All Pain, No Gain with Charles Liu

How fast does cheese roll down a hill? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly walk us through the physics behind the weirdest sports: cheese rolling, belly flopping, face slapping and more with astrophysicist Charles Liu.

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. We're gonna talk about the science of the weird in this episode. More on that in a moment. Let me first introduce my co-host Chuck Nice. Chuck, you baby. Hey, what's up Neil? Always good to have you. Actor and comedian? We get to say actor now along with comedian? You're acting in stuff? Saying he's acting like a comedian, that's what I say. Oh, yeah, that is. Acting like a comedian. Next time, you need our permission, you know, if you're gonna start acting.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So also, I got my co-host Gary O'Reilly. Gary?

• 0:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're stateside, but you're fundamentally a Brit. You sound Brit. You talk Brit. You think Brit.

• 0:57Gary O'Reilly?

  If it walks like and talks like, it must be.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we've got you because of your professional experience as a footballer, a soccer player in England. It's great to have you on, you know, as co-host. As always. As always. So tell me about the sports of the weird, Gary. Cause you know, I looked at the notes and said, I don't know what the hell Gary cooked up for the show. So take us in.

• 1:19Gary O'Reilly?

  I know, there's a lot in the recipe here, Neil. Hopefully it'll all come through. And, okay, in this episode, you'll hear me mention Queen Elizabeth II, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sir David Attenborough, who is royalty as well, the Wu-Tang Clan, Squid Games, and cheese. So you see, sports, it's a human thing. No other species on this planet invents a pastime and then organizes it into a championship or a tournament. The ancient Greeks, well, they had the Olympics.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, Gary. Even humans don't have that list of objects and people and phenomena.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then connect them in any way at all. You're telling me you're connecting those in this episode?

• 2:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 2:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:04Gary O'Reilly?

  And you'll see as we go along. Now, it's all about finding out the fastest and the strongest and, you know, who can throw the furthest, all of that sort of thing. But there are sports that didn't make it onto the Olympic playlist. So if I mention a couple, extreme ironing.

• 2:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that is, I love that.

• 2:26Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, or mountain unicycling. Right, my per, so this, this Chuck, really, basically what I'm saying is the Brits are mainly responsible for all of the silly, weird and wonderful sports that are out there. And we are going to look with our best friend, Charles Liu, at the science that's going to be buried in there. So, uh, Charles Liu.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Liu!

• 2:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wait, we got Charles Liu! Oh, my gosh! Oh, geek in chief.

• 2:53Charles Liu?

  Hello!

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Geek in chief, Charles.

• 2:55Charles Liu?

  It's a great pleasure to be here as always. Thank you.

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be back!

• 2:59Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is like your 50th appearance on the show.

• 3:02Charles Liu?

  Something like that.

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Clearly, we can't do the show without you. So, so you're, you're our geek in chief, friend and colleague, a professor of astronomy and physics at, at the City University of New York, Staten Island.

• 3:14Charles Liu?

  Yep.

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, always good to have you.

• 3:16Charles Liu?

  Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here as always.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, always good to have you.

• 3:19Charles Liu?

  Well, Chuck.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles in this episode.

• 3:20Charles Liu?

  Charles, it's all, that's right. In this episode, I'm Charles because the true Chuck, there is the one true Chuck when it comes to StarTalk.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that would be Chuck Norris.

• 3:29Charles Liu?

  That is Chuck Nice, right there.

• 3:35Charles Liu?

  Great to see you, everybody.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, yeah, so all good. And like I said, as your, as our geek in chief, however geeky I think I am, you're geekier. So that's why we have you on here.

• 3:46Charles Liu?

  Oh.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the geek spectrum, which knows no bounds.

• 3:49Charles Liu?

  You speak so kindly of me, sir.

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so okay, what's, what's, what's the first sport you got lined up here, Gary?

• 3:55Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, so I have to go straight for a British sport. Cheese rolling.

• 3:59Charles Liu?

  Oh, yes.

• 4:00Gary O'Reilly?

  On Coopers Hill in Gloucestershire. Thought to date back 600 years and be rooted in pagan rituals. All right, um, so here are the numbers, so pay attention. Coopers Hill is 200 yards long. It has a gradient of 50% and it's near vertical in places. The original wheel of cheese weighed between seven and nine pounds. But it is now fake cheese made of foam for the safety of the spectators, which is sad. The cheese has been clocked at 70 miles an hour. And the object of the race is to get to the bottom of the hill first and probably still be alive. It has been dubbed the world's most dangerous foot race. Charles, take it away.

• 4:41Charles Liu?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, just to be clear, when you say the cheese is going 70 miles an hour, it's rolling 70 miles an hour?

• 4:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep. Someone's taken a speed gun and clocked it.

• 4:50Charles Liu?

  Yeah. It's a classic, this is a classic freshman physics problem, Neil. Remember all those days? You roll a wheel of cheese without slipping down an incline of 50% at 200 yards. At the bottom, what is its velocity? Remember those things?

• 5:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, but you had to know what, what, you had to know how much did the thing like to roll?

• 5:11Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the, the, the, uh, which, the moment of inertia, I guess they called it, yes?

• 5:17Charles Liu?

  The disc of the moment of inertia, and then you have to figure out how much of the kinetic energy goes in the rotation and how much of it goes in the translation down the hill. Uh, there's this magical thing called rolling without slipping, which allows you to do, make some of these really cool calculations. If you start sliding, then bet's are off. Uh, but we're assuming that these cheeses roll, right? They're, they're not just like slip sliding away down the hill.

• 5:40Gary O'Reilly?

  No, they're, they're bouncing, Charles, because this is not a perfectly level.

• 5:45Charles Liu?

  Ah.

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would say bounding. They're bounding down the. Okay, we'll take bounding.

• 5:50Charles Liu?

  Okay, it's get along little cheesies. Okay, we're moving along. Here's here's your take. It's two hundred yards long, right? Which is six hundred feet. At a fifty percent grade, roughly that means what's a square root of two, like point seven is the height.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is fifty percent grade forty five degree angle?

• 6:06Charles Liu?

  Correct, that's what it is.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, so square root of two out of the.

• 6:08Charles Liu?

  Mm hmm. So of six hundred feet, right? So that's come about four hundred feet or thereabouts. Now, uh, if you remember your physics from, uh, like I said, one half A T squared, how long it takes to fall? Four hundred feet, uh, the answer is about four seconds. Okay, so, uh, the acceleration of gravity going straight down, uh, about four seconds. Uh, each second you go thirty two feet per second, uh, faster than you did before, or about twenty two miles an hour faster. Which means that if you've just fell straight down from the top two hundred yards all the way vertically, like off a cliff, you know, wily coyote kind of falling. When you hit the bottom, you'd be going around eighty to ninety miles an hour.

• 6:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 6:50Charles Liu?

  But you're rolling.

• 6:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 6:51Charles Liu?

  So some of it is going into your rolling, some of it is going away, and some of the times you're bounding. Then you're not constrained by gravity at all. So seventy miles an hour actually makes sense. You could actually get to that speed. Now, a human being couldn't do that because we don't roll without slipping. When we roll, we slip badly.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, that's how we roll.

• 7:11Charles Liu?

  That is how you go.

• 7:14Charles Liu?

  Score one for Chuck. Good job.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, that was a good one, Chuck. I wish I thought of that one. I I say that's how I roll. I don't know how you roll.

• 7:23Charles Liu?

  Now, uh, a person running, right, Usain Bolt on a flat field will run two hundred yards at a speed of about twenty to twenty five miles per hour. And so you, yeah, you get that gravity assist a little bit. Then it's a matter of trying to figure out whether you can plant your foot and rotate your speed fast enough, kind of like, uh, The Flash or or, you know, uh,

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Road Runner.

• 7:46Charles Liu?

  Or something, right? Yeah, meet meet, you know, you have to make sure that your feet are synced with how fast you're falling, combined with how fast you can turn. So you could probably.

• 7:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait. You said something very important there, Charles. What you're saying is, as you're running, you, I mean, this is so obvious that to say it. It's like, what? Is that what we actually do? What you're saying is, when I leap. I have to make sure that when I come in contact with the ground again, it's the bottom of my foot that's doing it and not my knee or my elbow or my head.

• 8:23Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 8:23Charles Liu?

  So there is, that's why you have the ambulances waiting at the bottom of the hill for this one, right, Jerry?

• 8:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, for sure.

• 8:30Charles Liu?

  So, so the answer is, you know, you have to time your motion of your feet to compensate, not just for your regular running, but when you're falling. And then you've got to know where your foot's gonna land. And so that's another physics problem. Fortunately, we human beings are great at physics. Not necessarily great at writing down answers on a, on a piece of paper, but great at sort of calculating where our foot needs to be at any given time to reach the ground just as we are reaching the ground.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean physiologically, we're good at that calculation without even knowing we're doing the calculation?

• 8:59Charles Liu?

  Our brains just do it for us. And it's the translation onto, you know, your calculations within an equation or a piece of paper or a laptop.

• 9:07Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's why babies look like they're drunk when they're walking.

• 9:10Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 9:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:12Charles Liu?

  Oh, wait, no, you mean babies aren't just, wait, babies aren't actually drunk when they're rolling?

• 9:18Gary O'Reilly?

  If you actually watch people chasing a wheel of cheese down Cooper's Hill, they are not smoothly running.

• 9:23Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 9:24Gary O'Reilly?

  They are flipping, slipping, sliding, banging into each other and things. Because it's, this is a natural hill. So it's got all sorts of divots and bumps and lumps in it. So, uh, yeah, it's just hilarious to watch.

• 9:38Chuck Nice?

  Is the idea that your wheel of cheese gets to the bottom first? And then you also have to be the first human at the bottom of the hill?

• 9:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, that's it. It's a complicated set of rules. They throw the cheese over the edge first and then a second later, everybody chases it. And whoever gets to the bottom first goes home with a big.

• 9:59Charles Liu?

  Cheese.

• 10:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you get to go home with the cheese you came with.

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, wait, if somebody else's cheese wins.

• 10:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you get to the bottom, do you take home their cheese wheel?

• 10:10Charles Liu?

  Oh, there you go.

• 10:11Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, there's only the one. That if they have a race, there's only one wheel of cheese.

• 10:15Charles Liu?

  At a time.

• 10:15Gary O'Reilly?

  You don't bring your own.

• 10:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so it's just one giant wheel of cheese.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not wheels of cheese racing against each other? Because you could, you could, if you know physics, you could fix that one, make, make your wheel coming first every time.

• 10:31Charles Liu?

  How?

• 10:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, what would you do to your wheel? If you want?

• 10:35Charles Liu?

  Oh, well, you, you want it to have the most amount of its kinetic energy going down the hill and the least amount of it spinning, right?

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 10:44Charles Liu?

  Yeah, which would mean, wouldn't you want to like squish the cheese to more like a bowling ball rather than a wheel?

• 10:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into the middle, right, okay.

• 10:52Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Bowling ball filled with cheese.

• 10:57Charles Liu?

  Wait, what, what, yeah, what's the moment of inertia of a sphere again?

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's two, I think it's two fifths MR squared.

• 11:03Charles Liu?

  Two fifths, okay, two fifths of the rim.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the more-

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  Let me give you my equation. Here's what you do with the cheese.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck's got an equation.

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  You eat it.

• 11:14Charles Liu?

  Just eat it?

• 11:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, screw this game, guys, I'm hungry.

• 11:19Charles Liu?

  But the cheese is like 70 pounds, dude.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 11:22Charles Liu?

  There's plenty for all.

• 11:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's not, so it's not a race.

• 11:27Chuck Nice?

  Gary, can you eat a wheel of cheese after you roll it down a hill?

• 11:33Chuck Nice?

  Is it still edible is my point? Okay, well, in that case.

• 11:37Charles Liu?

  You gotta wrap it really carefully.

• 11:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah, they do, they, they, they put a wooden sort of case around it.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was wondering, it's probably not brie.

• 11:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Protect it.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be a mess.

• 11:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Now you've mentioned it, it, it will be double Gloucester, which is a harder cheese. And therefore, not likely to end up spattered everywhere.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this just what we would call cheddar? And you'll call it double Gloucester?

• 11:58Gary O'Reilly?

  No, double, no, no, no, gosh.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry.

• 12:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Don't wash your cheeses up. Cheddar, double Gloucester, red Leicestershire, it's all, it's all butter cheese.

• 12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It sounds like firm cheese, okay, got it.

• 12:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 12:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I had it wrong, we're not racing cheese wheels, you're racing people down the hill, and then-

• 12:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Following a chariot.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's not a straight line, and it's not a thing, and, and, and Chuck, getting back to your Usain Bolt reference, Usain Bolt might not win that race because it's not a straight path.

• 12:27Charles Liu?

  Correct. It's like a cross-country run, but at a breakneck pace, and where you can possibly actually break your neck.

• 12:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 12:35Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell ya, when you explain it that way, I wanna watch this.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, okay. All right, so, and this has been going on for how long?

• 12:47Gary O'Reilly?

  About 600 years.

• 12:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 12:49Charles Liu?

  Now, if they use the same wheel of cheese, that's one hard cheese that's lasted for 600 years. That's like, not double Gloucester, that's like quintuple Gloucester by then.

• 12:58Gary O'Reilly?

  No, that's, that's not gonna be happening.

• 13:00Chuck Nice?

  Definitely evidence that there was no cable television back then.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No HBO for sure.

• 13:06Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so Gary, what's, what next sport? What next crazy ass sport you have from your home country?

• 13:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, we're moving out of Britain, but not too far. We're going to Norway.

• 13:19Gary O'Reilly?

  There is such a thing as the World Belly Flop Championships.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, wait, okay, I don't have time, wait. We had to put that in the next segment, okay?

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't even start that until we have a fresh segment to put that in. This is StarTalk Sports Edition, weird sports from throughout the world. Brought to you by Gary, I got nothing to do with this one.

• 13:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, so me?

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is all Gary. All right, we'll be back in a moment.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. Gary O'Reilly has called from throughout the world, specifically his part of the world, crazy ass sports.

• 14:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, Gary, I think you, you made this episode take place so that one day we will look at curling and say, hey, that's a good sport. I think you're trying to reset, you're trying to recalibrate how any of us have ever looked at the sport curling. We got a geek in chief, Charles Lu, who's always good to, to take us to places we, we, we didn't even think of going. And of course Chuck Nice, so keep it, so keep it going, Gary.

• 14:34Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, so the World Championships of belly flopping is a thing, but it's really taken on a, a massive interest in Norway, where it's known as dodzing, which translates apparently into death diving, right? Now, now, now this sounds weird. It was invented in 1972 by Erling Bruno-Hovden. You start on a 10 to 14 meter diving tower.

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, just to be clear, 1972 was before lead was banned in drinking water.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in household pain. That's one year before the laws went into effect at least in the United States of banning lead and leaded gas. But go on.

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  Could be anecdotal, but could be a connection.

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, put it out there.

• 15:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Just saying. So you're diving off of a tower into a swimming pool at thirty two to forty five, forty six feet high. There's classic belly flop, arms outstretched, legs outstretched. You just hit the surface of the water. Then there's freestyle, where in midair you have stunts and then just as they're about to impact, you just curl up in a ball and cannonball through this.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's not a belly flop, that's a cannonball.

• 15:44Chuck Nice?

  That's a cannonball.

• 15:45Gary O'Reilly?

  No, but there's classic belly flop.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:47Gary O'Reilly?

  So there's two different events. You can enter the classic or go for the freestyle.

• 15:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh, oh.

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. So the freestyle is it, it's not how much splash you don't make, it's how much splash you do make.

• 15:57Gary O'Reilly?

  And it's, no, it's the midair stunts. You have to perform a midair stunt and hold it for as long as you possibly can. So I mean, this, this, a dodge is, is, is the dive. There is an international dodge federation, although the delightful people of the Norwegian Swimming Federation do not recognize it. The, the, the world championships will attract something like three thousand paying spectators. So it's, it's quite a thing. If you see it, it's really, I mean, I suppose Norwegians are famous for ski jumping. So this is basically how to ski jump.

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Norwegians have some of the highest per capita income in the world.

• 16:39Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you have it.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is that it, Chuck? Is it? Because survival is not a thing they got to worry about. So they have to introduce ways they might die just to bring excitement to their life.

• 16:49Gary O'Reilly?

  So Charles, if, if I take a running jump as say like a man of about a hundred and seventy pounds or something like that off a.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Towers some thirty forty feet high.

• 17:00Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What sort of force am I gonna hit the surface of the water?

• 17:03Charles Liu?

  Ah, that's a good question, but you've got to be a little bit careful about this because it's not so much the force that matters, right? The amount of force you're experiencing from gravity uh is a constant amount, right? Your mass times the acceleration of gravity nine point eight meters per second. Rather, it's the momentum you have when you reach the water and how much time it takes for you to slow down.

• 17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, there it is.

• 17:31Charles Liu?

  And then that leaves you with the thing called impulse. So the amount of force you experience is if you have a whole bunch of momentum and you're falling and in a very short time or a very long time, you you reduce that momentum to zero, right? So if you, that's why, for example, when you're on the side of the road, you have these crash pads or or near the toll booths or something like that.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:53Charles Liu?

  The slower, the lo- longer it takes for you to slo- stop, the less force you will experience at any given time. So it's it's.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why, that's why high jumpers have big pillows on the other side of their.

• 18:04Charles Liu?

  Exactly. You wanna slow down their fall, not so much to sort of stop it. So so it's not just the amount of force, which would be the mass of the individual. Uh, well, one seventy pounds is what about eighty kilograms or such?

• 18:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I gotta say this just so that Chuck doesn't have to say it. So there'd be another Olympics where you have the pole vault and they land on cement. That's a different sport.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very.

• 18:27Charles Liu?

  Did the Norwegians invent that too?

• 18:31Charles Liu?

  They they are tough people.

• 18:35Charles Liu?

  I I thought the ski jump was already bad enough. I don't know if they invented them, but but imagine going down a hill in your skis through the air like three hundred feet and then landing.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 18:46Charles Liu?

  That's really amazing. Those guys are very impressive. So, yeah, you, bottom line is, uh, if you're belly flopping, right? You are hitting not only uh quickly, you're stopping really fast, but you also have a large surface area.

• 19:01Charles Liu?

  On which that you're hitting. So every single spot on your skin gets smacked. Uh, those good divers, well, I don't wanna say good. Those, uh, professional divers or Olympic divers, they're always trying to be as vertical as possible. Right.

• 19:15Chuck Nice?

  As little splashes.

• 19:16Charles Liu?

  That's right. So that when you hit, you have the smallest surface area sliced through and you don't actually feel a lot of pain. Then you let the water stop.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and the underwater cameras, they go down 10 feet or something.

• 19:28Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So over that 10 feet, they're slowing down.

• 19:30Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 19:31Chuck Nice?

  So now, now, now, at what point does the water itself, uh, offer enough resistance to just break you in half? Or like bust your bones up or, I mean, there's gotta be a point where that water becomes as hard as cement.

• 19:50Charles Liu?

  Well.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Golden Gate Bridge, people don't survive jumping off that bridge.

• 19:54Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 19:55Charles Liu?

  It, it's a, it's a, um, surface effect, as it turns out, basically. Um, but the way materials work, because you're going from an air, uh, low density into high density. Even if that, uh, water is liquid, when you hit, you can have a substantially strong amount of impulse that gets hit to you at that time. And, and exactly when you're jumping from a high distance into water, if you hit, uh, even from your platform there at 30 or, uh, 30 feet or 40 feet, Gary, uh, you can break bones, you can, uh, snap joints if you're not careful. So those belly floppers aren't just playing around.

• 20:36Charles Liu?

  They're probably being very, very careful that they hit with the soft part of their torsos. So they don't actually hit with their head and their chin going up against their, uh, the rest of their body and thus snapping something like a spine.

• 20:48Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, the record, the record is over 100 feet.

• 20:51Chuck Nice?

  That's crazy.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was the record for someone who lived?

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 20:56Charles Liu?

  But I'm guessing. That's not the classic belly flop, right? There's.

• 20:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, I hope not.

• 20:59Charles Liu?

  I'm sure that's the curling into a.

• 21:01Gary O'Reilly?

  I hope so.

• 21:02Charles Liu?

  Yeah, the curling into a cannonball at the last moment, you could probably hit with your, you know, buttocks or something like that. And you're much less likely to break something that's irreparable.

• 21:11Chuck Nice?

  Right. But, but, but you can't sit down for at least a week.

• 21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it is interesting. So in the cannonball, if you hit butt first. Um, so Charles is a is is a fat butt or a narrow butt better for a cannonball land?

• 21:28Charles Liu?

  Oh, well, that oh, well, there are two actors at work there, right? Because when you're talking about.

• 21:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, the left butt cheek and the right butt cheek.

• 21:35Charles Liu?

  Left and the right. Yeah, exactly. If you're hitting, trying to minimize your your cross sectional area hitting the water, then you want that narrow tuchus, right? On the other hand, the tuchus has substantial padding, and that will slow down your time of deceleration, right? The amount of time it takes for you to reduce your speed, just like a bumper on a car would. So you may want more bumper to slow you down, and thus you may not want to hit directly as tail on as possible, but just a little bit off to the side so you get that nice fatty cushion. I don't know.

• 22:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Doesn't that dissipate the energy better?

• 22:15Charles Liu?

  Yeah, I'd have to do the calculations. I think that would be a lot of fun to do.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so but so so Gary, this is now fifty a fifty year old sport. Is it? Does it make money? Is it?

• 22:26Gary O'Reilly?

  If there's three thousand spectators turning up for the world championships, I'm guessing they make money because there'll be all the sort of merchandising. There'll be also it appears on TV. So they're selling the TV rights, they're selling out spectators in stadiums in Norway. So, um, yeah, the world champions are belly flopping. It's on. It's out there making money.

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  Norway television must really suck if this is.

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If that's a if that's a prime time special.

• 22:55Chuck Nice?

  Right, if this is a prime time sport.

• 22:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, Chuck, let's just let's just get this fair. The winters in northern Norway are long and dark. And the summers, the sun up in places like Narvik, the sun will not set during summer. So there's a lot of.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which was summers, the opposite of the winters. The days are long and it never gets dark.

• 23:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cuz I think in the winter, the nights are long and it never gets light. Right, so that all switches out.

• 23:26Charles Liu?

  That's about it.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Charles, any calculation, fast calculation in your head about whether a 300-pound fat person relative to a 130-pound skinny person would do better in this kind of event?

• 23:40Charles Liu?

  Oh gee, calculate real quick.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we think, you know, with a lot of fat, that's, it protects your inner organs, right, on a fall?

• 23:48Charles Liu?

  Yep, here's the, if in the classic, in the classic where you're actually landing on your belly, you do want more subcutaneous belly stuff to slow you down. In the classic belly flop, as long as you have good technique and you're landing on your belly properly, right, without like bending your spine too much that you wind up snapping it or something, then you probably want to be larger and have more fat.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that would take the energy of contact and dissipate it into your fat without breaking your ribs, for example?

• 24:16Charles Liu?

  That's right, that's exactly what you would want. On the other hand, if you were that cannonball thing, you do your tricks in the air, then you curl into a ball and drop in, I think being thin would be better because then your profile going in will be smaller.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and if you're, if you're heavy going in, into the cannonball, it'd be like in, in, in all of the water parks with the, with the fish show, with the, you know, the porpoise shows, there's a splash zone.

• 24:42Charles Liu?

  Yes, that's right.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First 10 rows, watch out.

• 24:45Charles Liu?

  Yeah, yeah, you, you would, you would wind up producing quite a splash, no question about it.

• 24:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Gary, anything else you want to add to this before we go on to the next sport? Uh, no, I think we've. Allow me to say, allow me to just, a shout out to the Norwegians, okay? At this moment, the Norwegians, they have this fascinating sport, which is still intriguing to all of us on this panel, but they also have the world record for the 400-meter hurdle, and they have the highest ranking chess player there ever was. And this coun, this is a country of how many people?

• 25:25Charles Liu?

  Eight.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eight, eight people?

• 25:27Charles Liu?

  Eight people?

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That right, eight people.

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, no more people.

• 25:34Charles Liu?

  A few million, like somewhere between like a five million people maybe?

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, as many as in a metropolitan area of a city in America. So that's, you know, they're doing something right. You know, give them their belly flop if the rest of this is going down the way it is.

• 25:50Charles Liu?

  Yeah. Hooray for Norway, I say.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. All right. So Gary, what sport is up next?

• 25:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Face slapping.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh oh, uh oh. All right, all right. Yeah, there it is again. Okay, we're gonna take a break. And we'll come back.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll come back and talk about face slapping as a sport. Face slapping as a sport on StarTalk Sports Edition when we return.

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. Odd, unusual sports, all of which Gary invented.

• 26:37Gary O'Reilly?

  With my Norwegian chums.

• 26:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just, yeah, we talked about cheese rolling. We talked about.

• 26:46Charles Liu?

  Belly flop.

• 26:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Belly flopping. And what's the next topic here, Gary?

• 26:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Face slapping. And I do not have an origin as national identity for this thing. Um, it's been featured in Squid Games, the Netflix show.

• 27:00Charles Liu?

  Get out.

• 27:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, yeah. So here we go. They love it in Russia. There's one of their slap kings, that's the official term, is Vasili Chamos Tiskaya, or affectionately known as Dumpling, who weighs in at 370 pounds. It's open to both men and women, but they don't hit, you know, you say, you know.

• 27:22Charles Liu?

  It's gender specific.

• 27:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Women slap women, men slap women. Um, the rules are simple. You get five slaps each. That's if you get that far. And if you evade a slap, you get a foul, two fouls, and you're out. You can only use the upper part of your palm and cannot touch the jaw, temple, or ear.

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's left on the face to slap?

• 27:41Charles Liu?

  The cheek, the cheek, right here.

• 27:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the cheek is connected to the jaw.

• 27:46Charles Liu?

  But you don't hit the jaw. You can only hit the cheek.

• 27:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 27:51Charles Liu?

  Yeah, it makes sense because you don't want to break the jaw.

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Charles, you sound like you helped write the rules. I thought you were as new to this as the rest of us on this call. All right.

• 27:59Charles Liu?

  Well.

• 28:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, go on, Gary, what else?

• 28:02Gary O'Reilly?

  So we've got someone who's 370 pounds. His arms are probably like my legs and he's going to slap me in the face and I'm standing there and letting him do it.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so what determines who wins?

• 28:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, if you just say, I've had enough.

• 28:20Gary O'Reilly?

  You have to stand your ground and be slapped.

• 28:23Charles Liu?

  But wait, you only get five. You only get five shots, didn't you just say? So anyone can handle five shots.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, not with someone has meat hands coming at you, 370 pounds.

• 28:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Because you've got a straight arm lever, you've got a gigantic hand that's coming at you, I can't imagine what sort of speed, but I don't like the idea of that at all.

• 28:47Chuck Nice?

  See, here's how this game works for me. I get to go first and then I quit.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I go first and then I forfeit, I lose.

• 28:58Charles Liu?

  That's it, all right, I lose. Oh, I'm so broken up.

• 29:05Gary O'Reilly?

  You know there's going to be someone who is so determined not to quit, they'll stick it out. Unless they get knocked out.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are crazy people, right? These are people who like...

• 29:15Gary O'Reilly?

  This is the world of weird and wonderful.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what country leads this?

• 29:19Gary O'Reilly?

  I don't think there is a leader, although it is popular in Russia.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, wait, wait, so is this a spectator sport, Gary?

• 29:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, they have championships and although the prize money isn't enormous, you get to walk out there with about a thousand dollars or something like that and they'll have championships based around places and obviously there's weight categories, I would imagine. The 370 pound giant pitching up against the 100.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, you don't want anybody slapped into orbit.

• 29:51Chuck Nice?

  Are you allowed to enter other people?

• 29:58Charles Liu?

  As attackers or as targets?

• 29:59Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, as targets, yeah, like.

• 30:01Charles Liu?

  Well, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, Gary. A thousand bucks or so can certainly buy you a lot of ice packs.

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just exactly the right amount of ice packs.

• 30:11Charles Liu?

  That's right, that's right. But I would not necessarily discount a thin person or a lightweight person doing poorly compared to a heavyweight person in this kind of competition.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 30:23Charles Liu?

  Well, think about it.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's arm speed, right?

• 30:25Charles Liu?

  The arm speed is what matters more than anything else. The kinetic energy is one half mv squared, right? V, the velocity, it increases much faster than the mass, which is always increases linearly. So if you can be really fast, then you're good. Not to mention, let's say if you are thin, you might be more limber in your joints. And thus, when you get struck, you might be able to absorb it a little bit better by allowing your face and your joints to, yeah, to change. It's increasing the amount of time your body has to absorb the force and therefore experience less force.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As we talked about earlier, and just to emphasize a point Charles made, the most lethal bullets fired out of a rifle are not the fattest, heaviest bullets. They're very small, you know, the M16 rifle, high velocity, high muzzle velocity, is a 22 caliber, somewhere around there?

• 31:21Charles Liu?

  Yes, .223.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So basically a 22 caliber bullet. So they said, let's give up some mass, but put it all into velocity. And that's what makes it so lethal. So, very good point, Charles.

• 31:32Gary O'Reilly?

  So Charles, what if you have less nerve endings in your cheek? I mean, how many nerve endings in a human cheek? Answer, please.

• 31:41Charles Liu?

  Millions. But, yes, if you were somehow genetically predisposed that you had fewer cheek nerve cells, then you might tolerate the pain a little bit more, right? But I'm thinking more along the lines of the damage that it would do to your face. Right, how much, uh, how many blood vessels would break? The millions of capillaries that are in your cheek muscles. Of those kinds of things. And so in that sense, you can imagine a very, um, not heavyweight person, but with a lot of cheek fat.

• 32:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:16Charles Liu?

  And that, that would make you a very strong candidate in this kind of contest.

• 32:20Gary O'Reilly?

  So the similar thing to the belly flopping, so the, the dissipation of energy through, through the cheek.

• 32:25Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right, Gary, you got one more sport, I think, is that right?

• 32:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh, yeah, let's, let's do another, uh, one of the finest sports ever created by the Brits. Shin kicking.

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shin kicking.

• 32:38Chuck Nice?

  From slapping the kicking.

• 32:40Charles Liu?

  Oh, man. Why do these sports have to be so violent?

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What gets you ready for soccer? Cause they're kicking each other.

• 32:47Charles Liu?

  Nah, why can't you just do something like carry your wife or something? Wouldn't that be a better sport?

• 32:51Gary O'Reilly?

  There is that, there is, that the Finns, the Finns do that. There is a wife carrying, uh, competition.

• 32:57Charles Liu?

  What?

• 32:58Gary O'Reilly?

  And it's, uh, yeah, it's over an obstacle course. And they.

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this before they're married or after they're married in preparation for the threshold for, for the wedding night?

• 33:08Gary O'Reilly?

  You don't actually have to carry your own wife or have a wife. You have to have a young woman or a woman over the age of 17, who you carry over, I think there's two dry hurdles and then there's a wet hurdle.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That wouldn't have to be a rule in the sport, but go on.

• 33:25Gary O'Reilly?

  That's a rule. The, the rule is in wife carrying, the, the, the woman must be over 17 years of age. And you, you throw her over your shoulders, kind of, there's different, there's different styles. Well, no, I'm not referring to young ladies as a sack of potatoes.

• 33:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a mink stole.

• 33:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, then there's the, the fireman's carry. Then there's a thing called Estonia style. Okay, so basically the, the woman is over your shoulders and her legs come over, over the front of you and you hold on to those. And that, I suppose, Charles, is, is kind of like a counterbalance, a lever.

• 34:01Charles Liu?

  Yes, that's right.

• 34:02Gary O'Reilly?

  And allows you to then run.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just a piggyback ride you give your kids.

• 34:05Charles Liu?

  It's the reverse piggyback.

• 34:06Gary O'Reilly?

  The woman's upside down.

• 34:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I thought this was a family show.

• 34:13Chuck Nice?

  Cause I, let me tell you what you just described.

• 34:19Charles Liu?

  Come on, Chuck.

• 34:20Gary O'Reilly?

  I didn't invent the sport. I was gonna go for shin kicking. Charles wanted to do wife carrying.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that, these are your sports at all. So how did this begin?

• 34:30Gary O'Reilly?

  The wife carrying thing.

• 34:32Chuck Nice?

  No, no, no, just go to the shin kicking, go ahead.

• 34:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright, so shin kicking is another British thing. It's in the same part of the world as the cheese rolling. So obviously, they definitely don't have cable TV. It goes back about 400 years to a thing called the Cotswold Olympics. And that's Olympics spelt with a K.

• 34:52Gary O'Reilly?

  It should be, on the surface, the stupidest sport anyone could ever, ever have invented. But there's something going on with it. It takes place in the beautiful area of the Cotswolds. They have banned. Wait, wait, is that a person, place, or thing, the Cotswolds? It's a place, the Cotswold, it's an area of Britain, just to the south and west. Forgive my American geographic ignorance.

• 35:15Chuck Nice?

  I think there's a cheese named Cotswold, isn't there?

• 35:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, there probably will be.

• 35:22Gary O'Reilly?

  It does have a deeper meaning. And it's strange, but if I explain it, maybe then you'll have a better understanding. Shin kicking is absurd, right? But not without this meaning. It's about standing your ground. It's about stubbornly resisting the assaults that come your way and giving back as good as you get.

• 35:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so it's about revenge? It's a bit weird. There's rules.

• 35:48Chuck Nice?

  So, wait a minute, you can just do what? You stand there, stand your ground. You kick somebody in the shins. And then, how much time do you get, do they get to recover? Because I've never been kicked in the shins. I've never bumped my shin on a coffee table. I've never even scraped my shin without immediately pulling it up to my chest and writhing in pain, or, so how much time do you get to recover?

• 36:15Gary O'Reilly?

  It's an ongoing bout. So each, here we go, this is the quaint British tradition. Each person has to, there's two people in a ring to begin with, right? A circular ring. And there's a judge outside. And they have, both have to wear white coats. They have to hold on to the collar of each of their opponent. And if they get them on the ground, they win. And there are three, count them, one, two, three, rounds. And you can only kick between the knee and the foot.

• 36:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so it's like wrestling with kicking?

• 36:49Chuck Nice?

  You're you're you're holding the person like the I forget the hold that you when you see those guys wrestling they start off with their hand on the neck.

• 36:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Chuck Nice?

  And then you and then you get to kick the guy and if if somebody goes down that's then they win.

• 37:03Gary O'Reilly?

  They are you you ground your opponent you get a point and you get as many whoever gets the most points after three rounds wins or if someone says you know what I've had enough my shins really hurt now I'm going home.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It still sounds like Gary that people they need more streaming TV services.

• 37:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Gary O'Reilly?

  There there are a lot of bored people and the twisted mind that came up with this I I don't quite know but it's a thing shin kicking.

• 37:29Charles Liu?

  I hope they're allowed to wear shin guards that'd be okay.

• 37:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you know what they do they okay so they wear trousers.

• 37:35Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 37:35Gary O'Reilly?

  And they stuff hay down the legs of their trousers.

• 37:40Charles Liu?

  Ah.

• 37:41Gary O'Reilly?

  To give them some protection but really.

• 37:43Chuck Nice?

  So it's not the least bit uncomfortable either.

• 37:47Charles Liu?

  The tried and true tradition of stuffing your pants yes I understand.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See I would I would have stuffed a metal plate down my pants that's what I would have done.

• 37:56Gary O'Reilly?

  This is 400 years old the access of ready-made metal shin guards wasn't really there straw building.

• 38:02Chuck Nice?

  That blacksmith would have been my friend I'm with Neil on this one. Hay on top metal metal against the skin.

• 38:09Gary O'Reilly?

  There are so many more weird sports there's a sport called goanna pulling.

• 38:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:15Gary O'Reilly?

  It's the the Aussies came up with that.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look Aussie you mean Aussie like Australians not the Aussies like Aussie and Harriet. Right okay.

• 38:24Gary O'Reilly?

  No the Australians the down-unders um then you've got chess boxing.

• 38:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Which has become yes you heard me no T in there chess boxing. So you have a round of chess you play play blitz chess right so you have a round of chess. And then they go and have a three minute boxing round, come back, round of chess, three minutes and they alternate. So you win by checkmate or knockout.

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 38:54Gary O'Reilly?

  It really, you have to have, uh, I think it's called an ELO, isn't it? The chess sort of gradient system. You have to have 1600 and above.

• 39:03Chuck Nice?

  It's pretty good.

• 39:04Gary O'Reilly?

  As a chess.

• 39:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Gary O'Reilly?

  And have been at least, have 50 amateur bouts as a boxer to compete professionally.

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This guarantees that you will lose your cognitive abilities.

• 39:19Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 39:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this, there'd be good data there. Find out what happens to your chess rating every time you get knocked out. And then this is, this is important concussion, uh, data. Oh my God.

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 39:31Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, the thing is, the, uh, science has taken an interest in chess boxing because it's the ability to flip flop out of a physical strenuous demand, like a, a round of boxing, and then sit down and be calm, cerebral and focused.

• 39:49Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Yeah.

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 39:52Chuck Nice?

  I don't, I don't, I don't know any real life situations where you might have to do that.

• 39:59Gary O'Reilly?

  I think it's, it's, it's how the brain.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  Hey, man.

• 40:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Works and copes with stress and moving, moving in and out.

• 40:06Chuck Nice?

  But right now I gotta do some calculus.

• 40:11Charles Liu?

  That's what happened to me all the time in high school, Chuck. I don't know what's wrong.

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Well played, sir. Well played.

• 40:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Says the geek in chief. So guys, we gotta, we gotta land that plane. So, uh, Gary, there's probably a longer list than we were even able to get to today.

• 40:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh gosh, yeah. I mean, the, okay, Conkers.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I mean, we're, we're out of time, Gary.

• 40:32Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, look, I've got to drop some names here.

• 40:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just in case the ones we've already discussed are not weird enough. Okay, go.

• 40:38Gary O'Reilly?

  A favorite of Queen Elizabeth the second and Sir David Attenborough. So I've got those two names in. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is a big fan of face slapping.

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. Well, okay.

• 40:47Gary O'Reilly?

  And the Wu-Tang Clan have a song about chess boxing.

• 40:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 40:51Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 40:52Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go. All connected.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, by the way, we've had the Jizza on StarTalk and that was many years ago in our early seasons. So, uh, we get around on this, on this show. So wait, so what's the favorite sport of Queen Elizabeth?

• 41:06Gary O'Reilly?

  She was a big fan of Conkers, which is a horse chestnut. You know those things in the autumn that fall off?

• 41:14Charles Liu?

  On a string.

• 41:14Gary O'Reilly?

  And you drill a hole, you put a string through, and then you try and smash your opponent's Conker with it. Conkers.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's a Conker?

• 41:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Another British sport.

• 41:23Charles Liu?

  It's...

• 41:23Gary O'Reilly?

  What's a Conker?

• 41:25Charles Liu?

  It's a horse chestnut.

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, what do you mean? You won't have to smash their Conkers with your Conkers?

• 41:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 41:32Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again.

• 41:35Chuck Nice?

  You had me at horse chestnut.

• 41:39Charles Liu?

  I would have more fun swinging cantaloupes at one another and having them smash.

• 41:43Chuck Nice?

  That's the Gallagher version.

• 41:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love it. It's a good one. Now, explain to everyone who Gallagher is. Yeah.

• 41:52Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, you gotta look up Gallagher.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you gotta look him up.

• 41:54Chuck Nice?

  There's no explaining him.

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look him up.

• 41:55Chuck Nice?

  If you don't know who Gallagher is, kids, just go to YouTube.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, look up any Gallagher clip. It'll say exactly what you gotta say.

• 42:03Chuck Nice?

  You'll see it.

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My favorite line from Gallagher, and then we gotta call it quits? He was the one that came up with, which was later then repeated by other comedians. I think he said, "If pro is the opposite of con, then progress is the opposite of congress."

• 42:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Chuck Nice?

  And, God, that saying just keeps getting better with each year.

• 42:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That came out of him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, guys. Gary, we gotta do this again, because apparently we did not exhaust your list.

• 42:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, we have.

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been StarTalk, the Weird Sports Edition. And, Charles, always good to have you, man.

• 42:42Charles Liu?

  Pleasure.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, guys. That's has been StarTalk Sports Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. Keep looking up.