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SYSK Selects: Juggling: What the Heck · Stuff You Should Know

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