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The digital duo Josh and Chuck deconstruct your world.
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Recent Postings by Category
BrainStuff
- Thank You and Best Wishes to Marshall Brain
- Contest – Design a $300 house and win $25,000
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The Coolest Stuff on the Planet
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Keep Asking
- Why can a 5 foot 8 inch man dunk a basketball on a 10 foot rim while some people of taller stature can’t?
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- How do we know the age of the universe?
Stuff Mom Never Told You
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- How to Get Your Wedding Announcement into The New York Times
Stuff to Blow Your Mind
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- Blow Your Mind: The Skin We Live In
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Stuff You Should Know
- Stuff You Should Know at SXSW
- The Southern Death Cult, the Maya and Georgia
- Deformed Baby Spider Brains
The Stuff of Genius
CarStuff
- Listener Mail: What’s the world’s largest engine?
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How-to Stuff
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PopStuff
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 70: Weddings
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 69: Perfume: The Culture of Scent
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 68: Astrology: What’s PopStuff’s Sign?
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
- Good News from the Oldest Mayan Calendar
- One Year Later: Colony Collapse Disorder
- Who Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Stuff to Change the World
- Who will own the Arctic?
- Obesity: The New Global Crisis
- Bill Gates Makes For A Pretty Decent Cartoon
Stuff You Missed in History Class
- A Visit to Clybourne Park: The Hansberry Connection
- A Visit to Clybourne Park: This Old House
- Butch Cassidy: Should we read between the lines?
Chuck Bryant
No wires. This is not a marionette. Pretty cool!
Josh Clark
It was pretty cool.
Chuck Bryant
I love that. Then they did scenes where they were riding bicycles. In some cases, I think they had to have – I think they call it Muppet switching – where they had a full-body Muppet that they would occasionally have to use the marionette wires.
Josh Clark
Or they would have a little person in it.
Chuck Bryant
Or they would have a little person, or they would use a remote control, which came a little bit later.
Josh Clark
Also, this is my favorite. When they had a Muppet driving a car, the car was actually being driven, so the Muppet would be in the front seat. The Muppeteer would be crouched down in the back seat operating the Muppet. Then there would be a little person in the trunk driving the car with remote control.
Chuck Bryant
Looking at a video screen.
Josh Clark
They’re actually extremely sophisticated. What they have to do – this is incredibly complex. You have to know exactly what’s going to happen in every scene. Then you have to build the set to accommodate a human person and a Muppet and their Muppeteer, so there may be several different levels. This sounds very dangerous.
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
Josh Clark
Then the Muppeteer as well, they had – and they have had since the 70s – monitors strapped to their chests so they can see what their Muppet is doing.
Chuck Bryant
Which is all backwards?
Josh Clark
It is backward. So they have to know if they are looking at the screen and they want their Muppet to move left, they have to move right.
Chuck Bryant
Very complicated.
Josh Clark
I imagine that the wiring, the neural connections of these people’s brains are very unusual. If you could slap them in a wonder machine and take a look at them next to one of ours, I bet you’d notice dome real distinctions.
Chuck Bryant
Yeah. We should write an article on Muppeteer’s brains. That would be good. You’re dead on. One of the Muppeteers – there’s been about 100 of them – one of them Dave Goelz said. “It takes maybe five years to do everything without thinking about it. In fact, I still find it difficult.” Frank Oz said, “What you’re doing is so complicated that you really don’t have time to think about what you’re doing. First your body understands. Then your mind grasps what you’re doing, sometimes.” So very complicated stuff!