Stuff You Should Know - How the Globe of Death Works

Episode Date: December 14, 2017

The Globe of Death – el Globo de la Muerte to our Spanish-speaking friends – is perhaps the greatest of all the circus arts. It requires no smoke, no mirrors, only motorcycles, a giant sphere and fearless riders with the will to bend physics. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

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

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you live in San Francisco, you better come and see us at the Castro. That was horrid, but really nice, Chuck. I appreciate that. Yeah, so we are going to be, as the song says,

at the Castro Theater on January 14th for San Francisco Sketch Fest, Chuck. That's right. They're just about every year now, and it's a lot of fun, and San Francisco, you always treat us so well, so I recommend a stocking stuffer or two in the way of stuff you should know live tickets.

And there's an extra stocking stuffer they can get featuring just Charles W. Chuck Bryant, right? Oh, that's right. I'm doing my very first ever movie crush live at the Punchline, and I am having as my guest Mr. Tony Hale of Veep, Interested Development, Mr. Buster Bluth himself, and I know, right? And we're going to be talking about

the movie Punch, Drunk Love, and it is at 1 p.m., so you could double dip that day, see me at one, see stuff you should know at night, and I am even going to be doing a little meet and greet before and after. Fantastic, Chuck, this is why they call you the hardest working man in show business. That's right, and you can get tickets

for Movie Crush Live at bit.ly slash movie crush. Yep, and you can get tickets for our Sketch Fest show at syskylive.com, and there's still a few tickets left for Seattle the following day on January 15th, so syskylive.com, and bit.ly slash movie crush, Chuck? Correct. That's right. We'll see you guys in January.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. The three of us were just lobotomized, so we're feeling just fine. Globe of Death. That's right, or because it's huge down in South America,

El Globo de la Muerte, which I think I prefer that one. El Globo de la Muerte. El Globo de la Muerte. Jerry? She just said it. Jerry, good job. Man, I think she did it better than anybody. Well, Jerry actually speaks Spanish.

That's right. She's not a faker like us. No, she's not. I'm so mad at and learned Spanish. Oh yeah, you did German, I did French. Just so dumb. Like, how helpful would it be to know Spanish now? It would be pretty helpful.

I would love to chat it up with Spanish-speaking people I see every day in my life. Yeah, well, it's never too late to learn, Chuck. And know what they're saying about me. Right, exactly. Yeah, it's too late. It's over. No, it's not.

I'm saying it's not too late. No, no, no, it's too late. I'm not learning a new language. I think that's sad. I'm going to go learn Spanish just to show you. Oh, so you can talk about me in Spanish behind my back? Yeah, me and Jerry can. So, Chuck.

Yes? We're not talking about learning Spanish or whether it's too late to learn language. Because it is. It's not. We are talking about, like you said, the globe of death, also known as the globe of steel. Yeah.

Yeah, apparently that was a Ringling Brothers marketing department invention, or PR department invention, because they were going, oh, no, we can't have like a globe of death at our circus. You don't want anybody to see our elephants and start thinking about death? About sphere of fear.

That's a good one, too. Yeah. What about the 360 degree circle of intimidation? I just came up with that one. It's not that great, huh? We should, no, that was terrible. We should tell people what we're talking about, because I can sense the frustration weeks from now,

brewing with angry listeners. Sure. Already, so the globe of death, what we're talking about is if you've ever been to a circus, or a fair. A fair, and by the way, this is, we thought we would never add to the circus arts suite. Here it is.

And here it is. There's still more to come. What, county fairs, state fairs? Sometimes, like if you have a pretty good music festival, they might have something like this. Oh, okay. Maybe a Jane's Addiction show, who knows? Yeah, what's the world's fair, remember those?

Oh man, they still have them, but they're just not the same any longer. I think the US pulled out of them a decade or two back. I think the internet killed it. As a matter of fact, you're absolutely right. That's what I read. Because just the other day, I was thinking like, whatever happened to the world's fair,

and it turns out they're still there. They're called international expos or something now. Yeah, that's cool. And yeah, they are just not as interesting. It's not about the future. And they specifically said that it's just the internet. Now you can go on the internet and find all that stuff without leaving your home.

Internet ruins so much. That's the only way of looking at it. So, Globe of Death, what we're talking about, or we could beat around the bush for another 10 minutes. No, no, we'll go over here, let's just go. If you've ever been to a circus or those places, they might have this attraction wherein there is a steel sphere.

Mesh, steel mesh, so you can see through it. Yeah, you can see through it, but you can still see it's there. It's not invisible. Yes, that would be amazingly cool. Yeah. Wherein there are one, but usually more than one, motorcycle riders riding inside of a globe,

around and around, horizontally, vertically. Doing a loop to loop, all the way from the top to the bottom and over and over again. And yeah, just one person doing this, this article says it's kind of boring. I wholeheartedly disagree, and I would like to see the author try to do it, right? Yeah, sure, but compared to when you got

four or five people in there. Right. And then a lady standing in the middle, smoking a cigar. That's another, right, juggling babies. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, get a baby juggler. And I think the record that I saw,

somebody was trying to break seven and do eight motorcyclists in a sphere at once. I didn't see anyone had actually done it. There's been a lot of talk about it, but I didn't see anyone had done it. Seven is the most that I've seen. Although I've seen with my own eyes on video. Eight.

Oh, wow. I just, oh no, I'm sorry. Seven is the most I saw with my own eyes on video. But it is, it's amazing because they'll follow one another in a circle, which is pretty cool, but then one will break off and start doing something perpendicular to the other circle.

And they'll just miss each other every time. And it's just an amazing feat of machine and mind coming together in this field. Yeah, yeah, which we'll get to. I think, think, think, think, I might have it figured out physics-wise. This is kind of a rehash of the Sun episode as hard as it is to understand.

Oh, I thought, I didn't think this was that bad. Oh, well then you take it. Oh no, I'm not taking it. No, you take it. But I just saw like a few basic principles and then bang, bang, boom. Well, my brain broke trying to figure it out. And I think I got it, but I also may have gone insane

and come up with a completely and tiredly different interpretation of reality. Well, you're on a podcast. Right. Your name is Josh Clark. So I must be nuts. You know what I wanna see in one of these things is a motorcycle with a sidecar with a small child.

Or a monkey, that'd be even better. Yeah, a cigar smoking monkey. Wouldn't that be fun? Yeah. And the monkey's just like, what is going on? Yeah, because that's what monkeys were put on Earth to do. To smoke cigars and sidecars while we move them around globes of death.

All right, shall we go into some history here? Yes. I was very surprised to learn that the globe of death was invented and patented in 1904. Yeah, I saw it was invented even before then. Oh, well, sure, probably. That it was sometime in the 1890s in Europe, somebody came up with this act.

Crazy. But yeah, it is surprising. You'd think this would be like 70s daredevil era kind of stuff, right? Sure. But no, the 19th century is when it was first invented. And here's the gas of the whole thing. The original one's, the original globe of death

was written in on bicycles. Pedal fast, sir. And unicycles. Pedal super fast, sir. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, I don't see how that worked because as we will learn later in the physics, in the post-adbreak physics section,

it's all about speed. It is very much about speed. How did they do this on a bicycle? Well, I don't think they did the loop-to-loop. I think that came later after the motorcycle. Well, okay, so they just did sort of horizontal-ish circles. Yeah, which I'm sure if it was the 1890s, you'd be like, wow, I'm impressed.

Yeah, sure. I live in Wisconsin and I'm preoccupied with death and horribleness, so this is a real relief for me. So Grand Rapids, Michigan was where the first one was patented by a man, a bicycle stuntman named Arthur Rosenthal. And he had a stage name, Arthur Rose.

He had a partner, Mr. Frank Lemon. I know, that's a lemon rose. I love that word together. Lemon rose? That sounds very nice, doesn't it? Doesn't it? It's pleasant. It's no cellar door, but...

No, but it's close, it's in a different direction. It should be like a type of gum, sugar-free gum. Sugar-free lemon rose? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't even chew gum and I chew that. Yeah. So they would do like these little 10, 15 minute routines. Here's a quote from one of the state fairs.

Routines of skill and nerve guaranteed to deliver laughs and roars. But again, they were on bikes, bicycles. Yeah. So I guess around 1910s, the motorcycles started to become a little more ubiquitous, a little more affordable. And the first thing that people did with them was put them in the globe of death.

Yeah, well, I don't know about the first, but sure. They cast their bikes aside and said, I've got plans for you motorcycle. Where have you been all my life? That's right. So they started riding these things, and it just spread further and further afield. I guess it started in Europe, made its way to America,

because Arthur Rosenthal was from Grand Rapids, Michigan, right? Yeah. And it moved down to South America in pretty short order. So I think by 1912, there was a guy named Jose Urius, who had built his own globe of death back then and was riding in it as well, down in Brazil. And his family's actually still around and still performing

the Urius Brothers Globe of Death Act. Yeah, remember our circus family's podcast? Oh, were they? They were in that, huh? I think they were either in it or it, you know, I was just pointing out, generally, like, you do something like this, and your kid's going to probably grow up and do something like this.

Right, exactly. You know, it's a family trade. Yeah, now they're up to the great grandsons are the ones who are performing in the show. And what I read was that Jose Urius' 1912 Globe of Death is still in use by them. They have other globes as well, but it's still in usable condition.

That's the true globe of death. You could actually die. Right, right, exactly. You may have noticed earlier I said something about the word patent from Arthur Rosenthal. He did get a patent on May 3, 1904. And you also heard us mention things like South America in Germany.

Right, right. And you may be thinking, well, that's great. Art Rosenthal was getting banked from all these globes of death everywhere. Sadly, that did not happen. He had a patent, but I guess it was just one of the things where early 1900s, you're going to have a hard time chasing these people down around the world saying,

I own the patent to that. Give me $100. Right, well, I mean, I think even though they're paths must have crossed, I can't imagine the globe of death community even around the world was a big group. So I'm sure he was keenly aware of it, but I don't know, maybe he just didn't pursue it because it was international.

Who knows? Well, I just think at the time it's just so hard to successfully do that internationally. Yeah, I think you're right, man. So at any rate, we got numerous globes of death all around the world. A lot of the writers, where did you get this history section? I can't even tell you.

I don't remember. All right, well, they mentioned quite a few speedies. Speedy Wilson, Speedy McNich, I like Speedy McNich. Sure. And Louie, Speedy Babs, and it says Babs in one line, and Babus in another, so I'm not sure which it is. We're going with Babs. I like Babs.

But he was notable because he was the very first person to do a loop-to-loop and not just merely ride horizontally, which is very impressive for what, 1930s to 50s? Yeah. It was, I think, his was 1934. Or no, he set a world record. This guy was a Globe of Death Amaze Balls guy. He set a world record.

After being the first to do the loop-to-loop, he set a world record of 1,003 loops inside of a globe. They should call these Amaze Balls. I think it's still, they should. That's a great name. Amaze Balls of Death, Amaze Balls de la Muerte. But I think his record is still unbroken of 1,003. It's got to just be because somebody's like,

I don't feel like spinning around that many times. Yeah, people are too busy. Yeah. That would take hours. I have a family. But like you said, there are many families all over the world that have been doing this for many, many decades. And it seems very much to have stayed in the family biz.

And one of the ones in our article, they talk about a lot, are they the Euryces? Yeah. Yeah. So there was a heyday of the globe of death between World War I and World War II. That may have actually been its original golden age. But it also spread around the world around that time then,

too. There was another one in the 70s, the 60s and 70s. There were some innovations that we'll talk about. And then it kind of became almost legit in the early 2000s when long-established circuses started to pick up the acts. Like the Euryces, I believe, were hired by Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey. The Universal Circus picked up the Willi family.

And so they kind of went from, I think, like these kind of scratching on an existence, like having to hustle to basically corporate sponsorship. Like finally, the big circuses got hip to this idea in the early 2000s. Shall we take a break? Yeah, let's. All right, let's take a break and we'll come back and we'll

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

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael.

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

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, man. So we're back. And as you said, we're talking about the globe of death.

That's right. Yeah, so these things, here's the deal with these, is they vary in size, generally speaking, unless you're pulling off some pretty amazing tricks with lots of writers who are trying to set some big record. You're probably looking at about a 16-footish in diameter sphere. And they need to go.

And it's amazing that they were doing this in the 30s and 40s when motorcycles were so heavy. Well, the globe of death got its name from killing some people, for sure. For real? Oh, yeah. OK, I figured. There have been many, many, many injuries.

But yes, you're right. Especially early on, it was exceedingly dangerous. Yeah, so these motorcycles are a lot more powerful and lighter now. So if you're going to be in the globe of death business, now is a good time to do it. You're going around, generally, 40, 50, maybe 60 miles an hour at the most, 3 and 1 half to 4 and 1 half Gs.

And that is G-force on your body. And that's what's generally happening. You're on a trajectory that you have pre-planned, but you are not on a track and it doesn't use magnets. Yeah. It's literally just physics at work. Yeah, apparently a lot of people think that there's a trick or an illusion to it.

And there actually is not. And again, we're not to the physics yet. We've got to hang on. But we're going to talk about it eventually. That's right. So like you said, the globes themselves have kind of a universal size, although it changes. But there are also other things that the globes do.

So it's amazing enough that there's people like riding around these things on motorcycles. But I think one of the first families to use a split globe was the Uriuses. I saw a picture that they credited to the 60s where the globe hydraulically splits in half and the top part lifts up. And guess which side or which part

the rider's moving in at the time, right? The upper part. So they are actually in the top half of the globe. And now there's like no bottom. The bottom is well below. And there's a big gap between the top half and the bottom half of the globe of death. And the rider's just circling around the top.

How big is that gap? In the picture, it looked to be a good five to six, seven feet. Oh, I misread this whole move then. Oh, dude, it is not like a it's like they can very easily just go flying out. If they got too close to the edge, that's their toast. See, here's what I thought happened during a split globe trick is that they split it

by about eight inches and then would just continue to span that split. Oh, that'd be pretty cool. Vertically, but no, this is yours. Not yours, you didn't invent it. Well, I presented it. Yours is way better. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I agreed. And to see it is actually pretty amazing because it just brings home the whole thing before. Yes, they have a bottom, but it's still it's a really scary sphere of death, right? But now there's nothing. There's just the top. It's incredible.

It's an incredible thing to see. Everyone basically should go to YouTube and check it out right now, split globe. There's also a family, I believe it's the Torres family who were the first to introduce a triple split globe. So there's a top, a middle and a bottom. Whoa. And so I think the one I saw was they were circling

the middle part, the middle band. So it's really just this narrow little band of steel that they have to like stay on track with or else go a little higher, a little lower. Again, your toast. Right, and you think that the dangerous part would be sticking to the globe with that motorcycle. That is not the case because once we explain the physics,

which we're still not gonna do yet. Not yet, not yet. Like physics takes care of that. So it's pretty easy. Like there's a formula that you figure out how fast you need to be going and it's constant. Like you don't have to worry about anything else. It's really those G-forces.

Once you get in there, one of these Uriah's dudes said when they go upside down, he said, our heads are at gray out. Like they come close to passing out in this thing from the G-Force and there's one trick they do with, is it one of their wives that they put in there? And she's an aerialist so she hangs from the center while they ride around her.

And they said, there's a certain point in that show where she can't see us and we can't see her. And you just have to trust that it is mapped out and timed and practiced. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Mapped out and timed before you even practiced. Right, yeah. And it's basically all timing from what I understand,

but they have all that like just ticked off in their heads. Just from experience. Amazing. One of the other things that really comes into play are the bikes that they use, right? So for this How Stuff Works article, I think they actually interviewed one of the Uriah's brothers. And he was saying that like all the bikes they use

are modified dirt bikes. So they're powerful, but they're also lightweight. But then they modify them and change them from like 125 cubic centimeter engine to about 150 cubic centimeter engine. But it's still on that same light dirt bike, right? So it's got a lot of power. But there's only a certain amount of speed

you're gonna get to anyway. Because as we'll see in the physics, which we're not getting to yet, if you speed up too quickly, you're gonna increase the g-force too much and you're going to black out. And that's a terrible thing to have happen to you while you're in the globe of death, right?

Yeah. So there's only a certain amount of speed you need. So horsepower, which is the quality in the engine that you want to hit high top end speeds. The quality? The quality, the quality of that engine. That's a thanks for pointing that out. Because I think I would have gotten it past a few people

had you not said anything. Hang on, man, I'm here on my fingernails. So horsepower is not important. What is important is torque. Torque is that thing where, you know, when you hear like, oh, this car can go from zero to 60 in like five seconds or whatever. That's all torque, that's an expression of torque.

And torque is the power that it takes to spin something on its axis, like a rotational power. Right? And so, you know, like you're spinning an axis when you're making a tire move. And the faster you can make that tire move from a dead stop, the quicker you can go in the shorter amount of time. That's torque.

And that's what really counts on the bikes in the globe of death. Because you want to be able to just take off and be spinning around like from a dead standstill in no time at all. Yeah, well, they actually rock it back and forth a little bit to get the timing right. Even better.

But they still want really high torque. And so that's what they're looking for with these bikes as far as the big modification goes. As much torque as you can possibly have. Can I tell you a torque story? Oh, you have a torque story? I've got a torque story. Let's hear it.

So vacation this year, Isle of Palms, where I famously lost another tooth. On a crostini. On a crostini. This was pre. No, I think this is after I lost a tooth. Regardless, we went out to dinner one night at Isle of Palms as opposed to just cooking up tons and tons of seafood

at the house, which is what I like to do. And we got a car ride to the restaurant, had a great time, had quite a bit to drink, big celebratory. I think it was a final night dinner. And then afterward, we call a car to pick us up. And a dude shows up in a Tesla, a Tesla car. Like this is a ride sharing app? Yeah, yeah.

Wow. So he shows up in a Tesla and I was like, oh, well, this is great. We're all excited. Little buzz. No one had ever ridden in a Tesla. And he got us in this thing. And he was sort of telling us a very cool guy. College student paying for his Tesla

and school through driving it for people. And he was just telling us all about it. People get a sense that Tesla owners like to show off their Teslas because they're so neat. And it really was cool. And I'm not a car guy. I'm knocked out by much in a car. But I was like, this is pretty great.

So I'm sitting in the back seat and my friend Justin's in the front and his girlfriend and Emily and I are all three in the back. And he was talking about the torque and the 0 to 60 capabilities, the qualities of that engine. And he was like, yeah, there's no combustion. So there's like zero lag. Like you hit the gas and you go.

Like even your highest performance combustion sports car engine, there's a little bit of that lag at first when you punch it while everything's firing. But not so with the Tesla. And so Justin's girlfriend was like, can you do it? Can you show us? He was like, all right. So he makes a couple of turns and goes to this area,

this long straight road where it's pretty desolate. And he knows he can do it. And he stopped and he's like, all right, everyone hold on. And we kind of laughed at you unnecessarily, hold on. And he punched it, dude. And it was faster than any roller coaster, like even the ones that hydraulically launch you, faster than anything I've ever experienced that quickly in my life.

Yeah, I've heard that about Teslas actually. It pushed us back into the seat physically, pushed my head back against the headrest. And the only thing we could all do was laugh and smile. And I think Melissa screamed, like a scream of delight. We were like four children. And it was one of the coolest things. And of course, I gave him this huge tip, which I think

that's how he's paid for that Tesla. Sure, right. He's given people joy rides. Yeah, he's like, I guess I can. Anyway, it was great. That is not a prolonged ad for Teslas. I wish I could afford one of those things. But it was very sweet.

Well, they have, I guess, more affordable, comparatively speaking. Was it the Model 3? Yeah, but I don't think that's the one that does what this one does. I think all of them do, though, because they don't have that lag. Yeah, but they all don't have that huge engine.

Yeah, that's true. Like, surely they don't all go this fast, right? I don't know. Let's find out. We'll go look it up later. And I asked them, like a dummy, how'd you buy this thing? I went to a Tesla dealership. He was thinking, dad.

Gotcha. Should we take another break? After that Tesla story, we need to recuperate. Yeah, I feel like I derailed this. No, no, no, I've got to digest that whole thing. All right, we'll come back and we'll finally talk about physics. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

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

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

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, we are back, and it's time, it's time for the dreaded

physics, which Chuck's feeling pretty good about. So, Chuck, why don't you take a crack at it, and then I'll take a crack at it. Well, I mean, I'm not going to explain it all in heavy re-explain it, so. Oh, OK. Because that's no pun for anybody. Well, you go ahead.

But we can tag team this thing. The way I understand it is there are a few forces at work here that make this all possible, one of which is, oh, Nancy, is it centrifugal or centripetal? I've seen that if you are a physicist, there is no such thing as centrifugal, centripetal. So that's one of the main forces at work. And if you are traveling on just a regular street,

it's a pretty easy calculation if you're talking about the mass of centripetal force. It just gets complicated when you're talking about a globe of death, because you're not on a flat surface, and you're not just traveling horizontally on a round surface, you're going all over the place. So that's when it gets a little more complicated. Right.

Keep going. Well, centripetal force is directed toward the center of a path, of a circular path. Yeah. You've also got the force, and this is just the overview. We'll get more detailed. There's also the force of gravity, of course, at work when you're in one of these things,

because when you're going upside down, as everyone knows, gravity is always directed straight down. Yeah, or when you're perpendicular to the ground or parallel to the ground, like riding around in a circle, on the middle of the globe, it's still pushing you downward. Gravity is always pushing you downward. That's right. OK.

And then finally, we have the normal force, which everyone's always heard the saying that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you go and press on something that's not movable, like a 5,000-pound rock, and that rock doesn't move, it is that the normal force is that rock exerting its force back on you. It's in an equal and opposite amount, right?

That's right. And if it wasn't there, and it's not always there, then you would push the rock, and it would move. Right. Right. Yeah, well done. But that's not all. Oh, man.

It's like, how did these all work together? So here's what's been messing me up, and I think this helped my breakthrough. The force of gravity and G-forces are not the same thing. This is what was messing me up. I'm like, if G-forces make it feel like you're being pressed up against something, right? So you remember, did you ever go on that steel, drum, carnival

machine? Oh, yeah, we've talked about this. I would just spin, right? And you get pressed up against the inside, and they lower the floor, and you're just hanging there. But you're like, of course, you're being pressed up against the edge. Apparently, and this is why people think physicists are all

crazy, but apparently that's an illusion. You're not actually being pressed up against the edge of it. You're being pressed toward the center by the drum, OK? That's centripetal force, and there's another way to think about this. Man, I can do this, Chuck. If you took a key and you put it on a string, and you started swinging it over your head in a circle, right?

So it's spinning on an axis, and the axis is where the string is being held in the grip of your hand. That's the axis of the circle. What's happening is that key, at any given time, it just wants to go straight. That's all it wants, man. Just let me go straight. That's the direction of its velocity,

is straight at any given point. The problem is it's attached to the string, and the string is exerting the centripetal force, pulling the key toward the center. And so rather than being allowed to go straight, it's being forced into a circular path around the center. That is what centripetal force does. OK, that's all well and good when it's a key on a string.

But when you're talking about the globe of death, the string is actually the globe. The globe is the thing that exerts the centripetal force against the person on the bike, right? There's no string pulling them toward the center. They're not being pulled toward the center by the string. They're being pushed toward the center by the external force of the globe of death, OK?

And as long as that globe is strong enough to take the G forces, which we'll talk about in a second, that increased weight against it and push it back in an equal amount, then it will just keep directing that person along that circular path around the center, which is in the middle, this invisible point in the middle of the globe of death, right?

If it's not strong enough, then it's going to break and that person is going to go off in that straight direction that they've been wanting to go in the whole time but have been directed into a circle instead. Right. So in terms of an equation, in this case, centripetal force is equal to the force of the gravity

on the motorcycle and the dude, or lady. They have ladies that do this now. Yeah, they do. They have a whole female team, which I'll tell you in a second once I find the name. So it's that force, force of gravity, plus that normal force that I was talking about on the motorcycle. And the rider by the globe pushing back on that.

So once you can figure that out, like I said earlier with a math equation about how fast you need to go, as long as you know how big everything is, that is the globe. But once you go below that speed and you start to fall, that normal force goes to zero. Right. So it takes a bit of friction to keep the tire gripped to the globe.

For sure. As long as you have that friction, that normal force can press against you much more easily. Right? Yes. OK. So I think, so here's the thing. So this is the difference between the force of gravity

and G forces. G forces are just a measure of how much gravity is pushing down on you at any given point. Like if you jump up in the air, that's one G that you're with no wind resistance that you normally experience. And we call it weight, right? That's your weight is the force of gravity

acting on the mass of your body. But if you speed up really, really quick, especially, say, at like a circular velocity, right? You are actually increasing your own weight, which you feel as G force. It's like pressing down on you. You feel heavy and you can't move. And in real physiological terms, like the blood is being

pressed away from its normal locations, which is why you can black out, right? Because some of the blood is no longer in some parts of your brain, and your brain needs the blood to operate. But as far as the physics goes, gravity's always pushing downward on you. Remember that.

And the G force is pushing you and making you feel like you're being pushed outward when really it's the combination of your circular velocity and the radius, the distance between the edge of the circle and the center of the circle at any given point. And the more you increase your speed or the less of the radius, the stronger the G force or the higher than the G force is against you.

So if you have a small little globe of death or you're traveling really, really fast in a globe of death, you're going to very quickly reach a G force to where like you not only black out, but you can die from that as well, right? So they actually, like you said before, the timing is what they have in their heads. But they can sit down and mathematically

calculate what speed they need to hit at, what the weight that they need to be at and their bike needs to be at, so that they can know, as long as I hit the speed, I'm always going to be able to go anywhere I want to on the globe of death. That's right. I think we did a chunk. Yeah.

And so as far as G force goes, what you can handle as a human is what, like about seven Gs is about the tops that you want to go as a person. I don't remember what James Bond, which one was that? Was it Octopussy? I don't know. I don't think I've seen that one. Yeah, he got in a G force machine,

which was basically a big, it was like a centrifuge, a big round room with a pod on an arm connected in the center. And it would just spun him around. And of course, he was like, give me all you got. Sure. And then they gave him kind of a little ride. And then the bad guy came in, the baddie,

and started cranking it even further and even further. And I just remember being a kid and seeing Roger Moore's face, like they must have just had some powerful wind blower on him because his cheeks were rippling. I was like, oh my god, he's really in that thing. Right. But I think, I mean, I'm sure that they did not get the physics right.

And they probably pushed him to like 11. So that really rings a bell what you're describing. I guess I have seen it before. You saw all those movies, didn't you? I've seen most of them. That's a Roger Moore one. So I would think I have seen it. Yeah.

But that comes to mind. But yeah, because I can see Roger Moore's face going like, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, and that only happened once. Right, exactly. RIP, Roger Moore. Yeah, for real. But you remember Colonel John Paul Stapp, the guy who gave

us seatbelts and crash test dummies? Oh, how could I forget? Remember, his eyes used to burst blood vessels because of the amount of Gs that he was being pushed to. Yeah. But I think, so you mentioned the seven Gs. That was what a guy named Guy Martin, who is a motorcyclist who actually set the world record

for the fastest anyone's hit a wall of death with, which is basically like a globe of death. But without the top and the bottom, it's more like a barrel. Yeah, exactly. And that's just riding horizontally super fast in his case. I think what, he hit 78 miles an hour? Yes, and the Guinness people said, we're here, and you got two chances to get to 60 miles per hour.

And he did like 72, I think, the first time, and then 78 the second time. I would like to have seen that. It probably looked like Roger Moore. And I think that was Moon Raker. I don't think I see Moon Raker either. Well, Moon Raker was the one that was, for James Bond, it was very futuristic.

Had to deal with outer space and stuff like that. Doesn't he do it in zero gravity with the Bond girl? Of course he does. What was the one where he's got that lotus that turns into a submarine? Man, I want to say the spy who loved me. I think you might be right. I don't know.

I know that, jeez, somewhere Matt Gorley is spinning in his chair in Los Angeles. Ah, I can't remember. I can't either. Yeah, I love my Bond, but I just don't have them all like mapped out and memorized. Gotcha. If you do want to see that Guy Martin break

that world record, apparently the channel four over in the UK sponsored it, so I'm sure they have it somewhere. Oh yeah? Yeah. I have to give a huge shout out to PBS Digital Studios Crash Course Physics for helping break my brain into understanding of the centriple force thing.

That you didn't go to Nickelodeon Science? They didn't have it. They didn't have what I was looking for. Yeah, we said this at live shows. I don't know if we ever said on the air, but children's science websites are great, great places to understand complex science if you don't get it. We go there a lot and that's, we don't only go there,

but a lot of times that's a great starting point for breaking things down in an easy way. So we highly recommend it. Agreed. There's no shame. No, not at all. You got anything else? I got nothing else.

Well, if you want to know more about the Globe of Death, just go start watching Globe of Death videos. They're pretty awesome. And in the meantime, you can check out this article on HowStuffWorks.com. Since I said that, it's time for Listen a Mail. I'm going to call this flu epidemic. Okay.

Hey guys, I'm a master's of public health candidate in Atlanta at Emory. Nice. And we spent a good amount of time discussing the flu. I remember you mentioning the Spanish flu and wondered if such an epidemic could happen again. Bad news is it can and it probably will, according to public health scholars that is.

The culprit is our meat industry, which keeps an overbundance of foul and pigs in tight, unsanitary quarters. Because of the way this industry is growing, and some might argue due to its lack of regulation, these unsafe conditions lend to the rapid mutation of the virus. This coupled with the ever-decreasing CDC budget

makes it harder and harder for vaccine scientists to create accurate vaccines. On top of all that, the flu is seen as a low threat by most of our society, rendering us ill-equipped and underprepared. Most people are scared of Ebola or other difficult to catch viruses. However, influenza is a rapidly mutating

and highly aggressive virus that is easily transmittable and is right here on our doorstep. Scientists predict the flu might be the next most deadly epidemic if we are not careful. My recommendation to our congresspeople, stop cutting the CDC budget. Prevention is key. I know it probably sound like a quack, not to me.

For real. But just wanted to spread a little knowledge and say hey to my favorite podcasters. Thanks for putting on such an amazing show. And that is from Jasmine. Thanks a lot, Jasmine. Hello, over there at Emory. That's right, I love your rice.

What? Jasmine rice. Oh, okay. Weird. If you want to get in touch with us like Jasmine did, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast or Josh M. Clark. You can hang out with me on my website, ruceriousclark.com.

You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's also facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us all an email, including Jerry, to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.