How the Moonwalk Works

When Michael Jackson debuted the moonwalk in 1983 the world was enrapt. The dance goes back farther, to the 1930s, and pops up again in the 50s, before reappearing via mimes and West Coast poppers in the 70s. Follow the circuitous route of an iconic move.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. So
it's just moon walks right in this joint. Can you moonwalk? Now?

(00:22):
I think everybody at the Bellhouse on Junet knows I
can moonwalk. Okay, I didn't moonwalk, but I think you
could just based based on my moves, you could. You
could make the assumption that I'm an awesome moonwalker. I've
seen your moonwalk. It's you know, herky jerky. You know,

(00:43):
it's that kind of moonwalk that guys like us do.
I don't understand, you know you kind of it kind
of simulates the moonwalk. I see, you know what I mean.
It's a it's an echo of a moonwalk. I wouldn't
call it smooth and floaty, oh I would. Yeah, Now,
I know it's not a great moonwalks, right. I never
learned the moonwalk because I didn't try to practice the

(01:05):
moonwalk more than like once, and I was like, I
can't do that. Oh yeah. I just bailed on it
like my brother practiced and got okay at it. I'm
surprised he didn't like teach it as a class for
free to children in need. Now he got uh, he
got okay at it? Um, But I just I don't

(01:26):
know if I I think I bail on things that
aren't easy for me. Well, that's definitely a candidate for that. Um. Yeah,
I think that's a trait I have. I don't like
to spend a lot of time on something that I
don't think i'm good at. I'm not one of those like, no, man,
I'm gonna try the moonwalk until I learn it. I see.
I was like, maybe I just im not a moonwalker,
don't you? Didn't you say you bail on books too

(01:48):
that don't like capture your attention at this point in
your life? Was that you? I don't think I said that,
but I I didn't say that. But I will you
work your way through a book? Well, I'll give it
a fair shot. It's been a while since I've bailed
on a book, though, because I usually just pick good
books like that. I know we're really good. Uh. I

(02:12):
don't know how long I give a book. How long
do you give a book? I will give a book
two pages, yeah, but like three or four times? Right? Like,
what am I missing? Let me try that again. Yeah, yeah,
that's fair. I just write a book called Head Full
of Ghosts, which is pretty neat. It's like a psychological thriller. Huh.

(02:34):
I haven't read a fiction booking forever, and then right
now either I'm reading the right stuff, Wolf Classic, and
it's that. I think Tom Wolf might be the greatest
reporter of all time. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I don't
think there's anybody better. Our buddy Joe Randazzoh oh yeah.

(02:57):
At midnight fame people are quaite. A minute, I thought
he was at the Onion. Now he said at midnight.
He used to work at the Onion. Uh. He just
recommended a book which I'm really interested in that I
wanted to tell you about because it sounds like it's
right up your one alley called Sapiens A Brief History

(03:18):
of Humankind by You've All Noah Harari and the It
had has a pretty remarkable thesis, which is that humans
can Humans didn't kill each other off because they can
cooperate in large numbers, because we have an ability, a

(03:41):
unique ability. Animals don't have two believe in things that
exist only in our imagination. Huh, Like government and money
and God. And he said, all of these things allow
us to cooperate. Like we talked about in our money episode.
It's like money has that paper has no value. We
just all agreed. So it's essentially fiction, the cool concept

(04:05):
of money. It's just something we've all agreed on. And
he said, is it's this cooperation by believing in these
fictional things that is the only reason that humans didn't
kill each other off, like you know, any other weird species. Yeah,
I've got to check that out. Said it sounds super interesting.
He said it was amazing, so and thank you for

(04:25):
relating that. Yeah, I want to Maybe you should read
it and just tell me about it, because I'm still
have never read four Man. I'm a fiction reader. I
try to I try to read nonfiction, and this I
don't know. I just like a good fictional yarn more.
I'm I'm quite the opposite. Like I told you, I
wanted to be a Civil War buff. I got one
of those huge books that's supposed to be great, and

(04:46):
I just can't do it. Like The Moonwalk, you don't
like fiction, I do like it, it's just for the
so much of the time I'm reading for work that
see I think he would enjoy fiction as a break. Well,
that's why I read head Fellow Ghosts. I was like,
I'm reading a fiction book. I need to just like

(05:09):
read something different and use my imagination again. And um
it worked. It was like it had an effect on
me that what was it? Yeah? What was it about?
It was about a girl who may or may not
be possessed and like how her family unravels around her.
Is it like poplit? I don't know that. It's you know,

(05:29):
like easy to read. Dean Coontzon, Oh no, no, it was.
It was a little more literary than that, and I
wish I'm sorry to the author who who wrote the book.
I don't remember the dude's name, but he does a
good job. I'm sorry to Dean Counts and John Grisham
all of a sudden, Uh, they know, they know what
they are. Let guys know what they are. Although Dean

(05:50):
Coutz man, that guy's imagination is fantastic. Man, I always
assumed that he was better than Stephen King because he
could finish the story. I've never read a Stephen King book. What,
I don't read a lot of that stuff. Okay, I
read one Dean Kuntz Book in my early twenties and

(06:11):
one night. That's the only time I've ever done that. Well, yeah,
that was a good thing about it Kuntz Book because
you can go through it like crazy. Started reading it
like eight or nine and I stopped at like five
in the morning. But each one is way different than
the others, I mean really differently. The guy's got a
great imagination. You should read some of Stephen King's work
like he is. He's he's so unfairly I was actually

(06:34):
talking to Hodgman about this the other day. He's like,
very unfairly criticized as a hack, but he's actually, oh yeah,
a lot of people are doing couldn't sucks. But if
you just because he's so prolific and because he very
famously has trouble finishing a story, Yeah, but he's like
nobody can get inside the mind, like the dark side

(06:57):
of a person's the average person's mind better than Stephen King.
He's just a he's a great storyteller. Aside from the
ending part. So what's the Shining? It is probably the
one I should read, Probably not because you're so used
to Kubrick's Shining and it's just so radically. That's the one. Right,
that's a big one. I've never read the stand I

(07:17):
would start with the short stories. They're fantastic, right, those
he can finish. It's the largest What do you mean
not finish like this amazing build up and then the resolutions, like,
so he finishes you just mean it's okay, right, it's
it's not left unfinished. It's the resolution is um The
payoff is not so great. Yeah, interesting, and it's still fine,

(07:39):
but it's he's so good at building things up that
it's almost it would be almost impossible to finish it.
I don't know if we should call this beginning book
talk with Josh and Chuck or patting the episode. You
want to talk moon walk? Yeah, we needed a little something.
This is a short one. Well, you were saying that,

(07:59):
you're like you just couldn't do it. This is Let me.
Let me tell you how I approached the moonwalk. All right.
My left hand was covered in a white glove with
sequence sewn on that my mom made for me. Did
you really wearing the thriller jacket a little black pants? Yeah,
that's how my moon walked. I was still not that

(08:22):
great at it. You were, you were in man, this
is so in my wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't. I
mean I listened to pop music. But I was also
the influenced by my well he's now my brother in law,
but the General. The General started dating my sister when
I was twelve, Okay, so like he was always around
and he was like, you're twelve years old. You need

(08:43):
to listen to the Almond Brothers and Leonard Skinnered and
Molly Hatchett and Blackfoot in the Atlanta Rhythm section, the
Doobie Brothers, like heck yeah. But I also listened to
the American Top forty every week. So, I mean I
was an MTV. I was glued to so you can't
be glued to MTV and not like digest ing some
of that stuff. But I was never never owned parachute

(09:06):
pants or but so that was the only sequence thing
I eve w owed. But that's very sweet that your
mom did that. I think so too, and it was
a very sweet gesture. Um. But I think one of
the other reasons the Moonwalk spoke to me and I
didn't realize it until researching this article, Chuck that I

(09:28):
was also super into break dancing at the time, and
the moonwalk is actually not a breaking move. It's a
popping move. But for all but actual breaking and popping dancers,
it was the same thing. Yeah, I don't I don't
see how it's a popping move. I saw that in
the article and I couldn't put it together because thing
is so herky jerky, and a good moonwalk is so

(09:50):
smooth and buttery. Well, so lockin is herky jerky, right, Well,
no popping is too popping? Is that? Like? Yeah, but
it's also I wish this is really not good for audio,
but it's also so you know, the one where you
hold out one hand and make a wave, the wave
goes through your body to the other hand, the classic

(10:11):
popping is it? Yeah? And I was like, okay, I'll
bet the worms popping wrong. The worms are breaking move.
I clearly don't know, but the average person who's who's
doing these dances is probably popping, locking and breaking it
at the same time. Yeah. And and I know we
covered breakdancing some in the hip hop episode, but we

(10:33):
should do it total breakdance, like give it its full do, Okay,
and we're gonna call it the total breakdance episode. But
we I mean, we've got to cover some of it here,
because there's there's there's such a basis of it in
the moonwalk. The moonwalk castletch a basis in it. But
the moonwalk goes even further back than popping and lock in,

(10:55):
which we'll talk about in a minute. It goes all
the way back to the thirties. Should we take a break?
Oh man, yes, stop, all right. Josh just taught me

(11:20):
how a moon walking. Now I'm great at it. And
this I can't remember what that's called. The wave the
waves where you stand up at a baseball game. So
what is this? I don't know. I mean, people that
don't know what Josh is doing right now are probably frustrated.
But it's that you know that move you do where
you wave the one arm and it goes to your

(11:40):
body and the other arm waves and then you pass
it to your friend. Yes, that's a popping move, is it? Yeah?
Body popping clearly doesn't. I don't know what popping means.
I think the name is a bit of a misnomer. Yeah,
probably all right. And by the way, people, you might

(12:00):
as well get to this. I'm not gonna be able
to gush much about Michael Jackson because I'm one of
the people who thinks he did bad things in his
private life. So if you don't hear me talking about
how awesome he is, that's why I have a hard
time separating the art from the artist. Well you want
to throw it out there, man, if you believe that,

(12:21):
how could you? Yeah, I'm unconvinced at this point, all right,
But I mean seeing my own a. Yeah, that's a
good one, good one. A bunch of people are like,
that's what c o amy covering my own a. Speaking
for myself anyway, if you hear a little bit of
like callousness in my voice, that's that's why. So, uh,

(12:45):
going back in time, Uh, it was not invented by
that man. It was like you said, it goes back
to the nineties. If you look on the YouTube's they're
like history of the Moonwalk, you will see a nice video.
It shows the evolution of this dance, starting with Cab
Callaway in the nineteen thirties doing something called the Buzz.

(13:08):
The Great band Leader Jazz big band leader. He remains
unaccused of anything. He was also awesome in the Blues Brothers.
Oh yeah, wow, he was still around for that. That's right.
I forgot about that about fifty years on. Yeah. Uh
so in the nineteen thirties he did something called the
Buzz and it was a little more herky jerky and
not as smooth. Then there was something that this article

(13:30):
mentions called the camel Walk, which I looked into, or
the collegiate walk that like Sammy Davis Jr. Did in
this video. I don't think it looks anything like the moonwalk,
not really. I think they're going forward first of all, right,
which is a big one, and it's cool. It's a
cool move. Sure, James Brown dares Sammy to do it.
Sammy's like, all right, I'll do it. So, boy, could

(13:55):
you imagine being in that audience, Man, Sammy Davis Junior
and James Brown on the same stage. Who do we
have now? Bieber and whoever else? I don't even know him,
Bieber and Bieber. It's a nightmare group. Yeah. So uh sorry, man,
it's not old. You're not old because you're trash and

(14:18):
justin Bieber you're just saying it's a jerk. You know.
He really has done a lot of stuff to say
to earn that. Yeah, it's not like he's some like
super nice guy. People are just unfair to like look
at some of the videos and like pan in a
bucket in a restaurant. Did you ever see that one? No?
I heard about that one, though. Well, I think he's

(14:40):
just too much wealth and not enough guidance and probably
too much booze and stuff. I think maybe he might
be somewhat reformed now, but really I think he's grown
up a little bit, but I don't follow it that closely.
Just the p in the bucket thing, Yeah, I mean
that was enough to turn me off forever. Win him back,
justin win back, good luck. So we were talking about

(15:04):
the walk or the camel walk, right, so, um, you
were saying it doesn't look like a moonwalk. In fact,
it looks kind of like a reverse moonwalk sort of.
But the point is it was it's somebody Sammy Davis Jr.
Floating Their feet are floating a little bit. They appear
to be floating while they move, al Right, So it's

(15:24):
related to the moonwalk, right, I'll give you that. The
one that's like dead on though is Bill Bailey in
nineteen fifty five full on moonwalks off the stage. Yeah,
in nineteen at the Apollo. Yeah, and there's a great
video and it's at the very end of the video,
but I urge you to not just skip to the end,
because you've got two or three minutes of some sweet,

(15:47):
sweet tap dancing. Yeah, which I didn't realize how much
I loved until I saw this guy and he was
supposedly trained by Mr bo Jangles himself. Really Ye, that
was a real person. Yeah, I don't remember his name,
but Bojangles. Yeah. I love tap dancing. I didn't know
it and I watched this sound was like, man, that's amazing.
You should go see Gregory Hines. Is he still doing it?

(16:08):
Probably there's no way he's just like I'm done tapping.
Yeah it tap was life for that guy. Yeah, I
mean that stuff is amazing. And what's the guy's name?
I can't remember, Well, I did see that movie. Um
there was a guy, uh savyon Glover. Oh I know

(16:29):
who you're talking about, like much more recent Yeah, like
mean mean tap dancer, Like he just shouting insults while
he was you. He looks stupid, but watch me dance.
So Bill Bailey in nineteen fifty five, like legit moonwalked

(16:49):
and um, it's hard to say, like he's the guy
that invented it, because dance, like any art form, is
just borrowed and changed and morphs along the years to
where I don't know that anyone can specifically say, like
Bill Bailey might have seen it from someone else and
then like that's a hot move. Yeah, he seems like
the type of um talent that he could have come

(17:13):
up with it himself. Yeah. But what's weird, Chuck, is
that that's apparently where it went and died, Like he
created the moonwalk and it's stopped with him for a while. No,
if you go back in the history of it, the
people who popularized the moonwalk didn't know that he had
done that. Oh yeah, yeah, I see what you means.

(17:34):
So simultaneously, there's also some movement that's similar called the
air walk, but it's mine. Yea like Marcel Marcel's walking
against the wind, very famous routine where his feet are floating.
It's called air walking and it's strictly mine, right. Yeah.
The difference between that and the moonwalk is that they're
stationary and acting like they're walking forward and the wind

(17:58):
is blowing them, but they're not going backwards. It's but
it's also not part of a dance either. Correct, some
this is but this is a weird little thing that
I didn't realize. There was apparently a mime. There's a
period of the seventies where mimes were cool. Did you
know that? Yeah? I mean that was I remember watching

(18:19):
Shields and Yarnell as a kid on television on major
network TV. I was all brainstem at the time because
I was totally unaware of that. Yeah, miming was a
big deal and that like I would practice that, Okay,
okay a little bit, not for years, but yeah, I
practice miming. What a bizarre period of American pop culture.
Shields and Yarnell. This mime couple had a were they

(18:42):
two dudes or a man and a woman? You were married? Okay? Um?
That they They had their own TV show, Shields and
Yarnell was watched apparently by a lot of people, including you.
It was also watched by a dude named Jeffrey Daniel. Yeah. Man,
Frey Daniel was a great dancer, probably still is he is? Uh.

(19:05):
Not only was he on Solid Gold, he was in
the band Shalomar with Jody Whatley. Yeah, Jody Whatley and um.
Shalimar was created by the great Don Cornelius of soul
train R I P I believe did he die a
few years ago? And uh, Gary Mumford was the original singer.
And then on album number two, Gerald Brown took over,

(19:26):
like you said, with Jody Whatley of Shallomar Fame, I
guess and then later on her own fame. Yeah she
was she had her own solo career, right and uh
and this guy Jeffrey Daniel, Right, So Jeffrey Daniel was
dancing in the sheets. Remember that hit. Yes, it's great
Footloose soundtrack song Dancing and the Sheets, dude, dude, and

(19:48):
that that was the eighties. The eighties stuff they you know,
came around in the seventies with more disco. It was
super disco. We to start with. Um. But this dude,
Jeffrey Daniels who was in Shalimar, who's also a solid
gold dancer. He had a pretty awesome move called the backslide.
And when you watch him backslide, uh, he's he's moonwalking,

(20:09):
total total moonwalk. It totally is and um. Later on
he was interviewed like where did you get this? Where
you know where? Where you know? Where did you come
up with the idea? He was like, I was super
into Shields and Yarnelle at the time. So miming influenced
the backslide, which, as we'll find out in a second,
directly led to the moonwalk. And we'll get to that

(20:30):
finally after this. You alright, Chuck, we're back. Yes, Jeffrey Daniel.

(20:51):
I watched that interview that's on the YouTube. It was
on a British talk show called soccer a m of
the two thousand seven things. They had him on Soccer Am.
Apparently it's not just about sports, but they have like
comedy bits and pop culture stuff. Uh So he was
surprised on that show. They showed the clip of of

(21:12):
Bailey in the in the fifties and he was like,
what's that. He's like, I've never even seen that. He
was surprised to see that someone was legit moonwalking, you
know whatever, fifties something years earlier, the same move. It's
not like, oh, that's kind of close, like maybe the
camel walk or um the buzz like Cab calloway. It

(21:33):
was a moonwalk. It was the moonwalk. But that's what
I'm saying, that's what's so bizarre is that this guy
invented the moonwalk in ve and it began and ended
with him, and it took mimes getting a TV show
to create the moonwalk as we understand it today. Talk
about chaos theory, you know what I'm saying, though, like

(21:55):
other people could have influenced the mimes that knew about
Bill Bailey, like it could guess, guess, that's entirely possible.
But Marcel Marceau was doing the air walk as far
back as the thirties before Bill Bailey. Was he around
in the thirties from what I understand, Okay, which is
weird because well he was pretty old when in the
seventies when he hit it big. So yeah, I think

(22:16):
then he was doing it in the thirties, because that's
what this article says in it. I didn't find anything.
I didn't find any footage of him from the thirties,
like all of it seemed to be from the seventies
or early eighties. Well, the heyday of mimes also looked.
I was curious why people hate mimes and did little research,
and of course there's no no like definitive thing. It's

(22:37):
not like a phobia, no. But everything I saw I
came down to a few things. They look like clowns
in clowns. We did a whole episode on that, and uh,
the silent thing seems to bug people. And then just
the notion that there, you know, they'll get up all
in your face in the part you're out just enjoying

(22:57):
your day and a mime will come up and be like,
you know, to start doing their like intruding upon you
to do their act, which I don't even know is
I don't even know if that's the case over there.
Oh it is, believe me, mine very interestive like to
start static and I finish it. Uh So back to

(23:18):
Jeffrey Daniel. He's dancing on Soul Train, He's dancing on
Solid Gold. There's another couple of dancers name Jeron Casper
candidate great name, and Derek Cooley Jackson j A X
s O N. Another cool name, and they were moonwalking
around or backsliding around, and so all these dudes were

(23:38):
basically kind of laying the foundation for what the moonwalk
would come to be. It got real, like even if
you watch Bailey's it's a legit moonwalk, but it's not
as smooth as Daniel ended up doing it. You know,
like when you see him on solid Gold, he like
that's one of the smoother moonwalks you'll ever see, and

(23:59):
he probably debuted it for the first time in American
history on TV on Top of the Pops. Was talking
about yeah, smooth, so um, people thought he was cheating. Yeah,
They're like, this is the floor oils or something like
what is that we watching? Right? It blew everybody away, right,

(24:21):
but everybody's no one knew who this guy was. Really,
it was a solid gold answer at the time, everybody
knew who Michael Jackson was. So in about a year later,
almost exactly a year later, UM, NBC broadcast this special
called Motown Retrospective and it was a huge, huge thing. Um.

(24:45):
Diana Ross did her first appearance with the Supreme since
nineteen sixty nine. Marvin Gaye played, Um. There was a
battle of the bands between the Temptations and the Four
Tops Stevie Wonder Um, I'm sure everybody when it was
like a soccer game. UM, and Michael Jackson comes out right,

(25:06):
and people like, who's he? I mean he was pretty
big at the time. Now, of course he was. He
was huge, but so was Marvin Gaye in the Four
Tops and Stevie Wonder, Right, Michael Jackson comes out and
brings the house down. And one of the reasons he
brought the house sound was because he's doing Billy Jean,
which when the thing came out was the number one
song in America. But during the dance he did the moonwalk,

(25:29):
and it was the first time basically anybody who had
seen uh had ever seen the moonwalk. Yeah, like, like
no one in America watching this NBC special had been
watching Top of the Pops stuff on solid gold here
and there. But it was definitely like a mind blower
for because it was such a widely watched special for sure. Um, well,

(25:55):
here's the deal. He was taught the moonwalk depends on
who right. Some people say he sought out Daniel said,
you teach me. Other people say no, it was Casper
Candidate or Coolie Jackson. But from what I gather it,
it sounds like all those guys eventually worked with him
over the years. Is like either choreographers or choreographers slash

(26:19):
backup dancers. So he he learned it from some or
all of those people. Yeah, Like, um, Daniel choreographed like
his smooth Criminal video, and Coolie and Casper are the
dudes who like lean with him on other that very famous,

(26:40):
like crazy side lane that he did in the video.
Does he do one of those de lean move? The
crazy side lean, I think is what it's called. Can
I say what happened to me yesterday? What did you
do a lean? Well? I was looking at videos on
how to moonwalk tutorials okay, uh, to see if I
could get it. And when you watch it slowed down

(27:01):
and broken down, it's like, oh, well, I get it.
It's not that complex, but it's hard to master. And
we'll get to all that coming up, Like I'm sure
we're gonna bumble our way through a description about the moonwalk,
but we're gonna try. But then I started following into
that little YouTube vortex of videos and I saw this
guy saying, here's how you do the lean, and I

(27:24):
was like, I want to know how to do that
because it's cool. It is it's like an illusion. It
is well, it's not, it's real. And there's a guy, well,
I don't and there's a guy named Robert Hoffman who
It turns out this guy is great. He does he's
dance tutorials and he's kind of funny and and does

(27:46):
it in such a way that it's interesting to watch,
and so I encourage everyone to go watch Robert Hoffman's
tutori on how to do the lean, and he kind
of explains, He fully explains the illusion and how to
how to do it well. And I look at it
and I'm like, oh man, you're about to follow over right,
And then he pulls it back, and I thought, I'm
gonna practice the lean because that will be like I've
always wanted to know how to dance, but I'm just

(28:08):
not good at it. But I want to get like
the lean down at least so I can bust that out.
It's just like standing in place, Yeah, but you know
you shouldn't even do it on a dance floors while
you're having a conversation with somebody, like slowly, slowly, just
start to leave, so they're about to go over, snap
back into place and be like, what if You're totally right?

(28:29):
Because I don't go to dance parties anymore anyway, What
am I talking about? Regular parties? Yeah? I would just
be in the office one day in the kitchen and
I'll he's gonna go, oh my god, I didn't go
over Oh man, um, all right, so where are we?
So we're talking about how there's a there's a discrepancy
over who taught Michael Jackson the moonwalk. Correct. The thing

(28:51):
is is, Michael Jackson never claimed to have invented the moonwalk.
People just assumed he had because he was huge at
the time. And he also later said that he didn't
know what he what his dance routine was gonna be
for Billy Jean for this motown special. So a lot
of people say, well, obviously he just did the spur
of the moment or whatever. No, totally untrue. He employed

(29:14):
choreographers and including those three guys like you said, all
three of them worked with him as choreographers. And he also,
as far as his sister Janet I think, says, they
went to see Shalamar at Disneyland before this and saw
um Jeffrey Daniel doing the backslide and said, dude, you

(29:34):
gotta teach me that. Here's some money, teach me the moonwalk.
Oh wait, it's not called the moonwalk yet. And he
also said that he never called it the moonwalk, that
it was actually the media that came up with that,
but he adopted it for surely some I mean obviously
someone named it some Yeah, some ap reporters like named
there's me. Uh for what it's worth, Daniel said, besides,

(29:58):
she shields and Yard now that the the Electric boogaloosy
is who inspired him as well. And I looked up
those guys. They're the ones who originated body popping. Yeah,
and they were a dance group and I was looking
at one of them and I was like, let's rerun. Okay,
you're talking about locking. Yes, it is Rerun. Yes, he

(30:18):
was huge, and he was a member of the Lockers,
which was at one point the Electric Boogaloos. You know
those are two different Well, no, at one point they were.
They were merged, okay, and then then that's where popping
and locking came from, because popping and lock and are
two different types of day. Originally they were the Electric
Boogaloo Lockers, and then I guess they diverged at one point. Okay,

(30:39):
maybe they were like I want to lock, I want
to pop. Well, the dude who invented locking, it was
good friends with Rerun and like, if you think of
Rerun dancing, like those wrist twists and the jumps and
the suspender stuff, that's lock and totally. And they were
on that dance squad the Lockers. It was Don Campbell
who invented locking. Rerun and then Tony Basil, the girl

(31:02):
who sang mickey. Yeah. So if you don't know who reruns,
you're like, what in the world are you guys talking about?
What you oldsters? Um? Oh yeah, it's a It was
a TV show called What's Happening about these three friends
in South central l A in the seventies. Very funny. Uh,

(31:23):
and Rerun was one of the characters played by the
great Fred Barry who was in the Lockers in the
electric Googlue Lockers and just go watch go type rerun
dancing What's happening and uh, what you're watching is pure locking.
One of the great TV theme songs of all time too. Now,
if you throw what he's it really is. What instrument

(31:44):
was that like a klezmer or something. I have no idea.
It's weird, but it's a great one. Um. The if
you throw in that, that our movement, that wave and
the worm, you've got Papa and walking and breaking. Yeah,
what people think of as breakdancing. That's pretty amazing. Like

(32:05):
we've I was thinking the other day about how in
our lifetime is people our age and there's a range.
But we've seen like a complete, like two complete at
least two new complete art forms created in hip hop
music and that and breakdancing created out of whole cloth.

(32:27):
It's amazing. And the new sports like what like you know,
X games and snowboarding and skateboarding, like we've like seen
these new things created. And you always think that, well,
music is, what else can you do? I guess chechnow
and all that stuff that was created as well, Um, jazz,

(32:48):
well that was before us a little, but no, it's true.
I just think it's pretty neat to look you know,
I know what you're talking about. Two you you're like, well,
there's grunge. Well grunge is an offshoot of like rock
and roll or whatever. But yeah, no, I mean these
were completely new art forms that some people still think
are a fad, which is funny. Really well, you know
you hear like older Mudgeons like rap is gonna be

(33:09):
a fad. No, wrap is brand new art form here forever,
and it changes in morphs and is you know, it's amazing.
It's neat. So we did a hip hop episode. You
mentioned that, Yeah, it was good. I thought for you know,
a couple of shamos like us. I think we did
a pretty decent job, agreed. Um, alright, So do we
need to explain how to break dance? I want to

(33:31):
hear you explain it. No, I can't. You mean moonwalk? Yeah?
What to say? Break dance? Break? Yeah? Yeah, we need
to say how to moonwalk? Okay, so go ahead, take
it away. Well you're the one who does it so well,
all right, all right, are you ready? So you start?
First of all, you want to take off your shoes
and put on some socks on a nice slick floor. Yeah,

(33:51):
don't try to do it on like um uh pine bark. No.
Maybe pour yourself a vodka gimlet. Yeah, well that's the
that's the drink of the moonwalker. So um. You you
are on a slick floor, wearing socks, and you stand
straight up and down right, and you take your right

(34:13):
foot and you put it out in front of you
with your foot flat on the floor. Okay, bend your
left knee and go up on the ball of your
left foot. Okay, now holding yourself in place with just
your the ball of your foot. All of everything is
on whatever foot you have up, the ball of whatever

(34:35):
foot you have up. Take a sip of that gimlet, right,
maybe another one too, I need one now, And then
you drag your foot back the foot that's on the floor,
and as you drag your right foot back past your left,
you drop your left and you drop your left heel
and raise your right and then you repeat the same
process and you're floating. There's the moonwalk, a k. The backslide.

(35:00):
You're pretty square if you call it the moonwalk. These days,
we had to title this episode moonwalk because we wanted
everybody to know what we were talking about. But it's
called the backslide. Okay, that is correct. And I watched
the tutorial, which the guy who did the tutorial actually
wasn't great at it. Um like he he had it
down like how to teach you. But when he did it,

(35:21):
I was going, yeah, it's not great. Was Steve Brule? No, God,
that would be great. I just think the guy had
the wrong shoes on personally, But I'll bet that's what
he blames it onto. The thing he stressed for a
good moonwalk is a long stride, which is where you're lacking.
If I can be honest. Oh am, I doing it

(35:41):
too too short? Yeah, okay, long stride Josh Okay, I
didn't realize you've had so many formed opinions about my moonwalk. Uh.
That foot that you're keeping flat needs to be so
so flat to create the illusion. What what am I doing?

(36:02):
I'm not talking about you know, your foot was pretty
good and flat. That's your stride. I pretend like it's dead,
like my foot is dead when I drag it. Uh.
And then when you when you go to switch feet,
he said, you really just snap them both real hard
to create that illusion like a good completely synchronized simultaneous

(36:22):
snap up and down with those two feet, your long stride,
keep that foot flat, keep that vodka gimlet flowing, and
you're gonna be moonwalking in no time. And then you
can also because what you're doing is it's supposed to
look like you're walking while you're moving backward. You're walking
forward but moving backwards, and that's the definition of the
moonwal So you can, um, you can like add your

(36:44):
arms swinging, lean like your till till your body forward
a little bit if you're real good. Michael Jackson used
to like move his head up and down in rhythm
to his walking or whatever, and it adds to the effect.
Totes Shalamar. I feel like I kind of should try it,
try it right now. Well, I'm not gonna do it now.

(37:05):
You don't have a vodka gimlet, Nope? Are you got
anything else? And you go get some cocktail onions. Those
are great Gibson onions. Oh is that it Gibson and
I'm thinking of yeah, but that's sim It is the
lime juice roses lime, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh. If you
want to know more about vodka gimlets, you can type
that word in the search part how stuff works dot com.

(37:26):
And since I's a gimlet, it's time for listener now
before listener mail. This is ah, I'm gonna call this
correction time. Okay, we need like Lola Vie music. We
do so you know, we have corrections on the show
from time to time. This was sort of a big
one because we really goofed on the Gettysburg Address episode. Um,

(37:50):
and boy did we hear about it. Remember how I
said I wanted to be a Civil war buff. I
don't anymore. You know, you have a rough start to
your career as a Civil war buff. They're not nice people.
As it turns out, no one on the internet's a
nice person. No, I was. I was just very surprised
if people got angry that we messed something up, just like, so,
what did we mess up? We said fifty thou dead,

(38:12):
It was fifty total casualties. Is that what it was?
So we messed up and said mistaked casualties for dead
when in fact casualties is dead, missing or wounded. Um.
And then we also said that while we were talking
about the percentage of the army, like it was this
much a percentage of of the Union army and a

(38:33):
third of Lee's army. But it was just for the
army fighting in that battle, not the total Union army
and the total Confederate army. And we very specifically were like,
this is for the entire army. So we got a
little excited and a little ahead of ourselves. Well, clearly
we're the most evil people of the century. So very

(38:56):
sorry about that. Civil War Buffs you know now, don't
have a contact Chuck again. Please all right, listener mail
now yeah, um, I'm just gonna read this one. Hey guys,
great podcast, especially like how you pointed out, Uh, but
here's some of the bogus studies how to do good research,

(39:16):
especially like how you guys pointed out the pressure when
you're an understudy to do studies that support the current
theories of your employer, without getting into a ton of detail.
I've been there, and I left research altogether because I
became pretty disillusioned with it all. One thing you did
not mention is that entire industries get erected based on
the results of a few initial studies. Uh, the sexiness

(39:38):
of the studies. Aside, which is what you talked about.
The research or does a good job and does not
show anything, or has a negative study, their funding is
often at stake. For my personal experiences, is the largest
basis for bias. WHOA, that was a mouthful. It's hard
to say when you're missing the tooth um research. Researchers
become heavily vested and being right from a face perspective,

(40:02):
if a c in a monetary perspective, we don't really
recognize realize this because the scope of the impact of
the studies are usually small. But that researcher who suddenly
lost all their grants, it's a pretty high price to
pay for being ethical. I don't really have any answers
to how to clean it up. But science is contrarian
and by nature anti consensus. Instead, we have a system

(40:24):
that rewards only rewards reinforcement. Good researchers have to be
allowed to say, if you did this great study and
found nothing without the fear of losing grant money. Amen,
that's from Trevor. Thanks Trevor. That was very illuminating. Yeah,
an enlightening, very very adit. Yeah did you say that? Yeah, Rudy, really,

(40:47):
I don't. Okay. Uh. If you want to get in
touch with us, like Trevor did, you can tweak to
us that. That's why sk podcast. You can join us
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can send us an email to stuff podcast. The work
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