August 13, 2015 • 39 mins
We've covered our fair share of pop-culture icons and here is another - Hula-Hoops. They've been around since ancient time in some form or another, but made their name in during the Hoop Boom of the 1950s. Learn all about this popular fad and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hang, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry
over there. Uh, and this is Stuff you Should Know
the podcast. How's going It's fine, great. How's it going
(00:24):
with you? Good? Jerry's distracting me a little bit because
all I see in my peripheral vision is her practicing
her new hula fire dance routine. It's pretty dangerous. It's dangerous,
but it's um it's interesting to see out of the
corner of one's eye. Performance art, performance hula art. Can
you hula hoop? I cannot, sir, I'm too self conscious
(00:46):
too to even try it. Yeah, it's it's a grown man,
forty four year old man hula hooping. Plus when I
do it, like as I rotate my hips and make
the same ro tap my hips, Yeah, it makes the
sound of like almost congealed jello just slopping around in
the ball. You know what I mean. I don't want
(01:09):
to make that sound. Yeah, but um, I did see
at a the East Atlanta Strut Festivals, one of Atlanta's
many great neighborhood festivals. I believe the Strut to Me
is known for having the better music of most of
the festivals. And our buddy Craig Johnson's band played Space Knife,
not space Knife O. This one was I can't remember
(01:30):
the name of this band, but that band is no
longer now he's got a new band. Even that guy
is always coming up with new stuff. You could never
pay him down too good. You should check out Space
Knife though. People on the web you can find it.
It's good. It was in our TV show too. Yeah,
that's his alter ego. But anyway, Freg's band was playing
and this I was pretty hula naive hoop naive at
(01:50):
this point. And a few years ago, and um, there
was this lady doing uh hula routine to his band
playing and I videoed it. It was so awesome. So
she was hoop dancing hoop dancing. Yeah, like the neck,
the arms, the legs, moving around with it like supremely
(02:10):
talented hooper. Yeah. If you go onto the web and
and type in hoop dancing, it's gonna bring up some
pretty impressive videos. Yeah, and it's quite a workout. I
could tell. We'll get to that. But just watching her
I got tired, and so I drank another beer and
just listen to music. Yeah, and pretended you were hula
hooping in your head. Yeah, you're like, I'm so good
at this in my head. But I was like, man,
(02:32):
that's a thing. Again. I had no idea, but it's
a big thing, ya, hula hooping. Yeah, but it's been
around for a while, Yes, it has. For example, Chuck,
did you know, As Robert points out, Robert Lamb wrote
this article from Stuff to Blow your Mind. Yeah, and
he says that the hula hoop has been around in
some form or fashion since before most of the world's religions. Wow,
(02:55):
that's really saying something. That is saying something. So let's
get in the way back machine. Oh we're play back time. Yeah,
let's go back to one thousand b C. My friend,
we're in Egypt and their little children, Egyptian children with
dried up grape vines they've made into hoops playing with them,
(03:17):
and there's some Egyptian news like get off of my
patch of sand kids, Yeah, you know, instead of a lawn. Sure,
I get it. That was good. That was all right. Um,
so they there, they no doubt used them in similar
ways that we did today, But they what one thing
they did, which was a big sporting thing to do
(03:39):
for a long time, which I don't get personally. The
fun value that is is using a stick to push
a hula hoop to the road. I think the fun
and it is that the hula hoop as it's traveling
down the road, which does seem to be the oldest
use of the hoop as playtime activity, Right, it wants
to fall, it wants to follow over, right, So if
(04:01):
you can keep it um going, then there's probably a
tremendous amount of personal satisfaction that you can carry all
the way to bedtime with and maybe have good dreams
because of Yeah, I don't even see if you had
a plastic polyethylene hula hoop, a modern hoop, I don't
see how a stick like how you would even push it. Uh,
you would want a stick with maybe um like a fork, No,
(04:25):
probably something like a stick with a big wad of
chewed bubble gum on it to like just have some
sort of point of contact. Because, as we'll see when
we talk about hula hoop physics, friction plays a big
part in making hula hoops. Hula hoop, Yes, around the
waist that is well in any in this case as well,
and the stick makes contact with the hoop, you're using
(04:46):
friction to push it along. Good point. So I see
your point. Like, if you're going to use a stick
on a like a plastic hula, who it's gonna slide
off or it's gonna want to Maybe it scares me.
That's why I think it's dumb. Maybe I would be
made a love by the hoop maybe at first, but chuck,
you would have to hang in there and stick with it,
and um, pretty soon you'd be rolling hoops like an
(05:09):
Egyptian kid. Yeah, like an ancient Egyptian child. Hoop rolling
was a big deal throughout ancient Greece as well and Rome. Um,
they decorated them with bells and things and toys. Uh,
fifth century BC. There's you ever heard of ganny Mede? Ganymede.
He was a handsome hero, Oh he was. He supposedly
(05:33):
there's an old fifth century BC urn of him, um
where he's holding a rooster that was apparently a gift
from Zeus and a whop hula whop, clearly hula hoop
and apparently this discovery Um, I'm not sure why it's
called the Berlin Painter urn, but it is again no idea.
(05:54):
But um apparently they said, well, I wonder if hoops
played a role in the earliest Olympics. And I guess
they've discredited that idea now, but for a while because
of this urn, this picture of ganey Mead with a
hoop um, they wondered, was it a sport? Yeah, an
Olympic sport. But the Greeks supposedly did use hoops for
(06:17):
physical fitness as like a physical activity, in very much
the same way it's become popular today. I would imagine
a hulah an Olympic hula hooper would be sort of
like the you know, the what was the sport the
curler of today? Are you kind of like an ancient Greece, Like, hey,
what do you throw the hammer? What do you do?
I'm a hula hooper, although I would guess would probably
(06:39):
be more akin to the hula hoopers of today. Yeah,
the hooper roller is what the sport would have been.
That would be more like curling, right, hula hooping. That's tough, man,
it is tough. Uh. What else? The ancient Briton's um
they had a game called a battle game called kill
the Hoop. Yeah, I like this one when they would
roll the hoop and throw try to throw a spear
(06:59):
through it. Pretty neat and dangerous. Uh. And apparently they
also used it and the hula method and it would
people get injured. Yeah, it's there was a fifteen or
fifteenth century those are the four hundreds of the fourteenth
century century hula hoop craze in Britain in that bizarre
(07:23):
that is weird, and yeah, people were getting injured. There
was a proclamation by the early physicians. They would pull
up there like crows, mask their plague mass just long
enough to be like stay away from hula hoops, steer
clear of those things. Yeah, the warning was hoops kill
was I guess what was posted on the church door.
And this is like in addition to being in the
(07:44):
way of a spear that was being thrown at a
rolling hoop, like this is just from hula hooping. I
would stay away from the hoops altogether if I was
an ancient Briton. Yeah, because really, if you're like an
ancient Briton, you're going from like zero to sixty as
far as like physical fitness goes. Once you're hula hooping.
Oh yeah, you know, just because you're not just sitting
(08:05):
around eating uh like lamb's brains, Yeah, drinking meat? Uh
what else? The Native Americans UM have a long culture
of using the hoop um in New Mexico, the taos
Uh Pueblo people, UM, they used them in ritual dances,
private healing ceremonies. And did you look up this chunky thing? No,
(08:30):
did you find the chunky reference? I did. The kaho
Kean Native Americans. That was an unusual way to pronounced that.
How would you say it kaho Kean? I think in
Native American would be kaho Kean. That's fine. Uh. Near St.
Louis apparently is where they played this game Chunky, which
(08:52):
I just had to look it up because a game
called Chunky with an E y and um. From what
I saw, it was more of a small stone disc
than like a hula hoop looking thing, and you would
it was like kill the hoop though in Britain, right, Yeah,
they would throw a stick apparently it looked like a
combination of like um bocci and and kill the hoop.
(09:17):
Weird because I think they would try and throw the
spear where the disc would eventually land and the closest
to the disc one. That's like they're predicting where the
where the hoop would fall. I guess this makes sense,
although that's not really like Bocci at all. I mean,
I get there's a proximity element that's boc s y Um,
(09:40):
but I don't know. I don't know. Like once I
saw that and saw pictures, I was like, I don't
even know if they should be in this article because
it's like a small doughnut that's a hoop of sorts.
I guess. So it's a stretch if he asked me.
But it was a big spectator sport, like fifty acre
stadiums of people would watch this would go to the
chunky games and so so there was chunky matches in
(10:04):
Koho kia Uh, and the pueblo used there. I think,
as you said, they used hoops, and they weren't the
only ones. UM. There are other tribes from all over
North America and meso America. I believe UM that used
hoops for dancing. And apparently it was in nine thirty
a guy named Tony white Cloud, who was a Yemez
(10:26):
pueblo down in New Mexico. UM did like a hoop
dance in public and basically brought it back like it
had been virtually lost to the ages, at least as
far as uh the average American was concerned. Most people
didn't know this was the thing. Luckily, Tony white Clouds
like check this out did an awesome hoop dance, and
(10:47):
then by there were national hoop dancing competitions in New Mexico. Um,
and they're a big deal still to this day. Yeah,
of course, I think did he kick off the America crazy? No,
he didn't. He was strictly native American hoop dancing, not
(11:07):
hula hooping. Okay, so let's go to well, let's take
a break actually, because this is this is the big
revelation here. That's right, all right, Josh, We're at that
(11:39):
point where mainstream America goes hoop crazy. But to get
to that point, we actually have to go backward again
in time for a second, back in the way back machine.
So let's go it running. Let's go to I don't know, Feediar, Tahiti,
year Poesia. Yeah, and it's the eighteenth century. See all
(12:03):
these British sailors drink some rum, oh man, Okay, yeah,
in addition to the realm we've already drank today. Uh.
So the British sailors that you see here, um, are
noticing a hula dance, right, and they're filing it away
in their mental catalog. And uh now when they reach
(12:24):
Britton again, why have we been saying it like that?
I don't know. Uh, they notice that it bears a
striking resemblance to what people do with the hula hoop.
You gyrate every time you'd say that, by the way,
you can't can't not do it. So the term hula
became applied to the hoop, especially when you used your
(12:45):
hips to gyrate to rotate them. When you rotate your
hips with the hoop. Uh, these British sailors ended up
applying the word hula to it, and it's stuck. That's
where it came from, was Polynesia, even though they was
no hoop involved in Polynesia. Correct, Yes, they just kind
of ganked that word. You think their own purposes is
(13:10):
all over again? That was a big nineties sternm wouldn't it.
Let's go watch some X files. Um, what's actually yeah,
the movies coming out soon night. Oh yeah, they're doing
another one, aren't they that thing will never die. I
don't think it should keep doing movies, That's what I say. Um.
So we mentioned that the Greeks I believe used it
(13:34):
for physical fitness, right. Uh. I don't think we said that.
I think I said it, okay, Um the uh, the
Swiss actually came to adopt it for the same reasons
too in the nineteenth century. In early twentieth century, Yeah,
someone named Emil Jacques uh dal Crose and that was great.
(13:55):
That's tough. UM had a program called Rhythmics, which, of
course I started singing Sweet Dreams this morning because of that,
and I've been singing it all day as a result.
So that was a special training program. It was apparently
a big deal. It was a big deal. So Rhythmics
used hoops for UM basically physical fitness, but also interpretive dance,
(14:18):
that kind of stuff. It was a combination of It
was like dance training is is what I can gather,
and it used hoops. The reason that we're mentioning this
when we're talking about the American crazes, that it directly
led to the American craze potentially because yourhythmics spread from
Switzerland to UM. Great Britain and it was brought in
(14:42):
as part of like pe class in Australia. And it
was in Australia that the founders of Whammo were inspired
to create the modern hula hoop that we think of
today boom. So it's possible they watched the rhythmics class
or heard about the rhythmics class and with Australian kids
and then said, well, this is a clearly something of
(15:02):
Australian design and let's bring it to the US and
started crazy. They said, sweet dreams were made of these. Yeah. Uh.
And this was Richard Ner and Arthur spud melon mel
malin melon sounds like m l o n like Thornton melon. Uh.
Don't tease me with that movie The Great Back to School.
(15:28):
I saw a bit of that recently and and the
only thought through my head was like, man, why couldn't
I have caught this from the beginning? Yeah, because I
want to see it all that And man, his son
is pasty. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought you were
saying that was a line for the movie. It should
have been. Yeah, his son Keith Gordon, who became a
great movie director. H really Yeah, the guy from Christine
(15:50):
and Back to school. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he'd he gave
up acting and started directing movies and directed uh a
bunch of good movies. One called Waking the Dead. You
should see, I thought, Keith Gordon co starred, and they live.
I don't know, maybe I'll have to check that. Uh
So where were we? Oh? Yes, the two founders um
(16:13):
of WAMMO. They said, you know what, let's take these
wooden hoops, let's make them out of polyethylene. Let's make
them and let's charge a dollar ninety eight for them
and make them all kinds of fun colors. Yeah, and boom,
the hulahoop craze in night was born. Like it was
the definition of a flash in the pancrase, a lot
(16:37):
of money in a very short span of time, like
a summer. Basically pretty much in Ninemo released it and
by the end of nineteen fifty eight these things were
rotting in the warehouse. But in the meantime they sold globally,
globally from the summer to the end of ninety eight
a hundred million. Who who Yeah, more than that, I think,
(17:02):
dam my brain, Yeah, you forgot what we were talking about.
I almost said, Frisbee, did we do one on the frisbee. No,
I thought we had, but we haven't have we No,
we did one on the boomerang, right, just like a frisbee,
but it's like a dangerous frisbee. Uh. So they sell
all these hula hoops. They make a ton of money, um, like,
(17:23):
you know, over fifty million dollars in a short span
of time, which I'm sure they weren't happy with that
that it didn't last, but they were also probably like
an injection of cash like that is great for any business. Yeah,
and then they moved on to the frisbee and made
even more money. Yeah. And they did not secure a
patent for it. I guess it didn't matter in the
long run. Well, they couldn't because it was so yeah,
demonstrably an ancient invention that nobody could patent it. Nope,
(17:47):
but they trademarked it. They did. They trade marked the
name hula hoop in the United States, which is why,
uh we still call it hula hoop today. I guess
it just became we should probably put the title with
a are in a certain goal for this. Oh, yeah,
we should do that, like Barbie. Uh. It was named
the number thirty five toy of all time UM by
(18:07):
Time magazine and they know toys toys, And then from
nineteen sixty eight to nineteen eighty one there were national
hula hoop contests held and the guess in the early
eighties people were finished with it. There were also like
a tremendous amount of um music, like musical singles released
(18:28):
called the hula hoop song. Different people recorded different songs
about hula hooping. Doesn't surprise me. Yeah, it was a
crazy big time And you say that they were done
with it by the eighties, not true. The national competitions
there was so if you look at hula hooping records,
the most recent hula hoop records from two thousand nine, Well,
(18:48):
but was that part of a national competition probably, or
just a guy named Aaron Hibbs he hula hooped, just
hula hooped for seventy four hours and fifty four minutes. Wow.
He broke the record of I didn't even stand up
for that long. He broke the record of a girl
named Kim kob rely um. She held the record twice,
(19:09):
in nineteen with fifty four hours and in nineteen eighty
four for seventy two hours, which is pretty impressive. People
do like hundreds of them at once. Yeah, there's a
guy named Paul Dizzy Hips Blair who set the record
in two thousand nine with a hundred and thirty two
hoops at the same time. That's impressive. He's basically probably
(19:30):
just like like the Michelin man made of hula hoops.
Ever tell you about the Surface Area Man constant him
in Athens that was out on Halloween, um in Athens
in college and those the dude I know. The guy's
name is Blake. He has You may have seen him.
He had big red dreadlocks, kind of a short guy,
(19:51):
just a ubiquitous Athens dude. He lives kind of in
my neighborhood now. I still see him every once a while.
We called him Sideshow Blake because of Sideshow Bob. And
he came in bar and the Georgia Bar, and he
had these foam disks around his arms, around his legs,
around his waist and neck that were huge, like probably
(20:12):
four ft across, and he was Surface Area Man and
that was just his costume because when he moved around,
he took up like, you know, probably seventy five square
feet in space and he would just move through the
bar and say, I'm surface area man, and I'll always
remember every time I see Blake. I saw him at
the grocery store the other day. Was he dressed like that? No,
but that was like surface He wouldn't fit down the
(20:34):
grocery aisle. Does he have dread still? Yeah? Does he
really still rocking the red dreads? He's dedicating? He looks
exactly the same. Actually, but we weren't friends. I could
actually like him. Actually, I'm gonna just walk by him
and go surface area man. I'm gonna do it. All right,
Let's talk about the Hudsucker Proxy for a quick moment,
(20:55):
and then we'll take another break. Did you ever see
that one? I don't think I made it through that one.
The Coen Brothers, Yeah, uh not. All of their movies
are great. I disagree. I love the Cohen Brothers, but
some of their movies stink. Oh boy that they're part
of my pcent club where every movie they've made it
has been great. That is wrong? Which other ones? Don't
(21:16):
you like? The Man who Wasn't There? Love it? Uh?
Bob Robertson, They didn't. That wasn't there? Well it was terrible? Okay? Uh? Well,
the Hudsucker Proxy too. I liked it. I would put
it at lesser Cohen's for sure, you would have to,
but I enjoyed it quite a bit. Tim Robbins and
Jennifer Jason Lee and Paul Newman u in a fictitious
(21:39):
tale of the invention of the hula hoop. Um. It
is not the true biopic of the invention of the
hula hoop, but they co opted it for one of
their movies and it was nothing pretty great. But that's
just me, okay, all right, go ahead, Well no, that
was it that I just want to shout it out. Fine,
Uh well, then let's take a break because are about
(22:00):
to get into physics in hoop games. Yep. After this,
(22:27):
no Country for Old Man terrible. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
I love that's maybe the best. Raising Arizon is probably
the best that It'd be tough for me to pick
on any given day, but far Ago is the one
I can watch over and over. Yeah, I would say
this three year time for first. Did we just come
(22:48):
back from the break? Just sick? Going right back into
the car? I don't know. All right, let's do it.
We'll see how Jerry edits this. Um, so let's it
wouldn't be a Stuff You Should Know podcast if we
didn't talk about the science behind something seemingly unscientific. Well,
hula hoops are super complex as far as physics goes,
you know, super complex, super complex. There's just a few things.
(23:08):
We are not in agreement on stuff today, are we?
I don't know what's going on. So let's say you
have a hula hoop, right, and it's around your waist,
and you take it and you wrote you have it
up against maybe one hips making contact with your body.
That you're starting in the traditional way, then sure, and
you whip it around to one side, and as you
do you start rotating your hips. Right, I'm rotating my
(23:33):
hips chests. Uh. And as you do that, when you
rotate your hips, what you're doing is, first of all,
you're conserving the angular momentum you gave the hula hoop
when you pushed it in a certain direction, twisted it
around yourself. Right, that's right. You are the axis you, Yes,
you are the excess to and when you move your
hips around you, when you when you rotate your hips,
(23:53):
you're applying what's called torque. Yeah, because all this hoop
wants to do is fall down around on the ground
and you look foolish. It wants to stop. Well, no,
it doesn't want to stop because of inertia. It wants
to keep going, but it can't because of friction. But
it wants to fall down to the ground like you said,
and make you look foolish. But ironically, that same friction
(24:14):
is keeping it from doing that. Who was the fool? Now?
Whoop the hula hoop? Fool? All right? Did you talk
about the torque? I did talk about torque, and torque
is a twisting force where you're twisting your hips. You're
thrusting the hula hoop around in the circle, and what
you're doing there is contributing to the centripetal force and
(24:36):
its centrifical no send trip at all, two different things.
Move is a force that moves at a right angle
to the motion of your body, so it keeps that
thing whatever it is, say, hula hoop or tractor tire, which,
by the way, someone said a record hula hooping with
a tractor tire. Yeah, for like seventy seconds of fifty
four pound tire. How big was a person? I'm sure
(24:59):
he's ginorm all right, Um, I think he's from like
bailor roost or something, you know. Yeah, they do that
on a daily basis. So, uh, with the centripetal forces
is going at a right angle to the direction that
you're thrusting your hips, it's constantly going to move around
the circle on the axis. That is centripetal force, boom,
(25:21):
tripetal motion. I should say yes. And when this hoop
wants to fall, of course, we're talking about gravity. Gravity
wants to win that fight. But um, if you keep
that pulsing gyration going, then you're gonna keep that hoop
just a little ahead of the curve. Yeah, that's apparently
the key, and Robert puts this in here is a
kind of like a throwaway thing that I think that's
(25:42):
the key of hula hooping is you want your hip
to move just before that that I guess wave that
comes in contact with your body again, comes in contact
like comes catch and release in a way. Okay, you
can catching it on your up and then slinging it
back around. I'm gyrating. There's a lot of gyrating going
(26:05):
on in this room right now. It's crazy. Um, So
there's a few different parts of the body at work. Um.
I don't know why in two thousand four they needed
a fifteen page study in the Journal of Biological Cybernetics
to figure this out, because if you just look at somebody,
you can tell that the hips, knees and ankles are
(26:25):
really what's at play keeping that thing going. And that's
if you're just doing the the hip hula hoop, notack
and legs and all that. Of course, it's just the
standard hooping, right. Yeah. And so another study I think
four years later, in the Journal of Human Movements. I
don't know why they needed that. They built upon this
two thousand four study and said, okay, you use your hips,
(26:47):
knees and ankles. Everybody uses it, but depending on the individual,
there'll be different contributions from the hips, knees or ankle
depends on the motion of your ocean exactly. So it's
like the individual. Everybody uses the same the same parts,
but they use them in different percentages to come up
with the hula hooping motion. Yeah. I've got certain body
(27:10):
types are better at this than others too. Yeah. Slim, yeah, yeah,
probably so that the one in front of A Craig's band,
she was pretty slam. I guess she's working that thing. Man.
It was like, it was pretty amazing hula hoop. So
that's hoop dancing. When we'll finish up here with some
other games. Well, we didn't talk about hoop dancing. We
(27:30):
were just talking about hula hooping. No, we talked about
hoop dancing at the beginning with that lady. Oh yeah, okay,
so that's hoop dancing. Okay, that's when you know it's
around the neck and then you work it down around
your hips and then up one arm and then up
the other arm. It's pretty impressive. Um, your standard hula hooping,
of course, which we've covered. Uh, speed and endurance depends
(27:51):
on what you're after, sure, like I want to do
this for twenty minutes, or I want to do it
really fast for five minutes. Okay, hooper, that's one of
my favorite trendling Like you're a little ancient Egyptian kid.
I'd like to see you do that hoop rolling. Let's
do it. Let's do a video for that. Okay, we
(28:12):
could do a periscope of it. Oh yeah, let's do that.
We're gonna start doing that. We could do at least
one of me hoop rolling. I think people, Well, we're
gonna get emails, they'll turn out and droves to see that.
Hundreds of people show up for that. There's one not
on this list that I want to give a shout
out to. All Right, what it was invented? Apparently in
Belgium they call it Belgium skipping. It's called ankle skipping.
(28:36):
It's where you put the hula hoop on one foot
around one ankle and you use it to hula hoop.
You make the hula hoop motion with that one and
if it comes around, you jump through the hoop with
the other one. Yeah, I can't believe it wasn't on
this list. Yeah, that's a solid hooped endeavor. But apparently
it's a pretty recent invention from like the sixties. All Right,
that makes sense. Um, that's sort of like hoop jumping,
(28:59):
but not quite know hoop jumping is more like jump
roping with a hula hoop. Yeah, but that kind of
reminds me of that too. Okay. Hoop jumping is when
you hold the hula hoop the top of it and
then you swing it around your body and jump up
and down. Um, like you have nothing better to do
in life, right, Like you can't find a jump rope
(29:19):
you haven't heard of those before. Return the hoop. This
is the only one I was ever good at. That's
when you you hold it vertically and you fling it
out as hard as you can backwards, and it sort
of spins in place and comes back to you, and
if you're not expecting it, you're gonna turn and run
because it's startling. He talked about kill the hoop. We
(29:39):
don't recommend you use spears to do that, or just
make sure nobody's in the vicinity of where the hoop is. Yeah,
you don't want to combine hoop chundling and kill the
hoop because you'll kill the hoop chund to lure. And
I'm not even to cover this last one. I dare
YouTube though. I like this one. Whop your environment, Yeah,
go ahead. So it's like can put hula hoops around
(30:02):
and you jump from them like their their islands and
there's a lot of in between. Okay, what's wrong with that?
I don't know, too childish, No, I'm very childish, but
I don't know. I just didn't there's a dear childlike
not childish. Big difference. Man. Uh, Well, we talked about exercise.
It is um legitimate exercise are hula hoop classes now. Um,
(30:26):
apparently Marissa Tomay, the actor, um, took hoop fitness classes
to lose weight for or to get in shape for
her movie The Wrestler in two thousand eight. Uh. First
Lady in Michelle Obama is very famously hoop worked out. Yeah,
whop hooped the lawn of the White House to say, hey, kids,
get active and at the US Open, yeah, you can
(30:47):
still have fun by doing this. Um. And they even
did another study to see what kind of calories you
could burn. Lots of hoop studies, um, too many. Um.
They took women between sixteen at the nine and said
go crazy and hoop and they yeah. And they were
weighted hoops too, by the way, Um, which is not
(31:11):
to say they were super heavy. They're generally still pretty
light weight. Yeah. But strangely a weighted hoop is easier
to keep going, yes, which makes sense, I think. Uh.
And they average a hundred fifty one beats per minute.
Yeah heart beats oh their heart Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
(31:32):
Tripical Quest would be proud. Uh. And that is burning
seven calories a minute or two ten calories during a
half hour of hooping. So that's good. Exercise people. That's like, um,
weightlifting type calorie burn yeah plus also um, like if
you just break it down to calorie first of all, chalk.
(31:52):
I want to do an episode and I'm not quite
sure how to frame it yet. It doesn't have a thesis.
But there are so many like medical myths out there
that are just taken as fact, even by the medical establishment,
even though like if you asked a doctor like is
this fact, they would be like, no, no, actually it's
not like drinking eight glasses of water a day totally
(32:13):
made up and that Like, I think we should do
one on medical myths sometime. What do you think we
should have? We not No, Like part of me wants
to say we have, but I think things to have
just come up like here there over over the years. Anyway. Um,
if even if you take the calories out of the equation,
(32:33):
just hula hooping, the standard hip gyration hula hoop will
really really work out your core. Yeah, like hoop. No,
you can just sit in your chair and do what
I'm doing now, Like I'm getting I'm sweating. Yeah right now,
my lip, my upper lip is broken out in perspiration. Uh.
(32:54):
Modern hooping Um burlesque uses hoops. If you go to
any music uti, well, these days you're gonna see the
ladies like I was talking about, or they might have
them decked out with L E D s or even fire.
Well what's neat is um L E D hula hoops
in particular are really displaying like the physics of hula
hoops pretty net through Like, Um, what's that type of
(33:15):
photography LSD? No? No, uh, what's the what's that photography
where you like you just keep the shutter open, so
like high exposure, long exposure. Yeah, you just said it,
keeping that shutter open. It's like when you see the
pictures of the cars on the freeway right and it's
just like a long trail of headlights. Yeah, but there
(33:35):
are photos out there of L E ed um hula
hoops there. It's just like you can see they don't
just keep like a flat path. They go all over
the place in some way. It's really neat. It's pretty cool. Um.
What about this lady, the Israeli sculptor Did you watch that?
I saw a couple of pictures of it. Yes. Her
name is Cigolette Lendau, and in two thousand three she
(33:57):
did a performance art um slash clitical statement of peace
where she did what's called barbed hula and she was
naked and uh hula hooped with a barbed wire hula
hoop that just tore her abdomen up. It's really rough. Yeah,
it was pretty disturbing, but she said, um she uh.
(34:19):
It was on then Israeli beach that she defined as
the only common natural border Israel has. So she was
making a statement to my friend, Well, she's an artist,
that's what they do. Um. I got a couple of
last things in the hula hoop craze of the Yeah, yes, yeah,
not the not the fourteenth century Briton one. Um. It
(34:42):
was in Japan, it was banned. The hula whoop was
banned because they were worried was going to lead to
actual stuff things happening gyrating hips. Yeah. Um. And apparently
the Soviets said that it was a it was evidence
of the emptiness of American culture. Hula who crazy, really, yeah,
leading to the Soviets to be like Americans, come on,
(35:06):
they hated America. Do you remember when the Iron Curtain
fell and you were like, oh wait a minute, Like
everything we were taught about the Soviet Union was basically
made up and they were like, you know, the average
Russian was like a good person. Yeah, and the average
Russian was a lot like the average American, and yeah,
drunk on vodka. I'm gonna live for it, all right,
(35:30):
that's it. If you want to know more about hula hoops,
you can type that word into the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And since I said search parts,
time for listener mate, I'm gonna call this uh anorexia?
Did you read this one? Why don't you know how
I missed that? Hey, guys, I'm a huge fan. I
want to let you know how you have how Stuff
(35:52):
you Should Know has helped me over the years. And
again listening if I love these again listening at the
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Agust Night. Stuff you shou Know has played a part
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(36:13):
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The podcast was really helpful on bad days, especially if
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But your podcast also helped me gain a better relationship
(36:34):
with my sibling. My eating disorder costs a lot of
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But one day I invited her to listen to your podcast.
Stuff You Snow quickly became a part of her commute
to university class. We occasionally would discuss the podcast topics.
We now have a tradition, and I love this part too.
We now have a tradition of listening to the Christmas
(36:56):
Extravaganza together while in winter break, which is what we
want people to do, to gather the family and make
this a thing. Some plum pudding. Even though I don't
know what we're we're gonna get pretty slim on Christmas.
I've got at least one great topic. Yeah, we need
to start looking now though, You're right, yeah, um, we've
even gifted each other matching stuff you should know shirts
(37:18):
one here. More recently, I received a very urgent text
letting me know in all caps that you guys were
coming to Minneapolis this fall, and another text, so let
me know that Chuck's daughter Ruby shares the same birthday
is our father. And I want to point out again
and Josh the Triumvirate. That's right. Your podcast gives us
endless topics and inside jokes. And I can't thank you
(37:39):
enough for bringing us closer together. Thanks again for being
such a big part of my formative years. Uh, my
sister and I can't wait to see you guys in
Minneapolis this fall. That is from Emily, and she said
please shut out her sister Megan. Awesome, and we thank
you for telling us all day like that really means
the world to us. Yes, and best of luck in
your continued recovery. That is tough stuff. Yeah, and congratulations too. Yeah. Well,
(38:03):
well we should do it Eating Disorder podcast at some
point that one's been hanging out there. Yeah yeah, because
you know, there's like a whole It was like this
new idea that like almost everybody has an eating disorder
in America these days of some kind. Yeah, like typically
binge eating is like a huge thing. Um, yeah, we
should definitely do that. Yeah. Um, but thank you very
much Emily and hello sister Megan. You appreciate you guys listening,
(38:27):
and hopefully we'll see you guys in Minneapolis when we
come in October. And you know what, actually write me back.
We'll put you on the guest list. Oh man, how
about that nice for you too, That's something just for you, Tobe,
no guests. I'm just kidding. Well, you need to lay
it down. We should probably have illegal disclaimer added after
this too. Yeah, we might hear from a lot of
(38:48):
Emily and Megan's in Minnesoa. Uh. If you want to
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(39:13):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hang, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry
over there. Uh, and this is Stuff you Should Know
the podcast. How's going It's fine, great. How's it going
(00:24):
with you? Good? Jerry's distracting me a little bit because
all I see in my peripheral vision is her practicing
her new hula fire dance routine. It's pretty dangerous. It's dangerous,
but it's um it's interesting to see out of the
corner of one's eye. Performance art, performance hula art. Can
you hula hoop? I cannot, sir, I'm too self conscious
(00:46):
too to even try it. Yeah, it's it's a grown man,
forty four year old man hula hooping. Plus when I
do it, like as I rotate my hips and make
the same ro tap my hips, Yeah, it makes the
sound of like almost congealed jello just slopping around in
the ball. You know what I mean. I don't want
(01:09):
to make that sound. Yeah, but um, I did see
at a the East Atlanta Strut Festivals, one of Atlanta's
many great neighborhood festivals. I believe the Strut to Me
is known for having the better music of most of
the festivals. And our buddy Craig Johnson's band played Space Knife,
not space Knife O. This one was I can't remember
(01:30):
the name of this band, but that band is no
longer now he's got a new band. Even that guy
is always coming up with new stuff. You could never
pay him down too good. You should check out Space
Knife though. People on the web you can find it.
It's good. It was in our TV show too. Yeah,
that's his alter ego. But anyway, Freg's band was playing
and this I was pretty hula naive hoop naive at
(01:50):
this point. And a few years ago, and um, there
was this lady doing uh hula routine to his band
playing and I videoed it. It was so awesome. So
she was hoop dancing hoop dancing. Yeah, like the neck,
the arms, the legs, moving around with it like supremely
(02:10):
talented hooper. Yeah. If you go onto the web and
and type in hoop dancing, it's gonna bring up some
pretty impressive videos. Yeah, and it's quite a workout. I
could tell. We'll get to that. But just watching her
I got tired, and so I drank another beer and
just listen to music. Yeah, and pretended you were hula
hooping in your head. Yeah, you're like, I'm so good
at this in my head. But I was like, man,
(02:32):
that's a thing. Again. I had no idea, but it's
a big thing, ya, hula hooping. Yeah, but it's been
around for a while, Yes, it has. For example, Chuck,
did you know, As Robert points out, Robert Lamb wrote
this article from Stuff to Blow your Mind. Yeah, and
he says that the hula hoop has been around in
some form or fashion since before most of the world's religions. Wow,
(02:55):
that's really saying something. That is saying something. So let's
get in the way back machine. Oh we're play back time. Yeah,
let's go back to one thousand b C. My friend,
we're in Egypt and their little children, Egyptian children with
dried up grape vines they've made into hoops playing with them,
(03:17):
and there's some Egyptian news like get off of my
patch of sand kids, Yeah, you know, instead of a lawn. Sure,
I get it. That was good. That was all right. Um,
so they there, they no doubt used them in similar
ways that we did today, But they what one thing
they did, which was a big sporting thing to do
(03:39):
for a long time, which I don't get personally. The
fun value that is is using a stick to push
a hula hoop to the road. I think the fun
and it is that the hula hoop as it's traveling
down the road, which does seem to be the oldest
use of the hoop as playtime activity, Right, it wants
to fall, it wants to follow over, right, So if
(04:01):
you can keep it um going, then there's probably a
tremendous amount of personal satisfaction that you can carry all
the way to bedtime with and maybe have good dreams
because of Yeah, I don't even see if you had
a plastic polyethylene hula hoop, a modern hoop, I don't
see how a stick like how you would even push it. Uh,
you would want a stick with maybe um like a fork, No,
(04:25):
probably something like a stick with a big wad of
chewed bubble gum on it to like just have some
sort of point of contact. Because, as we'll see when
we talk about hula hoop physics, friction plays a big
part in making hula hoops. Hula hoop, Yes, around the
waist that is well in any in this case as well,
and the stick makes contact with the hoop, you're using
(04:46):
friction to push it along. Good point. So I see
your point. Like, if you're going to use a stick
on a like a plastic hula, who it's gonna slide
off or it's gonna want to Maybe it scares me.
That's why I think it's dumb. Maybe I would be
made a love by the hoop maybe at first, but chuck,
you would have to hang in there and stick with it,
and um, pretty soon you'd be rolling hoops like an
(05:09):
Egyptian kid. Yeah, like an ancient Egyptian child. Hoop rolling
was a big deal throughout ancient Greece as well and Rome. Um,
they decorated them with bells and things and toys. Uh,
fifth century BC. There's you ever heard of ganny Mede? Ganymede.
He was a handsome hero, Oh he was. He supposedly
(05:33):
there's an old fifth century BC urn of him, um
where he's holding a rooster that was apparently a gift
from Zeus and a whop hula whop, clearly hula hoop
and apparently this discovery Um, I'm not sure why it's
called the Berlin Painter urn, but it is again no idea.
(05:54):
But um apparently they said, well, I wonder if hoops
played a role in the earliest Olympics. And I guess
they've discredited that idea now, but for a while because
of this urn, this picture of ganey Mead with a
hoop um, they wondered, was it a sport? Yeah, an
Olympic sport. But the Greeks supposedly did use hoops for
(06:17):
physical fitness as like a physical activity, in very much
the same way it's become popular today. I would imagine
a hulah an Olympic hula hooper would be sort of
like the you know, the what was the sport the
curler of today? Are you kind of like an ancient Greece, Like, hey,
what do you throw the hammer? What do you do?
I'm a hula hooper, although I would guess would probably
(06:39):
be more akin to the hula hoopers of today. Yeah,
the hooper roller is what the sport would have been.
That would be more like curling, right, hula hooping. That's tough, man,
it is tough. Uh. What else? The ancient Briton's um
they had a game called a battle game called kill
the Hoop. Yeah, I like this one when they would
roll the hoop and throw try to throw a spear
(06:59):
through it. Pretty neat and dangerous. Uh. And apparently they
also used it and the hula method and it would
people get injured. Yeah, it's there was a fifteen or
fifteenth century those are the four hundreds of the fourteenth
century century hula hoop craze in Britain in that bizarre
(07:23):
that is weird, and yeah, people were getting injured. There
was a proclamation by the early physicians. They would pull
up there like crows, mask their plague mass just long
enough to be like stay away from hula hoops, steer
clear of those things. Yeah, the warning was hoops kill
was I guess what was posted on the church door.
And this is like in addition to being in the
(07:44):
way of a spear that was being thrown at a
rolling hoop, like this is just from hula hooping. I
would stay away from the hoops altogether if I was
an ancient Briton. Yeah, because really, if you're like an
ancient Briton, you're going from like zero to sixty as
far as like physical fitness goes. Once you're hula hooping.
Oh yeah, you know, just because you're not just sitting
(08:05):
around eating uh like lamb's brains, Yeah, drinking meat? Uh
what else? The Native Americans UM have a long culture
of using the hoop um in New Mexico, the taos
Uh Pueblo people, UM, they used them in ritual dances,
private healing ceremonies. And did you look up this chunky thing? No,
(08:30):
did you find the chunky reference? I did. The kaho
Kean Native Americans. That was an unusual way to pronounced that.
How would you say it kaho Kean? I think in
Native American would be kaho Kean. That's fine. Uh. Near St.
Louis apparently is where they played this game Chunky, which
(08:52):
I just had to look it up because a game
called Chunky with an E y and um. From what
I saw, it was more of a small stone disc
than like a hula hoop looking thing, and you would
it was like kill the hoop though in Britain, right, Yeah,
they would throw a stick apparently it looked like a
combination of like um bocci and and kill the hoop.
(09:17):
Weird because I think they would try and throw the
spear where the disc would eventually land and the closest
to the disc one. That's like they're predicting where the
where the hoop would fall. I guess this makes sense,
although that's not really like Bocci at all. I mean,
I get there's a proximity element that's boc s y Um,
(09:40):
but I don't know. I don't know. Like once I
saw that and saw pictures, I was like, I don't
even know if they should be in this article because
it's like a small doughnut that's a hoop of sorts.
I guess. So it's a stretch if he asked me.
But it was a big spectator sport, like fifty acre
stadiums of people would watch this would go to the
chunky games and so so there was chunky matches in
(10:04):
Koho kia Uh, and the pueblo used there. I think,
as you said, they used hoops, and they weren't the
only ones. UM. There are other tribes from all over
North America and meso America. I believe UM that used
hoops for dancing. And apparently it was in nine thirty
a guy named Tony white Cloud, who was a Yemez
(10:26):
pueblo down in New Mexico. UM did like a hoop
dance in public and basically brought it back like it
had been virtually lost to the ages, at least as
far as uh the average American was concerned. Most people
didn't know this was the thing. Luckily, Tony white Clouds
like check this out did an awesome hoop dance, and
(10:47):
then by there were national hoop dancing competitions in New Mexico. Um,
and they're a big deal still to this day. Yeah,
of course, I think did he kick off the America crazy? No,
he didn't. He was strictly native American hoop dancing, not
(11:07):
hula hooping. Okay, so let's go to well, let's take
a break actually, because this is this is the big
revelation here. That's right, all right, Josh, We're at that
(11:39):
point where mainstream America goes hoop crazy. But to get
to that point, we actually have to go backward again
in time for a second, back in the way back machine.
So let's go it running. Let's go to I don't know, Feediar, Tahiti,
year Poesia. Yeah, and it's the eighteenth century. See all
(12:03):
these British sailors drink some rum, oh man, Okay, yeah,
in addition to the realm we've already drank today. Uh.
So the British sailors that you see here, um, are
noticing a hula dance, right, and they're filing it away
in their mental catalog. And uh now when they reach
(12:24):
Britton again, why have we been saying it like that?
I don't know. Uh, they notice that it bears a
striking resemblance to what people do with the hula hoop.
You gyrate every time you'd say that, by the way,
you can't can't not do it. So the term hula
became applied to the hoop, especially when you used your
(12:45):
hips to gyrate to rotate them. When you rotate your
hips with the hoop. Uh, these British sailors ended up
applying the word hula to it, and it's stuck. That's
where it came from, was Polynesia, even though they was
no hoop involved in Polynesia. Correct, Yes, they just kind
of ganked that word. You think their own purposes is
(13:10):
all over again? That was a big nineties sternm wouldn't it.
Let's go watch some X files. Um, what's actually yeah,
the movies coming out soon night. Oh yeah, they're doing
another one, aren't they that thing will never die. I
don't think it should keep doing movies, That's what I say. Um.
So we mentioned that the Greeks I believe used it
(13:34):
for physical fitness, right. Uh. I don't think we said that.
I think I said it, okay, Um the uh, the
Swiss actually came to adopt it for the same reasons
too in the nineteenth century. In early twentieth century, Yeah,
someone named Emil Jacques uh dal Crose and that was great.
(13:55):
That's tough. UM had a program called Rhythmics, which, of
course I started singing Sweet Dreams this morning because of that,
and I've been singing it all day as a result.
So that was a special training program. It was apparently
a big deal. It was a big deal. So Rhythmics
used hoops for UM basically physical fitness, but also interpretive dance,
(14:18):
that kind of stuff. It was a combination of It
was like dance training is is what I can gather,
and it used hoops. The reason that we're mentioning this
when we're talking about the American crazes, that it directly
led to the American craze potentially because yourhythmics spread from
Switzerland to UM. Great Britain and it was brought in
(14:42):
as part of like pe class in Australia. And it
was in Australia that the founders of Whammo were inspired
to create the modern hula hoop that we think of
today boom. So it's possible they watched the rhythmics class
or heard about the rhythmics class and with Australian kids
and then said, well, this is a clearly something of
(15:02):
Australian design and let's bring it to the US and
started crazy. They said, sweet dreams were made of these. Yeah. Uh.
And this was Richard Ner and Arthur spud melon mel
malin melon sounds like m l o n like Thornton melon. Uh.
Don't tease me with that movie The Great Back to School.
(15:28):
I saw a bit of that recently and and the
only thought through my head was like, man, why couldn't
I have caught this from the beginning? Yeah, because I
want to see it all that And man, his son
is pasty. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought you were
saying that was a line for the movie. It should
have been. Yeah, his son Keith Gordon, who became a
great movie director. H really Yeah, the guy from Christine
(15:50):
and Back to school. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he'd he gave
up acting and started directing movies and directed uh a
bunch of good movies. One called Waking the Dead. You
should see, I thought, Keith Gordon co starred, and they live.
I don't know, maybe I'll have to check that. Uh
So where were we? Oh? Yes, the two founders um
(16:13):
of WAMMO. They said, you know what, let's take these
wooden hoops, let's make them out of polyethylene. Let's make
them and let's charge a dollar ninety eight for them
and make them all kinds of fun colors. Yeah, and boom,
the hulahoop craze in night was born. Like it was
the definition of a flash in the pancrase, a lot
(16:37):
of money in a very short span of time, like
a summer. Basically pretty much in Ninemo released it and
by the end of nineteen fifty eight these things were
rotting in the warehouse. But in the meantime they sold globally,
globally from the summer to the end of ninety eight
a hundred million. Who who Yeah, more than that, I think,
(17:02):
dam my brain, Yeah, you forgot what we were talking about.
I almost said, Frisbee, did we do one on the frisbee. No,
I thought we had, but we haven't have we No,
we did one on the boomerang, right, just like a frisbee,
but it's like a dangerous frisbee. Uh. So they sell
all these hula hoops. They make a ton of money, um, like,
(17:23):
you know, over fifty million dollars in a short span
of time, which I'm sure they weren't happy with that
that it didn't last, but they were also probably like
an injection of cash like that is great for any business. Yeah,
and then they moved on to the frisbee and made
even more money. Yeah. And they did not secure a
patent for it. I guess it didn't matter in the
long run. Well, they couldn't because it was so yeah,
demonstrably an ancient invention that nobody could patent it. Nope,
(17:47):
but they trademarked it. They did. They trade marked the
name hula hoop in the United States, which is why,
uh we still call it hula hoop today. I guess
it just became we should probably put the title with
a are in a certain goal for this. Oh, yeah,
we should do that, like Barbie. Uh. It was named
the number thirty five toy of all time UM by
(18:07):
Time magazine and they know toys toys, And then from
nineteen sixty eight to nineteen eighty one there were national
hula hoop contests held and the guess in the early
eighties people were finished with it. There were also like
a tremendous amount of um music, like musical singles released
(18:28):
called the hula hoop song. Different people recorded different songs
about hula hooping. Doesn't surprise me. Yeah, it was a
crazy big time And you say that they were done
with it by the eighties, not true. The national competitions
there was so if you look at hula hooping records,
the most recent hula hoop records from two thousand nine, Well,
(18:48):
but was that part of a national competition probably, or
just a guy named Aaron Hibbs he hula hooped, just
hula hooped for seventy four hours and fifty four minutes. Wow.
He broke the record of I didn't even stand up
for that long. He broke the record of a girl
named Kim kob rely um. She held the record twice,
(19:09):
in nineteen with fifty four hours and in nineteen eighty
four for seventy two hours, which is pretty impressive. People
do like hundreds of them at once. Yeah, there's a
guy named Paul Dizzy Hips Blair who set the record
in two thousand nine with a hundred and thirty two
hoops at the same time. That's impressive. He's basically probably
(19:30):
just like like the Michelin man made of hula hoops.
Ever tell you about the Surface Area Man constant him
in Athens that was out on Halloween, um in Athens
in college and those the dude I know. The guy's
name is Blake. He has You may have seen him.
He had big red dreadlocks, kind of a short guy,
(19:51):
just a ubiquitous Athens dude. He lives kind of in
my neighborhood now. I still see him every once a while.
We called him Sideshow Blake because of Sideshow Bob. And
he came in bar and the Georgia Bar, and he
had these foam disks around his arms, around his legs,
around his waist and neck that were huge, like probably
(20:12):
four ft across, and he was Surface Area Man and
that was just his costume because when he moved around,
he took up like, you know, probably seventy five square
feet in space and he would just move through the
bar and say, I'm surface area man, and I'll always
remember every time I see Blake. I saw him at
the grocery store the other day. Was he dressed like that? No,
but that was like surface He wouldn't fit down the
(20:34):
grocery aisle. Does he have dread still? Yeah? Does he
really still rocking the red dreads? He's dedicating? He looks
exactly the same. Actually, but we weren't friends. I could
actually like him. Actually, I'm gonna just walk by him
and go surface area man. I'm gonna do it. All right,
Let's talk about the Hudsucker Proxy for a quick moment,
(20:55):
and then we'll take another break. Did you ever see
that one? I don't think I made it through that one.
The Coen Brothers, Yeah, uh not. All of their movies
are great. I disagree. I love the Cohen Brothers, but
some of their movies stink. Oh boy that they're part
of my pcent club where every movie they've made it
has been great. That is wrong? Which other ones? Don't
(21:16):
you like? The Man who Wasn't There? Love it? Uh?
Bob Robertson, They didn't. That wasn't there? Well it was terrible? Okay? Uh? Well,
the Hudsucker Proxy too. I liked it. I would put
it at lesser Cohen's for sure, you would have to,
but I enjoyed it quite a bit. Tim Robbins and
Jennifer Jason Lee and Paul Newman u in a fictitious
(21:39):
tale of the invention of the hula hoop. Um. It
is not the true biopic of the invention of the
hula hoop, but they co opted it for one of
their movies and it was nothing pretty great. But that's
just me, okay, all right, go ahead, Well no, that
was it that I just want to shout it out. Fine,
Uh well, then let's take a break because are about
(22:00):
to get into physics in hoop games. Yep. After this,
(22:27):
no Country for Old Man terrible. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
I love that's maybe the best. Raising Arizon is probably
the best that It'd be tough for me to pick
on any given day, but far Ago is the one
I can watch over and over. Yeah, I would say
this three year time for first. Did we just come
(22:48):
back from the break? Just sick? Going right back into
the car? I don't know. All right, let's do it.
We'll see how Jerry edits this. Um, so let's it
wouldn't be a Stuff You Should Know podcast if we
didn't talk about the science behind something seemingly unscientific. Well,
hula hoops are super complex as far as physics goes,
you know, super complex, super complex. There's just a few things.
(23:08):
We are not in agreement on stuff today, are we?
I don't know what's going on. So let's say you
have a hula hoop, right, and it's around your waist,
and you take it and you wrote you have it
up against maybe one hips making contact with your body.
That you're starting in the traditional way, then sure, and
you whip it around to one side, and as you
do you start rotating your hips. Right, I'm rotating my
(23:33):
hips chests. Uh. And as you do that, when you
rotate your hips, what you're doing is, first of all,
you're conserving the angular momentum you gave the hula hoop
when you pushed it in a certain direction, twisted it
around yourself. Right, that's right. You are the axis you, Yes,
you are the excess to and when you move your
hips around you, when you when you rotate your hips,
(23:53):
you're applying what's called torque. Yeah, because all this hoop
wants to do is fall down around on the ground
and you look foolish. It wants to stop. Well, no,
it doesn't want to stop because of inertia. It wants
to keep going, but it can't because of friction. But
it wants to fall down to the ground like you said,
and make you look foolish. But ironically, that same friction
(24:14):
is keeping it from doing that. Who was the fool? Now?
Whoop the hula hoop? Fool? All right? Did you talk
about the torque? I did talk about torque, and torque
is a twisting force where you're twisting your hips. You're
thrusting the hula hoop around in the circle, and what
you're doing there is contributing to the centripetal force and
(24:36):
its centrifical no send trip at all, two different things.
Move is a force that moves at a right angle
to the motion of your body, so it keeps that
thing whatever it is, say, hula hoop or tractor tire, which,
by the way, someone said a record hula hooping with
a tractor tire. Yeah, for like seventy seconds of fifty
four pound tire. How big was a person? I'm sure
(24:59):
he's ginorm all right, Um, I think he's from like
bailor roost or something, you know. Yeah, they do that
on a daily basis. So, uh, with the centripetal forces
is going at a right angle to the direction that
you're thrusting your hips, it's constantly going to move around
the circle on the axis. That is centripetal force, boom,
(25:21):
tripetal motion. I should say yes. And when this hoop
wants to fall, of course, we're talking about gravity. Gravity
wants to win that fight. But um, if you keep
that pulsing gyration going, then you're gonna keep that hoop
just a little ahead of the curve. Yeah, that's apparently
the key, and Robert puts this in here is a
kind of like a throwaway thing that I think that's
(25:42):
the key of hula hooping is you want your hip
to move just before that that I guess wave that
comes in contact with your body again, comes in contact
like comes catch and release in a way. Okay, you
can catching it on your up and then slinging it
back around. I'm gyrating. There's a lot of gyrating going
(26:05):
on in this room right now. It's crazy. Um, So
there's a few different parts of the body at work. Um.
I don't know why in two thousand four they needed
a fifteen page study in the Journal of Biological Cybernetics
to figure this out, because if you just look at somebody,
you can tell that the hips, knees and ankles are
(26:25):
really what's at play keeping that thing going. And that's
if you're just doing the the hip hula hoop, notack
and legs and all that. Of course, it's just the
standard hooping, right. Yeah. And so another study I think
four years later, in the Journal of Human Movements. I
don't know why they needed that. They built upon this
two thousand four study and said, okay, you use your hips,
(26:47):
knees and ankles. Everybody uses it, but depending on the individual,
there'll be different contributions from the hips, knees or ankle
depends on the motion of your ocean exactly. So it's
like the individual. Everybody uses the same the same parts,
but they use them in different percentages to come up
with the hula hooping motion. Yeah. I've got certain body
(27:10):
types are better at this than others too. Yeah. Slim, yeah, yeah,
probably so that the one in front of A Craig's band,
she was pretty slam. I guess she's working that thing. Man.
It was like, it was pretty amazing hula hoop. So
that's hoop dancing. When we'll finish up here with some
other games. Well, we didn't talk about hoop dancing. We
(27:30):
were just talking about hula hooping. No, we talked about
hoop dancing at the beginning with that lady. Oh yeah, okay,
so that's hoop dancing. Okay, that's when you know it's
around the neck and then you work it down around
your hips and then up one arm and then up
the other arm. It's pretty impressive. Um, your standard hula hooping,
of course, which we've covered. Uh, speed and endurance depends
(27:51):
on what you're after, sure, like I want to do
this for twenty minutes, or I want to do it
really fast for five minutes. Okay, hooper, that's one of
my favorite trendling Like you're a little ancient Egyptian kid.
I'd like to see you do that hoop rolling. Let's
do it. Let's do a video for that. Okay, we
(28:12):
could do a periscope of it. Oh yeah, let's do that.
We're gonna start doing that. We could do at least
one of me hoop rolling. I think people, Well, we're
gonna get emails, they'll turn out and droves to see that.
Hundreds of people show up for that. There's one not
on this list that I want to give a shout
out to. All Right, what it was invented? Apparently in
Belgium they call it Belgium skipping. It's called ankle skipping.
(28:36):
It's where you put the hula hoop on one foot
around one ankle and you use it to hula hoop.
You make the hula hoop motion with that one and
if it comes around, you jump through the hoop with
the other one. Yeah, I can't believe it wasn't on
this list. Yeah, that's a solid hooped endeavor. But apparently
it's a pretty recent invention from like the sixties. All Right,
that makes sense. Um, that's sort of like hoop jumping,
(28:59):
but not quite know hoop jumping is more like jump
roping with a hula hoop. Yeah, but that kind of
reminds me of that too. Okay. Hoop jumping is when
you hold the hula hoop the top of it and
then you swing it around your body and jump up
and down. Um, like you have nothing better to do
in life, right, Like you can't find a jump rope
(29:19):
you haven't heard of those before. Return the hoop. This
is the only one I was ever good at. That's
when you you hold it vertically and you fling it
out as hard as you can backwards, and it sort
of spins in place and comes back to you, and
if you're not expecting it, you're gonna turn and run
because it's startling. He talked about kill the hoop. We
(29:39):
don't recommend you use spears to do that, or just
make sure nobody's in the vicinity of where the hoop is. Yeah,
you don't want to combine hoop chundling and kill the
hoop because you'll kill the hoop chund to lure. And
I'm not even to cover this last one. I dare
YouTube though. I like this one. Whop your environment, Yeah,
go ahead. So it's like can put hula hoops around
(30:02):
and you jump from them like their their islands and
there's a lot of in between. Okay, what's wrong with that?
I don't know, too childish, No, I'm very childish, but
I don't know. I just didn't there's a dear childlike
not childish. Big difference. Man. Uh, Well, we talked about exercise.
It is um legitimate exercise are hula hoop classes now. Um,
(30:26):
apparently Marissa Tomay, the actor, um, took hoop fitness classes
to lose weight for or to get in shape for
her movie The Wrestler in two thousand eight. Uh. First
Lady in Michelle Obama is very famously hoop worked out. Yeah,
whop hooped the lawn of the White House to say, hey, kids,
get active and at the US Open, yeah, you can
(30:47):
still have fun by doing this. Um. And they even
did another study to see what kind of calories you
could burn. Lots of hoop studies, um, too many. Um.
They took women between sixteen at the nine and said
go crazy and hoop and they yeah. And they were
weighted hoops too, by the way, Um, which is not
(31:11):
to say they were super heavy. They're generally still pretty
light weight. Yeah. But strangely a weighted hoop is easier
to keep going, yes, which makes sense, I think. Uh.
And they average a hundred fifty one beats per minute.
Yeah heart beats oh their heart Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
(31:32):
Tripical Quest would be proud. Uh. And that is burning
seven calories a minute or two ten calories during a
half hour of hooping. So that's good. Exercise people. That's like, um,
weightlifting type calorie burn yeah plus also um, like if
you just break it down to calorie first of all, chalk.
(31:52):
I want to do an episode and I'm not quite
sure how to frame it yet. It doesn't have a thesis.
But there are so many like medical myths out there
that are just taken as fact, even by the medical establishment,
even though like if you asked a doctor like is
this fact, they would be like, no, no, actually it's
not like drinking eight glasses of water a day totally
(32:13):
made up and that Like, I think we should do
one on medical myths sometime. What do you think we
should have? We not No, Like part of me wants
to say we have, but I think things to have
just come up like here there over over the years. Anyway. Um,
if even if you take the calories out of the equation,
(32:33):
just hula hooping, the standard hip gyration hula hoop will
really really work out your core. Yeah, like hoop. No,
you can just sit in your chair and do what
I'm doing now, Like I'm getting I'm sweating. Yeah right now,
my lip, my upper lip is broken out in perspiration. Uh.
(32:54):
Modern hooping Um burlesque uses hoops. If you go to
any music uti, well, these days you're gonna see the
ladies like I was talking about, or they might have
them decked out with L E D s or even fire.
Well what's neat is um L E D hula hoops
in particular are really displaying like the physics of hula
hoops pretty net through Like, Um, what's that type of
(33:15):
photography LSD? No? No, uh, what's the what's that photography
where you like you just keep the shutter open, so
like high exposure, long exposure. Yeah, you just said it,
keeping that shutter open. It's like when you see the
pictures of the cars on the freeway right and it's
just like a long trail of headlights. Yeah, but there
(33:35):
are photos out there of L E ed um hula
hoops there. It's just like you can see they don't
just keep like a flat path. They go all over
the place in some way. It's really neat. It's pretty cool. Um.
What about this lady, the Israeli sculptor Did you watch that?
I saw a couple of pictures of it. Yes. Her
name is Cigolette Lendau, and in two thousand three she
(33:57):
did a performance art um slash clitical statement of peace
where she did what's called barbed hula and she was
naked and uh hula hooped with a barbed wire hula
hoop that just tore her abdomen up. It's really rough. Yeah,
it was pretty disturbing, but she said, um she uh.
(34:19):
It was on then Israeli beach that she defined as
the only common natural border Israel has. So she was
making a statement to my friend, Well, she's an artist,
that's what they do. Um. I got a couple of
last things in the hula hoop craze of the Yeah, yes, yeah,
not the not the fourteenth century Briton one. Um. It
(34:42):
was in Japan, it was banned. The hula whoop was
banned because they were worried was going to lead to
actual stuff things happening gyrating hips. Yeah. Um. And apparently
the Soviets said that it was a it was evidence
of the emptiness of American culture. Hula who crazy, really, yeah,
leading to the Soviets to be like Americans, come on,
(35:06):
they hated America. Do you remember when the Iron Curtain
fell and you were like, oh wait a minute, Like
everything we were taught about the Soviet Union was basically
made up and they were like, you know, the average
Russian was like a good person. Yeah, and the average
Russian was a lot like the average American, and yeah,
drunk on vodka. I'm gonna live for it, all right,
(35:30):
that's it. If you want to know more about hula hoops,
you can type that word into the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And since I said search parts,
time for listener mate, I'm gonna call this uh anorexia?
Did you read this one? Why don't you know how
I missed that? Hey, guys, I'm a huge fan. I
want to let you know how you have how Stuff
(35:52):
you Should Know has helped me over the years. And
again listening if I love these again listening at the
age of twelve and I'm now turning eighteen, it's pretty cool,
Agust Night. Stuff you shou Know has played a part
in the young adult I've become. At twelve, I was
diagnosed with restrictive and rexia. It was hospitalized for about
a month and did day treatment for almost a year.
After leaving treatment for the day I had religiously put
(36:13):
on my headphones and turn on Stuff you Should Know.
The podcast was really helpful on bad days, especially if
I had just had an argument with my parents, are
a difficult meal or your humor was especially helpful. I
remember laughing out loud many times in the car, which
was quite a rare occurrence. I'm pretty solid and recovery now.
But your podcast also helped me gain a better relationship
(36:34):
with my sibling. My eating disorder costs a lot of
tension between my sibling and I for quite a few years.
But one day I invited her to listen to your podcast.
Stuff You Snow quickly became a part of her commute
to university class. We occasionally would discuss the podcast topics.
We now have a tradition, and I love this part too.
We now have a tradition of listening to the Christmas
(36:56):
Extravaganza together while in winter break, which is what we
want people to do, to gather the family and make
this a thing. Some plum pudding. Even though I don't
know what we're we're gonna get pretty slim on Christmas.
I've got at least one great topic. Yeah, we need
to start looking now though, You're right, yeah, um, we've
even gifted each other matching stuff you should know shirts
(37:18):
one here. More recently, I received a very urgent text
letting me know in all caps that you guys were
coming to Minneapolis this fall, and another text, so let
me know that Chuck's daughter Ruby shares the same birthday
is our father. And I want to point out again
and Josh the Triumvirate. That's right. Your podcast gives us
endless topics and inside jokes. And I can't thank you
(37:39):
enough for bringing us closer together. Thanks again for being
such a big part of my formative years. Uh, my
sister and I can't wait to see you guys in
Minneapolis this fall. That is from Emily, and she said
please shut out her sister Megan. Awesome, and we thank
you for telling us all day like that really means
the world to us. Yes, and best of luck in
your continued recovery. That is tough stuff. Yeah, and congratulations too. Yeah. Well,
(38:03):
well we should do it Eating Disorder podcast at some
point that one's been hanging out there. Yeah yeah, because
you know, there's like a whole It was like this
new idea that like almost everybody has an eating disorder
in America these days of some kind. Yeah, like typically
binge eating is like a huge thing. Um, yeah, we
should definitely do that. Yeah. Um, but thank you very
much Emily and hello sister Megan. You appreciate you guys listening,
(38:27):
and hopefully we'll see you guys in Minneapolis when we
come in October. And you know what, actually write me back.
We'll put you on the guest list. Oh man, how
about that nice for you too, That's something just for you, Tobe,
no guests. I'm just kidding. Well, you need to lay
it down. We should probably have illegal disclaimer added after
this too. Yeah, we might hear from a lot of
(38:48):
Emily and Megan's in Minnesoa. Uh. If you want to
get in touch with us, you can tweet to us
at s y s K podcast. You can join us
on Facebook dot com, slash of you should know. You
can send us an email at Stuff Podcast at house
to works dot com and it's always joining us at
our home on the web, Stuff you shao dot com
(39:13):
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