Stuff You Should Know - How Roller Derby Works

Episode Date: September 28, 2010

Nowadays roller derby is increasingly popular across the US -- but how did it get its start, and how does it work? As Josh and Chuck delve into the world of roller derby, they touch on skateboarding, women's rights and more. Tune in and learn more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. This is Josh Clark. Charles W. Bryan is clearing his nose out across from me. I was laughing up boogers because you were singing Dolly Parton before we went on air. Yeah, I was. I love Dolly. I'm hoping that was never recorded by Jerry secretly, surreptitiously. We only had a little outtakes in a while. It's been a while. Jerry,

get on that. We haven't said anything funny in a really long time. I think that's the problem. Hey, Chuck. Hey, dude. Did you know that we are smack dab in the middle of roller derby playoff season? Yeah. Oh, you did? Yeah, I would say. Did you know that prior to 9am this morning? No, but I would say we're smack dab in the middle of a roller derby revolution. Yeah. Yeah, we're smack dab in the middle of a roller derby playoff season that is situated within a larger roller derby revolution. Can we agree to that one? Yes. Okay. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Roller derby, it's kind of everywhere. If you are not into it, I'm sure you've at least seen some cool posters or stickers on cars supporting roller derby leagues

all of a sudden. And if you notice that there really weren't any prior to 2001, you're a pretty sharp person. I would say so. We have our own roller derby league here in Atlanta, the Atlanta Roller Girls. Have you been? I have not. I've seen them on cable access though. Is that your Tuesday night? Just watching cable access? I don't. I actually don't remember where I would have seen them because I don't even have cable access or cable or anything right now. We need to go. We need to make a point to go. It's like right down from my house. It's on ponds, right? Yeah, the Yerub Shreiner temple. Yeah. Yeah. Oddly. All right, we'll go. Because you know Saturday, September 25th, which is probably before this will come out. Yeah. That's the next playoff.

I bet if we took Jerry, she'd know like a third of the people there. You know, they'd be like, hey, Jerry, what's up? Yeah. So Chuck, the Atlanta Roller Girls are one of 98 sanctioned leagues. And growing. Yeah. Because when did Tracy write this article? Like maybe 2006? Yeah, I think that the WFTDA, the Woman's Flat Track Derby Association, has been around since 2004. So she did not acknowledge that in this. So it was probably 2003. Okay. So since 2003, Tracy cited there's about 30 leagues. Yeah. Now there's 98 sanctioned and another 43 that are apprentice leagues. They're up and coming. Yeah. Right. So there's a boatload of roller derby going on around this country. Sure. I was looking on the Flat Track Derby

Association site and they have like the, you know, links to all the different teams pages. So they have the logos of each one and I found the best one. Which one? My favorite was the Dutchland Rollers out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They have like an Irish woman with the head kerchief on with a black eye. Amish or Irish? Amish. Oh, okay. Did I say Irish? Yeah, she might have been Irish too. Did I say Irish? You did. Oh, that stinks because I really meant Amish. That's right. So is that their whole get up? They all wear Amish gear? I don't know. I just saw the logo. They probably do because they go with the themes generally. Yeah. But that's, that's for later, right? So Chuck, let's talk about this. Let's talk about roller derby and by,

let's talk about it. Let's talk about its history. Yeah. From what I can tell, Josh, in the mid 1930s, there was a sports promoter named Leo Celso. Sounds very like sports promoter from the 30s, doesn't he? Yeah. We need a roller derby, see? And that's basically what he said. But initially it was, you know, they used to have all these endurance competitions back in the day, like the danceathons and all those silly things you did before television. His was initially a roller skating endurance competition. Right. It was called the Transcontinental Roller Derby. Yeah. And the idea was to do 57,000 laps, which is about the distance across the U.S. It's about 3,000 miles. It's a long way to skate. Yeah. But they all kind of realized this kind

of stinks and it's not very fun to watch. It does. Plus skaters were skating about 11 and a half hours a day. Yeah, it's no fun. Right. And I'm sure there's a pretty sizable cash prize. This is during the Depression, so you could make people wrestle bears and tutus and all sorts of crazy stuff to feed their family. So I'm sure that's why people skated 11 and a half hours a day for these things. The problem wasn't that it was too much for human constitution. It was that it was boring. Yeah. It's just people going around a track again and again and again. And then ultimately it's like, wow, they just skated across the U.S. But in the meantime, it's boring. And there was a sports writer, a very famous sports writer named Damon Runyon, who in 1937

came to Seltzer and was like, look, dude, this is a good idea. But the coolest part is when people run into each other. Why don't you make something like that really emphasizes that? Right. And apparently Seltzer was like, I don't know. It seems kind of rough and we'll give it a shot. And all of a sudden, the next thing you know, you have like 1930s ladies just beating the tar out of each other. Have you seen footage of it? It's pretty awesome. It is. I mean, back in the 30s, too. I think of everyone is so genteel and everything. No, it was just as rough and tumble as it is today. Oh, yeah. And he only had the endurance version for a couple of years, I think, before he was like, you know, you may be onto something. Right. And from that point on, that's

roller derby. Yes, Josh. And it grew, you know, it was very popular during the 40s and 50s. And clearly if you remember like happy days, I think those are roller derby unhappy days at one point. Didn't Pinky Tuscadero participate? I don't know. I was wondering that earlier. It seems like something she would do. See, it seems like she'd be too cool for that, but she would like beat up the girls after the match, maybe. That's pretty bad. I don't know. We'll have to look that up. Leather Tuscadero, wouldn't it? Or was that her sister? Were there two of them? Was Leather or Nickname? I don't know. I'll put that up. But it did grow in popularity up until about the 70s. I think a lot of things declined in the 70s because of the stinking

economy and the gas crisis. And so people weren't going out and spending money on things like roller derby anymore. Right. Or skateboards. Skateboarding had an opposite effect, though, didn't it? Yeah, it boomed, I think, because that awesome documentary, The Lords of Dogtown. Was that a doc? Well, there was a documentary and then a feature film based on the documentary. Oh, okay. But the documentary's better. Okay. But yeah, the swimming pool is. They couldn't, people couldn't afford to fill up their pools so the pools dried out and they skated. Right. Skateboards in the pools. And that, Stacey Perelta was one of those who would go on to found Powell Perelta Skateboards, the greatest skateboard company of all time. They were awesome.

Who would sponsor the greatest group of skaters of all time, the Bones Brigade. Yeah. Yeah. But that has nothing to do with roller derby except for the wheels. Well, it does actually have something to do with roller derby. In this case, that the dock is always better than the feature film. You just hang on to that one. Sure. Put that one in your back pocket. Well, it's interesting though in that roller derby did decline in the 70s, but that's when it was actually probably most visible because they had those televised, I remember when I was a kid. Do you? Oh yeah, they televised it on. You were like a, you know, 25 year old kid. 25 in 1975. And I sent you the link earlier when we watched a little bit of this

clip to through YouTube, like 1970s roller derby. You can see some of this stuff. You can and you can hear the commentators. When they tried to revive it in the 70s after it's declined, there was kind of an artificial revival where roller derby toured the country in civic centers and small towns. Yeah, like an exhibition and everything. Right. But there was like different, they're different teams, but like the, the announcers were the same. Right. And the announcers used a lot of colorful language. Like there was one woman who is so genetic. Let's just go and say that. There was a woman who's like, I think they, they cited or waited about 200 pounds. She's like a big blocker. Yeah. And she, the, the announcers said that she was

roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island. And it was just kind of like even on the YouTube clip, the person who posted it said, I apologize for the announcer saying that one of the, the skaters is the size of Rhode Island. It was the sep, anything went back there in the 70s. Pretty much. You can do anything you want. Pretty much. But even that didn't, didn't keep roller derby into the 80s. Like that kind of fantastic misogyny and the kind of world wrestling look and feel that it had to it. Yeah. They took it sort of over the edge to where they would like fake hit each other and stuff like that. Right. Um, but that, that, that didn't, that didn't keep it alive. Right.

And we should say also that that revival is significant in that it foreshadows the 21st century revival because it was all women. Yeah. Prior to that, in the 40s, the 50s and the 60s, when like during the heyday of roller derby, it was co-ed. Yeah. Well, not co-ed on the same team. They would have like the, you know, teams were co-ed. I think periods were not co-ed. Oh, see, I thought it was women competed in the same night as men, but only against each other. I think teams were originally co-ed, which is, which has grown from the, the first roller derby where they were 25 teams of one man and one woman. Right. And then that carried on. So I think the teams were co-ed, but different periods, it would be the male team or the women's team, I think.

But the men kind of went away for the most part. And now the modern revival is all ladies. Right. In Austin, Texas, in 2001, a group of women got together and basically single-handedly revived roller derby into this really huge incarnation that we're seeing now, right? Well, yeah. And like we said, in 2004, just a few years later, the women's flat track derby association was formed, and they pretty much run the show. And we should mention that, you know, flat track means that, well, it's clearly not a roller rink at the Shriners Auditorium in Atlanta, but a lot of them use roller rinks and instead of the curved bowls. The banked. Yeah, the banked bowls that they used to use, but they still have those in some places. Can I get the impression

that flat track and banked kind of go head to head? Well, yeah, the one lady, they interviewed some women, Tracy did for this article, and she said that they'll debate that, of course, but it's really all in the spirit of the sport. Sure. They're still like sisters. And there's a, I should say, there's a documentary about that formation in 2001 in Austin called Hell on Wheels. Oh, really? And that's where I saw footage of the old timey 1930s roller derby people just beating the crap out of each other. Awesome. Yeah, it is pretty awesome. But then there's a feature film based on that. Yeah. That Chuck, I don't know if you remember or not, but on the way back from Guatemala. That's where I watched it. You were watching it,

and I was watching you watch it. And like every once in a while, just be like, Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore in the same movie. It's that's a rough one. Drew Barrymore directed that, I believe. And produced it and basically paid for it. Yeah, it was called Whippet, and it was set in Austin. And I hesitate to say I didn't like it very much because you never know if Drew Barrymore is a listener, but I thought about that too. It was good. I think it put it on the map faux show. Definitely. It brought it into the mainstream. How about that? Yes. Okay. And Jimmy Fallon was just terrific as the announcer and isn't he always. Future man was the coach. Class act. So that was Whippet. Let's talk about the spirit of

roller derby, Chuck. Okay. It is fishnet stockings and tutus and knee socks and black eyes, big elbows. All kinds of costumes. Awesome names. Oh, yeah. Right. So just in this article alone, Atlanta Roller Girls, Susan B. Agony. That's good. That's my favorite. That's pretty good. Let's see. Who else is there, Chuck? Well, I saw Jackie Daniels, which is kind of good. Some of them play off the tough, like liquor bottle thing. Like our friend, well, we should also say to our friend Debbie. Freakgirl. Freakgirl.com is her blog and she's a freelance writer. She did not write this, but she is new to roller derby. And I posed some questions for her and we'll get to those throughout, but her name. Too bad we can't have her doing voiceover. That'd be cool. Her name is

Molotov cupcake, 100 proof. I like that one. And she makes, she's really good cupcake baker. So she's incorporating her love of liquor and explosives in cupcakes. That's awesome. And I should also mention too, my favorite name of all time, this is from a listener about a year ago wrote in and her name was Suddenbeth. I thought just sometimes the simplicity of a name like that, Suddenbeth. There was a, in the Hell on Wheels doc, one of the original roller girls was Betty Rage. Betty Rage. I like that one too. Yeah, or a Beyonce. Yeah, apparently Beyonce according to Molotov cupcake is the worst biggest blocker you've ever heard of in the history of roller derby. She's a big girl and she is like size. That's one of the cool

things about roller derby that Debbie points out and that the league points out is that that physique does not matter. You have a skill set you can bring whether you are a 250 pound blocker or you're like Juno and you can just zip through people real fast. Ellen Page. I know. Okay, sorry. You look stupefied. No, I know. But it's, you know, that's part of the fun of it all. It's picking out your name and designing your uniform and your look as a team. The one from New York is they have one that's really cool. They all have like a checker cab theme. So they have like checkered hose on and like a yellow cab skirts and shirts like bowling shirts. Right. It's cool. I think that the one, the common theme, if not, it's not physique. Like you said,

it's basically just sheer guts and an ability to stand up to torture, including self torture, right? Which is pretty much the basis of training. Yeah. Like Debbie was telling you in that little mini interview you conducted with her that she had to do plank position squats, push-ups, sit-ups. What else? Well, all of this is in skates, by the way. Well, I was going to add that at the end. That's like the kicker. Okay. You can't put the kicker in the middle. They cover basic. She said it was boot camp on wheels and squats and all sorts of like physical training. All on skates. There you go. Yeah. Which she's on the New Jersey Hell Razors with a Z team and they practice two hours twice a week and she's been training for four and a half months and just finished

her basic skills test. Right. And so when you're training, like she was just talking about basically calisthenics, but there's like training as well. Like you throw yourself on the ground to learn how to roll and get up really quick. Sure. Because it's not just getting up. Like you're getting up with four wheels on each foot. Yeah. And people zipping by you that you have to learn how to jump over people. That's a tough one. Have you ever tried to jump in skates? No. Have you ever done any disco boogie in or anything like that? I was an ice skater. Okay. Roll balancing? No. All right. Did you see that movie? I saw parts of it. Really? Yeah. It looked pretty cool. They still do that in New York. Some of the 70s like disco skating and stuff. They do everything in New York now.

That's off New York. You also have to skate at high speeds. Chuck, I understand. Yes. There's a actually a bullet in this Tracy Wilson article. It says skate at high speeds. There's also one that says you need to stretch out beforehand. Yeah. That's a big one too. And you have to start and stop in skates as well. Yeah. But I think to be fair, I think that means like you need to start and stop on a dime. Gotcha. Precision, high speed skating, dodging, jumping, balance, control, all on four wheels, eight wheels. All right. So check. That's the training part. And apparently there's a very delineated process to it. And you keep the newer people away from the more experienced people according to Debbie. Fresh meat. And then you actually have to pass a test

to become like a sanctioned flat track derby association participant. Yeah. Like you, I guess you can't actually participate in a bout until you're cleared by them, right? Yeah. Because it's dangerous. You know, they don't want you either getting hurt. Yeah. Although people do get hurt all the time, clearly. Should we talk about that? And now we'll talk about that later. Well, let's talk about how to play. Yeah. Like because even after reading this and understanding the rules, unless you really, I think it's probably one of those ones where unless you're there, or you're very familiar with the two teams, so you know who's who. It's tough to, it just looks like a muddle of like elbows and fists and stuff. Yeah. And in the Drew Barrymore movie,

they handle that kind of clumsily just by having a segment where they explain the rules. Do that. That's like, did Ellen pay to explain the rules? Because that's what she did in Inception too. Remember, like every, every like 30 minutes, she'd stop and look at the camera and be like, okay, everybody, it's refresher time. She didn't explain the rules. I think Jimmy Fallon did. But it's necessary in a movie like that because when you look at a roller derby match, if you don't know what's going on, you might just think it's mayhem out there. Because it looks like mayhem. But there's actually not just rules, but there's also strategy to this as well, which makes it even more awesome, right? Yes. Let's hear it, Josh. Okay. Well, Chuck, first of all, let's talk about

the different kinds of players on the team. You have two teams. Yep. And two, these teams are going to play about five players each, right? About is a series of shorter races, two minutes tops, but they can be shorter than that. They're called jams, jams, right? So you have a jammer, and this person is delineated by a star on her helmet, right? The jammer, there's a jammer on each team. And the jammer is the only person on these teams who can actually score a point, right? So here's the deal. You've got a jammer on each team. You have three blockers on each team. Yes. And the blockers don't have anything on their helmets. Right. And then you have pivots on each team. So if you're looking at the starting line going back, you have the two pivots. They have

stripes on their helmet. Yes, thank you, Chuck. And the pivots act as kind of like the, you know, like a catcher in Major League Baseball is kind of managing what's going on on the field. Yeah. Same thing. Tracy also compared the pivots to like NASCAR pays cars. Yeah, they set the pace of the game, basically. But they're also like calling moves out to the rest of the team. They seem to be the bosses. They're actually plays. Okay. Thank you. And coaches. Right. So Chuck, going from the front back is pivots, the blockers, and then the jammers. Right. And the pivots and the blockers all take off when the ref blows his whistle the first time. And then after about 20 feet, actually after exactly 20 feet, the ref blows his whistle again,

and then the jammers take off. Right. Right. So their whole point is to snake through the crowd and get ahead of them and come all the way back around, lap them and go through again. Yeah, I get the idea that the jammer is clearly the speediest and probably most skilled skater. And probably the most belt slinkiest person who can just kind of like get through. I would think so. Yeah, but I would think you'd have to be extremely skilled. Yeah. Because you're probably having to jump the most like your whole job is to go forward. Yes. As fast as possible. While other people are trying to keep you from going forward. Right. So you get a point for every player as long as everything is above the boards and inbound. And we'll get to some of the

rules. Okay. And penalties. Yeah. And a second. But for every player, the jammer passes after the first lap. Yeah, the first lap there's no points, right? No, but that establishes the lead jammer. Right. And we'll get to why that's important in a second. Yeah. But for every opposing player, the jammer passes that their team gets a point, right? Yeah. So the lead jammer is the one who comes out of the pack first through the first lap. No points are scored. But the lead jammer has the ability to actually stop the jam. When you act that out. Right. And by putting her hands on her hips. Yeah. Or touching her helmet and touching her hips a couple of times I've seen as well. And that means the jam is over. Right. And there's a break in between. And then you

start another jam, which is a part of the overall bout. Is that right? That's right. And we were wondering, I wonder if Debbie emailed me back why you would call a jam before the period is over, the two minute period. And we both surmised that it's probably a strategy thing. If you feel like they're calling out the points, I believe, if you're up on points, you can just go ahead and call the jam. Right. And you've won that jam. Right. You're locking the other team out of a comeback from that jam. Right. I think that's probably why they would do it. It's gotta be. It's gotta be. Why else would they do it? So that's pretty much like a standard jam. Yeah. That's how it's scored. And there's actually, there's a cool flash animation on our site. Did you check it out?

No, I watched a YouTube thing. In the article, it's, you can just click and you make all these little people that you're seeing from overhead go around. And yeah, it's pretty neat. That's fun. It gets the point across very well. So Josh, there are some other rules, specific rules, because it's not just a free-for-all. Like you can't trip and stuff like that. So we'll read a few of these off. You have to be in bounds. You can't go out of bounds to pass an opponent. Right. In order to score your point. Like you said, I believe you can pass the jammer responsibility over to your pivot. Is that right? You're killing a match. Apparently, there's something on the helmet that you can pass. I guess the star comes off.

Yeah. And you can pass it during the match, but the lead jammer status doesn't transfer. Oh, so you can't call the match? Right. Or the jam, sorry. Yes. This is more complex than college football. You do not receive additional points if you fall to the back of the pack and then pass the same player. So you can't zip by everybody, then hang back and do it all over again. Once you pass that player, that's your point for that player. Right. You have to come all the way around again and lap them. Right. And if you actually lap the other jammer, that's more points. That's called a grand slam. That's called money in the bank, my friend. That's the big daddy move of all time. Okay. And I imagine that's pretty hard.

I would say a jammer probably has to go down for that to happen. Yeah. Or your jammer just has to stink. Yeah. It could be a poor jammer. So what's the deal with the blocking? Because obviously you're not just skating through each other. Your purpose as a blocker is to keep them from going by you. Okay. So I think the rules are, the rules slightly vary a little bit here. They're league to league. I get the impression, but some of the very common ones are you can't block with your armfully extended. Right. Definitely no clothesline. Yeah. That's stuff you've seen in the movies when they hook up together and clothesline. That's just, that's not, that's not right. No. Or they might do that to intimidate. You can, you can, I think you can

hold hands, but neither person's arm can be fully extended. Oh, okay. You can't throw, you can throw elbows, but you can't throw elbows above the shoulder. Right. Generally you can't throw. Or below the waist. You can't block actually below mid-thigh. Oh, is it mid-thigh now? You can't fall on purpose in front of somebody as awesome as that move is. Especially if you try to fall and the person jumps over you. Yeah. Because it's like, yeah. Burn. And what happens if you break these rules is you go to a penalty box just like you do. Also called the sin bin. The sin bin. So like an ice hockey, you can spend like 30 seconds to a minute in there, which is, you know, that's like half a jam. Or you can, if you commit a major,

you can be completely like removed from the scene, like fighting. Remove from the scene. The police come. They're like, you have to leave with us. You know, any kind of fighting or I think deliberate falling is a major infraction. Unless the person jumps over you and goes, burn. Not true. Or if you foul a skater while they're down, or if you give the referee too much guff, I think they can throw you out for dramatic purposes. In support nation. I know the roller girls sin bin is a waiting pool. Oh really? And at least circa 2004, I should say. Right. There's a picture of one of the roller girls in a waiting pool. And there's like a wheel of fortune that you spend to find out what your penalty is. I got a few more things here from Debbie. Okay, Chuck. She said that she

had not been on roller skates since she was 15. Yeah. Because that's a big deal. I don't think roller skating is like riding a bike necessarily. No, it's like riding roller skates. And she is, she's about my age now, which I'm not going to say how old Debbie is because I just want to be nice. She was 25 in 1975. So she said that there are other women there that have never been on skates before though. Yeah. In her training. Yeah. And I asked her about the bonding aspect of it because I think Debbie did it because she was looking for something fun to do and an activity, a physical activity that, you know, help her keep in shape and stuff like that. Plank position and roller skates and stuff. Yeah. Well, she said it's the hardest thing she's ever had to do

physically. But she said the bonding has been the most surprising and best part about it. She said that after feeling sort of awkward initially as being the new girl, she's all of a sudden has 18 new girlfriends and they're real supportive of each other. I think she said one of the girls is in a band and they'll go and see her play. And I'm sure some of these ladies probably eat her cupcakes. You know, I'm sure too. So it's a good, you know, it's a good supportive scene there. Yeah, it sounds like it. And I think part of it has to do with the fact that men aren't allowed. And so it's women feel empowered to have a sport to call their own that's rough and tumble. And her niece even remarked that she thought it was cool that there's a sport that boys aren't allowed to play.

It's very cute. And another factor that Debbie likes. And I know that most of the women probably like is that, you know, you, it's fun. You get to dress up. She says she gets to wear cute skirts and knee-high socks and then go beat the crap out of somebody and then have a beer with her later on. Yeah. So the sex and violence all rolled into one. You got it, Chuck. I mean, that's as American as it gets. I think you just came up with the new slogan. We should pitch that. And there is tons of violence. There's a lot of injury, although from what I've seen of 21st century roller derby, compared to 1970s roller derby, there's far, far less violence. But I think it's more frequently real. There's a lot of injury, a lot of soft tissue injury, contusions.

One of the roller girls interviewed in this article, broke her tailbone twice. If you've ever fallen on your tailbone, you're just like, yeah, you've come nowhere near breaking it, but it's just like this really jarring pain. It's awful. Imagine breaking it twice. I can't. So it happens. You couldn't catch me out there, man. They're way tougher than I am. Yeah. What's the fishnet injury? What's that called? It's called fishnet burn. It's where you fall and slide while you're wearing fishnets that leaves like the stippled burn on your leg. I got hit in the face. I gotta tell you, it's not nice. It's not nice. I got hit in the face with a baseball when I was a kid and I had like the

baseball stitches embedded in my face. I don't know why I felt the need to take that. But it's swell shut, dude. I got hit in the face and dropped to the ground and picked my head up and my eye was already swollen shut. You looked like an Amish woman. I did. Chuck. Josh. I guess it's about it, right? Well, we should say if you want to support, we are coming into playoff season. Oh, wait. Hold on. Let's talk about that. These leagues are, there's like pretty much no paid professional roller roller girls. They're all, they pay for their own equipment. Sure. They pay dues for the league, right? And a lot of times these leagues are pretty much de facto charitable organizations. Yeah, it's awesome. Like they donate to local charities in the community

and even better, there's some corporate sponsors like PBR is a big corporate sponsor, of course they have. Which means that they just funnel money right to charities through these groups. So if you go pay to see a roller derby, you're going to be helping people. Yeah, they have raffles and stuff and they sell swag and I think there's comic books. They sell swag? Yeah, they sell swag. They have the, why is that funny? It just is. So like I said, we are approaching a tournament season. The WFTDA has a championship tournament November 5th through 7th in Chicago and first and second and third place teams from each region. They have four regions, east, north central, south central and west earn a spot at the championship

and there are big five tournaments in September and November to determine who goes to the ultimate championship. Yeah, so the roller girls, the Atlanta roller girls playoffs are going to be in Lincoln, Nebraska from October 8th to 10th. I was about to say, is that the closest one, but looking at these, that may be the closest one. Yeah, and if you're in Sacramento from October 1st to 3rd, check out the west region playoffs. Yes, the east region is in White Plains, New York, September 24th through 26th and for all you Sconeys out there, I know we have a lot of Sconey fans, September 10th through 12th in Green Bay, you can go to the north central playoffs. And you should probably build a time machine to do that.

Oh yeah. So Chuck, I hope you went. You want to talk about roller derby and cinema? Yeah, I mean Whippet, what else is there? Is that Rock L Welch movie? Yeah, Kansas City Bomber, that's a very famous one. There is also the Jammer, which is a stage play by Roland Jones. It's about a love story between two members of a classic co-ed team. And then there's an A&E documentary called Roller Girls. Yeah, that was a one year deal in 2006, I think. And then there's also, again, there's Hell on Wheels, which if you don't like paying for your documentaries, you can go on to snagfilms.com and watch it in its entirety for free. Oh really? Yeah. I bet Netflix has got that stuff too. Yeah. I predict that no matter what happens to us,

Chuck, we have at least careers as washed up sports commentators for roller derby in our future. Awesome. Okay. Have you ever seen the Saturday Night Live skit with the 70s commentators, sports commentators? That's really good. Sudeikis and, what's his name? Will Arnett? No. Will Farrell? No. Will Wheaton? Will, what's the guy's name? I don't know. McGroober. Is that his name? No, he plays McGroober. Oh, he plays McGroober? I know who you're talking about. Will Forte. Nice. You pulled that out in no way. Yeah, he and Sudeikis do this sports commentary, but it's really off color and inappropriate, but it's very, very funny. That's awesome. Yeah. All right. Well, if you want to learn more about roller derby and play with the cool flash animation we

have in this article, type in roller derby in the search bar at howstuffworks.com and that'll bring that article up and you will thank us a lot. I think so. So do we have any listener mail? Josh, we're going to do what I like to call fan gift thank yous and what you'd like to call administrative details. Yes, we have a list here of things that people sent us that we're very thankful for. So Nicole, what? No. Nicole from Ontario sent us Lego candies. What? You didn't see those? No. I'll show them to you. Okay. Joe Garden, our buddy from the onion. He's a writer at the onion. Joe, who has a terrific Facebook experiment going on his t-shirt project. It's really cool. He wears a t-shirt every day and says whether he should keep it or toss it. Nice. And

he's on like his approaching his 90th t-shirt. Holy cow. And he, you know, depending on what people vote, he will throw it away. That's really cool. It's funny, but that's neither here nor there. But he did send us, he and some other onion writers, including his wife, I believe, wrote The New Vampire's Handbook, a guide for the recently turned creature of the night. And he sent us that. And that's very funny. Thank you, Joe. Kristen F sent his handmade candies from Dish Bistro and Bar in Pasadena. And remember the homemade Nougat? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was good. The pistachio. I didn't know I loved Nougat until I had this Nougat. Oh yeah. It was amazing. Chuck, where you been? You ever had a Mars bar? No, but this is unlike

that kind of Nougat. It's good Nougat. This is Supreme Nougat. And she got, she got on to us because this was a while ago and she didn't make the last cut. And she was like, thanks a lot. Oh, she didn't. See if you get any more Nougat. Yeah. Well, would you think she'll send us more Nougat now? I hope so. Mark from the band Red Pete sent us a CD with a song inspired by our A Ponzi Scheme show. You wrote a song about it. Corey T of Massachusetts sent us a tick remover, which I didn't know they made. A tick key. A tick key. Yeah. Elizabeth made a flower pen for Jerry, which is very sweet. That is sweet. And Jerry has it in her office, if I'm not mistaken. Dr. Diane Hamilton, we supplied her with a cover quote. And she wrote a book, Josh, about being

an online student. And I read it and I gave her quote and soup to nuts. Yeah. It's actually on the book. Yeah. Our first cover quote. Yeah. So if you want to read Dr. Diane Hamilton, it's called the online student users manual. And if you're into online education, it's like really the whole deal there. Sure. Jim Sue and Peter, Steven and Lawrence. Wait, I have a question for you. Yeah. Did you, in your book, did you read the inscription? Our cover quote? Uh-huh. No, but did you read the inscription? Oh, that she wrote to us? Uh-huh. Yeah. Did you say, don't tell Josh, but you're my favorite? Yeah, mine said that too. Mine said don't tell Chuck, but you're my favorite. Really? I feel

so betrayed because she didn't say that in mine. Oh no. Actually, she said, I wasn't going to tell you this, but Josh is my favorite. Jim Sue, Peter, Steven and Lawrence sent us a postcard from Guatemala. They're doing volunteer work down there. Are those Jerry's friends? No. Okay. And customink.com sent us a real men way to bills t-shirts. And you know what's funny is that he said in the email, like, you don't feel like you have to mention us. This isn't like a marketing employee. We just wanted to do it. And then on the little packing slip, it said, marketing rush, send this quickly. No. In Kenya. That's hilarious. So customink.com, we do want to plug you for that. And finally, Pauline does custom photographic prints on homemade Abica paper. Yeah. It's so

cool. It is. I have a nice view of a lake in New York. I got the guy surfing at the Golden Gate Bridge and Jerry has one as well. And if you want to see this, she actually prints this stuff on homemade paper. I'm not sure if that's getting through. She makes paper. It got through to me, Paul. And they're very awesome. And you can support her at www.psphoto.ca. And as usual, if you have sent us a nice gift and we thank you for it, you should feel free to post it on our Facebook page, right? Yes. Please do. Okay. We do have a Facebook page, which we should mention. Yes. www.facebook.com. Yes. Slash stuff you should know. I can't wait for that move. I know. I'm looking forward to it too. Looks awesome. I love the kid who's playing Zuckerberg. He was

in a zombie land. Yeah. He's been other stuff. He's good. And then we tweet. Yes, you do. S-Y-S-K podcast. And then we also have a blog, Stuff You Should Know. It's at the blogs at howstuffworks.com. Yes. And we have our Atlanta trivia event coming up. Yes, October 13th. That's a Wednesday from just block out 6 to 11. And there's going to be trivia in there sometime. It's free. John Hodgman and Joe Randazo are going to be playing with us. And Dave Willis, creator of Aquatine Hunger Force in Squidbillies. That's right. And we're going to be a team and we're going to take all of you suckers on and we're going to beat the tar out of you. If you want to come and play for free. Yes. That is at the five seasons Brewery West Side in Atlanta on October 13th and come one,

come all. It's going to be fun. Absolutely. So that's it, man. That's a plug fest. If you have an email you want to send us, I would love to hear about your first brush with. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app,

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