Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Rockettes: Still Kicking After All These Years

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

Tune in to this classic episode to learn all about the legendary NYC Rockettes, who actually got their start in Missouri.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And listen to the full podcast now. Hey, everybody. Happy Saturday. I got a select for you. This is Chuck here of the Stuff You Should Know podcast. Introducing Rockets, colon, still kicking after all these years. This one came out January 1st, 2019, and it's about the Rockettes. And this is the time of year to talk about the Rockets.

I learned a lot about this organization, organization, this dance true. and they're storied history, and I think you're going to like it. So give it a listen, and please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry.

Happy New Year. You are too tall to be a rockette, aren't you? Just barely. Jerry and I can be Rockettes And you can't No, it's true Which is a shame Because you have the gams

I do actually I've got pretty decent legs You know At least my calves are all right What, no thighs They're a little tree trunky For my taste Oh yeah?

Yeah I've got a bit of like a fertility Idol thing going on Like up toward the hips And all that Yeah Well it's because of all those squats I was not expecting to talk about this.

About your gams? Yeah. Oh, well, I'll talk about my legs all day long. Well, let's hear it. They're shapely. Okay. They're not, I gain all my weight between my waist and my chin. Uh-huh.

Like, I don't, if you looked at my legs and my arms, you'd be like, that guy weighs 160 pounds. That's hilarious. And then the rest of me comes along to bust that myth. Step aside. Still have a nice little fanny? Sure. Everybody knows that.

Sorry, listeners in the U.K. Oh, yeah, that means something different over there, doesn't it? It does. It's just so dainty and nice that a little five-year-old kids can say fanny in the United States. That's right. It's just the Brits who are sickos. But this isn't about our gams. This is about a dance troupe, a legendary dance troupe.

Yeah, about as legendary as. a dance troupe can possibly be, are the rockettes. I think so. I just said that sentence like Yoda. Can you do the voice? No. No? No.

Not even going to try. But this totally surprised me digging into the research on this to learn that the legendary Rockettes of New York City and Radio City musical are not from New York City. No, they're not. Where are they from, Chuck? Did you know this? I had no idea now. Yeah.

So shout out to St. Louis. Yeah. They were founded in the 1920s, 1925, to be exact, in St. Louis, Missouri, as the Rockets. The St. Louis Rockets, which I think they were trying to be a basketball team, maybe. St. Louis Rockets? Sure. Yeah, there was a choreographer named Russell Markert, which is, I kept wanting to say Market, but that is an R. And he founded them, like you said, in 1925, and he was inspired by a British dance troupe named the Tiller Girls, which was founded in 1894 by John Tiller.

And it was kind of a similar idea. He saw these Tiller girls, and he was like, I want a high-kicking, glamorous theatrical dance troupe of my own. Yeah. So I'm going to rip it off. He did, actually. So John Tiller is widely acknowledged as the creator of what's called Precision Dance, which is where you have a bunch of dancers who are really highly trained, really athletic, and really precise in their movements that can move in such unison that you take a number,

like a number of different dancers, and they basically become one thing that can do things that an individual dancer can't do. And that's precision dance technique. And John Tiller literally invented it with, I think, four 10-year-old girls in the 1890s. And he came up with some further refinements to it. Like when you put your hand around the waist of the people on either side of you,

it kind of lends to the unity of the whole thing. And Russell Markert saw this and was like, this is amazing. If I can get some American girls with longer legs to kick higher, it'll knock everybody's socks off. That's a quote, by the way. Yeah, and there's something to that, that synchronicity of, for me, for movement and sound, that just knocks me out every time. When I go and see a choir, like a hundred people singing together. And high kicking.

Or a symphony, just the, not only the sound, but the movement. when you watch a symphony, that's a big part of it for me. Forget a choral symphony. Like, I'm on the floor, weeping, if you take me to a choral symphony. But there's something about that precision of all these people together. It's just really, like, I don't know what it is about it. I mean, it's a collective voice or collective movement,

but it's that precision that really just gets me every time. For sure. Well, that's what the Rockettes are known for. It's their trade is precision dance. They're as good as it gets with it. Although the teller girls are definitely still around. They still have Christmas specials themselves, and they're doing their thing for sure.

So it's not just an offhand thing to say the rockets are as good as it comes, as good as they come in precision dance, because the teller girls would probably say, I would dispute that statement. But they would say it with a British accent. Right. I dispute that statement. So they were not as tall back then.

The original height requirements were between 5-2 and 5, 6-5-5, 6-5. And now they went, we'll take your tallest dancer and make them our shortest dancer. Because I guess it's just, I don't know. I'm not sure why they did that. But now it's between 5-6 and 5-10-and-a-half, and it is not because they want to exclude people or discriminate against people

who are too tall or they feel too short. But it's so they can just all look it's an optical illusion so they can all look the same height because they take that 5 foot 10 and a half inch dancer although they don't have to be that tall

but they take whoever their tallest dancer is put her right in the middle and then just stagger it out from there and in the end everyone looks it's weird, everyone looks to be the same height even though they're not. I don't understand how this works. It's just, I saw it so many different places that I'm convinced that it does work.

I just don't get the illusion of it, how it works. Well, I think over four inches and 36 women, it's just so minute of differences as you scale down that it would take, I guess, an extraordinary human to be like, that woman is an inch and a half taller than the one five people away from her. Right. You know? I got you. Yeah, I guess that's true. So you're just a normal person, is what I'm saying. You should feel good about that.

I fall for that optical illusion every time. Yeah, everybody should. So they started with the Missouri Rockets with just 16 women. And like I said, now they have 36. And they debuted in St. Louis, but then went to New York to perform rain or shine on Broadway. And that is where a man named S.L. Roxy, that was his nickname, Rothafel, which is an interesting name, that's where he saw them and said, hey, I got to get in on this. This is amazing. Yeah, so Russell Markert took the idea from John Tiller, and Roxy Rothafel said, hey, I want in on this jam. So I'm going to grab a few of these dancers from St. Louis and bring them over to New York City.

And we're going to have them start dancing there, okay? And I know just the place for them. There's this new venue that's opening up in 1932, and they're going to call it the Radio City Music Hall. And I'm going to make sure that these dancers are able to perform, and we're going to call them the Roxiettes. How about that, huh? Huh? Because of his nickname. Right? And Markert said, that's fine.

fine just make sure you pay me some money for it sure and he he did get paid and got paid until 1971 he that's hard to believe but he worked for the rockets or with the rockets uh from 1932 to or i guess even previous in st louis yeah 1925 all the way until 1971 yep really amazing yeah it is pretty amazing that's a pretty long career um so they they opened radio city music hall I think they were part of a 17 group act. And it was like such a hot ticket, something like 100,000 people wanted in. But it's a 6,200 seat theater,

which I think it still remains the nation's largest indoor venue, which is really saying something because I guess it'd just be like a theatrical venue because obviously... The largest indoor venue. Sports venues have it beat by quite a bit. Oh, theatrical. Okay, I got you. It has to be, yeah, it's either movie or theatrical or something,

but it's the largest venue of its kind in the United States, from what I see. Yeah, and for many years, they, I mean, they had specials every now and then, but it was sort of just a movie theater. Yeah, and here's the thing. You could go see the movies, I think especially it started to take off in the 50s. Like, before they would have premieres for movies, and the Rockettes would, like, perform at the premiere. And then at some point, I don't know if it was Russell Markert or Roxy Rothafel or somebody said, well, why just do this once?

How about every time somebody comes to see a movie at the Radio City Music Hall, we'll have the Rockettes perform before the movie. Can you imagine that, how cool that would be? It would be pretty cool. I mean, like imagine seeing that and then being like, okay, now for the movie. That'd just be a different experience for sure. Yeah. But it was rough on the world. Rockettes because not all the movies were successes. So they would change the Rockettes show for each

movie. So if a movie came along and it was just a terrible flop, this whole choreographed routine that they'd learned would be out the door in two days and now all of a sudden they had to learn a new one quick because there was a new movie coming in to replace that one. Oh, so they did a different routine for each film? Yes. Interesting. Yeah. And sometimes they would have to learn it in a matter of hours like around midnight before the next day's performances. I wonder if it was tied to the film. Sometimes, I think, but not all the time. I think it was, I think it wasn't in some cases,

but I think more than anything, they would change the routine just because the people coming to see a different film would want to see a different routine. Okay, I got you. That makes sense. Yeah. So in the 1940s, they were one of the first groups to sign up for the United Service organization and go and perform for the troops.

And in the 1950s is when things really started to kind of take their toll. Like they were performing sometimes up to five times a day. And so they said they built a dormitory there, which they could live in. I don't think they were required to. But it really was to accommodate the fact that they were working almost around the clock rather because learning these new routines like you said and then performing up to five times a day. Really grueling stuff.

It was basically the prototype for Google. Just making it so your employees didn't have to leave. Oh, interesting. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, just go sleep in your pod. So the Rockets, their fame started to grow pretty quickly. And they made like a few steps, if you'll forgive the pun. along the way that kind of cemented them as a, as much a piece of America as Apple Pie or

baseball or moms or what have you. So the 50s were also big for the Rockettes too because they joined the Macy's Thanksgiving they prayed in 1957, I think. Yeah, that was the big, the big move. Yeah, because they went from just a group that you either had to go to New York or go off. to war to see to, while they're in my living room now, these girls are high kicking on my television, and I'm just loving life. All right, so let's take a break. It's 1950s.

Good times are ahead, and then dark times come in the 70s because it's New York City in the 70s, and everything was kind of awful then. So we'll be back right after this. Podcasters, it's time to get the recognition you deserve. The IHeart Podcast Awards are coming back in 2026. Got a mic? Then you've got a shot.

Every year we celebrate the most creative, compelling, and game-changing voices in podcasting. Is that you? Submit now at iHeartPodcastawards.com for a chance to be honored on the biggest stage in the industry. Deadline December 7th. This is your chance. Let's celebrate the power of podcasting. and your place in it. Enter now at iHeartpodcastawards.com.

Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health. And I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom. And I'm Jordan, the show's producer. And like a lot of guys, I haven't been to the doctor in many years. I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't. Because guys usually don't go to the doctor unless a piece of their face is hanging off or they've broken a bone. Depends which bone.

Well, that's true. Every week we're breaking down the unique world of men's health from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility and things that happen in the bedroom. You mean sleep? Yeah, something like that, Jordan. We'll talk science without the jargon and get you real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about.

It's going to be fun, whether you're 27, 97, or somewhere in between. Men's health is about more than six packs and supplements. It's about energy, confidence, and connection. We don't just want you to live longer. we want you to live better. So check out the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. On an all-new episode of IHeartRadios Las Culturistas,

Emmy, Golden Globe, and Tony Award winner, Sarah Paulson, spills on red carpet hacks. We saw these pictures and you're like, what is the story with this? She gets real about the inspiration behind her roles. Oh, no, there is no end to how people will behave. And she puts host Matt Rogers and Bowen-Yag on notice. I don't think so, honey.

I feel very, very triggered by this. Open your free IHeart Radio app. Search Las Culturista. And listen to the full podcast now. Okay. Okay. Hey, before we get started, Chuck, I want to say, we put on a pretty good stage show ourselves. We've been known, too.

And we've got some coming up, you know, plug, plug. Yeah, there's no high kicking involved. There could be if people demanded it. I would be willing to do a little high kicking. So are we talking about some shows? Yeah, let's do that real quick. All right, so we're going out west for our annual sojourn in January, where we go to Seattle and we go to Portland,

and then we end up at SF Sketchfest like we always do. do in mid-January yeah and i've got a end-of-the-world live show on friday at sketchfest and you have a movie crush on saturday at sketchfest right yeah i'm doing a matinee show at one o'clock uh on saturday january 19th with busy phillips is my guest nice and my show is friday the 18th at cafe du nord and i am my own guest fine solo and then i have another one in brooklyn on the 24th uh at the bellhouse too oh i thought you already did that one No, uh-uh. It got postponed to January 24th. Oh, great. Yes, so you haven't missed it. There's still time for you to come.

Fantastic. So that is our little plug. How about that? Yeah, and of course, our big stuff you should know show is at the Castro on, what is that, Thursday night? That is Thursday the 17th. Yeah, so come see us at the Moore in Seattle, Revolution Hall in Portland, at the Castro in San Francisco. Check out our individual little shows. uh our cute little individual shows and there's plenty of information on sysk live dot com that's right so now it's the 70s new york is uh it's suffering

which is crazy when you look at pictures of new york city in the 70s and early 80s even just hard to believe how bad things were there yeah it was pretty rough and actually it's funny like you can thank rudolph juliani for i guess cleaning up the town if you want to call it that okay have you ever heard that what to thank rudolph juliani for cleaning up the town uh-huh uh sure okay good for him so um i saw him in the park one day you did what was he doing talking to a duck no he was he was doing like a photo op but i had friends in from uh from another country even i think And I said, hey, guys, that's the mayor of New York over there. And they were like, oh, that's nice.

And I went, it's kind of a big deal to just walk around and see the mayor of New York. Did they say, oh, that ever, Chuck? I think they're Australian, actually. Yeah. Oh, that was my Australian impression. Oh, that was good then. Thank you. That's a great story, Chuck.

Yeah, it's fine. But for them, they didn't understand fully that the mayor of New York City is, it's quite a big deal to see him just out and about in the city. I have a similar story. I was watching one of the first few seasons of Law and Order on my television one day, and there was the mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani.

Interesting. But I knew it was a big deal. I got another story. Okay. Did you know in the Michael Bay film Pearl Harbor that they comped in Bruce Willis' John McLean character from Diehard in one hospital scene?

How? Just digitally. That's an anachronism. I know. That doesn't make any sense. Did they really do that? Yeah, you can look it up, Pearl Harbor, John McLean, and there's, like, screenshots of John McLean and his white tank top, just briefly for a blip in the background of one of the hospital scenes in Pearl Harbor.

It's so weird. So, you know, there's a nude woman in the window of one of the buildings that the rescuers fly by in the Disney movie from the 60s? Yeah, all these weird. weird movie Easter eggs. Just bored editors, I guess. That's exactly what it did. Bored juvenile editors.

All right, so it's the 1970s. In New York. None of this has happened yet that we're talking about. The rescuers did. The rescuers did, but there was no die-hard. There was no Pearl Harbor movie. Right. Except for Toro, Toro, Torah, but no bad Pearl Harbor movie.

Okay. No Rudy Giuliani. He was alive. Sure. But he was not the mayor of New York City in the 1970s. Not as far as we know. Who was that? That was Ed Koch.

He was the 80s, I think. Oh, was he? Maybe late 70s. All right, we'll get that straightened out. Okay. But New York City is going down the toilet, including, believe it or not, the great Radio City Music Hall, much like our own legendary Fox Theater in Atlanta, was facing shutdown and demolition, potentially. Yeah, there was a rough transition from some of those old.

movie palaces after people stopped well going to movie palaces and moved out to the suburbs a lot of those beautiful places were left out in the cold and some of them didn't well a lot of them didn't make it but some of them almost didn't make it like you said the fox and radio city and apparently it was going to be turned into a parking lot and balushi himself got onto the news desk at saturday live and was railing against the demise of radio city music hall and the rockettes too had said hey hey hey hey this is our home this is an iconic place let us help like go raise awareness and funds to save this place and they did they were successful they got it put on the national historic register of historic places and it has a landmark designation not just the building

there's 1,200 buildings in new york with the landmark designation but only 110 interiors have the landmark designation and radio city music hall is one of them which means that its interior is so amazingly beautiful that is a protected landmark in the United States. Yeah, I've never been in there. I haven't either. I've been to Carnegie Hall, but never Radio City. That's on the list for sure.

But it's interesting because they tried to, their whole deal was, is they wanted exclusive movie bookings. Like they were to be the only theater in town that would be showing a particular movie. So that limits their pool. immediately, and then they really prefer G-rated movies. They had really strict screening criteria.

So that just, it narrowed down their movie pool so small that they would go weeks and weeks at a time where nothing happened there. Yeah, so they would just shut down. Because, again, remember, like the Rockettes are a dance troupe that you would see before you saw a movie. So if they're not showing movies, they're not showing the Rockettes. And at this time in the 70s, the Rockettes said,

okay, our talent is being wasted here. At least let us go take the show on the road while you guys are sitting around waiting for another movie to come along. And they actually, they gained that right because they're union dancers, we should say. We'll get into that a little more later. But they managed to get the right to take the show on the road,

and they really started to make a name for themselves in the 70s in places like Tahoe and Vegas. Sure. Apparently made a huge fan out of Sammy Davis Jr., who would come see the same show like Night After night when they play in Vegas or Tahoe or whatever. He was just fascinated by the Rockettes. Love that. For sure.

Little Sammy. What a great guy. We should do a show on him. Apparently he also, oh yeah, I'm down with that. He also surprised them on stage once by joining them on stage for a dance number, which apparently he knew because he'd seen the show so many times. Wow. Which that's a

pretty Sammy thing to do in Las Vegas. High kickin? Well, his kicks weren't so high. Run out on stage, unbidden? invited. He's the little guy. He was. He was the littlest rockette, I imagine.

He was, too. So they're doing their show on the road here and there. They're making ends meet. Radio City is struggling, even though it was designated as a landmark. The 80s were not super kind to Radio City either. They very famously appeared at the halftime show of the Super Bowl in 88. They're trying to change with the times. They're dancing it in the 90s at different places.

and they're always doing their Christmas deal throughout all this after they started doing that and what was that 57? 32. Oh, they did the Macy's Parade in 32? Oh, no, I'm sorry. I thought you meant the Christmas Spectacular.

Yeah, the Macy's parade was, the Thanksgiving parade was 57. Yeah, so they've got their holiday stuff, their Easter specials, their Christmas specials. They're dancing at inaugurations for George W. Bush. In fact, they came under fire for dancing at, Trump's inauguration.

Well, the dance troupe almost was split asunder over whether they wanted to do that or not. Yeah, it was a big deal. It was a huge deal, actually, and they had revived the Easter extravaganza. They renamed it the New York Spring Spectacular the year before, and they said they took a year off, and I don't think they ever went back to it, because of all the controversy over 2016 in the inauguration. It was just such an unusual experience for the Rockettes. like they're just like America personified

and for there to be a huge national conversation about them performing at an inauguration. It was a big deal for the organization for sure, especially for the dancers who are like career rockets. Yeah, exactly. Should we talk a little bit about just being a racquet? I think we should, man. Because we've done it.

We have. I mean, there was a brief time. Although we've basically entered Dina Lohan territory now. Who's that? Lindsay Lohan's mom, she very famously lied about being a racquet. Oh, really? Yeah, she said that her, she has a background in show business. She was a rockette for a while,

and some journalist went and dug around, and they found out that she was definitely, they had no record whatsoever of her under any name, maiden or married, ever being a rock cat. It's always amazing to me when, Uh, very provable or disprovable public lies are told by people like that or like politicians who say that, you know, like they've fought in a war when they didn't. Like, that's happened. Yeah.

It's just, I don't know why people say things like that. It's like, no, we kind of can go check that really easily. Yeah, even, but even without like, you know, the checkability of it to just, like, you know, lie in an interview like that, to puff yourself up, I guess. It's just, like, I don't understand the psychology of it. Is it just because you don't feel like you're given the interviewer enough of what they need? Or did they lay some sort of trick that led you into it? Or I don't understand it either. Yeah, I wonder if people start to believe these lies.

Like if you make up a story about yourself and you just stick with it for so long, it's weird psychology. Yes, human psychology is indeed quite weird. Didn't you have a web show called Psychology is weird? Nuts. Psychology is nuts. A little short-lived video thing. Yeah, go check that out, everyone. Oh.

We'll take a break. Podcasters, it's time. Got a mic. Then you've got a shot. Every year, we celebrate the most creative, compelling, and game-changing voices in podcasting. Is that you? Submit now at iHeartPodcastawards.com for a chance to be honored on the biggest stage in the industry. Deadline December 7th.

This is your chance. Let's celebrate the power of podcasting and your place in it. Enter now at iHeartPodcastawards.com. Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health. And I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom. And I'm Jordan, the show's producer. And like a lot of guys, I haven't been to the doctor in many years.

I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't. Because guys usually don't go to the doctor unless a piece of their face is hanging off or they've broken a bone. Depends which bone. Well, that's true. Every week, we're breaking down the unique world of men's health, from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility and things that happen in the bedroom. You mean sleep? Yeah, something like that, Jordan. We'll talk science without the jargon and get you real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about.

It's going to be fun, whether you're 27, 97, or somewhere in between. Men's health is about more than six packs and supplements. It's about energy, confidence, and connection. We don't just want you to live longer. We want you to live better. So check out the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. What up, y'all? It's your boy, Kevin on stage.

I want to tell you about my new podcast called Not My Best Moment, where I talk to artists, athletes, entertainers, creators, friends, people I admire who had massive success about their massive failures. What did they mess up on? What is their heartbreak? And what did they learn from it? I got judged horribly. The judges were like, you're trash.

I don't know how you got on the show. Boo, somebody had tomatoes. No, I'm kidding. But if they had tomatoes, they would have thrown the tomatoes. Let's be honest. We've all had those moments we'd ravaged. forget. We bumped our head. We made a mistake. The deal felt through. We're embarrassed. We failed. But this podcast is about that and how we made it through. So when they sat me down,

they were kind of like, we got into the small talk and they were just like, so what do you got? What? What ideas? And I was like, oh, no. What? Check out Not My Best Moment with me, Kevin on stage on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. I am going to tell you're back. Yes, so we were going to tell everyone about our experience as Rockettes. Because we're Dina Lohan. So here's the thing. If you're a Rockett, and you've been doing this for 10 years.

years you're a pretty long-lived rockette although i think i saw um one woman who is a rocket and if i'm talking weird all of a sudden it's because i am stalling everybody looking for her name and i'm not finding it but i think it's lindsay how i'm almost positive her name's lindsay how i believe she has been a rock cat for 14 years that's a long time that's a very long time to be a rocket because as you will soon learn being a rocket is extremely difficult and very demanding and inside of show business and out they're widely seen as probably some of the best professional dancers in the business and certainly some of the most disciplined professional dancers in the business as well um but it's really hard to do for a really long time and one of the main reasons why is because their work schedule is extremely grueling but but with lindsay

how she would make the same amount of money that a first year rocket would make because they're all paid the same they work the same hours they do the same work some of them are kind of promoted as like the faces of the rockets the company I think Madison Square Garden company that owns Radio City Music Hall

and the Rockettes are really protective of their image and like they aren't free to just kind of talk to the media or whatever there's some that are kind of like you and you and you, you're the Rockettes, you're the face of the Rockets. But other than that, everyone does the same amount of work, same amount of hours, same amount of pay. And one of the reasons they do that is because the point of the Rockets is not to have standouts. It's not like other dance troops or other Broadway troops or anything like that.

There's not meant to be stars. The Rockets are the star, and they're meant to be one single unit that moves and works and lives together. Yeah, and they're unionized. So they make most of their money over the holiday season. So they walk out after a couple of months with about $40,000 in their pocket, which isn't bad, you know, for a couple of months work. But it is, like you said, super grueling. If you want to become a rocket, you're not required to, but there is something called the Rockette Summer Intensive Dance Program, where you can go, you can enroll, you can spend six hours a day,

learning everything over the course of about a week. All the choreography, how to get in that shape, stay in that shape, how to prevent injuries, and sort of the business of it all. And like I said, you don't have to do that, but they do place a lot of Rockets if you attend that intensive dance program. Well, some I saw out of 1,000 that have taken at 60 have gone on to actually become Rockets. Yeah. Because it's very tough to become a Rockets.

kit too. Yeah, and I mean, I get the feeling that has less to do with the program than just how hard it is to make that cut. Right, right, exactly. So, not only do you have to be fit enough to kick those famous kicks

up to 1,200 times a day through all these shows, but there's one clothing change. You've got to do all these costume changes, but there's one in particular in between the parade of the wooden soldiers in New York at Christmas

that you have to be completely changed out in 78 seconds 78 seconds and these costumes are not like super easy to take off the wooden soldier one in particular are pretty complex so 78 seconds

probably goes by extremely fast yeah and there's 36 Rockettes total performing on stage but there are 80 certified Rockettes total overall, you have a morning cast and afternoon cast, and then you have for each of those shows, you have four swings or extras per. So like if someone's like, I just twisted my ankle, I can't do this, they have four women waiting in the wings for each of those morning and afternoon

shows. Yeah. So the thing is, though, is they're working six days a week, or the Rockettes are performing six days a week. If you have two casts, rather than... work both cast six days a week, they'll alternate to give one another a day off. And they'll do that on days sometimes where there's four performances in a day, which means that if you are a rocket, there are days, and I've seen also sometimes they're back-to-back days, where you're doing four performances in a single day, four 90-minute performances. And that's when those 1,200 kicks that you mentioned Chuck comes in. because some of those shows have 300 high kicks,

and we're talking eye-level kicks. And if you do four of them in a day, you've just kicked at eye-level 1,200 times in a day. And from some of the articles I've read, that is about as much as your body can possibly take. Yeah, I mean, they all, in the interviews I saw, there was that great New York Times article where they really sort of dive into a day in the life of a rocket

during the holiday season, and they all kind of are like, there's no way to prepare your body for this. Like, we are in the best shape that a dancer can be in, and it just destroys us to the point where, like, one of them said that just taking their stockings off at the night is laborious. Right. And, you know, with their commute, depending on where they come from, some of them are awake and either commuting or rehearsing or performing 20 hours in a day. Mm-hmm. Just grueling, grueling stuff.

But across the board, they also all say that it's the only job that they want. It is a great sorority and sisterhood and an honor to be one of these, over the years, 3,000 women who have made that cut. Right. You know, never were like, well, it's really not worth it in the end. Yeah, no, I mean, at least the ones who are allowed to speak to the media certainly have a lot of positive things to say about being a racquet and, like, how familial it is and how you're just hanging out with your best friends.

And it is a great gig for a dancer, especially as one of these articles pointed out, if you're a dancer who doesn't sing. Yeah, that's a rare thing to get that kind of a gig. I think it's one of the few for jazz and tap dancers where singing's not involved. But also, not just like a good gig, a good paying gig, too. Like 40 grand for a couple of months of performances,

a lot of the Rockettes, they don't live in New York. They'll come live in New York during the season when they need to rehearse and then do the Christmas spectacular and then they go home. So they might live in New York

from September to the end of December and then they go back home and wherever home is, 40 grand probably goes a lot further than it does in New York unless they live in San Francisco, in which case it's probably it goes even faster.

But it's a really good paying gig. They also have benefits because their union and their contract workers, they have year-round benefits and 40 grand. So they can go work as Pilates instructors, as nutritionists, as

all the other stuff that they do during the year normally, and then they come back and they're a racquet. But something I thought was pretty cool was even if you're, say, a 10th year racquet, you get invited back. Like once you're a racquet, you're in as a racquet, but you still

have to audition in April like everybody else. Yeah. So you audition. in April and if you make the cut you start to go get in shape and then rehearsals I think start in September and rehearsals are six hours, six days a week for basically the six weeks leading up to

the performances which run from mid-November till I saw December 31st I also saw tickets available for a January 1st show so I don't know if they extended it or not Yeah and it's funny like 40 grand sounds like a lot of money over a couple of months and it is but when you break it down per show, it breaks down to about 135 bucks a show. Yeah.

Which all of a sudden, it doesn't seem like great money. No, but that's what you make as a standard cast member for a Broadway union dancer. Yeah. Or actor, a variety performer, I think, is the union they're part of. So, no,

it doesn't seem like much, but that's another reason why the Rockette gig is so good. You get overtime on those days when you do a third and a fourth show. You're getting overtime pay. And there's multiple shows on multiple days. So you can, I mean, another actor at a different gig working the same days over the same period would not make that amount of money, that 40 grand, because they wouldn't have any overtime, they wouldn't have that many shows. Yeah, and I don't think anyone, like, dreams of going to Broadway to become rich and wealthy.

Like, part of the Allure Broadway is you're with the best of the best. and you can say, I danced or I sang or I acted on Broadway. With Brian Cranston. I saw him on Broadway. Yeah? I saw Michael McKeon on Broadway. Oh, yeah? An accomplice.

The audience was the accomplice. That was the big twist. Oh, well, you just ruined that one. Was it good? It was great. It was one of the greatest stage performances I've ever seen. I saw Lenny live on stage. Derek St. Hubbins.

Yeah, this is before I knew him as anything but Lenny. I was like eight. Oh, so this was a while ago. Cranston is in something new on Broadway now, I think, too. He's a network. Right. Oh, man, I want to see that. Sure.

I bet that's good. I saw that it was described as, get this, Chuck, get ready for this. Oh, boy. Electrifying. Really? A Broadway show described as electrifying? His performance was electrifying. I don't think I've ever heard that word used.

for the theater. So another thing, though, about the Rockets, even though they do make most of their money over those couple of months, and then they have the rest of the year to, and in a lot of cases be like a dance instructor or something like that, or a fitness instructor, they increasingly are working more and more months out of the year,

whether it's as ambassadors for the Rockets or doing like video things for YouTube, They are increasingly called on to do other things. Yeah, so what is the woman who came along as the lead choreographer and director and really kind of punched it up even further? Her name is Linda Haberman, and she took over, I think, in like the mid-2000s, maybe 2008, and she kind of brought like this whole new, not a new, it's not a whole new thing. She just kind of, she made it a little more pro-feminist, a little bit.

more like you go-girl kind of vibe to the Rockettes than they had before. They were seen, you know, rehearsing in the rehearsal gear rather than like full costume. And it was just kind of like the intent I get was to make them more people. Yes. Yes. Because one of the great criticisms of the Rockettes is that they're nothing but like teeth and legs. Just a bunch of women out there kicking, like forming one large Uber woman. who can kick her legs amazingly high

and has like the whitest gleamingest teeth ever you've ever seen and that it was really kind of just objectification of women like by definition and Linda Hamerman like really kind of

took that and tried to unravel it quite a bit and she also took the show so we should talk a little bit about the show it's a depending on who you are it's either like just beloved traditional Americana, kitsy,

offensively sexists, who knows, but I think the first two are kind of the predominant views of it. It's kitsy and sweet, or it's, you know, endearing Americana. And Linda Haberman

kind of took that and tried to punch it up into the 21st century a little more. And there's like way more visual effects than there were before. There's like a 3D component, I think, to this year's show or recent year's show.

like the whole theme is like a girl wants a video game and her mom is kind of showing her you know why that's not so great because it's a violent video game there's a lot of kind of updating that rockets have undergone in the last few years and that was largely from what I understand Linda Haberman's doing

I think she was the one that digitally inserted John McLean from Diehard she was he swoops in in the New York Folly section now I'm glad they updated things because this was a prime case of like a beloved American tradition that could use some refreshing and you can highlight them as humans and individuals and still you can have both you know and you can still have that desired effect of uniformity and precision that they're known for you know right exactly but

they don't have to be just like faceless and nameless you know now and i read a few like feminist critiques of the rockettes and they seem to have been Kind of outdated. Like, I really feel like Linda Haberman did a good job. Yeah, she kind of took those critiques and changed them in a lot of ways. That's great. One of the other criticisms is that it wasn't until 1985 that the Rockettes had their first woman of color as a member of their cast, of their troop. Oh, yeah?

The first woman of color was a Japanese woman named Setsuko Marahashi. And in 1985, she joined. In 1988, the first African-American woman joined. Her name was Jennifer Jones. And the reasoning, apparently it was Markert, who was like, no. From all I saw, it had nothing to do with racism. It was the idea that it was going to disrupt the visual unity of the dance line. If there were, you know, differing skin colors in this dance line.

And apparently he was so nutso about it. Like, you would get in trouble if you had a sun tan. Like, that's how he wanted everything to be homogenous and in unison. Well, regardless, in the 21st century, in the late 20th century, that sentiment didn't hold up. And I guess shortly after he died is when they started adding women of color more to the Rockettes troop. Yeah, and then they saw people of color in that same dance line. And they went, oh, it's still awesome and synchronized. and looks great.

Exactly. And from his grave, he went, no. He started rolling around in it. Oh, goodness. So you haven't seen a Rockett's Christmas spectacular, huh? You mean live in person? Yeah. I have not.

I have not either. Are we going to go now? I think we should. I want to know if any Rockettes listened to this show. Yeah. That would make me super, super happy. It would for me as well. And the only other small tidbet I have is they have microphones in their heels of their shoes.

I saw that, too. They used to play recordings of their tapping, right? Oh, I don't know. That does not surprise me. Yeah, and then they figured out how to do the actual, like broadcast the actual tapping. So we're going to go one day, Chuck, we're going to go see the Christmas Spectacular. We're going to go see the live nativity with the real camel and donkeys and the wooden toy soldier march where they fall down like a domino and slow motion. It's pretty amazing stuff.

And if you want to know more about the Rockets, then go to Radio City Music Hall and find them there. How about that? That sounds great. Well, since I said that, then it's time for listener mail. I'm calling this. I was a search and rescue victim volunteer. So this guy, his dad, I'm going to summarize the beginning of it because it's kind of long. But his dad lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and his...

a member of the local SAR team. And so they were like, we need someone to play the victim here. And he was like, I'll do it. This guy's son. So here's what happened. He set off into the heavily wooded area and did, he said, I did everything I could to think of to try and fool the dog and the handler. I ran in circles, went back over my own trail.

I threw off my hat. I even found some garbage and rolled around in it to mask my scent. Wow. Once I had done everything I could think of to try and fool the dog and handler that would be tracking me. I found a nice comfy spot up in a bush on a hill where I could just watch the dog and the handler try and track me.

I thought I'd done a pretty good job, but once I called the handler and let him know I was in position, it was all over very quickly. I sat back and everyone was shocked to watch the dog basically retrace my trail step by step every move I made, all those circles, finding my hat even that I'd thrown off. Even getting into that pile of garbage that I'd rolled around in,

I love that this dog is just basically making a fool of poor Ryan up there in the mountains. So he said, needless to say, the dog found me in short order, gave him lots of praise for the great job he had done. Thankfully, I was never in any real danger, so my experience was a lot more enjoyable, obviously, than when people are in real need of a search-and-rescue dog. Thanks for the great episodes, guys. keep me company on overnight shifts

and make it all go by quicker. So if you read this on the show, can I get a shout out to my girlfriend, Taryn? She would be thrilled to hear her name get called out on the show. I think that just happened. Yep. So that is from Ryan. I like the gusto that Ryan put into trying to fool this dog.

Rolling at garbage. And I equally love that this dog was like, whatever. So thank you, Ryan. Thank you, Taryn, for listening. And thank you to the Sardaw. Sure. It's gruffy. If you want to get in touch of this, you can go to our website, Stuff You Should Know.com. You can find all of our social links there.

And you can send an email to Chuck, Jerry, and me at Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Podcasters, it's time to get the recognition you deserve. The IHeart Podcast Awards are coming back in 2026. Got a mic? Then you've got a shot. Every year we celebrate the most creative, compelling, and game-changing voices in podcasting.

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I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA, and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom. And I'm Jordan, the show's producer. And like most guys, I haven't been to the doctor in way too long. I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't. Every week, we're breaking down the world of men's health from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility. We'll talk science without the jargon

and get your real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about. So check out the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. On an all-new episode of IHeartRadios Las Culturistas, Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony Award winner, Sarah Paulson, spills on red carpet hacks. We saw these pictures and you're like, what is the story with this? She gets real about the inspiration behind her roles. Oh, no, there is no end to how people will behave. And she puts host Matt Rogers and Bowen-Yag on notice. I don't think so, honey.

I feel very, very triggered by this. Open your free IHeart radio app. Search Las Culturista and listen to the full podcast now. This is an IHeart podcast.