SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: Hula-Hoops: The Toy That's A Shape

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Speaker 1 Okay, it's Joshi again, and up next on our playlist is our episode on hula hoops.

Speaker 1 This is a Stuff You Should Know classic, and hula hoops, for those of you who don't know, were this hoop that you kept going around your waist by making a hula motion.

Speaker 1 It's one of the more appropriately named toys of all time, and it was a huge craze back in the 20th century.

Speaker 1 So, get your time machine, leather helmet, and goggles on, and let's go back to the hula hoop.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

Speaker 1 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.

Speaker 1 And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. How's it going? It's fine.
Great.

Speaker 1 How's it going with you? Good. Jerry's distracting me a little bit because all I see in my peripheral vision is her practicing her new hula fire dance routine.
It's pretty dangerous.

Speaker 1 It's dangerous, but

Speaker 1 it's interesting to see out of the corner of one's eye. It really is.
Yes. Performance art.
Performance hula art.

Speaker 1 Can you hula hoop? I cannot, sir. I'm too self-conscious to

Speaker 1 even try it. Yeah.
It's a grown man, 44-year-old man, hula hooping. Plus, when I do it,

Speaker 1 like, as I rotate my hips, it makes the sound of the gyrate.

Speaker 1 Rotate my hips. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It makes the sound of like almost congealed jello just slopping around in a bowl. You know what I mean? I don't want to make that sound.
Yeah, but I did see at

Speaker 1 the East Atlanta Strut Festivals, one of Atlanta's many great neighborhood festivals. I believe the strut, to me, is known for having the better music of most of the festivals.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And our buddy Craig Johnson's band played. Space Knife?

Speaker 1 Not Space Knife. Okay.
This one was...

Speaker 1 I can't remember the name of this band, but that band is no longer. Now he's got a new band even.
That guy is always coming up with new stuff. You can never pin him down.

Speaker 1 He's too good. You should check out Space Knife, though, people, on the web.
You can find it. It's good.
It was in our TV show, too. Yeah, that's his alter ego.

Speaker 1 But anyway, Craig's band was playing, and I was pretty hula naive, hoop naive

Speaker 1 at this point, and a few years ago. And there was this lady doing

Speaker 1 a hula routine to his band playing, and I videoed it. It was so awesome.
So she was hoop dancing? Hoop dancing, yeah. Like

Speaker 1 the neck, the arms, the legs, moving around with it, like supremely talented hoop purr. Yeah, if you go onto the web and type in hoop dancing, it's going to bring up some pretty impressive videos.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it's quite a workout, I could tell. And we'll get to that, but just watching her, I got tired.
Right. And so I drank another beer and just listened to music.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And pretended you were hula hooping in your head. Yeah.
You're like, I'm so good at this in my head. But I was like, man, that's a thing again? I had no idea, but it's a big thing.
Yeah. hula hooping.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But it's been around for a while.
Yes, it has.

Speaker 1 For example, Chuck, did you know, as Robert points out, Robert Lamb wrote this article from Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And he says that the hula hoop has been around in some form or fashion since before most of the world's religions. Wow.
That's really saying something. That is saying something.

Speaker 1 So let's get in the Wayback Machine. Oh, we're going way back, aren't we?

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's go back to 1000 BC, my friend. We're in Egypt, and there are little children, Egyptian children, with dried-up grapevines they've made into hoops, and they're playing with them.

Speaker 1 And there's some Egyptian who's like, get off of my patch of sand, kids. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, instead of a lawn? Sure, I get it. That was good.
That was all right.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 they no doubt use them in similar ways that we did today, but one thing they did, which was a big sporting thing to do

Speaker 1 for a long time, which I don't get personally, the fun value that is, is using a stick to push a hula hoop down the road.

Speaker 1 I think the fun in it is that the hula hoop as it's traveling down the road, which does seem to be the oldest use of the hoop as a playtime activity, right? Yeah. It wants to fall.

Speaker 1 It wants to fall over. Sure.
Right?

Speaker 1 So if you can keep it going, then there's probably a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction that you can carry all the way to bedtime with and maybe have good dreams because of.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't even see if you had a plastic polyethylene hula hoop, the modern hoop,

Speaker 1 I don't see how a stick like

Speaker 1 how you would even push it.

Speaker 1 You would want a stick with maybe...

Speaker 1 Like a fork?

Speaker 1 No, probably something like a stick with a big wad of chewed bubblegum on it to just have some sort of point of contact.

Speaker 1 Because as we'll see when we talk about hula hoop physics, friction plays a big part in making hula hoops hula.

Speaker 1 Hoop. Yes.
Around the waist, that is. Well, in this case as well, when the stick makes contact with the hoop, you're using friction to push it along.
Yeah. Good point.
So I see your point.

Speaker 1 Like, if you're going to use a stick on a, like a

Speaker 1 plastic hula hoop, it's going to slide off. It's going to want to.
Maybe it scares me. That's why I think it's dumb.
Maybe I would be made a fool of by the hoop. So I'm intimidating.

Speaker 1 Maybe at first, but Chuck, you would have to hang in there and stick with it. Yeah.
And pretty soon you'd be rolling hoops like an Egyptian kid. Yeah.
Like an ancient Egyptian child. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hoop rolling was a big deal throughout ancient Greece as well and Rome. They decorated them with bells and things and toys.

Speaker 1 Fifth century BC, there's you ever heard of Ganymede? Of course. Ganymede? Ganymede.
Ganymede. He was a handsome hero.
Oh, he was.

Speaker 1 The handsomest, supposedly. There's an old fifth century BC BC urn of him

Speaker 1 where he's holding a rooster that was apparently a gift from Zeus. I think, yeah.
And a hoop, a hula hoop. Clearly a hula hoop.
And apparently this discovery,

Speaker 1 I'm not sure why it's called the Berlin painter urn, but it is. Okay.

Speaker 1 Again, no idea. But

Speaker 1 apparently they said, well, I wonder if hoops played a role in the earliest Olympics. And I guess they discredited that idea now.

Speaker 1 But for a while, because of this urn, this picture of Ganymede with a hoop,

Speaker 1 they wondered.

Speaker 1 Was it a sport? Yeah. An Olympic sport.
But the Greeks supposedly did use hoops for physical fitness, as like a physical activity, in very much the same way it's become popular today.

Speaker 1 I would imagine

Speaker 1 an Olympic hula hooper would be sort of like the,

Speaker 1 you know, the

Speaker 1 what's the sport, the curler of today?

Speaker 1 You kind of. Like in ancient Greece, like, hey, what do you, I throw the hammer? What do you do? I'm a hula hooper.
Although, I would guess it'd probably be more akin to the hula hoopers of today.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the hoop roller is what the sport would have been.

Speaker 1 That'd be more like curling. Right.
Hula hooping? That's tough, man. It is tough.

Speaker 1 What else? The ancient Britons, they had a game called, a battle game called Kill the Hoop. Yeah, I like this one.
When they would roll the hoop and try to throw a spear through it. Yep.

Speaker 1 Pretty neat and dangerous.

Speaker 1 And apparently they also it in the hula method and it would people would get injured. Yeah, it's there was a 15th 14th or 15th century.
14th. Was it the 1400s or the 14th century? 14th century.

Speaker 1 C hula hoop craze in Britain. Isn't that bizarre? That is weird.
And yeah, people were getting injured. There was a proclamation by the early physicians.

Speaker 1 They would pull up their crow's mask, their plague mask, just long enough to be like, stay away from hula hoops, steer clear clear of those things.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the warning was hoops kill was, I guess, what was posted on the church door. And this was like in addition to being in the way of a spear that was being thrown at a rolling hoop.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like this is just from hula hooping. I would stay away from the hoops altogether if I was an ancient Briton.
Yeah, because really if you're like an ancient Briton,

Speaker 1 you're going from like zero to sixty as far as like physical fitness goes. Sure.
Once you're hula hooping. Oh, yeah.
You know? Just because you're not just sitting around eating

Speaker 1 lamb's brains. Right.
Yeah. Drinking mead.

Speaker 1 What else? The Native Americans have a long culture of using the hoop. Yeah.
In New Mexico, the Taos

Speaker 1 Pueblo people,

Speaker 1 they use them in ritual dances,

Speaker 1 private healing ceremonies. Yeah.
And did you look up this chunky thing?

Speaker 1 No. Did you find the chunky reference? I did.
The Cahokian Native Americans.

Speaker 1 That was an unusual way to pronounce that. Well, how would you say it? Cahokian?

Speaker 1 I think in Native American it would be Cahokian. Okay.

Speaker 1 That's fine.

Speaker 1 Uh near St. Louis apparently is where they they played this game Chunky, which I just had to look it up'cause a game called Chunky

Speaker 1 with an EY.

Speaker 1 And um from what I saw, it was more of a a small stone disc than like a hula hoop

Speaker 1 looking thing.

Speaker 1 And you would it was was like kill the hoop, though, in Britain, right? Yeah, they would throw a stick, apparently. It looked like a combination of like

Speaker 1 bocce

Speaker 1 and kill the hoop. Weird.
Because I think they would try and throw the spear where the disc would eventually land and the closest to the disc, one.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's so like they're predicting where the hoop would fall? I guess. This makes sense.
Although that's not really like bocce at all.

Speaker 1 I mean, I get there's a proximity element that's bocce-esque. Yes, yeah, well put.
Um, but I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Like, once I saw that and saw pictures, I was like, I don't even know if this should be in this article. Yeah, because it's like a small donut.

Speaker 1 That's a hoop of sorts. I guess so.
It's a stretch, if you ask me. But it was a big spectator sport.
Like, 50-acre stadiums of people would watch this. Wow.
Would go to chunky games.

Speaker 1 And so chunky matches. So there were chunky matches in Cahokia.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the Pueblo used their, I think, as you said, they used hoops, and they weren't the only ones.

Speaker 1 There were other tribes from all over North America and Mesoamerica, I believe, that used hoops for dancing.

Speaker 1 And apparently it was in 1930, a guy named Tony Whitecloud, who was a Yemez Pueblo down in New Mexico,

Speaker 1 did like a hoop dance in public and basically brought it back. Oh, yeah.
Like it had been virtually virtually lost to the ages, at least as far as the average American was concerned. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Most people didn't know this was a thing. Luckily, Tony Whitecloud was like, check this out.
Did an awesome hoop dance. And then by 1991, there were national hoop dancing competitions in New Mexico.

Speaker 1 And they're a big deal still to this day. Yeah, of course.
I think. Did he kick off the American craze? Yes.
No.

Speaker 1 He didn't. He was strictly Native

Speaker 1 hoop dancing. Gotcha.
Not hula hooping. Okay, so let's go to...
Well, let's take a break, actually, because this is the big revelation here. That's right.

Speaker 2 Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously.

Speaker 9 On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI.

Speaker 12 It all starts with your prompt.

Speaker 14 From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work.

Speaker 10 It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the S ⁇ P 500.

Speaker 19 Then you can invest in a few clicks.

Speaker 20 Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's.

Speaker 21 Go to public.com slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

Speaker 10 That's public.com slash podcast.

Speaker 22 Paid for by public investing. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc.

Speaker 23 member FINRA and SIPC.

Speaker 22 Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor.

Speaker 17 Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool.

Speaker 18 Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.

Speaker 5 Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures.

Speaker 1 You know, everyone living with a rare autoimmune condition has their own story to tell.

Speaker 1 And that's why in season five of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio Production, in partnership with Argenix, you'll hear powerful, real-life perspectives.

Speaker 1 That's right. This podcast explores stories of what life is really like with MG or CIDP.

Speaker 1 Host Martine Hackett sits down with people who faced it all, the early signs and symptoms, the search for answers, and the strength it takes to keep moving forward.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and this season, the stories go even deeper, showing us what resilience truly looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs, and the communities that make all the difference.

Speaker 1 So listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1 All right, Josh, we're at that point

Speaker 1 where mainstream America goes hoop crazy.

Speaker 1 But to get to that point, we actually have to go backward again in time for a second. Back in the Wayback Machine.
So let's go.

Speaker 1 Let's go to, I don't know, Fiji or Tahiti or Polynesia.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's the 18th century. Yeah.
See all these British sailors? Can we drink some rum? Oh, man. Okay.
Yeah. In addition to the rum we've already drank today.
All right, good.

Speaker 1 So the British sailors that you see here are noticing a hula dance, right?

Speaker 1 And they're filing it away in their mental catalog. And now when when they reach Britain again.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Why have we been saying it like that? I don't know.

Speaker 1 They notice that it bears a striking resemblance to what people do with the hula hoop. You gyrate every time you say that, by the way, you know.
You can't do it in your seat. Can't not do it.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So the term hula became applied to the hoop, especially when you used your hips to gyrate. Sure.
to rotate them. Yes.

Speaker 1 When you rotate your hips with the hoop, these British sailors ended up applying the word hula to it, and it stuck. That's where it came from, was Polynesia.
Right.

Speaker 1 Even though there was no hoop involved in Polynesia, correct? Yes. They just kind of

Speaker 1 ganked that word

Speaker 1 for their own purposes. It is 1997 all over again.

Speaker 1 That was a big 90s term, wasn't it? Ganked, yeah.

Speaker 1 Let's go watch some X-Files.

Speaker 1 Let's, actually. Yeah, the movie's coming out soon, right? Oh, yeah, they're doing another one, aren't they? Yep.
That thing will never die.

Speaker 1 I don't think it should. No, keep doing movies.
That's what I say.

Speaker 1 So we mentioned that the Greeks, I believe, used it for physical fitness, right?

Speaker 1 I don't think we said that. I think I said it.
Okay.

Speaker 1 The Swiss actually came to adopt it for the same reasons, too, in the 19th century, in early 20th century. Yeah, someone named Emile Jacques

Speaker 1 Dalcroze. Man, that was great.
That's tough.

Speaker 1 Had a program called Eurythmics,

Speaker 1 which, of course, I started singing Sweet Dreams this morning. Of course.

Speaker 1 Because of that, and I've been singing it all day as a result. So that was a special training program, and it was apparently a big deal.
It was a big deal. So Eurythmics used hoops for

Speaker 1 basically physical fitness, but also interpretive dance, that kind of stuff. It was a combination of, it was like dance training is what I can gather, and it used hoops.

Speaker 1 The reason that we're mentioning this when we're talking about the American craze is that it directly led to the American craze, potentially, because urhythmics spread from Switzerland to Great Britain.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And it was brought in as part of like PE class in Australia.
And it was in Australia that the founders of WAMMO were inspired to create the modern hula hoop that we think of today. Boom.

Speaker 1 So it's possible they watched a Eurythmics class or heard about a Eurythmics class with Australian kids and then said, Well, this is clearly something of Australian design, and let's bring it to the US and start it craze.

Speaker 1 They said, Sweet dreams were made of these. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And this was Richard Nur

Speaker 1 and Arthur Spud Mellon. Mel Melline.

Speaker 1 Mellon sounds like M-L-O-N. Like Thornton Mellon.

Speaker 1 don't tease me with that movie.

Speaker 1 The Great Back to School. I saw a bit of that recently.
Yeah. And the only thought through my head was, like, man, why couldn't I have caught this from the beginning? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because I wanted to see it all. That and, man, his son is pasty.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you were saying that was a line from the movie.
It should have been. Yeah, his son, Keith Gordon, who became a great movie director.
Oh, really?

Speaker 1 Yeah, the guy from Christine and Back to School. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he gave up acting and started directing movies and directed a bunch of good movies. One called Waking the Dead, you should see.

Speaker 1 I thought Keith Gordon co-starred in They Live.

Speaker 1 I don't know, maybe.

Speaker 1 I'll have to check that.

Speaker 1 So where were we? Oh, yes. The two founders of WAMO.

Speaker 1 They said, you know what? Let's take these wooden hoops. Let's make them out of polyethylene.
Let's make them 40 inches.

Speaker 1 And let's let's charge $1.98 for them and make them all kinds of fun colors.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And boom.
The Hula Hoop craze in 1958 was born. Like, it was the definition of a flash in the pan craze.
Yeah. A lot of money in a very short span of time.
Like a summer, basically. Pretty much.

Speaker 1 In 1958, Waymo released it, and by the end of 1958, these things were rotting in the warehouse.

Speaker 1 But in the meantime, they sold globally, globally, from the summer to the end of 1958, 100 million

Speaker 1 hula hoops. Yeah, more than that, I think.
Man, my brain. Yeah, you forgot what you were talking about.
I almost said frisbees.

Speaker 1 Did we do one on the frisbee? No. I thought we had, but we haven't, have we? No, we did one on the boomerang.
Oh, right. Which is like a frisbee, but not.

Speaker 1 It's like a dangerous frisbee.

Speaker 1 So they sell all these hula hoops. They make a ton of money,

Speaker 1 like, you know,

Speaker 1 over $50 million in a short span of time, which I'm sure they weren't happy with that it didn't last. But they were also probably like an injection of cash like that is great for any business.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then they moved on to the Frisbee and made even more money. Yeah, and they did not secure a patent for it.
I guess it didn't matter in the long run. Well, they couldn't because it was so

Speaker 1 demonstrably an ancient invention that nobody could patent it. Nope.
But they trademarked it. They did.
They trademarked the name Hula Hoop in the United States, which is why

Speaker 1 we still call it Hula Hoop today, I guess. Yeah.
It just became the. We should probably put the title with an R in a circle for this.
Oh, yeah, we should do that, like Barbie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was named the number 35 toy of all time

Speaker 1 by Time magazine. And they know toys.
They know their toys. And then from 1968 to 1981, there were national Hula Hoop contests.

Speaker 1 held.

Speaker 1 And I guess in the early 80s, people were finished with it. There were also a tremendous amount of music, like musical singles released called the Hulu Hoop Song.
Oh, really?

Speaker 1 Different people recorded different songs about Hulu Hooping. Didn't surprise me.
Yeah, it was a craze, big time. Yeah.
And you say that they were done with it by the 80s. Not true.
Oh, what?

Speaker 1 The national competitions?

Speaker 1 So if you look at Hulu Hooping Records, the most recent Hula Hoop record is from 2009.

Speaker 1 Well, but was that part of a national competition?

Speaker 1 Probably. Or just a star.
A guy named Aaron Hibbs, he hula hooped, just hula hooped for 74 hours and 54 minutes. Wow.
He broke the record of. I couldn't even stand up for that long.

Speaker 1 He broke the record of a girl named Kim Coberly.

Speaker 1 She held the record twice in 1978 with 54 hours and in 1984 for 72 hours. Wow.
Which is pretty impressive. Yeah, so

Speaker 1 people would do like hundreds of them at once. Yeah, there's a guy named Paul Dizzy Hips Blair who set the record in 2009 with 132 hoops at the same time.
Wow. That's impressive.

Speaker 1 He's basically probably just like the Michelin man made of hula hoops. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Did I ever tell you about the surface area man costume in Athens? No. I was out on Halloween

Speaker 1 in Athens in college, and there was a dude. I know the guy.
His name is Blake. He has, you may have seen him.
He had big red dreadlocks, kind of a short guy, just a ubiquitous Athens dude. No.

Speaker 1 He lives kind of in my neighborhood now. I still see him every once in a while.
We called him Sideshow Blake because of Sideshow Bob.

Speaker 1 And he came in the bar, in the Georgia bar, and he had these

Speaker 1 foam discs around his arms, around his legs, around his waist and neck that were huge, like probably four feet across. And he was surface area man.
And that was just his costume.

Speaker 1 Because when he moved around, he took up like, you know, probably 75 square feet of space. And he would just move through the bar and say, I'm surface area man.

Speaker 1 And I'll always remember every time I see Blake, I saw him at the grocery store the other day. Was he dressed like that? No, but I was like,

Speaker 1 he wouldn't fit down the grocery aisle. Does he have dreads still? Yeah.
Does he really? Still rocking the red dreads. He's dedicated.
He looks exactly the same, actually. But we weren't friends.

Speaker 1 I could.

Speaker 1 Actually, next time I see him. I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 I'm going to just walk by him and go, surface area, man. You should.
I'm going to do it.

Speaker 1 All right. Let's talk about the Hudsucker Proxy for a quick moment, and then we'll take another break.
Okay. Did you ever see that one?

Speaker 1 I don't think I made it through that one. The Cohen Brothers? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not all of their movies are great. I disagree.
I love the Cohen Brothers, but some of their movies stink. Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 They're part of my 100% club, where every movie they've made has been great. That is wrong.

Speaker 1 Which other ones don't you like? The Man Who Wasn't There? Loved it.

Speaker 1 Bob Robertson? They didn't. That wasn't theirs.
Well, Well, it was terrible. Okay.

Speaker 1 Oh, the Hud Tucker proxy, too. All right.
I liked it. I would put it at Lesser Cohen's, for sure.
You'd have to. But

Speaker 1 I enjoyed it quite a bit. Tim Robbins and Jennifer Jason Lee and Paul Newman in a fictitious tale of the invention of the hula hoop.

Speaker 1 It is not the true biopic of the invention of the hula hoop, but they co-opted it for one of their movies, and it was, I think, pretty great. Okay.
But that's just me. Okay.
All right. So go ahead.

Speaker 1 Well, no, that was it. Oh, that was all.
I just wanted to shout it out. Fine.

Speaker 1 Well, then let's take a break because we're about to get into physics. Yeah, and hoop games.
Yep.

Speaker 1 After this.

Speaker 2 Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously.

Speaker 9 On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI.

Speaker 12 It all starts with your prompt.

Speaker 14 From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work.

Speaker 10 It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the S ⁇ P 500.

Speaker 19 Then you can invest in a few clicks.

Speaker 20 Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's.

Speaker 21 Go to public.com/slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

Speaker 10 That's public.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 22 Paid for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc.

Speaker 23 member FINRA and SIPC.

Speaker 22 Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor.

Speaker 17 Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool.

Speaker 24 Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.

Speaker 5 Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures.

Speaker 1 You know, everyone living with a rare autoimmune condition has their own story to tell.

Speaker 1 And that's why in season five of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio Production, in partnership with Argenix, you'll hear powerful, real-life perspectives.

Speaker 1 That's right. This podcast explores stories of what life is really like with MG or CIDP.

Speaker 1 Host Martine Hackett sits down with people who faced it all, the early signs and symptoms, the search for answers, and the strength it takes to keep moving forward.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and this season, the stories go even deeper, showing us what resilience truly looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs, and the communities that make all the difference.

Speaker 1 So listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Oh, you like that one? I love that one. That's maybe the best.
Raising Arizona is probably the best.

Speaker 1 It'd be tough for me to pick on any given day, but Fargo is the one I can watch over and over and over. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would say this through your typer first. Did we just come back from the break, just segwaying right back into the comments? I don't know.
All right, let's do it. We'll see how Jerry edits this.

Speaker 1 So let's. It wouldn't be a stuff you should know podcast if we didn't talk about the science behind something seemingly unscientific.

Speaker 1 Well, hula hoops are super complex as far as physics goes, you know. Not super complex.
Super complex. There's just a few things.
We are not in agreement on stuff today, are we? I don't know.

Speaker 1 What's What's going on? So let's say you have a hula hoop, right? And it's around your waist. And you take it and you throw it.
You have it up against maybe one hip. Sure.

Speaker 1 Making contact with your body. You're starting in the traditional way, then.
Sure. And you whip it around to one side.

Speaker 1 And as you do, you start rotating your hips. You're gyrating.
Right?

Speaker 1 I'm rotating my hips, Chuck.

Speaker 1 And as you do that, when you rotate your hips, what you're doing is, first of all, you're conserving the angular momentum you gave the Hula hoop when you pushed it in a certain direction, you twisted it around yourself, right?

Speaker 1 That's right. You are the axis.

Speaker 1 Yes, you are the axis. Yes.
And when you move your hips around,

Speaker 1 when you rotate your hips, you're applying what's called torque. Yeah, because all this hoop wants to do is fall down around on the ground and make you look foolish.
It wants to stop.

Speaker 1 Well, no, it doesn't want to stop because of inertia. It wants to keep going, but it can't because of friction.
But it wants to fall down to the ground, like you said, and make you look foolish.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but ironically, that same friction is keeping it from doing that. Who is the fool now, hoop? The hula hoop.
Yep, fool.

Speaker 1 All right, did you talk about the torque? I did talk about torque, and torque is a twisting force where you're twisting your hips and you're thrusting the hula hoop around in a circle.

Speaker 1 And what you're doing there is contributing to the centripetal force. That's right.

Speaker 1 That's centrifugal. No, centripetal.
Two different things.

Speaker 1 Is a force that moves at a right angle to the motion of your body.

Speaker 1 So it keeps that thing, whatever it is, say hula hoop or tractor tire, which, by the way, someone said a record hula hooping with a tractor tire was. Shut up, really?

Speaker 1 Yeah, for like 70 seconds, a 54-pound tire. How big was a person? I'm sure he was ginormous.
All right.

Speaker 1 I think he was from like Baylor Roose or something, you know? Oh, yeah, they did that on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 with the centripetal force, is it going at a right angle to the direction that you're thrusting your hips,

Speaker 1 it's constantly going to move around a circle on the axis, and that is centripetal force. Boom.

Speaker 1 Or centripetal motion, I should say. Yes, and when this hoop wants to fall, of course, we're talking about gravity.

Speaker 1 Gravity wants to win that fight. But if you keep that pulsing gyration going,

Speaker 1 then you're going to keep that hoop

Speaker 1 just a little ahead of the curve. Yeah, that's apparently the key.
And Robert puts this in here as a kind of like a throwaway thing. Yeah, that is

Speaker 1 the key of hula hooping is you want your hip to move just before that that I guess wave that comes in contact with your body again comes in contact. It comes back

Speaker 1 to catch and release in a way. Okay, yeah.
Like you're catching it on your hip and then slinging it back around. No, I'm gyrating.
Yeah, you are. Wow.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of gyrating going on in this room right now. There is.
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 So there's a few different parts of the body at work.

Speaker 1 I don't know why in 2004 they needed a 15-page study in the Journal of Biological Cybernetics to figure this out, because if you just look at somebody, you can tell that the hips, knees, and ankles are really what's at play keeping that thing going.

Speaker 1 And that's if you're just doing the hip hula hoop. Cool.
Not right

Speaker 1 neck and legs and all that, of course. Yeah, just the standard hooping, right? Yeah.
And so another study, I think four years later in the Journal of Human Movement Science.

Speaker 1 I don't know why they needed that one either. Well, they built upon this 2004 study and said, okay, you use your hips, knees, and ankles.
Everybody uses it.

Speaker 1 But depending on the individual, there'll be different contributions from the hips, knees, or ankle. Depends on the motion of your ocean.
Exactly. So it's like the individual.
Everybody uses

Speaker 1 the same parts, but they use them in different percentages to come up with the hula hooping motion. Yeah, I bet certain body types are better at this than others, too.
Yeah, it's slim. Yeah?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Probably so.

Speaker 1 The one in front of Craig's band, she was pretty slim, I guess. Sure.
She was working that thing, man. It was like, it was pretty amazing.
Hula hoop. So that's hoop dancing.

Speaker 1 And we'll finish up here with some other games. Well, we didn't talk about hoop dancing.
We were just talking about hula hooping. No, we talked about hoop dancing at the beginning with that lady.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, okay. So that's hoop dancing.
Okay. That's when you, you know, it's around the neck and then you work it down around your hips and then up one arm and then up the other arm.
Right, right.

Speaker 1 It's pretty impressive.

Speaker 1 Your standard hula hooping, of course, which we've covered.

Speaker 1 Speed, endurance, depends on what you're after. Sure.
Like, I want to do this for 20 minutes or I want to do it. 74 hours.
Really fast for five minutes. Okay.

Speaker 1 Hoop rolling? That's one of my favorites. Hoop trundling.
Yeah. Like you're a little ancient Egyptian kid.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'd like to see you do that. Hoop rolling? Sure.
Let's do it. Let's do a video for that.
Okay. We could do a periscope of it.
Oh, yeah? Let's do that. Are we going to start doing that?

Speaker 1 We could do at least one of me hoop rolling. I think people

Speaker 1 were going to get emails. Yeah, they'll turn out in droves to see that.
Sure. Hundreds of people will show up for that.
There's one not on this list that I want to give a shout out to.

Speaker 1 All right, what? It was invented apparently in Belgium. They call it Belgium skipping.
It's called ankle skipping.

Speaker 1 It's where you put the hula hoop on one foot around one ankle and you use it to hula hoop. You make the the hula hoop motion with that one.

Speaker 1 And as it comes around, you jump through the hoop with the other one. Yeah.
I can't believe it wasn't on this list. Yeah, that's a solid hoop endeavor.

Speaker 1 But apparently, it's a pretty recent invention from like the 60s. Oh, really?

Speaker 1 All right, that makes sense. That's sort of like hoop jumping, but not quite.
No, hoop jumping is more like jump roping with a hula hoop. Yeah, but that kind of reminds me of that, too.
Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 Hoop jumping is when you hold the hula hoop, the top of it, and then you swing it around your body and jump up and down. Okay.

Speaker 1 Like you have nothing better to do in life. Right.
Like you can't find a jump rope. You haven't heard of those before.

Speaker 1 Return the hoop. This is the only one I was ever good at.
That's when you hold it vertically

Speaker 1 and you

Speaker 1 fling it out as hard as you can backwards and it sort of spins in place and comes back to you. Right.
And if you're not expecting it, you're going to turn and run because it is startling.

Speaker 1 We've already talked about kill the hoop. We don't recommend you use spears to do that.
Or just make sure nobody's in the vicinity of where the hoop is. Yeah, good point.

Speaker 1 You don't want to combine hoop trundling and kill the hoop because you'll kill the hoop trundler. No.
And I'm not even going to cover this last one. I dare you to, though.
I like this one.

Speaker 1 Hoop your environment. Yeah, go ahead.
So it's like you put hula hoops around and you jump from them. Like they're islands and there's lava in between.
Okay. What's wrong with that? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Too childish?

Speaker 1 No. I'm very childish, but I don't know.
I just didn't.

Speaker 1 You're childlike, not childish. Oh, gotcha.
Big difference, man.

Speaker 1 Well, we talked about exercise. It is legitimate exercise.
There are hula hoop classes now.

Speaker 1 Apparently, Marissa Tomei, the actor,

Speaker 1 took hoop fitness classes to lose weight or to get in shape for her movie The Wrestler in 2008.

Speaker 1 First Lady Michelle Obama has... Very famously, Hoop Worked out.
Yeah, hooped the lawn of the White House to say, hey, kids, get active. And at the U.S.
Open?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can still have fun by doing this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they even did another study to see what kind of calories you could burn. Lots of hoop studies.

Speaker 1 Too many.

Speaker 1 They took women between 16 and 59 and said,

Speaker 1 go crazy and hoop. And they added.
For half an hour. Yeah.
And they were weighted hoops, too, by the way.

Speaker 1 Which is not to say they were super heavy. They're generally still pretty lightweight.
Yeah, but strangely, a weighted hoop is easier to keep going.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Which makes sense, I think.

Speaker 1 And they average 151 beats per minute.

Speaker 1 BPM.

Speaker 1 Yeah, heartbeats. Oh, their heart.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Tribe called Quest would be proud. Right.

Speaker 1 And that is burning seven calories a minute or two hundred and ten calories during a half hour of hooping. So that's good exercise, people.
That's like weightlifting-type calorie burn. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Plus, also,

Speaker 1 like, if you just break it down to calorie burn, first of all, Chuck, I want to do an episode, and I'm not quite sure how to frame it yet. It doesn't have a thesis, but there are so many

Speaker 1 medical myths out there that are just taken as fact. Sure.
Even by the medical establishment, even though, like, if you asked a doctor, like, is this fact?

Speaker 1 They would be like, no, no, actually, it's not. Like, drinking eight glasses of water a day.
Yeah. Totally made up.
I knew you were going to say that one.

Speaker 1 Like, I think we should do one on medical myths sometime. What do you think? We should.
Have we not?

Speaker 1 No. Like, part of me wants to say we have, but I think things have just come up like here or there over the years.
Anyway,

Speaker 1 even if you take the calories out of the equation, just hula hooping, the standard hip gyration hula hoop will really, really work out your core. Yeah.
like you didn't even need a hula hoop.

Speaker 1 No, you can just sit in your chair and do what I'm doing now. Yeah.
Like, I'm getting, I'm sweating

Speaker 1 right now. You totally are.
My lip. My upper lip is broken out in perspiration.

Speaker 1 Modern hooping burlesque uses hoops. If you go to any

Speaker 1 music festival these days, you're going to see the ladies like I was talking about, or they might have them decked out with LEDs or even fire.

Speaker 1 Well, what's neat is LED hula hoops in particular are really displaying like the physics of hula hoops

Speaker 1 through like

Speaker 1 what's that type of photography? LSD?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 no.

Speaker 1 What's that photography where you like you just keep the shutter open so it like high exposure or long exposure? Yeah, you just said it. Keeping that shutter open.

Speaker 1 It's like when you see the pictures of the cars on the freeway at night and it's just like a long trail of headlights. Yeah, but there are photos out there of LED hula hoops there.

Speaker 1 It's just like you can see. They don't just keep like a a flat path.
They go all over the place in some way. It's really neat.
It's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 What about this lady, the Israeli sculptor? Did you watch that?

Speaker 1 I saw a couple pictures of it. Yes, her name is Sigalit Landau.
And in 2003, she did a performance art slash political statement piece where she did, it was called Barbed Hula.

Speaker 1 And she was naked and hula hooped with a barbed wire hula hoop. That just tore her abdomen up.
Yeah. It's really rough.
Yeah, it was pretty disturbing, but she said

Speaker 1 she

Speaker 1 was on an Israeli beach that she defined as the only calm and natural border Israel has. So she was making a statement, my friend.
Well, she's an artist. That's what they do.

Speaker 1 I got a couple of last things. Let's hear it.
In the hula hoop craze. Of the 50s of America? Yes.

Speaker 1 Not the

Speaker 1 14th century Breton one. Okay.

Speaker 1 It was

Speaker 1 in Japan it was banned. The Hula Hoop was banned because they were worried it was going to lead to actual stuff things happening.
Yeah. Gyrating hips.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And apparently the Soviets said that

Speaker 1 it was evidence of the emptiness of American culture, the hula hoop craze. Really? Yeah.
Leave it to the Soviets to be like, Americans, come on.

Speaker 1 They hated America.

Speaker 1 Do you remember when the Iron Curtain fell and you were like, oh, wait a minute, like everything we were taught about the Soviet Union was basically made up? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they were like, you know, the average Russian was like a good person. Yeah, and the average Russian was a lot like the average American.
Yeah, drunk on vodka.

Speaker 1 I'm going to live forever.

Speaker 1 All right, that's it. If you want to know more about hula hoops, you can type that word into the search bar at houstuffworks.com.
And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mate.

Speaker 1 I'm gonna call this anorexia. Did you read this one? No.

Speaker 1 Why not? Let's see how I missed that one. Hey guys, I'm a huge fan and want to let you know how you has how Stuff You Should Know has helped me over the years.
I began listening. I love these.

Speaker 1 I began listening at the age of 12 and I'm now turning 18. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
August 9th. Stuff You Should Know has played a part in the young adult I've become.

Speaker 1 At 12, I was diagnosed with restrictive anorexia, was hospitalized for about a month, and did day treatment for almost a year.

Speaker 1 After leaving treatment for the day, I'd religiously put on my headphones and turn on stuff you should know.

Speaker 1 The podcast was really helpful on bad days, especially if I had just had an argument with my parents or a difficult meal. Your humor was especially helpful.

Speaker 1 I remember laughing out loud many times in the car, which was quite a rare occurrence. I'm pretty solid in recovery now, but your podcast also helped me gain a better relationship with my sibling.

Speaker 1 My eating disorder caused a lot of tension between my sibling and I for quite a few years, but one day I invited her to listen to your podcast. Sephi Schnow quickly became a part of

Speaker 1 her commute to university class. We occasionally would discuss the podcast topics.
Nice. We now have a tradition, and I love this part too.

Speaker 1 We now have a tradition of listening to the Christmas extravaganza together while on winter break, which is what we want people to do. Yeah, man.
To gather the family and make this a thing.

Speaker 1 Eat some plum pudding. Even though I don't know what we're

Speaker 1 going to get pretty slim on Christmas topics. I've got at least one great topic on

Speaker 1 We need to start looking now, though. You're right.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 We've even gifted each other matching stuff you should know shirts when here.

Speaker 1 More recently, I received a very urgent text letting me know, in all caps, that you guys were coming to Minneapolis this fall. That's right.

Speaker 1 And another text to let me know that Chuck's daughter, Ruby, shares the same birthday as our father. And I want to point out again, and Josh.
Yeah. The triumvirate.
That's right.

Speaker 1 Your podcast gives us endless topics and inside jokes, and I can't thank you enough for bringing us closer together. Thanks again for being such a big part of my formative years.

Speaker 1 My sister and I can't wait to see you guys in Minneapolis this fall. That is from Emily, and she said, please shout out your sister, Megan.

Speaker 1 Awesome, Emily. Thank you for telling us all that.
Like, that really means the world to us. Yes, and best of luck in your continued recovery.
That is tough stuff. Yeah, and congratulations, too.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 we should do an eating disorder podcast at some point. That one's been hanging out there.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because, you know, there's like a whole, there's like this new idea that like almost everybody has an eating disorder in America these days. Of some kind.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like typically binge eating is like a huge thing. Sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we should definitely do that. Yeah.
But thank you very much, Emily, and hello, sister Megan. We appreciate you guys listening.

Speaker 1 And hopefully we'll see you guys in Minneapolis when we come in October. Yeah, and you know what? Actually, write me back.
We'll put you on the guest list. Oh, man.
How about that? That's so nice.

Speaker 1 Free tickets for YouTube. Wow.
That is something. Just for YouTube.
No guess.

Speaker 1 Right. Just kidding.
Well, you need to lay it down. We should probably have a legal disclaimer added after this, too.
Yeah, we might hear from a lot of Emily and Megan's in Minnesota.

Speaker 1 If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com/slash stuffy should know.
You can send us an email at stuffpodcast at houseuffworks.com.

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Speaker 1 Living with an autoimmune condition isn't easy, and every journey is different.

Speaker 1 That's why season five of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition from Ruby Studio and Argenix shares powerful first-hand stories from people with conditions like MG and CIDP.

Speaker 1 Hosted by Martine Hackett, these conversations dive into what resilience really looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs, and finding strength in community.

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