December 29, 2016 • 46 mins
Human blockheads are performers who hammer nails and things into their noses. Yup. That's a thing. And it isn't a trick either - anyone can do it. Just please don't try to.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, San Francisco, we're coming back to see you. Yes,
our second year in a row. We're gonna be going
to s F Sketch Fest. What I like to think,
it's the premier comedy festival in the United States, probably
well in the world, you think, so, yeah, what about Beijing? Nope,
it's a it's a close second, but a second. Well,
(00:21):
we love San Francisco, we love performing there. Everyone is
always so kind to us. And by San Francisco we
mean the entire Bay area of course. Yeah. So we
will be there doing our thing for one time only
show on Sunday, January at one pm. Yeah, it's the
rare Sunday afternoon. We're like the NFL of podcasters. Yeah, exactly,
(00:45):
That's that's what I've always thought. So all you have
to do is go to the SF Sketch Fest site,
look at the old calendar, and there are tons of
great people performing. Oh yeah, So I suggest like just
doubling down and getting tickets all kinds of good shows
for sure, and hurry up and get tickets to ours
because they've only been on sale for a week or
so and they're already half sold out. That's right, So
please hurry San Francisco. Please hurry. Welcome to Stuff You
(01:10):
should know it's from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and it's just us chickens here in Studio
one A. Yeah, the blockhead is gone. Yeah, Jerry the blackhead.
(01:31):
I'm just kidding. She's not a blockhead. She's a meat hit.
She is a meat head. This is fun. What else
is she here? We can say whatever we want. She'll
never hear this, that's true. Two things I've noticed today.
We're both wearing blue hoodies. Oh yeah, yours is uh
a recreation of the great sweater that Danny wore in
(01:52):
The Shining Uh, which I think I've told you you
love Lee Unk of Pixar owns that real sweat her.
Oh yeah you did tell me that. Yeah, Like, if
you're like, you know, you got the sweatshirt version. He
owns the sweater. It's the real thing. But unless he's
the same size as like a little four or five
six year old boy, he put it on his own kid. Yeah,
(02:15):
that's probably why he had a kids madness right well
to model the sweater. Yeah, yeah, uh and I'm wearing
my high school sweatshirt Dan Raiders. Yeah. Dan. The other
thing I noticed is that got new glasses or a
new prescription. My eyes were clearly getting worse, and you're
(02:38):
fuzzy to me, but my papers are clear. Oh and
I should have gotten the bifocals, Like he said, vocals, Gramps,
I've been doing a lot of this definitely doesn't aid
you at all, chuck his pull his glasses down his nose,
and then looked over him. Well, when you're at home
and let's say you got the TV on but you're
working on your laptop, it's it's troublesome. Have you ever
(03:01):
heard of that? Um? I can't remember what. It's called
progressive lenses. No, it's like a type of basically training
your eyes to get better by denying them corrective lenses. Well,
I did that for forty three years and it didn't work. Well,
I mean, or maybe it did work. Your eyes would
have been way worse had you not done that. Here's
what I know. I know that two weeks ago, like
(03:24):
I never wore my previous glasses prescription because it didn't
look like they were doing anything. Um, but things were
getting harder to read. So I went back three years
later and they were like, oh, yeah, things have changed. Um,
but I was reading two weeks ago. I was just
sort of holding it back a little more maybe. But
now when I put these on, it's like someone turned
on the lights. I was like, holy cow, that's so clear.
(03:45):
But it's something changed in just the last few weeks. No,
I think I would just I was just used to
getting by on as clearly as I could, because once
I put these on. I just couldn't believe the difference.
It's good for you for doing something, Yeah, but now
I gotta I gotta weird glasses all the time, or
not all the time. But when I read, you remind
me exactly of how I felt in fourth grade when
(04:06):
I got glasses. They came in and they were like, okay,
everybody's doing the eye test, and of course you just
think it's cursory, like a lice check or something like that, right,
and you went stood in the corner, and then the
nurse or whoever it was just like, you need glasses.
I was like, what, You're insane, woman, I think, is
what I said. But it was a man, right, and
so that's all they knew. I proved myself insane. Um
(04:28):
yeah right, so uh, I ended up with glasses and
I remember feeling like, oh man, I'm shackle for the
rest of my life. Yeah, that's a tough age. I
don't know if glasses still had the same stigma on
young kids, but when we were kids, it was definitely
like four eyes and all that. Yeah, there was a
bit of it. So I showed them. I went out
and got the most Elton Johnny glasses I could find.
(04:50):
They were clear, with like a thin blue like wire
running through the frames. They were pretty awesome. Yeah, alright,
so human block Yeah, so, Chuck, have you ever seen
the human blockhead trick? I should not call it a trick,
just stunt. You're right, I have like in person. Yeah. Also,
(05:14):
I went to a Gym Rose circus once and that
they had a blockhead that when I went. I'm not
sure if they still do. Was it Ryan Stock? I
don't think so. This is a long time ago. Yeah,
he seems a little young to have been in the
original Gym Rose show. Yeah, I mean this was in
like was it at Lallapalooza. Maybe because that was in
(05:36):
the first the first part of the first Lallapaluza. They
were part of that. Yea, how was that that show?
There you go? Maybe that's where it was. Maybe so well,
I've never seen a human blockhead, so I mean I
was aware of it. I'm sure I'd seen like references
to it in cartoons or whatever. But I went online
because I noticed as I was researching this, I was like, wow,
I feel like fainting for some reason. I was like,
(05:59):
this really makes me fainty, and I went online and
just exposed myself to it, and uh, it was Yeah,
I didn't actually faint, but it's something. Well, we should
go ahead and say, then, a human blockhead is a person,
and we'll get into the history of it where that
name came comes from. But it's a person, a performer
(06:20):
who inserts a nail or a camping steak or a drill,
paris scissors, what something sharp that would make your stomach
turn if you saw it jammed in a person's nose
all the way and they do just that. And the
reason I corrected myself earlier I called it a trick.
(06:41):
It's not a trick. The person who performs the human blockhead,
or who is a human blockhead, um would correct me
and say no, no, this is a stunt. A trick
suggests that there's some sort of illusion, there's some sort
of deception or stage magic going on. This is a
stunt because it's exactly what you think it is. There's
a nail going into the person's skull. Yeah. And if
(07:02):
you don't know and you go to one of these,
you probably think it's a trick. It's a fake nail.
It's a collapsible or a telescoping nail or something. Um,
maybe some sort of a slide of hand, like the
old trick where you just turned to the side and
act like you're pulling something out of your mouth, you
know that old bit. Yeah, I finally figured that one
(07:23):
out in my twenties. Uh, thanks to your glasses probably,
um so to the uninitiated, it's uh. People probably leave
these performances sometimes saying, well, you know, of course that
wasn't real. There's no way, right, it's true, right, that's
that's what you think. In the performers they play on that, right,
it's part of the whole thing. But it's actually legitimately
(07:45):
the nail is not fake, and it it actually is
going into the person's head. But the further misconception is that, okay,
if it is going in the person's head, that it's
being driven into their skull, their bone um, either through
a new hole that they're making because they're crazy, or
(08:06):
an established hole that they have like um that they're
they've used time and time again. Like uh, an ear
piercing that it's healed over. Not the case. Yeah, I
was about to say the body doesn't need any new holes,
but I forgot about piercing. That you need piercing. But
that's the only thing I can think of where you
would want a new hole that's legitimate, right, Um, I
(08:31):
don't know. Some doctors could want new holes for you,
depending like if you got a colostomate or a tricky otomy.
It didn't even think about that medical reasons. Or stellarc
put an ear on his arm. I was thinking about him.
I can't believe you remember that guy's name. Yeah he
was if he didn't listen. Years ago we talked about him.
(08:51):
He was a performance artist who put he molded in
and grafted a ear look alike onto his arm, survived
some terrible infections that was bluetooth compatible, so he could
literally hear through it. Right, I mean you know what
I mean. He yeah, he's probably not literally hear through it,
but it had like a bluetooth mic in the ear,
(09:12):
and then he had like a head phone in his
own ear, So yeah, he could hear what was going
in there. With assistance of technology, he should hear through it. Well,
he's a performance arts what do you expect? But that
technically wasn't a hole though. No, it was just a
fake ear on his arm. No, it was a real ear.
Was it? A really? Whose was it? It was like
a cloned ear grafted onto his arm. It was basically
(09:34):
the cutting edge of performance art at the time. Yeah,
I wonder what he's doing now. I gotta look that
cat up. He's sitting around on people's couch, is going like, hey,
remember that time I grafted in here on my arm?
That was pretty great? Huh? And he says, hey talked
to the forearm and they say still ark. We never
get tired of that, Joe. Um So should we talk
(09:55):
about the history first or the mechanism? Let's do history.
I love this guy. Well, by guy I know you're
talking about because there can be only one Mr Melvin Burkhardt,
who passed away fifteen years ago in two thousand one,
at the age of ninety four years old. He's born
in Atlanta uh in seven, grew up in New Orleans mainly,
(10:21):
and quit school at an early age and became a
well we worked a couple of odd jobs, worked for
Western Union, but then found his calling as a sideshow performer,
which we've covered on the show. Yeah, along with other
circus arts. Yeah, you you've got it for circus arts.
I think just about every circus art one we've ever
done is your pick? Was it? But man, we have
(10:43):
an extensive library of circus arts. Yes, swort, swallowing, lion taming,
lion taming, fire eating, fire eating. Do we have firewalking? No?
I don't think so. All right, look for that one soon. Yeah,
for real or tight rope backs. We had a circus
families we did. He's exhausted this, I don't know, man, firewalking?
(11:07):
We should do the the wheel. We talked about it,
the wheel with the motorcycles in it. What's it called?
The something of death? Wheel of death? No globe of death.
Maybe maybe he's a globe of death. Clunky clunky ride right? Um?
All right? So back to Mr Brookhart. He started performing inside.
(11:31):
He did so he was. He kind of fell into performing.
He used to go to the theater a lot. And
one day when he was I think fourteen or fifteen
or something, Uh, he jumped to his feet when the
people on stage ask for volunteers to come on stage,
and I guess he tripped or fell. I don't, I
didn't know if it was purposeful or not, and drove
a nail through his for her right, and everyone's just
(11:53):
laughed and laughed. Um, he did get some last not
for the nail yet, that came later, but um, he
was invited back for the next show, and within a
day or two he found himself with a contract to
do an amateur performance. So he started um performing at
a very early age. And and um, his his thing
initially was and I think throughout his career he was
(12:16):
what was called a talker, a master of ceremonies at
a side show. Yeah, uh, you might call him a
barker or something like that. But um, they were the
ones who kept the show going. They introduced the new
side show performers as they came on and went off,
And he did his own act in between the other acts,
and part of his act ended up being the uh
(12:37):
the nail, the human blockhead trick, among a bunch of
other stuff. Yeah. So one of these quotes that I
got his New York Times obituary and um, which are
always great, but one of the quotes from one of
his counterparts, and Coney Allen was so funny. He said,
this was from Dick Zigon. Uh, he's a side show guy,
and he said, anybody can insert objects in their nasal passage,
(13:00):
their nasal passage, but Melvin's patter and comedy made it
an act. And then the other guy. It's two great quotes.
Todd Robbins, as a magician, uh, who was also a
blockhead at times, says, anyone who has ever hammered a
nail into his nose it was a large debt to
Melvin Burkhart. Yeah, there's a little bit of tongue in
cheek in that oh bit that I'm sure Burkhart would
(13:22):
have appreciated. Um. That Todd Robbins guy actually has traced
it back um to the Joddu Wallas, basically the Indian
the Hindu performers, street performers, UM. And they apparently did
a human blockhead trick long ago. And I don't know
(13:43):
if it was just totally coincidental that Melvin Burkhardt stumbled
upon it himself, or if he had heard about it
or seen it himself. But at any rate, as far
as it goes in the West and the modern conception
of the human blockhead, Melvin Burkhart was the guy who
invented it. Yeah, I'm sure they're probably people in India
scoffing at that notion. But he was soon discovered by
(14:05):
none other than um Mr Ripley himself, and he took
him on to his auditorium in Manhattan, had him performing,
and supposedly is the one who came up with the
name human blockhead for this act. Man that Robert Ripley,
he coined a lot of stuff. I don't get it, though,
I still don't get why blockhead this is. It's a
(14:29):
dumb name. I would have called it, like, I don't
know what I would have called it. Give me ten minutes, though,
and I'll think of about Okay, shout it out when
you got it all right? Well, I mean, like you
can hammer nails into a block of wood. I guess
so is that what? It's a stupid name, But without
it we wouldn't have the Lucy from peanuts favorite Um
put down. Remember she called everybody a blockhead? Oh yeah,
(14:52):
what about the human pincushion. That's not quite right, though
it's okay. It's actually a lot more accurate. But at
think there are other human pin cushions, aren't there people
who do? That would be very confusing. I'm the pin cushion. No,
I'm the pin cushion. You're a blockhead? Um? So he uh,
he actually ended up And this is where this story
(15:14):
ties into Flee circuses. Actually, uh at Hubert's Museum on
Fort Street, which I believe is where the Hecklers had
their Um Flee circus for decades and where the where
it appeared in Easy Rider. That's right, Yeah, that's right. Uh.
Boy's all coming together, isn't it really? Uh? And he
(15:37):
was what was known as um like some people are.
You know, when we did our side show podcasts, a
lot of people were born with physical deformities. If they
would um, some people say we're exploited. Other people say championed.
But he was not that. He was what was known
as a working act. So he just had some talent
(15:57):
and fortitude to do some of these things. He wasn't
necessarily born with any strange nasal passage, although he does
say he was a boxer and broke his nose such
that they removed nasal bones that he thinks created this
passage to um inserting a nail into your sinus cavity. Um,
(16:21):
But it is, it exists in everyone, Okay, So that
to me is a great place to put a break.
All right, you're ready, Yes, here we go. All right, Chuck,
(16:57):
you may mention that, um, Melvin Burkhard was a boxer, right,
So apparently during his boxing career, he was getting some
bone that had been shattered in his face removed around
his nose, around his nasal cavity, and the story goes
that he noticed that the doctors were having a really
(17:18):
easy time sticking like a scalpel or pincers or all
sorts of little medical instruments in his nose. Rubber Chicken.
Henny Youngman was his doctor. Just look him up, everybody, uh.
And he was like, well, jeez, if these guys can
put the stuff in my nose, I'll bet I could too,
And if I combine it with my pattern comedy, I
(17:41):
could really make a good show of this. And apparently
that's where he was inspired to do the human blockhead trick.
I can make fifty a week. So he had something
like a dozen pieces of bone removed from his nasal
cavity area from his skull for medical reasons right speak
from his boxing career. Um, so he apparently had a
(18:01):
larger than normal nasal cavity as a result. Well that
makes sense. But it's like what you said. Everybody has
a hole in their face and it can be exploited
to do the human blockhead trick. We have a lot
of holes in our face. So let's talk about the
holes in our face. Right, Chuck, just put his glasses on.
(18:22):
I'm tired of looking over you and feeling like I'm seventies?
So how do I look without? Like? I gotta get
a picture of this? How do you look when I'm
looking at you through the glasses. Without the glasses? You
look great? How do I look with the glasses on?
Not so great? Larger and fuzzy. So look at me
(18:43):
over the clare you go wow. Alright, we'll put that
up on Instagram. Alright, the holes in our face? Um,
let's talk about the skull. The skull while it appears
as if it's just one big solid bowling ball with
a face on the front of it. Right, Um, it
is not. It is twenty two bones and all. And
(19:04):
if you look, if you've ever seen a human skull,
you can see this because they have sutures where it's
joined together. It's a big patchwork of of goodness, protective goodness.
And for the most part, when you look at someone's
face and you say, hey, high cheekbones, prominent chin, um,
look at the size of those teeth and how pointy
they are, that's crazy. These are these are actually like
(19:28):
features of either the bone themselves, are the bone underneath
the skin. That's your facial features. Right. But there's one
very prominent exception to this rule, um, and that's your nose.
Your nose is not the result of uh protrusion of
bone with skin stretched over it. Most of your nose
is made of cartilage, right, So there's actually very little
(19:50):
bone involved in your skin. Just on the bridge or
with your nose. Just on the bridge of the nose,
that's right, Okay, So beneath the bridge of the nose, everybody,
I want you to to take your anger, put it between
your eyes and then just pressed down. That's the bridge
of your nose, not too hard, Not that hard, okay,
and then just go slides, start to slide a little
further down. That is not bone any longer, that's cartilage.
(20:13):
And behind that cartilage, friends, there's a big old hole
in the center of your face. Have you ever had
your nose broken? Let me just knock on with like
fifty times. No. Have you ever been punched in the nose? Yes,
but didn't break it? No, Okay, I've never had my
nose broken. I've never been punched. Knock on wood at all. Yeah,
(20:35):
uh no, never been in a fight. That's great, it is,
but I kind of feel like I should get in
a fist fight. That There's this thing called bars, and
if you go out at certain times, you can get
into a fight pretty easy. I was always the guy
that was breaking up like like, oh, guys, like it
(20:56):
would be much more fun if we all just kept
drinking and not get in a fight like that. That
there's nothing that will ruin a night more than a
bar fight. It's all over bar fight suck. Yeah, across
the board. Plus, I never always had a very strong
inclination to not get punched in the face. I think
that's a sensible inclining. So I was, well, not really.
(21:17):
You know, you see how some people act and some
people some dudes love to fight, some ladies love to fight.
You know. Yeah, I could go out looking for it. Sure,
I don't know that that's to be admired or celebrated
in anything anyway. It's the worst those people like. And
when I lived in Arizona that short year, I picked
(21:38):
up just you know, friends at my restaurant, and one
of the friends of the dude that worked there was
one of the most uncomfortable people to hang out with
have ever experienced. He was always looking to get in
a fight every where we went, and it just I
was so fraught with anxiety, you know, tons of anger inside.
(21:58):
And is it just don't you wonder stuff like that
is hormonal, Like that guy's hormones are tuned a little
out of I bet you there's a lot of factors
hormones upbringing anger from childhood. But all I know is
is that I was like, I felt like I was
gonna have a heart attack every time I was near
this dude. So I was just waiting for the inevitable
(22:19):
fits fight. Wouldn't it be need If that guy listens
listening right now, knows who you're talking about. And it's
just started sobbing uncontrollably, like he's just had a breakthrough.
Would be great because you mentioned his childhood. He's not listening.
I'm can guarantee you that. So um oh yeah the nose,
yeah yeah, so cartilage, the nose is easy to break,
(22:39):
is kind of where I was getting. But technically you're
not really breaking yet really because it's cartilage. I guess
you can break cartilage. Don't listen to me. So. Um.
What you've also got in that in your face up
front of that skull is um, all kinds of spaces. Uh.
(23:00):
There are these little hollow places called sinuses. You got
your eye sockets of course. Uh. And then you're the
old reliable foreman magnum, which is where the brain stem
exits the skull. That really has nothing to do with
this episode, It doesn't. This is just sort of a
breakdown of what's going on in your face, Tracy. By
(23:22):
the way, this is a Tracy Wilson joint. Sure, um,
And she's just trying to prove her point that there's
lots of holes in the skull. That's right. The only
holes that matter for a blockhead are the nostrils, and
I would say the nasal cavity, right, And the nasal
cavity is that whole in your skull, in the front
of your skull where your nose goes, and um, that
(23:45):
leads all the way back to your throat actually, yeah,
which is very important actually for other acts that we'll
talk about. Yeah, So the the area where it terminates
at the throat is called the naso farynx. And all
of this is just wide open. You can stick whatever
you want in there, um, please don't, and you can
(24:06):
do it without nailing, without hammering, without anything like that.
You can just slide it in. Right. Physically speaking, we'll
get into how all the reasons why that's very difficult,
but just physiologically speaking, there's a big old hole in
the front of your face. There's a lot of empty
space behind it, going all the way back to your throat,
and so the human blockhead takes advantage of this this
(24:29):
um uh, these holes. Right. But it wouldn't be so
great if you could just look at somebody and say, hey,
that's well, it's great. You're just sliding a nail into
a hole in an open passage. That doesn't do anything.
The trick. The illusion is based on the natural formation
of our nose and our nostrils, which appear to go upward,
(24:51):
which is not the case. Actually, if you pull your
nose back and look into a mirror, you see that
the hole is behind him, not above them, right, And
that's the whole illusion. Yeah, Like you feel like when
you blow your nose, that snot is coming down from
like the top of your head, and that's not the case. Now,
it's coming from the back, that's right. It's the ceiling
(25:13):
is just about even with the top of the nose
right below your eyes, the ceiling of the nasal cavity, right, yeah,
not the ceiling of your your bedroom. Uh. In the
floor of the nasal cavity is about level with what's
known as the L R cartilage a L A R,
which is where the nostrils are, right, that's the bottom
(25:33):
of your your nostrils. Yeah. So when you see it,
like you said, when you see the trick, the fact
that it's not going up and it's just going straight in,
it makes people go, oh my god, what is going on.
He's driven his nail right into the bone of his skull.
That's what it looks like. That's right. And by the way,
if you want a good a good view of all
this looks like I stumbled upon a horrific photo of
(25:54):
somebody who's nostrils. I guess there this the cartilage that
separates their nostrils into two. Yeah, there's got to be
a name for that. Right, it's gone, and the whole
nose is the skin of the nose is being pulled
back so you can see the skull behind it. So
if you wanted to just type in all our cartilage
(26:16):
and Google search image searching, you will. You'll be as
unhappy as I am for having seen it's gonna go,
rather than do you want to see it? Nah, it's
pretty crazy now, that's all right, Okay, I'll look at
it later because I know i'll I want to. I'll
be lying in bed tonight thinking of it. I'm not
gonna do it. I'm not doing it. H So to
finish up, though, in the cavity it is not just
(26:37):
a smooth straight thing either. They have um. They're these
grooves called conka c U N c h A E
I'm gonna say um on the walls and they hold
onto the moisture when you exhale and that's gonna keep
everything nice and lubricated, which is what you want in there,
thanks to the mucus membrane that lines all these surfaces
(26:58):
and keeps everything nice. And I'm not gonna say the
M word, but nice and moist. Yeah, everybody hates that word,
huh and not everyone, but there's science behind it. Okay there.
I can't remember a post an article for mental phlaws.
Apparently there's some science behind White people don't like that
word nice. So when you're doing the human blockhead trick,
(27:22):
I should change that when you're when you're seeing a
professional do the human blockhead trick. Um, what they're doing
is they're they're sliding the nail. Let's just stick with
the nail. The nail into their nasal cavity. They want
to usually hug the alar cartilage the floor of their
(27:42):
nasal cavity, try to avoid the concat. Isn't that way
you decided? That's pronounced? And then they're pushing it all
the way back into their naso pharynx. Right, You've got
about six eight inches of space to deal with from
that much from your nostril back to the naso pharynx. Yeah, um,
and Uh, they the human blockhead to make it so
(28:06):
it's not just sliding a nail into your nose, which
is gross, but that's pretty playground. Ee. They will take
a hammer and they will hold onto the nail very tightly,
and they will make it look like they're hammering the
nail into their skull. Right, and there's the sound of
the hammer against the nail and it sounds really painful.
Where really you can just take the thing and slide
(28:27):
it in, easy peasy. Yeah, that's called stagecraft. Right. So
all of this sounds extremely easy, and in a sense
it is. But there are a lot of obstacles to
performing this trick successfully, and we'll talk about those right
after this. So I don't think we should go any
(29:11):
further without a serious c o A message. It seems obvious,
but do not try to stick a nail in your
nose because Josh and Chuck said it was possible. Yeah,
that's really good. Um, the human anatomy, the anatomy of
a of a face and a skull, makes it possible.
We advise no one to ever try this unless you
(29:34):
want to get into the circus arts legitimately and want
to take the steps to like really learn how to
do this right. I actually ran across this um theory
eleven dot com forum. The novice was asking how to
do this, and this guy named William Draven replied, and
I thought he had a pretty good c o a himself.
He said, like, UM, if you do want to do this,
(29:57):
in no way advocate um learning from reading text on
the internet or even watching videos. Go find somebody who
is who has successfully performed this trick numerous times and
then learned from them directly. Don't learn from guys like us.
Don't learn from reading William Draven's comments on the internet.
(30:18):
Don't don't read it from anybody. Go find somebody who
knows this trick and and learn it from them. And
where do you find that person? There? The guy in
the corner of the bar with the nail in there? Now,
it's pretty easy, right, or they live in a town
called Winter or something in Florida. Um And I did, look,
we keep saying, dudes. I did try and find to
(30:38):
see if there are any women out there who did this.
I didn't find any, but I'm sure they're sure they're
They're supposedly more than a hundred human blockheads around the world.
Go find one of them. I'm sure some women do this.
I'm sure it's just not a prominent Google search to
type in, you know, woman blockhead. I'm sure they also.
(31:01):
I think every single time I've ever said guys, I've
I've meant it as a gender neutral Yeah. Yeah, so. Um.
One thing Tracy points out is that all noses are different. Uh,
and sometimes to reach your nasal cavity, you might the
lower edge of your nostril might be in the way.
So you know, sometimes it might just glide right in
(31:22):
and you look the same. But sometimes it will, like
if you do it right, you know, your nose will
stick up like, you know, like your snout will stick
out like a pig because the nails holding it up.
Other noses, it might just look normal except for the
fact that there's a nail through it. Um. A lot
of people who do this, most people, I should say,
who do it practice initially with Q tip. That's probably smart,
(31:45):
right yeah, um, yeah, you want to practice with a
que tip. And one reason why you want to practice
with a Q tip is number one. It's I would
guess it'd be harder to injure yourself with a Q tip.
I'm sure, although I'm sure it's still be quite easy, sure, um.
And then that Q tips are kind of fuzzy. Yeah.
And so one of the hardest things to overcome doing
(32:06):
the human blockhead trick their stunt is overcoming the sneezing reflex.
That's the biggest one. I mean, there's all sorts of
other problems, like if you use something that's not clean, um,
you set yourself up for sinus infection because you're sticking
foreign objects back there around your scinus is. Um, you
can damage the very soft mucous memories and tissue that
(32:29):
are around that line your nose and nasal cavity and
your scinuses and your nasal farynx. But one of the
one of the biggest challenges is overcoming the sneezing reflects,
which can combine all this stuff, all these dangers and
then increase some tenfold. Yeah. If you're trying to stick
a nail in your head in the early stages and
you sneeze that, you know sneezing can be a very
(32:51):
violent reaction. So let's talk about sneezing real quick, all right,
All right, So Tracy went to the trouble of outlining
how a sneeze works right, it's pretty neat. So you've
got a sneez has a reef. What's called a reflex arc.
Any kind of reflex, as far as the human body
is concerned, consists of a reflex arc, and it's made
up of a receptor. In this case, Um, we've got
(33:12):
nerve endings in our noses. Those are the receptors, and
they're the things that say, you know, I just snorted
pepper up my nose yea, or this house is dusty
or whatever might cause you uh you know, animal dand
or whatever. Hops in beer for me. Oh yeah. So
like if you literally smell like an I p A.
I don't even have to smell it. I can just
(33:33):
just drinking it, just like one good sneeze and then
you're fine. Yeah wow, hops gets me Hops and peppermint
huh yeah. Um, So you've got you've got the stimulus
against the receptor. The receptors got the the sensory nerve
leading up to the integration center of your brain that
(33:56):
the whatever center integrates all of this information for that
particular reflex. Uh, your motor nerve which says, hey, go
do this, and then it's called an effector in the
case of sneezing and effector is the process the physical
process of sneezing? Right? Yeah, which you know everyone everyone sneezes.
(34:18):
Let's get real. You know what was interesting to me, Chuck,
is you know when you're researching yawning, you yawn when
you research itching, did you sneeze? You scratch, didn't sneeze?
I thought the same thing. Really, I wonder if I'm
gonna start sneezing, and I did not. It's not suggestible,
totally reactive thing. So when you sneeze, you know your
you might start off with your eyes watering. Uh, and
(34:40):
you're gonna secrete some fluid from your nasal passage. And
then there's an abrupt like pre sneeze breath that you
draw in from your diaphragm. Um, I don't think that
has a name. Let's just call it the pre SNEeSe
breath breath. I think we just coined it. Uh. And
then and then you're I fram in muscles in your
(35:01):
chest contract really quickly, and the air leaves that nose
and mouth really quickly. Um. Do you have a sneeze
pattern or is it random? Um? No, I'm sure I
follow a pattern almost always sneezing. Threes is your three, yes,
but I mean it depends, like I seriously will sneeze
(35:24):
eight or nine times if you're drinking a poppy beer. Um, yeah,
I'm almost always three. And when it's not, it's it
stands out to me as being unique or incomplete. So yeah,
sometimes or sometimes I'll sneeze later and think like, oh, yeah,
there's the third, which is silly. It's like celebrity deaths.
(35:45):
I wonder about. I meant to look that up though,
wonder if there's any science to that sneezing patterns. There's
just science to everything, science and magic. Um. So you
can put off a sneeze. You've probably done that before.
That tickling sensation just goes away. Those are to me
the incomplete things because you felt like or I feel like,
(36:05):
you know, so close and I clearly needed to sneeze,
but you didn't. If your body doesn't sneeze and it
it warded itself off. Yeah. And so the point of
all the sneezing talk is that part of mastering the
human blockhead stunt is reducing your sneeze reflex and apparently
(36:25):
it can be done just by exposing yourself to a
sneeze reflex, over and over and over again. So you
just stick that que tip in there. You sneeze, You
do it again, you sneeze, You do it again, you sneeze.
You go eat a TV dinner and take a little
break because it's tough and you're mad. You're really mad,
get really fixed off, and then you come back, and
(36:46):
then you do it again, and then eventually a few
days later, a few weeks later, you've lost all your friends,
but you don't sneeze when you stick something up your nose. Victory. Yeah.
I also saw that if you, uh, if you are
a human blockhead, you want to basically scrub down any
new stunt nail that you've got with this with steel
(37:09):
wool and then soaking in rubbing alcohol for a while
to prevent sinus infections. I'm picturing like a Carnie thriller
where someone creeps in and like switches out the nail
some pathogen. No I'm dead. Uh So, Like I said,
there are over a hundred people doing this around the world. Supposedly.
Um Ryan Stock, who you mentioned earlier, has become pretty
(37:31):
famous because he's been on I think he had a
TV show of his own He was definitely an America's
got talent. Yeah, and he does all sorts of things.
He and his wife, Oh she in on the act.
Oh yeah, she's definitely part of an Amberlin So, like
I said, he does all kinds of things. But um,
one of his most notable tricks is a spin on
this called the human meat head where just look it
(37:55):
up Ryan Stock. He puts a meat hook. Remember how
he set it was connected to the throw. He will
go all the way through his nose, out of his
mouth with the end of the hook, and then he'll
pull stuff around. He actually pulled the almost the pound car.
He hels the world's record as being the only person
that ever doing You gotta hear this the title of
(38:16):
this world record. He has a world record for the
heaviest vehicle pulled using a hook through the nasal cavity
and out of the mouth point three five pound car.
No idea, how much that isn't killograms? Uh? I remember
my brother he ate something when he was the first
time I realized that was all connected. He laughed a
(38:39):
lot when eating hamburger and coughed hamburger through his nose
or milk through the nose. When you made your friend laugh.
That was always That's a classic, man. You just were
triumphant the rest of the day. I actually have found
if I'm jogging, like I always chew gum and I
like break the gum slowly into small pieces and I
eventually like eat it or whatever. But if there's like
(39:00):
a few moments where like there there's a small piece
of gum separated from the rest of the gum, and
I've noticed every once in a while, I don't know
what sets it off, but I'll just snot it out,
like it'll shoot up my throat and then on my nose.
And this sapped more than what I don't you're either
not jogging, right, you're not chewing gum, right, there's something
(39:23):
there's a breakdown here. I don't think you're supposed to
do that. It's true, weird. Does it hurt? No, it's
just surprising, Like, sure, it's the gum. What do you
mean it's like pieces of brain. Did you ever hear
about the woman who had like a running nose for
twenty years and she finally went to the doctor and
they're like, that's cerebro spinal fluid. Your brain is leaking
(39:45):
out of your nose. Was she okay? I guess, I
mean she lived with it for decades. That's crazy. Um.
And there's this other guy that I want to mention too,
the faith healer. Oh yeah, John of God. And this
made me want to do I'd love to do a
(40:05):
show on faith healing period and a show on psychic
surgery like those are definitely on the list now. Um.
But he is a famous Brazilian faith healer who um,
I mean he's he's big, like if he's he's way
more famous than I thought he was because I hadn't
(40:26):
heard of him. But he's a big time and um,
he does these. He has a couple of kind of operations, uh,
one visible and one invisible. And one of the visible
ones is he sticks forceps up the nose of people
and to supposedly heal them of certain things. And apparently
he was exposed by the great James Randy, Um, the
(40:50):
amazing Randy who we talked about, the great legendary skeptic
old sour Puss what's that his name? Did ever see
the documentary? No? I haven't yet. It's really good. There's
a great documentary called um an Honest Liar about the
amazing Randy. He's just so interesting. But he he I
think ABC or CBS or someone got him involved. Yeah,
(41:13):
ABC TV to expose uh John of God. And he said, well,
for sure one of the things. I mean, he's exposed
psychic surgeons before, but he said, this force ups up
the nose thing. There's nothing more than the blockhead trick,
and that's all he's doing. Fraud. We'll do a human
(41:33):
or no, a psychic surgery one. For sure. That sounds
pretty interesting. I remember seeing that when I was a kid.
I thought it was like the real deal. That apparently
Andy Kaufman like went to psychic surgeon and then figured
out the scam. So sad, so says Milosh Foreman. At
least yeah, he's like chickens in the hand. I see it. Uh,
(41:53):
you got anything else? I do not. If you want
to know more about human blockheads, you can type those
in the search part how stuff works dot com. You
can search human blockhead online. There's at least one good
Melvin Burkhart performance on YouTube. Don't forget to look up
all our cartilage, um Ryan Stock and also shout out
(42:15):
to um Zen Arts l A for their article on
blockheads that was helpful. As well. Since I said all that,
it's time friends for listener mail. So Chuck, I guess
this is the last one of the year. Yeah, yeah,
we should say before we do mail. Um, Happy New Year, everybody. Yeah,
(42:36):
be safe. We want to see everyone in and um
we kind of said it in the Christmas episode. But
thanks for everything over the years. Yeah for real, it
means a lot to us. And uh we we just
can't wait to get things going again. And by your calendar,
just a couple of days by your Earth calendar. And
(42:57):
also on a personal note, happy birthday too, my darling wife.
You me, Happy birthday? You me? Okay, Well it's time
for listening mail. Huh. I'm gonna call this uh banning
advertising the kids. We heard from a lot of people
on this. It's a hot topic. Hey guys live in
Northern Virginia. Just listen to your show on advertising for children.
I want to relate an relay and experience we had
(43:18):
with our eighteen then eighteen month old daughter. We're on
vacation with her in Florida. Had a day with nothing
on our to do list, so we decided to take
a drive to Walt Disney World. We also found a
bag full of cash in our club compartment. My husband
was was hesitant about going because of her young age
and the fact that she had zero exposure to Disney
(43:38):
at this point. I persuaded him by saying she would
enjoy the parades and the characters, even if she didn't
know who they were. Literally, only television she had ever
seen at that point was educational programming on PBS Kids,
and that was even minimal. So as we turned onto
the road trying to make our way to the Magic Kingdom,
there was a water tower in the distance decorated like
Mickey Mouse, ears and all, and my daughter immediately shouted, look,
(44:00):
it's Mickey Mouse. But they were like, yeah, how do
you know that? Uh. My husband and I were both
completely surprised. We could not believe that our daughter had
been indoctrinated into recognizing that brand at only eighteen months,
especially since we hadn't taught her that. Most likely she
(44:23):
was shown a toy or a book at daycare. Uh.
It is not that we were against that Disney or anything, obviously,
because we were taking her there. It's just very shocking
to see your young child parrot that information. This could
also be evidence of reincarnation well, at least what if
it was like a billboard and she's like, look, it's
a new Gangrich that would be cause for alarm. I
(44:44):
know this advertising is everywhere and it's nearly impossible to avoid,
and just hope we can eventually teach her to not
be fooled and use critical thinking to make decisions rather
than her emotions. Thanks for all you do to make
my long commute so much more enjoyable. That is from Stacy,
And she says, my daughter now is nearly five and
gets annoyed by commercials, so she pauses television until she
(45:06):
can fast forward through them all one point for technology. Nice. Well,
thanks a lot, Stacy. We appreciate that. It's a cool story.
I hope you guys had a good time at Disney World. Um,
and uh, that's it right. Well, if you want to
get in touch with us, like Stacy did, you can
tweet to us at josh um Clark or s Y
(45:27):
s K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on
Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant or Facebook
dot com slash Stuff You should Know, send us an
email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
(45:51):
and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff workst
Hey, San Francisco, we're coming back to see you. Yes,
our second year in a row. We're gonna be going
to s F Sketch Fest. What I like to think,
it's the premier comedy festival in the United States, probably
well in the world, you think, so, yeah, what about Beijing? Nope,
it's a it's a close second, but a second. Well,
(00:21):
we love San Francisco, we love performing there. Everyone is
always so kind to us. And by San Francisco we
mean the entire Bay area of course. Yeah. So we
will be there doing our thing for one time only
show on Sunday, January at one pm. Yeah, it's the
rare Sunday afternoon. We're like the NFL of podcasters. Yeah, exactly,
(00:45):
That's that's what I've always thought. So all you have
to do is go to the SF Sketch Fest site,
look at the old calendar, and there are tons of
great people performing. Oh yeah, So I suggest like just
doubling down and getting tickets all kinds of good shows
for sure, and hurry up and get tickets to ours
because they've only been on sale for a week or
so and they're already half sold out. That's right, So
please hurry San Francisco. Please hurry. Welcome to Stuff You
(01:10):
should know it's from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and it's just us chickens here in Studio
one A. Yeah, the blockhead is gone. Yeah, Jerry the blackhead.
(01:31):
I'm just kidding. She's not a blockhead. She's a meat hit.
She is a meat head. This is fun. What else
is she here? We can say whatever we want. She'll
never hear this, that's true. Two things I've noticed today.
We're both wearing blue hoodies. Oh yeah, yours is uh
a recreation of the great sweater that Danny wore in
(01:52):
The Shining Uh, which I think I've told you you
love Lee Unk of Pixar owns that real sweat her.
Oh yeah you did tell me that. Yeah, Like, if
you're like, you know, you got the sweatshirt version. He
owns the sweater. It's the real thing. But unless he's
the same size as like a little four or five
six year old boy, he put it on his own kid. Yeah,
(02:15):
that's probably why he had a kids madness right well
to model the sweater. Yeah, yeah, uh and I'm wearing
my high school sweatshirt Dan Raiders. Yeah. Dan. The other
thing I noticed is that got new glasses or a
new prescription. My eyes were clearly getting worse, and you're
(02:38):
fuzzy to me, but my papers are clear. Oh and
I should have gotten the bifocals, Like he said, vocals, Gramps,
I've been doing a lot of this definitely doesn't aid
you at all, chuck his pull his glasses down his nose,
and then looked over him. Well, when you're at home
and let's say you got the TV on but you're
working on your laptop, it's it's troublesome. Have you ever
(03:01):
heard of that? Um? I can't remember what. It's called
progressive lenses. No, it's like a type of basically training
your eyes to get better by denying them corrective lenses. Well,
I did that for forty three years and it didn't work. Well,
I mean, or maybe it did work. Your eyes would
have been way worse had you not done that. Here's
what I know. I know that two weeks ago, like
(03:24):
I never wore my previous glasses prescription because it didn't
look like they were doing anything. Um, but things were
getting harder to read. So I went back three years
later and they were like, oh, yeah, things have changed. Um,
but I was reading two weeks ago. I was just
sort of holding it back a little more maybe. But
now when I put these on, it's like someone turned
on the lights. I was like, holy cow, that's so clear.
(03:45):
But it's something changed in just the last few weeks. No,
I think I would just I was just used to
getting by on as clearly as I could, because once
I put these on. I just couldn't believe the difference.
It's good for you for doing something, Yeah, but now
I gotta I gotta weird glasses all the time, or
not all the time. But when I read, you remind
me exactly of how I felt in fourth grade when
(04:06):
I got glasses. They came in and they were like, okay,
everybody's doing the eye test, and of course you just
think it's cursory, like a lice check or something like that, right,
and you went stood in the corner, and then the
nurse or whoever it was just like, you need glasses.
I was like, what, You're insane, woman, I think, is
what I said. But it was a man, right, and
so that's all they knew. I proved myself insane. Um
(04:28):
yeah right, so uh, I ended up with glasses and
I remember feeling like, oh man, I'm shackle for the
rest of my life. Yeah, that's a tough age. I
don't know if glasses still had the same stigma on
young kids, but when we were kids, it was definitely
like four eyes and all that. Yeah, there was a
bit of it. So I showed them. I went out
and got the most Elton Johnny glasses I could find.
(04:50):
They were clear, with like a thin blue like wire
running through the frames. They were pretty awesome. Yeah, alright,
so human block Yeah, so, Chuck, have you ever seen
the human blockhead trick? I should not call it a trick,
just stunt. You're right, I have like in person. Yeah. Also,
(05:14):
I went to a Gym Rose circus once and that
they had a blockhead that when I went. I'm not
sure if they still do. Was it Ryan Stock? I
don't think so. This is a long time ago. Yeah,
he seems a little young to have been in the
original Gym Rose show. Yeah, I mean this was in
like was it at Lallapalooza. Maybe because that was in
(05:36):
the first the first part of the first Lallapaluza. They
were part of that. Yea, how was that that show?
There you go? Maybe that's where it was. Maybe so well,
I've never seen a human blockhead, so I mean I
was aware of it. I'm sure I'd seen like references
to it in cartoons or whatever. But I went online
because I noticed as I was researching this, I was like, wow,
I feel like fainting for some reason. I was like,
(05:59):
this really makes me fainty, and I went online and
just exposed myself to it, and uh, it was Yeah,
I didn't actually faint, but it's something. Well, we should
go ahead and say, then, a human blockhead is a person,
and we'll get into the history of it where that
name came comes from. But it's a person, a performer
(06:20):
who inserts a nail or a camping steak or a drill,
paris scissors, what something sharp that would make your stomach
turn if you saw it jammed in a person's nose
all the way and they do just that. And the
reason I corrected myself earlier I called it a trick.
(06:41):
It's not a trick. The person who performs the human blockhead,
or who is a human blockhead, um would correct me
and say no, no, this is a stunt. A trick
suggests that there's some sort of illusion, there's some sort
of deception or stage magic going on. This is a
stunt because it's exactly what you think it is. There's
a nail going into the person's skull. Yeah. And if
(07:02):
you don't know and you go to one of these,
you probably think it's a trick. It's a fake nail.
It's a collapsible or a telescoping nail or something. Um,
maybe some sort of a slide of hand, like the
old trick where you just turned to the side and
act like you're pulling something out of your mouth, you
know that old bit. Yeah, I finally figured that one
(07:23):
out in my twenties. Uh, thanks to your glasses probably,
um so to the uninitiated, it's uh. People probably leave
these performances sometimes saying, well, you know, of course that
wasn't real. There's no way, right, it's true, right, that's
that's what you think. In the performers they play on that, right,
it's part of the whole thing. But it's actually legitimately
(07:45):
the nail is not fake, and it it actually is
going into the person's head. But the further misconception is that, okay,
if it is going in the person's head, that it's
being driven into their skull, their bone um, either through
a new hole that they're making because they're crazy, or
(08:06):
an established hole that they have like um that they're
they've used time and time again. Like uh, an ear
piercing that it's healed over. Not the case. Yeah, I
was about to say the body doesn't need any new holes,
but I forgot about piercing. That you need piercing. But
that's the only thing I can think of where you
would want a new hole that's legitimate, right, Um, I
(08:31):
don't know. Some doctors could want new holes for you,
depending like if you got a colostomate or a tricky otomy.
It didn't even think about that medical reasons. Or stellarc
put an ear on his arm. I was thinking about him.
I can't believe you remember that guy's name. Yeah he
was if he didn't listen. Years ago we talked about him.
(08:51):
He was a performance artist who put he molded in
and grafted a ear look alike onto his arm, survived
some terrible infections that was bluetooth compatible, so he could
literally hear through it. Right, I mean you know what
I mean. He yeah, he's probably not literally hear through it,
but it had like a bluetooth mic in the ear,
(09:12):
and then he had like a head phone in his
own ear, So yeah, he could hear what was going
in there. With assistance of technology, he should hear through it. Well,
he's a performance arts what do you expect? But that
technically wasn't a hole though. No, it was just a
fake ear on his arm. No, it was a real ear.
Was it? A really? Whose was it? It was like
a cloned ear grafted onto his arm. It was basically
(09:34):
the cutting edge of performance art at the time. Yeah,
I wonder what he's doing now. I gotta look that
cat up. He's sitting around on people's couch, is going like, hey,
remember that time I grafted in here on my arm?
That was pretty great? Huh? And he says, hey talked
to the forearm and they say still ark. We never
get tired of that, Joe. Um So should we talk
(09:55):
about the history first or the mechanism? Let's do history.
I love this guy. Well, by guy I know you're
talking about because there can be only one Mr Melvin Burkhardt,
who passed away fifteen years ago in two thousand one,
at the age of ninety four years old. He's born
in Atlanta uh in seven, grew up in New Orleans mainly,
(10:21):
and quit school at an early age and became a
well we worked a couple of odd jobs, worked for
Western Union, but then found his calling as a sideshow performer,
which we've covered on the show. Yeah, along with other
circus arts. Yeah, you you've got it for circus arts.
I think just about every circus art one we've ever
done is your pick? Was it? But man, we have
(10:43):
an extensive library of circus arts. Yes, swort, swallowing, lion taming,
lion taming, fire eating, fire eating. Do we have firewalking? No?
I don't think so. All right, look for that one soon. Yeah,
for real or tight rope backs. We had a circus
families we did. He's exhausted this, I don't know, man, firewalking?
(11:07):
We should do the the wheel. We talked about it,
the wheel with the motorcycles in it. What's it called?
The something of death? Wheel of death? No globe of death.
Maybe maybe he's a globe of death. Clunky clunky ride right? Um?
All right? So back to Mr Brookhart. He started performing inside.
(11:31):
He did so he was. He kind of fell into performing.
He used to go to the theater a lot. And
one day when he was I think fourteen or fifteen
or something, Uh, he jumped to his feet when the
people on stage ask for volunteers to come on stage,
and I guess he tripped or fell. I don't, I
didn't know if it was purposeful or not, and drove
a nail through his for her right, and everyone's just
(11:53):
laughed and laughed. Um, he did get some last not
for the nail yet, that came later, but um, he
was invited back for the next show, and within a
day or two he found himself with a contract to
do an amateur performance. So he started um performing at
a very early age. And and um, his his thing
initially was and I think throughout his career he was
(12:16):
what was called a talker, a master of ceremonies at
a side show. Yeah, uh, you might call him a
barker or something like that. But um, they were the
ones who kept the show going. They introduced the new
side show performers as they came on and went off,
And he did his own act in between the other acts,
and part of his act ended up being the uh
(12:37):
the nail, the human blockhead trick, among a bunch of
other stuff. Yeah. So one of these quotes that I
got his New York Times obituary and um, which are
always great, but one of the quotes from one of
his counterparts, and Coney Allen was so funny. He said,
this was from Dick Zigon. Uh, he's a side show guy,
and he said, anybody can insert objects in their nasal passage,
(13:00):
their nasal passage, but Melvin's patter and comedy made it
an act. And then the other guy. It's two great quotes.
Todd Robbins, as a magician, uh, who was also a
blockhead at times, says, anyone who has ever hammered a
nail into his nose it was a large debt to
Melvin Burkhart. Yeah, there's a little bit of tongue in
cheek in that oh bit that I'm sure Burkhart would
(13:22):
have appreciated. Um. That Todd Robbins guy actually has traced
it back um to the Joddu Wallas, basically the Indian
the Hindu performers, street performers, UM. And they apparently did
a human blockhead trick long ago. And I don't know
(13:43):
if it was just totally coincidental that Melvin Burkhardt stumbled
upon it himself, or if he had heard about it
or seen it himself. But at any rate, as far
as it goes in the West and the modern conception
of the human blockhead, Melvin Burkhart was the guy who
invented it. Yeah, I'm sure they're probably people in India
scoffing at that notion. But he was soon discovered by
(14:05):
none other than um Mr Ripley himself, and he took
him on to his auditorium in Manhattan, had him performing,
and supposedly is the one who came up with the
name human blockhead for this act. Man that Robert Ripley,
he coined a lot of stuff. I don't get it, though,
I still don't get why blockhead this is. It's a
(14:29):
dumb name. I would have called it, like, I don't
know what I would have called it. Give me ten minutes, though,
and I'll think of about Okay, shout it out when
you got it all right? Well, I mean, like you
can hammer nails into a block of wood. I guess
so is that what? It's a stupid name, But without
it we wouldn't have the Lucy from peanuts favorite Um
put down. Remember she called everybody a blockhead? Oh yeah,
(14:52):
what about the human pincushion. That's not quite right, though
it's okay. It's actually a lot more accurate. But at
think there are other human pin cushions, aren't there people
who do? That would be very confusing. I'm the pin cushion. No,
I'm the pin cushion. You're a blockhead? Um? So he uh,
he actually ended up And this is where this story
(15:14):
ties into Flee circuses. Actually, uh at Hubert's Museum on
Fort Street, which I believe is where the Hecklers had
their Um Flee circus for decades and where the where
it appeared in Easy Rider. That's right, Yeah, that's right. Uh.
Boy's all coming together, isn't it really? Uh? And he
(15:37):
was what was known as um like some people are.
You know, when we did our side show podcasts, a
lot of people were born with physical deformities. If they
would um, some people say we're exploited. Other people say championed.
But he was not that. He was what was known
as a working act. So he just had some talent
(15:57):
and fortitude to do some of these things. He wasn't
necessarily born with any strange nasal passage, although he does
say he was a boxer and broke his nose such
that they removed nasal bones that he thinks created this
passage to um inserting a nail into your sinus cavity. Um,
(16:21):
But it is, it exists in everyone, Okay, So that
to me is a great place to put a break.
All right, you're ready, Yes, here we go. All right, Chuck,
(16:57):
you may mention that, um, Melvin Burkhard was a boxer, right,
So apparently during his boxing career, he was getting some
bone that had been shattered in his face removed around
his nose, around his nasal cavity, and the story goes
that he noticed that the doctors were having a really
(17:18):
easy time sticking like a scalpel or pincers or all
sorts of little medical instruments in his nose. Rubber Chicken.
Henny Youngman was his doctor. Just look him up, everybody, uh.
And he was like, well, jeez, if these guys can
put the stuff in my nose, I'll bet I could too,
And if I combine it with my pattern comedy, I
(17:41):
could really make a good show of this. And apparently
that's where he was inspired to do the human blockhead trick.
I can make fifty a week. So he had something
like a dozen pieces of bone removed from his nasal
cavity area from his skull for medical reasons right speak
from his boxing career. Um, so he apparently had a
(18:01):
larger than normal nasal cavity as a result. Well that
makes sense. But it's like what you said. Everybody has
a hole in their face and it can be exploited
to do the human blockhead trick. We have a lot
of holes in our face. So let's talk about the
holes in our face. Right, Chuck, just put his glasses on.
(18:22):
I'm tired of looking over you and feeling like I'm seventies?
So how do I look without? Like? I gotta get
a picture of this? How do you look when I'm
looking at you through the glasses. Without the glasses? You
look great? How do I look with the glasses on?
Not so great? Larger and fuzzy. So look at me
(18:43):
over the clare you go wow. Alright, we'll put that
up on Instagram. Alright, the holes in our face? Um,
let's talk about the skull. The skull while it appears
as if it's just one big solid bowling ball with
a face on the front of it. Right, Um, it
is not. It is twenty two bones and all. And
(19:04):
if you look, if you've ever seen a human skull,
you can see this because they have sutures where it's
joined together. It's a big patchwork of of goodness, protective goodness.
And for the most part, when you look at someone's
face and you say, hey, high cheekbones, prominent chin, um,
look at the size of those teeth and how pointy
they are, that's crazy. These are these are actually like
(19:28):
features of either the bone themselves, are the bone underneath
the skin. That's your facial features. Right. But there's one
very prominent exception to this rule, um, and that's your nose.
Your nose is not the result of uh protrusion of
bone with skin stretched over it. Most of your nose
is made of cartilage, right, So there's actually very little
(19:50):
bone involved in your skin. Just on the bridge or
with your nose. Just on the bridge of the nose,
that's right, Okay, So beneath the bridge of the nose, everybody,
I want you to to take your anger, put it between
your eyes and then just pressed down. That's the bridge
of your nose, not too hard, Not that hard, okay,
and then just go slides, start to slide a little
further down. That is not bone any longer, that's cartilage.
(20:13):
And behind that cartilage, friends, there's a big old hole
in the center of your face. Have you ever had
your nose broken? Let me just knock on with like
fifty times. No. Have you ever been punched in the nose? Yes,
but didn't break it? No, Okay, I've never had my
nose broken. I've never been punched. Knock on wood at all. Yeah,
(20:35):
uh no, never been in a fight. That's great, it is,
but I kind of feel like I should get in
a fist fight. That There's this thing called bars, and
if you go out at certain times, you can get
into a fight pretty easy. I was always the guy
that was breaking up like like, oh, guys, like it
(20:56):
would be much more fun if we all just kept
drinking and not get in a fight like that. That
there's nothing that will ruin a night more than a
bar fight. It's all over bar fight suck. Yeah, across
the board. Plus, I never always had a very strong
inclination to not get punched in the face. I think
that's a sensible inclining. So I was, well, not really.
(21:17):
You know, you see how some people act and some
people some dudes love to fight, some ladies love to fight.
You know. Yeah, I could go out looking for it. Sure,
I don't know that that's to be admired or celebrated
in anything anyway. It's the worst those people like. And
when I lived in Arizona that short year, I picked
(21:38):
up just you know, friends at my restaurant, and one
of the friends of the dude that worked there was
one of the most uncomfortable people to hang out with
have ever experienced. He was always looking to get in
a fight every where we went, and it just I
was so fraught with anxiety, you know, tons of anger inside.
(21:58):
And is it just don't you wonder stuff like that
is hormonal, Like that guy's hormones are tuned a little
out of I bet you there's a lot of factors
hormones upbringing anger from childhood. But all I know is
is that I was like, I felt like I was
gonna have a heart attack every time I was near
this dude. So I was just waiting for the inevitable
(22:19):
fits fight. Wouldn't it be need If that guy listens
listening right now, knows who you're talking about. And it's
just started sobbing uncontrollably, like he's just had a breakthrough.
Would be great because you mentioned his childhood. He's not listening.
I'm can guarantee you that. So um oh yeah the nose,
yeah yeah, so cartilage, the nose is easy to break,
(22:39):
is kind of where I was getting. But technically you're
not really breaking yet really because it's cartilage. I guess
you can break cartilage. Don't listen to me. So. Um.
What you've also got in that in your face up
front of that skull is um, all kinds of spaces. Uh.
(23:00):
There are these little hollow places called sinuses. You got
your eye sockets of course. Uh. And then you're the
old reliable foreman magnum, which is where the brain stem
exits the skull. That really has nothing to do with
this episode, It doesn't. This is just sort of a
breakdown of what's going on in your face, Tracy. By
(23:22):
the way, this is a Tracy Wilson joint. Sure, um,
And she's just trying to prove her point that there's
lots of holes in the skull. That's right. The only
holes that matter for a blockhead are the nostrils, and
I would say the nasal cavity, right, And the nasal
cavity is that whole in your skull, in the front
of your skull where your nose goes, and um, that
(23:45):
leads all the way back to your throat actually, yeah,
which is very important actually for other acts that we'll
talk about. Yeah, So the the area where it terminates
at the throat is called the naso farynx. And all
of this is just wide open. You can stick whatever
you want in there, um, please don't, and you can
(24:06):
do it without nailing, without hammering, without anything like that.
You can just slide it in. Right. Physically speaking, we'll
get into how all the reasons why that's very difficult,
but just physiologically speaking, there's a big old hole in
the front of your face. There's a lot of empty
space behind it, going all the way back to your throat,
and so the human blockhead takes advantage of this this
(24:29):
um uh, these holes. Right. But it wouldn't be so
great if you could just look at somebody and say, hey,
that's well, it's great. You're just sliding a nail into
a hole in an open passage. That doesn't do anything.
The trick. The illusion is based on the natural formation
of our nose and our nostrils, which appear to go upward,
(24:51):
which is not the case. Actually, if you pull your
nose back and look into a mirror, you see that
the hole is behind him, not above them, right, And
that's the whole illusion. Yeah, Like you feel like when
you blow your nose, that snot is coming down from
like the top of your head, and that's not the case. Now,
it's coming from the back, that's right. It's the ceiling
(25:13):
is just about even with the top of the nose
right below your eyes, the ceiling of the nasal cavity, right, yeah,
not the ceiling of your your bedroom. Uh. In the
floor of the nasal cavity is about level with what's
known as the L R cartilage a L A R,
which is where the nostrils are, right, that's the bottom
(25:33):
of your your nostrils. Yeah. So when you see it,
like you said, when you see the trick, the fact
that it's not going up and it's just going straight in,
it makes people go, oh my god, what is going on.
He's driven his nail right into the bone of his skull.
That's what it looks like. That's right. And by the way,
if you want a good a good view of all
this looks like I stumbled upon a horrific photo of
(25:54):
somebody who's nostrils. I guess there this the cartilage that
separates their nostrils into two. Yeah, there's got to be
a name for that. Right, it's gone, and the whole
nose is the skin of the nose is being pulled
back so you can see the skull behind it. So
if you wanted to just type in all our cartilage
(26:16):
and Google search image searching, you will. You'll be as
unhappy as I am for having seen it's gonna go,
rather than do you want to see it? Nah, it's
pretty crazy now, that's all right, Okay, I'll look at
it later because I know i'll I want to. I'll
be lying in bed tonight thinking of it. I'm not
gonna do it. I'm not doing it. H So to
finish up, though, in the cavity it is not just
(26:37):
a smooth straight thing either. They have um. They're these
grooves called conka c U N c h A E
I'm gonna say um on the walls and they hold
onto the moisture when you exhale and that's gonna keep
everything nice and lubricated, which is what you want in there,
thanks to the mucus membrane that lines all these surfaces
(26:58):
and keeps everything nice. And I'm not gonna say the
M word, but nice and moist. Yeah, everybody hates that word,
huh and not everyone, but there's science behind it. Okay there.
I can't remember a post an article for mental phlaws.
Apparently there's some science behind White people don't like that
word nice. So when you're doing the human blockhead trick,
(27:22):
I should change that when you're when you're seeing a
professional do the human blockhead trick. Um, what they're doing
is they're they're sliding the nail. Let's just stick with
the nail. The nail into their nasal cavity. They want
to usually hug the alar cartilage the floor of their
(27:42):
nasal cavity, try to avoid the concat. Isn't that way
you decided? That's pronounced? And then they're pushing it all
the way back into their naso pharynx. Right, You've got
about six eight inches of space to deal with from
that much from your nostril back to the naso pharynx. Yeah, um,
and Uh, they the human blockhead to make it so
(28:06):
it's not just sliding a nail into your nose, which
is gross, but that's pretty playground. Ee. They will take
a hammer and they will hold onto the nail very tightly,
and they will make it look like they're hammering the
nail into their skull. Right, and there's the sound of
the hammer against the nail and it sounds really painful.
Where really you can just take the thing and slide
(28:27):
it in, easy peasy. Yeah, that's called stagecraft. Right. So
all of this sounds extremely easy, and in a sense
it is. But there are a lot of obstacles to
performing this trick successfully, and we'll talk about those right
after this. So I don't think we should go any
(29:11):
further without a serious c o A message. It seems obvious,
but do not try to stick a nail in your
nose because Josh and Chuck said it was possible. Yeah,
that's really good. Um, the human anatomy, the anatomy of
a of a face and a skull, makes it possible.
We advise no one to ever try this unless you
(29:34):
want to get into the circus arts legitimately and want
to take the steps to like really learn how to
do this right. I actually ran across this um theory
eleven dot com forum. The novice was asking how to
do this, and this guy named William Draven replied, and
I thought he had a pretty good c o a himself.
He said, like, UM, if you do want to do this,
(29:57):
in no way advocate um learning from reading text on
the internet or even watching videos. Go find somebody who
is who has successfully performed this trick numerous times and
then learned from them directly. Don't learn from guys like us.
Don't learn from reading William Draven's comments on the internet.
(30:18):
Don't don't read it from anybody. Go find somebody who
knows this trick and and learn it from them. And
where do you find that person? There? The guy in
the corner of the bar with the nail in there? Now,
it's pretty easy, right, or they live in a town
called Winter or something in Florida. Um And I did, look,
we keep saying, dudes. I did try and find to
(30:38):
see if there are any women out there who did this.
I didn't find any, but I'm sure they're sure they're
They're supposedly more than a hundred human blockheads around the world.
Go find one of them. I'm sure some women do this.
I'm sure it's just not a prominent Google search to
type in, you know, woman blockhead. I'm sure they also.
(31:01):
I think every single time I've ever said guys, I've
I've meant it as a gender neutral Yeah. Yeah, so. Um.
One thing Tracy points out is that all noses are different. Uh,
and sometimes to reach your nasal cavity, you might the
lower edge of your nostril might be in the way.
So you know, sometimes it might just glide right in
(31:22):
and you look the same. But sometimes it will, like
if you do it right, you know, your nose will
stick up like, you know, like your snout will stick
out like a pig because the nails holding it up.
Other noses, it might just look normal except for the
fact that there's a nail through it. Um. A lot
of people who do this, most people, I should say,
who do it practice initially with Q tip. That's probably smart,
(31:45):
right yeah, um, yeah, you want to practice with a
que tip. And one reason why you want to practice
with a Q tip is number one. It's I would
guess it'd be harder to injure yourself with a Q tip.
I'm sure, although I'm sure it's still be quite easy, sure, um.
And then that Q tips are kind of fuzzy. Yeah.
And so one of the hardest things to overcome doing
(32:06):
the human blockhead trick their stunt is overcoming the sneezing reflex.
That's the biggest one. I mean, there's all sorts of
other problems, like if you use something that's not clean, um,
you set yourself up for sinus infection because you're sticking
foreign objects back there around your scinus is. Um, you
can damage the very soft mucous memories and tissue that
(32:29):
are around that line your nose and nasal cavity and
your scinuses and your nasal farynx. But one of the
one of the biggest challenges is overcoming the sneezing reflects,
which can combine all this stuff, all these dangers and
then increase some tenfold. Yeah. If you're trying to stick
a nail in your head in the early stages and
you sneeze that, you know sneezing can be a very
(32:51):
violent reaction. So let's talk about sneezing real quick, all right,
All right, So Tracy went to the trouble of outlining
how a sneeze works right, it's pretty neat. So you've
got a sneez has a reef. What's called a reflex arc.
Any kind of reflex, as far as the human body
is concerned, consists of a reflex arc, and it's made
up of a receptor. In this case, Um, we've got
(33:12):
nerve endings in our noses. Those are the receptors, and
they're the things that say, you know, I just snorted
pepper up my nose yea, or this house is dusty
or whatever might cause you uh you know, animal dand
or whatever. Hops in beer for me. Oh yeah. So
like if you literally smell like an I p A.
I don't even have to smell it. I can just
(33:33):
just drinking it, just like one good sneeze and then
you're fine. Yeah wow, hops gets me Hops and peppermint
huh yeah. Um, So you've got you've got the stimulus
against the receptor. The receptors got the the sensory nerve
leading up to the integration center of your brain that
(33:56):
the whatever center integrates all of this information for that
particular reflex. Uh, your motor nerve which says, hey, go
do this, and then it's called an effector in the
case of sneezing and effector is the process the physical
process of sneezing? Right? Yeah, which you know everyone everyone sneezes.
(34:18):
Let's get real. You know what was interesting to me, Chuck,
is you know when you're researching yawning, you yawn when
you research itching, did you sneeze? You scratch, didn't sneeze?
I thought the same thing. Really, I wonder if I'm
gonna start sneezing, and I did not. It's not suggestible,
totally reactive thing. So when you sneeze, you know your
you might start off with your eyes watering. Uh, and
(34:40):
you're gonna secrete some fluid from your nasal passage. And
then there's an abrupt like pre sneeze breath that you
draw in from your diaphragm. Um, I don't think that
has a name. Let's just call it the pre SNEeSe
breath breath. I think we just coined it. Uh. And
then and then you're I fram in muscles in your
(35:01):
chest contract really quickly, and the air leaves that nose
and mouth really quickly. Um. Do you have a sneeze
pattern or is it random? Um? No, I'm sure I
follow a pattern almost always sneezing. Threes is your three, yes,
but I mean it depends, like I seriously will sneeze
(35:24):
eight or nine times if you're drinking a poppy beer. Um, yeah,
I'm almost always three. And when it's not, it's it
stands out to me as being unique or incomplete. So yeah,
sometimes or sometimes I'll sneeze later and think like, oh, yeah,
there's the third, which is silly. It's like celebrity deaths.
(35:45):
I wonder about. I meant to look that up though,
wonder if there's any science to that sneezing patterns. There's
just science to everything, science and magic. Um. So you
can put off a sneeze. You've probably done that before.
That tickling sensation just goes away. Those are to me
the incomplete things because you felt like or I feel like,
(36:05):
you know, so close and I clearly needed to sneeze,
but you didn't. If your body doesn't sneeze and it
it warded itself off. Yeah. And so the point of
all the sneezing talk is that part of mastering the
human blockhead stunt is reducing your sneeze reflex and apparently
(36:25):
it can be done just by exposing yourself to a
sneeze reflex, over and over and over again. So you
just stick that que tip in there. You sneeze, You
do it again, you sneeze, You do it again, you sneeze.
You go eat a TV dinner and take a little
break because it's tough and you're mad. You're really mad,
get really fixed off, and then you come back, and
(36:46):
then you do it again, and then eventually a few
days later, a few weeks later, you've lost all your friends,
but you don't sneeze when you stick something up your nose. Victory. Yeah.
I also saw that if you, uh, if you are
a human blockhead, you want to basically scrub down any
new stunt nail that you've got with this with steel
(37:09):
wool and then soaking in rubbing alcohol for a while
to prevent sinus infections. I'm picturing like a Carnie thriller
where someone creeps in and like switches out the nail
some pathogen. No I'm dead. Uh So, Like I said,
there are over a hundred people doing this around the world. Supposedly.
Um Ryan Stock, who you mentioned earlier, has become pretty
(37:31):
famous because he's been on I think he had a
TV show of his own He was definitely an America's
got talent. Yeah, and he does all sorts of things.
He and his wife, Oh she in on the act.
Oh yeah, she's definitely part of an Amberlin So, like
I said, he does all kinds of things. But um,
one of his most notable tricks is a spin on
this called the human meat head where just look it
(37:55):
up Ryan Stock. He puts a meat hook. Remember how
he set it was connected to the throw. He will
go all the way through his nose, out of his
mouth with the end of the hook, and then he'll
pull stuff around. He actually pulled the almost the pound car.
He hels the world's record as being the only person
that ever doing You gotta hear this the title of
(38:16):
this world record. He has a world record for the
heaviest vehicle pulled using a hook through the nasal cavity
and out of the mouth point three five pound car.
No idea, how much that isn't killograms? Uh? I remember
my brother he ate something when he was the first
time I realized that was all connected. He laughed a
(38:39):
lot when eating hamburger and coughed hamburger through his nose
or milk through the nose. When you made your friend laugh.
That was always That's a classic, man. You just were
triumphant the rest of the day. I actually have found
if I'm jogging, like I always chew gum and I
like break the gum slowly into small pieces and I
eventually like eat it or whatever. But if there's like
(39:00):
a few moments where like there there's a small piece
of gum separated from the rest of the gum, and
I've noticed every once in a while, I don't know
what sets it off, but I'll just snot it out,
like it'll shoot up my throat and then on my nose.
And this sapped more than what I don't you're either
not jogging, right, you're not chewing gum, right, there's something
(39:23):
there's a breakdown here. I don't think you're supposed to
do that. It's true, weird. Does it hurt? No, it's
just surprising, Like, sure, it's the gum. What do you
mean it's like pieces of brain. Did you ever hear
about the woman who had like a running nose for
twenty years and she finally went to the doctor and
they're like, that's cerebro spinal fluid. Your brain is leaking
(39:45):
out of your nose. Was she okay? I guess, I
mean she lived with it for decades. That's crazy. Um.
And there's this other guy that I want to mention too,
the faith healer. Oh yeah, John of God. And this
made me want to do I'd love to do a
(40:05):
show on faith healing period and a show on psychic
surgery like those are definitely on the list now. Um.
But he is a famous Brazilian faith healer who um,
I mean he's he's big, like if he's he's way
more famous than I thought he was because I hadn't
(40:26):
heard of him. But he's a big time and um,
he does these. He has a couple of kind of operations, uh,
one visible and one invisible. And one of the visible
ones is he sticks forceps up the nose of people
and to supposedly heal them of certain things. And apparently
he was exposed by the great James Randy, Um, the
(40:50):
amazing Randy who we talked about, the great legendary skeptic
old sour Puss what's that his name? Did ever see
the documentary? No? I haven't yet. It's really good. There's
a great documentary called um an Honest Liar about the
amazing Randy. He's just so interesting. But he he I
think ABC or CBS or someone got him involved. Yeah,
(41:13):
ABC TV to expose uh John of God. And he said, well,
for sure one of the things. I mean, he's exposed
psychic surgeons before, but he said, this force ups up
the nose thing. There's nothing more than the blockhead trick,
and that's all he's doing. Fraud. We'll do a human
(41:33):
or no, a psychic surgery one. For sure. That sounds
pretty interesting. I remember seeing that when I was a kid.
I thought it was like the real deal. That apparently
Andy Kaufman like went to psychic surgeon and then figured
out the scam. So sad, so says Milosh Foreman. At
least yeah, he's like chickens in the hand. I see it. Uh,
(41:53):
you got anything else? I do not. If you want
to know more about human blockheads, you can type those
in the search part how stuff works dot com. You
can search human blockhead online. There's at least one good
Melvin Burkhart performance on YouTube. Don't forget to look up
all our cartilage, um Ryan Stock and also shout out
(42:15):
to um Zen Arts l A for their article on
blockheads that was helpful. As well. Since I said all that,
it's time friends for listener mail. So Chuck, I guess
this is the last one of the year. Yeah, yeah,
we should say before we do mail. Um, Happy New Year, everybody. Yeah,
(42:36):
be safe. We want to see everyone in and um
we kind of said it in the Christmas episode. But
thanks for everything over the years. Yeah for real, it
means a lot to us. And uh we we just
can't wait to get things going again. And by your calendar,
just a couple of days by your Earth calendar. And
(42:57):
also on a personal note, happy birthday too, my darling wife.
You me, Happy birthday? You me? Okay, Well it's time
for listening mail. Huh. I'm gonna call this uh banning
advertising the kids. We heard from a lot of people
on this. It's a hot topic. Hey guys live in
Northern Virginia. Just listen to your show on advertising for children.
I want to relate an relay and experience we had
(43:18):
with our eighteen then eighteen month old daughter. We're on
vacation with her in Florida. Had a day with nothing
on our to do list, so we decided to take
a drive to Walt Disney World. We also found a
bag full of cash in our club compartment. My husband
was was hesitant about going because of her young age
and the fact that she had zero exposure to Disney
(43:38):
at this point. I persuaded him by saying she would
enjoy the parades and the characters, even if she didn't
know who they were. Literally, only television she had ever
seen at that point was educational programming on PBS Kids,
and that was even minimal. So as we turned onto
the road trying to make our way to the Magic Kingdom,
there was a water tower in the distance decorated like
Mickey Mouse, ears and all, and my daughter immediately shouted, look,
(44:00):
it's Mickey Mouse. But they were like, yeah, how do
you know that? Uh. My husband and I were both
completely surprised. We could not believe that our daughter had
been indoctrinated into recognizing that brand at only eighteen months,
especially since we hadn't taught her that. Most likely she
(44:23):
was shown a toy or a book at daycare. Uh.
It is not that we were against that Disney or anything, obviously,
because we were taking her there. It's just very shocking
to see your young child parrot that information. This could
also be evidence of reincarnation well, at least what if
it was like a billboard and she's like, look, it's
a new Gangrich that would be cause for alarm. I
(44:44):
know this advertising is everywhere and it's nearly impossible to avoid,
and just hope we can eventually teach her to not
be fooled and use critical thinking to make decisions rather
than her emotions. Thanks for all you do to make
my long commute so much more enjoyable. That is from Stacy,
And she says, my daughter now is nearly five and
gets annoyed by commercials, so she pauses television until she
(45:06):
can fast forward through them all one point for technology. Nice. Well,
thanks a lot, Stacy. We appreciate that. It's a cool story.
I hope you guys had a good time at Disney World. Um,
and uh, that's it right. Well, if you want to
get in touch with us, like Stacy did, you can
tweet to us at josh um Clark or s Y
(45:27):
s K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on
Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant or Facebook
dot com slash Stuff You should Know, send us an
email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
(45:51):
and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff workst
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