December 12, 2025 • 39 mins
We've covered our fair share of pop-culture icons and here is another - Hula-Hoops. They've been around since ancient time in some form or another, but made their name in during the Hoop Boom of the 1950s. Learn all about this popular fad and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Okay, it's Joshy again. And up next on our playlist
is our episode on hula hoops. This is a stuff
you should know classic and hula hoops. For those of
you who don't know, were this hoop that you kept
going around your waist by making a hula motion. It's
one of the more appropriately named toys of all time,
and it was a huge craze back in the twentieth century.
(00:21):
So get your time machine, leather helmet and goggles on
and let's go back to the hula hoop.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is Stuff you should know the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
How's going It's.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Fine, great, how's it going with you?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Good? Jerry's distracting me a little bit because all I
see in my peripheral vision is her practicing her new
hula fire dance routine.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's pretty dangerous.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
It's dangerous, but it's it's interesting to see out of
the corner of one's eye.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It really is yes, performance.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Art, performance hula art.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Can you hula hoop. I cannot, sir, I'm too self
conscious too.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
To even try it. Yeah, it's it's a grown man,
forty four year old man hula hooping.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Plus when I do it, like as I rotate my hips,
it makes the same rotate my hips. Yeah, it makes
the sound of like almost congealed jello, just slopping around
in a bowl, you know what I mean. I don't
want to make that sound.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, but I did see at a the East Atlanta's
Strut Festivals, one of Atlanta's many great neighborhood festivals. I
believe the Strut to Me is known for having the
better music of most of the festivals. And our buddy
Craig Johnson's band played Space Knife, not space Knife, Okay,
this one was. I can't remember the name of this band,
(01:58):
but that band is no longer. He's got a new band.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Even that guy is always coming up with new stuff.
You can never pin him down. It's too good.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
You should check out Space Knife though people on the web. Yeah,
you can find it. It's good.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
It was in our TV show too.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, that's his alter ego. But anyway, Craig's band was
playing and this I was pretty hula naive hoop naive
at this point. And a few years ago, and there
was this lady doing a hula routine to his band
playing and I videoed it. It was so awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
So she was hoop dancing.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Hoop dancing, Yeah, like the neck, the arms, the legs,
moving around with it, like supremely talented hooper. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
If you go onto the web and type in hoop dancing,
it's going to bring up some pretty impressive videos.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah, and it's quite a workout. I could tell. We'll
get to that. But just watching her, I got tired,
and so I drank another beer and just listen to music.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah, and pretended you were hula hooping in your head. Yeah,
you're like, I'm so good at this in my head.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
But I was like, man, that's a thing again. I
had no idea, but it's a big thing.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah, hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
But it's been around for a while.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yes, it has.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
For example, Chuck, did you know. As Robert points out,
Robert Lamb wrote this article from Stuff to Blow your mind.
Oh yeah, and he says that the hula hoop has
been around in some form or fashion since before most
of the world's religions. Wow, that's really saying something.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
That is saying something. So let's get in the way
back machine.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Oh we're going way back time.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, let's go back to one thousand BC. My friend
and we're in Egypt, and they're little children, Egyptian children
with dried up grapevines they've made into hoops playing with them.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
And there's some Egyptian who's like, get off of my
patch of sand kids. Yeah, you know, instead of a lawn.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Sure, I get it. That was good. It was all right.
So they they no doubt use them in similar ways
that we did today. But they what one thing they
did which was a big sporting thing to do for
a long time, which I don't get personally. The fun
value that is is using a stick to push a
(04:13):
hula hoop down the road.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
I think the fun in it is that the hula
hoop as it's traveling down the road, which does seem
to be the oldest use of the hoop as a
playtime activity, right, Yeah, it wants to fall, It wants
to fall over, sure, right, So if you can keep
it going, then there's probably a tremendous amount of personal
satisfaction that you can carry all the way to bedtime
(04:36):
with and maybe have good dreams because.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Of Yeah, I don't even see if you had a
plastic polyethylene hula hoop, a modern hoop, I don't see
how a stick like how you would even push it.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
You would want a stick with maybe like a fork, No,
probably something like a stick with a big wad of
chewed bubblegum on it to like just have some sort
of point of contact. Because, as we'll see when we
talk about hula hoop physics, friction plays a big part
in making hula hoops hula hoop.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yes, around the waist that is.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Well in any In this case as well, the stick
makes contact with the hoop, you're using friction to push
it along.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, good point.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
So I see your point. Like, if you're gonna use
a stick on a like a plastic hula hoop, it's
gonna slide off, or it's gonna want.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
To Maybe it scares me. That's why I think it's dumb.
Maybe I would be made a fool of by the hoop.
So I'm in timidy maybe.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
At first, but chuck, you would have to hang in
there and stick with it. Yeah, and pretty soon you'd
be rolling hoops like an Egyptian kid.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah, like an ancient Egyptian child.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Hoop rolling was a big deal throughout ancient Greece as
well and Rome. They decorated them with bells and things
and toys. Fifth century BC. There's you ever heard of
ganny Mead? Of course, ganymedey Mead, gany Mead. He was
a handsome hero. Oh, he was, he handsomest.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Supposedly there's an old fifth century BC urn of him
where he's holding a rooster that was apparently a gift
from Zeus. Yeah, and a hoop, a hula hoop, clearly
a hula hoop. And apparently this discovery I'm not sure
why it's called the Berlin painter eurn, but it is. Okay, again,
(06:21):
no idea, but apparently they they said, well, I wonder
if hoops played a role in the earliest Olympics. And
I guess they've discredited that idea now, but for a while,
because of this earn this picture of ganny Meade with
a hoop, they wondered.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Was it a sport? Yeah, an Olympic sport.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
But the Greeks supposedly did use hoops for physical fitness
as like a physical activity in very much the same
way it's become popular today.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I would imagine an Olympic hula hooper would be sort
of like the you know, the uh what was the
sport the curler of today? Are you kind of like
an ancient Greece? Like, hey, what do you throw the hammer?
What do you do? I'm hula hooper?
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Oh, although I would guess it'd probably be more akin
to the hula hoopers of today.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, the hoop roller is what the sport would have been.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
That'd be more like curling, right, hula hooping. That's tough, man.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It is tough. What else? The ancient Britons they had
a game called the battle game called Kill the Hoop. Yeah,
I like this one when they would roll the hoop
and throw try to throw a spear through it. Yep,
pretty neat and dangerous and apparently they also used it
in the hula method and it would people get injured.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, there was a fifteenth fourteenth or fifteenth century, fourteenth
was it the fourteen hundreds or the fourteenth century fourteenth
century hula hoop craze? Yeah in Britain? Isn't that bizarre?
Speaker 3 (07:51):
That is weird?
Speaker 1 (07:52):
And yeah, people were getting injured there was a proclamation
by the early physicians. They would pull up their like
crows mask the masks just long enough to be like,
stay away from hula hoops, steer clear of those things.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, the warning was hoops kill was I guess what
was posted on the church door.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
And this is like in addition to being in the
way of a spear that was being thrown at a
rolling hoop. Yeah, like this is just from hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I would stay away from the hoops altogether if I
was in ancient Briton.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, because really, if you're like an ancient Briton, Huh,
you're going from like zero to sixty as far as
like physical fitness goes. Sure once you're hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Oh yeah, you know, just because you're not just sitting
around eating like a lamb's brains, right, yeah, drinking mead?
Uh what else? The Native Americans have a long culture
of using the hoop in New Mexico, the Taos Pueblo people,
they use them in ritual dances, private healing ceremonies. And
(08:55):
did you look up this chunky thing?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
No, did you find the chunky reference?
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I did. The Cahokian Native Americans that.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Was an unusual way to pronounce that.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Well, how would you say it?
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Cahokien?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
I think in Native American would be hoke.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Okay, that's fine.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Near Saint Louis apparently is where they played this game Chunky,
which I just had to look it up because a
game called Chunky with an E y and from what
I saw, it was more of a small stone disc
than like a hula hoop looking thing.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And you would it was like kill the hoop though
in Britain.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Right, Yeah, they would throw a stick. Apparently it looked
like a combination of like bachi and and kill the hoop.
Weird because I think they would try and throw the
spear where the disc would eventually land, and the closest
to the disc one.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Oh, that's how like they're predicting where this where the
hoop would fall. I guess this makes sense, although that's
not really like.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Bachi at all. I mean, I get there's a proximity
element that's bochi.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
S yes, yeah, well put, but I don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
I don't know, Like once I saw that and saw pictures,
I was like, I don't even know if they should
be in this article. Yeah, because it's like a small doughnut.
That's a hoop of sorts, I guess. So it's a
stretch if you asked me. But it was a big
spectator sport, like fifty acre stadiums of people would watch this.
Wow would go to junkie games and so chunkie matches.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So there was chunky matches in Coahokiah. Yeah, and the
pueblo used there. I think, as you said, they used hoops,
and they weren't the only ones. There were other tribes
from all over North America and meso America. I believe
that used hoops for dancing. Yeah, and apparently it was
(10:50):
in nineteen thirty a guy named Tony white Cloud, who
was a Yemez Pueblo down in New Mexico, did like
a hoop dance in public and basically brought it back.
Oh yeah, it had been virtually lost to the ages,
at least as far as the average American was concerned. Yeah,
most people didn't know this was the thing. Luckily, Tony
(11:11):
white Cloub was like, check this out, did an awesome
hoop dance, and then by nineteen ninety one there were
national hoop dancing competitions in New Mexico and they're a
big deal still to this day.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, of course, I think. Did he kick off the
American craze? Yes, no he didn't.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
He was strictly native American hoop dancing, gotcha, not hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Okay, so let's go to well, let's take a break actually,
because this is this is the big revelation here, that's right,
(12:07):
all right, Josh, we're at that point where mainstream America
goes hoop crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
But to get to that point, we actually have to
go backward again in time for a second.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Back in the way back machine.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
So let's quote it running. Let's go to I don't know,
Fiji or Tahiti or Polynesia. Yeah, and it's the eighteenth century. Yeah,
see all these British sailors.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Can we drink some rum?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Oh man? Okay, yeah, in addition to the room we've
already drank today. All right, good, So the British sailors
that you see here are noticing a houla dance, right,
and they're filing it away in their mental catalog. And
now when they reach Briton again, Yeah, why have we
(12:56):
been saying it like that? I don't know, they notice
that it bears a striking resemblance to what people do
with the hula hoop.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
You gyrate every time you'd say that, by the way,
you can't in your seat, can't not do it, Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
So the term hula became applied to the hoop, especially
when you used your hips to gyrate. Sure to rotate them, Yes,
when you rotate your hips with the hoop. These British
sailors ended up applying the word hula to it, and
it stuck. That's where it came from, was Polynesia.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Right, even though there was no hoop involved in Polynesia? Correct, Yes,
they just kind of ganked that word. Ye think their
own purposes.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Is nineteen ninety seven all over again.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
That was a big nineties termo, wasn't it yanked?
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yeah? Let's go watch some X Files.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Let's actually yeah, the movie's coming out soon right. Oh yeah,
they're doing another one, aren't they. Yeah. That thing will
never die. I don't think it should keep doing movies,
That's what I say.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So. So we mentioned that the Greeks I believe used
it for physical fitness, right.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
I don't think we said that.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I think I said it. Okay. The Swiss actually came
to adopt it for the same reasons too. In the
nineteenth century and early twentieth century.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, someone named Emil Jacques Dalcroze and that was great.
That's tough. Had a program called Eurythmics, which, of course
I started singing Sweet Dreams this morning, of course because
of that, and I've been singing it all day as
a result. So that was a special training program and
(14:39):
it was apparently a big deal.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
It was a big deal. So eurhythmics used hoops for
basically physical fitness but also interpretive dance that kind of stuff.
It was a combination of It was like dance training
is what I can gather, and it used hoops. The
reason that we're mentioning this when we're talking about the
American craze is that it directly led to the American
(15:02):
craze potentially because eurhythmics spread from Switzerland to Great Britain
and it was brought in as part of like pe
class in Australia, and it was in Australia that the
founders of Whammo were inspired to create the modern hula
hoop that we think of today boom. So it's possible
(15:23):
they watched the eurhythmics class or heard about a eurhythmics
class with Australian kids and then said, well, this is
a clearly something of Australian design and let's bring it
to the US and start a craze.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
They said, sweet dreams were made of these. Yeah, and
this was Richard Knerr and Arthur spud Melon mel maline
melon sounds like.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
M l O N like Thornton Mellon.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Uh huh. Don't tease me with that movie, The Great
Back to School. I saw a bit of that recently. Yeah,
and the only thought through my head was like, man,
why couldn't I have caught this from the beginning? Yeah,
because I wanted to see it all.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
That And man, his son is pasty.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought you were saying that
was a line for the movie. It should have been. Yeah,
his son Keith Gordon, who became a great movie director.
Oh really Yeah, the guy from Christine and Back to School?
Yeah yeah, yeah. He gave up acting and started directing
movies and directed a bunch of good movies, one called
Waking the Dead.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
You should see, I thought Keith Gordon co starred, and
they live.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
I don't know, Maybe I'll have to check that. So
where were we oh yes. The two founders of Whammo,
they said, you know what, let's take these wooden hoops,
let's make them out of polyethylene. Let's make them forty inches,
and let's charge a dollar ninety eight for them and
(16:54):
make them all kinds of fun colors.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, and boom.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
The hula hoop craze in nineteen fifty eight was born.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Like it was the definition of a flash in the
pan craze.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yeah, a lot of money in a very short span.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Of time, like a summer. Basically pretty much. In nineteen
fifty eight, WMO released it, and by the end of
nineteen fifty eight these things were rotting in the warehouse.
But in the meantime they sold globally, globally from the
summer to the end of nineteen fifty eight, one hundred
million hula hoops.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Yeah, more than that, I think.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Damn my brain.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, you forgot what we were talking about.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
I almost said frisbees.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Did we do one on the frisbee?
Speaker 1 (17:38):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:38):
I thought we had, but we haven't have we No,
we did one on the boomerang. Oh right, just like
a frisbee, but not it's like a dangerous frisbee. Uh
So they sell all these hula hoops. They make a
ton of money, like, you know, over fifty million dollars
in a short span of time, which I'm sure they
weren't happy with the that it didn't last, but they're
(17:59):
all so probably like an injection of cash like that
is great for any business.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah. Then they moved on to the frisbee and made
even more money.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah, and they did not secure a patent for it.
I guess it didn't matter in the long run.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Well, they couldn't because it was so demonstrably an ancient
invention that nobody could patent it. Nope, But they trademarked it.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
They did. They trademarked the name hula hoop in the
United States, which is why we still call it hula
hoop today. I guess. Yeah, it just became.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
They should probably put the title with a R in
a circle for this.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Oh yeah, we should do that, like Barbie. Yeah. It
was named the number thirty five a toy of all
Time by Time magazine. And they know toys, they know
their toys. And then from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen
eighty one, there were national hula hoop contests held and
the guests in the early eighties people were finished with it.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
There were also like a tremendous amount of music, like
musical singles released called the hula hoop song. Oh really,
different people recorded different songs about hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, it was a craze big time. Yeah, and you
say that they were done with it by the eighties,
not true. The national competitions there was so if you
look at hula hooping records, yea, the most recent hula
hoop records from two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Wow. But was that part of a national competition?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Probably for just a guy named Aaron Hibbs, he hula hoop,
just hula hooped for seventy four hours and fifty four minutes. Wow.
He broke the record of.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
I couldn't even stand up for that long.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
He broke the record of a girl named Kim Koberly.
She held the record twice, in nineteen seventy eight with
fifty four hours and in nineteen eighty four for seventy
two hours. Wow, which is pretty impressive.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yeah, people were still like hundreds of them at once.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah. There was a guy named Paul Dizzy hips Blair
who set the record in two thousand and nine with
one hundred and thirty two hoops at the same time.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Wow, that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
He's basically probably just like like the Michelin man made
of hula hoops.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah. To ever tell you about the Surface Area Man
costume and Athens. No, that was out on Halloween in
Athens in college, and that was a dude. I know.
The guy's name was Blake. He has you may have
seen him. He had big red dreadlocks, kind of a
short guy, just a ubiquitous Athens dude. No, he lives
(20:23):
kind of in my neighborhood now. I still see him
every once in a while. We called him Sideshow Blake
because of Sideshow Bobs. Sure, and he came in the
bar and the Georgia Bar, and he had these foam
discs around his arms, around his legs, around his waist
and neck that were huge, like probably four feet across,
(20:43):
and he was Surface Area Man. And that was just
his costume because when he moved around, he took up like,
you know, probably seventy five square feet in space and
he would just move through the bar and say Surface
Area Man. And I'll always remember every time I see Blake.
I saw him at the grocery store the other day.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Was he dressed like that?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
No? But I also like surface. He wouldn't fit down
the grocery aisle.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Does he have dread still?
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah? Does he really still rocking the red dreads?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
He's dedicated?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
He looks exactly the same. Actually, but we weren't friends.
I could actually see him. Actually, I'm gonna just walk
by him and go surface area. Man, you should I'm
gonna do it. All right, Let's talk about the Hudsucker
Proxy for a quick moment, and then we'll take another break. Okay,
did you ever see that one?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
I don't think I made it through that one.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
The Coen Brothers, Yeah, uh not.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
All of their movies are great.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
I disagree.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I love the Coen Brothers, but some of their movies stink.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Oh boy, that they're part of my one hundred percent
club where every movie they've made has been great?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
That is wrong?
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Which other ones? Don't? You like?
Speaker 1 (21:46):
The Man who Wasn't there?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Loved it?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Bob Robertson, They didn't.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
That wasn't theirs?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Well it was terrible. Okay, uh? Well the Hudsucker Proxy too,
all right, I liked it.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
I would put it at lesser Cohen's for sure, you'd
have to. But I enjoyed it quite a bit. Tim
Robbins and Jennifer Jason Lee and Paul Newman in a
fictitious tale of the invention of the hula hoop. It
is not the true biopic of the invention of the
hula hoop, but they co opted it for one of
their movies, and it was I think pretty great.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Okay, but that's just me, okay, so go ahead.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Well, no, that was it. I just wanted to shout
it out.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Fine, Well, then let's take a break because we're about
to get into physics.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah, and hoop games yep.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
After this, No Country for Old Men terrible. I'm kidding,
(23:00):
I'm kidding.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Do you like that one?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
I love that one. That's maybe the best. Raising Arizona
is probably the best.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
It'd be tough for me to pick on any given day,
but Fargo is the one I can watch over yeah
and over.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah. Yeah. I would say this three year type for first.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Did we just come back from the break just segueing
right back into the car?
Speaker 1 (23:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
We'll see how Jerry edits this, so.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Let's it wouldn't be a stuff you should know podcast
if we didn't talk about the science behind something seemingly unscientific.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Well, hula hoops are super complex as far as physics goes.
You know that, super complex, super complex.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
There's just a few things.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
We are not in agreement on stuff today, are we?
Speaker 3 (23:40):
I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
So let's say you have a hula hoop, right, and
it's around your waist, and you take it and you
throw it. You have it up against maybe one hip, sure,
making contact with your body.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
That you're starting in the traditional way, then.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Sure, and you whip it around, yeah, to one side,
and as you do, you start rotating your hip. You're gyrating, right,
I'm rotating my hips, chants, and as you do that,
when you rotate your hips, what you're doing is, first
of all, you're conserving the angular momentum you gave the
hula hoop when you pushed it in a certain direction,
you twisted it around yourself.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Right, that's right. You are the axis.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yes, you are the axis.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And when you move your hips around, when you rotate
your hips, you're applying what's called torque.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Yeah, Because all this hoop wants to do is fall
down around on the ground and make you look foolish.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
It wants to stop. Well, no, it doesn't want to
stop because of inertia. It wants to keep going, but
it can't because of friction. But it wants to fall
down to the ground like you said, and make you
look foolish. Yeah, but ironically that same friction is keeping
it from doing that.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Who's the fool now, hoop the hula hoop? Yep, fool?
All right? Did you talk about the torque?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
I did talk about torqu and torque is a twisting
force where you're twisting your hips and you're thrusting the
hula hoop in a circle, and what you're doing there
is contributing to the centripetal force.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
That's right and centrific goal no centripet all two different
things move.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Is a force that moves at a right angle to
the motion of your body, so it keeps that thing
whatever it is, say, hula hoop or tractor tire, which,
by the way, someone set a record hula hooping with
a tractor tire. Shut up, really yeah, for like seventy
seconds of fifty four pound tire.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
How big was a person?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I'm sure it was ginormous. I think he was from
like Baylor Roos or something, you know.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Oh yeah, they do that on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
So with the centripetal force is going at a right
angle to the direction that you're thrusting your hips, it's
constantly going to move around a circle on the axis.
That is centripetal force. Boom, centripetal motion. I should say yes.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And when the soop wants to fall, of course, we're
talking about gravity. Gravity wants to win that fight. But
if you keep that pulsing gyration going, then you're going
to keep that hoop just a little ahead of the curve.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, that's apparently the key. And Robert puts this in here.
Is it kind of like a throwaway thing?
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Yeah, that is the thing.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
It's the key of hula hooping. Is you want your
hip to move just before that that I guess wave
that comes in contact with your body again, comes in contact, comes.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Back around, catch and release in a way. Okay, you
can catch it on your hip and then slinging it
back around. Now I'm gyrating, yeah you are.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Wow, there's a lot of gyrating going on in this
room right now.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
There is.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
So there's a few different parts of the body at work.
I don't know why in two thousand and four they
needed a fifteen page study in the Journal of Biological
Cybernetics to figure this out, because if you just look
at somebody, you can tell that the hips, knees, and
ankles are really what's at play keeping that thing going.
And that's if you're just doing the hip who hoop,
(27:01):
not right neck and legs and all that.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Of course, yeah, just the standard hooping right.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
And so another study I think four years later in
the Journal of Human Movement side.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
I don't know why they needed that either.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
They built upon this two thousand and four study and said, okay,
you use your hips, knees, and ankles. Everybody uses it,
but depending on the individual, there'll be different contributions from
the hips, knees or ankle depends on the motion of
your ocean exactly. So it's like the individual. Everybody uses
the same the same parts, but they use them in
(27:34):
different percentages to come up with the hula hooping motion.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Yeah. I bet certain body types are better at this
than others too.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, slim, yeah, yeah, probably.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
So I met the one in front of Craig's band.
She was pretty slam I guess sure she's working that thing. Man.
It was like, it was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Hula hoop.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
So that's hoop dancing. When we'll finish up here with
some other games.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Well, we didn't talk about hoop dancing. We were just
talking about hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
No, we talked about hoop dancing at the beginning with
that lady. Oh yeah, okay, so that's hoop dancing. Okay,
that's when you you know, it's around the neck and
then you work it down around your hips and then
up one arm and then up the other arm, right right,
It's pretty impressive. Your standard hula hooping, of course, which
we've covered. Speed endurance depends on what you're after. Sure,
(28:23):
like I want to do this for twenty minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Or I want to do it seventy four hours.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Really fast for five minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Okay. Hoop rolling, that's one of my favorite.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Hoop trundling, Like you're a little ancient Egyptian kid.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, I I'd like to see you do that hoop rolling. Sure,
let's do it.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Let's do a video for that.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Okay, we could do a periscope of it. Oh yeah,
let's do that.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Are we going to start doing that?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
We could do at least one of me hoop rolling.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
I think people, Well, we're going to get emails.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah, they'll they'll turn out in droves to see that.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Sure, hundreds of people will show it for that.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
There's one not on this list that I want to
give a shout out to you.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
All right?
Speaker 1 (28:58):
What it was invented? Apparently in Belgium they call it
Belgium skipping. It's called ankle skipping. It's where you put
the hula hoop on one foot around one ankle, and
you use it to hula hoop. You make the hula
hoop motion with that one and as it comes around,
you jump through the hoop with the other one.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I can't believe it wasn't on this list.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yeah, that's a solid hoop endeavor.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
But apparently it's a pretty recent invention from like the sixties.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Oh really, all right, that makes sense. That's sort of
like hoop jumping, but not quite.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
No, hoop jumping is more like jump roping with a
hula hoop.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Yeah, but that kind of reminds me of that too.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Hoop jumping is when you hold the hula hoop the
top of it, and then you swing it around your
body and jump up and down.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Okay, like you have nothing better to do in life, right,
Like you can't find a jump rope. You haven't heard
of those before?
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Return the hoop. This is the only one I was
ever good at. That's when you hold it vertically and
you fling it out as hard as you can backwards,
and it sort of spins place and comes back to you.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Right, And if you're not expecting it, you're going to
turn and run because it is startling.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
We've already talked about kill the hoop. We don't recommend
you use spears to do that, or just.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Make sure nobody's in the vicinity of where the hoop is. Yeah,
you don't want to combine hoop chundling and kill the
hoop because you'll kill the hoop chundlure.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
No, And I'm not even uncovered this last one. I
dare you too, though.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
I like this one. Hoop your environment, Yeah, right, go ahead.
So it's like you put hula hoops around and you
jump from them like they're islands and there's lava in between. Okay,
what's wrong with that? I don't know too childish.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
No, I'm very childish, but I don't know. I just didn't.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
There's your childlike not childish. Oh, gotcha, big difference, man.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Uh, well, we talked about exercise. It is legitimate exercise.
Our hula hoop classes. Now apparently Mursa Tomay, the actor,
took hoop fitness classes to lose weight or to get
in shape for her movie The Wrestler in two thousand
and eight. First Lady Michelle Obama.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Has very famously hoop worked out.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Yeah, hooped the lawn of the White House to say, hey, kids,
get active and at the US Open, Yeah, you can
still have fun by doing this. Yeah. And they even
did another study to see what kind of calories you
could burn.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Lots of hoop studies too many.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
They took women between sixteen and fifty nine and said
go crazy and hoop and they yeah. And they were
weighted hoops too, by the way, which is not to
say they were super heavy. They're generally still pretty light weight.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, but strangely weighted hoop is easier to keep going.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Yes, which makes sense, I think. And they average one
hundred and fifty one beats per minute bpmat yeah, heart beats.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Oh their heart.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, tribe coal quests would be proud, right.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
And that is burning seven calories a minute or two
hundred and ten calories during a half hour of hooping.
So that's good exercise people.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
That's like weightlifting type calorie burn.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Plus also like if you just break it down to
calorie first of all, Chuck, I want to do an
episode and I'm not quite sure how to frame it yet.
It doesn't have a thesis. But there are so many
like medical myths out there that are just taken as facture,
even by the medical establishment, even though like if you
asked a doctor like is this fact they would be like, no, no, actually,
(32:39):
it's not like drinking eight glasses of water a day. Yeah,
totally made up. And you're going to say that, Like,
I think we should do one on medical myths sometime.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
What do you think we should have? We not?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
No, Like part of me wants to say we have,
but I think it things to have just come up
like here or there over the years. Anyway, if even
if you take the calories out of the equation, just
hula hooping the standard hip gyration hula hoop, yeah, will
really really work out your core.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yeah, like you need a hula hoop.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
No, you can just sit in your chair and do
what I'm doing now. Yeah, like I'm getting I'm sweating.
Yeah right now, you totally are. My lip My upper
lip is broken out in perspiration.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Uh. Modern hooping burlesque uses hoops. If you go to
any music festival these days, you're going to see the
ladies like I was talking about, or they might have
him decked out with LEDs or even fire.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Well what's neat is LED hula hoops in particular are
really displaying like the physics of hula hoops pretty neat
through Like, what's that type of photography LSD? No, No, uh,
what's the what's that photography where you like you just
keep the shutter open so it like high exposure, long exposure.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yeah, you just said it, keeping that shutter open. It's
like when you see the pictures of the cars on
the freeway right and it's just like a long trail
of headlights.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, but there are photos out there of LED hula
hoops there. It's just like you can see they don't
just keep like a flat path. They go all over
the place in some way. It's really neat.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
It's pretty cool. What about this lady, the Israeli sculptor.
Did you watch that?
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I saw a couple of pictures of it.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yes. Her name is Cigolette Landau, and in two thousand
and three she did a performance art slash political statement
piece where she did it was called barbed Hula and
she was naked and hula hooped with a barbed wire
hula hoop that just tore her abdomen up. Yeah, it's
(34:43):
really rough. Yeah, it was pretty disturbing. But she said
she was on an Israeli beach that she defined as
the only common natural border Israel has. So she was
making a statement to my friend, Well.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
She's an artist.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
That's what they do.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
I got a couple of last things. Let's hear it
in the that hula hoop craze.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Of the fifties of yeah, yes, yeah, not the not
the fourteenth century Briton one. There.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
It was in Japan, it was banned. The hula hoop
was banned because they're worried it was going to lead
to actual stuff things happening gyrating hips. Yeah, and apparently
the Soviets said that it was a it was evidence
of the emptiness of American culture, the hula hoop craze. Really, yeah,
leave to the Soviets to be like Americans. Go on,
(35:36):
they hated America. Do you remember when the Iron Curtain
fell and you were like, oh, wait a minute, Like
everything we were taught about the Soviet Union was basically
made up.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Yeah, and they were like, you know, the average Russian
was like a good person.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Here, Yeah, and the average Russian was a lot like
the average American, and.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Yeah, drunk on vodka, I'm gonna live forever.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
All right, that's it. If you want to know more
about hula hoops, you can type that word into the
search bar at housetuffworks dot com. And since I said
search bar, it's time for the listener mail.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
I'm gonna call this anarexia.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Could you read this one?
Speaker 3 (36:15):
No?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
See how I missed that one.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Hey guys, I'm a huge fan. I want to let
you know how you how Stuff you should Know has
helped me over the years. I began listening if I
love These, began listening at the age of twelve, and
I'm now turning eighteen.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
August Night. Stuff you should Know has played a part
in the young adult I've become. At twelve, I was
diagnosed with restrictive anarexia, was hospitalized for about a month
and did day treatment for almost a year. After leaving
treatment for the day, I'd religiously put on my headphones
and turn on stuff. You should know. The podcast was
really helpful on bad days, especially if I had just
had an argument with my parents or a difficult meal,
(36:51):
or your humor was especially helpful. I remember laughing out
loud many times in the car, which was quite a
rare occurrence. I'm pretty solid recovery now. But your podcasts
also helped me gain a better relationship with my sibling.
My eating disorder costs a lot of tension between my
sibling and I for quite a few years. But one
day I invited her to listen to your podcast, so,
(37:12):
if you should know, quickly became a part of her
commute to university class. We occasionally would discuss the podcast topics.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
We now have a tradition and I love this part too.
We now have a tradition of listening to the Christmas
Extravaganza together while in winter break, which is what we
want people to do. Yeah, man to gather the family
and make.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
This a thing Yeah, it's pudding.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Even though I don't know what we're going to get
pretty slim on Christmas time.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
I've got at least one great topic. Yeah, we need
to start looking now though. You're right.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Yeah, we've even gifted each other matching stuff you should
know shirts. One year more recently, I received the very
urgent texts letting me know in all caps that you
guys were coming to Minneapolis this fall, and another text
to let me know that Chuck's daughter Ruby shares the
same birthday as our father. And I want to point
out again and.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Josh, yeah, the Triumvirate.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
That's right. Your podcast gives us endless topics and inside jokes,
and I can't thank you enough for bringing us closer together.
Thanks again for being such a big part of my
formative years. My sister and I can't wait to see
you guys in Minneapolis this fall. That is from Emily,
and she said, please shout out your sister Meghan.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Awesome, Emily, thank you for telling us all that like
that really means the world to us.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Yes, and best of luck in your continued recovery. That
is tough stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Yeah, and congratulations too.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Yeah, Well, we should do an eating Disorder Podcast at
some point that one's been hanging out there.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah. Yeah, because you know, there's like a whole there's
like this new idea that like almost everybody has an
eating disorder in America these.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Days of some kind.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Yeah, like typically binge eating is like a huge thing. Sure, yeah,
we should definitely do that. Yeah, but thank you very much,
Emily and hello sister Meghan. We appreciate you guys listening,
and hopefully we'll see you guys in Minneapolis when we
come in out.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Yeah, and you know what, actually write me back. We'll
put you on the guest list. Oh man, how about that?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
So nice?
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Free tickets for YouTube?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Wow, that is something just for YouTube. O.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Guess right, just kidding.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Oh, you need to lay it down. We should probably
have a legal disclaimer added after this too.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, we might hear from a lot of Emily and
megans Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
If you want to get in touch with us, you
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Podcast at house stuffworks dot com and has always joined
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Know dot com
Speaker 2 (39:42):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Okay, it's Joshy again. And up next on our playlist
is our episode on hula hoops. This is a stuff
you should know classic and hula hoops. For those of
you who don't know, were this hoop that you kept
going around your waist by making a hula motion. It's
one of the more appropriately named toys of all time,
and it was a huge craze back in the twentieth century.
(00:21):
So get your time machine, leather helmet and goggles on
and let's go back to the hula hoop.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is Stuff you should know the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
How's going It's.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Fine, great, how's it going with you?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Good? Jerry's distracting me a little bit because all I
see in my peripheral vision is her practicing her new
hula fire dance routine.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's pretty dangerous.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
It's dangerous, but it's it's interesting to see out of
the corner of one's eye.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It really is yes, performance.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Art, performance hula art.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Can you hula hoop. I cannot, sir, I'm too self
conscious too.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
To even try it. Yeah, it's it's a grown man,
forty four year old man hula hooping.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Plus when I do it, like as I rotate my hips,
it makes the same rotate my hips. Yeah, it makes
the sound of like almost congealed jello, just slopping around
in a bowl, you know what I mean. I don't
want to make that sound.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, but I did see at a the East Atlanta's
Strut Festivals, one of Atlanta's many great neighborhood festivals. I
believe the Strut to Me is known for having the
better music of most of the festivals. And our buddy
Craig Johnson's band played Space Knife, not space Knife, Okay,
this one was. I can't remember the name of this band,
(01:58):
but that band is no longer. He's got a new band.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Even that guy is always coming up with new stuff.
You can never pin him down. It's too good.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
You should check out Space Knife though people on the web. Yeah,
you can find it. It's good.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
It was in our TV show too.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, that's his alter ego. But anyway, Craig's band was
playing and this I was pretty hula naive hoop naive
at this point. And a few years ago, and there
was this lady doing a hula routine to his band
playing and I videoed it. It was so awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
So she was hoop dancing.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Hoop dancing, Yeah, like the neck, the arms, the legs,
moving around with it, like supremely talented hooper. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
If you go onto the web and type in hoop dancing,
it's going to bring up some pretty impressive videos.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah, and it's quite a workout. I could tell. We'll
get to that. But just watching her, I got tired,
and so I drank another beer and just listen to music.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah, and pretended you were hula hooping in your head. Yeah,
you're like, I'm so good at this in my head.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
But I was like, man, that's a thing again. I
had no idea, but it's a big thing.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah, hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
But it's been around for a while.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yes, it has.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
For example, Chuck, did you know. As Robert points out,
Robert Lamb wrote this article from Stuff to Blow your mind.
Oh yeah, and he says that the hula hoop has
been around in some form or fashion since before most
of the world's religions. Wow, that's really saying something.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
That is saying something. So let's get in the way
back machine.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Oh we're going way back time.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, let's go back to one thousand BC. My friend
and we're in Egypt, and they're little children, Egyptian children
with dried up grapevines they've made into hoops playing with them.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
And there's some Egyptian who's like, get off of my
patch of sand kids. Yeah, you know, instead of a lawn.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Sure, I get it. That was good. It was all right.
So they they no doubt use them in similar ways
that we did today. But they what one thing they
did which was a big sporting thing to do for
a long time, which I don't get personally. The fun
value that is is using a stick to push a
(04:13):
hula hoop down the road.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
I think the fun in it is that the hula
hoop as it's traveling down the road, which does seem
to be the oldest use of the hoop as a
playtime activity, right, Yeah, it wants to fall, It wants
to fall over, sure, right, So if you can keep
it going, then there's probably a tremendous amount of personal
satisfaction that you can carry all the way to bedtime
(04:36):
with and maybe have good dreams because.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Of Yeah, I don't even see if you had a
plastic polyethylene hula hoop, a modern hoop, I don't see
how a stick like how you would even push it.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
You would want a stick with maybe like a fork, No,
probably something like a stick with a big wad of
chewed bubblegum on it to like just have some sort
of point of contact. Because, as we'll see when we
talk about hula hoop physics, friction plays a big part
in making hula hoops hula hoop.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yes, around the waist that is.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Well in any In this case as well, the stick
makes contact with the hoop, you're using friction to push
it along.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, good point.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
So I see your point. Like, if you're gonna use
a stick on a like a plastic hula hoop, it's
gonna slide off, or it's gonna want.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
To Maybe it scares me. That's why I think it's dumb.
Maybe I would be made a fool of by the hoop.
So I'm in timidy maybe.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
At first, but chuck, you would have to hang in
there and stick with it. Yeah, and pretty soon you'd
be rolling hoops like an Egyptian kid.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah, like an ancient Egyptian child.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Hoop rolling was a big deal throughout ancient Greece as
well and Rome. They decorated them with bells and things
and toys. Fifth century BC. There's you ever heard of
ganny Mead? Of course, ganymedey Mead, gany Mead. He was
a handsome hero. Oh, he was, he handsomest.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Supposedly there's an old fifth century BC urn of him
where he's holding a rooster that was apparently a gift
from Zeus. Yeah, and a hoop, a hula hoop, clearly
a hula hoop. And apparently this discovery I'm not sure
why it's called the Berlin painter eurn, but it is. Okay, again,
(06:21):
no idea, but apparently they they said, well, I wonder
if hoops played a role in the earliest Olympics. And
I guess they've discredited that idea now, but for a while,
because of this earn this picture of ganny Meade with
a hoop, they wondered.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Was it a sport? Yeah, an Olympic sport.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
But the Greeks supposedly did use hoops for physical fitness
as like a physical activity in very much the same
way it's become popular today.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I would imagine an Olympic hula hooper would be sort
of like the you know, the uh what was the
sport the curler of today? Are you kind of like
an ancient Greece? Like, hey, what do you throw the hammer?
What do you do? I'm hula hooper?
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Oh, although I would guess it'd probably be more akin
to the hula hoopers of today.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, the hoop roller is what the sport would have been.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
That'd be more like curling, right, hula hooping. That's tough, man.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It is tough. What else? The ancient Britons they had
a game called the battle game called Kill the Hoop. Yeah,
I like this one when they would roll the hoop
and throw try to throw a spear through it. Yep,
pretty neat and dangerous and apparently they also used it
in the hula method and it would people get injured.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, there was a fifteenth fourteenth or fifteenth century, fourteenth
was it the fourteen hundreds or the fourteenth century fourteenth
century hula hoop craze? Yeah in Britain? Isn't that bizarre?
Speaker 3 (07:51):
That is weird?
Speaker 1 (07:52):
And yeah, people were getting injured there was a proclamation
by the early physicians. They would pull up their like
crows mask the masks just long enough to be like,
stay away from hula hoops, steer clear of those things.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, the warning was hoops kill was I guess what
was posted on the church door.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
And this is like in addition to being in the
way of a spear that was being thrown at a
rolling hoop. Yeah, like this is just from hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I would stay away from the hoops altogether if I
was in ancient Briton.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, because really, if you're like an ancient Briton, Huh,
you're going from like zero to sixty as far as
like physical fitness goes. Sure once you're hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Oh yeah, you know, just because you're not just sitting
around eating like a lamb's brains, right, yeah, drinking mead?
Uh what else? The Native Americans have a long culture
of using the hoop in New Mexico, the Taos Pueblo people,
they use them in ritual dances, private healing ceremonies. And
(08:55):
did you look up this chunky thing?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
No, did you find the chunky reference?
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I did. The Cahokian Native Americans that.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Was an unusual way to pronounce that.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Well, how would you say it?
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Cahokien?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
I think in Native American would be hoke.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Okay, that's fine.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Near Saint Louis apparently is where they played this game Chunky,
which I just had to look it up because a
game called Chunky with an E y and from what
I saw, it was more of a small stone disc
than like a hula hoop looking thing.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And you would it was like kill the hoop though
in Britain.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Right, Yeah, they would throw a stick. Apparently it looked
like a combination of like bachi and and kill the hoop.
Weird because I think they would try and throw the
spear where the disc would eventually land, and the closest
to the disc one.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Oh, that's how like they're predicting where this where the
hoop would fall. I guess this makes sense, although that's
not really like.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Bachi at all. I mean, I get there's a proximity
element that's bochi.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
S yes, yeah, well put, but I don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
I don't know, Like once I saw that and saw pictures,
I was like, I don't even know if they should
be in this article. Yeah, because it's like a small doughnut.
That's a hoop of sorts, I guess. So it's a
stretch if you asked me. But it was a big
spectator sport, like fifty acre stadiums of people would watch this.
Wow would go to junkie games and so chunkie matches.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So there was chunky matches in Coahokiah. Yeah, and the
pueblo used there. I think, as you said, they used hoops,
and they weren't the only ones. There were other tribes
from all over North America and meso America. I believe
that used hoops for dancing. Yeah, and apparently it was
(10:50):
in nineteen thirty a guy named Tony white Cloud, who
was a Yemez Pueblo down in New Mexico, did like
a hoop dance in public and basically brought it back.
Oh yeah, it had been virtually lost to the ages,
at least as far as the average American was concerned. Yeah,
most people didn't know this was the thing. Luckily, Tony
(11:11):
white Cloub was like, check this out, did an awesome
hoop dance, and then by nineteen ninety one there were
national hoop dancing competitions in New Mexico and they're a
big deal still to this day.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, of course, I think. Did he kick off the
American craze? Yes, no he didn't.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
He was strictly native American hoop dancing, gotcha, not hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Okay, so let's go to well, let's take a break actually,
because this is this is the big revelation here, that's right,
(12:07):
all right, Josh, we're at that point where mainstream America
goes hoop crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
But to get to that point, we actually have to
go backward again in time for a second.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Back in the way back machine.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
So let's quote it running. Let's go to I don't know,
Fiji or Tahiti or Polynesia. Yeah, and it's the eighteenth century. Yeah,
see all these British sailors.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Can we drink some rum?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Oh man? Okay, yeah, in addition to the room we've
already drank today. All right, good, So the British sailors
that you see here are noticing a houla dance, right,
and they're filing it away in their mental catalog. And
now when they reach Briton again, Yeah, why have we
(12:56):
been saying it like that? I don't know, they notice
that it bears a striking resemblance to what people do
with the hula hoop.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
You gyrate every time you'd say that, by the way,
you can't in your seat, can't not do it, Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
So the term hula became applied to the hoop, especially
when you used your hips to gyrate. Sure to rotate them, Yes,
when you rotate your hips with the hoop. These British
sailors ended up applying the word hula to it, and
it stuck. That's where it came from, was Polynesia.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Right, even though there was no hoop involved in Polynesia? Correct, Yes,
they just kind of ganked that word. Ye think their
own purposes.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Is nineteen ninety seven all over again.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
That was a big nineties termo, wasn't it yanked?
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Yeah? Let's go watch some X Files.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Let's actually yeah, the movie's coming out soon right. Oh yeah,
they're doing another one, aren't they. Yeah. That thing will
never die. I don't think it should keep doing movies,
That's what I say.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So. So we mentioned that the Greeks I believe used
it for physical fitness, right.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
I don't think we said that.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I think I said it. Okay. The Swiss actually came
to adopt it for the same reasons too. In the
nineteenth century and early twentieth century.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, someone named Emil Jacques Dalcroze and that was great.
That's tough. Had a program called Eurythmics, which, of course
I started singing Sweet Dreams this morning, of course because
of that, and I've been singing it all day as
a result. So that was a special training program and
(14:39):
it was apparently a big deal.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
It was a big deal. So eurhythmics used hoops for
basically physical fitness but also interpretive dance that kind of stuff.
It was a combination of It was like dance training
is what I can gather, and it used hoops. The
reason that we're mentioning this when we're talking about the
American craze is that it directly led to the American
(15:02):
craze potentially because eurhythmics spread from Switzerland to Great Britain
and it was brought in as part of like pe
class in Australia, and it was in Australia that the
founders of Whammo were inspired to create the modern hula
hoop that we think of today boom. So it's possible
(15:23):
they watched the eurhythmics class or heard about a eurhythmics
class with Australian kids and then said, well, this is
a clearly something of Australian design and let's bring it
to the US and start a craze.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
They said, sweet dreams were made of these. Yeah, and
this was Richard Knerr and Arthur spud Melon mel maline
melon sounds like.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
M l O N like Thornton Mellon.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Uh huh. Don't tease me with that movie, The Great
Back to School. I saw a bit of that recently. Yeah,
and the only thought through my head was like, man,
why couldn't I have caught this from the beginning? Yeah,
because I wanted to see it all.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
That And man, his son is pasty.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought you were saying that
was a line for the movie. It should have been. Yeah,
his son Keith Gordon, who became a great movie director.
Oh really Yeah, the guy from Christine and Back to School?
Yeah yeah, yeah. He gave up acting and started directing
movies and directed a bunch of good movies, one called
Waking the Dead.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
You should see, I thought Keith Gordon co starred, and
they live.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
I don't know, Maybe I'll have to check that. So
where were we oh yes. The two founders of Whammo,
they said, you know what, let's take these wooden hoops,
let's make them out of polyethylene. Let's make them forty inches,
and let's charge a dollar ninety eight for them and
(16:54):
make them all kinds of fun colors.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, and boom.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
The hula hoop craze in nineteen fifty eight was born.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Like it was the definition of a flash in the
pan craze.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yeah, a lot of money in a very short span.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Of time, like a summer. Basically pretty much. In nineteen
fifty eight, WMO released it, and by the end of
nineteen fifty eight these things were rotting in the warehouse.
But in the meantime they sold globally, globally from the
summer to the end of nineteen fifty eight, one hundred
million hula hoops.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Yeah, more than that, I think.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Damn my brain.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, you forgot what we were talking about.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
I almost said frisbees.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Did we do one on the frisbee?
Speaker 1 (17:38):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:38):
I thought we had, but we haven't have we No,
we did one on the boomerang. Oh right, just like
a frisbee, but not it's like a dangerous frisbee. Uh
So they sell all these hula hoops. They make a
ton of money, like, you know, over fifty million dollars
in a short span of time, which I'm sure they
weren't happy with the that it didn't last, but they're
(17:59):
all so probably like an injection of cash like that
is great for any business.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah. Then they moved on to the frisbee and made
even more money.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah, and they did not secure a patent for it.
I guess it didn't matter in the long run.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Well, they couldn't because it was so demonstrably an ancient
invention that nobody could patent it. Nope, But they trademarked it.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
They did. They trademarked the name hula hoop in the
United States, which is why we still call it hula
hoop today. I guess. Yeah, it just became.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
They should probably put the title with a R in
a circle for this.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Oh yeah, we should do that, like Barbie. Yeah. It
was named the number thirty five a toy of all
Time by Time magazine. And they know toys, they know
their toys. And then from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen
eighty one, there were national hula hoop contests held and
the guests in the early eighties people were finished with it.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
There were also like a tremendous amount of music, like
musical singles released called the hula hoop song. Oh really,
different people recorded different songs about hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, it was a craze big time. Yeah, and you
say that they were done with it by the eighties,
not true. The national competitions there was so if you
look at hula hooping records, yea, the most recent hula
hoop records from two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Wow. But was that part of a national competition?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Probably for just a guy named Aaron Hibbs, he hula hoop,
just hula hooped for seventy four hours and fifty four minutes. Wow.
He broke the record of.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
I couldn't even stand up for that long.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
He broke the record of a girl named Kim Koberly.
She held the record twice, in nineteen seventy eight with
fifty four hours and in nineteen eighty four for seventy
two hours. Wow, which is pretty impressive.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yeah, people were still like hundreds of them at once.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yeah. There was a guy named Paul Dizzy hips Blair
who set the record in two thousand and nine with
one hundred and thirty two hoops at the same time.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Wow, that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
He's basically probably just like like the Michelin man made
of hula hoops.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah. To ever tell you about the Surface Area Man
costume and Athens. No, that was out on Halloween in
Athens in college, and that was a dude. I know.
The guy's name was Blake. He has you may have
seen him. He had big red dreadlocks, kind of a
short guy, just a ubiquitous Athens dude. No, he lives
(20:23):
kind of in my neighborhood now. I still see him
every once in a while. We called him Sideshow Blake
because of Sideshow Bobs. Sure, and he came in the
bar and the Georgia Bar, and he had these foam
discs around his arms, around his legs, around his waist
and neck that were huge, like probably four feet across,
(20:43):
and he was Surface Area Man. And that was just
his costume because when he moved around, he took up like,
you know, probably seventy five square feet in space and
he would just move through the bar and say Surface
Area Man. And I'll always remember every time I see Blake.
I saw him at the grocery store the other day.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Was he dressed like that?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
No? But I also like surface. He wouldn't fit down
the grocery aisle.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Does he have dread still?
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah? Does he really still rocking the red dreads?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
He's dedicated?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
He looks exactly the same. Actually, but we weren't friends.
I could actually see him. Actually, I'm gonna just walk
by him and go surface area. Man, you should I'm
gonna do it. All right, Let's talk about the Hudsucker
Proxy for a quick moment, and then we'll take another break. Okay,
did you ever see that one?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
I don't think I made it through that one.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
The Coen Brothers, Yeah, uh not.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
All of their movies are great.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
I disagree.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I love the Coen Brothers, but some of their movies stink.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Oh boy, that they're part of my one hundred percent
club where every movie they've made has been great?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
That is wrong?
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Which other ones? Don't? You like?
Speaker 1 (21:46):
The Man who Wasn't there?
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Loved it?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Bob Robertson, They didn't.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
That wasn't theirs?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Well it was terrible. Okay, uh? Well the Hudsucker Proxy too,
all right, I liked it.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
I would put it at lesser Cohen's for sure, you'd
have to. But I enjoyed it quite a bit. Tim
Robbins and Jennifer Jason Lee and Paul Newman in a
fictitious tale of the invention of the hula hoop. It
is not the true biopic of the invention of the
hula hoop, but they co opted it for one of
their movies, and it was I think pretty great.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Okay, but that's just me, okay, so go ahead.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Well, no, that was it. I just wanted to shout
it out.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Fine, Well, then let's take a break because we're about
to get into physics.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah, and hoop games yep.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
After this, No Country for Old Men terrible. I'm kidding,
(23:00):
I'm kidding.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Do you like that one?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
I love that one. That's maybe the best. Raising Arizona
is probably the best.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
It'd be tough for me to pick on any given day,
but Fargo is the one I can watch over yeah
and over.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah. Yeah. I would say this three year type for first.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Did we just come back from the break just segueing
right back into the car?
Speaker 1 (23:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
We'll see how Jerry edits this, so.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Let's it wouldn't be a stuff you should know podcast
if we didn't talk about the science behind something seemingly unscientific.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Well, hula hoops are super complex as far as physics goes.
You know that, super complex, super complex.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
There's just a few things.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
We are not in agreement on stuff today, are we?
Speaker 3 (23:40):
I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
So let's say you have a hula hoop, right, and
it's around your waist, and you take it and you
throw it. You have it up against maybe one hip, sure,
making contact with your body.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
That you're starting in the traditional way, then.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Sure, and you whip it around, yeah, to one side,
and as you do, you start rotating your hip. You're gyrating, right,
I'm rotating my hips, chants, and as you do that,
when you rotate your hips, what you're doing is, first
of all, you're conserving the angular momentum you gave the
hula hoop when you pushed it in a certain direction,
you twisted it around yourself.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Right, that's right. You are the axis.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yes, you are the axis.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And when you move your hips around, when you rotate
your hips, you're applying what's called torque.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Yeah, Because all this hoop wants to do is fall
down around on the ground and make you look foolish.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
It wants to stop. Well, no, it doesn't want to
stop because of inertia. It wants to keep going, but
it can't because of friction. But it wants to fall
down to the ground like you said, and make you
look foolish. Yeah, but ironically that same friction is keeping
it from doing that.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Who's the fool now, hoop the hula hoop? Yep, fool?
All right? Did you talk about the torque?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
I did talk about torqu and torque is a twisting
force where you're twisting your hips and you're thrusting the
hula hoop in a circle, and what you're doing there
is contributing to the centripetal force.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
That's right and centrific goal no centripet all two different
things move.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Is a force that moves at a right angle to
the motion of your body, so it keeps that thing
whatever it is, say, hula hoop or tractor tire, which,
by the way, someone set a record hula hooping with
a tractor tire. Shut up, really yeah, for like seventy
seconds of fifty four pound tire.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
How big was a person?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I'm sure it was ginormous. I think he was from
like Baylor Roos or something, you know.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Oh yeah, they do that on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
So with the centripetal force is going at a right
angle to the direction that you're thrusting your hips, it's
constantly going to move around a circle on the axis.
That is centripetal force. Boom, centripetal motion. I should say yes.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And when the soop wants to fall, of course, we're
talking about gravity. Gravity wants to win that fight. But
if you keep that pulsing gyration going, then you're going
to keep that hoop just a little ahead of the curve.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, that's apparently the key. And Robert puts this in here.
Is it kind of like a throwaway thing?
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Yeah, that is the thing.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
It's the key of hula hooping. Is you want your
hip to move just before that that I guess wave
that comes in contact with your body again, comes in contact, comes.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Back around, catch and release in a way. Okay, you
can catch it on your hip and then slinging it
back around. Now I'm gyrating, yeah you are.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Wow, there's a lot of gyrating going on in this
room right now.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
There is.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
So there's a few different parts of the body at work.
I don't know why in two thousand and four they
needed a fifteen page study in the Journal of Biological
Cybernetics to figure this out, because if you just look
at somebody, you can tell that the hips, knees, and
ankles are really what's at play keeping that thing going.
And that's if you're just doing the hip who hoop,
(27:01):
not right neck and legs and all that.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Of course, yeah, just the standard hooping right.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
And so another study I think four years later in
the Journal of Human Movement side.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
I don't know why they needed that either.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
They built upon this two thousand and four study and said, okay,
you use your hips, knees, and ankles. Everybody uses it,
but depending on the individual, there'll be different contributions from
the hips, knees or ankle depends on the motion of
your ocean exactly. So it's like the individual. Everybody uses
the same the same parts, but they use them in
(27:34):
different percentages to come up with the hula hooping motion.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Yeah. I bet certain body types are better at this
than others too.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, slim, yeah, yeah, probably.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
So I met the one in front of Craig's band.
She was pretty slam I guess sure she's working that thing. Man.
It was like, it was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Hula hoop.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
So that's hoop dancing. When we'll finish up here with
some other games.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Well, we didn't talk about hoop dancing. We were just
talking about hula hooping.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
No, we talked about hoop dancing at the beginning with
that lady. Oh yeah, okay, so that's hoop dancing. Okay,
that's when you you know, it's around the neck and
then you work it down around your hips and then
up one arm and then up the other arm, right right,
It's pretty impressive. Your standard hula hooping, of course, which
we've covered. Speed endurance depends on what you're after. Sure,
(28:23):
like I want to do this for twenty minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Or I want to do it seventy four hours.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Really fast for five minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Okay. Hoop rolling, that's one of my favorite.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Hoop trundling, Like you're a little ancient Egyptian kid.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, I I'd like to see you do that hoop rolling. Sure,
let's do it.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Let's do a video for that.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Okay, we could do a periscope of it. Oh yeah,
let's do that.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Are we going to start doing that?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
We could do at least one of me hoop rolling.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
I think people, Well, we're going to get emails.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yeah, they'll they'll turn out in droves to see that.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Sure, hundreds of people will show it for that.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
There's one not on this list that I want to
give a shout out to you.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
All right?
Speaker 1 (28:58):
What it was invented? Apparently in Belgium they call it
Belgium skipping. It's called ankle skipping. It's where you put
the hula hoop on one foot around one ankle, and
you use it to hula hoop. You make the hula
hoop motion with that one and as it comes around,
you jump through the hoop with the other one.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I can't believe it wasn't on this list.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Yeah, that's a solid hoop endeavor.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
But apparently it's a pretty recent invention from like the sixties.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Oh really, all right, that makes sense. That's sort of
like hoop jumping, but not quite.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
No, hoop jumping is more like jump roping with a
hula hoop.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Yeah, but that kind of reminds me of that too.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Hoop jumping is when you hold the hula hoop the
top of it, and then you swing it around your
body and jump up and down.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Okay, like you have nothing better to do in life, right,
Like you can't find a jump rope. You haven't heard
of those before?
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Return the hoop. This is the only one I was
ever good at. That's when you hold it vertically and
you fling it out as hard as you can backwards,
and it sort of spins place and comes back to you.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Right, And if you're not expecting it, you're going to
turn and run because it is startling.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
We've already talked about kill the hoop. We don't recommend
you use spears to do that, or just.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Make sure nobody's in the vicinity of where the hoop is. Yeah,
you don't want to combine hoop chundling and kill the
hoop because you'll kill the hoop chundlure.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
No, And I'm not even uncovered this last one. I
dare you too, though.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
I like this one. Hoop your environment, Yeah, right, go ahead.
So it's like you put hula hoops around and you
jump from them like they're islands and there's lava in between. Okay,
what's wrong with that? I don't know too childish.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
No, I'm very childish, but I don't know. I just didn't.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
There's your childlike not childish. Oh, gotcha, big difference, man.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Uh, well, we talked about exercise. It is legitimate exercise.
Our hula hoop classes. Now apparently Mursa Tomay, the actor,
took hoop fitness classes to lose weight or to get
in shape for her movie The Wrestler in two thousand
and eight. First Lady Michelle Obama.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Has very famously hoop worked out.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Yeah, hooped the lawn of the White House to say, hey, kids,
get active and at the US Open, Yeah, you can
still have fun by doing this. Yeah. And they even
did another study to see what kind of calories you
could burn.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Lots of hoop studies too many.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
They took women between sixteen and fifty nine and said
go crazy and hoop and they yeah. And they were
weighted hoops too, by the way, which is not to
say they were super heavy. They're generally still pretty light weight.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, but strangely weighted hoop is easier to keep going.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Yes, which makes sense, I think. And they average one
hundred and fifty one beats per minute bpmat yeah, heart beats.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Oh their heart.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, tribe coal quests would be proud, right.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
And that is burning seven calories a minute or two
hundred and ten calories during a half hour of hooping.
So that's good exercise people.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
That's like weightlifting type calorie burn.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Plus also like if you just break it down to
calorie first of all, Chuck, I want to do an
episode and I'm not quite sure how to frame it yet.
It doesn't have a thesis. But there are so many
like medical myths out there that are just taken as facture,
even by the medical establishment, even though like if you
asked a doctor like is this fact they would be like, no, no, actually,
(32:39):
it's not like drinking eight glasses of water a day. Yeah,
totally made up. And you're going to say that, Like,
I think we should do one on medical myths sometime.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
What do you think we should have? We not?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
No, Like part of me wants to say we have,
but I think it things to have just come up
like here or there over the years. Anyway, if even
if you take the calories out of the equation, just
hula hooping the standard hip gyration hula hoop, yeah, will
really really work out your core.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yeah, like you need a hula hoop.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
No, you can just sit in your chair and do
what I'm doing now. Yeah, like I'm getting I'm sweating.
Yeah right now, you totally are. My lip My upper
lip is broken out in perspiration.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Uh. Modern hooping burlesque uses hoops. If you go to
any music festival these days, you're going to see the
ladies like I was talking about, or they might have
him decked out with LEDs or even fire.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Well what's neat is LED hula hoops in particular are
really displaying like the physics of hula hoops pretty neat
through Like, what's that type of photography LSD? No, No, uh,
what's the what's that photography where you like you just
keep the shutter open so it like high exposure, long exposure.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yeah, you just said it, keeping that shutter open. It's
like when you see the pictures of the cars on
the freeway right and it's just like a long trail
of headlights.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, but there are photos out there of LED hula
hoops there. It's just like you can see they don't
just keep like a flat path. They go all over
the place in some way. It's really neat.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
It's pretty cool. What about this lady, the Israeli sculptor.
Did you watch that?
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I saw a couple of pictures of it.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Yes. Her name is Cigolette Landau, and in two thousand
and three she did a performance art slash political statement
piece where she did it was called barbed Hula and
she was naked and hula hooped with a barbed wire
hula hoop that just tore her abdomen up. Yeah, it's
(34:43):
really rough. Yeah, it was pretty disturbing. But she said
she was on an Israeli beach that she defined as
the only common natural border Israel has. So she was
making a statement to my friend, Well.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
She's an artist.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
That's what they do.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
I got a couple of last things. Let's hear it
in the that hula hoop craze.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Of the fifties of yeah, yes, yeah, not the not
the fourteenth century Briton one. There.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
It was in Japan, it was banned. The hula hoop
was banned because they're worried it was going to lead
to actual stuff things happening gyrating hips. Yeah, and apparently
the Soviets said that it was a it was evidence
of the emptiness of American culture, the hula hoop craze. Really, yeah,
leave to the Soviets to be like Americans. Go on,
(35:36):
they hated America. Do you remember when the Iron Curtain
fell and you were like, oh, wait a minute, Like
everything we were taught about the Soviet Union was basically
made up.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Yeah, and they were like, you know, the average Russian
was like a good person.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Here, Yeah, and the average Russian was a lot like
the average American, and.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Yeah, drunk on vodka, I'm gonna live forever.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
All right, that's it. If you want to know more
about hula hoops, you can type that word into the
search bar at housetuffworks dot com. And since I said
search bar, it's time for the listener mail.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
I'm gonna call this anarexia.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Could you read this one?
Speaker 3 (36:15):
No?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
See how I missed that one.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Hey guys, I'm a huge fan. I want to let
you know how you how Stuff you should Know has
helped me over the years. I began listening if I
love These, began listening at the age of twelve, and
I'm now turning eighteen.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
August Night. Stuff you should Know has played a part
in the young adult I've become. At twelve, I was
diagnosed with restrictive anarexia, was hospitalized for about a month
and did day treatment for almost a year. After leaving
treatment for the day, I'd religiously put on my headphones
and turn on stuff. You should know. The podcast was
really helpful on bad days, especially if I had just
had an argument with my parents or a difficult meal,
(36:51):
or your humor was especially helpful. I remember laughing out
loud many times in the car, which was quite a
rare occurrence. I'm pretty solid recovery now. But your podcasts
also helped me gain a better relationship with my sibling.
My eating disorder costs a lot of tension between my
sibling and I for quite a few years. But one
day I invited her to listen to your podcast, so,
(37:12):
if you should know, quickly became a part of her
commute to university class. We occasionally would discuss the podcast topics.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
We now have a tradition and I love this part too.
We now have a tradition of listening to the Christmas
Extravaganza together while in winter break, which is what we
want people to do. Yeah, man to gather the family
and make.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
This a thing Yeah, it's pudding.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Even though I don't know what we're going to get
pretty slim on Christmas time.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
I've got at least one great topic. Yeah, we need
to start looking now though. You're right.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Yeah, we've even gifted each other matching stuff you should
know shirts. One year more recently, I received the very
urgent texts letting me know in all caps that you
guys were coming to Minneapolis this fall, and another text
to let me know that Chuck's daughter Ruby shares the
same birthday as our father. And I want to point
out again and.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Josh, yeah, the Triumvirate.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
That's right. Your podcast gives us endless topics and inside jokes,
and I can't thank you enough for bringing us closer together.
Thanks again for being such a big part of my
formative years. My sister and I can't wait to see
you guys in Minneapolis this fall. That is from Emily,
and she said, please shout out your sister Meghan.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Awesome, Emily, thank you for telling us all that like
that really means the world to us.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Yes, and best of luck in your continued recovery. That
is tough stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Yeah, and congratulations too.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Yeah, Well, we should do an eating Disorder Podcast at
some point that one's been hanging out there.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah. Yeah, because you know, there's like a whole there's
like this new idea that like almost everybody has an
eating disorder in America these.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Days of some kind.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Yeah, like typically binge eating is like a huge thing. Sure, yeah,
we should definitely do that. Yeah, but thank you very much,
Emily and hello sister Meghan. We appreciate you guys listening,
and hopefully we'll see you guys in Minneapolis when we
come in out.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Yeah, and you know what, actually write me back. We'll
put you on the guest list. Oh man, how about that?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
So nice?
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Free tickets for YouTube?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Wow, that is something just for YouTube. O.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Guess right, just kidding.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Oh, you need to lay it down. We should probably
have a legal disclaimer added after this too.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, we might hear from a lot of Emily and
megans Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can tweet to us at s y SK podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email at Stuff
Podcast at house stuffworks dot com and has always joined
us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should
Know dot com
Speaker 2 (39:42):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
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