Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Yo-Yos Work

Episode Date: April 13, 2019

You may have played with a yo-yo before -- perhaps you've even walked the dog -- but do you know about the physics behind what makes a yo-yo sleep and wake up? Learn all about inertia, angular momentum and the history of the yo-yo in this episode of SYSK. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey there, everybody. It's your old friend, Josh. And for this week's SYS Case Selects, I've chosen the episode on yo-yos, which is great. It's like a trip around the world on the end of a string

that draws you right back home at the end, which makes it great. So please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That's me.

Same as ever. Scratching the old back. Yeah, just got a little itch there. You ever use one of those little dealies, the little creepy hand, the little monkey paw on the end of that stick? I have before. Yeah.

I don't like to do that. It hurts. Oh, yeah? I guess you could call it. It's a painful sensation. I get up against the wall sometimes and do the balloon, the bear trick. That I'll do sometimes, too.

But it's weird. I only have back hitches in about the same place, and that would be on my left shoulder blade on the western side of it, depending on which direction I'm facing. Curiously, this is going to be the most interesting part of this show. That is not true, Chuck, man.

So, Chuck. Yes? This is going to be a great one. OK. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those ones where it's like, wow, that turned out to be really good. It's physics heavy out the union. Yeah, everyone loves that.

But the fact is, when we finish this, you're going to know how Yo-Yo works. This is probably the most truly titled, truest titled episode we've ever done. You think? Yep. Oh, no, no, no. All right, well, we'll find out.

I think it should be called physics through the eye of a Yo-Yo. So listen, have you ever seen the movie Harlem Nights? Parts. Dude, go back and watch it again. Like, watch the whole thing. Oh, you're crazy. It's one of the best movies ever.

Eddie Murphy, Red Fox, Richard Pryor. Great cast. And like everybody else in it, too. I think Bernie Mac's in there. Awesome cast. Terrible script. I don't think the script is terrible. I thought it was great.

There's one thing about that movie that bugged me to know it. It's set in like the 20s, right? Yeah. And throughout the movie, Eddie Murphy uses the word Yo. Yo is obviously a modern term. And it just sticks out like a sore thumb every time he does. It drives me crazy. Like, it drives me crazy that he did.

It drives me crazy that the director wasn't like, you can't say Yo. This is like 1920s New York. Yo wasn't around. I don't know that they were going for historical accuracy in that one. They were wearing spats. Yeah, well.

So Jerry liked that one. So I went back and did a little digging, Chuck. And it turns out that Yo was, in fact, around in the 1920s. But Eddie Murphy was still wrong for using it in that capacity. OK. OK, so Yo goes back at least to like the 15th century as like a hunting cry, right? When somebody was like, somebody else might go Yo.

And you go chase Fox. That was kind of the first wave of Yo. As far back as 1859, we know that there were sailors that were using it. Yo-ho-ho. Yo-ho-ho. Or also, it was a response for a roll call like Yo. Like somebody called your name, you would say Yo.

Aki. It wasn't until after World War II, though, that the modern incarnation comes. And it came out of the Italian quarters of Philadelphia. Of course it did. So that's where they think Yo came from after World War II. Hence, Eddie Murphy was wrong in using Yo, especially frequently, in the movie Harlem Nines.

So I did all that research. Or I could have just looked into Google Translate from English to Filipino or vice versa and find that it just means come. Yeah, but I don't think that's what it means here, does it? It does now. So the word Yo-Yo as it stands means come, come or come back. Yeah, that makes sense.

Did you know that? I did. You want to talk a little bit about the history of Yo-Yos? Did you know before reading this fantastic article that Yo-Yos originated, as we understand them now, originated in the Philippines in the 1920s? I didn't know that. I did know that it was around for a long time

before that, though, in other forms. Well, pretty much the same form. There were two forms of Yo-Yos in history. And one came out of the, the new one came out of the Philippines. The other one, yeah, it was pretty old. Well, ancient Chinese, or at least ancient Greeks, more than 2,500 years ago. But they think the Chinese had something similar to that.

Yeah, I'm starting to strongly suspect that the Chinese are the origin of human civilization. Yeah, they came up with beer. Well, they came up with beer. There you have it. They went right there. And it is the oldest toy on the planet, except the doll, the dolly.

I thought that was pretty interesting, too. Of course. Although, I wonder if they're kind of diminishing any kind of ancient rituals or rites by saying, like, look at this cute doll when really it's, you know, some sort of fetish. I don't know. You never know.

So it's been around a long time. They've designed it in different ways over the years. The original design had the string tied tight to the little axis there. We'll call it the Greek design. The Greek design? No, we'll call it the Chinese design. Or the European design.

Well, not design, but it was popular in Europe. And that, obviously, if you ever used an old yo-yo like that or redesigned yours to where it's tied around the axle, it'll pop up, you know, as soon as you throw it down, it'll pop back up. Yeah, because it's tied to the axle. Makes a lot of sense. Right.

And you said it was popular in Europe. There were other words for it, other names for the yo-yo before it was a yo-yo. That's right. There was the lemigrette, the bendalore. The bendalore was British, I believe. The quiz? Yeah, I didn't get a country of origin for that.

But it was very popular in Europe. There's a painting of, I think, Louis the 18th. Is he the boy king? I don't know. Whichever Louis was the boy king of him holding like a yo-yo, like a royal painting of him with a yo-yo. Or the, what was the little hoop on and a stick? I think that's what it was called.

That was an awesome game. The hoop on a stick. Woo-hoo. And then, I don't think you can compare the yo-yo to the hoop on a stick. No, I'm not comparing. I'm just saying I just never got that toy. Oh, OK, well, here's another one for you.

Napoleon was well known for carrying and using a yo-yo, apparently, for stress relief. Oh, yeah? Yeah. It didn't work too well. He was a stressed out dude. Yeah. He needed the yo-yo.

But as you said, that's the European-favored or Chinese design where the strings tied really tight to the axle. And it just basically goes up and down. Yeah. Right? So the Filipino design led to the modern yo-yo, as we understand it now. And the huge distinction is that the string is just

looped around the axle, kind of loosely, which has the added benefit of allowing the yo-yo itself to spin once it reaches the end of the string. Yeah. Sleep. That's what the, that's why people yo-yo, I think. Yeah. It's all about the tricks.

I mean, it's sort of fun for a minute just to go up and down. But it's really all about the tricks. Right. It's just a stress relief if it just goes up and down. Did you yo-yo when you were a kid? Yeah, here or there. But even as a kid, I could sense that these new modern ones that we'll talk about, like ball bearings and clutches,

they just seem like cheating. I agree. Let's not even talk about them. It's not even a real yo-yo. So Chuck, you want to talk a little bit about physics? Well, let's finish the history first, shall we? Oh, OK. Well, I have plenty of that.

It was originally in the Philippines, they think it was a hunting weapon for like 400 years. So but not like a little tiny yo-yo. They were really big. And it was basically a big spindle attached to a rope with spikes coming off of it. They were like the size of a yugo. Yeah, and I guess the benefit there

is you could get it back after you threw it at somebody. Right. The string was almost just useless, though. Well, it was rope. You could just throw it and run after it. Oh, really? OK. It was actually heavy rope and they used it for hunting, too.

Right. Well, at some point down the line, well, yeah, you would think anything used in hunting does double duty and more. Exactly. Anything you're trying to kill. Yeah. Well, at some point, though, they became smaller

and became toys. And in the 20s, a Filipino immigrant to the US named Pedro Flores started a company, the first modern yo-yo company in the United States and did pretty well for himself. And then in 1920, 1990, he sold out to a man named Duncan. Right? Donald Duncan?

Yes, Donald Duncan. And we're Duncan. We're Duncan. Properly. And Flores is in Santa Barbara, and like you said, was selling these things like hotcakes. And then Duncan said, hey, let me buy that. I'm going to keep the name yo-yo because it's catchy.

I'm going to trademark it, and now I own it. And through the years, he had competitors that made similar devices with different names. And they were like, dude, everyone's calling this thing a yo-yo. We want to be able to call it a yo-yo, too. And he said, no, no, I own it. Then the federal courts in 1965 says, you know what?

That's generic enough now where you don't own it. Any longer. They're all yo-yos. Well, those legal challenges to their trademark, the name yo-yo, was one of the things that bled the company dry. It eventually went bankrupt. Duncan Company went bankrupt. Yeah, the same year they ruled against them.

They were like, well, that's it for us. But they also had other money troubles. They were actually victims of their own success, the Duncan Company was. So they moved in the 40s to Luck, Wisconsin, which very quickly became known as the yo-yo capital of the world. And at their peak, they were making 3,600 yo-yos an hour, mostly out of wood at first.

Maple, they were using a million board feet of maple wood every year. Yeah? That's a lot. And they actually, in addition to their legal challenges, like the money going to fight their legal battles, they were paying tons of money in overtime, too, advertising. And as a matter of fact, I think in 1962, Chuck,

they managed to sell 45 million yo-yos. And in that same year, there were only 40 million kids in the US. Wow. That's pretty astounding. A chicken in every pot and a yo-yo in every other hand, at least. Yeah.

Sure. Well, I guess some kids were yo-yo with both hands up. Rich kids. But like I said, the company ended up going bankrupt anyway. But yo-yo enthusiasts still look very fondly on the Duncan name, and I think June 6th, yes, June 6th is National Yo-Yo Day, which happens to be the same day as Donald Duncan's birthday.

Yeah. Well, and the Duncan name lives on. Obviously, you still see Duncan yo-yos. They sold out. They didn't just shut down. Well, they went bankrupt and sold out, right? Yeah. So it was the Flambele Plastics Company.

They said, we'll keep the name Duncan because it's synonymous with yo-yos. Yeah. It's not generic yet. No. No. Yeah. MUSIC

On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and Choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, hey dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen,

so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. There's a little yo-yo history for you. Yeah. I got a little more I'm going to say to the end. I think you'll like.

OK. I'm going to tease you with it. Now let's talk about physics. Well, I think this is very interesting. Good. So there's two. OK, you mentioned with the string tied to the classic Chinese design yo-yo,

you have one kind of energy going on, right? Yes. And that is linear momentum, the ability of it to go up and down, or I should say down and up, right? That's right. With the Filipino design, the modern design, it has two kinds of potential energy. It has that same linear momentum to go up and down,

but it also has angular momentum. And angular momentum is its ability to spin on an axle. OK, so you've got two things going on. And like you said, when the yo-yo hits the end of the line of its linear momentum, it can still, it's built up since it's wound around the spool. It's built up a lot of angular momentum, so it can just sit there and spin or sleep as you call it.

Yeah, it actually increases as it goes down, which is the key to keeping it spinning. It gets faster as it falls. There's another pretty cool trait to a yo-yo. Who knew they were so complex? I didn't. Did you? I did not.

OK, so they also have gyroscopic stability, Chuck. They do. OK, so if you have a yo-yo that's sleeping and you push down on top of it, it goes down and then back up. Right. That's because of its gyroscopic stability. That point that you push down on the yo-yo is transferred from the front and spun around to the back,

so that's evened out. So the yo-yo will just keep spinning as long as it's spinning fast enough. Gyroscopic stability. Yes, that means a spinning object will resist change to its axis of rotation. And if you've ever thrown a football, it's the same thing. Yeah.

Or if you've ever thrown a football poorly, what do they call that? A wobbler, a turkey. Wounded duck. Brick. That's why a wounded duck doesn't go very far, because it doesn't have that tight spin. Yeah.

So it falls off its axis and won't travel as far. Exactly. Same as a frisbee. And then the whole team's mad at you. Basically, anything that spins, frisbees, footballs, there's got to be a baseball. We could liken it to a baseball somehow. Let's say a curveball, knuckleball, slider.

Definitely not a knuckleball. Slider. It doesn't spin at all. Really? Is it like a shot put? No, the knuckleball, the whole key is it doesn't move. It travels like this. And that's why it moves all around.

Crazy. Isn't that nutty? Yeah. So you've got your yo-yo sleeping. You're totally aware of its gyroscopic stability. And you understand that its angular momentum is just awesome. It's far out, right? It's far out.

But you want to wake it up. And that's when you bring it out of its sleep and rewind it back up the spool, right? Little tug on the old finger. Yeah, and the reason why is because the loop, right, there's less friction with the loop around the axle. Yeah. When you tug it, you increase that friction

and you allow it to rewind. It just grabs a hold of its buddy and just let's go back up to the palm. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I like yo-yo physics a lot. So we basically just talked about the two hardest parts, right? Sleeping and waking.

Yeah, and like I said, sleeping is the key to do any kind of trick like walking the dog, which I was pretty good. I used to do a few yo-yo tricks. Really? Yeah, I could walk the dog. And I could do the deal where you make a triangle and then tick-tock through the triangle.

Something like a cradle or probably the cats in the cradle. Let's call it a cat's cradle. And then I could do the around the world. Wow, around the world. Yeah, I couldn't do any of those. This inspired me to get a new yo-yo, by the way. I like the vintage Duncan ones, specifically the yellow ones with the butterfly, like the gold butterfly.

The inverted ones? No, it's the second butterfly on the rainbow. Because they had those that looked like a butterfly that were inverted. And I think that actually plays a part in the increasing the moment of inertia section. I think that's why they flipped it out to put more weight on the outside.

Yeah, OK, you want to talk about that? Why not? So do you remember when we did the Murphy's Law podcast? How could I forget? Remember one of the books that he wrote was For Your Moments of Inertia? Yeah, I didn't realize it was a terrible, terrible engineering pun until I read this article.

Kind of made me hate John Paul Stapp a little bit. Nah, we love that guy. So Chuck, a moment of inertia is basically a way of describing a spinning object's resistance to changes in that rotation, basically being slowed down, right? And what smarter people than us have figured out is that if you increase the mass and distribute it slightly

further away from the axis, you're going to increase its moment of inertia. Right. And that increases the amount of time it's just sleeping, right? Yeah, and like I said, I don't know this, but I just remember when I was a kid, they had those inverted yoyos.

And I bet you anything, that's why they did that. It's got to be. Because they were wider at the outside and then curved in, which had to be less mass. Yeah. Less stuff, less wood. Right. So I'm going to go on record just saying

that's why they did that. But I think you want more mass further away to increase its moment of inertia, right? Yeah, so there was more mass on the outside, further away from the axis. Right. So that allows things to sleep a lot longer. And that was, I guess you could say,

one of the breakthroughs in yoyo design. I think in the 60s, they started adding mass to the outside and extending the axle a little bit. Bam, the yoyo has been improved. Think about this, right? 2500, maybe even longer than that, years ago, somebody invented the yoyo, does not change until the Philippines in the early 20th century.

Well, I thought it said it did change. We just don't know. Said there were changes in design over the years. No? Not that I took. I took it like there was one way, and then there was the Filipino way. And that was it.

We got a correction to make then. And then the 20th century hits, and then there's all these great improvements on these designs. Indeed. One of the improvements, Chuck, was adding ball bearings, right? Yeah. So you and I don't think these are improvements,

or at least I don't. OK, that's absolutely true. That's a good caveat. I think that the Filipinos perfected the yoyo. Let's just call them modifications. OK. For sorry kids who don't know how to yoyo. Rich kids.

Yeah, that makes it easier, I think. Yeah. Isn't that the whole point of both of these things? Yeah, I guess the. It makes it easier to sleep. Yeah, and I guess they're like, well, if you're just enjoying sleeping and waking your yoyo, then why make it tough?

If you want to have fun with your toy. Right. I can't believe they made it easier for kids to have fun. How dare they? So the ball bearing design, I think, is kind of clever. Basically, this modification takes the axle and splits it in two. Yeah. Into two races, which are basically little courses

for ball bearings to spin around. Right? Now, does that split the axle? These are just around the axle. So one is connected to the axle. Right. That's the inner race. One is connected to the string that's the outer race.

And then in between the two are ball bearings. Right. OK. They're not connected in any way, except maybe via the context with the ball bearings. Right. So when you release your yoyo toward the ground, and it's linear and angular momentum really build up,

when it hits, the inner race can tilt a little bit and connect with the outer race via the ball bearings. So they're spinning. Right. Right? And then as they straighten out, they're not connected anymore. So the string no longer has any effect on whether the yoyo spins or not, because it's just the inner race connected to the axle

that's spinning. So your yoyo can sleep far, far longer. Yeah. The outer race spins the inner race, which spins the axle. Right. It's like a transfer of angular momentum. Exactly. And then the string's just like, you just let me know when you're done,

and we'll wind back up. Well, it'll give a little toggle. Do the same thing with that style, right? Right. OK. Or you can just completely take yourself out of the equation altogether, except for a snap of the wrist. The initial release is all you need to do with what's called

the yoyo with the brain. These are really fake yoyos. Yeah. I want to get one, though. It's kind of cool. You could be in a vegetative state and do this yoyo. Yeah. This was in the 90s.

Company called Yomega released these. And they called it the yoyo with the brain, when in fact, they should have called it the yoyo with a clutch. And the deal here is you've got these two clutch arms, weighted ball on one side, and it's not attached on the other side, and they're spring-loaded. The spindle is not attached to the axle, but the clutch arms are attached to the spindle.

So when you throw this thing down, it's going to spin slower at first, and the clutch is engaged. As it gets faster, all of a sudden, it's enough inertia to pop the clutch, essentially, against the edges. And it releases the spindle, which makes the whole thing spin faster on the axis. Right, the centrifugal force pushes down the weight, which pushes down the arm onto the spring, which releases the

two, which allows it to spin. And it only spins for a certain amount of time. It's not like the kind that you tug back up. It'll spin till it slows down, and then the clutch locks back down, and boom, it shoots back up. Right back up. I want to, I wish we had one of those. I want to see what it's like.

So basically, the two modifications are based on separating the string from the axle by creating two different kinds of, I guess, axles or spindles or whatever. Which are really just sort of taking the Filipino design a step further, because although it made contact with the axle, it wasn't, quote, connected to the axle. I guess it was, but it wasn't tight. Right, and a guy named Michael Caffrey is the one who came

up with the yo-yo with the brain, and Yomega started selling them in 1990, but he came up with it in 1980, two years after a man named Tom Kuhn created the no-jive three in one yo-yo that you could take apart and replace the axle and do all sorts of modifications with. Oh, really? Big, big time for changes in yo-yo design. So did he rip this dude off?

Is that what you're saying? No. Oh, OK. No, I'm just saying these two big steps in yo-yo design. The way he said two years after was sinister. Well, you're a very suspicious person, I am, when it comes to yo-yo design. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and

Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends,

and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted

Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm

here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, Chuck, that's pretty much the physics of yo-yos. Did you know that? We just explained how yo-yos work.

You know, I looked online at videos and stuff to make it a little easier, because this is a very visual thing. And they do have videos. But what I found out is that a lot of teachers, physics teachers, use yo-yos to describe these, whatever, four to six properties that we described. I have to tell you, I understand angular momentum far better

now. I understand, and although it went through the yo-yos, through the football, I understand the moment of inertia. OK. All right, was that moment of inertia? No, that's angular momentum. Angular momentum. Spinning on an axis.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, you were talking about the gyroscopic stability. Yeah, there you go. That's what it was. See, I get confused. I need to, Chuck. It's physics, man. Don't feel bad.

You want to know a couple more pieces of yo-yo trivia? Yeah, let's hear it. In 1968, one Abby Hoffman of the Chicago Seven was indicted, or no, charged with contempt of Congress when he started doing the Walk the Dog during a House on American Activities Committee session that was investigating him. So he was like, I'm just over this.

I'm going to yo-yo? Well, apparently, the way I read it is that he was trying to entertain, lighten everything up. He's like, here, watch me yo-yo. And he was walking the dog. Who I said, no, not one. So that's how yo-yos are connected to McCarthyism. If you ever take an S5SK quiz and that comes up.

Plus, yo-yos were huge back then. Totally. That was like the heyday, I think, in the 60s. Yeah. Nixon, have you seen Nixon try to yo-yo? No. Man, if you don't like Nixon, this will just make you hate him even more.

The night that they opened the Grand Ole Opry in, I think, sometime in 1974, what's the main guy? Like the whole cast of he-haws behind Nixon. And then the main, Roy Acuff. Yeah. He presents Nixon with a yo-yo and has to put it on Nixon's finger. And Nixon looks like, what's going on?

And then he tries to do it once. And it just kind of like flops down and makes like a sad trombone noise. And he just has this swollen look on his face. Like, I don't like yo-yos. He looks kind of like you did at the beginning of this episode. Yeah, me and Nick Tricky did it. Who knew?

And then they took a yo-yo in space, Chuck. Yeah, I saw that. And it still worked. It did work. They found that letting it drop did nothing because they were testing it in microgravity. But if you throw it, it will go slowly. You can do it slowly, but it will still spin.

And it moves kind of just kind of gracefully along the string, like in just mid-air, horizontally. But it'll never sleep. Well, thank god NASA did that. Yeah, back in 1985. Those are all the videos you see, though. They do much more than that. That was back when NASA was like, we have so much money.

We don't know what to do with it. Let's launch something. And let's say the Toys and Space Project. And they did. Now, this was just for yo-yos. That was the only thing they did on that plate. Well, no, the Toys and Space Project encompassed 60 shuttle missions, one for each toy

that they tested out. Wow. Jax was one of the best ones. I bet. The Bolo paddle? Yeah. So that's yo-yos. Frankly, I'm pretty happy with this one.

I thought you were going to lead in with something on yo-yo ma. No, man. Try to look up yo-yos in the news and not get yo-yo ma. Jeez. Can't do it. Stupid challenge. I searched yo-yo minus ma, minus knee, minus gaba to finally get some stuff on yo-yos.

Oh, yo-gaba-gaba, sure. Yeah. Oh, what was the other one? Yo mama? Nio. Yo MTV raps. That came up, too. Did it.

Yeah, I stopped searching before I minused MTV, too. I didn't know you could minus. I was in the gym. Yeah. And it'll root out all the search, all the results that have that in it. Really? So you just put the minus on?

Minus, and then the next letter, no space. Had no idea. And you can do a bunch of different ones. No commas, no nothing, just like minus gaba, minus yo. Really? Minus ma, minus knee. You literally just improved my life. Oh, good.

Or my research. For like the eighth time today. Yeah. All right. Well, that's it. All right. Yo-yos, yo. I was in a jewelry store once, and Nio came in.

Seemed nice. Who's Nio? He's this rapper. Who's from Atlanta? I thought you were talking about The Matrix. No, that's Nio. This is Nio. Oh, yeah, I've heard of him.

Yeah, him. Well, if you want to learn more about yo-yos, including some really top-notch illustrations, this is one of those ones that you will see why we have staff illustrators here at HowStuffWorks.com in color, no less, that's all. You want to type in yo-yo in the handy search bar at HowStuffWorks.com.

That'll bring up that really cool article. And I said handy search bar, so now it's time for Chuck to shine with another edition of Listener Mail. Josh, this is one of our oldest and not by age, but one of our most loyal fans, Anna Spies. She has a band, and they put together, well, let me just read it. This is coming out shortly after Christmas,

and she said it was still great to read this. Hi, guys, and Jerry, since we're firmly in the festive, greedy little griff of the holiday season, I was wondering if you could give a shout out to a project I'm involved in, or my band is, at least. It's a charity album to raise funds for the continued fallout from the Japanese earthquake and nuclear disaster.

In the light of everything that's happened since, I know it's been put on the back burner of most people's charitable contributions, which is why we were thrilled and honored to do our part to re-raise awareness when the label releasing this compilation approached us to contribute a track. So, you know, she's right. You hear about these tragedies that happen,

and then six months later, you kind of forget about it. It's the curse of the new cycle. Exactly. But luckily, there's a lot of people that my friend Dave is one of them that's still working like on the tsunami from five or six years ago. Oh, that's great. So continued help is always needed.

There's a CD that's going to be out in mid-December. So by the time this comes out, it'll already be out. You can stream the entire album, which is 37 Tracks by 37 Artists on the website, morehopeforjapan.com. And her band, New Century Classics, wrote and recorded a brand new song just for this compilation, and she's quite proud of it, and I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but I'm going to.

And she says there's a lot of far better-known artists on there, and anyone who likes instrumental music, post-rock, ambient, and basically pretty melodic guitar-based tunes should dig it. So check it out. That's Anna's band, New Century Classics. Cool. Morehopeforjapan.com.

Very cool. Thanks a lot, Anna. Appreciate that. Thanks for letting us know. Thanks for doing what you do. And thanks for listening for like years. She's been around forever. Yeah, yeah.

I guess if you're working on something that you feel like everybody's forgotten and shouldn't have, let us know. And we'll try to help you re-raise awareness, too. Yeah. Yeah, send us a tweet to S-Y-S-K podcast, or you can shoot us a Facebook something, facebook.com, slash stuff you should know.

And as always, you can get really personal and send us an email, a real live email, to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The HowstuffWorks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.