Stuff You Should Know - How Surfing Works

Episode Date: February 19, 2013

You know the Beach Boys and you've seen those Hang Ten shirts with the little feet emblem, but there's a lot more to surfing than appears on pop culture's surface. From learning how to pop up on the board to the physics of how waves form and break to the Sport of Kings' Hawai'ian origin, learn all about surfing with Chuck and Josh. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and it's Stuff You Should Know, just the same as it always was, huh? I guess so. How are you doing? I'm good. I like your hat. I'm ready to hang 10. Are you? That seems like probably a very difficult thing to do, but not that great. Not that cool. It's super difficult. I can imagine. I don't think it's

super cool too. It's old school. Oh, you remember Spud's McKenzie had that hang 20 or hang whatever poster? No. Do you remember Spud's McKenzie? Oh, yeah. Well, that dog could surf. Okay, really? According to the posters that I've seen, okay. People still call those dogs Spud's McKenzie's too after all these years. Yeah, what kind of terriers? It's some sort of pit bull terrier, but it's like a Stratfordshire. I have no idea. It is a terrier though, for sure. Yeah, because they go after rats and mailmen. So, Chuck, yes, can you guess when the first recorded description of someone surfing was, what are you going to guess, the 50s, the 60s? Well, I know what it is, so. Oh, well, I'm going to tell you again. Yeah, it was 1779. In fact,

did you know that? I did. So, that was the one you're going to guess. That's the one I said to you. Everyone's a winner. So, and it was, as you know, I guess by a guy named Lieutenant James King, who at the time of the writing had just very recently become the captain of the HMS Discovery, because his captain, Captain James Cook, very famous explorer, had just been killed by the Hawaiians because he had taken their chief captive in order to force them to return a boat. Because he surfed in their waters and localism was rough. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I guess so. And apparently the tradition among Hawaiians, as far as localism goes, it was pretty serious and always has been. Oh yeah. It's always been that way. It's very stratified out there. Yeah. But anyway,

so James King, he first describes this site of people riding these long wooden boards, catching a wave and riding it on in. And he kind of established or set the precedent for Hawaii as the originator of surfing. Yeah. But what's pretty cool is this is one of those instances where Europeans came in eons after something had started and actually got it right. Because Hawaii was in almost all likelihood the place where surfing was born. That's right. Like it had started in Polynesia. They had like kind of bellyboards, I think they called them. But they didn't really ever stand up. It was the Hawaiians who first stood up. Oh, really? So Hawaii is the cradle of surfing. Of modern surfing. And man, did they ever do it? Yes. They sure did and do

to this day. Yeah. Well, they're carrying on a very long tradition. They are. Yeah. Like we were saying, you mentioned localism, but and I said it was stratified out there. There were actually places in Hawaii where if you weren't a member of the ruling class, you didn't surf there. And if you did, you got in huge trouble. Oh, sure. So like the like King Kamehameha was a chief Hawaiian chief, very famous one. That's the club that Magnum hangs out at is named the King Kamehameha Club. And he was noted for being like a really great surfer. Did you know that? I did not know that. Never heard of the guy actually. King Kamehameha? That's pretty much the only Hawaiian chief like I'd ever heard of, probably from watching Magnum. Really? Yeah. But he was a great surfer and

eventually surfing became known as the sport of Kings. Oh, yeah. Because of that, because the chiefs surfed. Yeah. And they were pretty good at it. And their social status was exemplified by the length of their board. Oh, yeah. Which is pretty. So the longer the board, the higher status you had is a commoner or a king. Yeah. And you could be a very good surfer and not be part of the ruling class, but you're still pretty well revered. And actually, you're called a kahuna. Nice. You're a surfing expert. So it's a big kahuna. Yes. That was the fat surfing expert. Oh, okay. Well, it's a lot of those guys are. Yeah. Well, yeah. It's like one part of the world where you can be a big old fat guy and lay around on the beach and you're like King Daddy. And have

face tattoos. Oh, do they have those two? Well, the Maori do. I think they surf. Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought we were talking Polynesia. Oh, man, I hope so. So let's talk some more surfing history. Okay. You know, they were surfing big time in the late 1700s, standing up, pushing up, doing all the modern moves. Well, not all the modern moves because they were pretty much long boards back then. Yeah. Long, long, long boards. But it was, you know, it was a huge part of society still is. But they likened it in this one article, too, like baseball was in the U.S., how it was in Polynesia. Oh, yeah. And even though it's all just a guess, how it evolved, we have no idea really because Polynesians, there's really no

certainty about their movement around the earth thousands of years ago. Right. So we're all just sort of guessing at this point. But Mark Twain surfed. Yeah, he did. He didn't have a very easy time with it. He tried it at least, right? Yeah. In 1876, I'm sorry, 1866, he published in his book, Roughing It. I tried surf bathing once. Everything was bathing back then. I guess so. Sunbathing. And then like, I think just bathing was when you started going into the ocean. Yeah. Even though you weren't like, you know, washing your butt. Right. Or maybe you were. Because no one really bathed back then. I'm sure they did. I tried surf bathing once subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the board placed right. And at the right moment too, but missed the connection myself.

The board struck the shore in three quarters of a second without any cargo. I guess he was the cargo. Right. And I struck the bottom about the same time with a couple of barrels of water in me. So Mark Twain's first experience was probably like many people's first experience with surfing. Yeah. Mine included. Yeah. And so Twain visits Hawaii at a time where there are a lot of Americans hanging out there and they were growing a lot of pineapples. And they, since Hawaii wasn't a state, there are a lot of tariffs against those pineapples. And a couple of guys, two cousins with the last name of Dole, decided to overthrow the Hawaiian chieftain so that they could get the US to annex Hawaii and get these tariffs lifted. And as a result of this and missionaries coming and

Cook's people and all that, the Hawaiians had dwindled from about 800,000 by the time Cook showed up to like 40,000. And surfing kind of went with it. The interest dwindled. But there were some people still surfing, right? And just enough so that there was a resurgence. When Mark Twain was doing it, it must have been, he was probably like the first, the second, I guess the second white guy to ever write about it. But the third white guy, Jack London, was the one who brought surfing into popular culture. Really? Yeah. He visited Hawaii in 1907. Awesome. And he hung out one of the, one of the ways that he helped spread surfing was just by writing about a guy named George Freeth. Yeah. He is, he basically invented modern surfing. Yeah. And was a heck of a lifeguard,

as were some of the, a lot of the early surfers it seems like. Yeah. Were great swimmers, great lifeguards, great surfers. Duke Kahana Maku. He was a five time Olympic swimming medalist. Yeah. And he like traveled Europe and everything and gave swimming exhibitions. And maybe the first guy to play beach volleyball too. Is that right? Oh, he has a great restaurant. And supposedly one of them invented the little backboard that like the rescue board. Oh, yeah. Even though that's debated, but some people, I think it was Freeth or was it Freeth? Yeah. Freeth may have? Yeah. But he was the first dude to like stand up, do good moves. I think his boards were shorter and all, and this was, you know, turn of the century stuff.

Right. Like 1907, 1912, when those guys were surfing and they were surfing on like long wooden boards. And I mean like really long, like 10 feet, 16 feet. Yeah. Like imagine trying to maneuver one of those. Well, you don't really. But they were the first ones who said, Hey, we can kind of change these boards and make them maneuverable. So they were the first ones to figuratively, I guess, literally shape modern surfboards. Oh, did they create the shortboard? They started to. They started to make changes to it. It wasn't just a flat plank of wood any longer. Nice. So in the 20th century is when the shortboard came along in earnest and they added things like they made them lighter, of course, which helps easier to manage the new shapes, helped with stability.

And then they started messing with the fins too, which I guess we can get to here in a minute, but the fins make a big difference. Of course, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of stuff that the fins affect. Well, like what? I guess we can go ahead and go there. They impact stability, feel, drive maneuverability. And you can have all kinds of things from like a single fin to up to five, even though I get the impression that five fins is a little obnoxious. And kind of like training wheels. Well, I don't know. I think two or three fins is what you're looking for is, well, it depends what you're trying to do. The angle of the fin is called the toe. And that's the angle in relation to the center of the board. So it can be cocked, you know,

a little diagonally or just straight on. Oh, okay. If it makes the board more responsive, the closer that the front of the fin is to the center of the board. So the closer, the more it's angled, the more responsive it's going to be. And then you have the can't. That is the angle in relation to the bottom of the board. So if you have no can't, it's just straight up and down. It's not angled at all. Okay. It's going to be super fast. If it's angled, it's going to be more responsive. So it all changes depending on how many fins and how deep they are, how big they are, what the angle is on how you're going to drive this thing, basically. It can be foiled on both sides or have no foil. More foil gives you more lift. Okay. It can have a rake, which is

how far back the fin curves. So if it's like a super shark fin, it's going to be different than if it's a little more just straight. Small rake is faster, but again, not as maneuverable. Flex stiffness, it can be really super stiff or have more, you know, flex to them. Stiffness is stiff. It's not as forgiving. But I think if you're like a better surfer, you're going to want it more stiff. And then, you know, the base link, the smaller the base of the fin, the tighter the turns, the height and the depth. If it's taller, it's more stable, but it's not going to be as maneuverable. So some of them are removable now. Oh yeah. Some of them are set in, but they make them now where you can actually remove the fins, which is great for traveling and storage. And

I guess if you just want to mix things up a little bit, but yeah, there's a lot of work that goes into, that's just the fins alone. That's just the fins on the bottom. Yeah. Because I always wondered until I looked into this, like, why does, why does that one just have one fin? Why does that have three? And why are those fins huge? And why are those angled? Man, it all matters. It all makes a difference. Yeah. And it really just depends on what kind of, it's like when you're buying a car, depends on what you're looking for. We have like the addition of fins. You can thank like Duke and George for that at the very beginning. But they kind of popularized surfing on the west coast. Yeah. And the west coast took over. And then about the early 60s, thanks to things like

Gidget and the Beach Boys, surfing just exploded, right? And now we have just, I guess the change from surfboards in 1912 to 2012 and that hundred years. Yeah. It's just incredible and exponential. Sure. And it hadn't changed much for the thousand or so years leading up to 1912. Right. So everything is kind of took off in the 20th century. And now you can basically categorize the kind of board that you're holding or surfing on as either a shortboard or a longboard, right? Well, I mean, yeah. And then there's dozens of other boards within those categories. Right. But yeah, those are two big categories. So like if you're pretty good at surfing, you're probably going to use a longboard, right? Just depends what you're looking to do. Okay. But like you, if you are a novice,

the longboard's not the good one to start out on. Well, I mean, it's easier to stand up on because it's large and more stable. And but you're just going to, you know, you can't maneuver it and cut back and stuff unless you're like super good. Right. And it's, it's, I guess akin to either like driving in the big Cadillac down the highway or being in your little sports car. Yes. You know. Okay. Which you could learn to drive on either one of those. Sure. You could learn on a longboard. Depends what you're after. I would be a longboard guy now. Would you? In my earlier days, I tried surfing. It was like I tried the shortboard and tried to do that stuff. Well, it's just that that was the thing. But now I would get up on the longboard and just

stand there, like walk up and down, hang down, do all that good stuff. Have you ever seen one of those Frankie and Annette Beach movies where they're surfing? Oh, yeah. And they're just, they are just literally standing there with their arms out, like moving side by side. It's awesome. In the back, it's just the green screen behind them. Yeah. And longboard, you can get a couple of people on them and two or three people if you're good. Yeah. And you just stand there and wave your arms. I decide apparently from what I've seen. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to

distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. 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 for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford,

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the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings five years down in many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So, okay, so you've got longboards, you've got shortboards, you've got the fins, the sides of the surfboard, the rails impact how the thing moves, whether or not it's curved the bottom, the board, the bottom of the board, the rocker. Yeah. If it's curved or not and how much it's curved, I imagine makes the board a lot more maneuverable, the more convex it is, right? Yeah. And then you've got longboards, which are about nine feet long up to 12 feet long, which is just

crazy to me. Like you could fit three people on there pretty comfortable. Yeah, I've seen like a lot of people on a longboard, like when they do the tricks and stuff. Yeah, I can't name a number of people, but I feel like I've seen at least four or five people get up on a longboard. Yeah. And then you got fun boards, right? These sound like the most fun. What's a lot? What's a fun board? It's kind of like in between a longboard and a shortboard. And it's fun. It's best for tricks. I think if you want to like really kind of shred or whatever, and also I should probably say I have no idea what I'm talking about here because I've never surfed. I think people have understood that by now. But the shortboard is obviously better for

that because you can shred the wave, right? Yeah. But in a longboard, it's harder to maneuver unless you're really, really good at it. But a fun board is kind of falls in between those two. Like you can kind of rest and relax and just stand there if you want, but you can also maneuver. Right. That's my impression of the fun board. I have to look into it. I had never heard of the fun board. Oh, you had and I had. Really? Yeah, I really genuinely have. Believe you. One thing I did know what I was talking about. So back in the day, they were all made of wood. Now you can still get wooden surfboards. In fact, I think a lot of the purists can still get like those sweet handmade wooden surfboards. Sure. But mostly these days, they're going to be what's

called pop outs mass manufactured. They pop out of a factory mold is where they get the name. And they're either polystyrene or polyurethane covered in fiberglass and resin. And but you can still, you know, handmade those to obviously you can get kits or you can pay, you know, thousands of dollars for some dude in California or Hawaii to hand shape your own sweet little board. Yeah. Tracy said that surfboards cost between $150 and $500. I think that's when you're shopping on Amazon.com. Yeah. Yeah. I found some that were pretty awesome for less than a thousand. Yeah. I mean, like the vast majority are less than a thousand. I was kind of surprised because I thought she was way off, but she wasn't off by that much. No. And I think that you can spend over a thousand

like anything if you get like the sweet dude right hand makes him and he's going for it. Right. You're going to pay a pretty penny. But I mean, like I even came across one as proctor surfboards and they do custom boards and even those were like less than a thousand. Yeah. It's pretty neat. That's nice because that makes it an egalitarian sport. You think so? A little. I'd say this is a little pricey. It definitely is. But I'm saying at least it's not like the gap between the poor man surfboard and the rich man surfboard is not $10,000, $20,000, $30,000. It's $1,000, $1,500. Yeah. I guess so. That's what I mean. Yeah. You can easily be priced out of it, but you can still get a decent surfboard for what,

a couple hundred bucks? Yeah. I bought a surfboard for 50 bucks that I just kept for in college because I thought it was cool to have in the corner of my living room. And I took it to the beach a couple of times and it sucked. Did your bedroom look like a pottery barn teen catalog scene? I've never seen that. They frequently have surfboards like stood up in the corner. No. It was just Chuck's silliness in the day. So did you say that stuff made of polyurethane? Yeah. And it's covered in a resin? I did. And fiberglass? Which makes it light. It makes it buoyant. But I can also imagine that if you get hit by one of these things, it hurts bad. Yeah. I mean, they're lightweight, but it's just you whack somebody in the head with

it. Or if you get stabbed with it, you know, they're sharp. Yeah. On the front and sometimes on the back. I would never buy a sharp surfboard. I'd just be afraid of it. What would you do? I'd get one that's more rounded. You get a boogie board. We'll just get it in our tube. Okay. So you've got your surfboard. Yep. Another really important thing that you have to have. You have to have all this other stuff aside from the leash is kind of superfluous. It's nice. It's an add-on. You have to have wax because polyurethane resin bound surface tends to be slick, especially when you're standing on it in the water. And you can use wax to basically create like a traction surface. Yeah. For your feet. Yeah. It helps for sure. And they're also not like

completely slick on top. Like where you stand, they'll have like, you know, the, I don't know, what's not sandpaper or maybe the sandpaper. Okay. Like glass, glass it into it to help out a little bit. But not always. Again, surfers are very particular about what they like and what they don't like. And they're all sorts of choices. And is Dr. Zog sex wax like the wax or is that just the wax that guys like me have heard of? I'm sure that was the stuff that we wore as teenagers. That's like saying was the guy, the suntan lotion guy. Panama Jack. Yeah. It's like saying was Panama Jack like the lotion of choice? I got you. I think it's sort of like that. But Panama Jack was the lotion of choice. Was it really? It's the t-shirt of choice, for sure. Yeah.

Rolled up sleeves. Oh yeah. So board shorts. Tracy Wilson wrote this. Tracy points out board shorts are sturdier versions of swim trunks. Right. I didn't know that. I guess they're beefed up. Well, they have a tie. So it's not just like elastic. Yeah. Is that the difference? It's got a strong tie. They usually don't have elastic. Yeah. All right. And they are sturdy. Yeah. I just think they don't come off as easy. I think they're designed not to. Gotcha. Because that'd be embarrassing. Sure. Rash vest. Those are just like the little short sleeve Oakley shirt that you wear that keeps your, and she says it helps prevent chafing with impact with the water. Maybe true, but if you've ever been on a surfboard, your chest, it gets a little chafed as well from the sand and stuff like

that. Yeah. So that protects you there. And then of course, wet suits when you're cold. Or if you're in the Pacific Ocean, which you know, usually year round, they're wearing wetsuits up there. Yeah. I guess the wetsuits probably not superfluous. I mean, depending on where you're surfing, you have to wear a wetsuit. Yeah. And you're either a regular surfer or your goofy foot, which means which foot do you put forward? If you put your left foot forward and your right foot back, it's just standard. And then if you turn around and put your left foot back, you're known as a goofy foot. Same with skateboarding too. Yeah. And I don't know if, well, surfing led to skateboarding. Some say. I think it directly led to skateboarding. And I don't know if that's

a slag to call someone a goofy foot or to be a goofy foot or not. I think it probably was originally, but so many people skate or surf goofy foot now. It's just like a term. It had to be a slag, because they would have called it like cool foot or something. If it was like super cool to do it that way. Or if like a really popular guy named Tom had done it, they'd be like, well, it's Tom footed. Well, wherever you put your foot in the rear, that's the one you want to have the leash attached to. And that is not superfluous either. You want to have your board attached to your ankle. Yeah. Because if you fly off, you don't want to have to go swimming too far to get it. Sure. And it also can, you know, if it's attached to your foot and you're having trouble,

you can grab hold of your surfboard and some other good reason to help save yourself. Perhaps. So how do you learn to surf, Josh? It's a, I think one of those things that it's easy to learn how, but very, very difficult to master. And it takes tons of practice. And I want to also, I want to give a shout out to two. We got a lot of that history from a site from an article written by a guy named Ben Marcus. And the article is called From Polynesia with Love. Good stuff. It is good stuff. And then thesurfinghandbook.com has this whole section called beginner surfing tips. And they have everything you need to know. They're so friendly. And like one of the, one of the things that they just kind of put out as like this mantra is like,

just go into this whole thing, knowing that you're not going to be good right away. That you're going to fail. And it's like, just try not to get frustrated. And certainly, if you start to get so frustrated that you don't want to surf anymore, they say like, take a break. Like it's supposed to be fun. It's surfer. You don't get so uptight. And yeah, basically don't come in like you're going to just be a champ right away. It takes tons of practice. And a lot of the practice starts on land, like practicing the pop up. Yeah. I had the opposite experience that you described, which was easy to do, hard to master. I had a really tough time doing it at all. Oh, really? Yeah, I did. And everyone in my little group that had never done it, like we, none of us could stand up on

that first day at all. Well, then, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think on, I mean, like, if you just looking at it on paper and thinking about what you have to do, that's not that much to it. It's like, but being able to do it, mastering it too. Yeah. Yeah. It was tough for me. I can imagine. And it will be for me too, eventually. You can try it. Sure. So basically, when I say it's kind of easy, there's just a few steps. Basically, you want to swim out, paddle out on your stomach to the breakers, right? Yep. And this is where the waves are starting to turn into white caps. They're breaking. Yeah. And when you get to this line, where is it where all the surfers hang out? What's it called? Oh, the lineup. That's where all the surfers are hanging out waiting for

the wave, right? Talking philosophy and music and how to beat up people who shouldn't be there. You want to go in a curve because you don't want to get beat up. And you want to avoid the waves. And you just basically, it'll make it easier to paddle out there. And it's easier to not get beat up from getting in another server's way. So when you get out to the lineup and you're starting to catch a wave, you want to be facing the shore. And as a wave starts to swell, as this well comes in and starts to break, you want to be right on top of it, right in front of it, right? Yeah. And you're paddling really fast. Trying to catch the wave, as they say. Yes. I think that's even in bold. It is catching the wave. And right as the, right before the wave starts to break or

right as it starts to break, like maybe to your right or to your left, you do what's called the pop up, right? Yeah. You do like a pushup. And then you pop your feet underneath you. Yep. And now you're standing. And you can apparently, right? Well, that's the process. And you can apparently like get onto your knees and then get onto your feet. Yeah. And it can work, but apparently like you don't want to learn to do that because it's a really bad habit and it's going to keep you from really surfing well. Right. So what you want to do is push up with your, with your hands and then put your feet underneath you and stand up. Yeah. In kind of a crouching position. Sure. And now you're surfing sideways. Yeah. Crouching position. And then that's it. That's all there

is to it. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite part when I tried it with back in college and stuff was when you're sitting out there with the other dudes and there aren't, there's no surfing involved. Yeah. When you're just like sitting there feeling cool, bobbing up and down with the surfing guys. Right. I used to do my favorite like that a lot. Yeah. A lot of standing around and talking. Just sitting down on the skateboard. It's called a dimple butt because of the grip tape eventually would just kind of form a little pattern in your butt. You actually ride at the skateboard sitting down? No, you're just sitting there talking. Yeah. Talking shop with the other thrashers. So when you're going out, you mentioned, you know, you want to go out in a curve and not like

go at this thing straight on. Yeah. If you've never done this in and you don't have anyone teaching you how it can be very frustrating because you will paddle out and the wave will bring you back into shore. Yeah. Over and over and over. And then eventually you're just going to go to the beach bar with your surfboard and though looking cool. Right. But what you want to do is what's called the duck dive. And that is as the, and this is on a shortboard as the wave approaches before it's like cresting and falling on you. You just want to push down on the board and go through the wave and come out on the other side. And if you do this right a couple of times, then you'll be behind where the waves are breaking and you're all good to go. You're

you're maneuvering yourself out of the way of most of the force of the wave. Yeah. And it's the duck dive. I think they caught the, you actually roll upside down and what's called the turtle roll with a longboard, but I bet you can duck dive with a longboard. Maybe not. I don't know. I wonder about that. But yeah, with the turtle roll, you roll underneath the board and then pull the nose down, right? Yeah. That's the turtle roll. Yes. Duck dive sounds easier. Turtle roll sounds more fun. I've never been on a longboard. I should try that. So let's talk about waves, man. This is, that's funny because I'm finally like, we're finally at a point where I know what I'm talking about. Yeah. The physics of waves. Right. So, um, yeah, you can't surf without waves. And

if you really want to surf, man, you have to understand what you're dealing with, like what you're riding, you know, like, if you're going to shred a half pipe, you better understand the physics of wood. Right. So if you're going to hit the bonsai pipeline, and, and by the way, we were talking about duck diving and all that for these huge Mavericks, like, you know, near San Francisco at Princeton by the sea and the bonsai pipeline, most of these dudes and ladies are being towed by like a jet ski. Right. Because they're just too big. You can't be like, see that 50 foot wave? I'm just going to duck dive. You will be, uh, duck on fee if that happens. Right. Yeah. You get towed out there by like a personal watercraft. Right. So we're just going

to cover what, you know, your average West Coast surfing waves. Okay. So if you're, if you're, uh, out to sea and some wind suddenly whips up, you're probably going to see some white caps. Right. Which is like basically like froth. Yeah. Just the water being batted around by the wind. But there's also going to be little crests that form. Right. And these crests, uh, give the wind a little more surface area to work with. And all of a sudden you have what is called a, um, peak. Yes. Um, and this peak starts to travel away from the direction of the wind. Now we're not talking about just like a nice little breeze or something. We're talking like hurricanes typically to form a good sized wave, but any wind could conceivably create a wave. Right. Yes. So when this peak starts

to travel away from the, from the wind, it actually expands a little bit of its energy. And it goes from this kind of choppy wave to this nice rounded thing called the swell. It doesn't look like there's much to it. The reason it doesn't look like there's much to it is because it's actually really deep at that point. Right. So you get a bunch of these swells lined up, um, as they get closer and closer to shore and the, they start to make contact with land at the bottom. Yeah. The ones in front start to slow a little bit. The ones in back start to catch up. And sometimes they combine into large swells. Right. That's right. And as these select, yeah, they get together essentially going in the same direction and say, Hey, come on, let's make

a, let's make a big wave. Right. And it's called constructive interference as far as wave physics goes. Right. Um, what's cool is if you look at a wave from the side, it looks like just like, uh, what's called a transverse wave, like something like you're looking at an EEG or something. Yeah. It's the, the wave length, the, the trough and the crest are up and down, but they're moving from left to right or whatever. Left to right. Yeah. Yeah. But really what a wave is doing is actually an orbital wave where all of this motion is actually making a circle as it moves along. Yeah. Right. These are the molecules actually. Yeah. But if, but you could, you can make a, you could make an animation where you could trace the movement of the waves and it'd be like this

is kind of big circle that goes from the back of the wave to the crest into the trough and then back down again. Right. Right. So, um, that's, that's a wave. And as it gets closer to the, the shore, um, it starts to slow down and when, when it hits land, the force of land or the immovability of land and the force of the wave combined to push the wave upward above the water surface. Yeah. And then the front of the wave starts to slow before the back of the wave, which means you have a wave breaking because the back crashes over the front. And if you have a really steep bit of land, you're going to have a really steep, um, crash that's going to form a barrel or a hollow wave. If the slope of the land that the wave runs into,

this well runs into is a little more gradual. You're going to have what's called a crumbling wave that just kind of breaks slowly in, in, in a kind of a nice gentle pattern. Yeah. It's what happens when water meets land. So if you've ever seen a wave, you know, 100 feet out in the ocean, it means that there's some sort of shallow reef right there making that happen. Yeah. Because a wave is about 1.6 times its, um, depth, the height of a wave is. Yeah. Right. Or it's, is that right? It's depth is 1.6 times its height. Okay. But yeah, but I mean, if you're riding a six foot wave, which has a lot of power to it, that's still only what, less than 10 feet of water that you're dealing with out there. That's a lot of water.

Yeah, it is. But I mean, like, that's still pretty shallow and you can hit the bottom when you're surfing, I think is, is the point. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and you know, the, the, the shape of the land under the ocean makes a big difference and what kind of waves you're going to get, obviously. So that's why the surfing, like really good surf spots in the world are super limited. Yeah. Like you can't man make this stuff. They've tried in Dubai. Yeah, but come on. I mean, that's stuff. That's lame. Yeah. Um, it's all mother nature, dude. So the best surf spots in the world are few and far between, uh, especially if you're looking for the big giant daddies. There's only a few spots on earth that you can encounter those. Right. So, uh, wind obviously pays a big difference,

not just in the formation of the wave, but in how it blows, uh, onshore offshore. What you're looking for ideally is a gentle offshore wind blowing toward the wave. Uh, if you're blowing, if it's an onshore wind coming from the ocean toward the beach, um, it can be a little rougher to deal with as a surfer. Yeah. So great days with the gentle offshore wind. That's when the surfers hear that on the radio, they get up early and go out there at daybreak. Is that the best time to surf daybreak? Well, I mean, there's all different times, but yeah, or maybe that has something to do too with tides. Well, no, with people just having to go to work. Oh yeah. But I used to see people on the PCH all the time, like super early morning and then in the evenings. That's pretty

cool. Yeah. But maybe it has something to do with, uh, the best waves too. Yeah. Because, you know, surfers don't blow off work. Sure. If the best waves are in the in bra, that's where I'm going. Right. I've seen, uh, summer school and, um, fast times at Ridgemont High. I'm familiar with surfing. Um, so we were talking about, um, I thought that I don't think either one was actually had any surfing, did they? Sure they did. Really? Sure. They talk, really? Summer school definitely had shots, like establishing shots of people surfing. Okay. Um, I don't know if they actually showed any in fast times at Ridgemont High. They're in the valley. There wasn't many waves. Oh, okay. But Spicoli, of course, was, was a surfer. Yeah. Big time. Well, and at the end,

you know, that was the great ending. He rescued, uh, Mick Jagger from drowning while surfing in the little interview with Stu. And, uh, what did he do? Hired Van Halen to play his birthday party or something? Did he? I know he won some sort of competition. Well, the competition was saving Mick Jagger's life. No, he has like a trophy or something. Oh, oh, and the dream sequence. Yeah. Um, okay. So we're talking about, uh, we're talking about the power of waves, right? Yeah. Did you know that a cubic meter, a cubic yard, basically, a cubic meter of water, that's not much, man. We're talking like this. Uh-huh. That weighs a ton. What do you mean? It weighs a ton. It weighs, um, 2,200 pounds. So if you took a box that big

and put water in it, it would weigh 2,000 pounds. Yes. Really? Yes. At, at four degrees Celsius, it's very specific. As you remember from the metric episode, like they calibrate like that. Right. But yes, it weighs a metric ton. A cubic meter of water weighs a metric ton. When like a gallon of milk just weighs like a couple of pounds. I don't know. I looked it up, though. I swear I looked it up and I actually double looked it up. I was like, because I thought the same thing seemed like a lot. Um, but yes, it weighs a lot of weights. Yeah. So, um, when that's, when that comes crashing down on you, it's kind of a thing. And there's different kinds of wipeouts, but apparently the worst kind of wipeout,

which I think Tracy described as falling off of your surfboard, is called going over the falls. And it's on one of those hollow barrel waves. Yeah. Right. Right. That are just very, very powerful because they hit land really quick and, and break really quick. Yeah. And when you get caught in the lip, that part where it's breaking at the top, it trips you up and basically throws you right in front of the wave at the trough. So you have like the full force of the wave, just doing this orbital wave right over you. You're, you're like in a washing machine at that point. So falling in, falling off your board, wiping out is one danger. Yeah. We should probably

talk about surfing dangers. I want to alert people to these things because they're out there. Have you ever been caught up in, in a wave like that? Yeah. It's scary, man. Yeah. Because you don't know what weighs up. Well, and you feel completely helpless. Like mother nature has got me and is throwing me around like a little rag doll. And I am completely helpless to do anything about it. Yeah. I feel like you're six. It does, no matter how old you are. And if you're six, boy, that's really scary. So riptides are dangerous. And that's one of the things that is at play there. That is the water returning to the sea. And that retreating water can be a fast moving current to take you really far out to sea before you know it. So they advise you,

you know, you've always heard like swim, perpendicular, no, wait, parallel, parallel. Oh, let's get this confused. To avoid the rip current. So perpendicular to the shore away from the shore. Yeah, exactly. So you pass out. So that can be kind of scary, the pull of the rip current. Oh, yeah. You can also hit stuff underwater. Like we said, sure, if a wave's out there, whatever its height is, I think times 1.6. That's how deep the water is. So you can very easily, especially in a heavy wave, get thrown to the bottom. You can get thrown on a coral reef. Yeah. Or hit by another board. Yeah. Which brings us to etiquette, surfing etiquette. There's because it can be very dangerous to run into people and because, you know, really great

surf spots are few and far between. That means that there's often a lot of people out there. Yeah. So there's kind of two informal rules of catching a wave of who gets precedent, right? Right. I guess first one up or first one or closest to the break. Right. That gives you the right of way. Yeah. And everybody else has to get out of your way. They should. And if they don't, what happens to them? Well, people, if you're in a nicer area, people might say, hey, bra, that's not too cool. Here's how it's done. Right. Or they might just drag you to the beach and kick the crap out of you and break your board and throw it in the back of your car and put you in that car. That happens. And regardless of what beach experience you have, they're probably going

to call you a kook too. A what? A kook? A kook. That somebody who doesn't follow surfing etiquette. Really? I bet you'll hear other words too. Sure. But I'll bet kooks in there. So are we at localism? Yeah, I think so. I wrote an article, Why do surfers have gangs? And it's a thing. And it has been a thing for a long time. I know most people think of surfers as like the Zen spouting easygoing philosophical beach dudes. And a lot of them are like that. But a lot of them are not surfing has been tied to violence over territory for many, many years. And that is because, like we said, there are only so many surf spots in the world. And when dudes like you and me get all excited to go try it out, we're taking the limited amount

of space and waves that exist for them. That's why I'm going to try and Dubai first. And Dubai? At the wave machine. No, you should. I think if you're taking a class or something, they know to go to a place where you teach classes and everyone else knows, don't go anywhere near the classes. So that's a good thing to do. But surf gangs have been around for decades and localism since the 70s has gotten kind of bad in some areas. And the boogie board was a big reason why because all of a sudden this thing was invented for all these little kids to go out there and they can ride waves without any experience or technique or skill whatsoever. And they don't know the rules and they don't care. And their parents don't care as long as they're not in their

hair on the beach. So thanks to the boogie board, the violence picked up in the 70s. And there are well established surf gangs, even though you won't hear them call that. No, they call themselves like families. Yeah. The Wolfpack in Hawaii on the North Shore of Oahu. They're just a family, but they can also be pretty violent. Russell Crowe did a narrative, a documentary called bra boys, blood is thicker than water, about Australia's bra boys. And they were some tough dudes since the 1960s, who have some of which have spent time in and out of jail. The Averton brothers, in fact, I think one of the Averton brothers made the documentary. But if you ask them, you know, they're just protecting their area and something sacred to them. Yeah, don't be a cuck.

Don't be a cuck. Southern California, I know San Diego has long been noted for localism. Is that right? Yeah, I didn't know that. The Silver Strand locals, the SSL and the Oxnard Shore locals. Are they from San Diego? No, those aren't. Okay. The Pier Point rats in the 80s and 90s. These are just some of the notorious surf gangs that, you know, they've run into cops. Some people have been beaten to death in 2007 in La Jolla. A surfer was beaten to death. Hawaiian surfer was killed in a fight in 2008. So this stuff happens. And if you go out to surf, just don't be scared, you know, like these people are going to hurt me. But it's definitely cool to try and ingratiate yourself somewhat. Bring them maybe like some homemade cookies or something out to the lineup. Ask

questions. There's probably some nice guys to be like, Hey, dude, which you should probably do this. And steer clear of the red hot chili peppers. Run across them in a lineup. You want to get away because they are bad dudes as far as surf gangs go. Is that a real surf gang? No, don't you remember in Point Break? Well, what were they? They were like a surf gang. They were like the rival surf gang that were in the movie. Yeah. I don't think I knew that. Yeah. Well, that was early on for them. That must have been their formative days. Yeah, definitely. That was in the 80s. Yeah. Or early 90s. Was that early 90s? It was maybe like 1991. You know, you directed that was Catherine Bigelow. That's one of her first movies.

I didn't know that. Yeah. That's a great movie. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. 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, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast

Therapy for Black Girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the Therapy for Black Girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flip through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy Award-winning artist Michelle Williams and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports,

motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. So we should point out, Tracy points out that surfing, it's pretty cool. Not many sports have spawned a musical genre and a film genre like surfing has. You know, there's not a lot of songs about basketball outside of, I guess, Grandmaster Flash and maybe Run DMC. But people aren't writing songs about football or croquet. No, there's no croquet songs. But if they are, they're from like the 1890s, you know, and they're not good. Surf music was a huge thing though and

still is in a lot of circles. And then of course the movie's point break. What's your favorite? You ever seen Big Wednesday? No. Good movie. Have you seen Surf Nazis Must Die? I have not. That's a good one. Is it? Yeah. Is there actually surfing in it? Yeah, there's a lot of fights on surfboards and yeah, people shooting one another with Uzi's on surfboards. Big Wednesday is a classic. Blue Crush is a more recent one that covers the ladies. Yeah. And Emily loves that movie, by the way. And then there's some great documentaries. The old Endless Summer movie was really great. And then Endless Summer 2 was not bad. And then there's recently, more recently, Stacey Peralta made one called Riding Giants, which is awesome. Another one called Step Into Liquid, which is really cool

too. Yeah, I think that's like number two or something like that. And like the best surf movies after Endless Summer. Yeah. Well, Endless Summer Night Stuff was cool, but that was like old school. And today they have the technology to like get inside the tube and go underwater. And it's like the footage that gets pretty amazing. It's very neat. Thank you, GoPro. You got anything else? Nope. Cool. I can't wait for you to try it. That's the next thing in this podcast is for you to report back with your experience. Okay. I will go do it. I think it'd be good. You know, if you spend a day or two, you'd be able to get up and go like, hey, I'm surfing. Look at me. I'm frankly in a net. But I mean, you're out for my surfboard. It's crazy what you're doing though. You are standing on

top of a plank of fiberglass on and riding water. Yeah. You know, it ain't easy. No, I'm sure it's not. Yeah. And I already can just feel my ankles getting banged up on the surfboard. Do you have good balance? Are you good at stuff like skateboarding? I'm not so bad with balance. Yeah. Surprisingly for my size, I can stand up on like one leg. That's balance. Yeah, you'll be okay. You'll be able to surf a little bit. It'll be fun. I'm going to go in there with an attitude suggested by this surf guide. Have fun. Just, yeah, it's going to be fun. Yeah. I'm not one of those people who gets all aggravated if I can't do something like that. You don't get aggro, bro? No, man. What's the point? I'd quit doing it before I got aggravated.

Well, that's good. That's very helpful. I'm more quitter than I am aggro. If you want to learn about surfing, and I mean like pretty decent amount about surfing, you can type that word into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And I said search bar, so it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Black Museum. Yeah. Remember we talked about that in the death mask episode? I still want to go. I was really hoping somebody would write it and be like, I can actually get you in there. No one did. No, but I bet if we really push for it, we did. Well, let's start pushing. We have lots of hands in the name. All right, guys. Just got done listening to your show in death mask. Heard you mentioned the Black Museum, and you said

they should make a movie about it. I instantly had a flashback of listening to a radio show by the same name when I was a teen. Although it was in the early 90s, my local AM radio news station would air old radio dramas in the late evening, and I would tune in occasionally. One of my favorites was the Black Museum. I went and looked it up. The Black Museum was a 1951 radio crime drama based on real life cases from the files of Scotland Yard's Black Museum. Orson Welles was both host and narrator for stories of horror and mystery. So the show had opened with Orson Welles speaking from London, Big Ben Chimes, and then the Black Museum, a repository of death. Here in the grim stone structure on the Thames, which houses Scotland Yard in a warehouse of homicide,

where every day objects a woman's shoe, a tiny white box, a quilted robe, all are touched by murder. So that sounds pretty cool. I mean, in Orson Welles too, like him saying things like that really gets to you. Chuck Bryant saying something does have the impact of an Orson Welles. It's not bad, but what does Chuck? So there you go, guys. Maybe someday somebody will make a TV show about it or a movie. And for now, you can go on the Internet and listen to the old episodes, 51 of them in all. So that's awesome. A big fan, looking forward to seeing your TV show soon. That is Dan from San Diego, which I believe means Wales. No, it doesn't. What does San Diego mean? It means St. Diego. That's right. In Spanish. I would not quote Anchorman and ruin this G-rated

podcast. No. If you have some, I guess, additional information for something that we've talked about or if you can get us into the Black Museum, we want you to get in touch with us. You can tweak to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com or you can hang out with us online at our house stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Looting. 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, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Borey and I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic Black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday. Many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.