divided by time, right. And when you're throwing a knife,
especially the heavy end first, the heavy end has traveled
a further distance in the same amount of time than
the lighter end. This friends creates something very parting a
knife throwing, although not fundamental, which is spin. Okay, And
so if you throw the throw the knife, you're gonna

(20:08):
throw it either blade end or handle end. And the
end regards what you're holding when you throw it. And
if you're holding say a knife handle, and you're throwing
it from the handle end, you're the front of the knife.
The point is going to be weighted. It's going to
be heavier so that that starts the spin. If you're

(20:31):
throwing it blade first, the handle itself will be heavier
so that will start the spin. And there's a couple
of different depending on which way you're throwing. There's a
the spin is going to take place over this the
course of um a very short distance actually, and so

(20:51):
let me let me just back up a second here.
There's there's some factors involved. Okay. They are distanced to target,
length of NiFe, weight and balance and then knife type. Right,
So the distance the target is going to is going
to tell you what type of throw you want. That's right. Um,

(21:14):
the kind of knife. Uh, they say, for every good
rule of thumb here, just throw it out. But they
do mention a rule of thumb regardless. That says a
blade that weighs about one ounce per inch, so in
this per inch of your the whole knife. Yeah, so um,
they shouldn't. Well, you can throw it ever you want,

(21:35):
but ten to sixteen ounces is a good starter knife, uh,
you know, and about that long or maybe twelve to
four fourteen inches and about that many ounces is where
you want to start off as a beginner. And all
kinds of shapes too, Like some of them are like
little spears. Uh, some have multiple points more like throwing stars. Uh.

(21:56):
They really run the gamut right and the um. So
depending on how you're gonna throw, whether it's a handle
throw or a blade throw. The weight of the knife
is going to be either in the handle or the blade.
It's going to be the opposite of where you're holding
the knife. Um. And if you throw holding the blade,
you're going to throw a half turn. It's a half
turn throw right. And the reason they call it that

(22:19):
is because the knife only makes one half turn. The
blade straightens out from your hand toward the target, and
then that's the only turn it makes. Yeah, it's not
like in the movies a lot of times you'll see
you go right and turn like nine times and stick
the guy in the forehead. That's really not what you're
doing with knife throwing. No, it's basically if you if

(22:41):
you're throwing it by the blade, it's gonna make one
half turn and that's it. So you if your blade throwing,
you would stand closest to the target, right, So if
some guys coming at you dressed as a raccoon and
you know he's gonna hurt you and you can throw
a knife and he's real close, you would throw by
the blade. That's right. Uh. And in fact, I don't
even know if it's possible bowl to throw a knife

(23:01):
like they do in the movies that I don't think
so just tumbles because every video I saw there, like
you try and prevent tumbling as much as you can,
Like that's the whole game. It's too because physics says
that a revolving object that suddenly breaks free will continue
to move in a straight line tangential to the point
at which it's released. In other words, that release points

(23:22):
a little tricky. You know, you gotta dial that in.
But we'll get to that too. And on the actual
throwing right, um, so the uh. The next the next
furthest away from the target is if you're holding the
the knife by the handle and you're throwing it, it's
going to make that's a full turn, full spin uh,

(23:43):
to where the blade goes from facing the target, facing
away from the target, and back to facing the target
in time to stick into that target and not embarrassing
he bounce off because it hit the blade or the
handle first. But it's very humiliating, so humility. Uh. And
then the last one is the furthest thrown away And
it's about the most you would ever want a blade

(24:03):
to turn, which is two times. That's about thirty ft
or about ten meters away from your target. You could
possibly get it to spin twice, but usually you just
wanted to spin once or half and that's it. Yeah,
And uh, did you say a half turns about seven
or eight feet. I don't think I did. I just
said it was the closest. Yeah, about seven or eight feet.

(24:25):
It depends full spin about twelve to fifteen And like
you said, the the great throw Dni double Bondini double
twist is up to Yeah. Although one of these other
throws that we're gonna get into, this thorn throw. One
of the benefits is you can throw from anywhere, supposedly.
So we're gonna take one more break and then we're

(24:46):
gonna come back and teach you a little bit about
throwing and then, uh, what to look for in a
good knife. Okay, so you've got you know about how

(25:21):
close you want to stay into the target, depending on
whether you're holding the knife by the blade or the handle.
The good thing is is there are a couple of
different grips, but they're very similar. So if you're like,
I want to get into blade throwing first because that
looks pretty cool, you're going to basically pinch the blade
of the knife and remember these are not sharp edges,
so you should be fine if you do. If you

(25:43):
I saw, if you are using a sharp edge knife,
you want to hold the blunt end. But you don't
want to do that. You don't even want to do that,
so so it doesn't really matter which way you're holding it.
But if you if it is sharp on what edge,
hold the other edge and you're just basically pinching it
between your your thumb and your first three fingers just
a little pitch. Yeah, it's just just a teeny pinch.
Maybe stick your pinky out for effecture, all right, and

(26:06):
that that's the blade throw. Yeah, and you've already got
your target. By the way, at this point, I know
you mentioned a block of wood, but they recommend um
aims small. What does it start? Small? Aim small? Yeah,
which is don't don't You don't need a tree trunk
um sliced up and put on a wall like you

(26:26):
just need, like whatever, a little twelve inch by twelve
inch block of wood. Or maybe if you want to
screw a bunch of wood together and then draw a
target on there, that's fine too. Yeah, you should probably
glue though, because the screws might your your knife might
bounce off of them. Yeah, you know if you're using
metal screws, okay, as opposed to the traditional wooden dell right,

(26:49):
so umptail joint right, So the the that's the what
did I say, that's the blade throw? Right, yeah, you
did blade throw. There's a handle throw too, and this
one is called a hatchet throw or hammer throw or
the handle throw you could call it to and everybody
all know what you're talking about. Yeah, and you stand, uh,
you're a little further back for this one because you've

(27:11):
got your your full turn going uh, and then you
just grip it like a baseball beat and swing away
right right, close your eyes, and you hope for the best,
say ninja strike, right yeah yeah. So um. The cool
thing is what you were saying about starting small, aiming small,
is that when you when you figure out that there's

(27:32):
actually just a few mechanics going on here, you'll be
able to tell what part of your throw is actually off,
whether it's distance, whether it's when you're releasing, whether it's
um how you're gripping it. The problems are, the issues
with your throw will show up, and you'll be able
to read based on how the knife is landing or sticking?

(27:54):
What's wrong with your throw? Yeah? Like if you are
throwing I think blade first and it sticks, but it's
sticking at a really hard angle where the where the
handle is pointing down. Then they say, maybe just move
back six inches with your stance, is it? Yeah, you're right,
You're right, and then try it again. Yeah, because that

(28:17):
means that you're the knife didn't get its full rotation right.
You wanted to basically be sticking straight out perpendicular to
the target. Yeah, that's a correct throw or as you're
as you're learning to do this. Yeah. And did you
say that it's generally your opposite leg of your throwing
hand forward? Oh yeah, so so yeah, so the stance, yeah,

(28:38):
I mean generally. But then again I also saw this
Russian guy that through with his throwing leg or the
same leg as a throwing hand forward, and he was like,
you know it all works basically. Was this thing good?
I knew you had the Italian thing going on, but
Russian was good. Oh yeah, I can I can do that.

(28:59):
So let's get into of the throw them. Okay, so
the stance, I should say, So with the with the stance,
you're standing with your Um, you're you're throwing arm. The
leg opposite you're throwing arm is closest to the target,
kind of like you're throwing a dart, you know. Um, yes, okay,
like that. Well, actually that's not quite true when I

(29:21):
throw it. When you throw a dart, your you're the
leg that is, the foot that is on the line,
is the same side as your throwing hand, is it. Yeah, okay,
well this is the opposite of that. Maybe I've been
throwing darts wrong all this time. So the so the
the leg opposite you're throwing arm is the one you
want closest to the target traditionally, right, Traditionally your weight

(29:43):
is on your back leg, though, is you're throwing, and
what you're doing is you're gripping the knife however you
want to blade or handle either way. You line it
up right with your eye against the target, bring your
arm back behind your head, and then keeping your wrists straight.
You don't want to flip your wrist or anything like it.

(30:06):
You bring it in an arc in front of you,
and you finish like you are shaking somebody's hand. If
you're going, hey, how are you right? But I got
a knife? Right? The thing is here's the thing. You're
gonna want to release at that handshake part when your
hand is straight out in front of you, and you're
gonna find nothing but heartache trying to throw a knife

(30:28):
like that. Oh, if you release it right at the end.
Oh no, it goes it'll go straight down, right, it'll
go down in front of you. Because when you release
an object that's going in an arc, it wants to
go straight in a tangential line from the the the
top of the arc. Right, that's right. So you want
to release it at the top of the arc. So

(30:50):
that is I was practicing just in the air, trying
to to make my brain release it at the top,
and that is really difficult to do because you think
initially that the nicest gonna go shooting up into the air.
It's not. It's gonna go straight. That's right. Pretty neat stuff,
that's right. And this is just I don't even know

(31:12):
what the traditional throw was called to you, I know,
I didn't see a name for it. Well, there are
some other throws which I might as well go ahead
and mention I've teased. One is the aforementioned thorn style
from Ralph Thorne. Okay, that's named after a dude is
named after a dude. Either way, it sounds cool. Yeah

(31:33):
this one, Um, did you see this one at all? Inline?
I didn't see that one. I kind of had an
idea of what they were talking about based on the article. Yeah,
they say that it resembles spear throwing. The action, Um,
I guess, and that you're you're not taking the knife
like behind your ear. You're sort of just extending your
whole arm and doing a big almost like you're throwing

(31:54):
a baseball pitch. Sure, that's what I imagine. Yeah, that's what.
It sort of looked like, a side arm, sort of
like a bunch of people were doing it different. And
then this guy's jumping all over behind his back like
Thorne style seems to be two just do whatever you want. Okay,
that's not true. Thorne's probably just like so angry right now.
He's like, yeah, come out. Uh. Then there was the

(32:19):
Russian style and this look it's a very compact um,
the elbow is in near the body, you hold the
knife behind the ear. Uh. And this I saw it
was a little bit more like, you know, like that
kind of thing. So that seems to me like depending
on how close you're holding your elbow to your body
like you're gonna chop the top of your ear off.
Well you want to avoid that, but it's it's more

(32:41):
like you're pushing it out rather than throwing it like
a tomahawk. So that's what I thought, Um Moon you
on style was like where you're basically like shoving the
knife forward. Well what I saw with that style, And again,
all these videos were different, so I don't know if

(33:02):
these people are just I mean, it is YouTube making it.
It's not like they're like, I'm an accredited thornist. But
the MoMu In style looks like they were having the
knife like in their hand, like kind of in their
palm and would throw it. But I don't know if
that was because of the knife, because the guy on
there was like, this is a bo bo shurrikan spike

(33:26):
which is thrown in the Momuen style. And that's what
this article said to people really get into this online
online though, right, That's what I did discover. So the
three the three things, those three types thorn style, Momuan
and Russian style, those are all styles of knife throwing
that involved no spin. That's what the common thread that
they all have yeah, which is pretty cool. It is cool,

(33:49):
And there's a couple of reasons you want to do this.
The most knife throwers say that's really tough on the
joints after a while. Yeah, that's what they say. And um,
the reason why is because it involves like doing crazy
like snapping motions with your elbow and your wrist and stuff.
Whereas with knife throwing, it's just a smooth arc you're
making it. Almost all of the motion is in your

(34:09):
shoulder and your elbow, Your wrist stays straight, and you
just areally generally releasing your grasp on the NiFe. Right,
do this into his ages all day long? Right? Yeah?
That with the no spin styles, it is, it's just tougher.
It's more of a snapping motion. That's like you're gonna
get tennis elbow after a while. The reason the advantage
that these have is like, if you're trying to throw

(34:31):
a knife through a hole, you can't have a twelve
inch knife spinning making this twenty four inch arc basically
or or circle. Um, you just want to send it
straight like a missile through that hole into some dude's leg,
into his calf, and then you you pounce on him.
Put your hand over his mouth and nose until he

(34:54):
falls asleep, and then you can advance further towards the castle. Well,
the Russian I saw was talking about the first thing
you do is find the balance point. So he held
out his finger and put the knife on it until,
you know, like a little until I found the exact point.
And he's like, there's a balance point. So once you

(35:15):
find out where that is, that will teach you exactly
how to hold it, um in any in any scenario. Basically,
I know where the balance point is though, So whatever
you're doing, though, if if this sounds like something you
want to do, whether it's spin throwing or no spin
throwing techniques, the key to knife throwing of any kind
is practice, practice, practice, And this article actually gives a

(35:39):
really good piece of advice. It says, get a little
set of throwing knives, the best you can afford, because
the more expensive they are, typically with them, the better
the more well made they are. And um, get some,
get like I said, of three or five or whatever,
because you're you're going to have to practice rep eatedly.

(36:00):
And if you have one knife and you're standing fifteen
feet away you throw it, you have to go get it.
You throw it again, go get it. That's not nearly
as fun as trying to throw like five quickly in
a row. So you're number one, you're going to be
more entertained. Um. But also if you do, no matter
how many knives you have, if you start to lose focus,
if you start to get bored or frustrated, stop because

(36:22):
if there's one thing about knife throwing, it's meant to
be fun. And if you're practicing with your friends, uh,
don't they don't stand to the side of the target.
They don't stand directly behind you. Um, I would recommend
they stand well behind you and well to one side
of you. I've got one even better. Don't even don't
even let your friends anywhere near you. You you have

(36:44):
to be alone while you're practicing throwing knives, but you
have to be in text or phone contact with your
parents who are watching you from a safe distance, streaming
it to your parents. Maybe. So, Uh, you should go
and look at some of these Ralph Thorn videos because
the funniest, the funniest part is uh the almost um

(37:06):
not angry, but just his trudge towards the target afterward
is very like I don't know, it's weird. He'll jump
up in the air and throw a few and then
he's just like do do do and then walks over
and undoes it from the log like, I don't know.
All the pizzazz leaves as soon as he's thrown. Yeah,
that's when you need. The pizzazz is during the throwing.

(37:28):
The rest is just wasted energy. Yeah, but you don't
see throw Denie. That's the difference between an impalement act
in a dude in his backyard on YouTube. Well, throw
Denie has the smarts to hire an editor to edit
that part out. Yeah, you know, it's a good point.
I don't know if we said the great throw Denie's name.
His name is David ed Amovitch and he's a neat guy.

(37:49):
Great name. So if you want to know more about
the great throw Denie or what's what's Thorne's first name,
Jesse Thorn and the other thing Ralph Thorne, Ralph Thorn,
or any kind of nice throw and go go check
out some videos. Again, do not do this unless your
parents say it's okay, and do it safely. Don't be stupid,
and never ever throw any living thing ever of any

(38:12):
kind ever or Josh and Chu are going to be
so mad at you. Ah. And in the meantime, let's
listen to some listener. Man. All right, I'm gonna call this, oh,
welcome back to the fold. This just delighted me. I
like this one too. You know in April it's gonna
be ten years, which is just nutty, nutty, nutty. No

(38:37):
one ever thought we'd be doing this so long. Jerry
has an age today, now she hasn't, but she's taken
up more clothes as the podcasts. Uh, she's getting ready
for her a gig as a target girl. Um all right, guys,
um and Jerry, whoever, whoever else that Stuff you should
Know might actually be reading this. I don't know how

(38:59):
fam will work. This is what she says, this is
how it works. Yeah, we read it. I realized, Um,
that the most I'm realistically going to achieve by stating this.
It's making you feel old. But when I was eleven
years old in two thousand eleven, Stuff you Should Know
was my favorite podcast and listen to every episode. Kept
on listening for a couple of years until I was thirteen,
when I stopped listening to it because that's what we

(39:22):
lose them is when they get too cool for school.
That's right. So for those those were your teenagers who
have kept listening through your teen years, we think you're cool.
You're doing it right. Your peers probably don't, but we do.
I have no idea why I stopped guys up until today.
I actually figured you guys must have stopped making it,
and I never bothered to go back and check until today.
Isn't that funny to think back? To think that someone

(39:45):
can think back like, oh, remember those guys? Like I
wonder how long are last? Daily weekly life? So funny.
I'm not sure how to properly put how I feel
into words, though, Uh, because not a lot else from
when I was that age till exist. I grew up
with the Internet. But poking around Google and looking for
old sites I used to just uh, it reveals a

(40:07):
trail of deleted accounts and domain names that no longer resolve.
What does she find an old computer or something? I
don't know. Maybe she's definitely taking a trip down memory lane.
I know, man, I've moved countries, so most of my
physical stuff was either given away or thrown into a
landfill across the Atlantic. To fact, the stuff you should
know still exist and it's still making episodes that are
just as good as I remember them being as incredible.

(40:30):
Very nice. Wow, this is crazy. This is from Hazel.
She has to We have a po box as you
can send some Jaffa cakes. Oh, this is nice. I
don't remember if I gave Hazel or address. Well please do.
But Hazel, if you're right back, we'll give you our
address and we can get some choppy cakes. Thanks for
coming back. Yeah, we appreciate that. We're glad to have
kept the home fires burning for you there, Hazel. I'd

(40:52):
like to hear from Sarah. Sarah Sparrow, the amazing ninety
year old fan. Yeah's eleven years old. I think she
was at the time. No, she was like was she
like eight or nine? Yeah, I can't remember when she started. Yeah,
but she was really young. Yeah, she became a cool teenage,
she definitely did. But maybe she'll become an actually cool
college student and come back. Yeah. Well thanks a lot, Hazel. Uh,

(41:15):
if you left us and came back and thought it
was as good as ever, we can hear that stuff
all day long. You can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com, slash stuff You Should Know You can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works
dot com, and has always joined us at her home
on the web, Stuff You Snow dot com

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