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Juggling: What the Heck · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry just
0:18
Speaker 1: doing a little tandem juggling with my bra That's what
0:20
Speaker 1: we're doing right now. Yeah. Yeah, I wish you guys
0:22
Speaker 1: could see this because it was got pretty good right now.
0:26
Speaker 1: Look at this half shower, half halfhower. Man, that was
0:29
Speaker 1: a good one. Bro Se balls at once. Yeah, Jerry,
0:33
Speaker 1: come light these torches on fire, like wow, man, half
0:37
Speaker 1: shower of rain and fire, this is really dangerous. Can
0:42
Speaker 1: you juggle? No? But I want to after this. My
0:46
Speaker 1: brother learned, of course. Of course. I'm sure he's born
0:49
Speaker 1: knowing how to juggle. He came out of the womb juggling. Now.
0:52
Speaker 1: He learned back when I like in high school and
0:54
Speaker 1: mastered it pretty quickly and now and he can still
0:57
Speaker 1: juggle some. I think it's one of those things will
1:00
Speaker 1: once you learn sort of the basics, you can always
1:02
Speaker 1: do it, because apparently a lot of it comes down
1:05
Speaker 1: to muscle memory, which is to say motor memory. Yeah,
1:09
Speaker 1: and in true Chuck fashion, I tried to learn to
1:11
Speaker 1: juggle for about an hour and never finished. Did you
1:15
Speaker 1: like see any progress over that hour? Yeah? I could.
1:19
Speaker 1: I could do the little one hand juggling two balls
1:21
Speaker 1: with one hand thing, okay, But I did a lot
1:24
Speaker 1: of chasing the ball. That's a problem, which apparently, if
1:27
Speaker 1: you're a beginning juggler, you're gonna be throwing the ball
1:30
Speaker 1: further and further away from you, just naturally chasing the ball,
1:32
Speaker 1: and they call it chasing it. So what do they suggest?
1:35
Speaker 1: They suggest that you learned to juggle close to and
1:38
Speaker 1: facing a wall, because that way you can't move forward,
1:42
Speaker 1: or you'll just keep hitting your head and you'll scratch
1:44
Speaker 1: your face up on the brick and quit juggling. This
1:47
Speaker 1: is a Jonathan Strickland joint of tech stuff. It's reeks
1:51
Speaker 1: of Strickland. It does like even if the byeline hadn't
1:54
Speaker 1: been on there, I would have been like, this is Stricklin.
1:57
Speaker 1: But I remember when this one was made. It was
2:00
Speaker 1: right when I got here, and like he there's a
2:02
Speaker 1: video embedded of Strickling teaching you how to juggle. It smells,
2:06
Speaker 1: it reeks of bald head cream and bowling shirts. Yeah,
2:09
Speaker 1: and it also has an illustration by Marcus who clearly
2:13
Speaker 1: always wanted to be a comic book illustrator because the
2:16
Speaker 1: guy who's in the graph on how to juggle is
2:20
Speaker 1: just totally ripped. Yeah, like a comic book here. I remember, Marcus,
2:25
Speaker 1: it seems like a million years ago. It was so
2:30
Speaker 1: juggling history. How long people been juggling? Uh, chuck. People
2:38
Speaker 1: have been juggling since at least tomb exactly. They found
2:48
Speaker 1: uh in Egyptian tombs, um hieroglyphics showing women toss juggling.
2:54
Speaker 1: And there are many kinds of juggling, by the way,
2:56
Speaker 1: and we're mainly going to talk about toss juggling, which
2:58
Speaker 1: is throwing something up in the air, throwing more things
3:01
Speaker 1: up in the air than you have hands. Yes, that's
3:05
Speaker 1: toss juggling. And there are, like you said, a bunch
3:08
Speaker 1: of other kinds. But if you're a toss juggler, you
3:10
Speaker 1: probably don't consider the other kinds real juggling. You're like,
3:13
Speaker 1: those are cool and everything, but that's not real juggling. Yeah.
3:16
Speaker 1: I asked my friend, our friend Brandon Ross from the
3:19
Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know Art Department, a juggler, very good juggler,
3:24
Speaker 1: and Uh I sent a message to him and did
3:26
Speaker 1: not hear back. In time. I was like it sayesn't
3:27
Speaker 1: here that modern jugglers poopoo things like taking a bite
3:31
Speaker 1: out of the apple and like some of those old
3:33
Speaker 1: school tricks. That is that true or not? And I
3:36
Speaker 1: didn't hear back from him, so maybe, well, you know,
3:39
Speaker 1: it was on Facebook, okay, so he'll get to it
3:42
Speaker 1: when he gets to it. So anyway, we're in ancient
3:44
Speaker 1: Egypt to be exact. That's right. There were jugglers in
3:49
Speaker 1: Greece and Rome and India and Thebes and Thebes in Europe,
3:55
Speaker 1: and uh, I think four BC was when it was
3:57
Speaker 1: actually written down that people were juggling. Yeah, supposedly in
4:01
Speaker 1: the Talmud, a rabbi named Shimon ben Gone Maliel. Yeah,
4:06
Speaker 1: I think I probably nailed that. Probably he could juggle
4:10
Speaker 1: eight torches at once. That's hard to believe because world
4:14
Speaker 1: records today are like seven I think for clubs, is
4:20
Speaker 1: it seven? I think so, yeah. But I mean, if
4:24
Speaker 1: if this rabbi was juggling eight torches, that sounds like
4:27
Speaker 1: it maybe pumped up a little bit throughout the years,
4:30
Speaker 1: you know, like it was two and then it was like,
4:32
Speaker 1: oh it was eight. Although this was the time of miracles,
4:36
Speaker 1: you know, like enough oil to keep it going for
4:40
Speaker 1: eight days a siege. Why not a rabbi who could
4:44
Speaker 1: juggle eight torches. It seems kind of paltry by comparison.
4:48
Speaker 1: Good point um. Through the Roman era, apparently that jugglers
4:52
Speaker 1: were actually held in high esteem, but then they kind
4:55
Speaker 1: of went down into pooper a little bit hilarious because
4:59
Speaker 1: people associated with them like like magicians, as con artists.
5:03
Speaker 1: So I don't know if it was like, hey, look
5:06
Speaker 1: at what this guy's doing while someone else is picking
5:08
Speaker 1: their pocket, but that's kind of what it seems like
5:10
Speaker 1: it might have been going on. Yeah, apparently you were
5:13
Speaker 1: a con artist. Like you said, everybody knows that you
5:17
Speaker 1: can't trust a juggler a juggalo, well at the right
5:21
Speaker 1: at the at the at the time, that's how people
5:25
Speaker 1: thought of jugglers. This seems to be during like the
5:27
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Empire in the West, right then the medieval
5:30
Speaker 1: era hits and suddenly jugglers start to become a little
5:34
Speaker 1: a little less threatening and actually a little more clown like.
5:38
Speaker 1: Like Initially they seem to have been not revered necessarily,
5:41
Speaker 1: but I thought of in fairly high esteem. Then they
5:44
Speaker 1: went the opposite direction, and then they came back as clowns.
5:50
Speaker 1: I wonder how many like um behind closed doors, how
5:53
Speaker 1: many like emperors and kings tried it out after seeing
5:56
Speaker 1: it in the door, or just like morons with it, yeah,
5:59
Speaker 1: and then had someone's head chopped off out of frustration.
6:02
Speaker 1: They took the chuck route. Although I didn't behead anybody,
6:04
Speaker 1: but during the medieval era you could. If you found
6:07
Speaker 1: a juggler, you probably also found something of a minstrel
6:10
Speaker 1: or performer and all around entertainer who probably traveled from
6:15
Speaker 1: town to town, maybe asking people to bring out there
6:18
Speaker 1: dead for some side work perhaps, and then juggling corpses,
6:23
Speaker 1: that's right, which must have been a sight to see.
6:25
Speaker 1: And then in the seventeen hundreds they became more of
6:28
Speaker 1: a circus act. And in the late eighteen hundreds of
6:33
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, Vaudeville came along. Of course, any sort of
6:36
Speaker 1: skill like that was big in vaudeville. And I did
6:39
Speaker 1: not know this, but W. C. Fields was a juggler
6:42
Speaker 1: in the vaudevillion days. I didn't know that. Before he
6:45
Speaker 1: became just a drunk actor. And he's not the one
6:49
Speaker 1: who raped anybody, right, who was it? I think that
6:51
Speaker 1: was Fatty R. Fatty R Buckle. That's who it was. Yeah,
6:55
Speaker 1: same ara, same guys. I looked it up and I
6:57
Speaker 1: ran across um the Hollywood Hell Club. So apparently before
7:03
Speaker 1: the brat Pack, before the rat pack, there was a
7:06
Speaker 1: group of like early early Hollywood guys, Harold Flynn who
7:11
Speaker 1: was a rapist. W. C. Fields, John Barrymore that just
7:15
Speaker 1: raised hell in um, Hollywood in like the twenties. Errol
7:19
Speaker 1: Flynn was a rapist, really accused rapist. I didn't know that.
7:23
Speaker 1: So then Vaudeville declines, Uh, circuses sort of decline a
7:27
Speaker 1: little bit for a while, and then jugglers started hitting
7:30
Speaker 1: the streets or as Jonathan Strickland said, or become mathematicians. Yep,
7:37
Speaker 1: we'll get to the math connection, which is LEGiT's foreshadowing,
7:41
Speaker 1: but I don't know that. Like they formed their own
7:43
Speaker 1: stage shows, performed on street corners, or became mathematicians. Those
7:47
Speaker 1: were the three options if you were a juggler. Uh.
7:50
Speaker 1: And then, of course, um in the nineteen forties, I
7:53
Speaker 1: say of course because it's common knowledge that these are
7:56
Speaker 1: when the juggling groups and conventions were formed. In Hell
8:00
Speaker 1: the International Brotherhood of Magicians Uh decided you know, at
8:04
Speaker 1: a meeting, Hey, guys like the jugglers got together and
8:07
Speaker 1: had a few drinks and said, I don't like being
8:09
Speaker 1: known as a magician. Yeah, you know, that's how the
8:11
Speaker 1: jugglers tell it. The magicians were like, get the jugglers. Yeah,
8:17
Speaker 1: and then they went threw down their smoke bomb when
8:19
Speaker 1: they were gone. So they formed and splintered off and
8:22
Speaker 1: formed the International Juggling Association. Uh. And in nineteen sixty
8:27
Speaker 1: nine they started holding championships and competitions Summer of Juggling.
8:32
Speaker 1: And in two thousand Jason Garfield, a very famous juggler,
8:36
Speaker 1: formed the World Juggling Federation and said, ESPN, you need
8:40
Speaker 1: to put this stuff on TV. So once a year
8:43
Speaker 1: they put it on TV progress along with the spelling
8:47
Speaker 1: be and the dart competition. What else which I watched
8:51
Speaker 1: the other day? Um, log rolling, yeah, lumberjacking sure, uh
8:58
Speaker 1: law and darting no that's illegal. No more, it's like
9:02
Speaker 1: cock fighting. Um so all right, let's get into it then.
9:06
Speaker 1: So we're actually gonna teach everybody how to juggle, like
9:10
Speaker 1: no kidding, yeah, and if you're really into this, like,
9:12
Speaker 1: we're gonna describe a lot of things visually, which is
9:16
Speaker 1: always a train wreck for us. Um So, I would
9:19
Speaker 1: recommend you do like I did and just get on
9:21
Speaker 1: the old YouTube and look up what Cascade juggling looks like.
9:25
Speaker 1: And they're four or five guys who have tons and
9:28
Speaker 1: tons of videos. There's there's a few. There's one guy
9:31
Speaker 1: that I believe is kind of the gold standard for
9:34
Speaker 1: YouTube instructional juggling videos. His name is Adam Schomsky s
9:39
Speaker 1: H O M. S K Y. And like, I'm sure
9:42
Speaker 1: I watched him. That guy pops it into slow motion
9:44
Speaker 1: for you. There's like um like graphics when like he
9:49
Speaker 1: throws something straight up, you might not have caught it.
9:51
Speaker 1: So it says throwing straight up, he's good and he's
9:56
Speaker 1: just doing it for the love of juggling. You can tell.
9:58
Speaker 1: I think they all do, I would hope. So I
10:00
Speaker 1: don't know if you make a ton of money it's
10:02
Speaker 1: a juggler these days, although there is, I should recommend
10:07
Speaker 1: it's gonna wait till the end. There's a great article
10:10
Speaker 1: on grant land dot com called Dropped by Jason uh
10:14
Speaker 1: fagone and he details a big, long story on Anthony Gatto,
10:20
Speaker 1: who may be the best juggler on the planet. He
10:22
Speaker 1: juggled for Circus a Oh, he had a bunch of
10:25
Speaker 1: the records until recently, Yeah, twelve world records. And he's
10:28
Speaker 1: amazing dude. Um, but he quit last year to run
10:33
Speaker 1: a concrete resurfacing business after becoming disenchanted with the juggling scene,
10:39
Speaker 1: basically calling out all these kids. He stays saying, like,
10:43
Speaker 1: you film something a hundred times and only nail at
10:46
Speaker 1: once and then you upload it to YouTube. That's not
10:49
Speaker 1: the same. He basically his quote is if you can't
10:52
Speaker 1: do a trick in three tries, you can't do it.
10:54
Speaker 1: He said, you may have done it, but it doesn't
10:55
Speaker 1: mean you can do it. It's essentially what you're talking about.
10:58
Speaker 1: This guy story is the prime US for office space. Yeah, basically,
11:03
Speaker 1: but he's amazing. If you watch Anthony Gotto juggling, like
11:06
Speaker 1: he will break the record for like, uh, let's say
11:11
Speaker 1: a number of balls in a rain shower and um,
11:15
Speaker 1: for the amount of time though he won't like do
11:17
Speaker 1: it for ten seconds, We'll do it for like ten minutes.
11:20
Speaker 1: And other jugglers are like, this dude is insane. How
11:22
Speaker 1: long he can keep all these clubs and balls and
11:25
Speaker 1: torches or whatever in the air. That's really funny that
11:28
Speaker 1: you mentioned him, and what happened to him because I
11:30
Speaker 1: noticed his records were like all mid two thousand's, the
11:34
Speaker 1: most recent ones were, and I wondered what happened to
11:37
Speaker 1: Anthony Gotto? Now I know you give the finger. It's
11:40
Speaker 1: a really good article. Actually it's nick dropped on grant
11:43
Speaker 1: land dot com. Alright, so how do you juggle? So, Chuck,
11:46
Speaker 1: here's how you juggle. Basically, you want to start with
11:50
Speaker 1: three balls, and if you have even half of a
11:53
Speaker 1: brain half, you will make sure that those balls are
11:57
Speaker 1: beam bags because bean bags are dead drops or they
12:01
Speaker 1: dropped dead. You're not gonna chase them all over the room. No,
12:03
Speaker 1: when they fall, they just stay put. Hacky sacks are
12:06
Speaker 1: good too, or you can buy, like my brother did,
12:08
Speaker 1: the Little um which are basically hacky sacks, a little
12:11
Speaker 1: juggling kit. Yeah, the Complete Klutz's Guide to juggling, isn't that?
12:18
Speaker 1: I think it was Before the Complete Idiots Guides, there
12:20
Speaker 1: was something called like something for Klutzes and it would
12:23
Speaker 1: teach you, like things how to how to juggle in um.
12:28
Speaker 1: So anyway, you start with three bean bags, which in
12:30
Speaker 1: the juggling world what these are. Anything you juggled are
12:33
Speaker 1: called props and specifically, bean bag falls under the category
12:39
Speaker 1: of balls. Even though they're not necessarily balls, they're still
12:42
Speaker 1: under the prop category balls because it's not a chainsaw
12:45
Speaker 1: or a torch exactly, club, which would fall under the
12:47
Speaker 1: category of clubs. Um So for most of the time
12:51
Speaker 1: we're gonna say balls. But just imagine as you're starting out,
12:54
Speaker 1: we're talking about bean bags. Okay, so you get three
12:56
Speaker 1: of them, chuck, Yes, you take two and you put
13:00
Speaker 1: them in a drawer to start. There's the first step
13:03
Speaker 1: to learning juggling. Take two of your three balls and
13:06
Speaker 1: put them away. Yeah, And strickling and experts say you
13:11
Speaker 1: should literally start with tossing one back and forth to
13:15
Speaker 1: get your arc down because the key is consistency. You
13:18
Speaker 1: don't want to and you know, once you get good
13:20
Speaker 1: you can do all sorts of things, but you don't
13:22
Speaker 1: want to toss one being back up four ft and
13:26
Speaker 1: one three ft when you're first starting out. You want
13:28
Speaker 1: to kind of toss them all about the same. Yeah,
13:30
Speaker 1: And you need to learn your hand movements, which are
13:33
Speaker 1: very important. Once you get hand movements down, you can
13:36
Speaker 1: do variations on the hand movements, but ultimately there's a
13:39
Speaker 1: basic hand movement that's a scooping motion. And um, the
13:43
Speaker 1: easiest one to start with to start practicing is the
13:46
Speaker 1: cascade pattern. Yeah, there's two main patterns, the shower and
13:49
Speaker 1: the cascade, which we've joked about so far about ten times.
13:53
Speaker 1: The shower is the one that you see on cartoons
13:56
Speaker 1: when someone's basically just throwing balls in a big circle
13:58
Speaker 1: and a big loop. Beautiful, beautiful, very cool looking. The
14:01
Speaker 1: cascade looks kind of like fireworks if you like squint
14:04
Speaker 1: your eyes and use your imagination. I never thought about that. Yeah,
14:08
Speaker 1: Like as the balls go up and they are out,
14:11
Speaker 1: they're basically arcing outward across your body. Um, and it
14:16
Speaker 1: looks just kind of like you know, one of those
14:18
Speaker 1: big fireworks where like blows up and then like this
14:21
Speaker 1: kind of trails downwards slowly. That's ultimately what it looks
14:24
Speaker 1: like to me. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. So the cascade,
14:28
Speaker 1: you move your hands in a figure eight and um,
14:31
Speaker 1: for the regular cascade, your right hand goes clockwise, your
14:33
Speaker 1: left hand is counter clockwise alternating these tosses. If you
14:38
Speaker 1: reverse that, it's called a reverse cascade. So the key
14:42
Speaker 1: here just remember you're using one ball still, but you're
14:45
Speaker 1: making a scooping motion. In towards your torso like in
14:51
Speaker 1: towards yourself, not away from your body, but in towards
14:53
Speaker 1: your body, right in front of your chest. Your your
14:57
Speaker 1: feet are shoulder with a part because they always b
15:00
Speaker 1: when you do anything. And you're tossing the thing up
15:03
Speaker 1: into an arc in about just above eye level, that's
15:08
Speaker 1: your that's the one that you start with. And you
15:10
Speaker 1: usually start with your dominant hand, yeah, because that will
15:13
Speaker 1: just probably be easier because you're more used to throwing
15:16
Speaker 1: things with that hand. And I didn't see it anywhere,
15:18
Speaker 1: but I put two and two together in this article,
15:21
Speaker 1: and it looks like. It looks like so it could
15:23
Speaker 1: be wrong everybody, but it looks like if you are
15:27
Speaker 1: doing a cascade of any kind, reverse cascade, any anything
15:30
Speaker 1: like that, whatever hand is going clockwise is the hand
15:33
Speaker 1: that you throw in the highest arc above your eye level. Okay,
15:38
Speaker 1: so you've got your one bag and you you make
15:41
Speaker 1: a scooping motion with your right hand in a counter
15:44
Speaker 1: in a clockwise motion, and you toss the ball or yeah,
15:48
Speaker 1: you toss the ball in an arc just above eye level,
15:51
Speaker 1: and then it drops and you catch it in your
15:53
Speaker 1: left hand. And then now in your left hand, you
15:57
Speaker 1: toss it again, but this one should be slightly under
16:00
Speaker 1: the arc of the first one. Yeah, it's moving into
16:03
Speaker 1: counter clockwise motion, so that eventually, when you add more
16:07
Speaker 1: balls and you have them all in the air, they're
16:08
Speaker 1: not just bumping into each other at the same place.
16:11
Speaker 1: The one from your clockwise motion hand is going higher
16:16
Speaker 1: and the one from your counter clockwise motion hand is
16:19
Speaker 1: following just beneath the arc of the first ball. That's right,
16:23
Speaker 1: it's inside that ball's path. Yes. Uh, And you're gonna
16:27
Speaker 1: at first be very frustrated because you're gonna want to
16:30
Speaker 1: throw both of the balls at the same time when
16:33
Speaker 1: you're just starting out with the two, just to get
16:35
Speaker 1: used to the motion, because it's just that it's sort
16:39
Speaker 1: of like if you've never played drums, it's hard to
16:42
Speaker 1: make your right arm, your left arm, your right foot
16:44
Speaker 1: your left foot do different things. Yeah, it's a bit
16:47
Speaker 1: of a brain trick. I think some people catch on
16:49
Speaker 1: quicker than others, obviously, But um, you want the two
16:54
Speaker 1: tosses to be distinct and separate. And one way to
16:57
Speaker 1: do this, Strickland says, is to count your tall like
17:01
Speaker 1: toss one, toss two, toss one, toss two, and then
17:05
Speaker 1: your little brother is gonna say, what are you doing
17:06
Speaker 1: in there? Shut up? Nothing? Toss one right, Um, so
17:13
Speaker 1: we might as well add the second ball. Now, are
17:16
Speaker 1: you ready? We've just been with one ball because that one.
17:20
Speaker 1: Toss one is with your your clockwise hand. Toss two
17:24
Speaker 1: is with your counterclockwise hand. You catch the second one,
17:27
Speaker 1: your toss two with your clockwise hand. Toss one, toss two.
17:31
Speaker 1: You're still just with one ball. Here. Now we're gonna
17:33
Speaker 1: add too, So you have one in your left hand.
17:38
Speaker 1: You have when you're right we're doing a cascade, so
17:41
Speaker 1: with your right hand you're making a clockwise scooping motion. Yes, right,
17:48
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I got it right. I wish people could
17:54
Speaker 1: see this one. So this is delightful. So, um, we're
17:58
Speaker 1: gonna throw the first ball, and as it reaches a
18:01
Speaker 1: zenith just above our eyes, we're gonna throw the second
18:04
Speaker 1: one just underneath the arc of the first one. Yeah.
18:07
Speaker 1: You know it's funny, is it. People that were walking
18:10
Speaker 1: by my desk all day saw me doing the same thing,
18:12
Speaker 1: because you kind of do it to yourself to be like, okay,
18:14
Speaker 1: I get I get the motion. Yeah, Like what is
18:17
Speaker 1: struggling saying here? And we were using no bean bags, No,
18:20
Speaker 1: just imaginary ones. Exactly. I didn't drop a single one.
18:23
Speaker 1: I'm a great imaginary chuggler. So chuck um with with
18:27
Speaker 1: this toss one toss to Ultimately, what you're doing is,
18:31
Speaker 1: let's say it takes a second for you to throw
18:35
Speaker 1: one ball to your other hand. You throw the second
18:40
Speaker 1: ball about the halfway mark of that first throw. So
18:43
Speaker 1: every half second you're throwing a ball, is that the deal?
18:48
Speaker 1: If you're fast, you are. Ultimately you're doing that. But
18:52
Speaker 1: it doesn't even necessarily have to be a second. Let's
18:54
Speaker 1: say it takes two seconds for it to go up
18:58
Speaker 1: and then down. So every second you're throwing, every half
19:01
Speaker 1: of whatever beat it takes for the ball to be
19:05
Speaker 1: tossed and then come down, you're throwing a ball, right, okay, okay,
19:10
Speaker 1: Which means that when you finally had the third ball
19:12
Speaker 1: in there, whoa, you can which let's go ahead and
19:16
Speaker 1: do that now. Yeah, you want to hold two balls
19:18
Speaker 1: in one hand, obviously, and uh they suggest to hold
19:22
Speaker 1: the two and the dominant hand, although if you're having
19:25
Speaker 1: a problem um making that third toss, they say, sometimes
19:29
Speaker 1: switch it up and it may help to hold the
19:31
Speaker 1: two in the non domination because some people just want
19:34
Speaker 1: to hold one and you're really just throwing two with
19:37
Speaker 1: another one in your hand, or else you're throwing one
19:41
Speaker 1: and then two at once, which you don't want to
19:43
Speaker 1: do either. Yeah, you're gonna be frustrated. It takes a
19:46
Speaker 1: lot of time in practice. Like, don't give up like
19:48
Speaker 1: I did when you didn't master it in one hour. Right,
19:51
Speaker 1: if you think that you're supposed to be mastering this
19:53
Speaker 1: as we're speaking now, just covered like six months of work.
19:59
Speaker 1: Now what you dmaster in a minute, though, is just
20:02
Speaker 1: clicking on YouTube and watching videos of jugglers. Again, I'm
20:05
Speaker 1: almost done. Yeah, okay, So with this cascade, you've got
20:08
Speaker 1: the third ball, and just remember that every half of
20:12
Speaker 1: a beat that it takes, you're throwing a ball. You're
20:15
Speaker 1: constantly throwing a ball. The cool thing about the third
20:18
Speaker 1: one is when you start with two balls in one hand,
20:21
Speaker 1: you obviously start with that hand for tossing. You toss
20:25
Speaker 1: it up in the air. As that one arcs, you
20:27
Speaker 1: toss your left one, is that one actually toss your
20:29
Speaker 1: third one, And about the time you're tossing your third one,
20:33
Speaker 1: your first one's landing. That's right, and you've just done
20:37
Speaker 1: what's called a flash of juggling. That's right. And if
20:39
Speaker 1: you have trouble catching at first, uh, don't worry about it.
20:44
Speaker 1: They recommend just work on the tossing. And if you
20:47
Speaker 1: drop the ball, and it's not a big deal at first.
20:50
Speaker 1: You just want to get that hand motioned down and uh,
20:54
Speaker 1: learn basically the motion of the cascade. Uh. And again,
20:58
Speaker 1: stand in front of a wall because you're gonna find
20:59
Speaker 1: yourself chasing the bean bag forward because you're tossing it
21:03
Speaker 1: further away from you. But be careful. Let's start with chainsaws.
21:08
Speaker 1: Let's start with chainsaws, which, by the way, are modified
21:12
Speaker 1: their props. They're not using real chainsaws unless you're crazy. Well,
21:16
Speaker 1: they probably don't have the thing there like the Haunted
21:19
Speaker 1: House chainsaws. All right, well, after this break, we are
21:23
Speaker 1: going to get into variations on the cat scade. All right, Josh,
21:43
Speaker 1: you've got the cascade down, try the reverse cascade, which is,
21:48
Speaker 1: like I said, just the opposite direction clock I'm sorry,
21:51
Speaker 1: counterclockwise for your right hand, clockwise for your left. You're
21:55
Speaker 1: scooping your hands inward instead of outward. I'm sorry you're
21:59
Speaker 1: scooping oward instead of inward, right, which sounds weird, but
22:02
Speaker 1: if you just do without balls, if you just do
22:04
Speaker 1: your hands like that, it makes sense. Yeah, you can
22:07
Speaker 1: just kind of do it in your imagination and then
22:10
Speaker 1: just change directions. Yeah, and you wait a minute, I've
22:12
Speaker 1: seen guys do that, right, It will feel like natural. Yeah.
22:16
Speaker 1: The the only the only big differences here is with
22:19
Speaker 1: your the hand that you throw in a higher arc
22:24
Speaker 1: has changed, so your first throw is going to be
22:26
Speaker 1: at a lower arc than the second throws. And your
22:30
Speaker 1: hands are moving in different directions. So remember the hand
22:33
Speaker 1: that's going in counter clockwise motion throws in the higher arc.
22:38
Speaker 1: And that's that's called Josh's law. Okay. Um, So while
22:43
Speaker 1: you're after you've mastered this, which will take a while,
22:45
Speaker 1: as we've said a hundred fifty times, um, you can
22:48
Speaker 1: start doing little tricks uh thrown in there because just
22:52
Speaker 1: a regular juggler is gonna get very far in life.
22:54
Speaker 1: Where you really make your dough is when you start
22:57
Speaker 1: throwing in things like the half shower or the tennis move,
23:02
Speaker 1: which is uh. And you know, if you look all
23:04
Speaker 1: these up, it basically when you see jugglers just juggling
23:07
Speaker 1: regular and then there aren't does something crazy looking. That's
23:10
Speaker 1: what these moves are like we could describe them in detail,
23:13
Speaker 1: but it's really a lot cooler if you just go look.
23:16
Speaker 1: But when you're watching juggling, you go, oh, man, what
23:18
Speaker 1: was that? Look what that girl just did with her arm?
23:20
Speaker 1: That was maybe a tennis move or or Mills mess
23:24
Speaker 1: invented by juggler Steve Mills, not my uncle Steve Mills.
23:29
Speaker 1: I don't think you can juggle or Burke's barrage or
23:32
Speaker 1: ruben Stein's revenge. Pretty cool stuff. Yeah, these are all
23:36
Speaker 1: just complex arm crossing patterns as you're juggling. Different variations
23:41
Speaker 1: on that. Um. Another variation that I like, have you
23:45
Speaker 1: seen this before? Bounce juggling. It's my favorite thing. Rather
23:48
Speaker 1: than throwing the ball something my favorite juggling okay yah,
23:51
Speaker 1: rather than throwing the balls up in the air to
23:53
Speaker 1: toss juggle the you throw the balls down on the
23:56
Speaker 1: ground and bounce themthing. There's this kid I saw on YouTube.
23:59
Speaker 1: If you just search bounce juggling, it's the first video.
24:04
Speaker 1: It's the thing, the first thing that comes up on YouTube.
24:07
Speaker 1: That guy. He starts out in profile, yeah, and you're like,
24:10
Speaker 1: like his basement or whatever. Yeah, but then once he
24:12
Speaker 1: don't know how many balls he had going. He had
24:15
Speaker 1: quite a few. Yeah, And there's different ways of doing this.
24:17
Speaker 1: You can either lift bounce it by just sort of
24:19
Speaker 1: tossing it in the air and letting it bounce, or
24:21
Speaker 1: you can actually throw it at the ground, which is
24:23
Speaker 1: called a force bounce. And I even wrote the coolest
24:28
Speaker 1: two of them. Bounce juggling is really cool looking. Um.
24:32
Speaker 1: There's clawing, which is basically palms down juggling. Um, so
24:37
Speaker 1: it's just the regular cascade, but yeah, you're like snatching
24:40
Speaker 1: him out of the air. Yeah, and it's like that's
24:42
Speaker 1: cool looking. You can do that solely, or you can
24:44
Speaker 1: just throw in a claw every now and then just
24:46
Speaker 1: delight your nieces and nephews at Christmas. There is the
24:51
Speaker 1: chop yeah, which I think this one is where you
24:53
Speaker 1: grab a ball and then throw it underneath your other arm.
24:59
Speaker 1: You throw it upboard underneath your other arm. Yeah, it's
25:01
Speaker 1: like a diagonal quick diagonal move. And like I said
25:05
Speaker 1: it all you'll just notice if you're not a real juggler,
25:08
Speaker 1: if you're just watching in the park one day, they'll
25:11
Speaker 1: do some crazy arm thing. It's just I call it flair. Well,
25:15
Speaker 1: there is actually something called flair that's a type of
25:18
Speaker 1: juggling bartenders flare. Oh you know the movie Cocktail Bartender's
25:23
Speaker 1: Flair that was a type of juggling supposedly not a fan, Oh,
25:28
Speaker 1: I thought it was great. I haven't seen the movie. Yeah,
25:31
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. And are you a fan of
25:32
Speaker 1: bartending flair though? Hey, I'm a Jerry Thomas fan. So
25:37
Speaker 1: yes the answers, yes, all right, I like uh, I
25:41
Speaker 1: like a bartender to like grump at me and slide
25:43
Speaker 1: my whiskey down the bar. That's the best trick. I
25:45
Speaker 1: want to say. It's fine pretty much like all bartenders. Yeah,
25:48
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah they do. They're doing God's work. So
25:52
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland says, generally speaking, if you have an odd
25:56
Speaker 1: number of props, you're gonna require a criss cross pattern.
26:00
Speaker 1: If you have an even number of props, it's going
26:02
Speaker 1: to be two separate groups juggled in each hand. Yeah.
26:05
Speaker 1: I remember you said you could juggle with one hand
26:07
Speaker 1: kind of yea. So remember toss juggling is any kind
26:11
Speaker 1: of juggling where the more the objects, the number of
26:15
Speaker 1: objects you're juggling exceeds the number of hands are using.
26:18
Speaker 1: So if you use two balls in one hand, that's
26:22
Speaker 1: toss juggling, it still counts. So if you're if you're
26:25
Speaker 1: juggling four things, you're basically toss juggling separately with two
26:30
Speaker 1: hands to two different things. So two bowling pins in
26:34
Speaker 1: each hand is toss juggling. I don't know if you
26:38
Speaker 1: could do clubs with one hand, can you? Yea, yeah,
26:41
Speaker 1: you're do it in columns and yeah. Yeah, that's that's
26:46
Speaker 1: some talent right there. That's how that's how most people
26:48
Speaker 1: do clubs is like one hand. I really I've just
26:52
Speaker 1: seen like the Cascade mainly. Mhm no, no, everytime I've
26:57
Speaker 1: ever seen clubs, it's like one handed to one handed juggling.
27:03
Speaker 1: You need to get out more. I guess I need
27:05
Speaker 1: to go to the park. Yeah that they hang out
27:08
Speaker 1: there along with the Hackey sackers. Um yeah, well like
27:13
Speaker 1: you mentioned then, I guess if you're going to be
27:14
Speaker 1: juggling with one hand, you've got the fountain, which is
27:18
Speaker 1: the circular pattern, like if I had two balls and
27:20
Speaker 1: I was just throwing them in a circle, or the
27:23
Speaker 1: straight up and down which is the column right, and
27:26
Speaker 1: that can be either synchronous or asynchronous. If you look
27:29
Speaker 1: up synchronous column juggler on YouTube, they're gonna be doing
27:32
Speaker 1: the exact same thing at the same time with both hands,
27:35
Speaker 1: which is pretty neat. I think asynchronous may be a
27:38
Speaker 1: little tougher though, just judging by the looks of it. Well,
27:40
Speaker 1: strickling makes the point that since you most people start
27:43
Speaker 1: out learning to juggle asynchronous lee, which is like that
27:47
Speaker 1: cascade is asynchronous. The hands aren't moving at the same time,
27:50
Speaker 1: they're moving at opposite beats. Um that it's it's actually
27:54
Speaker 1: easier for people to do that to do asynchronous makes sense.
27:59
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. Even handed juggling, what is that called.
28:04
Speaker 1: That's the one thing in juggling that doesn't have a
28:07
Speaker 1: name where you're just juggling four things at once, or
28:12
Speaker 1: like an even number of things, and you're using both
28:14
Speaker 1: your hands, but you're juggling two clubs. There's no name
28:18
Speaker 1: for it. It's driving me crazy. I'm sure there's a
28:21
Speaker 1: name for it. Well, I don't know what it is.
28:24
Speaker 1: You should name it after you at any at any term.
28:27
Speaker 1: Oh no, here it is numbers juggling. Okay, okay, So
28:32
Speaker 1: when you're doing numbers juggling, you uh, an even number
28:36
Speaker 1: of numbers juggling, you're just doing it asynchronous ly, probably
28:41
Speaker 1: to start. Okay, that was my point for my little tirade.
28:44
Speaker 1: I wonder how many angry jugglers we have right now, Oh,
28:47
Speaker 1: probably a lot. Uh. There's a couple of other kinds
28:52
Speaker 1: of juggling that are fun to watch, cigar box juggling
28:54
Speaker 1: and shaker cup. Um. You've probably tried the cigar box
28:58
Speaker 1: thing with two boxes or whatever. And that's when you
29:00
Speaker 1: have any number of boxes. You're holding one in each hand,
29:04
Speaker 1: but then you have quite a few in the middle,
29:07
Speaker 1: and you'll toss them up and flip them and then
29:09
Speaker 1: catch them between the other two boxes. Yeah, it's pretty neat.
29:12
Speaker 1: And the same sort of thing goes with the shaker cup. Um.
29:16
Speaker 1: Your cups are nesting inside one another, though, like cocktail cups,
29:20
Speaker 1: and you're you know, tossing those up and catching them.
29:24
Speaker 1: And they probably was born out of bar tender flare. Yeah,
29:27
Speaker 1: probably so all right, we mentioned clubs um as an alternative.
29:33
Speaker 1: They look like the standard club looks sort of like
29:35
Speaker 1: a modified bowling pin. Yeah, like a slim svelt bowling pin. Yeah,
29:40
Speaker 1: a sexy bowling pin. Uh. They are European and American versions,
29:43
Speaker 1: and I think the European version is slimmer and sexier
29:47
Speaker 1: than the American go figure. And um, I think they're
29:51
Speaker 1: a little more popular as well. Right, and the larger
29:55
Speaker 1: and is meant to fit into a Champagne coup the Europe.
30:00
Speaker 1: That's pretty neat. Uh. And I think you said that
30:03
Speaker 1: clubs also if you want to do like knives and torches,
30:07
Speaker 1: they call that a club as well. Yeah. I think
30:09
Speaker 1: there's like a few broad categories of props and the
30:14
Speaker 1: clubs that kind of thing, and then they fall under
30:16
Speaker 1: those subcategories like axes and torches andies out the n uh.
30:21
Speaker 1: And then there's ring juggling. Of course they're very stable,
30:25
Speaker 1: um because of their gyroscopic properties, and so you don't
30:29
Speaker 1: even mention. Well, the point is though you can juggle
30:34
Speaker 1: a lot more rings at once maybe than you might
30:37
Speaker 1: be able to juggle a ball. Yeah, and that's pretty
30:40
Speaker 1: impressive to see as well. Yeah, and then there's this
30:42
Speaker 1: thing I found today called contact ring juggling. That's when
30:45
Speaker 1: you're not throwing rings, uh you really you're rolling them along. Well.
30:51
Speaker 1: Now that's contact juggling with like a ball is when
30:54
Speaker 1: you're like doing the Harlem globe trotter thing and rolling
30:57
Speaker 1: it down your arm over your body and stuff. It's
30:59
Speaker 1: pretty cool. But the contact ring juggling is just just
31:01
Speaker 1: look it up. It's really cool. It's like, I mean,
31:04
Speaker 1: there's all different shapes, but the ones I've seen are
31:06
Speaker 1: mainly a figure eight um, and you're just manipulating them
31:10
Speaker 1: such that they look like it looks like an illusion,
31:14
Speaker 1: almost like one will be stationary and it looks like
31:18
Speaker 1: the other ring is circling around it. Well it is,
31:21
Speaker 1: but uh, just take my word for Okay, contact ring
31:24
Speaker 1: juggling everyone go check it out. Very popular in Asia.
31:27
Speaker 1: It looks like they've mastered it. Okay, very cool. So
31:33
Speaker 1: let's see. You got a buddy and you both like
31:35
Speaker 1: to go to the park. Well, this is a big one.
31:37
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. It's a thing. You've seen it. Yeah.
31:40
Speaker 1: Stuggling makes the point that juggling is kind of a
31:43
Speaker 1: social thing populated by social creatures. Like there's lots of
31:47
Speaker 1: juggling clubs and that kind of stuff, and that um
31:50
Speaker 1: where you know, you and I think of juggling. It's
31:53
Speaker 1: like a solitary activity. No way. Man, If you get
31:56
Speaker 1: too good jugglers together, it becomes a feast for the
31:59
Speaker 1: mind and the eyes. We could add this to our
32:01
Speaker 1: live show Juggling us juggling, Yeah, all right, and tandem.
32:05
Speaker 1: We have a lot of practice to do because what
32:08
Speaker 1: we could do Josh on stage, if we put a
32:11
Speaker 1: lot of work into it, is something called stealing and replacing.
32:15
Speaker 1: And that is when you basically will go up. If
32:20
Speaker 1: you're juggling four clubs, I'll go and steal one, or
32:25
Speaker 1: maybe steal two, and then three and then four, and
32:27
Speaker 1: then I'm the one juggling. But the juggling never stops, right,
32:32
Speaker 1: It looks as as a seamless synchronous pattern uninterrupted. If
32:37
Speaker 1: you're just like stop another person from juggling, it's just
32:40
Speaker 1: being a jerk. Yeah. The point of it is that juggling. Yeah,
32:44
Speaker 1: I guess so, But you're still juggling the whole time
32:46
Speaker 1: you're doing that. That's right. The whole point of of
32:49
Speaker 1: juggling with two people and like stealing and replacing is
32:52
Speaker 1: that the balls. If you were able to ask these
32:56
Speaker 1: juggled balls what they think is going on, they you
33:00
Speaker 1: would say nothing, it's the same thing. We're doing the
33:02
Speaker 1: same pattern. Say, Chuck, hands were a little sweatier, right,
33:07
Speaker 1: but what really happened was I replaced you. Yeah, that's
33:12
Speaker 1: one way to do it, or we could stand in
33:14
Speaker 1: front of each other like four ft apart and uh,
33:18
Speaker 1: you know, we're juggling the clubs and then tossing each
33:21
Speaker 1: other the clubs and we've got our little uh post stuff.
33:24
Speaker 1: You should now act all worked out? Yeah, what's cool?
33:26
Speaker 1: So with stealing replacing, with with juggling balls, like I
33:29
Speaker 1: would stand facing opposite you and just kind of grab
33:32
Speaker 1: yours like you said, and just ultimately like take over
33:35
Speaker 1: your catches, and then I would be juggling and then
33:37
Speaker 1: you could steal it back and we could go back
33:39
Speaker 1: and forth. And definitely with clubs, I would be standing
33:42
Speaker 1: next to you and just basically kind of push you
33:44
Speaker 1: out of the way. Well that's if you're stealing and replacing.
33:47
Speaker 1: If we're passing, then we're standing in front of each
33:49
Speaker 1: other and just throwing them back and forth to each other.
33:52
Speaker 1: And there's actually a pretty established way of um passing
33:55
Speaker 1: where it's called the three three ten where we do
33:58
Speaker 1: three pass is where every third toss I passed to
34:02
Speaker 1: you and you catch it, so you know we're in
34:05
Speaker 1: tandem and everything's going right, and then after three of those,
34:09
Speaker 1: you do every second toss. Then after three of those
34:11
Speaker 1: you do. Every toss, you toss another one, and then
34:14
Speaker 1: by that last one, we're just like on fire, just
34:18
Speaker 1: throwing throwing ones back and forth between ourselves. Yeah, and
34:22
Speaker 1: we did mention combat juggling. That was not a joke.
34:25
Speaker 1: It is a thing, and I've seen I looked up
34:27
Speaker 1: these little competitions. It's when it's sort of like dodgebhile.
34:31
Speaker 1: You get, you know, ten jugglers on a stage and
34:34
Speaker 1: they all start juggling, and they all start to try
34:36
Speaker 1: and thwart the other jugglers juggle while maintaining their's. So
34:43
Speaker 1: I would go up and throw mine in the air
34:45
Speaker 1: and try and knock yours out of your hand. But
34:48
Speaker 1: you can't, you know, get too crazy because you've gotta
34:50
Speaker 1: still juggle or else you're out. The way we've been
34:53
Speaker 1: describing this one, it feels like we've been replaced by
34:57
Speaker 1: impostors who listened to the show a lot and didn't
35:00
Speaker 1: know what topic to pick. Isn't that weird? I'm myself?
35:05
Speaker 1: Are you yourself? No, I'm you? Oh god, weird. Well,
35:10
Speaker 1: we'll get to the bottom of this right after these
35:12
Speaker 1: messages and that Chuck comes to the darkest time. This
35:26
Speaker 1: is Josh actual. Yeah, Okay, yeah, I'm replaced. I replaced
35:31
Speaker 1: the replacement. Um Nope, still here saying bizarre stuff like
35:36
Speaker 1: I replaced the replacement. And we're talking about the physics
35:40
Speaker 1: of juggling fun fun, which is it's actually kind of straightforward.
35:44
Speaker 1: It's stuff you would think of, but it's nice to
35:47
Speaker 1: put it into terms where we can say that we
35:50
Speaker 1: covered the physics of juggling. Like. So, the main factor
35:54
Speaker 1: acting on juggling, probably the most important part in the
35:58
Speaker 1: whole thing, is our good friend gravity. That's right. Uh.
36:03
Speaker 1: An acceleration due to gravity specifically is nine point eight
36:08
Speaker 1: m slash s to the second power, meaning nine point
36:11
Speaker 1: eight meters per second every second. So when you drop something,
36:15
Speaker 1: speed is going to increase by nine point eight meters
36:18
Speaker 1: per second. And don't bother us, we're not including any
36:21
Speaker 1: kind of error resistance. We're in a vacuum to demonstrate
36:24
Speaker 1: all of our physics were always in a vacuum. Our
36:28
Speaker 1: little stuff you should know, vacuum part next to the
36:30
Speaker 1: way back machine. Um. So it's a constant acceleration and
36:36
Speaker 1: because of that, the only way to slow down your
36:38
Speaker 1: pattern is by throwing something higher. Yeah, And so the
36:41
Speaker 1: more things that you add into your pattern, the higher
36:45
Speaker 1: you're going to have to throw because you have a
36:48
Speaker 1: constant acceleration downward acceleration after your toss um So that
36:54
Speaker 1: means you have to open up your pattern by throwing
36:56
Speaker 1: it higher up. The more stuff you have, because you
36:58
Speaker 1: simply would not have enough time to throw x amount
37:01
Speaker 1: of balls in the air. I mean, you can increase
37:03
Speaker 1: your hand speed somewhat, but at a certain point you
37:06
Speaker 1: just can't do it exactly. They're gonna be bean bags everywhere.
37:09
Speaker 1: Another um factor is that it's not really a factor.
37:13
Speaker 1: It's more of a fact. When you're throwing your balls,
37:16
Speaker 1: you're throwing them in a parabola, which means that the only, uh,
37:20
Speaker 1: the only velocity that counts is the is the vertical velocity,
37:26
Speaker 1: the vertical acceleration. When you throw something up, you're exerting
37:30
Speaker 1: your own force upward and what's it peaks gravity is
37:37
Speaker 1: pushing it back downward. That's right. It's gonna have a
37:39
Speaker 1: horror zonal velocity, but that's going to be constant, so
37:43
Speaker 1: there's no force acting on it unless there's no change
37:45
Speaker 1: in velocity. I guess with the column it's pretty much
37:47
Speaker 1: straight up and down. But generally speaking, you're gonna be
37:51
Speaker 1: have both. Yeah, it's moving horizontally, but there's no force
37:55
Speaker 1: pushing it. There's no change in I'm sorry, there's no
37:58
Speaker 1: change in acceleration. It's constant exactly, Okay. And then of
38:02
Speaker 1: course the mass of your props also count. Yeah, which
38:05
Speaker 1: is why if you've ever seen the old trick where
38:08
Speaker 1: someone's doing a bowling ball with a tennis ball with
38:11
Speaker 1: a club, it's super impressive because it's much much easier
38:16
Speaker 1: to juggle things with the same mass. Yeah, because you're
38:19
Speaker 1: just making the same motion over and over again. When
38:23
Speaker 1: you are juggling things with three different maths, meaning they
38:26
Speaker 1: have three different um, three different amounts of inertia or
38:30
Speaker 1: they require more different amounts of force to overcome inertiae um.
38:36
Speaker 1: Then yes, like you said, that's kind of impressive. It
38:39
Speaker 1: just requires that much more mental acuity. That's right. Is
38:44
Speaker 1: that all the physics. Now we get into the math.
38:47
Speaker 1: I know this actually kind of interested me a little bit,
38:50
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it is math and I'm well
38:52
Speaker 1: known to not love it. But um. There was a
38:56
Speaker 1: mathematician who named Claude Shannon who posed a juggling theorem
39:02
Speaker 1: um that basically describes the relationship of of a cask
39:08
Speaker 1: or well, just of a juggle, right, keep saying juggle?
39:11
Speaker 1: Is that a thing? Did I make it up? No?
39:13
Speaker 1: I think it's a thing. I think it's called something
39:15
Speaker 1: else though, a juggle. Yeah, Oh, a flash, a flash,
39:20
Speaker 1: there you go. That's a round of juggling, one single
39:23
Speaker 1: round where all three, year, all five, or all seven
39:26
Speaker 1: of your balls have been tossed once at least. But
39:28
Speaker 1: to the layman, it's called a juggle, right, so everyone
39:31
Speaker 1: knows what I mean. Uh. And this is in parentheses
39:35
Speaker 1: F plus d um, and then that would be times
39:38
Speaker 1: eight right outside the parentheses equals v plus d in
39:42
Speaker 1: prinheses times in when F is the time the balls
39:45
Speaker 1: in the air, D is the time as a ball
39:47
Speaker 1: in the hand, H is a number of hands, V
39:49
Speaker 1: is time that the hand is empty, and in as
39:52
Speaker 1: a number of balls being juggled. So basically what he's
39:55
Speaker 1: saying is, if you add together the amount of time
39:58
Speaker 1: the ball spends in the air plus the amount of
40:00
Speaker 1: time it spends in the hand, right, which is the
40:04
Speaker 1: full amount of time that that ball exists during a flash,
40:07
Speaker 1: multiply that times your hands to the number of hands.
40:10
Speaker 1: That's gonna equal the time your hand is empty, uh,
40:14
Speaker 1: plus the time the ball spends in the hand times
40:17
Speaker 1: the number of balls being juggled. I saw no reason
40:22
Speaker 1: for this equation whatsoever. Like at first I was like, oh,
40:26
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty cool, and then I spelled it out
40:28
Speaker 1: to myself in a it's like the amount of time
40:31
Speaker 1: the balls out of the hand plus the amount of
40:33
Speaker 1: time the balls in the hand times the number of
40:36
Speaker 1: balls the what. I didn't understand what the point of
40:41
Speaker 1: it was. So Claude Shannon, please get in touch with us.
40:46
Speaker 1: Well that's why he did it so people would write
40:49
Speaker 1: stuff about it. And well, the thing is, I guess
40:51
Speaker 1: the problem is that it says Shannon build the juggling robots.
40:54
Speaker 1: So I guess this formula allows robotics to happen. Yeah,
40:58
Speaker 1: and I saw the juggling robots, different robots that toss
41:02
Speaker 1: things and catch things, right, it's kind of cool. Okay. Yeah.
41:04
Speaker 1: So if if that's the point of the Shannon theorem,
41:08
Speaker 1: is that what that's called, sure the Claude's Claude's law,
41:15
Speaker 1: then then I understand it. And I take it back.
41:19
Speaker 1: What if there's some Cloud's law that's something awful that
41:23
Speaker 1: we don't know about. I hope that's the case. And
41:27
Speaker 1: then there's site swapping um, which is another math application.
41:32
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a musical akin to a musical
41:35
Speaker 1: score to a musician, as a form of notation describing
41:40
Speaker 1: the juggling pattern, and is what jugglers use two UM. Basically,
41:45
Speaker 1: if you were going to write out your juggling pattern
41:47
Speaker 1: and send it to your buddy, you wouldn't say, take
41:49
Speaker 1: your right hand and blah blah blah. You would use
41:51
Speaker 1: numbers to represent it. Which this actually does make sense. Yeah,
41:55
Speaker 1: this made a little more sense to me for sure. Yeah.
41:57
Speaker 1: And um, So, like a normal eball cascade is three
42:01
Speaker 1: three three. Each throw takes three beats, a zero is
42:05
Speaker 1: arrest on an empty hand, and a one is handoff
42:09
Speaker 1: from one to the other. And you can actually if
42:11
Speaker 1: you add them all together and take the average, you
42:13
Speaker 1: can tell how many balls are in that pattern. Right,
42:16
Speaker 1: So in a three three three you have those together,
42:18
Speaker 1: that's nine divided by three because there's three different numerals
42:21
Speaker 1: and you've got three or four five one four one
42:24
Speaker 1: is also three, right matth that sounds pretty difficult the foe,
42:30
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, the three three three makes intuitive sense
42:34
Speaker 1: to me, but that's you know, the four one five
42:40
Speaker 1: four five one four one. That's tough. Oh, man, is
42:44
Speaker 1: anyone still listening? Noo? Can you hear the echo? I can. Uh.
42:49
Speaker 1: If you look at a juggler, you might notice that
42:52
Speaker 1: they're probably not looking at their hands like at the catching.
42:55
Speaker 1: The catching is sort of automatic. Uh, they're kind of
42:57
Speaker 1: looking sort of up at the arc um. And they
43:01
Speaker 1: have done experiments to see where um your eyes go
43:05
Speaker 1: um A. A. M. Van Santvoord and Peter J. Beck
43:09
Speaker 1: did some experiments that actually found that while the peak
43:13
Speaker 1: is important, if you see the first one hundred milliseconds
43:16
Speaker 1: of the flight path, then you can juggle successfully. Yeah,
43:20
Speaker 1: which is pretty impressive. They found that jugglers are relying
43:22
Speaker 1: more on feel, sure then and then vision. That's why
43:26
Speaker 1: you can juggle blindfolded if you're really good. Supposedly some
43:29
Speaker 1: people can. I've seen it. Oh yeah, yeah, I bet
43:32
Speaker 1: Brandon Ross can. I could see that dude is talented, So, Chuck,
43:37
Speaker 1: we could probably keep talking about juggling for the next
43:39
Speaker 1: five years because there's a lot to it. Yeah, man,
43:42
Speaker 1: this is just a primer. Hopefully you guys are inspired,
43:46
Speaker 1: or at least we're inspired. In the first maybe twenty minutes,
43:48
Speaker 1: the good part of this episode to go out and
43:51
Speaker 1: um and learn to juggle. I know I was, And
43:54
Speaker 1: while we hate ourselves, we don't hate ourselves that much.
43:58
Speaker 1: We're gonna end this one ye. So we think that
44:02
Speaker 1: you should learn about juggling. And you can start by
44:06
Speaker 1: typing that word in the search bar at how staff
44:08
Speaker 1: works dot com. Since I said search far, it's time
44:11
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Uh. This is a really touching story,
44:17
Speaker 1: oddly enough, from Jennifer Grace. She's an actor in New
44:20
Speaker 1: York City who UM played a very long run of
44:24
Speaker 1: our Town on stage and had to go there without
44:27
Speaker 1: her husband at first because they were in Chicago and
44:30
Speaker 1: stuff you should know turned out to be the thing
44:32
Speaker 1: that linked them together before he finally moved to New
44:36
Speaker 1: York to join her. UM. They've been together for thirteen
44:38
Speaker 1: years now and they had their son, Emmett last fall,
44:40
Speaker 1: and a month before Emmett turned one. UH Tom, her
44:43
Speaker 1: husband was admitted to the hospital and has been there
44:46
Speaker 1: ever since. UM. He has a very rare issue with
44:50
Speaker 1: his bone marrow that they finally UH diagnosed as a
44:54
Speaker 1: plastic anemia. So basically he has no immune system, which
44:59
Speaker 1: means you can't risk getting sick which means her son,
45:02
Speaker 1: their son, can't even visit him, which is just unbelievably sad. Um.
45:07
Speaker 1: She can visit wearing mask and gloves and gown, but
45:11
Speaker 1: they can't even touch each other, the husband and wife.
45:14
Speaker 1: And this came on suddenly too right, Yeah, she said,
45:17
Speaker 1: it's pretty much the worst thing ever. I mean, they
45:18
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time even diagnosing this thing before
45:22
Speaker 1: they can I know, it's just so terrible, and they're
45:24
Speaker 1: just really really great people. Um, she said, Uh, it
45:29
Speaker 1: looks like we will be going forward though with a
45:31
Speaker 1: bone marrow transplant because he has a brother who is
45:34
Speaker 1: a match and he does have a good chance of
45:35
Speaker 1: recovering with with this bone marrow transplant and a round
45:39
Speaker 1: of chemo followed by this transplant in the new year.
45:42
Speaker 1: She says, There's not a lot that I can give
45:44
Speaker 1: him by way of a Christmas present this year, given
45:46
Speaker 1: the circumstances, but I'm hoping that perhaps you would give
45:48
Speaker 1: him a shout out on an episode. It's been a
45:51
Speaker 1: very special shared experience for us. It really brightened his day,
45:55
Speaker 1: so Tom dude. They also sent me a video of
45:58
Speaker 1: them playing a song together in the kitchen doing uh
46:03
Speaker 1: Springsteen song and it was just like they're the cutest
46:06
Speaker 1: couple ever and they're really great, and UM, I'm gonna
46:09
Speaker 1: plug their go fund me site because um, they didn't
46:12
Speaker 1: even ask me to. That's why I'm plugging it. Uh.
46:14
Speaker 1: It is go fund me dot com slash F seven
46:18
Speaker 1: five nine z G and that will help out offset
46:23
Speaker 1: um their hospital builds a little bit. And there's really
46:26
Speaker 1: nice folks. Since Tom get better soon, man, I hope
46:28
Speaker 1: that operation goes great. Yeah, Tom, here's to you, buddy.
46:32
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, and keep us keep us posted, you guys. Yeah,
46:36
Speaker 1: please do, Jennifer, that would be great. Uh. And we
46:38
Speaker 1: should totally post that go fund me stuff too, Yeah
46:41
Speaker 1: on social Yeah, yeah, we'll do that. Well. If you
46:44
Speaker 1: have a great story about how Chuck and I brought
46:47
Speaker 1: you together with your s O or helped you through
46:50
Speaker 1: a rough time or did anything good, we want to
46:53
Speaker 1: hear about it. You can tweet to us at s
46:55
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
46:58
Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can
47:01
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
47:04
Speaker 1: First dot com and it's always join us at home
47:07
Speaker 1: on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For
47:14
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
47:17
Speaker 1: how stuff works? Dot com