December 18, 2017 • 39 mins
Meet the Bad Boy of Bowling, learn how Ivan Lendl intimidated his opponents (it all started with his sneakers!), and why Australia's women's cricket team is considered the best group of trash talkers in the world. From Michael Jordan's incredible philosophy on distracting his opponents, to which sport is considered the Algonquin Round Table of loudmouths, Will and Mango dig deep into the Art of Trash Talking while discussing some of the funniest stories in sport. Featuring Jason Who. Sponsored by Beats by Dr. Dre
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, mango? What's that? Will? So, if you heard
about Victor, he's this trash talking robot. There's a trash
talking robot. Yeah. So he was designed at Carnegie Mellon
University and and the point was for people to play
scrabble with a robot. So the engineers wanted people to
keep coming back to play with him, and so they
decided to make him, you know, like not very good
(00:21):
at it. And the only words in his vocabulary were
lifted from a Sherlock Holmes short story. Also, the scientist
thought it would be funny to make him really moody.
So when he starts losing, he just gets all sarcastic
on him. So what type of stuff is he saying? Oh,
he's got some really good stuff. He'll say stuff like, um,
this isn't golf. You're supposed to be trying for a
(00:41):
high score? How goes that? And that's that's actually when
he's a little bit more confident, But mostly he'll just
razue and question whether you're actually cheating, because you know,
of course he doesn't believe a human brain is capable
of coming up with good words. I love this idea
of like a robot swore loser. Yeah, and he he
actually also blames his tiles a lot too. According to engineers,
(01:05):
it's way more satisfying to play against someone who's cocky,
but isn't actually that good. And one of the surprising
things about it is that beating a trash talker makes
people want to come back and beat him again. But
learning about Victor made me wonder, you know, is there
an art to trash talking? Are there techniques athletes used
to block it out? And does it really psych out
(01:26):
your opponent? So that's what today's episode is all about.
Let's dive in. Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
(01:53):
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Man Guesh Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass try
to distract us by playing his Is that a vufa zella?
I know that's the bad boy of how stuff works.
Mr Tristan McNeil, I can't believe he's playing feverd on
that thing. He's so talented. Wow, he really is all right? Well, Mango,
today's episode is all about trash talking. And I know
(02:16):
you've been wanting to cover this topic for a while,
so so why did you want to do an episode
on trash talking. I think it's partly because the stories
are so funny. I mean, you think about Muhammad Ali
writing poems about his opponents or Babe Diedrichson. Do you
do you remember her? She was like this athlete we
covered at Metal Fass. Yeah, I do remember her. She
competed in what wasn't like five events in some of
the early Olympics. She was phenomenal, and I believe she
(02:40):
said a javelin world record after tearing the cartilage in
her shoulder. But she also trash talked with the best
of them, like she'd let people know she was going
to beat them, and then she'd also run circles around
them in warmups. What do you mean by that, like
show off her skills during the practices or what. No,
she would literally run circles around them as she warmed up,
just taunting in an knowing them by playing her harmonica
(03:01):
as she did it. I love that she had a
harmonica on or that's so I know. But that's part
of what's so interesting to me is that this line
between trash talking and poor sportsmanship it's so blurry. Actually,
growing up, there was this kid in my neighborhood. He
was a wrestler, and he was incredible. He was like
number one in the state. He had been wrestling since
he was in elementary school, so when he started wrestling
(03:23):
on the high school team, it was sort of a joke.
The competition just wasn't up to his standard. And I
remember one time he pinned a guy with just one hand,
which is, you know, bad enough, right, But he was
using his other hand to wave at the cheerleaders on
the sideline. Like the whole thing was so cocky. It
sounds like it's from a movie or something, and I'm
(03:44):
guessing it was humiliating for the poor guy who got
pinned as well. Though. Yeah, I mean I was friendly
with the guy who got pinned, and when he told
me the story, he was more and add that had
happened to him than actually irritated by it. I mean,
I would have been furious. But on the one hand,
you kind of hate that sort of showman hip because
it feels indecent and on sportsmanlike, and on the other hand,
(04:04):
you think, jeez, he's a really good athlete. It actually
reminds me of the time, you know, Larry Bird was
just lighting it up against Utah, and he ran by
the opposing coach and he said something like, you know,
haven't you got anyone on the bench who can guard me?
And so the coach just looked down at his bench
and then slowly back at Bird and he pretty much says, no,
I don't see. I mean, you think, what a jerk.
(04:25):
And also he's Larry Bird, right, He's so good he's
allowed to say things like that. By the way, every
time I hear the name Larry Bird, now I think
about how the Twitter Bird mascot's name is Larry in
honor of him. But you know, there's so many different
types of trash talk, right, Like there's the stuff where
you HiPE yourself up, and then there's the chirping where
you're trying to pick apart the other opponent and getting
(04:46):
their heads so they're off their game. And I guess
Larry was walking this line between the two. Yeah. One
of the most fun parts of thinking about this episode
was looking into the psychology of trash talking. It's super interesting,
you know how effective it can be when you're talking
about all these incredible professionals they've been playing the sport
and dealing with some element of trash talking all their
(05:07):
life and it happens in every sport there. I mean
there's trash talking and bowling and cricket and then swimming
and sprinting. You know, no sport is immune to it. Yeah,
that's right. But another reason I wanted to do this
episode was I've seen this headline in the Harvard Business
Review this fall and it read, uh, the case for
trash talking at work, according to research. I just love
(05:31):
that sun had so much according to research, but it
sounded so ridiculous. I wondered, is there actually a case
for trash talking at work? I hope so, because I'm
feeling like we need to bring it to house that works.
But is there No, it's total click fait. I mean,
it's interesting that academics decided to study trash talking and
how it affects people in the workplace, and apparently when
(05:51):
the trash talk is coming from a different company, it
can be effective. Like one example they used was that
the head of GM was picking on Mercedes and he
said that the Mercedes C class was called that because
the C stood for mediocre, which is I know, it's
such a business to business put down. But the studies
point was that sort of language can actually be motivational
(06:12):
for Mercedes employees, Like when the smack talk is coming
from a competitor, it can be useful to rev up
your labor force and kind of increase their focus. Yeah,
and I get that, you know, an outsider picking on
you can definitely be motivational. But but what if it's
coming from inside the company? Right? So the articles titled
the case for trash talking at Work, so that's what
(06:32):
I expected this was going to be about. But the
study showed that when you try to motivate your own
employees by trashing them, it just ends up being demoralizing,
which is obvious, right. And also if your employees are
doing creative work, it totally throws them off. Like the
research showed that workers often respond by working less hard
or often even sabotaging their own projects, which which makes sense.
(06:54):
So I guess there's a moral here, and it's that,
you know, don't trash talk your competition because it will
motivate them, and don't trash talk about your employees because
it will demotivate them. I guess. Yeah. Basically, if you're
a business person, just don't trash talk. Right. Well, all right,
so let's move from the workplace into some ridiculous trash
talking stories from sports. I know these are some of
(07:15):
our favorites and and I know there are a ton
of these. But before we do, actually let's talk for
a second about how we're defining trash talk. Yeah, that's
a good idea. So actually, that's one thing the paper
did a great job of. They have this really nice
definition of talking trash as quote competitive incivility, and basically
(07:36):
they consider trash talking either boastful comments or insulting comments
about an opponent, all delivered before or during competition. Alright,
so I guess that in that definition they're limiting this
to words, so we're not talking about touchdown dances or
dirty tricks. And actually that phrase competitive incivility. It sounded
funny at first, but it is interesting. And I was
(07:58):
reading about sledging, which is what call trash talking and cricket.
It was not something I knew about before, but there
were a bunch of articles on how bad it's gotten recently,
that the sledging in women's cricket is particularly bad. Apparently
in Australia it's it's terrible there. So what did they
do well? I guess this was in an Australia versus
(08:18):
England match, But it's pretty much what you'd expect, and
athletes picking on each other and trying to get each
other off their game. There's a little body shaming thrown in,
which some might call over the line, but honestly, I
think partially it's because it was women doing the trash
talking that the newspapers reported it with such shock. And
I guess cricket is also supposed to be this gentlemanly game, right,
(08:39):
I mean, it's dressed up as a gentleman's game in
sort of fancy white uniforms and sweaters, but I don't
really think of it that way. Plus, it's not like
trash talking is this new phenomena. Like I was looking back,
and there's trash talking in the Bible. I mean, David
walks up to Goliath and says, I will strike you
down and cut off your head, and that's not that
distant from anything Mike Tyson said. I mean, I don't
(09:02):
think it's quite as elegant as I'm going to eat
your babies, but you know, I see what you're saying,
And obviously trash talking at war might be slightly different
circumstances than in a game. But I think what I
found funny was that in some of the articles there
was almost this maybe like a romanticism for this golden
age of trash talking and cricket, you know, back when
(09:22):
it was all super witty and actually, here let me
read you a few examples. This is from a site
called The Conversation. One of the more famous sledges was
between Australian cricketer Rod Marsh and then this guy from England,
Ian Botham. Apparently they were friends off the pitch, but
according to the anecdote, Marsh tried to get Botham off
his game by saying, quote, so how's your wife and
(09:44):
my kids, which you could see how Botham might be offended.
But then Botham replied with a comment of something like
wife's fine, but the kids are a little dim. So
he yes ended in exactly. I mean, that was always
my tactic to playing sports, right, You just let the
comments roll off you or use them to motivate you
and talk back on the scoreboard. But that comment actually
(10:06):
reminds me of the round table at the Algonquin. Did
you ever see that movie about Dorothy Parker? I think
it was called Mrs Parker in The Vicious Circle. No,
i'd heard about it, but I never actually saw it.
I don't actually remember the movie that well, but there
was this one scene where they showed the round table
at the Algonquin Club and this one guy joins the
table and picks on a bald writer who's sitting there like.
He just starts rubbing his head and he says, it
(10:28):
feels just like my wife's bare bottom. And then the
writer rubs his own head and says, why, yes, yes
it does. It's just kind of like one liner after
one liner. But I can't imagine all cricketing talk was
that witty. Yeah, I know, and and crickets certainly had
the reputation of being an elitist board, and maybe retelling
these stories helped make it feel a cut above. I
(10:50):
don't know. But actually there's another funny story that the
conversation referenced where there's this bowler named Shane Warren and
a batter from South Africa named Darryl Cullinan, and Warren,
who's about to bowldo him, says, I've been waiting for
two years to have another go at you, so Colin
and just looks back and says, looks like you spend
it eating. I mean, these are the stories that still
(11:12):
get talked about, you know, like they're they're the models
for how to react to trash talking brutal, but it
almost makes it feel like modern trash talking can't be
witty too. So I was reading up on foul shots.
Apparently with enough trash talking or even distraction from the fans,
you can lower your shooters chances of hitting free throws.
And there is one story of Scottie Pippen walking up
(11:33):
to Carlin Malone, who you know, was known as the Mailman,
right because because he delivered, right, Yeah, that's right. But
Pippin walked up to him as Malone was standing there
at the charity stripe and this was in the final
moments of an NBA Finals game, and he's about to
take two shots to tie and win the game, and
Pippin just whispers to him, the Mailman doesn't deliver on Sundays.
(11:57):
It's so stupid and witty, and I kind of want
of how long you've had that in his pocket just
waiting to drop it. But it completely took Malone out
of his rhythm and he missed the shots and lost
the game that's insane. All right. Well, I want to
talk about foul shooting and the airball chan and also
about how fans actually can affect a game. But before
we do, why don't we pause for a quick break.
(12:31):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, and we're talking about
the art of trash talking. Now, obviously, trash talking is
not a new phenomenon. I was looking back at some
old stories we've done. I actually saw you wrote one
about Roman bullets and how they used to have these
kind of like sarcastic inscriptions on them. That's right, that
was for metal filass. Archaeologists found these ancient Roman and
Greek bullets and they were surprised to find all these
(12:53):
ridiculous things written on them. So some had inscriptions for
good luck, you know, just so that they'd hit their targets.
But a lot of them had these ridiculous comments, like
out your for your backside. Actually, I think my favorite
one was one that said didn't say here's a sugar
plum for you. I know, that's that's so many words
for one tiny rock. All right, So obviously trash talking
(13:16):
isn't new, but they're competing views on how well it works.
Psychology Today did a story on it and they talked
to this sociologist, Richard Lapchick, and he founded the Center
for the Study of Sports and Society up at Northeastern,
and his point was that it serves a good purpose.
You know, when well done, it gives athletes an edge
over their opponents. But then they talked to a sports
(13:36):
psychologist who works with the nets and college basketball teams,
and he had kind of a different point. He said,
not only does it put down generally make an athlete
play better, but all the time and energy wasted on
thinking up the trash talk is taking away from playing
your best, and as he puts it, playing well as
the most intimidating factor, right, and when you're training and
(13:57):
competing at this elite level, I'm guessing it's hard order
to get psyched out. I remember reading this book Open
by Andrea Agassi, and in it he talks about how
his dad trained him, and you realize what sort of
focus and training athletes have and just how much they've
practiced along the way. So as a baby, his dad
actually taped ping punk peddles to his hands so he'd
swing at the tennis ball mobile he built for him.
(14:19):
In his crib and then at age three or four,
he's got this sought off racket that he's allowed to
use to hit anything in the house, so it could
be balls, but also things like salt shakers or whatever.
And by the time I want to say he's six
years old, he's hitting a thousand balls a day that
are blasted at him at a hundred twenty five miles
per hour. It's insane, Like he's just a kid, and
(14:42):
he's forced practice until his arms feel like they're going
to fall off every single day. And the first line
in his autobiography is about how no one ever believes
him when he says this, but he hates tennis. Of
course he hates tennis. I mean, that's insanity, I know.
But andre Agassi's dad was someone who believed in numbers
and math, and he thought that the kid who hit
a thousand balls a day for eighteen years was destined
(15:04):
to be number one in the world, you know, as
long as he's tough enough mentally. And there's certain points
in the story where a guess he gets intimidated and
thrown off his game, Like there's actually this great story
of von Lindell who walked around the shared locker room,
because in tennis you're sharing one locker room. But Von
Lindell would walk around completely naked except for tennis shoes.
Then you do this before a game just to psych
(15:26):
his opponents out. And during that he kind of sneered
at Agacy and dismissed him as quote, just a haircut
and a forehand, and then of course he proceeded to
wallop him. I mean, Von Lindell was terrifying, I know,
and naked live on Lindell is even more terrifying. But
my point is like, maybe you can intimidate a young
player or get in their head a little, but you
(15:48):
hit that many tennis balls in your lifetime and you
put yourself in that many competitive situations at a certain point,
you've got to be just on autopilot. Yeah, and I
can see that though. You know, clearly there are times
when you can get under somebody's skin. You know. Think
about Zadan in the World Cup. Oh yeah, when that
player from Italy said something about his mom or his sister. Yeah,
that was it. And he was playing Italy in the
finals and he actually headbutted the other player and it
(16:11):
was clearly provoked by words and you've got this season
player on the custom of retirement, and his hot headed
reaction actually got him kicked out of the game. Also
it turned into this ridiculous meme. But but I do
I get what you're saying. And the focus that elite
athletes are applying to their games is intense. And I
read a bit about it in an old esquire about
(16:31):
the American women's softball team and how the coach used
to write numbers on the balls and even though they
were coming at the batters, it over a hundred miles
an hour. In batting practice, the athletes would practice calling
out the numbers on the balls as they hit them.
Their eyes were so honed in they could actually identify
the numbers as the balls were rotating towards them. How
(16:52):
crazy is That's incredible, it really is. But you know,
it's also why so many athletes have these routines for
when they're at bat or at the free throw line
or whatever it is where they need to concentrate. And
sometimes it's for the rhythm. You know, if you bounce
the ball three times at a free throw line, then
spin it and find a certain scene, you kind of
calm yourself down, give yourself a rhythm you're used to,
(17:13):
but it also mentally resets you and and takes you
out of the trash talking that might be going on
around you. It's funny to talk about every setting because
I read this story about a rot and that he
has this simple routine that a sports psychologist taught him.
So after strike, he'd stepped back from the batter's box,
close his eyes, remember how much he loved playing the game,
(17:33):
then look up at the sky and open them, and
the whole thing is made to make him sort of
like shrug off his worries and smile and just remember
to enjoy the game. Yeah, yeah, I actually kind of
like that. And I read about an even weirder one,
and this isn't so much a routine so much as
maybe a practice exercise. So in hockey, obviously there's a
lot of trash talking or chirping, and you're allowed to fight,
(17:56):
so it serves a purpose, I guess. But I was
reading about this one exercise as sports psychologist made for
working with goalies. Basically, while you're on the couch and therapy,
he'd place live mouse traps on your thighs and then
throw balls at you to try to catch, and the
training was supposed to be terrifying, but you know, you
get through it, and the ideas once you're on the ice,
(18:19):
your body doesn't freeze up or get tense when you're
getting talked to, but instead stays loose. That's the hope,
at least. I mean, that has to be the strangest
way to train against trash talking. I know, so, I
know you want to talk about the airball chan and
the curtain of distraction, but before we do, can can
we actually talk a little bit about Michael Jordan's absolutely
what about him? All? Right? Well, for listeners who grew
(18:40):
up when we did, you probably remember Air Jordan as
much for his winning smile and all his commercials as
for that incredible athleticism that we all know him for
as well. I mean, he played this stifling defense, he
could slam dunk from the free throw line. He just
knew how to take over games, and so you know,
you were consistently stunned by his athleticism. But he also
(19:01):
seemed like this terrific ambassador for the game. Which is
kind of funny because when you do the research on
trash talking, Jordan's name comes up all the time. I
know they kind of glossed over that part in Space Jam,
yet I did. I know how often you watch Space Jam,
and yeah, there's just very little of that. But he
was an epic trash talker. And we've mentioned that sports
psychologists don't know the overall effective trash talking and games,
(19:25):
but Michael Jordan's a pretty good argument that trash talking
can work. And he actually had a specific philosophy about
trash talking. I thought this was super interesting. So basically,
he saw basketball as a team sport. But when he
talked to you, and he do everything from shooting free
throws with his eyes closed too, you know, just to
show you how much better he was than you, or
(19:45):
maybe he would tell you the movie he was gonna
make and then do it on the next play and
just beat you doing it and make you that much
more embarrassed than trying to play them. But you know,
his philosophy was that trash talking makes a players stopped
playing with their team. Often they're so installed that that
they'll want to prove their skills against you, and it's
easier for a team to be one player than a
(20:06):
whole team. Oh that's really interesting. So he was kind
of taking people out of making a smart pass or
a smart assistant, sort of daring them to make a
more glorious play. Yeah, and there there was actually this
one time the Nine Playoffs against one of your favorite players,
Muggsy Bows. I know, I loved Muggsy Bogs, And partially
it was just that he was so short. He was
(20:27):
like five three, But watching him gave me so much
hope as a short kid. He was really fun to
watch though. And and and Jordan was guarding Muggsy in
this this one story, and he gave him all the
space and then he just said shoot at you. And
so I condensed that he used an expletive there and
made fun of his height in doing so. But Muggsy
took the shot and not only did he miss, but
(20:50):
he missed like terribly and so totally airballed this shot.
And the sad part of the story, this actually kind
of heartbreaking, is that Moggy Bugs claimed that that moment
ruined his career. Until then, he'd had three straight years
of putting up double digit points in a game, but
after that year he was never the same. I think
he everaged something like five point nine points a game
(21:12):
after that. Oh that's horrible that trash talk had a
lasting impact. It's insane. Yeah yeah, And you know, part
of what made Jordan's so good, though, was how he
reacted to trash talking. So if you dared to trash
talk to him, it just motivated him insanely. Yeah. So,
I know we've all heard lots of these stories, but
no one pointed me to this one about the Dream
Team and how in scrimmage once Magic Johnson's team was
(21:36):
off to this early lead, so to rattle Jordan a little,
he tapped him on the shoulder and said, hey, man,
if you don't turn into air Jordan's soon, we're gonna
blow you out today. And the way Magic tells it,
like Jordan's eyes just went huge and he was livid.
So he comes down the court on the next play
and hits the three and then another three and just
torches the other team. And Magic Johnson actually calls it
(21:59):
the best game he's ever been a part of. How
I don't know why anyone would be dumb enough to
trash talk Michael Jordan those kinds of situations. All right, Well,
we still haven't gotten into how crowds impact games. But
why don't we take a quick break and then we'll
get into that, all right, mangoes. So, as you know,
(22:24):
we get a lot of great questions from our listeners.
But it's been kind of funny because the question we
get most often is who is Jason? And if you
don't know what I'm talking about, At the very end
of each episode, in the credits, we have this little
inside joke where we say that we forget to mention Jason,
and then we say Jason Who. And it's so funny
how many people right in asking who Jason is? And
(22:46):
I'm happy to report that we've actually got Jason here
in studio with us. He's a member of the House
Stuff Works team, but we are not actually allowed to
say his last name. He's going to remain a mystery.
But Jason, welcome to Part Time Genius. It is such
a pleasure. Guys. Now, the reason we're having you on
this episode because it is about trash talking, is because
(23:07):
you've actually worked at How Stuff Works twice and in
between these stents at How Stuff Works, you actually worked
for the w w E, the World Wrestling Entertainment Company. Right. Yeah,
it was kind of a phase. You know, It's kind
of like, you know, after college when you move away
out of your parents basement or something like that. It
was just it was something I needed to do. Wow,
it's pretty awesome. Okay, So, Jason, one question I had
(23:30):
for you was what is your best experience of trash
talking at the w w E? Like, did you actually
get to see anything up close? You know, I have
so many stories that could probably go into at least
two volumes of books someday. But I will tell you
that I was backstage one time and John Cena said
to me, can I run something by you? And he
(23:52):
literally cut a promo backstage and I said, it sounds great,
and then he went on to deliver. Ever, five minutes
later in front of folks, cut that same promo in
front of the rock And I'll never forget that. That
is unbelievable. You got a yeah, what am I supposed
(24:12):
to say if I didn't like it? And actually, there's
another strange connection between w E and how stuff works.
We've actually had some professional wrestlers in the studios and
how stuff works, right, Jason. Yeah, So folks may not know,
but actually Rick Flair lives right outside of Atlanta and
he was in our studio about a year ago doing
some voiceover recordings, and uh, it was incredible. The guy
(24:37):
is everything you see on TV uh and more. It
was amazing. He's more tan than he looks on TV. Uh, tan, purple,
whatever you want to say. All Right, Well, since we've
been talking about trash talking and the w w E,
we're gonna put you to the test, Jason, and we
may harass you if you don't do super well. But Mango,
what game are we playing with Jason? Today? Today's quiz
(24:58):
is called nine seven needs professional wrestler or Teddy Roosevelt's
guinea pig. Of course, yeah, that's that was the obvious
quiz for today. And so so what we're gonna do, Jason.
We're gonna give you a name and it's either a
former pro wrestler or a guinea pig owned by Teddy Roosevelt. Now,
if you're a presidential guinea pig enthusiast, which we know
you probably are, this should be easy for you. So
(25:21):
are you ready to play? Jason? I am. I know
a lot about wrestling history too, I'm I'm up for
the challenge. Okay, alright, there's five of these. Number one
the name is Haystacks Calhoun. Is this the name of
a professional wrestler or a Teddy Roosevelt guinea pig? I
think it's a guinea pig. It's actually a professional wrestler. Okay,
(25:43):
I'm just gonna shut up now, Oh ruined the reputation
cut me among Okay, here we go, all right. Number
two father O Grady, Wow Um, I'm gonna say guinea pig. Yeah,
that's right, appriendly. He was a local priest. The kids knew,
(26:03):
all right, so you are a one for one. Nice comeback. Okay.
Number three, Pampero Furbo. That has to be a wrestler. Yeah,
that's right. He was known as the wild Man of
the Pampas, and initially he went as Irvan the Armenian
and the Missing Link before he settled on his stage name.
But one of the best pieces of tribute about him,
and this is from Metal Flaus, is that his catchphrase
(26:24):
of oh yeah was later borrowed by Randy the Macho
Man Savage. Wow, it's pretty good. You're almost as timidating
as Randy the mancho Man Savage when you say it
like that, man, go oh yeah, all right, two out
of three so far, you're doing well. Number four, Bobo Brazil,
(26:45):
Bobo Brazil. It's gotta be a wrestler. Yeah he was.
He was a rival of the Sheik, of course he was.
All right, last one, here we go, number five fighting
Bob Evans. That has to be a guinea pig. Yeah,
that's right. All right. Well, how did Jason do on
the quiz today? Well, Jason went an amazing four for
five and uh that entitles them to a part Time
(27:08):
Genius certificate of Genius and a hearty handshake for playing.
Oh man, I wanted to trash talk him so bad
if his performance slip, but he's just too good. Congratulations Jason.
Thanks guys, Welcome back to Part Time Genius. All right, so, man, go,
(27:35):
I know you've been itching to talk about the sixth
man at games, you know, the roaring crowd and and
how it can actually affect games. Yeah, I do so obviously.
As some of our listeners might know, we went to
Duke and Cameron Indoor Stadium is a notoriously hard place
to play basketball games for opponents. But one of the
things I've always been surprised by is how athletes try
(27:55):
to block out the noise when they first walk in,
Like often you see them coming off the bus all
wearing headphones, and I think I saw this first in football,
but it's become common in all sports. Yeah. Actually, I
read this article about Olympic swimmers and and how people
used to think it was on sportsmanlike, you know, to
walk in the stadium wearing these noise canceling headphones. But
now it's just become the norm, you know. I don't
(28:16):
know if Michael Phelps started it. He used to walk
into the stadiums to pump himself up. He'd be listening
to Little Wayne, which is totally our move. I know,
we usually listen to a a Little Wayne before every episode, right,
that's right, But part of that is just the focus,
right for something like the Olympics. Athletes have been training
for this day intensely for their entire lives, and you know,
(28:37):
blocking out screens and taunts from fellow swimmers Like I.
I didn't realize this, but in Michael Phelps case, there
was a lot of dishing back and forth between the
South African and the French swimmers in the US. It's
kind of amazing because I kind of think of swimming
as such a solitary sport, but you want to tune
all that out and relax and meditate on this important
(28:57):
race ahead. Yeah, definitely, And you know, I know this
episode is sponsored by Beats by Dre. But one of
the things I've been curious about for a while is
whether those headphones really work and how they work, Like,
are they just creating this cocoon around your ears and
it's the paths that block out the noise or what
I know. So one of my concerns with wearing headphones
(29:18):
in noisy places is that you have to turn them
up so loud to hear the music. Like I rarely
listened to podcasts on the subway when I lived in
New York, just because I was afraid of damaging my
hearing from the standard headphones I had. But the technology
behind noise canceling headphones is really interesting. So basically, there's
a microphone in the headphone that's listening for ambient noise,
and when it senses noise around you, it creates this
(29:40):
fingerprint of that noise. You can read all about this
on how Stuff Works website. But the software inside basically
recreates that noise and then inverts it. So if you
think about the waves of sound coming at you, it
figures out the patterns of those sound and mixes it
with the opposite signal to neutralize it. And the higher
end headphones are just doing this for one noise, but
(30:01):
they're targeting two or three different noises, like the hum
of an airplane, but also the baby that's crying two
miles back. It's pretty crazy that they're able to pull
this off, and and obviously it works before a match
or a race, but unfortunately it can't help you during
the game. At least, I've not seen any players trying
to wear noise canceling headphones during their games. Right, So
(30:21):
back to Cameron Indoor and as you know, the stadium
is actually kind of small, but the crowd tends to
cheer the same thing in Unison, so it's tough for
an opposing athlete not to hear it. And the whole
time we were in school, i'd heard that the airball
chat was actually invented at Duke. You know, I've actually
heard that too, and I guess it's really not that
hard to imagine. Yeah, but apparently they didn't invent it there,
(30:41):
so they only modified this existing chat before. Apparently people
used to sing air ball and then clap twice and
then say air ball again and clap twice. But Duke's
contribution was to take out the claps and lengthen it,
so it became the familiar air ball. Air Ball just
really took it to the next level. That is revolutionary
(31:02):
and worth every dime of tuition that our parents paid. So, uh,
how did you actually find this out? There's this academic
paper on it called air ball Spontaneous large group precision chanting.
Is that really it looked into how a crowd of
strangers can chant things together without any sort of pre
planned effort. But as the article put it, while quote
(31:24):
air ball is a reasonable insult, it's the cadence that
makes it a perfect basketball taunt. Wow. Alright, so we
we know crowds taunt athletes and and I guess now
we know why crowds do it with that rhythm. But
I guess the question we still have to answer is
whether crowds actually have an impact on the games. Yeah,
so I can actually answer that. The New York Times
(31:44):
did a study on crowds and whether they affected the outcomes,
and mostly they analyze free throw attempts because it's the
only time in a game where the crowd is the
only defense on the court. Oh yeah, I guess, I
guess I had not thought about that way before. Yeah. So,
according to the numbers, on average, college basketball player will
shoot one percentage point less in a hostile arena, meaning
(32:05):
the crowd does have an impact. And in some stadiums,
like if you take Utah or u c l A, like,
the whole team will shoot about one point less. But
there's some places where that number is way, way worse.
And the king of those stadiums is Arizona State, where
they have the curtain of distraction. All right, well you
should definitely explain what the curtain of distraction is. But
how much worse the players shoot there? Well, they shoot
(32:27):
nine percentage points less on average. Yea, So here's what
the curtain of distraction is. For those of you you
haven't heard of it. It's almost like the I don't know,
the David S. Pumpkins of college basketball, Like the students
open the curtain that's built around this PVC pipe and
and then they have these ridiculous scenes with crazy props
and it's right behind the opposing team's basket and it
(32:49):
opens just before the shooter shoots the ball. But they'll
do things like they've got one skit called the Unicorn
Love Story where one person in a unicorn mask will
jump into another arms and they'll just make out, of course,
or other bizarre things like one time Michael Felts was
there and for the first free throw, he and this
other guy re enacted the Chippendale sketch from SNL. Like
(33:12):
you remember that sketch where Chris Farley and Patrick Squeeze
or Chippendale Dancer. Of course I remember it very well.
But right before the next free throw he pulled off
his pants and revealed this bright gold speedo, which, of course,
you know, distracted the shooter. That's pretty great. I do
love when there's an element of silliness to the taunts,
you know, like there's plenty of mean spirited stuff out there,
(33:33):
but there was another one I was looking at. When
Scotland played Italy and soccer, the crowd chanted deep fry
your pizzas. We're gonna deep fry your pizzas, which just feels,
I don't know, so ridiculous, it's just funny. Well, you
know what doesn't feel ridiculous? Ending this in a little
trash talk backed off, all right, let's do it. So
(34:00):
I love those photos of the sane bulk looking back
at his competitors and just smiling at the camera like
those were in all the papers, and he just makes
it look so easy. But I didn't realize that trash
talking is also a big part of his playful routine,
Like he likes to remind relay racers to hold onto
the baton and make sure they don't drop it because
it's very important not to drop the baton, and also
(34:24):
not to focus too hard on the bottom of the
shoes as he races away. He was definitely able to
back up that trash talk. That's pretty good though, But
one of my favorite moments in trash talking histories when
Chad Ocho Sinko Johnson he typed out an official letter
demanding double coverage from his opponents. It reads, quote Chad
Johnson's rule number one zero five nine. It is against
(34:46):
NFL policy to cover Chad Ocho Sinko man to man.
It always has been a rule, but with the events
of the last year, we must have forgotten who he was.
Please note that he is still the most uncoverable receiver
in the league. This rule is for the safety of
embarrassment to all defensive backs. I love that it's so elaborate. Okay,
(35:08):
so I love trash talking at sports, but I had
to bring in one from the non sports world, and
this is from hip hop. I'm sure you remember how
Drake famously made a power point of trash talk just
to show with superiority to Meek Mills. But my favorite
hip hop trash talk was when uh, jay Z and
Nas were in this back and forth and jay Z
sampled mass voice on the song the takeover. The lyric
(35:31):
is quote, yeah, I sampled your voice. He was using
it wrong. How unbelievable. And Brasen is that that's pretty
good though. All right, well, did you know there's actually
a bad boy of bowling. His name is Pete Webber,
and he's the guy responsible for not just trash talking
his opponents, but also introducing the wrap around Oakley's and
(35:53):
the victory crotch chop to professional bowling. Apparently his dad
was a pro bowler and a woman's spokesman for the sport.
But as the website Azzi wrote in a profile of him,
no one has ever won so much, so soon, so classlessly.
I think he just became my favorite bowler, right the
(36:14):
only one you can name the I think some of
the worst trash talk is when it's done politely. So
the New York Post had this anecdote about NFL player
Reggie White and how he was the most unique trash talker.
And this is according to Trent Dilfer, who's quoted in
the article, and he said, not only would he destroy you,
but then he'd say, quote, brother, Trent, you all right.
(36:35):
I almost feel bad doing it to you, but I'm
coming back. That's pretty good, all right? Did you know
the US women's soccer team is notorious for their trash talk.
According to one striker, Lady Andrade, who played for Columbia,
the whole team felt belittle by the US. She explicitly
told the press she quote wanted to beat them because
(36:55):
the US women liked to talk so much. And a
previous World Cup she punched Abby Wamback in the face
because she, you know, the talking finally got to her.
That's wild. So this isn't about trash talking, but it
does relate to the stuff we talked about before, about
routines and getting yourself in a rhythm. Did you know
that Dirk Nowitzki hums a David Hasselhoff tune to himself
(37:18):
before every foul shot. No I didn't. Apparently the song
is called looking for Freedom, but it must work because
at the time it was written about he was shooting
nearly for the line. Wow, you totally broke the rules
by not talking about trash talking, but you did manage
to work at David Hasselhoff tune into this, So it's
a good fact. I think I'm going to have to
(37:39):
give you the trophy this week. I know, and it's
a shame the audience can't see me doing my victory dance.
It's also a shame that I can. But all right, well,
if there are any great stories we missed you, guys
can always hit us up on Facebook or Twitter, or
drop us an email at part Time Genius at how
stuff Works dot com. We always love hearing from you,
or you can call us on our seven fact hot line.
(38:00):
That's one eight four four pt Genius. That's it for
today's show. Thanks to Beats by Dre for sponsoring, and
thank you for listening. Searcher, thanks again for listening. Farttime
(38:22):
Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does
the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and
does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the
exact producer thing. Gaveluesier is our lead researcher, with support
from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and
Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the show to
(38:44):
your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard,
we hope you'll subscribe, And if you really really like
what you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review
for us. Did you forget James Jason who it is
the best pos
Guess what, mango? What's that? Will? So, if you heard
about Victor, he's this trash talking robot. There's a trash
talking robot. Yeah. So he was designed at Carnegie Mellon
University and and the point was for people to play
scrabble with a robot. So the engineers wanted people to
keep coming back to play with him, and so they
decided to make him, you know, like not very good
(00:21):
at it. And the only words in his vocabulary were
lifted from a Sherlock Holmes short story. Also, the scientist
thought it would be funny to make him really moody.
So when he starts losing, he just gets all sarcastic
on him. So what type of stuff is he saying? Oh,
he's got some really good stuff. He'll say stuff like, um,
this isn't golf. You're supposed to be trying for a
(00:41):
high score? How goes that? And that's that's actually when
he's a little bit more confident, But mostly he'll just
razue and question whether you're actually cheating, because you know,
of course he doesn't believe a human brain is capable
of coming up with good words. I love this idea
of like a robot swore loser. Yeah, and he he
actually also blames his tiles a lot too. According to engineers,
(01:05):
it's way more satisfying to play against someone who's cocky,
but isn't actually that good. And one of the surprising
things about it is that beating a trash talker makes
people want to come back and beat him again. But
learning about Victor made me wonder, you know, is there
an art to trash talking? Are there techniques athletes used
to block it out? And does it really psych out
(01:26):
your opponent? So that's what today's episode is all about.
Let's dive in. Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
(01:53):
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Man Guesh Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass try
to distract us by playing his Is that a vufa zella?
I know that's the bad boy of how stuff works.
Mr Tristan McNeil, I can't believe he's playing feverd on
that thing. He's so talented. Wow, he really is all right? Well, Mango,
today's episode is all about trash talking. And I know
(02:16):
you've been wanting to cover this topic for a while,
so so why did you want to do an episode
on trash talking. I think it's partly because the stories
are so funny. I mean, you think about Muhammad Ali
writing poems about his opponents or Babe Diedrichson. Do you
do you remember her? She was like this athlete we
covered at Metal Fass. Yeah, I do remember her. She
competed in what wasn't like five events in some of
the early Olympics. She was phenomenal, and I believe she
(02:40):
said a javelin world record after tearing the cartilage in
her shoulder. But she also trash talked with the best
of them, like she'd let people know she was going
to beat them, and then she'd also run circles around
them in warmups. What do you mean by that, like
show off her skills during the practices or what. No,
she would literally run circles around them as she warmed up,
just taunting in an knowing them by playing her harmonica
(03:01):
as she did it. I love that she had a
harmonica on or that's so I know. But that's part
of what's so interesting to me is that this line
between trash talking and poor sportsmanship it's so blurry. Actually,
growing up, there was this kid in my neighborhood. He
was a wrestler, and he was incredible. He was like
number one in the state. He had been wrestling since
he was in elementary school, so when he started wrestling
(03:23):
on the high school team, it was sort of a joke.
The competition just wasn't up to his standard. And I
remember one time he pinned a guy with just one hand,
which is, you know, bad enough, right, But he was
using his other hand to wave at the cheerleaders on
the sideline. Like the whole thing was so cocky. It
sounds like it's from a movie or something, and I'm
(03:44):
guessing it was humiliating for the poor guy who got
pinned as well. Though. Yeah, I mean I was friendly
with the guy who got pinned, and when he told
me the story, he was more and add that had
happened to him than actually irritated by it. I mean,
I would have been furious. But on the one hand,
you kind of hate that sort of showman hip because
it feels indecent and on sportsmanlike, and on the other hand,
(04:04):
you think, jeez, he's a really good athlete. It actually
reminds me of the time, you know, Larry Bird was
just lighting it up against Utah, and he ran by
the opposing coach and he said something like, you know,
haven't you got anyone on the bench who can guard me?
And so the coach just looked down at his bench
and then slowly back at Bird and he pretty much says, no,
I don't see. I mean, you think, what a jerk.
(04:25):
And also he's Larry Bird, right, He's so good he's
allowed to say things like that. By the way, every
time I hear the name Larry Bird, now I think
about how the Twitter Bird mascot's name is Larry in
honor of him. But you know, there's so many different
types of trash talk, right, Like there's the stuff where
you HiPE yourself up, and then there's the chirping where
you're trying to pick apart the other opponent and getting
(04:46):
their heads so they're off their game. And I guess
Larry was walking this line between the two. Yeah. One
of the most fun parts of thinking about this episode
was looking into the psychology of trash talking. It's super interesting,
you know how effective it can be when you're talking
about all these incredible professionals they've been playing the sport
and dealing with some element of trash talking all their
(05:07):
life and it happens in every sport there. I mean
there's trash talking and bowling and cricket and then swimming
and sprinting. You know, no sport is immune to it. Yeah,
that's right. But another reason I wanted to do this
episode was I've seen this headline in the Harvard Business
Review this fall and it read, uh, the case for
trash talking at work, according to research. I just love
(05:31):
that sun had so much according to research, but it
sounded so ridiculous. I wondered, is there actually a case
for trash talking at work? I hope so, because I'm
feeling like we need to bring it to house that works.
But is there No, it's total click fait. I mean,
it's interesting that academics decided to study trash talking and
how it affects people in the workplace, and apparently when
(05:51):
the trash talk is coming from a different company, it
can be effective. Like one example they used was that
the head of GM was picking on Mercedes and he
said that the Mercedes C class was called that because
the C stood for mediocre, which is I know, it's
such a business to business put down. But the studies
point was that sort of language can actually be motivational
(06:12):
for Mercedes employees, Like when the smack talk is coming
from a competitor, it can be useful to rev up
your labor force and kind of increase their focus. Yeah,
and I get that, you know, an outsider picking on
you can definitely be motivational. But but what if it's
coming from inside the company? Right? So the articles titled
the case for trash talking at Work, so that's what
(06:32):
I expected this was going to be about. But the
study showed that when you try to motivate your own
employees by trashing them, it just ends up being demoralizing,
which is obvious, right. And also if your employees are
doing creative work, it totally throws them off. Like the
research showed that workers often respond by working less hard
or often even sabotaging their own projects, which which makes sense.
(06:54):
So I guess there's a moral here, and it's that,
you know, don't trash talk your competition because it will
motivate them, and don't trash talk about your employees because
it will demotivate them. I guess. Yeah. Basically, if you're
a business person, just don't trash talk. Right. Well, all right,
so let's move from the workplace into some ridiculous trash
talking stories from sports. I know these are some of
(07:15):
our favorites and and I know there are a ton
of these. But before we do, actually let's talk for
a second about how we're defining trash talk. Yeah, that's
a good idea. So actually, that's one thing the paper
did a great job of. They have this really nice
definition of talking trash as quote competitive incivility, and basically
(07:36):
they consider trash talking either boastful comments or insulting comments
about an opponent, all delivered before or during competition. Alright,
so I guess that in that definition they're limiting this
to words, so we're not talking about touchdown dances or
dirty tricks. And actually that phrase competitive incivility. It sounded
funny at first, but it is interesting. And I was
(07:58):
reading about sledging, which is what call trash talking and cricket.
It was not something I knew about before, but there
were a bunch of articles on how bad it's gotten recently,
that the sledging in women's cricket is particularly bad. Apparently
in Australia it's it's terrible there. So what did they
do well? I guess this was in an Australia versus
(08:18):
England match, But it's pretty much what you'd expect, and
athletes picking on each other and trying to get each
other off their game. There's a little body shaming thrown in,
which some might call over the line, but honestly, I
think partially it's because it was women doing the trash
talking that the newspapers reported it with such shock. And
I guess cricket is also supposed to be this gentlemanly game, right,
(08:39):
I mean, it's dressed up as a gentleman's game in
sort of fancy white uniforms and sweaters, but I don't
really think of it that way. Plus, it's not like
trash talking is this new phenomena. Like I was looking back,
and there's trash talking in the Bible. I mean, David
walks up to Goliath and says, I will strike you
down and cut off your head, and that's not that
distant from anything Mike Tyson said. I mean, I don't
(09:02):
think it's quite as elegant as I'm going to eat
your babies, but you know, I see what you're saying,
And obviously trash talking at war might be slightly different
circumstances than in a game. But I think what I
found funny was that in some of the articles there
was almost this maybe like a romanticism for this golden
age of trash talking and cricket, you know, back when
(09:22):
it was all super witty and actually, here let me
read you a few examples. This is from a site
called The Conversation. One of the more famous sledges was
between Australian cricketer Rod Marsh and then this guy from England,
Ian Botham. Apparently they were friends off the pitch, but
according to the anecdote, Marsh tried to get Botham off
his game by saying, quote, so how's your wife and
(09:44):
my kids, which you could see how Botham might be offended.
But then Botham replied with a comment of something like
wife's fine, but the kids are a little dim. So
he yes ended in exactly. I mean, that was always
my tactic to playing sports, right, You just let the
comments roll off you or use them to motivate you
and talk back on the scoreboard. But that comment actually
(10:06):
reminds me of the round table at the Algonquin. Did
you ever see that movie about Dorothy Parker? I think
it was called Mrs Parker in The Vicious Circle. No,
i'd heard about it, but I never actually saw it.
I don't actually remember the movie that well, but there
was this one scene where they showed the round table
at the Algonquin Club and this one guy joins the
table and picks on a bald writer who's sitting there like.
He just starts rubbing his head and he says, it
(10:28):
feels just like my wife's bare bottom. And then the
writer rubs his own head and says, why, yes, yes
it does. It's just kind of like one liner after
one liner. But I can't imagine all cricketing talk was
that witty. Yeah, I know, and and crickets certainly had
the reputation of being an elitist board, and maybe retelling
these stories helped make it feel a cut above. I
(10:50):
don't know. But actually there's another funny story that the
conversation referenced where there's this bowler named Shane Warren and
a batter from South Africa named Darryl Cullinan, and Warren,
who's about to bowldo him, says, I've been waiting for
two years to have another go at you, so Colin
and just looks back and says, looks like you spend
it eating. I mean, these are the stories that still
(11:12):
get talked about, you know, like they're they're the models
for how to react to trash talking brutal, but it
almost makes it feel like modern trash talking can't be
witty too. So I was reading up on foul shots.
Apparently with enough trash talking or even distraction from the fans,
you can lower your shooters chances of hitting free throws.
And there is one story of Scottie Pippen walking up
(11:33):
to Carlin Malone, who you know, was known as the Mailman,
right because because he delivered, right, Yeah, that's right. But
Pippin walked up to him as Malone was standing there
at the charity stripe and this was in the final
moments of an NBA Finals game, and he's about to
take two shots to tie and win the game, and
Pippin just whispers to him, the Mailman doesn't deliver on Sundays.
(11:57):
It's so stupid and witty, and I kind of want
of how long you've had that in his pocket just
waiting to drop it. But it completely took Malone out
of his rhythm and he missed the shots and lost
the game that's insane. All right. Well, I want to
talk about foul shooting and the airball chan and also
about how fans actually can affect a game. But before
we do, why don't we pause for a quick break.
(12:31):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, and we're talking about
the art of trash talking. Now, obviously, trash talking is
not a new phenomenon. I was looking back at some
old stories we've done. I actually saw you wrote one
about Roman bullets and how they used to have these
kind of like sarcastic inscriptions on them. That's right, that
was for metal filass. Archaeologists found these ancient Roman and
Greek bullets and they were surprised to find all these
(12:53):
ridiculous things written on them. So some had inscriptions for
good luck, you know, just so that they'd hit their targets.
But a lot of them had these ridiculous comments, like
out your for your backside. Actually, I think my favorite
one was one that said didn't say here's a sugar
plum for you. I know, that's that's so many words
for one tiny rock. All right, So obviously trash talking
(13:16):
isn't new, but they're competing views on how well it works.
Psychology Today did a story on it and they talked
to this sociologist, Richard Lapchick, and he founded the Center
for the Study of Sports and Society up at Northeastern,
and his point was that it serves a good purpose.
You know, when well done, it gives athletes an edge
over their opponents. But then they talked to a sports
(13:36):
psychologist who works with the nets and college basketball teams,
and he had kind of a different point. He said,
not only does it put down generally make an athlete
play better, but all the time and energy wasted on
thinking up the trash talk is taking away from playing
your best, and as he puts it, playing well as
the most intimidating factor, right, and when you're training and
(13:57):
competing at this elite level, I'm guessing it's hard order
to get psyched out. I remember reading this book Open
by Andrea Agassi, and in it he talks about how
his dad trained him, and you realize what sort of
focus and training athletes have and just how much they've
practiced along the way. So as a baby, his dad
actually taped ping punk peddles to his hands so he'd
swing at the tennis ball mobile he built for him.
(14:19):
In his crib and then at age three or four,
he's got this sought off racket that he's allowed to
use to hit anything in the house, so it could
be balls, but also things like salt shakers or whatever.
And by the time I want to say he's six
years old, he's hitting a thousand balls a day that
are blasted at him at a hundred twenty five miles
per hour. It's insane, Like he's just a kid, and
(14:42):
he's forced practice until his arms feel like they're going
to fall off every single day. And the first line
in his autobiography is about how no one ever believes
him when he says this, but he hates tennis. Of
course he hates tennis. I mean, that's insanity, I know.
But andre Agassi's dad was someone who believed in numbers
and math, and he thought that the kid who hit
a thousand balls a day for eighteen years was destined
(15:04):
to be number one in the world, you know, as
long as he's tough enough mentally. And there's certain points
in the story where a guess he gets intimidated and
thrown off his game, Like there's actually this great story
of von Lindell who walked around the shared locker room,
because in tennis you're sharing one locker room. But Von
Lindell would walk around completely naked except for tennis shoes.
Then you do this before a game just to psych
(15:26):
his opponents out. And during that he kind of sneered
at Agacy and dismissed him as quote, just a haircut
and a forehand, and then of course he proceeded to
wallop him. I mean, Von Lindell was terrifying, I know,
and naked live on Lindell is even more terrifying. But
my point is like, maybe you can intimidate a young
player or get in their head a little, but you
(15:48):
hit that many tennis balls in your lifetime and you
put yourself in that many competitive situations at a certain point,
you've got to be just on autopilot. Yeah, and I
can see that though. You know, clearly there are times
when you can get under somebody's skin. You know. Think
about Zadan in the World Cup. Oh yeah, when that
player from Italy said something about his mom or his sister. Yeah,
that was it. And he was playing Italy in the
finals and he actually headbutted the other player and it
(16:11):
was clearly provoked by words and you've got this season
player on the custom of retirement, and his hot headed
reaction actually got him kicked out of the game. Also
it turned into this ridiculous meme. But but I do
I get what you're saying. And the focus that elite
athletes are applying to their games is intense. And I
read a bit about it in an old esquire about
(16:31):
the American women's softball team and how the coach used
to write numbers on the balls and even though they
were coming at the batters, it over a hundred miles
an hour. In batting practice, the athletes would practice calling
out the numbers on the balls as they hit them.
Their eyes were so honed in they could actually identify
the numbers as the balls were rotating towards them. How
(16:52):
crazy is That's incredible, it really is. But you know,
it's also why so many athletes have these routines for
when they're at bat or at the free throw line
or whatever it is where they need to concentrate. And
sometimes it's for the rhythm. You know, if you bounce
the ball three times at a free throw line, then
spin it and find a certain scene, you kind of
calm yourself down, give yourself a rhythm you're used to,
(17:13):
but it also mentally resets you and and takes you
out of the trash talking that might be going on
around you. It's funny to talk about every setting because
I read this story about a rot and that he
has this simple routine that a sports psychologist taught him.
So after strike, he'd stepped back from the batter's box,
close his eyes, remember how much he loved playing the game,
(17:33):
then look up at the sky and open them, and
the whole thing is made to make him sort of
like shrug off his worries and smile and just remember
to enjoy the game. Yeah, yeah, I actually kind of
like that. And I read about an even weirder one,
and this isn't so much a routine so much as
maybe a practice exercise. So in hockey, obviously there's a
lot of trash talking or chirping, and you're allowed to fight,
(17:56):
so it serves a purpose, I guess. But I was
reading about this one exercise as sports psychologist made for
working with goalies. Basically, while you're on the couch and therapy,
he'd place live mouse traps on your thighs and then
throw balls at you to try to catch, and the
training was supposed to be terrifying, but you know, you
get through it, and the ideas once you're on the ice,
(18:19):
your body doesn't freeze up or get tense when you're
getting talked to, but instead stays loose. That's the hope,
at least. I mean, that has to be the strangest
way to train against trash talking. I know, so, I
know you want to talk about the airball chan and
the curtain of distraction, but before we do, can can
we actually talk a little bit about Michael Jordan's absolutely
what about him? All? Right? Well, for listeners who grew
(18:40):
up when we did, you probably remember Air Jordan as
much for his winning smile and all his commercials as
for that incredible athleticism that we all know him for
as well. I mean, he played this stifling defense, he
could slam dunk from the free throw line. He just
knew how to take over games, and so you know,
you were consistently stunned by his athleticism. But he also
(19:01):
seemed like this terrific ambassador for the game. Which is
kind of funny because when you do the research on
trash talking, Jordan's name comes up all the time. I
know they kind of glossed over that part in Space Jam,
yet I did. I know how often you watch Space Jam,
and yeah, there's just very little of that. But he
was an epic trash talker. And we've mentioned that sports
psychologists don't know the overall effective trash talking and games,
(19:25):
but Michael Jordan's a pretty good argument that trash talking
can work. And he actually had a specific philosophy about
trash talking. I thought this was super interesting. So basically,
he saw basketball as a team sport. But when he
talked to you, and he do everything from shooting free
throws with his eyes closed too, you know, just to
show you how much better he was than you, or
(19:45):
maybe he would tell you the movie he was gonna
make and then do it on the next play and
just beat you doing it and make you that much
more embarrassed than trying to play them. But you know,
his philosophy was that trash talking makes a players stopped
playing with their team. Often they're so installed that that
they'll want to prove their skills against you, and it's
easier for a team to be one player than a
(20:06):
whole team. Oh that's really interesting. So he was kind
of taking people out of making a smart pass or
a smart assistant, sort of daring them to make a
more glorious play. Yeah, and there there was actually this
one time the Nine Playoffs against one of your favorite players,
Muggsy Bows. I know, I loved Muggsy Bogs, And partially
it was just that he was so short. He was
(20:27):
like five three, But watching him gave me so much
hope as a short kid. He was really fun to
watch though. And and and Jordan was guarding Muggsy in
this this one story, and he gave him all the
space and then he just said shoot at you. And
so I condensed that he used an expletive there and
made fun of his height in doing so. But Muggsy
took the shot and not only did he miss, but
(20:50):
he missed like terribly and so totally airballed this shot.
And the sad part of the story, this actually kind
of heartbreaking, is that Moggy Bugs claimed that that moment
ruined his career. Until then, he'd had three straight years
of putting up double digit points in a game, but
after that year he was never the same. I think
he everaged something like five point nine points a game
(21:12):
after that. Oh that's horrible that trash talk had a
lasting impact. It's insane. Yeah yeah, And you know, part
of what made Jordan's so good, though, was how he
reacted to trash talking. So if you dared to trash
talk to him, it just motivated him insanely. Yeah. So,
I know we've all heard lots of these stories, but
no one pointed me to this one about the Dream
Team and how in scrimmage once Magic Johnson's team was
(21:36):
off to this early lead, so to rattle Jordan a little,
he tapped him on the shoulder and said, hey, man,
if you don't turn into air Jordan's soon, we're gonna
blow you out today. And the way Magic tells it,
like Jordan's eyes just went huge and he was livid.
So he comes down the court on the next play
and hits the three and then another three and just
torches the other team. And Magic Johnson actually calls it
(21:59):
the best game he's ever been a part of. How
I don't know why anyone would be dumb enough to
trash talk Michael Jordan those kinds of situations. All right, Well,
we still haven't gotten into how crowds impact games. But
why don't we take a quick break and then we'll
get into that, all right, mangoes. So, as you know,
(22:24):
we get a lot of great questions from our listeners.
But it's been kind of funny because the question we
get most often is who is Jason? And if you
don't know what I'm talking about, At the very end
of each episode, in the credits, we have this little
inside joke where we say that we forget to mention Jason,
and then we say Jason Who. And it's so funny
how many people right in asking who Jason is? And
(22:46):
I'm happy to report that we've actually got Jason here
in studio with us. He's a member of the House
Stuff Works team, but we are not actually allowed to
say his last name. He's going to remain a mystery.
But Jason, welcome to Part Time Genius. It is such
a pleasure. Guys. Now, the reason we're having you on
this episode because it is about trash talking, is because
(23:07):
you've actually worked at How Stuff Works twice and in
between these stents at How Stuff Works, you actually worked
for the w w E, the World Wrestling Entertainment Company. Right. Yeah,
it was kind of a phase. You know, It's kind
of like, you know, after college when you move away
out of your parents basement or something like that. It
was just it was something I needed to do. Wow,
it's pretty awesome. Okay, So, Jason, one question I had
(23:30):
for you was what is your best experience of trash
talking at the w w E? Like, did you actually
get to see anything up close? You know, I have
so many stories that could probably go into at least
two volumes of books someday. But I will tell you
that I was backstage one time and John Cena said
to me, can I run something by you? And he
(23:52):
literally cut a promo backstage and I said, it sounds great,
and then he went on to deliver. Ever, five minutes
later in front of folks, cut that same promo in
front of the rock And I'll never forget that. That
is unbelievable. You got a yeah, what am I supposed
(24:12):
to say if I didn't like it? And actually, there's
another strange connection between w E and how stuff works.
We've actually had some professional wrestlers in the studios and
how stuff works, right, Jason. Yeah, So folks may not know,
but actually Rick Flair lives right outside of Atlanta and
he was in our studio about a year ago doing
some voiceover recordings, and uh, it was incredible. The guy
(24:37):
is everything you see on TV uh and more. It
was amazing. He's more tan than he looks on TV. Uh, tan, purple,
whatever you want to say. All Right, Well, since we've
been talking about trash talking and the w w E,
we're gonna put you to the test, Jason, and we
may harass you if you don't do super well. But Mango,
what game are we playing with Jason? Today? Today's quiz
(24:58):
is called nine seven needs professional wrestler or Teddy Roosevelt's
guinea pig. Of course, yeah, that's that was the obvious
quiz for today. And so so what we're gonna do, Jason.
We're gonna give you a name and it's either a
former pro wrestler or a guinea pig owned by Teddy Roosevelt. Now,
if you're a presidential guinea pig enthusiast, which we know
you probably are, this should be easy for you. So
(25:21):
are you ready to play? Jason? I am. I know
a lot about wrestling history too, I'm I'm up for
the challenge. Okay, alright, there's five of these. Number one
the name is Haystacks Calhoun. Is this the name of
a professional wrestler or a Teddy Roosevelt guinea pig? I
think it's a guinea pig. It's actually a professional wrestler. Okay,
(25:43):
I'm just gonna shut up now, Oh ruined the reputation
cut me among Okay, here we go, all right. Number
two father O Grady, Wow Um, I'm gonna say guinea pig. Yeah,
that's right, appriendly. He was a local priest. The kids knew,
(26:03):
all right, so you are a one for one. Nice comeback. Okay.
Number three, Pampero Furbo. That has to be a wrestler. Yeah,
that's right. He was known as the wild Man of
the Pampas, and initially he went as Irvan the Armenian
and the Missing Link before he settled on his stage name.
But one of the best pieces of tribute about him,
and this is from Metal Flaus, is that his catchphrase
(26:24):
of oh yeah was later borrowed by Randy the Macho
Man Savage. Wow, it's pretty good. You're almost as timidating
as Randy the mancho Man Savage when you say it
like that, man, go oh yeah, all right, two out
of three so far, you're doing well. Number four, Bobo Brazil,
(26:45):
Bobo Brazil. It's gotta be a wrestler. Yeah he was.
He was a rival of the Sheik, of course he was.
All right, last one, here we go, number five fighting
Bob Evans. That has to be a guinea pig. Yeah,
that's right. All right. Well, how did Jason do on
the quiz today? Well, Jason went an amazing four for
five and uh that entitles them to a part Time
(27:08):
Genius certificate of Genius and a hearty handshake for playing.
Oh man, I wanted to trash talk him so bad
if his performance slip, but he's just too good. Congratulations Jason.
Thanks guys, Welcome back to Part Time Genius. All right, so, man, go,
(27:35):
I know you've been itching to talk about the sixth
man at games, you know, the roaring crowd and and
how it can actually affect games. Yeah, I do so obviously.
As some of our listeners might know, we went to
Duke and Cameron Indoor Stadium is a notoriously hard place
to play basketball games for opponents. But one of the
things I've always been surprised by is how athletes try
(27:55):
to block out the noise when they first walk in,
Like often you see them coming off the bus all
wearing headphones, and I think I saw this first in football,
but it's become common in all sports. Yeah. Actually, I
read this article about Olympic swimmers and and how people
used to think it was on sportsmanlike, you know, to
walk in the stadium wearing these noise canceling headphones. But
now it's just become the norm, you know. I don't
(28:16):
know if Michael Phelps started it. He used to walk
into the stadiums to pump himself up. He'd be listening
to Little Wayne, which is totally our move. I know,
we usually listen to a a Little Wayne before every episode, right,
that's right, But part of that is just the focus,
right for something like the Olympics. Athletes have been training
for this day intensely for their entire lives, and you know,
(28:37):
blocking out screens and taunts from fellow swimmers Like I.
I didn't realize this, but in Michael Phelps case, there
was a lot of dishing back and forth between the
South African and the French swimmers in the US. It's
kind of amazing because I kind of think of swimming
as such a solitary sport, but you want to tune
all that out and relax and meditate on this important
(28:57):
race ahead. Yeah, definitely, And you know, I know this
episode is sponsored by Beats by Dre. But one of
the things I've been curious about for a while is
whether those headphones really work and how they work, Like,
are they just creating this cocoon around your ears and
it's the paths that block out the noise or what
I know. So one of my concerns with wearing headphones
(29:18):
in noisy places is that you have to turn them
up so loud to hear the music. Like I rarely
listened to podcasts on the subway when I lived in
New York, just because I was afraid of damaging my
hearing from the standard headphones I had. But the technology
behind noise canceling headphones is really interesting. So basically, there's
a microphone in the headphone that's listening for ambient noise,
and when it senses noise around you, it creates this
(29:40):
fingerprint of that noise. You can read all about this
on how Stuff Works website. But the software inside basically
recreates that noise and then inverts it. So if you
think about the waves of sound coming at you, it
figures out the patterns of those sound and mixes it
with the opposite signal to neutralize it. And the higher
end headphones are just doing this for one noise, but
(30:01):
they're targeting two or three different noises, like the hum
of an airplane, but also the baby that's crying two
miles back. It's pretty crazy that they're able to pull
this off, and and obviously it works before a match
or a race, but unfortunately it can't help you during
the game. At least, I've not seen any players trying
to wear noise canceling headphones during their games. Right, So
(30:21):
back to Cameron Indoor and as you know, the stadium
is actually kind of small, but the crowd tends to
cheer the same thing in Unison, so it's tough for
an opposing athlete not to hear it. And the whole
time we were in school, i'd heard that the airball
chat was actually invented at Duke. You know, I've actually
heard that too, and I guess it's really not that
hard to imagine. Yeah, but apparently they didn't invent it there,
(30:41):
so they only modified this existing chat before. Apparently people
used to sing air ball and then clap twice and
then say air ball again and clap twice. But Duke's
contribution was to take out the claps and lengthen it,
so it became the familiar air ball. Air Ball just
really took it to the next level. That is revolutionary
(31:02):
and worth every dime of tuition that our parents paid. So, uh,
how did you actually find this out? There's this academic
paper on it called air ball Spontaneous large group precision chanting.
Is that really it looked into how a crowd of
strangers can chant things together without any sort of pre
planned effort. But as the article put it, while quote
(31:24):
air ball is a reasonable insult, it's the cadence that
makes it a perfect basketball taunt. Wow. Alright, so we
we know crowds taunt athletes and and I guess now
we know why crowds do it with that rhythm. But
I guess the question we still have to answer is
whether crowds actually have an impact on the games. Yeah,
so I can actually answer that. The New York Times
(31:44):
did a study on crowds and whether they affected the outcomes,
and mostly they analyze free throw attempts because it's the
only time in a game where the crowd is the
only defense on the court. Oh yeah, I guess, I
guess I had not thought about that way before. Yeah. So,
according to the numbers, on average, college basketball player will
shoot one percentage point less in a hostile arena, meaning
(32:05):
the crowd does have an impact. And in some stadiums,
like if you take Utah or u c l A, like,
the whole team will shoot about one point less. But
there's some places where that number is way, way worse.
And the king of those stadiums is Arizona State, where
they have the curtain of distraction. All right, well you
should definitely explain what the curtain of distraction is. But
how much worse the players shoot there? Well, they shoot
(32:27):
nine percentage points less on average. Yea, So here's what
the curtain of distraction is. For those of you you
haven't heard of it. It's almost like the I don't know,
the David S. Pumpkins of college basketball, Like the students
open the curtain that's built around this PVC pipe and
and then they have these ridiculous scenes with crazy props
and it's right behind the opposing team's basket and it
(32:49):
opens just before the shooter shoots the ball. But they'll
do things like they've got one skit called the Unicorn
Love Story where one person in a unicorn mask will
jump into another arms and they'll just make out, of course,
or other bizarre things like one time Michael Felts was
there and for the first free throw, he and this
other guy re enacted the Chippendale sketch from SNL. Like
(33:12):
you remember that sketch where Chris Farley and Patrick Squeeze
or Chippendale Dancer. Of course I remember it very well.
But right before the next free throw he pulled off
his pants and revealed this bright gold speedo, which, of course,
you know, distracted the shooter. That's pretty great. I do
love when there's an element of silliness to the taunts,
you know, like there's plenty of mean spirited stuff out there,
(33:33):
but there was another one I was looking at. When
Scotland played Italy and soccer, the crowd chanted deep fry
your pizzas. We're gonna deep fry your pizzas, which just feels,
I don't know, so ridiculous, it's just funny. Well, you
know what doesn't feel ridiculous? Ending this in a little
trash talk backed off, all right, let's do it. So
(34:00):
I love those photos of the sane bulk looking back
at his competitors and just smiling at the camera like
those were in all the papers, and he just makes
it look so easy. But I didn't realize that trash
talking is also a big part of his playful routine,
Like he likes to remind relay racers to hold onto
the baton and make sure they don't drop it because
it's very important not to drop the baton, and also
(34:24):
not to focus too hard on the bottom of the
shoes as he races away. He was definitely able to
back up that trash talk. That's pretty good though, But
one of my favorite moments in trash talking histories when
Chad Ocho Sinko Johnson he typed out an official letter
demanding double coverage from his opponents. It reads, quote Chad
Johnson's rule number one zero five nine. It is against
(34:46):
NFL policy to cover Chad Ocho Sinko man to man.
It always has been a rule, but with the events
of the last year, we must have forgotten who he was.
Please note that he is still the most uncoverable receiver
in the league. This rule is for the safety of
embarrassment to all defensive backs. I love that it's so elaborate. Okay,
(35:08):
so I love trash talking at sports, but I had
to bring in one from the non sports world, and
this is from hip hop. I'm sure you remember how
Drake famously made a power point of trash talk just
to show with superiority to Meek Mills. But my favorite
hip hop trash talk was when uh, jay Z and
Nas were in this back and forth and jay Z
sampled mass voice on the song the takeover. The lyric
(35:31):
is quote, yeah, I sampled your voice. He was using
it wrong. How unbelievable. And Brasen is that that's pretty
good though. All right, well, did you know there's actually
a bad boy of bowling. His name is Pete Webber,
and he's the guy responsible for not just trash talking
his opponents, but also introducing the wrap around Oakley's and
(35:53):
the victory crotch chop to professional bowling. Apparently his dad
was a pro bowler and a woman's spokesman for the sport.
But as the website Azzi wrote in a profile of him,
no one has ever won so much, so soon, so classlessly.
I think he just became my favorite bowler, right the
(36:14):
only one you can name the I think some of
the worst trash talk is when it's done politely. So
the New York Post had this anecdote about NFL player
Reggie White and how he was the most unique trash talker.
And this is according to Trent Dilfer, who's quoted in
the article, and he said, not only would he destroy you,
but then he'd say, quote, brother, Trent, you all right.
(36:35):
I almost feel bad doing it to you, but I'm
coming back. That's pretty good, all right? Did you know
the US women's soccer team is notorious for their trash talk.
According to one striker, Lady Andrade, who played for Columbia,
the whole team felt belittle by the US. She explicitly
told the press she quote wanted to beat them because
(36:55):
the US women liked to talk so much. And a
previous World Cup she punched Abby Wamback in the face
because she, you know, the talking finally got to her.
That's wild. So this isn't about trash talking, but it
does relate to the stuff we talked about before, about
routines and getting yourself in a rhythm. Did you know
that Dirk Nowitzki hums a David Hasselhoff tune to himself
(37:18):
before every foul shot. No I didn't. Apparently the song
is called looking for Freedom, but it must work because
at the time it was written about he was shooting
nearly for the line. Wow, you totally broke the rules
by not talking about trash talking, but you did manage
to work at David Hasselhoff tune into this, So it's
a good fact. I think I'm going to have to
(37:39):
give you the trophy this week. I know, and it's
a shame the audience can't see me doing my victory dance.
It's also a shame that I can. But all right, well,
if there are any great stories we missed you, guys
can always hit us up on Facebook or Twitter, or
drop us an email at part Time Genius at how
stuff Works dot com. We always love hearing from you,
or you can call us on our seven fact hot line.
(38:00):
That's one eight four four pt Genius. That's it for
today's show. Thanks to Beats by Dre for sponsoring, and
thank you for listening. Searcher, thanks again for listening. Farttime
(38:22):
Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does
the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and
does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the
exact producer thing. Gaveluesier is our lead researcher, with support
from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and
Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the show to
(38:44):
your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard,
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