StarTalk Radio - The Science of Sports, with Hope Solo

Episode Date: April 7, 2017

Neil deGrasse Tyson examines the science and psychology of sports with 2x Olympic gold medal winning soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo. Featuring co-host Chuck Nice, sport psychologist Brent Walker, Sports Illustrated’s Mark McClusky, data journalist Mona Chalabi, and Bill Nye. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to the Hall of the Universe. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And tonight, we're going to be talking about the science of sports, featuring my interview with U.S. National Women's Soccer goalie, Hope Solo. Hope Solo led her team to the World Cup championship and brought home gold medals from the Olympics.

We've got her on StarTalk tonight, so let's do this. I got Chuck Nice helping me out here. Chuck. Hey, Neil. Always good to be here. Give it up for Chuck. And if this were an astrophysics show, it would just be you and me, Chuck.

That's right. That was the topic, but it's sports. And I've got right up the street, Dr. Brent Walker. Welcome to StarTalk. Thank you for having me. Thank you. And you, professionally, you're a kinesiologist, but you're also a sports psychologist. I didn't even know that existed.

Sports psychologist. I didn't even know that existed. I know we surely needed one because there are some athletes that clearly are in bad need of counseling. So is that what you do? Well, if you look at the field of sports psychology, it's relatively new in terms of full-time positions. Okay. Believe it or not, it goes back to the 1930s. And originally the first consultant in sports psychology worked with the Chicago Cubs. And that worked out.

That worked out perfectly, as you can see. They haven't won a World Series since, what, 19-oh-oh-oh-oh-eight, whatever? Okay, yeah. All right. So it's any edge that you can give an athlete. That's what it sounds like. That's what it's about. Exactly.

And I'm looking at you, and I'm thinking, you've never played any sport ever in your life, right? I played field hockey. No, seriously, what'd you play? Basketball and baseball. Wow. Okay, so he's got street cred. Yeah. He's got some street cred.

So we'll be returning to you often in this conversation because this is Star Talk, which means we want to get to the bottom of any science that percolates within any of the guests that we have. And that is exactly how I began my interview with Hope Solo. Check it out. So Hope, I always have to ask, no matter who's sitting in that chair, when you grew up, sort of K through 12, are there any fond or horrific memories of your science or math classes in school? Third grade. I had to, I think we all had to, build a rocket, right? Really? We all built rockets. Okay, what did you blow up? Yeah, I did. I did blow up. It was such a sad day because I invited my family members to come to this day. It was like parent day. Everybody watch your kid.

Send the rocket off that we spent a week building. And I go to light it and it just kind of crumbled to the ground and imploded. And I just stood there, had no idea what to do. You know, I was so excited for this day and nobody came to my rescue. My teacher just stood there and kind of was like, okay, kind of laughed and was like, next kid up. And I remember it was nothing for him because he had like, you know, 12 other students that had to light their rockets and send them into space.

And I just stood there and I just had to pick up all the pieces and grab it and just kind of walk away. And I felt like I let down my parents and everybody. So does this mean you might have been a rocket scientist? Had that worked? I don't think that was going to work for me, but wasn't cut out for it. What town was this in? In Richland, Washington.

Richland, so I know, I know the Richland. There's a pair of cities. They were built to help the Manhattan Project to build the bomb. Yeah, so my high school I went to was called the Richland Bombers, and our mascot, so on the back of our letterman's coats, we'd have a big R with the mushroom cloud coming out.

No! So our mascot was the mushroom cloud, and my city is very proud of helping with Day's Pay, which is the airplane, the B-52 bomber, Day's Pay, that flew over Nagasaki and carried the plutonium that bombed the cities. And my city is very proud of that. But your mascot is not even an animal.

It is a mushroom cloud that's not even an animate object. You know, my town is very proud of how we contributed to... So the legacy is there. Yeah, I mean, people gave up their day's pay to help carry out their duties, their wartime duties, and they're very, very proud of that. And so the Day's Pay is what the B-52 bomber is named after my hometown.

The one that delivered the payload. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. You know, the reactor is now closed, and a lot of people had to move to the city to help clean it up, so it employs a lot of people. It employs my entire town, the Hanford nuclear reactor. And, you know, nobody would have known that Richland, Washington or eastern Washington would have existed unless, you know, all the scientists moved there.

Put them on the map. Put us on the map, yeah. So were your parents involved in the warp effort? Somebody must have been. Yeah. So my mom was an environmental scientist, and she actually helped with the cleanup. And, you know, I still, you know, I take pride in it, but I realize, you know, you know, we all look back in

history and we realize what we all could have learned. So I'm very proud of my town. I'm very proud of what my mom did to help with the cleanup crew at Hanford Nuclear Reactor. So it's especially embarrassing that your rocket didn't work. It's very embarrassing, right? If you're in the middle of nowhere

and your rocket didn't work, you know, better luck next time. You know, our fight song... But you're in a nuclear zone. Nuclear zone. Our fight song at sporting events was, Nukem, nukem, nukem till they glow. Nukem.

I know. We are very proud of our nuclear city. Evidently. People like to say there was, you know, I drank special water, and that's what made me such a great athlete. Wow. Chuck. Wow. Yeah, Nuka, so if you have access to a nuclear arsenal, you will win every athletic contest.

Absolutely. Right. So clearly that made community there. The legacy of the Manhattan Project influenced the name of the teams and how they behaved and what they chanted. And the fact that the Hulk played for their football team. From the gamma ray. That's a different lab that they got that one out of. So if I know I got 1,000 people cheering for me, do I perform better? Depends.

For some people, yes. For some people, no. Oh, because it'd make them nervous. Yeah. There were some interesting studies done at Duke with their basketball team. What they found was in shooting free throws, they tried several different things. Sometimes they would jump around. Sometimes they'd be quiet.

Sometimes they would yell right before the shot. And what they- For their own team or the opponent? The opponent. Okay. And what they actually found was one of the most detrimental things was to be quiet. Right. Which is counterintuitive, but it's also interesting that if you go to any sporting event, any basketball game,

people are quiet when the home team shoots. Right. Which makes no sense when you really look at it because you can hear a pin drop. That's going to get in the shooter's head. Because he's expecting noise. He's expecting distraction, and instead it gets silence. And would it be better effective if in that silence they started whispering things like,

your father doesn't love you. Emotional, psychological distress calls. You're a disappointment. So maybe there's not a general one answer to this. You look at baseball players where somebody's throwing a ball at you at 95 miles an hour,

and you have to hit it with a round object, and the crowd is cheering either for you or against you, and yet golfers with a ball sitting at their feet not moving want silence for them to hit the ball. Okay? I have no—don't get me started. That's funny. Okay? Silence. Otherwise, I'll miss the ball.

That's sitting still. Sitting on my feet on a pedestal. Okay? Oh, that's awesome. Well, of course, one person who has definitely made it to the top of her game is Hope Solo. And I think she's arguably, like, one of the best goalkeepers, maybe the best goalkeeper ever. So I asked her if in her own mind, she thought that she was destined to that fate or whether something else went down to make that happen. Let's check it out.

You know, I'm a great goalkeeper. So I have to, you know, really have faith in that decision to become a goalkeeper and believe it was the right one. But part of me thinks I would have been one of the best goal scorers of all time. Watch out. Well, but, okay, but it's too late. You're already the best goalie of all time. So we got, it's too late. We'll stick with that.

But this day and day, there's so many expectations on kids. Oh, yeah. And people think that they can spot talent at five years old. And I disagree because it's not just your athletic prowess. It's not your skill and your build. It's so much more your mentality and even what's in your heart. There's so much more to it that you can't just pick a kid at five years old and say, he's going to be the next Michael Jordan. I don't believe in that. And when I was five years old, I had the skill, and I had the competitive nature,

but my parents didn't want to push me. They wanted me to be a kid and have fun and play other sports and go camping and go fishing and learn about the world, not just live and breathe on a soccer field. So, Brent, there's psychology there, right? Yeah, so if you look at the opening of that clip, you heard her confidence. She's a great goalkeeper. So I think reaching that level, she had to have a very high level of confidence. What was interesting, though, was how she talked about trying to predict great athletes from an early age.

And there's no success in doing that. It's very little that would... But that's all we ever try to do, find a five-year-old, a ten-year-old, and say they're going to be the next this, the next that. Because Daddy never made it to state. You're going to make it to state. That's what I'm saying.

So it's not just do you have the mental drive to do it, there's the external forces, the parents who want it out of you. What's interesting about that is if you look at early sports socialization and specialization, if you specialize early on, there's really no benefit long term. There's a benefit for the immediate future. Other than gymnastics and figure skating, if you specialize at an early age, it doesn't lead to success on the back end. Some studies of college athletes show that over 80% played multiple sports growing up. So they didn't specialize. Oh, okay.

So the general good body performance. So when is a good time to suck your kid dry of any hopes of anything else in life except living out your personal dreams that are failed. Chuck! What did that question even come... What I meant to say was what's a good time to get kids

into sports? Yeah, do you have any advice on this? I mean, there'll be parents watching, kids watching. Yeah. And you've got a key here to a lot. Yeah, I think it's getting kids into as many sports as you can early on and then letting them go with what they enjoy. And it's not just sports.

People talk about the child prodigy in Mozart. He turned out pretty good, but... Pretty good. He was amazing. But how many 10-year-old concert pianists have you seen, and then you never hear about them later? And so maybe it's detrimental to the development of kids. I'll give you the opposite end of the continuum.

I actually went to college with a guy by the name of Marcus Pollard, and we didn't have football at our school. And I'll never forget this conversation. I said, Marcus, what are you going to do when you're done? He said, I'm going to put on 30 or 40 pounds and play in the NFL. And I remember thinking, and I'm going to be an astrophysicist. Not happening. So two years later, he was with the Indianapolis Colts,

had a 14-year playing career. And I think you can find more of those examples where people didn't play this sport, they ended up playing professionally, than the kid that specialized at the age of five and made it all the way through. There's a huge burnout factor. So, okay, I get that. But what about all this talk of the 10 years, 10,000 hours? Is that urban legend or is there something to it? Believe it or not, Malcolm Gladwell, who popularized the 10,000 hour rule, first of all, it's not a rule, and he misquoted the research. The research was done by Anders Ericsson, and it was on practice, of all things.

So to really think about research on practice and becoming part of pop culture is a little bit odd in the first place. But what that research actually showed, it was an average of 10,000 hours. For instance, one study with pro hockey players showed that they only played organized hockey about 10,000 hours. For instance, one study with pro hockey players showed that they only played organized hockey about 3,000 hours. Only 450 of those hours occurred prior to the age of 12. So it's a bit of a myth in the fact that

they didn't sit there and practice for 10,000 hours doing that. It was an average across entities, and it could range from 3,000 up to 25,000. You know, now when you said organized hockey, it just sparked something in me. A lot of times in basketball, what you have are kids who play not on an organized level, but on a schoolyard level, and that gives them a great deal of improvisation, and they exhibit a certain creativity that they bring to the game.

But then- Including no blood, no foul. Right. That's what my baby did. That's what it was. No blood, no foul. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep going.

But then they get into the organization and they can function. So how important is it to have your kid- Oh, good point. You got to behave according to rules. Right. So how important is that in terms of getting your kid to move along the continuum? I think it's a combination. What's interesting about that, if you look at just the playground play of sports,

is that studies of kids who just played pickup games, they actually are better at decision-making and conflict resolution because if we had an argument, we had to settle it. Right. There's no referee. Right, exactly. And what it also shows is that when you put adults into the equation, kids actually play less.

So when we're pickup, we keep it going. If the teams are lopsided, we change it. When adults got involved, kids stood around a lot. The games were lopsided. Nobody corrected that. And so in some ways, kids stood around a lot. The games were lopsided. Nobody corrected that. And so in some ways, kids are less competitive. Damn adults. They mess up everything.

They mess up everything. Coming up, more of the science of sports when StarTalk continues. Welcome back to StarTalk. We are here at Hayden Planetarium in New York City featuring my interview with Hope Solo, who is like the world-famous goalie for the U.S. National Women's Soccer Team. And I wanted to know, among many other things, what does it take, what is behind becoming the greatest soccer goalie there ever was? Check it out. Goalkeeping isn't, it's not about, you know, acrobats.

It's not about making a circus out of this position. It's about finding the quickest path to the ball. And I think for me, it's about efficiency. I want to be quick and agile, but I also want to have great angles to make my work less. And I want to find the quickest path to the ball to make my work less. And oftentimes, people don't give me praise because I'm not

making this huge acrobatic save. And it drives me crazy because unless you're being a showboat and making these acrobatic saves, you're really not getting praise for it. And so people, my goalkeeper coaches, believe that what makes me great is my ability to make things look easy. This is one of the most fascinating topics I can think of. If you are an amazing athlete, you can make things look easy, and then you show up fewer times on the sports highlight reel. So, is there any truth to that? Definitely. I think some of the best, they do make it look easy. So, in part of that, and I think what Hope's alluding to,

is she has unbelievable anticipation skills. The reality is she's looking at things that your average goalkeeper wouldn't even think to look at. She's probably thinking two steps ahead. I saw a great example of this in the sport of baseball. Now we have the ability to monitor where we look. So there's tech, they put glasses on people and they look at their eye tracking. And so they put major league hitters against minor league hitters. And what they found was when a major league hitter hits a home run, his eye, his gaze just stays in one spot, sees the ball, hits a home run. The minor leaguers were looking at the shoe. They were looking at the dirt. They were looking at the hat. They were looking all over the place. Okay, right. So with respect to what she just said about, you know, the fact that it's about acrobats, do you find that players now psychologically are trying to showboat so that they can get the glory?

I mean, if I'm a high school player and I want to go to college and get a scholarship, maybe I'm the guy that gets a little more attention on the glory. I mean, if I'm a high school player and I want to go to college and get a scholarship, maybe I'm the guy that gets a little more attention on the field. Maybe I'm the guy that takes my helmet off and blows kisses. You know, is that part of it? Yeah, definitely. I think some people know that you can get, you're in the limelight by doing those types of things. Yeah, but so in the case of, let's say a center fielder in baseball, if you're slow, then you make, I bet you make a lot of shoestring catches.

Correct. Because you're slow. If you're fast, you're standing there waiting for the ball to hit your mitt. Yeah, but I think that's where... But wouldn't the slow guy get on ESPN a lot more than the fast guy? Well, that's what I'm saying. But no, but maybe it's not so obvious because if you're fast, the perimeter of the area that you can cover is larger.

So that more balls will come to your attention than that of a slow person. You could be so slow it just bounces between the outfielders. And there's not even a catch to show. So you never get there. You never even get there in the first place. But that's where I think data analytics has become important because it exposes the person. That slow person that doesn't get to as many balls, now the data clearly shows that they don't get to as many balls.

Can't hide that. Right. And so on top of this is also your state of mind throughout all of this. And is it fair to use the phrase emotional intelligence for an athlete in this? Do you have a term that you use? Athletes, mental focus. Yeah, I think with emotional intelligence, I think of that in sport related to leadership. And I think that people who are emotionally intelligent, they know how the people around them feel, to be honest. So team captains, folks like that. Okay. But I think honestly, if you look at the greatest of all time, they're often, they fall on the opposite end of the continuum, where they're just, they're so focused on, hey, this is how I'm going to do it.

I don't care what you feel. I don't care what you think. I'm going to get it done. And that would be, yeah, the bottom end, because other people's emotional state is irrelevant to you. Right. And also, when I think of focus, you can think of, you know, soccer goalies come to mind, especially during penalty kicks.

Yeah. It's like, which way is the ball going to go? It's one-on-one. One-on-one. The goalie, in many cases, if not most cases, has to almost pre-commit. But I had hope so low. She's like one of the best at this. I had to ask her, what is going through her mind?

Emotionally, psychologically. Let's check it out. In a shootout situation where at least five kickers are going to shoot on me, I hope to make one. I hope to make two, but one is for sure you have to make one to help your team win. I go for two. And that's two out of five. Two out of five. So it's still not 50%. That's not 50%. And how much of it is luck? And how much of it is you reading a person because that's now mental that's not reflexes that's not i'm strong and can jump high that is i'm i've out psyched that person so talk about

evolution the game has evolved the game has absolutely evolved to the point where the athletes are better, they're smarter, they know how to disguise the way they're going to go. And so if you asked me this probably even six years ago, five years ago maybe, I would have said that I can read it. I can read some of these players who step up. I know what way they're going to go from their arm swing to their leg swing to how many steps they approach the ball with to their hip shape. I can read it. But within six years, players have gotten so good at disguising what way they're going

to go that I'm not as confident in saying that anymore. I try to read it, and oftentimes I get it wrong. So I don't think it in saying that anymore. I try to read it and oftentimes I get it wrong. So I don't think it's a guessing game. I don't think it's luck. It's not luck. There's, you know, I still believe. So it's an arms race. It's you can read them. They figured out that you're reading them. Now they've hide that and now they can outdo you. So now what can we do as goalkeepers to put them back on the defense? Yeah, so we got some statistics on this. The men's penalty kicks, they were successful 70% of the time. So it's really the odds are stacked against the goalie in this one.

And I wonder, is it kind of an arms race? Because if you figure out that I know how to read which way you're going to kick it, then you're going to switch that up, and then I've got to respond to that. I've got the perfect example of this. I was talking to a professional referee, odd situation. There was a lightning delay in a soccer game, professional soccer game right before a penalty kick. What is a lightning delay? So there was lightning in the stadium. So they had to get off the field. It's such wimps. Yes. So both teams go back to their locker rooms. Such wimps.

Yes. So both teams go back to their locker rooms. The goalkeeper goes and looks at all the PKs of the player about to take the PK. The PK penalty kick. The penalty kick. Sorry. Okay. And then the person taking the penalty kick went and looked to see what the goalkeeper did on all the PKs he's faced.

So they come back out, and they both overthought it because they have no idea that the other guy did the exact same thing. The referee knew it because he had talked to both of them. But it was a perfect example of technology, and we have too much information. Yeah, so again, that's the arms race. Right. They canceled each other. So it becomes like a poker game.

You're really sitting there trying to figure out if this guy, what he has in his hand. You don't play the hand. You play your opponent. Right. You play the person, not the hand. You play the person, not the hand. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And so do you teach this? Yeah. So part of this, too, and with goalkeepers, what we do is we take video and break it down, and we'll stop a shot right before someone takes it, and then we measure their reaction time. Is it going right or left? So they start to develop the ability to read what a player is doing and they start to be

able to anticipate that. So basically every school is going to want one of you in there. Definitely. So more on the science of athleticism when StarTalk continues. We're back on StarTalk, featuring my interview with champion soccer goalie, Hope Solo. And now, as amazing as she is,

she has a weakness that she revealed in my conversation with her. Let's check it out. I shouldn't tell everybody this, but I'm actually pretty weak upper body. I'm pretty weak. Yeah, but there's not a lot of shouldering going on. I land and fall on my shoulder every single day. Oh, sure, but you're not fighting with other people with your shoulders the way defenders are. When I go up for a ball in a crowd, I have to hold them off.

You know know they're trying to to hit me and get the ball that's what elbows are for but i'm gonna do that basketball my arms are up here focus on the ball that's right so they're hitting me in here so i have to have the shoulder strength to not get moved but i've been fortunate enough for the most part to be healthy throughout my career besides the shoulder injury, which happened in 2010, as you said. Did you fall on your shoulder? But I had been dealing with the pain for probably a couple years prior to when they actually said, enough is enough. Let's go get this taken care of.

Oh, it wasn't a catastrophic injury? No, it happened over time. Oh. And when I went in, because I was still strong, my doctor was like, oh, you're fine. Solo, you know, we'll do some x-rays and MRIs, but solo, you're fine. And then he went in and he looked at the x-rays and he was like, how in the world are you playing? And I basically, my arm was basically hanging off my body. I mean, I had my biceps tendon was unattached. I had a 360-degree tear of the labrum off the bone.

They had to do a microfracture because I had no cartilage left. And there's 13 anchors now holding it together. And they reattached the bicep tendon. And so now. That hurt just talking about it. Yeah. So this is my range of motion now in my arm as a goalkeeper. On your right arm? On my right arm. Yeah. I'm raising it right now. And I've managed to play five years since

surgery, which is kind of unheard of, but... But you're missing five inches of reach on this side of your body. I'm missing a lot of range of motion. Is that a missing five inches of reach on this side of your body. I'm missing a lot of range of motion. Is that a secret? Should we edit that out? We didn't edit that out. And now we know how to defeat Hope Solo.

We found her kryptonite. That's right. So, Brent, you played sports. Were you ever injured? Yes, I actually had a shoulder injury as a baseball player. Okay, so did you just suck it up and keep going like Hope Solo did, or did you wimp out? Oh, I sucked it up. Yeah, yeah, okay. I was just wondering. So, in my life, I rode competitively, and I also

wrestled. And wrestling, you're inly, and I also wrestled. And wrestling, you're in pain, but you're focused. I want to put this guy's shoulder blades on the mat. And even though I'm twisted, and I don't know about those until later because I'm really, really focused at the time. So it must be a true supposition that athletes just have a higher pain tolerance than, like like other people. Is that true? Fellow athlete. I believe so. So basically Hope is, she's, she's surviving pain. Yeah. At every, possibly every day of her life,

but certainly during a game, but her, but her ability to focus transcends all of that yep and your research shows this as well yes and do you help athletes actually deal with pain while they're or playing through pain as in i don't know disassociating from the pain so that they can continue on in the game yeah so if part of that's ethical if if i know right tells them right yeah yeah your arm is broken we'll tape you up and go back out on the field. Put some ice on it. Get back out there. But if they're not going to do any extra damage, then we work on like dissociation strategies

would be one technique. Just to be clear, dissociation means I'm in pain, but I will separate my focus from that pain so that I don't have to think about it. And I, I'm worrying about something else. So if you're actually being dissociative, what do you train the athlete to focus on? Is it the task at hand? I mean, it depends on the sport. So for instance, sometimes with swimmers who swim distance, they may count strokes at one point. They may sing a song at another point during a race. Underwater?

Okay, just wondering. Yeah. Okay. But, you know, in runners, same type of thing. Rowers, a lot of times rowers will just focus on the shoulder in front of them. Yeah. And they'll put their attention there so they're not thinking about what's going on in their body. What I consistently see with racers, for instance.

What kind of racers? Rowers, swimmers, runners. Whenever they come into my office, whenever they have a poor performance, they talk about how much pain they were in. They never talk about the pain when they perform well because they're not focusing on the pain. And so I think a lot of times that thought of someone just passed me, I'm falling back. How do I feel? Now you're creating the context that I don't feel that good. So not only does overcoming this pain enable you to focus and then perform, there's a rise of science being applied to athletic performance

that is like nothing we've seen in previous decades. And we've got someone, I think we've got someone on video call, Mark McCluskey from Wired Magazine, of all places, but then we think about it, maybe that makes sense. He wrote a book called Faster, Higher, Stronger, and the Olympic motto, of course, and he's thought a lot about enhancing athletic performance and what tools you might invoke to make that happen.

And I think we got him on video call. Guys, can you bring them up? Mark, welcome to StarTalk. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for being on. What is the leading force that you can see that we can look forward to in the future? I think the use of data and the use of analytics to really understand athletic performance in a more granular way. We see it in basketball.

We see the game actually changing because we have a better understanding of sort of the relative value of a shot from different places on the court, for instance. A lot about sleep and recovery and how that feeds into athletes' performance. Sleep is an incredible performance-enhancing drug. It might actually be the most effective one. And we as a culture and especially athletes tend to under- under sleep. So I, I think that was a really interesting thing to write about. It's because they're partying the night before. Sometimes it's not unheard of. So all I can think of as you speak is that scene in Rocky four, where Drago is being basically invented by all the Russian scientists and

they're giving them these injections and they got all this science, but Rocky is in the mountains, Rocky himself is in the mountains lifting logs. And so since movies are true, what that movie says is that raw guts and determination beat science every time. And I don't think that's true. I think that the combination of raw guts and science beats anything. Well, as you know, we've been talking about Hope Solo and her motivation to be the best. And she had some concerns about what role science will play in this.

But I think we'll all just get used to that. It's just another force operating on the performance of athletes that we all pay to watch. So thanks for your insights into this, and we'll all look for your book. Thank you very much. Okay. Mark McCluskey, everyone. Yeah. Coming up, we'll be answering your questions from our fan base on the science of sports when StarTalk returns.

Welcome back to StarTalk. We're talking about the science of sports. And in this segment, it's time for Cosmic Queries. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is where I answer questions from our fans. And tonight, we took your questions for me about the physics of soccer.

Yes. Okay? Exactly. Actually, my undergraduate degree is in physics, and the rest is in astrophysics. But once you get the foundation of physics, it can take you pretty far. Yeah. I'm just saying. You pretty much got it.

No, you get it. And Brent, if I need help here, I'm going to call on you, okay? And if I don't know the answer, I'll just say I don't know the answer. Go to the next one. Okay. Okay? All right. Let's get our first query.

It's from Dan Woods, Chicago, Illinois. Dan wants to know this. How many factors affect the distance a ball flies? Humidity, PSI, force of kick, altitude, et cetera. Ooh, good. So, yes, all of that. Next question. So, a couple of things.

If the air is thinner, the ball will travel farther. And because air provides resistance to movement, and the air just slows down the ball. You can't kick the ball faster just because you have lower gravity, for example. But after having kicked it, it will slow down more slowly. Gotcha. Okay. So that's one example. Another one is humidity. People think humidity, things don't travel as far. Humid air is thinner than dry air. Oh. Yes, it is. There you go. You know why? It's really quick. You ready? Go ahead. Okay. Because humid air has H2O in it. Okay. One oxygen, two hydrogens. Weigh that. That weighs less than the molecules it's displacing,

such as N2 and O2. Nitrogen doubles up with itself. It's got an atomic weight of 14. Two nitrogens is 28. Write that down. Two oxygens is 16 times 2. That's 32 atomic weight. What does water weigh? Two hydrogens? That's just 2. One oxygen? 16. Add them together. It's 18. So water weighs, water molecule weighs way less than the rest of the molecules you're breathing for your sustenance, the oxygen and the nitrogen, which actually doesn't do anything. So damp air, you can definitely hit stuff farther. Wow. That was fantastic.

All right. All right. Steve Ball from Kalamazoo, Michigan, wants to know, All right, Steve Ball from Kalamazoo, Michigan, wants to know, how does the spin on the ball make it bend in the air? So I can show you. All right, here, give me a ball. Oh, you got a ball? I got a ball.

Okay. So it's actually amazing, beautiful, and simple all at once. So if you spin the ball, so when you kick the ball and give it spin, right? If there is stitching on the ball or any irregularities on the surface, such as these hexagonal pentagonal shapes, such as the stitching on a baseball, what happens is as this spins, As this spins, it drags a layer of air around it. Okay, so it's ball plus air that's spinning. Now, as the ball is spinning and moving through the air, this side of the ball and its air adds to the air that's moving past it.

Right. Having it go by the ball faster than the air on this side of the ball that is fighting itself. Okay, now, we know from Bernoulli, alright, and other folks who have studied aerodynamics, that if you have fast-moving air relative to slow-moving air, there is a

force that descends upon that object. And the force is against the side of the fast-moving air. And I can show you. Can you hold that for a second? So check this out. Okay, so here we go. All right. I got a sheet of paper. All right. See that? Okay. So if I blow across the top of this, okay, you'd think I'd be pushing it further down because I'm putting air pressure on it. But now I'm going to move fast-moving air on top and no moving air on the bottom. And what did I say? If you have fast moving air, the force goes against it, okay? So watch, ready?

Right. It's lifting. It looks counterintuitive. It looks counterintuitive. It looks like when you're blowing the top, it should be going down. So what's happening is this is the side of the ball that's feeling a force pushing. Right. And there you have it. And that's how you throw a curveball in baseball, a bend in soccer. And in fact, if you try to play soccer on the moon, you ain't bending nothing. Okay? Coming up, we discuss the role of gender in sports.

Next on StarTalk. Welcome back to StarTalk. We are here at the American Museum of Natural History. Yes. Central Park West, New York City. We're featuring my interview with basically the world's greatest goalie, I think, in my book, Hope Solo. And in those conversations, we explored sort of the role of gender in professional sports. And I thought maybe it's time, this being StarTalk, to put some data on the situation.

You know who we have for that? Mona. Mona. So everybody, this is Mona Chalabi, and she is a data journalist, and she breaks down all manner of phenomena into data. So Mona, what do you have for us today, please? Today, Neil, I have some data on participation in high school sports, specifically girls participating in sports. High school sports? High school sports. Okay.

And the oldest data that we have on this, national data, is from 1971. Can you guess how many girls were playing soccer in high schools in America in 1971? I got it. Two. Eleven or something.

One team with no one else to play against. What, you're saying that's the most recent data from 1970? No, no, no. This is as far back as it goes. Oh, of course it's far back. I've got some recent data for you, don't worry. That's a good baseline of data, so that means you're going to be talking some real data smack right now. Yeah.

Okay. So in 1971, 700 girls in the US were playing soccer. But in 1972, everything changed because Title IX came into force. That was a piece of legislation that basically banned Sexual discrimination in any educational program that was federally funded So the year after title 9 was passed the number of girls playing soccer in the high schools in the u.s Jumps from 700 to 10,000 700 and since then it's continued to grow and today is 376,000. Wow.

Which is great. So with numbers that large, that's a large enough repository of people, so now if you get the best people out of 300,000, they will be better than your best people out of 100. Probably. Yeah, that's how, right? Yeah, probabilistically this is true, but the way that you express those numbers matters, right? So it kind of makes more sense to express this as percentages. So again, if you track the number of girls playing soccer from 1971 all the way up to present,

as a percentage, it has climbed from basically zero to about 20%. But that hasn't happened for all sports in the US. to about 20%. But that hasn't happened for all sports in the US. So basketball among girls in high school has actually dropped from 40% down to 20% over the same period. Tennis has also declined and so has volleyball. So soccer's kind of interesting in that respect, right?

It tells a different story. So is there any obvious, other than what the data are telling us, do you have an explanation for that? Yeah, all those other girls are now playing soccer. Oh, maybe that's good. That could be part of it for sure. The one last thing I would say about this is that all of this stuff matters.

The American College of Sports Medicine has found that when girls participate in sports, they're more likely to get higher grades in school and they're more likely to graduate from college. So it's very important. There you go. Mona, thank you. Thank you. All right. So I asked superstar goalie Hope Solo about these very same issues.

Did you know that in 2015, the U.S. National Women's Soccer Team won the Women's World Cup? The World Cup. Yes. They won it. Yes. That's got to mean something with regard to gender and sports and what force that has on the rest of us. Let's check it out.

The ratings for viewers of that game rivaled that of major men's professional sports. Absolutely. What a sign of the future that is. What a sign of the coming of times. I mean, congratulations. Watch out, men. We are here to stay. So you summoned the force to change the world.

Oh, we needed all the force possible. Wow. And we still need it to change the world. Also, of course, as the popularity of women's soccer grows, the base of people who will enter the field statistically. Let's just hope more male soccer players decide to play soccer so that we can have an American team who might win a World Cup. I'm serious. You're talking about the base number.

Oh, snap. But you're talking about the base number. It's like, look, we brought you home the trophy. All right, it's your turn. Ooh. I'm getting home the trophy. All right. It's like your turn. So do you know 27 million people tuned into that World Cup match between the USA and Japan? Wow. To watch us win. To watch Japan get crushed.

Okay. And it shattered every single viewing record for a televised soccer game ever played by men or women. So you think this would make a difference. Yes. But no. No. You look at the data here. What do I have here?

So it turns out the team pulled in. So there's prize money for it, right? So what did the winning women's team get to share? $2 million. Oh. The team. Wow To share, $2 million. The team. Wow. Shared $2 million. Now the Germans men team, okay, what did they take them?

$35 million. Wow. So there's an inequity. So something's got to change. And do you have any insight into this, Brent? Because I don't know what to make of it. Well, I think it shows that we've come a long way since Title IX, but we still have a long way to go.

Okay. And I think, you know, the interesting part about this one is the argument against women's sports is always television viewership, but this is a perfect example that blows that out of the water. You can't make that argument in this case. And it's got to also be the case with women's tennis. I mean, women's tennis arguably is more fun to watch than the men. But I think there's another issue at play here.

For instance, Seth Blatter, who was the former president of FIFA, made the comment that women's soccer players need to wear tighter shorts. Whoa. And to the point of tennis, for years, Anna Kournikova was the highest paid player in tennis. She never won a single tournament. She was a model. She was very attractive. So there's still this baggage. Sexism. But it's also true, just to be fair, though that's impossible in this situation, the most successful male athletes tend to be the better looking guys. Tom Brady, no one ever accused him of being ugly. Dreamy. Dreamy. So the looks for the men

also matter, but perhaps not nearly as much as has been invoked with women. But up next, Bill Nye, the science guy. He's going to explain

the science of goalkeeping when StarTalk returns. We're back on StarTalk. And we're going to wrap up my interview with gold medal professional goalie Hope Solo. And in my last clip with her, we just talked about her success and what that means and where that takes you. Check it out. Excuse the analogy. I truly did reach for the stars when I was just a young girl.

In this place, you can say you reached for the stars. In my office, you're cool with that. We're good. We're good with that. Okay. Reached for the stars. But I really did at a young age, I wanted to become a professional soccer player. And professional soccer didn't even exist for women.

And here I am today as a professional soccer player. So I didn't see the gender equalities at that time growing up, and now I see them every day and I live them. And we see them, you know, with this last summer's World Cup. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Maybe you have more power than you think, because it's not that you became a professional soccer player. It's that the world invented professional women's

soccer for you. Because I dreamt it. Because you dreamt it. So now you're worrying me a little now. What kind of power does she actually wield over the space-time continuum? So there's hope. She's all there. She's all there, Brent. She's your model candidate for what you try to make other athletes into. Yeah, ultimate level of having a dream and having the dedication to achieve it. And you're bringing science to this. That's good because we've got someone on our payroll who brings science to everything he thinks and does. And who would that be? I believe it's Bill Nye. Bill Nye, the science guy. And let's find out what Bill Nye has to say

about the science of goalkeeping. Let's check it out. A soccer shot comes at you fast, especially if you happen to be standing right here. So I hope you're hip. For a goalie like Hope Solo, there's a lot of science involved. The ball's going faster than a car on a highway.

Two hundred joules of energy coming right at your face. Now the ball has a smooth skin with sewn seams. Air flows smoothly over the smooth parts, but when it hits a seam, the molecules start to tumble. This makes air pressure build up and slack off suddenly. The ball moves side to side and up off suddenly. The ball moves side to side and up and down. The goalie has to track that trajectory so she can make the catch. Otherwise the other team scores a goal. Now, if she can make the catch, she can give it a nudge, even a strong nudge. But then the ball ends up back out there where it can fall in enemy hands or enemy feet So a goalie has to develop toughness

As well as a soft touch so she can absorb that energy the more science this goalie senses the more successful she'll be The idea is to grab every kick by the ball. That's Bill using his head in many ways. So Brent, do you have any reflections on what we've just been discussing? Well, I think when it comes to Hope Solo, she's a great example of where confidence can take you. I mean, she believed in herself. She had a vision. I think the big difference between someone

who achieves what she's achieved is not only she had the vision, she had the dedication to stick to it and separate herself from other people. It was an honor to have Hope visit me in my office, just to be in her presence. You see her on TV doing these amazing things that are not even human.

They come from some other place. And what I was reminded of is to recognize that whatever people say is your talent, at the end of the day, it goes nowhere without determination, without focus, without drive, without the all-consuming urge to want to be the best. And that's why not everyone is the best. From the Hall of the Universe of the Roe Center for Earth and Space,

I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, bidding you to keep working up.