Earth, Wind, and Water with Dr. Skateboard, The Armless Archer, and Jud Ready

Shoot an arrow without arms? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly & Chuck Nice explore Olympic events– swimming, archery, and skateboarding– with materials scientist Jud Ready, “Armless Archer” Matt Stutzman, and Bill “Dr. Skateboard” Robertson.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today, we're going to be discussing three kinds of Olympic activities. First, fast pools. Second, can you hit a target? An archery target? If you have no arms? We'll check that out at mid-segment. And we're going to end with the one and only Dr. Skateboard, a new feature of the Olympics this year.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The 2020 Olympics, of course, being contested in 2021. I got with me the one and only Gary O'Reilly. Gary? Hi, Neil. Good to be here, dude. Dude. I was telling people I stumbled. You've got a Wiki page of you and the time you were a pro footballer over in the UK. I'm very proud of that. So congratulations on that. And you're also a sports commentator there before you joined StarTalk. And I'd like to think you're still a sports commentator. I still am, thank you, yes. Sharing that expertise with us. I could not find a Wiki page on Chuck Nice. We've got to work on that. Chuck?

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  That's because I don't have legs as nice as Gary.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what that is?

• 1:25Chuck Nice?

  Man, when you go to Gary's Wiki page, he's in some short shorts. And I'm like, who wears short shorts?

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary would.

• 1:33Chuck Nice?

  That's me. Gary wears short shorts. And now my man has got some gams on him, baby. He's got some great legs.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, you're a comedian and a longtime StarTalk co-host and an actor of late. But delighted to see you in all these things. And I just want you to know that we knew you when, okay? As you ascend.

• 1:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, I'm not going anywhere.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not going anywhere, alright.

• 2:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you can't, you can't get rid of me that easy. Like Chuck got a couple TV shows and he's gone.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 2:08Chuck Nice?

  I'm like this, no I'm not, I'm right, I'm right here.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I swear I saw you in a Tide commercial with your, with your daughter. So you're, you're everywhere now. That's good, very good. Keep that going. Keep it going. So we're going to talk about the Olympics, which dates back to, of course, ancient Greece, when I think life was simpler, but I bet back then they didn't think so. And no one ever said, gee, life is simple today. No one's ever said that, ever. You have to look back on it and say, it was simple then and they didn't even know it. But generally.

• 2:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, except we, we look back on their life and we go, God, we have it so good.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the, the modern Olympics, which is what it's called, dates back to 1896. And they tried to sort of jumpstart the traditions of ancient Greece. Uh, some sports were, uh, all the ones then were included, I think, if not all of them. And, but some were added. And of course, the ones most people cared about in the day were track and field. And today, many, many more events are part of this, this, uh, uh, this contest, uh, this every four year contest. And for this first segment, we're going to talk about swimming pools. Uh, swimming, that's one of the, the events as a, as a category where records seem to be dropping all the time, every Olympics. And it's like, what did it, it's, it's some,

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  did something change with the water? Is there some, is there some thing about the bathing suit? Is the, is, is it the ball head that you shave? What's going on there? And so what we need is someone who's thought about this, uh, an engineer. This is StarTalk, so we're going to bring some, we're going to science the shit out of this, as, as Matt Damon said, from the surface of Mars, or at least his character did. And we've got an old friend of the show, Judd Reedy. Judd, welcome back to StarTalk. Hey Neil, hey guys. Thank you for having me back. You're based at Georgia Tech and Georgia, uh, uh, I think even your campus, uh, co-hosted the 1996 Olympics. Home of the Olympics, 1996, indeed.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, with the city of Atlanta. I'd love it. And, uh, you're Deputy Director of Innovation Initiatives? For the Georgia Tech Institute for Materials. This materials is one of the hidden things.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not purposefully hidden, but just no one thinks about it. It doesn't make headlines, but new stuff shows up on the shelf. With new, new properties. And I think of you every time that happened. I just want you to know.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 4:30Chuck Nice?

  I was thinking of you yesterday when we were, when, cause you know, we always have the dossier on everybody. And I was like, I wonder as the chief like research engineer. Do, do you ever come up with something to go, oh no, this too good. I gotta keep this.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  We do that a little bit with patents. We do keep it to ourselves just a little bit, but not forever.

• 4:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Okay. Cause yeah, as your principal research engineer at the, at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, GTRI. Not quite an acronym, but we'll, we'll take it because good stuff happens there. So let me ask you something. Swimming pools.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, if, if you see somebody with like eight gold medals around the neck, they probably got it for swimming. And in recent years, we think of Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps, of course. And so.

• 5:20Chuck Nice?

  Michael Phelps doesn't count. He has gills.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  Michael Phelps is related to that, that whatever that thing was in the shape of water. That, that fish, that fish guy.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're talking about the movie, the movie.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  That movie, yeah. If you ever look at Michael Phelps, he almost kind of looks like that little sea monster.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think he's got big flappy feet too. Like they might as well just be webbed, you know? So, so let me ask, what's, what's going on? Are we just getting better? Or is something happening on the back end of that where the pools are getting faster? And if they're getting faster, how does it get faster? It's just water. I know the properties of water from chemistry and physics. What are you, what's going on? And I know you've been thinking about this.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's all of it. It's the materials as well as just the technology for the pool. The main problem with, uh, with water is the resistance created by the other swimmers. If we just. Ran one swimmer at a time, a lot of this technology we introduced wouldn't be necessary. But when you put eight lanes of swimmers, big, huge, you know, six foot strapping men and women in there, they displace a lot of water and create waves. And those waves create friction, create resistance to.

• 6:27Chuck Nice?

  Wait, excuse me, not if you're in the lead.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Yes, but only if you do the single, uh, single link. As soon as you make a turn.

• 6:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Oh, you got everybody else's wake who just, who's still, yeah, who's behind you. Right. Sometimes that's a good thing, though, having that wake behind there. One of Phelps' medals was achieved by one of his teammates in the relay, riding the wake of the, uh, who was then the world record holder from France, riding his wake and then right at the last minute surfing over top of the wake and several powerful strokes and winning it. You can see it right on the footage. It's pretty impressive. Wow. So wait, wait, so you're saying some of the. It was drafting? Yeah, basically. He was in the fourth leg. Aquatic drafting. Yep, exactly right. Just like geese go do the same thing when they're going through the air. He was doing the same thing. You can see him move over towards the lane line. Yeah, but the geese didn't take your course at Georgia Tech, so.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  No, they just know it innately like a lot of Georgia Tech students do. Wow. Giving that shout out.

• 7:29Chuck Nice?

  They don't fly over campus.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  They don't get a medal.

• 7:32Gary O'Reilly?

  So if, if the wake, if the waves, if all of this turbulence in the pool is your major problem, and we've built pools out of concrete for ever and ever and ever, it seems, how has it been overcome?

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's three different ways that we do it here at Georgia Tech, and we've got the fastest pool in the United States. The first is that we've got tremendous pumping power to recirculate the water. You want to recirculate an elliptic sized pool every, at least every four hours to keep the algae growth and everything down. So that's 60 gallons at least per second. Wait, don't tell me the algae prevents you from swimming faster. I don't believe that. It does, because you want to pump it and keep the water clear. And so by pumping that water so fast, you've got gutters to extract it and then you have to return it to the pool. And so those.

• 8:19Chuck Nice?

  So are you saying that it creates a jet stream?

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you swim at any pool, there's current that circulates the water for filtration. And if we did that in this pool with 60 gallons per second, we would create a very noticeable current that the inside and outside lanes would experience. And so instead, we send it through the bottom and through these things called rosettes, which is like a mushroom that. Allows the water to come up and sweep everything to the side. So that cuts down on those currents. The other is is the gutter system that the waves as the wave reaches the wall, it falls off into the gutter rather than hitting the wall and bouncing back. And then the third third thing is

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because waves just love to reflect off of surfaces.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  They do.

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Waves and waves and surfaces go way back.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  And the depth of the pool is important as well for that wave. The Olympic pool here as well as Tokyo, they're three meters deep. So that's like 10 feet, nine feet. And

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A quick question. Is that the depth that the water polo folks work in?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, all the all the Olympic pools are always, it's both as well as the rhythmic swimming. The diving pool is actually five meters deep because you don't want to hit the bottom for that, of course. So

• 9:26Gary O'Reilly?

  If you've got those side drains, Judd, then that means the pool has to be completely full.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Overfill, in fact. When these, you know, when these eight strapping young men and women jump into this pool, they displace that equal volume of water, just like if you dropped an ice cube in a glass of water. So that

• 9:42Chuck Nice?

  Who do you think you are, Archimedes here?

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. You gotta get rid of the water. And so

• 9:51Gary O'Reilly?

  What stops it flooding? So you have to keep sucking that away every time that they're doing it. So you really have to have a complete system.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  It's a it's a full, full circle, fully enclosed system that's that's overfilled slightly because you don't want air to get entrained into the suction system because that'll create cavitation on your on your impellers or your pump and can cause those to break down prematurely as well.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is you your system dampens the waves as they hit the wall. Okay.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  But it can't do anything about the waves until they get there. So if you're in lane

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  one and lane eight, or whatever the edge lanes are, you're going to feel everybody else's wave before it gets deadened to your left.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Sorry, Neil. No, they've got those paddle wheel lane dividers. And in fact, here at our pool, we actually use two side by side so that the paddle wheels absorb the wave from the lanes immediately adjacent to you. And

• 10:44Chuck Nice?

  Oh, so those serve a purpose. I thought it was just to show those guys where to go.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  They're not. If you look at them, they're not. They're not stationary. They spin as the wave hits them and that absorbs that energy and prevents it from going over there. We found the reason why we set so many records at this very pool is that we use two lane lines along there to dampen it even further. Alright, so why doesn't every pool have this? Yeah. Secret stuff. I guess we filed a patent on it or something, or now everybody knows. Yeah, but then why don't they discount the gold medals, the world records at your pool? Uh, we didn't start doing that actually until a couple of years ago. In fact, um, after this wake surfing incident that occurred, uh, and people became kind of aware of this, um, that was in the early 2000s,

• 11:29Speaker 02

  uh, when Phelps was winning those. And so, um, like we didn't have, if you look at the footage from 1996 Olympics, not only is there a single lane line, but, uh, the starting blocks have changed as well. Uh, the starting blocks there are, are flat, uh, whereas now they're inclined.

• 11:44Chuck Nice?

  Why?

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Uh, why didn't anyone figure out that you might want to incline the starting blocks long ago? That's crazy, right?

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  So the... Yeah, because you're pushing off of something. I mean, in track, like, nobody starts flat.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Right, right. So why, why did this take so long to figure out? Well, the first starting block was 1936, the Berlin Olympics was literally just a wooden box that was bolted to the, to the pool deck. And that's what they stuck with for, it, it got slightly better when they started using medals. Um, but it, up until the 96 Olympics, it was still just essentially a box, but a metal flat surface, uh, that had an anti-slip surface on top of it. And... So you needed to dig with your toes to grab onto the edge? And so I went back and looked at the footage and all the swimmers, except for a couple, are always two-footed on the front, curling their toes over, where there's only a few, uh, sprinter styles. But, and after that Olympics, they inclined, first they inclined the surface to, to add it,

• 12:38Speaker 02

  and then they added an additional incline, so it was two inclines, so something to push off with. And so, yeah, you're starting with that extra oomph, just to, like a sprinter. When you say two inclines, you mean for the two different feet? Yeah. No, well, yeah. So, so one foot's on, on that and one foot's pushing on the back, back pedal, so you're... Like a sprinter in a track? Exactly right. Okay, very cool.

• 13:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright, Jared, does your pool have 10 lanes or 8 lanes?

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, all Olympic pools have 10 lanes, but you, lane 0 and lane 9 are not occupied.

• 13:09Gary O'Reilly?

  But that would reduce the impact on the swimmers on the outside lanes. Am I correct in thinking like that then?

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Uh, yes, they do not have that, that swimmer. So you would want, want those, though there's... downsides in that depending if you're a right-handed breather or a left-handed breather, sometimes you're not able to see your competition perhaps on the critical final leg. So that would be the main, main thing probably.

• 13:31Chuck Nice?

  What is the best lane because the, and why do they always give the fastest to the best guy?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  I'm superstitious always with horses and everything. I pick lane four. So I would pick lane four, but you know, I, I think a lot of it depends on just your training and your strategy. And like, even though we're introducing these things and good swimsuits, there's a lot of biomechanics that go into it. So we can provide all these things, but when it comes right down to it, it's the human in the loop that's, that really makes the difference.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, but then you wouldn't have a job. So let's stick with the technology. We gotta actually bring this to a, to a close, but it's been a delight to have you back on. And sorry, it's only one segment because there's a lot we've been covering for our Olympic, the attention we've been giving to the Olympics. But like I said, you're in one of my favorite fields, material science, and the more people know about what you do, the, I think the better offer will all be. So.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  We're gonna keep on keeping you happy Chuck and Neil.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So thanks again for being on StarTalk and when we come back, we're gonna talk to an ace archer who happens to not have arms when StarTalk returns.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about the Olympics, a series of these programs where we're just trying to figure out what's going on, how's it work and all the ways that science might be informing it. So Gary, who do you have for this segment?

• 15:25Gary O'Reilly?

  We have the most wonderfully interesting athlete, Paralympian Matt Stutzman, won silver in the London Olympics in 2012, Guinness World Record holder.

• 15:39Gary O'Reilly?

  For the most accurate arrow shot at a target over distance by any individual. Three hundred and ten yards. That's three football fields, all in a line, and then some.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then some.

• 15:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, team gold in the Parapan Olympic Games and an individual silver in the Paralympic Games.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Matt, welcome to StarTalk, dude.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if I'm going on a hunting trip, I'm taking you.

• 16:08Speaker 04

  I'm down. I'm down.

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  Do you ever hunt? Do you go bear hunting with a bow?

• 16:13Speaker 04

  You know what? I haven't. I haven't bear hunted yet because I feel like if I don't do good, he will chase me down and try to eat my arms off or something like that. I can't afford to lose any more appendages, but...

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no more limbs for you. Let me ask, could you just explain how, forgive my naivete here, but how do the Paralympics work? I presume each sport has its own rules about what needs to be your circumstances in order to participate. So in the case of the Paralympics archery, how, what are the rules about that?

• 16:51Speaker 04

  So the division that I'm in is basically they're looking at the least amount of disability possible. So pretty much everybody in my group of, let's say, a hundred, all of them have, most of their disabilities are from the waist down, whether they're paralyzed and have to be in a wheelchair, or they lost a leg and they have to stand on a prosthetic. There's different categories, but that's the most competitive category. And that's where I want to be because I just want to be the best.

• 17:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, I mean, really, you're just showing off.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what he's doing. That's what he's doing there.

• 17:26Chuck Nice?

  Let's be honest. I mean, here's a guy who's just like, yeah, I have a prosthetic leg and, you know, I can hit a target from a hundred yards. And you're like, uh, bro, I don't have arms.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't have arms and I hit a target.

• 17:38Chuck Nice?

  And I can do that from, and I can do it from three times the distance. So bite that. How about?

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he wins every argument there ever was.

• 17:46Chuck Nice?

  There's no argument to have, man.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  Hands down, you know?

• 17:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, Matt, let's roll back a little bit here. This Guinness Book of Records, which you own outright. Someone was saying to me that when you attempted this, because of the crosswinds, you had to aim at an air conditioning unit on a building in a completely different place to hit the target. What is going on?

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that the air, so that the, so that the air would move it onto the target and you have to know that in advance. Is that what happened there?

• 18:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the rules say you have to use a 60-pound bow and you only get three attempts, you know, ever to make it. You have to call your shooter.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, just wait. For the non-archers, when you say 60 pounds, that's the force necessary to pull the string.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  To draw back the bow, yes.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Not that the bow weighs 60 pounds, just to be clear.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  Correct. That is the kinetic energy that pushes the arrow forward is 60 pounds.

• 18:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, if it weighed 60 pounds, you'd be Hercules.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  I would definitely need bigger arm muscles for that one. But, so, yeah, so to figure out how to shoot that far away, when you do the math, you have to aim at a certain angle, you know, like whether it's like 32 degrees or whatever that is, and you have to calculate the arrow's speed and you, and so for me, it just so happened that where I needed to aim to calculate all this to actually hit the bullseye, I aimed at an air conditioning unit across the street at like a high-rise building. It, it, it happened to be like right in the perfect place, so I was aiming at that. In all my calculations, that's where it ended up being.

• 19:25Chuck Nice?

  So, so you're not only an expert bowman, you're a sniper too.

• 19:32Gary O'Reilly?

  I'd gone with intuitive scientist that was calculating mentally.

• 19:38Chuck Nice?

  No, but that's the, that is the, that's the hallmark of a great sniper, is that you're able to adjust for crosswinds and, and distance, man.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we need a poster, we, we need a poster with Matt, with the, with the target hit, and, and the caption just says, "Do the math."

• 19:56Gary O'Reilly?

  See Chuck, I just thought you'd ask the simple question, "How many times did you hit the air conditioning unit?"

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a Chuck, Chuck, you should have, that was you Chuck, that was, you dropped that one, Chuck.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  I did, I did.

• 20:10Gary O'Reilly?

  So, Matt, how many times did you hit the air conditioning?

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He killed three people in that apartment building.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  So, real quick, they never actually found out it was me because I don't leave fingerprints to prove it was me.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  I told you he was a sniper!

• 20:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so Matt, let me ask another naive question and forgive me if this sounds sort of ableist, right? So, um, do you have an advantage over those who would have lost their arms later in life? You having been born with no arms, so you only ever have known life with no arms?

• 20:52Speaker 04

  Absolutely, there's an advantage. Uh, it's, it's funny because when I first got into archery, they're like, "There's no way you can shoot a bow, you have no arms. It's impossible, you have to use your arms to shoot a bow." Well, then I, I started shooting a bow and then they're like, "Wow, that's like..."

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you, and you, wait, wait, and you aimed at them?

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's how I can't shoot.

• 21:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that would be a great argument. There's no way you can shoot a bow. Oh! Oh damn! Damn, I guess I was wrong.

• 21:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Last words on his tombstone, "I guess I was wrong."

• 21:28Speaker 04

  It's funny because when I first started shooting, there was a, uh, there was a, uh, like a TV show like that does spoof, um, like, uh, news? And they said, "Armless man wins silver but shot several people along the way."

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  It was funny, but, um, yeah, so when I started...

• 21:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But your brain has never known arms, so you're not fighting a pre-expectation of what you can do?

• 21:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, if they tested my brain and they said that the average person's brain, uh, the area of their brain that controls their feet motor skills is the size of a pea and mine's like the size of like a softball.

• 22:06Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Whoa.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  I was able to train my brain to do all this extra stuff with my feet. You know, it probably just said, we don't need hands. Let's just throw that chunk of the brain out and we'll use that to store foot stuff, I guess.

• 22:18Gary O'Reilly?

  So.

• 22:18Chuck Nice?

  No, that.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so for those only hearing this, uh, we, I can describe that you're, it looks like you're sitting in some kind of a garage workshop. And there's some badass looking vehicle over your left shoulder. But what, what's going on in that?

• 22:33Gary O'Reilly?

  What is it?

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a, is that a safe house? Is that a bunker where like, where are you? Do you know something?

• 22:37Speaker 04

  It's where I keep, it's where I keep my arms. Um, that way the people in the house will think I can't do anything, but.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, there you go.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  So when I'm not shooting my bow, I love cars and I love working on cars. I do almost all the work myself. And what's behind me right here is, uh, my race car that I just got done building and fixing up.

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me, what, tell me about some of your science background. Uh, you, you, you sound, you, you sound sufficiently physics fluent. So that tells me you must've had some physics in your portfolio.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  Well, to be honest, not, not a lot. A lot of it was just kind of like self-taught growing up. Uh, I lived on a farm.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that works too.

• 23:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That works too.

• 23:14Speaker 04

  I lived on a farm and I had to a lot of times. Think of how I was gonna do it. Like for example, I remember I was like eight years old and my dad said I needed to carry this five gallon bucket of feed out to the trough. And I had to figure out. How I was gonna take a board and put it across from one feed bucket and then stand up underneath it and balance. And I had to figure out like, I was out there with a measuring stick, trying to find the middle of the stick. So when I lifted up on it, it wouldn't fall, you know? So there was things like that throughout my whole life that I had to rely on like physics and math to just kind of overcome things, really.

• 23:47Gary O'Reilly?

  So Matt, you're a father of three boys, right? So how do you, how do you do the super dad hero at home while you prepare to go to a Paralympics in Tokyo and race a car?

• 23:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. You know, what's amazing about my boys is just like. They don't know any different. This is who they know. This is their dad. They go along with my craziness, whether I'm shooting my bow, working on cars. Uh, they just support me. In fact, they are one of the biggest motivations in my life and why I push myself to where I'm at because without them pushing me, I mean, that's honestly how I fell into archery in the first place because I, nobody would hire me and I, and I couldn't figure out how to get a job because people would say you have no arms and so they wouldn't hire me. So I found archery to put food on the table for them. So if it wasn't for them, I probably wouldn't have done this. I would have been trying to figure out something else. So.

• 24:42Chuck Nice?

  Wow, man, that's.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I'm reminded of an episode, um, thanks for mentioning the family there, Gary, because that reminded me, and I don't know if it was Twilight Zone or One Step Beyond, one of these sort of half hour, short story format TV series from the 1960s where there's this kid, middle school kid or younger in school and in their art class, they're modeling clay and they had to make a clay model of their hero. And so one person did Superman and then Thor and one person just, I'm doing my father. Okay. And he's doing this clay thing and he, and he only gave it one arm and the teacher says, no, put the other arm in. No, this idea. And then later on, the teacher meets the father

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and the father's just got one arm. And it was like, oh my gosh.

• 25:30Chuck Nice?

  That father went to go on and star in The Fugitive.

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but the point is, like you said, that if, if, if that just is life and you don't know any different, you're not in a position to judge it or it just is, and then you live life.

• 25:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And celebrate life for being alive.

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you this, when it comes.

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you have, I just, I gotta throw this out there. And I've, I've tweeted this too. So I've been thinking about this a long time and I thought, I wonder if octopuses pity humans for how few limbs we have because they've got hate. So, I mean.

• 26:06Chuck Nice?

  So when you shoot, what, what are the mechanics behind you shooting? Yeah.

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Take us through what that is.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  So how about, um, as I'm explaining it, I can also show you.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Sweet. See how good?

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very sweet. Okay.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm. And do it. And, and, uh, because many people will only hear this. If you can be a little descriptive, more descriptive than you otherwise would be.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  Okay. So. This right here is a release aid that I had made. This is the only modification that I use to shoot my bow. So when you look at a bow, or when you're listening, or in your mind visualizing a bow, I'm shooting a normal bow that you would buy off the shelf, that you would use to shoot with your hands. So like, they didn't specifically make this bow for me whatsoever.

• 26:53Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's legit, there's the, within the rules?

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Everything's within the rules. So, and even, even this thing that's on my shoulder right here is within the rules. So, I put on a-

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a kind of a yoke around your shoulders?

• 27:06Speaker 04

  It goes underneath my armpits, and across my chest, and then I tighten it up. And over my right shoulder, I have a release aid.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  That looks like a trigger of maybe like a gun or something like that. And it has a long bar.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  That bar goes on my chin. So when I'm aiming, I pull with my shoulder, that applies pressure to that little trigger, which allows the bow to shoot.

• 27:31Chuck Nice?

  Ah, got you.

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, is this, but is it your chin or your teeth that, that engage that?

• 27:37Speaker 04

  My chin. So I put it in my mouth, to hook it onto the bow.

• 27:41Chuck Nice?

  Then you hook it on to the bow, and then as you pull back with your shoulder, that causes the bow to come back. But then all you have to do is put your chin down-

• 27:51Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 27:51Chuck Nice?

  -on the release, and then the hook pulls up-

• 27:54Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  -and bang.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Bang. So, so this bow that I'm gonna use right now is a bow that I'm actually gonna use at the games. Um, and it is shooting a little itty-bitty skinny arrow. And I know you guys are into this stuff, but this, this arrow weighs 429 grains. Okay?

• 28:15Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  It shoots out of my bow at 200 miles per hour.

• 28:20Chuck Nice?

  Ow!

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Oh my god. So, literally, as I fire the bow, and when you guys see this, what, by the time this arrow hits the target, which is only gonna be about three or four feet away from me, it's already doing 200 miles per hour.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it would be at 200 miles an hour, the instant it separates from the string. And so, because that's the last moment where it's getting any energy that you supplied it.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is correct.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then the rest is just aerodynamics and gravity at that point.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  It does.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now you're seated.

• 28:51Speaker 04

  It does slow down over a period of 310 yards, but you have to calculate that into, you know, how much is it gonna slow down? I know when I did that shot, it was about a six-second arrow flight. Took about six seconds.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you had to, so you had to shoot wherever that air conditioner was, it was surely high, to the side of the target because of the crosswinds, but also had to have been above the target. Gravity. Because you have to allow the arrow to drop.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  It was about 20, I think it was like a 28 or 30, it might have been a 32-degree angle that I was aiming in the air, so 32 degrees up, that's like that.

• 29:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotcha. Wow.

• 29:30Speaker 04

  Okay, so, I rest the bow for people who can't see, I rest the bow against my left leg and I'm sitting in a chair. I use my right foot to pick up the arrow and load it onto the bow, like that. I then use my right leg and grab the bow and I pick it up and I sit gentleman's style, where I cross my leg, so it kind of brings my right foot up to my chest. At this point, I take my release aid and I bend down to the string and I hook it on.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 30:02Speaker 04

  Like that. And now that it's hooked on, I take the bow up with my right foot and, so now it's a very weird awkward yoga position, okay? So at this point, I'm gonna take my right foot and push it away from my chest, like that.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now you're, now you're getting that 60 pounds of force.

• 30:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I don't know if you guys can see all that, but that's what it looks like, okay? So then I aim at the target, bring the trigger up to my jaw, and then I add pressure until it shoots.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Bam, just like that. Bam.

• 30:35Chuck Nice?

  Mmm, look at that.

• 30:37Speaker 04

  And that results in bullseyes and medals and lots of smiles. Wow.

• 30:46Gary O'Reilly?

  You've got to do thi- you've got a set number of arrows to release in a set period of time. That's intense. How are you controlling? How are you able to dial yourself down and focus in the middle of competition?

• 31:00Speaker 04

  Um, so you shoot 72 arrows for qualification and you shoot six arrows at a time. And you get four minutes to shoot each six arrow group. And then you go score them, pull them and stuff. But when I do that, I'm so in the zone that when I, like when I draw my bow back, I don't know who's around me, you know, I, I practice the timing. I do a lot of mental prep, uh, what a good shot feels like. So the distance that we'll shoot in Tokyo is 50 meters.

• 31:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  And the bullseye-

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's nothing for you. Damn.

• 31:33Speaker 04

  The bullseye is smaller than a-

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They should just hand you the medal and then you keep a-

• 31:36Speaker 04

  Hey, you know what, I'll take that.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  The bullseye is smaller than a CD. So a perfect, a perfect score is 720 points and the world record is 705.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  And, uh, the last several months or so, I've been shooting in practice about 708 to 712 range.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, ooh, ooh.

• 32:01Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna be watching your ass. Oh my gosh.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  This year's been amazing for me as far as mentally. I, I just got back from trials and beat the old world record by 12 points. Or no, over 12, over 20 points is what the, the new, so I now own the new world record, so.

• 32:19Gary O'Reilly?

  That's amazing. That's two world records.

• 32:21Speaker 04

  So, so just in, just in comparison, if you guys want to know, so, um, I average like 700 points at 50 meters, okay? The number one ranked able-bodied archer, um, in the world shoots for United States of America. And on the same day, on the same field, uh, when they were shooting their scores, they shot a 704 maybe, and I shot 700. So that, I'm only like three or four points off the number one able-bodied archer in the world. So as a comparison.

• 32:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn.

• 32:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, there is no comparison. You make him look like dog food.

• 33:02Chuck Nice?

  Let's be real here.

• 33:05Gary O'Reilly?

  So Matt, when you, when you rock up, do you all of a sudden get a lot of attention? Because of who you are?

• 33:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:13Gary O'Reilly?

  And, and do the other athletes get a similar sort of attention? And does that kind of blow them out? But for you, you seem to have grown, obviously, into this attention. And is it, is it, you know, well, I've been here before. I'm, I'm not phased by this. Or, um, do you see the other athletes getting kind of outside of their comfort zone with the attention?

• 33:33Speaker 04

  Oh, for sure. You know, uh, what, one thing that's interesting is I've been my whole life used to attention. And what I mean by that is, is it can be negative attention too. Like people making fun of me because I have no arms or like I'm at a restaurant.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially as a kid.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, like.

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, especially as a kid.

• 33:49Speaker 04

  Eating you in a restaurant with my feet and then everybody in the restaurant staring at me, right? So my whole entire life, I've been able to say, you know what? I don't care what they think. I'm gonna do me. None of that bugs me. Like, I don't care. I'm gonna block them out. So when it comes to archery and I get into that on the, on the stage of it, it means something and we have thousands of people watching. I don't even know that they're there. Whereas let's say for you, let's say, let's say I'm shooting, you know, against Gary or something. He's never been in that situation, right? So you shot really good and now you're shooting for a gold medal, but you've never shot in front of 10,000 people before. So there is an advantage there for me, you know, because I've been dealing with it my whole life and they haven't been.

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  You, you'd make a great stand-up comic.

• 34:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you gotta, you gotta have that, you gotta have that same mentality. It's like, I don't care if these people not laughing.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, only Chuck has to feel that way. Other comics, they're actually laughing at this. No. So I'm delighted by how much physics you picked up in your life. And, and as Gary said, a lot of it would have come intuitively to you if you didn't have the formal training. You're thinking about nature and forces and energy the right way. And on this show, we're delighted to learn when athletes throw in some math to get their medal. And so Matt, it's been a pleasure to have you on this program. We will all be watching you in Tokyo.

• 35:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and good, good luck, but it doesn't even sound like you need it.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  I'll take all the good luck. I appreciate you guys inviting me on the show. It's been amazing. I loved all the laughs. Thank you again.

• 35:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, thank you.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to take a quick break. I want to thank Matt Stutzman for being on for this segment. And when we return, we're going to have Dr. Skateboard on yet another one of our Olympic installments of StarTalk. We'll see ya.

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  How can you get your own Patreon shout out like Michael Weber, Justin Nelson and Mike Reno? Well, go to patreon.com slash StarTalk Radio and support us. And thank you to Michael, Justin and Mike, because without you, we couldn't do this show.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about the Olympics. And in this segment, we're going to address skateboarding. Yeah, I said it. Skateboarding. It is a new Olympic sport.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  Yay!

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary. Gary. Do we know anybody? Who did you, who'd you get for this segment?

• 36:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, there's only one telephone number that we needed.

• 36:54Gary O'Reilly?

  And this guy can drop the science and he can drop the tricks. This has to be Bill Robertson, AKA.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doctor Skateboard. Okay, anybody named Doctor Skateboard is fine by me, okay?

• 37:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Anna, so let's, let's give him his props, okay? PhD in education, selected as a Fulbright Scholar.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 37:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Nominated by the UTEP in 2008.

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  UTEP, dude, I know you're British, that's UTEP, University of Texas, El Paso.

• 37:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, thank you, the UTEP for Professor of the Year. He is a TED, yes.

• 37:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Professor of the Year.

• 37:29Gary O'Reilly?

  He is a TED Talker, I know, the dude's got some chops. And then you give him a board and he's two times US Masters Champion, 2013 and 14. He's three times Masters Freestyle Champion and he is in the Freestyle Hall of.

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So freestyle means you, you do creative stuff that no one ever dreamt of doing and, and then you get remembered for it.

• 37:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Drop it like a.

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And provided you don't die from it, those, the people, there's a selection effect there.

• 37:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Bill, Doctor Skateboard, I, I resonate deeply with you because I know you're a science educator. And, but in what ways have you folded skateboarding into that enterprise? I'd be delighted to learn how, how you figure that out. And I, and my notes here, it says you call it action science. So what's going on there?

• 38:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, so originally it started, I was a middle school teacher in New Mexico, trying to get people interested in physical science concepts. And the kids at middle school was very difficult and challenging. They didn't like the traditional experiments, but one day I decided.

• 38:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called hormones, just to be clear, middle schooled. It's not that, I choose, I don't think I like these traditional experiments. That is not what's going through their head, for sure.

• 38:46Speaker 05

  But bringing my board out, you know, made a, made a difference and, you know, I could present things about forces, motion, Newton's laws of motion and things we had to cover and, and they were, they, they really enjoyed it. So that sort of started my journey with that. You know, I've been a long time skateboarder and performer. So I just worked on the ideas of integrating, you know, physical science concepts related to forces, motion, Newton's laws of motion and simple machines into that approach. And then it, it took off from there, not only using, you know, skateboarding, but other action sports, you know, BMX and other ways to try to connect. Kids to things they're interested in and then also to the science. So to put, if you will, put the action science was putting physical science in the context

• 39:30Speaker 05

  of things young people like to do.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. An educator who can't stop telling people, as Carl Sagan used to say, when you're in love, you want to tell the world. And so you're in love with skateboarding and you just fold that into wherever, whatever the lesson plan is going to be. Very good.

• 39:47Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 39:48Chuck Nice?

  You're not just shredding, brah. You're learning something.

• 39:52Gary O'Reilly?

  So, doctor, when we get to the Olympics and like we said, it's a debut for skateboarding. You've got two categories, street and park.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  What? What?

• 40:02Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm out.

• 40:03Chuck Nice?

  Street skateboarding.

• 40:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Street skateboarding and park. Now, I mean, what can we expect from those two categories?

• 40:10Speaker 05

  So in both the disciplines of park and, and street skateboarding, you've got 40 of the best women and men athletes in each area competing for Olympic medals. So it's, it's going to be quite interesting. The, the street is primarily something you would see with rails and stairs and ramps.

• 40:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 05

  It's a, and, and we have a-

• 40:29Chuck Nice?

  Everything you've ever seen on YouTube, baby. Right now, in the Olympics. That's right. Watch me grind this out, baby, for gold. I'm sorry.

• 40:40Speaker 05

  Well, no, the, the top athlete is, uh, number one is really, uh, an American by the name of Nige Houston, who, uh, is all, is all over the place. And he's, uh, I think, uh, you know, our best chance for, for gold, but that, that we have a strong team, both on the men and the women's side. And then in the parks, uh, you have really transitioned bowl riding, uh, bigger transitions. And, uh, you have really a good team there as well. So they're, they're kind of two, uh, unique disciplines in skateboarding.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, you didn't say bull, you didn't say bull riding. You said bowl riding.

• 41:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I said bowl riding, yes.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bow.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bow. Okay. Where the sides are curved and you sort of rock up and back and forth.

• 41:21Speaker 05

  I know I'm from Texas now, but you know, it's definitely-

• 41:25Gary O'Reilly?

  No hoofs and horns. So what can we expect? What kind of tricks are we going to be seeing? And what kind of language are we going to be coming away with?

• 41:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what part of Newton are you using the most? That's what I want to know.

• 41:37Speaker 05

  Well, I think a lot of times it's, you know, with this idea of action and reaction is one of the things that comes across in the in the science, you know, as they're moving towards obstacles or working with the obstacles. Going back to your, what can we expect? You know, you're going to see, I think, some really interesting things like kickflip, blunt slides down rails. You're going to see 360 flips across stairs. You're going to see in the bowls, things like 540, the McTwists. You're going to see.

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, just to be clear, 540 is 360 plus 180? Okay, so that would be a one and a half.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  Half.

• 42:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I just like the geometric angular measure of this. Instead of saying it's one and a half flips, we're doing a 540. You're counting out the degrees. That's very good, very mathematical of you. Okay.

• 42:30Speaker 05

  And so, so I think that's the, that's the big thing. And then, then the riders are going to have, you know, timed runs. And they'll, you know, they'll be judged on not only their degree of difficulty, but their creativity and then probably their amplitude and a few other categories. So you can kind of tell, you know, who's shining in those moments. But you'll see the best riders in the world.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just curious. So in the pro portion, I'm sorry, go ahead Neil. Quick. So I want to distinguish two things. When I see skateboarding and then I see in the Winter Olympics, they have the, what is it called? Snowboarding, snowboarding. Okay.

• 43:06Speaker 05

  Half pipe.

• 43:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the, yeah, in the half pipe. In the Winter Olympics, at all times, they are descending a hill.

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, whatever else they're doing in the middle of it. So they're using gravity as a force of their forward motion. Whereas in skateboarding, you are pumping your action almost the way you do on a swing. Where how do you go from nothing to a big arc? You are pumping your own body energy into your motion. So is it true that all the skateboarding you're describing, maybe other than the going down the stairs? But the bowl skating, the park skateboarding, you're not going downhill. You're always pumping your own energy back into your new position. Is that correct?

• 43:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, that is correct. You know, you're going to be using the transitions as a way to push down them, to gain speed, and then to go up the transition to bring yourself into the air. You'll probably see very little pushing, except as someone is moving through a trick. But they're going to be using the momentum of the obstacles to ride the bowls and to do the tricks and to create.

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is an important distinction then between the skateboarding and the snowboarding, for me. Yeah.

• 44:21Gary O'Reilly?

  So what's the most we can expect? Because I read that during quarantine, an 11-year-old threw a 1080 into on a vertical ramp. Now, if an 11-year-old can do it, Dr. Skateboard, surely the top people in the world should be working a lot hard.

• 44:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, you know, I think.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I gotta do my math. A 1080, that's four?

• 44:42Gary O'Reilly?

  A lot.

• 44:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lot.

• 44:45Gary O'Reilly?

  You're welcome.

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the IT world, 1080 is like the resolution 1080P. So a 1080, so Dr. Skateboard, tell me about a 1080. What is that?

• 44:53Speaker 05

  So a 1080 would be, you know, if you go 360s, 1, 720, 1080. So it'd be three revolutions or three spins, you know, on that. And Gary, there's a discipline that's called the mega ramp. It's not in the Olympics, but it's something they do. And that's how this person was able to do that. These are much larger structures and so, you know, you really need the bigger space to do that. But you will see things here, I mean, conceivably, you know, 540s, 720s. You'll see a lot of also motion where they're spinning, but they're also flipping their boards. So you'll see like kickflip varials, kickflip McTwists, which are, you know, where you're spinning the board a 360 and you're spinning 540.

• 45:39Speaker 05

  So the degree of difficulty goes way up for that.

• 45:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. So, so what if, I don't know if it's gonna be a part of it or not, but are the mega ramp vert drops gonna be a part of the competition?

• 45:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is that? Wait.

• 45:52Chuck Nice?

  I'll let Dr. Skateboard explain it, you know, cuz he's the-

• 45:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mega ramp, okay.

• 45:56Speaker 05

  In mega ramp, you have a large ramp. It's probably, I don't know, six stories up. You drop down an incline, you hit a ramp. There's a gap. It's usually fifty to seventy feet that they go across. And then they hit a huge quarter pipe, you know, which is probably fifteen to twenty feet high. And then they go fifteen to twenty feet high above it.

• 46:16Chuck Nice?

  Above it.

• 46:17Speaker 05

  And then they land, and if they're successful-

• 46:19Chuck Nice?

  Wait, wait, while doing tricks. While doing tricks!

• 46:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that would be, that would be a gravity assisted maneuvers at that point?

• 46:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Yes.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it.

• 46:27Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 46:29Gary O'Reilly?

  I guess that's in the next Olympics.

• 46:31Speaker 05

  No, they, they've limited, you know, the types of skateboarding. So that's one of the things I think is both a plus and a criticism, is you've got these two disciplines of street and bull riding. But skateboarding is, you know, a much larger phenomenon that is actually not just a sport, it's a culture. And it extends everywhere that people live and ride their boards.

• 46:50Chuck Nice?

  It's the hip hop of sports. It really is.

• 46:54Gary O'Reilly?

  So have we, have we got any technology that's emerged in the last couple of years? Cuz it's been a couple of years since we last spoke. And we got into sort of like sealed bearings and things like that. But has there anything new come in to make this sport even better?

• 47:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Bill, in your educational circle, there's Newton's laws and then there's material science. Yeah, so where do you, where do you fold that in?

• 47:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, so the one thing about a skateboard is it's actually stayed pretty stable in its components since the nineteen seventies. And specifically with the advent of urethane wheels, it really made a difference. And, but the one thing you do see now in skateboarding is you see more customized or different designs of deck shapes. So, so people are really using the width, the length and the wheelbase of decks to differentiate themselves. But skateboarding has pretty much stayed the same since we last talked, you know. It's, it's a board, two trucks and four wheels, you know, going through this. Now, the wheels can vary in hardness. You can have the sealed bearings. But I think ultimately, it's a, it's a pretty stable technology. It's seven ply laminate.

• 47:59Speaker 05

  Uh, you know, maple is typically what it's done and then it's, you know, set under pressure to, to create a concave and that's another big difference over the years. The, the concave or the contours for the board have really helped riders stay on their boards rather than just a flat board itself.

• 48:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, if it, if it, if it has that kind of give, you can, the energy that you goes into, to deform it can be recovered when you jump off of it. Right? As any good sort of spring action would be. Here's what I want. In 2028 Olympics, I'll give it one Olympic cycle to get there. I want the hoverboard event. Okay?

• 48:42Chuck Nice?

  You know, they do have, wait, you know, they do have a hoverboard.

• 48:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A third category.

• 48:46Chuck Nice?

  That was, yeah, that was actually sponsored by Lexus where what they make a superconductor and they make the hoverboard a ride on like that, that superconductor where it levitates above this magnetic, um, these magnetic rails and you ride the hoverboard around their little track. Um, but it's a skateboard.

• 49:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Okay. So eight years, I'll give it. Eight years feels right. Okay?

• 49:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, I, Bill, I don't know how you feel about hoverboards.

• 49:23Speaker 05

  Well, well, you know, so me, I'm a, I'm a purist, you know, I kind of grew up in the.

• 49:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Old school, old school. Get off my lawn.

• 49:31Speaker 05

  I'm an old school guy. So, you know, I'm a, I'm all about four wheels, two trucks, a board and, and the ground as your, uh.

• 49:44Chuck Nice?

  I like that.

• 49:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, are you going to Tokyo?

• 49:50Speaker 05

  You know, I'm not going to Tokyo, but I've been, actually been working with some of the people from USA Skateboarding, have a couple of friends who are involved with that and so that it's been, I've stayed in touch about what's happening and they're all preparing to leave here, probably I think by July 23rd.

• 50:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotcha. So I mean, I'm delighted just first to have you on the show, but also to know that your expertise is helping sort of Merica try to get some medals in this inaugural event. And I think, you know, we've debated what sports maybe shouldn't be in the Olympics. That comes up often on this show. And one criterion I used was, might you have ever seen it on a Grecian urn? Like, would, would the Greeks have put it on an urn? I think they would have put skateboarding on the urn. What do you guys think?

• 50:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, a guy, guy in a tunic with a skateboard, giving you the hang loose sign. Yo, what up, bro?

• 50:49Gary O'Reilly?

  So, okay Neil, let's, let's think about, if we're, if we're talking classics here, which is the ancient Greek, you think about the jumping, long jump, triple jump, things like that, that use Newton's laws of action, reaction.

• 51:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:04Gary O'Reilly?

  This, this then has to reconnect to the classic action, reaction with skateboarding. So it does have some resonance back to...

• 51:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So I think the Greeks would have been cool with it, I think. Yeah, I'll give you that. Yeah. All right, dude, we gotta bring this to a close. Bill Robertson, thank you, Dr. Skateboard. What a moniker that is. Is this on your business cards?

• 51:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, I do have some business cards, but you know, I've been doing it ever since I got my, my PhD. And you know, really my mission has been to combine education with, with skateboarding to, to reach out to marginalized students, but also to give, you know, pathways to success for students and, and education to the things they like to do. So, but that's really what Dr. Skateboard's all about.

• 51:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've got a TED Talk. Any other place we can find you online?

• 51:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, you can go to DrSkateboard.com. Got all my...

• 51:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 51:53Speaker 05

  I'm on Instagram.

• 51:56Chuck Nice?

  Can't get any better than that.

• 51:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can't get any better than that. Okay.

• 51:59Speaker 05

  No way to find you.

• 52:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah, very excellent. Delighted to showcase your work here. And so thanks for being on StarTalk.

• 52:07Speaker 05

  Thank you all for having me. You know, Neil, it's a pleasure. Chuck, Gary, thank you so much. And it's really my honor to be, to be associated with StarTalk. And thank you for all the good work y'all are doing.

• 52:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right. So this has been another sort of Olympic explainer. The inaugural appearance of skateboarding in the Tokyo Olympics. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.