Stuff You Should Know - Knife Throwing: Super Cool

Episode Date: February 27, 2018

Sure knives can cut through a steak or slash through jungle vines, but probably the coolest thing you can do with a knife is throw it. At a person mounted to a wooden wheel. Spinning around. While you’re blindfolded. Learn all about the impalement arts in this episode. 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. Hello, Colorado. The state's so nice, we're playing there twice. That's right. Two days in a row. Chuck, we added a second show to our Gothic Theater tour.

That's right. We're gonna be there June 7th and June 28th now. The 28th is sold out, but one of those weird cases where you go see the first show, you were actually late buying tickets. Right. We're also gonna be in Boston, April 4th, DC, April 5th. We're gonna be in St. Louis on May 22nd,

and Cleveland on May 23rd. And then of course, we're gonna wrap this summer up on June 27th, 28th at the Gothic Theater in Colorado. So go to sysklive.com for all of your information and ticket needs. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Here we go.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. This is Stuff You Should Know. All right. This bears some explanation. So I was doing my Stevie from Malcolm in the middle impression.

Which one was Stevie? He was the kid in the wheelchair who was like, breathed like that, who talked like that, because he had serious asthma. Yeah. Did you remember him? Was he just like a classmate? Yeah, he was like his best friend, I believe.

Yeah, I don't remember. I like that show, though. Yeah. Well, that's not what I was doing, really. No, we're slightly out of breath because we just had a fire alarm. Yeah, we had to walk down four flights of stairs, and not like this, the one, the kind of flight

where it's like down, landing down again. They should call that two flights. Yeah, so we walked down eight flights of stairs, and then walked back eight more. I know. Right when we got down, stopped, and immediately turned around to go back in. Yeah.

It was ridiculous. It was the kind of thing that makes you say, maybe I won't leave next time there's a fire alarm. I was prepared to hide in the studio and keep working. Yeah, we thought about it, but there's a fire marshal who works here, so you can't run afoul of him. Man, he got on that orange vest, quick like.

Changes everything. Have you ever heard of those guys that sneak into places with those vests? Yes, I have. I don't, is there a name for what they do? I'm sure more than one person has done this, but there's these two guys in particular who kind of got, I don't know about how famous,

but made a name for themselves for putting on the orange vest and saying basically like, if you wear one of these, you can get in anywhere you want almost. If you have an orange vest on, you look like you're supposed to be there. Well, yeah, you gotta have that steely sense of nerve.

And a walkie-talkie is probably a good thing to have too. But they can go anywhere, because the orange vest guy, that means that something's wrong and the orange vest guy has to take care of it. Yeah, like they showed pictures in the, in front of a, I can't remember what show it was, but a big, big concert,

where they were in that buffer area between the people and the stage. Right, yeah, I saw that too. And Fred Durst is like, oh, there's an orange vest guy. Something must be going on. What year was that? This would have been 2002, maybe.

The Fred Durst years. Great years. The Wonder Years. You're right. Wow. Man, I'm hot now too. I feel good. I got like, that got the endorphins falling.

This is gonna be a cool episode, buddy. Well, the irony is I, so grossly out of shape, I started getting on the Peloton. Yeah. So I've been, and this is not a plug for pellets, I guess it is, but it's not an ad, but I've been getting on that thing.

So my legs are ham, rubber band hams. Nice. Right now. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Hey, y'all prepare yourself for the rubber band ham. That's the song, right?

Hey, will you indulge me for one moment? Oh man. I've been waiting for you to ask me that for a long time. All right, so I've got the old side gig going with Movie Crush, my podcast where every Friday I sit down with someone awesome and talk about their favorite movie. And kill it.

Thank you. But I have now added a second weekly episode that publishes on Monday called Mini Crushes. And that's where I just sit in here with producer Noel. He's sort of the omniscient voice of God. And he sort of chimes in and I source a lot of questions from Facebook to the Movie Crush Facebook page. Listener mails, I do recommendations.

It's just a really interactive fan based experience. Yeah. So I want to plug the Mini Crushes and let everyone know that yesterday I dropped a very special Mini Crush which was the Chuck and it's Emily's podcast debut. Oh, congratulations man. That's right.

It's called the Chuck and Emily drink wine and talk about the Oscar nominations. Oh yes, nice. Yeah, so we recorded this thing at home. We put the kid to bed and broke out some nice wine and did our pre-Oscar roundup. So that dropped yesterday and then next Monday, the day after the Oscars,

we're going to have our post Oscar roundup where we talked about who won and what the speeches were like and who wore it best. That's awesome. And Emily's gonna be a star Chuck. Yeah, she was actually pretty great. And if you want a little peek behind the marital curtain, this is your chance.

So yeah, if you could check out Movie Crush on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Nice man. Do you feel indulged? I very much. Good. All right, let's talk about knife throwing. So I'm a little psyched about this

because knife throwing taps into my ninja training that I did under Tommy Roper as I'm sure I've mentioned before. Yeah. Reading about this, researching it. I never threw knives. We never made it that far in my training. Maybe now I'll be,

I'll be hang gliding throwing knives at the same time. Right. I'm gonna get into both at once. But I did a little throwing star stuff. Throwing star is like the dummies knife throwing. Because that thing always sticks, right? Yeah, I mean, depending on how many spikes you got coming off of it.

And how many beers you've had. Sure. And whether the tree is actually like a metal pole or not, you're probably gonna stick a throwing star. Throwing a knife is an entirely different endeavor. And it's something that anybody can do that Nicholas Gerbys, or Gerbys, never met him yet. He points out that this is actually kind of like

a low hanging hobby. That you can get a set of knives for 10, 15 bucks a piece. You probably want about five, as we'll explain why. Maybe six, and then you just practice. Get yourself a good block of wood and practice. And anybody can do this. It's not like you're born to throw knives. You practice, and if you like it, you keep going,

you just get better and better at it. And you can impress your friends and neighbors. Yes, and here's the point in the show where we issue our COA kids. If you're out there, do not go get a steak knife from your drawer and start throwing it at your dog. That is not a throwing knife.

And never throw anything at your dog, kids. I will come find you. Yeah, never throw anything at anybody that's sharp. But throwing knives are built to throw. They're weighted and balanced to throw. They're not like regular old knives, and we'll get into all that. But just, if you really want to try throwing knives,

go ask mom and dad. Sure. Or Tommy Roper. Get ready for a no, and then play them this podcast where it is an actual circus art. And please, for the love of God, tell me this is the last one. I don't think so.

Of the circus arts. No, it's not. What else is there? There's a bunch. We've done the Globe of Death. Oh, yeah. Flame swallowing. Lion taming, sword swallowing.

Sword swallowing. We did circus families, just straight up circus families. Human cannonball. This has got to be it. I don't think so, man. I think it's going to keep going in depth. Clowns. We did clowns.

Clowns, for sure, yeah. They don't want a PT Barnum, though. No. You mean Hugh Jackman? Mm-hmm. What is it, Chuck Stradamus? I don't know. Something like that.

I make one lucky casting call, predict one sexual predator, and one bad lifetime movie. Or what was Sharknado? Sci-Fi? Sci-Fi movie. Three little things. That's all. That doesn't make me no Stradamus.

Haven't won the lottery yet. Think of all the things I've said that didn't come true. Right. Way more. Yeah, I guess that's true. You know? Yeah. And whatever writes in.

No, it's true. Well, that didn't happen. Right, you really got that. Actually, they do write in to tell us we got stuff wrong a lot. That's true. So we're going to take this seriously, because we want you 10-year-olds out there who want to get your parents to let you do this, to see that you're taking this seriously

by listening to this podcast first, OK? That's right. So what we're talking about specifically is known as somewhat ironically as an impalement act, which is a really weird thing to call it. It's, well, it's, yeah, it really is. I think it's a little tongue-in-cheek. You think?

Because the point is to not impale somebody with this kind of thing, right? That's right. And impalement acts are an umbrella term that cover not just knife throwing, but bullwhip cracking. Oh. Shoot sharp shooting, archery, William Tell kind of thing. Yeah, yeah.

All of those fall under the umbrella term of impalement acts. Jerry's in dressing over there to our left. She got very hot in the fire drill. All right, so this goes back if we can get back on the way back machine. Oh, yeah. All the way back to the late 19th century. Oh, we got to go back even further than that.

Are you going to go back to ancient times? No, no, we'll still just go to the 19th century. Because I'm sure Chinese people in ancient times threw stuff that stuck in walls. Well, I looked at, I looked up the oldest knife. China started everything. Apparently they did. Apparently they found the oldest knife 500,000 years ago.

Oh, the oldest knife. Knife. So we've been using knives longer than there have been modern humans. Yeah, for sure. And then at some point, probably about 499,000 years ago, we started throwing knives. That's right.

It's stabbing is OK, but throwing a knife is when you really can come to appreciate what a knife does. OK? Man, there was nothing better in an 80s movie than when James Bond threw a knife and it got a guy. Or American Ninja, that's what I was trained on. Yeah. All right, so Wild West shows, Buffalo Bill and his Wild West

shows traveled throughout the United States, throughout Europe. Knife throwing became a big spectacle at things like this, as well as, obviously, sharp shooting and probably archery. They probably did all the impalement arts. They definitely did. And they really brought it to the world to the point where you can just basically say

that's where it started, was Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Yeah, and this is one of those things where, through a modern lens, it is incredibly misogynistic to think about the fact that you say, hey, let me take a scantily clad woman, a target girl. Yeah, that's what they call him, a target girl. And throw knives at her. Yeah, just stay in there.

Stay still. Yeah, throw knives near her. That's your job. It's always a lady. She's always got on like a bikini or something. She's just like almost like Wild West steampunk renaissance fair thing. You know, just to cover all of the geek boys' dreams

and desires. Right, but when you look at it through the modern lens, it's like, man, that is totally misogynistic. That is the act. It's got a burlesque thing going on. Yeah, sure. I mean, you can see what they're trying to do is titillate the young boys in the audience.

They're trying to sell tickets. And it probably wouldn't have sold as many tickets that they just had Bill the farm hand with a balloon in his mouth getting popped. I mean, it's still pretty cool. You're still seeing the same thing. But yeah, it's just basically tradition and custom to have a scantily clad woman as your target girl.

Again, that's what they call them, is the target girl. And that is one of the two people involved in this impalement act. That's right. We mentioned the balloon in the mouth. That was one of the big tricks. It was a German husband and wife named the Gibson's, who introduced the very famous Wheel of Death in 1938

at the Ringling Brothers show at Madison Square Garden. Have you seen this? Oh, yeah. OK, so I had seen stuff like with knife throwing before. And I always thought a fleece circus was another one. Do you remember our fleece circus episode where it turns out that fleece circuses actually involved real fleas? Yeah, that was the best of the circus arts.

And everybody thought it was like, no, it's magnets or just your imagination power of suggestion. And that's just not the case. The same thing applies to knife throwing impalement acts. Like I always thought, did you really? Yeah, I thought I think there was like a happy days or something like that where somebody gets volunteered. There's definitely an I love Lucy with a knife act

where she's the target girl. But there is some show where maybe Laverne and Shirley and I think about it. Anyway, the guy's throwing them and like the knives are coming out of the backboard around them. So it's all an illusion, right? That is not true in knife acts. If you're the target girl, a dude

is throwing 12 inch long, extremely sharp, pointy knives right at your head and is trying to get as close as possible to you without hitting you. Correct. And again, that's just the profile where they're throwing knives around you and making like a chalk outline of your body. That's the profile.

But there's other ones like holding a cigarette in your mouth and knocking the ash off with a knife. Or you're holding a flower in your mouth and they slowly like cut the stem off piece by piece. There's some pretty interesting things that people have done with knife acts. Yeah, sometimes, and this is the riskiest of all moves, riskier even more so than the wheel of death

is when they do the, when they cover the target over with paper. Yeah, the veiled wheel of death. So you can't even see that spinning who is behind there. You just have to have it timed completely perfectly. Right, but if you take a step back and think about this, there is nothing about that act that should allow you to say, oh, if I throw like this, I will, I will miss the person because they're spinning.

So you have to know where their body is at every second. But you've taken away how you know that, which is your vision because they're behind a big sheet of paper that you're throwing knives through. And there's this guy who will talk about it a little further. His name is The Great Throedini. Love this guy. He has done something.

It's probably the most dangerous, most impressive knife throwing act anyone's ever done. He did the veiled wheel of death with two target girls on it. So he has two girls strapped to a board spinning behind a big piece of paper that he can't see them through and he's throwing knives at them fast. Yes, very fast. The guy threw them on an average of a knife every 0.59 seconds.

And he didn't hit either one of them. Amazing. It is amazing. It's so amazing. I think we should take a break and regroup. 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. Yeah, 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, 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. We're back. We just watched one hour of great Thuridini videos. And he apparently caught on, like, in his 50s, he was like, hey, I'm pretty good at this. Back in 1996, he just, I guess, somebody was like, have you tried throwing knives? And he said, no, I haven't.

And they were like, well, try throwing knives. And he said, well, fine, I will. A couple of weeks later, he tried throwing knives. And he said, I really like this. Yeah. He said it felt natural and right. So he started throwing knives and entered competitions and started winning.

I think he became world champion within like two years. He beat the other four people. And then he said, you know what? This is fun and all, like, these competitions. But I think I want to try an act, like, an old throwback and palement act. So he started one. When you buy a tuxedo.

Basically, bought his wife, Barbara, a target girl get up. Oh, is that his target girl? One of them, yeah. I think she may have been the original one. Taught her to smoke cigarettes so he could knock the ash off of the end of them. And there you go. Impalement act achieved.

But not only that, Chuck, like the guy is, like, legitimately the best knife thrower on the planet. Well, he's one of them. He holds a record for fastest. But, boy, you go down a YouTube rabbit hole. And to, like, people like Ralph Thorn and. Better than Great Thordini, huh? Well, Great Thordini does the impalement act

as in the circus art. Ralph Thorn is like, if you're running through the woods, chasing somebody. I haven't seen this guy. This is, well, that's the Thorn style. We'll get into those styles later. OK, gotcha. But, yeah, he will, like, launch himself off of a tree stump

in the air and throw one behind his back. See, now, that's basically the training I was indoctrinated. Yeah, yeah, like martial arts. Sure. Real world suburban neighborhood dangers. Right. There's a raccoon. Oh, no.

No, no, no. You're not throwing at raccoons. All right, so. A raccoon comes at me? Well, sure. OK. Here's what you need if you're going to throw a knife. You need a throwing knife.

A throwing knife, like I said, is not a steak knife. It is very much made to be thrown. It is balanced so that you throw it. And we'll talk about the different ways that they're balanced. But one thing they are not is sharp on the sides. Yeah, the edges. Yeah, they're very pointy. Right.

But they're dull on the edges because you're going to, a lot of times, be throwing it by that blade. So get a knife for throwing, like the old saying. Sharp of point. Sharp of point is the point. Sharp of edge does you no good, that old saying. Yeah, that's a great thing. That should go on a T-shirt.

It should. So yeah, you want a sharp point, but there's nothing about a sharp edge that's going to help you in any way, shape, or form, because the whole point, again, is the point that's going to stick into whatever that target is, which is usually a block of wood, right? Yes. So depending on how you're going to throw it,

you want to throw the heavy end first. And there's a reason for this. The reason is that if you want to get technical about it, velocity equals distance divided by time, right? And when you're throwing a knife, especially the heavy end first, the heavy end has traveled a further distance in the same amount of time than the lighter end. This, friends, creates something very important

in knife throwing, although not fundamental, which is spin. OK? That's right. And so if you throw the knife, you're going to throw it either blade end or handle end. And the end regards what you're holding when you throw it. And if you're holding, say, a knife handle and you're throwing it from the handle end,

you're the front of the knife. The point is going to be weighted. It's going to be heavier so that that starts the spin. If you're throwing it blade first, the handle itself will be heavier. That's right. So that will start the spin. And there's a couple of different,

depending on which way you're throwing, the spin is going to take place over the course of a very short distance, actually. So let me just back up a second here. OK. There's some factors involved. OK? They are distance to target, length of knife, weight

imbalance, and then knife type, right? So the distance to target is going to tell you what type of throw you want. That's right. The kind of knife, they say, for every good rule of thumb here, just throw it out. But they do mention a rule of thumb, regardless, that says a blade that weighs about 1 ounce per inch.

And that's per inch of the whole knife. Yeah. So it shouldn't, well, you can throw whatever you want. But 10 to 16 ounces is a good starter knife, and about that long, or maybe 12 to 14 inches, and about that many ounces is where you want to start off as a beginner. Right.

And all kinds of shapes, too. Definitely. Some of them are like little spears. Some have multiple points, more like throwing stars. They really run the gamut. Right. So depending on how you're going to throw, whether it's a handle throw or a blade throw,

the weight of the knife is going to be either in the handle or the blade. It's going to be the opposite of where you're holding the knife. And if you throw holding the blade, you're going to throw a half turn. It's a half turn throw, right? Yeah.

And the reason they call it that is because the knife only makes one half turn. The blade straightens out from your hand toward the target, and then that's the only turn it makes. Yeah, it's not like in the movies a lot of times you'll see you go right in turn like nine times and stick the guy in the forehead. That's really not what you're doing with knife throwing.

No, it's basically if you're throwing it by the blade, it's going to make one half turn and that's it. So if you're blade throwing, you would stand closest to the target, right? So if some guy is coming at you dressed as a raccoon and you know he's going to hurt you and you can throw a knife and he's real close, you would throw by the blade. That's right.

And in fact, I don't even know if it's possible to throw a knife like they do in the movies that just tumbles because every video I saw there, like you try and prevent tumbling as much as you can. Like that's the whole game as to because physics says that a revolving object that suddenly breaks free will continue to move in a straight line tangential to the point at which it's released.

In other words, that release point is a little tricky. You've got to dial that in, but we'll get to that too on the actual throwing. So the next furthest away from the target is if you're holding the knife by the handle and you're throwing it, it's going to make, that's a full turn, full spin, to where the blade goes from facing the target, facing away from the target,

and back to facing the target in time to stick into that target. And not embarrassingly bounce off because it hit the blade or the handle first. That's very humiliating, right? So humiliating. And then the last one is the furthest one away. And it's about the most you would ever

want a blade to turn, which is two times. That's about 30 feet or about 10 meters away from your target. You could possibly get it to spin twice. But usually, you just want to spin once or half. And that's it. Yeah, and did you say a half turn is about 7 or 8 feet? I don't think I did. I just said it was the closest.

Yeah, about 7 or 8 feet, it depends. Full spin about 12 to 15, and like you said, the great throwdini, double bondini, double twist is up to 20, 30 feet. Although, one of these other throws that we're going to get into, this thorn throw, one of the benefits is you can throw from anywhere, supposedly. So we're going to take one more break,

and then we're going to come back and teach you a little bit about throwing and then what to look for in a good knife. Music On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called. David Lasscher and Kristine 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, okay, 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. Oh, 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. OK, so you've got, you know about how close you want to stand at the target, depending on whether you're holding the knife by the blade or the handle. The good thing is, is there are a couple of different grips, but they're very similar. So if you're like, I want to get into blade throwing first,

because that looks pretty cool. You're going to basically pinch the blade of the knife. And remember, these are not sharp edges, so you should be fine. If you do, I saw, if you are using a sharp edge knife, you want to hold the blunt end. Yeah, but you don't want to do that. You don't even want to do that.

So it doesn't really matter which way you're holding it, but if it is sharp on one edge, hold the other edge. And you're just basically pinching it between your thumb and your first three fingers. Just a little pinch. Yeah, just a teeny pinch. Maybe stick your pinky out for effect. Sure.

All right, and that's the blade throw. Yeah, and you've already got your target, by the way, at this point. I know you mentioned a block of wood, but they recommend aim small. What is it, start small, aim small? Yeah. Which is don't, you don't need a tree trunk sliced up

and put on a wall. Like you just need like a whatever, a little 12 inch by 12 inch block of wood, or maybe if you want to screw a bunch of wood together and then draw a target on there, that's fine too. Yeah, you should probably glue though, because the screws might, your knife might bounce off of them.

Yeah. You know? If you're using metal screws? Okay. Sure. As opposed to the traditional wooden dowel. Right. So.

Dovetail joint. Right. So the, that's the, what did I say? That's the blade throw, right? Yeah, you did blade throw. There's a handle throw too. And this one is called a hatchet throw or hammer throw, or the handle throw, you could call it too,

and everybody will know what you're talking about. Yeah, and you stand your, a little further back for this one. Right. Because you've got your full turn going. Yeah. And then you just grip it like a baseball bat and swing away, right?

Right. Close your eyes and you hope for the best. You say ninja strike. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So the cool thing is what you were saying about starting small, aiming small,

is that when you figure out that there's actually just a few mechanics going on here, you'll be able to tell what part of your throw is actually off. Yeah. Whether it's distance, whether it's when you're releasing, whether it's how you're gripping it, the problems or the issues with your throw will show up

and you'll be able to read based on how the knife is landing or sticking, what's wrong with your throw. Yeah. Like if you are throwing, I think blade first and it sticks, but it's sticking at a really hard angle where the handle is pointing down. Right. Then they say maybe just move back six inches

with your stance. That's, is it? Yeah, you're right, you're right. And then try it again. Yeah, because that means that your, the knife didn't get its full rotation. Right. You wanted to basically be sticking straight out

perpendicular to the target. Yeah. That's a correct throw, as you're learning to do this. Yeah, and did you say that it's generally your opposite leg of your throwing hand forward? Oh yeah, so, yeah, so the stance? Yeah, I mean generally, but then again, I also saw this Russian guy that threw with his throwing leg

or the same leg as his throwing hand forward. Right, like a. And he was like, you know, it all works basically, was his thing, this guy was great. I knew you had the Italian thing going on, but a Russian, that was good. Oh yeah, I can, I can do that. So let's get into the throw then, okay?

So the stance, I should say. So with the stance, you're standing with your, your, your throwing arm, the leg opposite your throwing arm is closest to the target. Kind of like you're throwing a dart, you know how you're throwing a dart? Yes. Okay.

Like that. Well, actually, that's not quite true. When I throw, when you throw a dart, your, your, the leg that is, the foot that is on the line is the same side as your throwing hand. Is it? Yeah. Okay, well, this is the opposite of that.

Maybe I've been throwing darts wrong all this time. So the, so the, the leg opposite your throwing arm is the one you want closest to the target. Traditionally. Right, traditionally. Your weight is on your back leg though, as you're throwing. And what you're doing is you're gripping the, the knife, however you want to blade or handle either way,

you line it up, right? With your eye against the target, bring your arm back behind your head and then keeping your wrist straight. You don't want to flip your wrist or anything. You bring it in an arc in front of you and you finish like you are shaking somebody's hand. Like you're going, Hey, how are you? Right?

But I got a knife. Right. The thing is, here's the thing. You're going to want to release at that handshake part when your hand is straight out in front of you and you're going to find nothing but heartache trying to throw a knife like that. Oh, if you release it.

Right at the end. Oh no, it goes, it'll go straight down. Right. It'll go down in front of you because when you release an object that's going in an arc, it wants to go straight in a tangential line from the, the, the top of the arc, right? That's right.

So you want to release it at the top of the arc. That's right. So that is, I was practicing just in the air. I know. Trying to, to make my brain release it at the top. And that is really difficult to do because you think initially that the knife is going to go shooting up into the air.

It's not, it's going to go straight. That's right. Pretty neat stuff. That's right. And this is just, I don't even know what the traditional throw was called. Do you? I, I know.

I didn't see a name for it. Well, there are some other throws which I might as well go ahead and mention up teased. One is the aforementioned thorn style from Ralph Thorn. Okay, that's named after a dude. It's named after a dude. Either way, it sounds cool. Yeah, this one, did you see this one at all online?

I didn't see that one. I kind of had an idea of what they were talking about based on the article. Yeah, they say that it resembles spear throwing, the action, I guess in that you're, you're not taking the knife like behind your ear. You're sort of just extending your whole arm and doing a big,

almost like you're throwing a baseball pitch. Sure, that's what I imagine. Yeah, that's what it sort of looked like. But like sidearm? Sort of like a bunch of people were doing it different and then this guy's jumping all over behind his back like thorn style seems to be to just do whatever you want. Okay.

That's not true. Thorn's probably just like so angry right now. He's like, yeah, come up to my woods. I'll show you how I do whatever I want. Then there was the Russian style and this look, it's a very compact. The elbow is in near the body. You hold the knife behind the ear

and this I saw was a little bit more like, you know, like that kind of thing. So that seems to me like depending on how close you're holding your elbow to your body, like you're going to chop the top of your ear off. Well, you want to avoid that. Sure. But it's more like you're pushing it out

rather than throwing it like a tomahawk. Right. So that's what I thought Moon Yuan style was like, where you're basically like shoving the knife forward. Well, what I saw with that style, and again, all these videos were different. So I don't know if these people are just,

I mean, it is YouTube. Making it up. It's not like, they're like, I'm an accredited thornist, but the Moon Yuan style looks like they were having the knife like in their hand, like kind of in their palm and would throw it. Gotcha.

But I don't know if that was because of the knife, because the guy on there was like, this is a Beau Shuriken spike, which is thrown in the Moon Yuan style. Right. And that's what this article said too. People really get into this online though. Right.

That's what I did discover. So the three things, those three types, thorn style, Moon Yuan and Russian style, those are all styles of knife throwing that involve no spin. That's the common thread that they all have. Yeah, which is pretty cool. It is cool.

And there's a couple of reasons you want to do this. Most knife throwers say that's really tough on the joints after a while. Oh yeah. That's what they say. And the reason why is because it involves like doing crazy, like snapping motions with your elbow and your wrist and stuff. Whereas with knife throwing,

it's just a smooth arc you're making and almost all of the motion is in your shoulder and your elbow, your wrist stays straight and you just are generally releasing your grasp on the knife, right? So Thordini can do this into his 80s. All day long. Right, yeah.

With the no spin styles, it's just tougher. It's more of a snapping motion that like you're gonna get tennis elbow after a while. The reason, the advantage that these have is like if you're trying to throw a knife through a hole, you can have a 12 inch knife spinning, making this 24 inch arc basically or circle. You just want to send it straight

like a missile through that hole. When he's throwing a knife through a hole. Into some dude's leg. Okay. Into his calf. And then you pounce on him, put your hand over his mouth and nose until he falls asleep. And then you can advance further toward the castle.

Well, the Russian guy I saw was talking about the first thing you do is find the balance point. So he held out his finger and put the knife on it until like a little seesaw until he found the exact point. And he's like, there's balance point. So once you find out where that is, that will teach you exactly how to hold it in any scenario basically.

Got to know where that balance point is though. So whatever you're doing though, if this sounds like something you want to do, whether it's spin throwing or no spin throwing techniques, the key to knife throwing of any kind is practice, practice, practice. And this article actually gives a really good piece of advice.

It says, get a little set of throwing knives. The best you can afford because the more expensive they are typically with them, the better, the more well made they are. Yeah. And get some, like I said, of three or five or whatever because you're going to have to practice repeatedly. And if you have one knife and you're standing 15 feet away

and you throw it, you have to go get it. You have to throw it again and go get it. That's not nearly as fun as trying to throw like five quickly in a row. So number one, you're going to be more entertained. But also if you do, no matter how many knives you have, if you start to lose focus, if you start to get bored or frustrated, stop.

Because if there's one thing about knife throwing, it's meant to be fun. And if you're practicing with your friends, they don't stand to the side of the target. They don't stand directly behind you. I would recommend they stand well behind you and well to one side of you. I've got one even better.

Don't even press. Don't even let your friends anywhere near you. You have to be alone while you're practicing throwing knives, but you have to be in text or phone contact with your parents who are watching you from a safe distance. You're still live streaming it to your parents. Maybe so.

You should go look at some of these Ralph Thorn videos because the funniest part is the almost not angry, but just his trudge toward the target afterward is very like, I don't know, it's weird. He'll jump up in the air and throw a few. And then he's just like, I do, I do, I do. And then walks over and undoes it from the log.

Like, I don't know, all the pizzazz leaves as soon as he's thrown. Yeah, that's when you need the pizzazzes during the throwing. The rest is just wasted energy. Yeah, but you don't see Thordini. That's the difference between an impalement act and a dude in his backyard on YouTube.

Well, Thordini has the smarts to hire an editor to edit that part out. Yeah, that's a good point. I don't know if we said the great Thordini's name. His name is David Adamovich and he's a neat guy. Great name. So if you want to know more about the great Thordini or what's Thorn's first name?

Jesse Thorn. The other Thorn. Ralph Thorn. Ralph Thorn. Or any kind of knife throw and go check out some videos. Again, do not do this unless your parents say it's okay and do it safely. Don't be stupid and never, ever throw

at any living thing ever of any kind. Ever, or Josh and Chuck are gonna be so mad at you. That's right. And in the meantime, let's listen to some list of your mails. All right. I'm going to call this, oh, welcome back to the fold. This just delighted me. I like this one too.

You know, in April, it's going to be 10 years. I know. Which is just nutty, nutty, nutty. No one ever thought we'd be doing this so long. Jerry has an age today. No, she hasn't, but she's taking off more clothes as the podcast has come on. In celebration.

She's getting ready for her gig as a target girl. All right, guys. And Jerry, whoever else is stuff you should know might actually be reading this. I don't know how fan mail works is what she says. This is how it works. Yeah, we read it. I realize that the most I'm realistically going to achieve

by stating this is making you feel old. But when I was 11 years old, in 2011, stuff you should know was my favorite podcast and listened to every episode. Kept on listening for a couple of years until I was 13 when I stopped listening to it because. That's when we lose them is when they get too cool for school. That's right. So for those of you who are teenagers who have kept

listening through your teen years. We think you're cool. You're doing it right. Your peers probably don't, but we do. I have no idea why I stopped, guys. Up until today, I actually figured you guys must have stopped making it. And I never bothered to go back and check until today.

Isn't that funny to think back? To think that someone can think back like. Oh, remember those guys? I wonder how long that lasted. Daily, weekly life. So funny. I'm not sure how to properly put how I feel into words, though, because not a lot else from when I was that age

still exists. I grew up with the internet, but poking around Google and looking for old sites, I used to just, it reveals a trail of deleted accounts and domain names that no longer resolve. Does she find an old computer or something? I don't know, maybe. She's definitely taken a trip down memory lane. I know, man.

I've moved countries, so most of my physical stuff was either given away or thrown into a landfill across the Atlantic. The fact that stuff you should know still exists and is still making episodes that are just as good as I remember them being is incredible. Very nice. Wow, this is crazy.

This is from Hazel. She asks if we have a PO box so she can send some Jaffa cakes. Oh, that's nice. I don't remember if I gave Hazel our address. Well, please do. But Hazel, if you write back, we'll give you our address and we can get some Jaffa cakes. Thanks for coming back.

Yeah, we appreciate that. And we're glad to have kept the home fires burning for you there, Hazel. I'd like to hear from Sarah. Sarah Sparrow, the amazing 90-year-old fan. Yeah, she's 11 years old. I think she was at the time. No, she was like.

Was she like eight or nine? Yeah, I can't remember when she started. Yeah, but she was really young, yeah. She became a cool teenager. She definitely did. But maybe she'll become an actually cool college student and come back. Yeah.

Well, thanks a lot, Hazel. If you left us and came back and thought it was as good as ever, we can hear that stuff all day long. You can tweet to us at joshumclark or syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant or slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyshnow.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

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