Flop Off
01:15:33 Share

WNYC Studios is supported by Zuckerman Spader. Through nearly five decades of taking on high-stakes legal matters, Zuckerman Spader is recognized nationally as a premier litigation and investigations firm. Their lawyers routinely represent individuals, organizations, and law firms in business disputes, government, and internal investigations and at trial. When the lawyer you choose matters most. Online at Zuckerman.com.

Radio Lab is supported by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call the shots on your auto insurance too with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget.

Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. At Hotels.com, we know some travelers crave sand between their toes. Others want to be poolside with a drink on the way. And more often than not, those two people end up in a relationship. With the Hotels.com app, compare properties side-by-side across amenities like pool and ocean view.

Compromise isn't so bad when you're holding a Mai Tai by a pool with an ocean view, agreeing that, yeah, this is better than finding sand in awkward places for three days. Book now in the Hotels.com app and find your perfect somewhere. When raising a Pacifico beer with friends you just met turns into hitting up their friend's local art show, getting inspired to create something together, and painting your first mural, you found what was waiting for you.

Pacifico. Life's waiting. 21 plus only. Discover responsibly. Pacifico Clara Beer. Imported by Crown Imports Chicago, Illinois. Listener supported. WNYC Studios.

Okay, so here we are on the precipice of a new year. But before we jump into it, we wanted to just look back on all the stories and updates Radiolab has brought you this year. Harry Pace. Why don't we have like three movies about this dude? Rep. Myason. They just wanted to thank him. For keeping their kids alive. Placenta. When you're pregnant, you grow an entirely new organ. Breath.

Red herring. That conversation with Annie and Lulu about farts. Are you like anti-fart or something? Are you not?

One of my favorite moments in podcasting of all time. So many greats. In a way, putting red herring next to breath, it's like breath comes out one way and red herring comes out the other way. You know what I mean? Anyway, so why are we looking back? Well, it's that time of year, right? This is the moment when like you take stock of things that you care about and you want to financially support. But we've got a new way for you to do that. It's called the lab. And to be a part of the lab, there are three tiers you can choose from. So depending on...

how generous you're feeling or how much of a peak you want to get behind the scenes, you get

A lot of great stuff. We got some magnets. We got some embroidered retro patches. We got tote bags. And instead of ads, you'll get bonus content and you'll get extra interviews or invitations to members only events. You get a live stream following Jada Boomrod 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Can we just dwell for a second on the no ads thing? I have to say this is like revolutionary. I just like I breathe in more deeply even just thinking about it. The story just goes on.

So to take a look, see if you want to join, you just head on over to Radiolab.org slash join. If you do end up supporting us. We really appreciate it. So much. Yeah. And have a happy new year. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. From WNYC. WNYC.

I feel like I'm in an elevator or something. I feel like I'm in a lobby. Hi, this is Lulu. Hey, it's Latif. And this is the last episode of Radiolab for the year of 2021. And it's been a... Wow, it's been a year. Yeah.

Lulu, do you remember last year at this time? Yeah, there was so much burgeoning hope. Pfizer and BioNTech has shown early promise. Moderna announcing its vaccine. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine is being called a new weapon tonight. This time it's just one shot. Yeah, it was vaccine after vaccine after vaccine. Sputnik V vaccine.

Anything was possible. Sleeves were coming up, needles were going in. Vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don't get sick. There was this moment of excitement. Yeah, like we can lick this thing. Unless something very odd happens, I would say that it is pretty much over. And then...

And then we did it. And now it's all solved and everything's great. It's all over. Terrific. And we're not quite. I know. The pandemic just won't leave us. Right. I mean, some of it was not our fault. I mean, some of it was our fault as a human species. Some of it was not our fault. But regardless, as we've been looking back on this year...

the second one in a row that has felt like it hurt. Like it started with so much promise and we're ending with a whimper. We realized that, you know, this year has been a flop. It's been a flop of a year. Yeah. So here at Radiolab, as this crappy year comes to a close, we decided to pay homage to the flop itself.

This very common and yet very seldom celebrated human experience of flopping. So, without further ado, we bring you... Not just one, not just two, but... Six flops. Six flops. Flops that are in the ocean. Reverse this.

Flops that are on basketball courts. Flops that are on stage in front of millions of people. Flops in the White House. But not in the way you think. Six flops of various shapes, forms, and velocities. Hoping that as we flop our way to the end of the year, it might be nice to flop with others. And it might give us a little insight into what's on the other side of a flop. ♪

So who has our first flop? I have it. It's me. Hello. Who are you? My name is Sindhu Nyanasambandham. Welcome. Thank you. What you got? Where are you taking us? We are going back to the early 2000s to the show...

American Idol. Of course. Which was one of my favorite shows growing up. Yeah. And, you know, you probably know how it's set up. It's pretty simple. Contestants go in front of these three judges, sing a song. Sometimes they're great contestants.

Sometimes they're really not. Yeah. And the performance that I remember most from the show, it's actually one of these flop auditions. And that's the one I'm going to tell you about. Okay. So this flop happened in September of 2003. Hello. How are you doing? Oh, great. Thank you. You're doing great? Great to see you guys. This skinny Chinese guy wearing black pants and this blue short-sleeved shirt walks on stage. William, why are you here?

I'm here to sing to America. Answers a few questions from the judges. What are you going to sing? I would like to sing Ricky Martin, She Banks. I hope you all enjoy it. Okay. All right, let's go. And start singing. Talk to me, tell me your name. You blow me off like it's all the same. You let it fuse and I'm ticking away like a bomb. Yeah, baby. He's...

bouncing around in this like kind of awkward way. You can tell he's trying to dance, but it's not really working. And eventually, the judges cut him off. William, it's one of actually the worst auditions we've had this year. I already gave my best and I have no regrets at all.

And for some reason, this flop by this guy, William Hung, more than any other flop in maybe the history of the whole show, it went viral. Let me just say I have no professional training in music. Talk to me, tell me your name. There's an SNL sketch about it. People made parodies.

Making fun of his voice. He's not from China, he's from Singapore. Because he seems really poor. His accent. I'm ready to give my best. Even his teeth. I'm going to take some carrots and tomatoes and put it with the William Hung chopper. What did you think about all this when you saw it happening? I mean, I was just a kid. I probably just laughed with everyone else. But, you know, watching it now, it really just makes me sad. What is sad about it?

I mean, I think why he was so laughed at was because he sort of fit this like nerdy Asian stereotype. Yeah. And like I grew up in this place that was...

filled with people who are Asian American and, you know, just like a very immigrant community. And as an immigrant watching TV and like, especially a show like American Idol, it's sort of this way to answer this question of like, how am I supposed to be here? Like, what is liked? You know, what's like, what's good, what's lovable. And American Idol is the cleanest version of that because you literally get someone just like

going and being themselves and then three people being like that was good i like this i like what you're wearing i like how you talk i hate this yeah exactly that's so funny because it's yeah like an american idol it's like your american paragon of what it is to be an american right right um and you know william hung didn't fit the part right he didn't fit

And, you know, I thought when this whole thing happened, you know, when America essentially told him, William Hung, you don't belong. I thought he'd just, like, disappear. But he sort of did the opposite of that. Oh, William Hung's coming. William Hung in the house. He's coming overnight. Cultural phenomenon, ladies and gentlemen. Which was so strange to me. William Hung!

Like he goes on all these big talk shows and performs She Bangs in malls, concerts, sports games. He does a halftime show at a Golden State Warriors game, a concert at the Rose Bowl with like Janet Jackson and Maroon 5. It's like he's reliving the nightmare of that American Idol audition over and over and over again. Yeah. And I just like...

I never would have done that. You know, I was the kind of kid who, if I got one answer wrong in class, I wouldn't want to go back the next day. And this guy was like going back to school, jumping on the desk and just like shouting the wrong answer again and again and again. It's like he's immune to being humiliated. Yeah. And I've always wondered, like, how? How did he manage to respond this way? So...

William, how's it going? Good. I called him up. Just a moment. Let me fix my background. Yeah, sure. He's 39 years old now. Lives in Jacksonville, Florida with a friend. Okay. After the whole American Idol thing, he tried to become a high school teacher, but that didn't quite work out. And now he's a professional poker player. Did you just make your bed? Yeah. Okay.

I asked him how he ended up auditioning for American Idol, and he said it's not like he grew up wanting to be a performer. He moved to the U.S. from Hong Kong when he was 10 and had a really hard time fitting in. You could say that I'm more of a loner. My best friends were my teachers. He got bullied in middle school. Probably just because I'm Chinese or Asian.

Because I was the only Asian in my class. And college wasn't much easier. I didn't know how to make friends socially. But then, one day, he's walking into his dorm...

And this poster catches his eye. A picture of a guy with a microphone, the red curtains behind it. And it's his poster for this talent show that his dorm's holding. And he decides on a whim to sign himself up. It's like a new opportunity. He used to love doing karaoke with his parents. The way I saw it was I had nothing to lose. He chooses Ricky Martin's she bangs. I just try to mimic Ricky Martin's dance moves. Practices. So like, she bangs, she bangs. Yeah.

And when he gets on stage, I see people were dancing with me. They were so excited. And then at the end, people were giving me loud cheers and applause. Like, yay! Woo! And he ends up actually winning the whole show. Wow. I was like, what? Really? Yeah, he wins a DVD player. Nice. So it's one of those nights that you feel like you were on top of the world. Yeah.

Later that week, he's watching Fox News, which he watches every night. And he sees an advertisement for auditions for American Idol. I was like, wow, maybe there's an opportunity there. And, you know, he's still like riding off the high of like winning this school talent show. I could win big, right? Nobody knows. He's like, you know what? This is the next step. I'm going to sign myself up. Hell of a next step. Yeah. And you both saw how this went.

Though... It was so weird and funny. Like, Randy would hold this white sheet of paper... It's interesting to hear William recount what happened. And then Simon was frowning like this. He was crossing his arms. He seems... No. Well, that's a surprise of the century. Almost amused.

I know I didn't do well on the audition. I was nervous. My movements were very jerky. If you use the standards, saying good, it wasn't good. But I could live with it. It's okay.

Tell me more about your emotions of that day. And we talked about all of it. You know, the jokes people made about him. Did you at any point feel humiliated? The big performances of shoe bangs. I was just excited. And when I asked him about people making fun of him. I kind of just like one ear in, one ear out. But that doesn't hurt you? That doesn't hurt your feelings?

No, they want to laugh at me. That's fine. Because they enjoy watching or listening to songs like my, to my, you know, to my style of she bangs, whatever. But I wonder if you could talk about even one specific moment that either was painful or humiliating or like angering to you.

I really don't have that, Sindhu. And that's a good thing. There were some interesting experiences for sure, but it wasn't like angered. How do I say it? It's not so impactful that I had to think about it every day. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's just amazing because like humiliation is a really hard feeling for most people. And it definitely is for me. And I, you know, I fear it a lot. And, you know, that is one of the reasons I want to talk to you is because it seems like you're sort of impervious to it or that you're able to perform some type of alchemy. I was asking him in all these different ways. And I was really starting to feel like he was somehow immune somehow.

Until through all of this, did you ever cry? I asked him this. No. Not once? No. Not for American Idol, no. What's something that has made you cry? Ooh.

Very hard, very hard. There were a few moments that made me cry. I remember one day I spent a lot of time after teaching, preparing the next lesson. This was after the idol stuff settled down. He was training to become a teacher. The next day I was like, okay, these things will go well. I was optimistic. But then, you know, the kids just decided not to follow me. You know, they

They saw me more like a funny entertainer, celebrity. They didn't see me as their teacher. And then my master teacher called me out and step aside. Like I'm taking over. It wasn't a good scene. It was an embarrassing scene to me. So yeah. And then he told me he would fail me if I don't improve. I cried after I got home.

Because that really hurts. That's not a fun thing to hear. Yeah. It felt real, you know? That's like, oh my gosh, I did all this and you say this is not good enough. Okay. I felt that was a bigger embarrassment compared to my American Idol flop. Why did that feel like a bigger flop to you?

Because I worked so hard to get to where I was. I was ready to graduate. I seriously considered taking on a high school teaching position after I was done. But after that experience, that changed my mind. It's like, okay, I don't want to go through this ever again. Yeah. I mean, I guess that makes sense that that feels more like a flop because...

I guess with a flop, you need to have a ton of expectation and hope and, you know, you have to care a lot. And then you have that crushed with like a huge disappointment, like a total failure. And I guess this experience you had as a teacher does fit that definition way better. Yeah, I agree. But the thing is, like for me, there's like one more component to the definition, which is like,

The audience, like the group of people who are watching you fail. Yeah. Yeah. And to me, like, that's almost everything. Like, it would matter so much to me that American Idol was in front of millions of people. But you don't seem to weight that component very much. And I just like, why do you think that is?

Well, like I mentioned, for my American Idol audition, I just focus on having fun, enjoying the moment, and that's it. Yeah. Well, I guess another way to ask this, so the story we're making right now together, it's actually like the first ever story where my voice will be a big part of it. Oh. Millions of people will be listening to this, and that's...

really scary to me. Like, I, you know, I guess I'm, I'm asking you all this from a place kind of wanting to learn from you. How do you not let the fear of judgment from all those people? And really for you, not, I mean, not just the fear of it, but like the actual judgment. How do you not let that totally crush you?

Oh, I like this one. So I would say I choose to embrace my identity. I choose to embrace my past, my present, my future. It's a choice. I feel like I'm not the norm, whatever that means. Back then, I was not the norm. Now, I'm still not the norm. And that's okay.

Did you find that helpful? I mean, kind of. I don't know. I mean, I think what I realized is that what he did to this question and kind of all of my questions. Yeah. Is he sort of just rejects them. Yeah. And I think it's because these questions kind of assume that what the judges or the audience, like the people out there, you know, America, they assume that what America thinks matters. Yeah. Yeah.

And I don't know, I just don't think that that's how he operates. I pay my dues. Time after time. I've done my sentence. And I feel like every time I listen to one of his tracks. And bad mistakes. He's actually made some albums, which I've kind of been listening to a lot. It sort of reminds me that William Hung is a way to be in this world. I'm through. We are the champ.

Producer Sindhu Nyanasambandam. When we come back, way more flops. Aquatic flops, Olympic flops, NBA flops. More flops, a lot more flops. We are the champions. We are the champions. No time for losers. Cause we are the champions of the world.

WNYC Studios is supported by Zuckerman Spader. Through nearly five decades of taking on high-stakes legal matters, Zuckerman Spader is recognized nationally as a premier litigation and investigations firm. Their lawyers routinely represent individuals, organizations, and law firms in business disputes, government, and internal investigations and at trial. When the lawyer you choose matters most. Online at Zuckerman.com.

When raising a Pacifico beer with friends you just met turns into hitting up their friends, local art show, getting inspired to create something together, and painting your first mural, you found what was waiting for you. Pacifico. Life's waiting. 21 plus only. Discover responsibly. Pacifico Clara Beer. Imported by Crown Imports Chicago, Illinois.

I'm Maria Konnikova. And I'm Nate Silver. And our new podcast, Risky Business, is a show about making better decisions. We're both journalists whom we light as poker players, and that's the lens we're going to use to approach this entire show. We're going to be discussing everything from high-stakes poker to personal questions. Like whether I should call a plumber or fix my shower myself. And of course, we'll be talking about the election, too. Listen to Risky Business wherever you get your podcasts.

Next flop comes to us from editors Soren Wheeler and Alex Neeson. All right, Neeson, you there? Yeah, I'm here. Did you have like a hot start that you had in your head or should I just kind of get us kicked? I mean, I have some stuff that I want Lutza from Lulu to watch. Oh, okay. That'll be. But you can go. But go. Let's go. Ready, ready, ready. Okay. Yeah. So, so I guess I'd say that this one is about the flop as a lie told through the physical movement of bodies. Oh!

on the basketball court. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. Do you guys even know what a flop is in basketball? A flop? No, I don't. You want to school him, Alex? Yeah. Let's just, like, show you what we're even talking about. So this is a clip of Marcus Smart, guard for the Boston Celtics. He comes to the basket for a rebound. And...

And... Oh, man. That was extreme. He seems to, like, bounce off the Atlanta player. Does this flailing pirouette out of bounds. Yeah. It's like he decided to do high jump in the middle of a game or something. Yeah. So that's a flop. It's when there wasn't a foul or sometimes any contact at all, but the player falls and flails dramatically to try and get the ref to think there was a foul. Ah!

Yeah, it's like a putting on a show. Like, oh, ow, he got, you know, like, oh my God, he pushed me over. I feel like I know of this in soccer, but I didn't know that it was a thing in basketball. No, it's a thing in basketball too, for sure. It always has been. Yeah. But right around 2012 or so. And look at our national television big board. It seemed to be sweeping the NBA like some kind of plague. Are you kidding me? We got flopping as a major issue and we're going to the big board? At that time. Oh my God.

The flops were just getting like especially flagrant and people were tired of seeing them. In part because it looks stupid, but also because people thought it was bad for the game. That it's disgusting, cheating. And it needed to be stopped. I would like to eliminate it from the game.

But then, along came a guy named... Are you serious? Are you really that clueless? Mark Cuban. What the hell is that? You don't ever use facts. You don't ever use substance. The guy from Shark Tank.

And he's desperate to put an end to the madness. And he also happens to be a billionaire and owns the Dallas Mavericks. Yes. Yeah, well. I have to say, in my head, I imagine like a limo rolling up on your lab. No. Mark Cuban just emailed me. That's how it started. So this is Peter Weyand. He's a biomechanics researcher at Southern Methodist University. So you just opened your email one day and it was just like, Mark Cuban. One evening, I was like, oh. And I showed it to my wife. She's like, this is ridiculous.

really, Mark? And she said, yeah, I think it is. You should probably answer that. That's funny. And basically he says, look, this flopping stuff is getting out of control. He was concerned about the integrity of the game. You know, we got all these big, huge guys that are sort of falling over all the time and flailing. And so I'm going to throw you a bunch of money and you are going to prove scientifically that these guys are flopping.

So sadly, since I am a Shark Tank fan, I've never met Mark Cuban. That's Ken Clark. He was, at the time, he was a graduate student in Peter's lab. And so he and Peter got together, thought about it, and they're like, all right. This will be fun. We have the equipment. We have the tools. So let's do it. Absolutely. All right. So what did you do? We crashed into each other over and over and over.

We played human billiards. Yeah, exactly. The idea was if they could figure out what a normal non-floppy collision looked like, well, then they could spot when something fishy was happening. So we set up big crash pads in the lab. They bring people in. They put like the little sensor things on them. We have a motion capture system. They got the cameras and they just have people run into each other. Well, to do that... Max, Max, Max...

in a whole variety of ways. Subjects of different sizes. A little guy runs into a big guy. With different incoming velocities. You try it really fast, now you go really slow or you just push on them. Well, what are you doing today? Oh, we're just putting on some, you know, video game suits and running into each other the whole day. Yeah. They even built a metal and plastic person. They called it Gus. Gus was, he was just a galvanized structure with the,

piece of plywood in the middle. To like knock him over. I wanted to put a San Antonio Spurs jersey on Gus, but the members of the crew said, no, that's pushing it too far.

So they do all these tests and here's what they come up with. Guys falling on their butts all the time, that's not actually a reliable sign of a flop at all. If a player has their feet planted and their weight on their heels or whatever, it doesn't take much force to knock them over. It's not much. It's not much at all. If they don't move their feet, bam, over they go. Yeah, absolutely. So that's going to actually happen a lot in the natural course of a game. But the thing you need to watch, according to Peter and Ken, is...

The arms. All of the excessive upper body motion. The histrionics. Yeah, the histrionics, really. The natural reaction when you're hit and falling backwards is for you to take your arms and reach backwards to brace for impact. And so if a player's flailing with their arms above their head all crazy. Nine times out of ten. That's probably a flop.

they're putting on a show. Problem is even that doesn't really help much because a guy could actually get fouled and sort of flail his arms just to like draw attention to it. Right. So they write this whole report up. They even made like a video and they give it back to Mark Cuban. Yeah.

And this was not what Mark Cuban wanted to hear. He was hoping for more, something more concrete and actionable to sort of stamp out this epidemic of faking. But, you know, we can't change the science. So the whole experiment was...

Well, I mean, yeah, maybe a little bit. But the interesting thing was that Peter and Ken told us that a scientific hard science spot the flop kind of thing actually might be

possible in the not-too-distant future. It's not far-fetched to think that we could have instantaneous velocity on all 10 players on a basketball court at any given time. And all you would need is just like a tiny little bit of math. You know their mass. You know mass and velocity. You know instantaneous momentum. You go off some basic assumptions that momentum in a collision is going to be

Then you just have computers that are sort of tracking and crunching all those numbers. Based on the sizes and the velocities, incoming and outgoing. And if there's more momentum coming out of that than going in. You just send a little signal down to the ref right there on the court. Beep, beep, you know, bell goes off in the ref's earpiece and says, hey, that was a flop. Just like, eh, a big old X was like, that was fake. Yeah, then they just put it on the big screen right over there. Like a family feud when you get it wrong. Yeah, that's right.

To think that someone like Mark Cuban would spend his infinite amount of dollars to find out the core cause of flopping instead of why his team can't win a championship again seems to be a bit of a waste of money, don't you think?

Okay, so after talking to Peter and Ken about what they did, we were kind of letting ourselves imagine, at least in theory, a game without flops. So we decided to put this idea in front of my friend Tyler Tynes. He's a sports writer at GQ. And he's going to be talking about how to make a game

And I was like, Tyler, like, what do you think? I don't think anyone in this country, if they have any sense about themselves, would look at you in your face, sit down and tell you they enjoy flopping. But flopping is part of the game. It's always been part of the game. And he was kind of squishy on this. Well, I think the thing in where I come from is that flopping by nature is sucker shit. It is naturally detestable.

So he hates flops. But at the same time, part of the beauty of the game for him is just letting players play it however they're going to play it. And so the issue actually isn't with the players. The issue is with the league that incentivizes this type of entertainment. So Trey Young or Draymond Green or Marcus Smart flails a bit differently than maybe some of our heroes of old. The reality here is that

It makes money when you flop. The teams are better if you flop and you can get a three-point shot. We have incentivized sports in America to be like, win, win, win, win, win, by any means necessary. But flopping is by any means necessary. And so is the core of this actually the players? Well, but if you could decide whether the system is going to incentivize a flop or not, right? For sure. You could change the system so it doesn't incentivize it. I'm just kind of curious, like, would you rather see...

a game with no flopping? No. And actually, we heard the same thing. No. It just doesn't feel right to me, you know, having grown up playing basketball. From both Peter Way and Ken Clark. No. I don't think so. Not in my mind. I don't like adding police officers to the sports that I watch. You know what I mean? Like, we have changed how we talk about basketball. And flopping, and the policing of flopping, is a part of that. Where...

The way—like, how you identify who a basketball fan is now has changed. Who enjoys basketball? Who runs these teams? Who now are the presidents of these front offices? These are white kids who wanted to be Michael Jordan and Allen Iverson and never could. And now they have the cultural cachet and the power to say what is important within our athletics. And it is how we get to something as serious and non-serious as flopping.

where it should be just a part of the art form. It should just be fun. But instead, it's become policed. Now you're a bad player if you flop. Now you don't care about the art of basketball if you flop. Now, even for someone like me, I'm calling these people out their name because they flop, right? It's not the trueness of how we believe basketball is supposed to be played. And so, to me at least, the issue is that, why don't you just care if these boys are playing basketball or not? I hear you.

It's interesting because when I came into it, when we started working on this story, my feeling about flopping was pretty much centered around James Harden. Notorious flopper. And he would look so smug about it and it would just grind my gears and I would just be so incensed by it. So when we started working on this...

It was really a moment for me to sit and think about like what kind of basketball game I actually want. And so I arrive at this place where I'm like flopping just feels like it's just part of the theater and the drama of like what makes watching a game so exhilarating. Watching James Harden figure out how to be an insurance salesman with these flops is

It was kind of magical because you knew he was going into the game and had no care about the rules of the game. And that level of anarchy, that level of just self-assuredness and that you were going to break the game in some respects, that was cool. And so my thing is that I don't care if you flop. It's a part of how you are going to get over in this game. I ain't going to say I respect the thing, though.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's grabbing his head. That's a flop, dude. He hit his head. Come on. He just knows how this game is. He didn't throw it. Chips his feet, his legs forward, and loses his balance. That was a flagrant flop. Oh, he got a foul. Are you kidding me? He went over, and then he decided. ♪♪

Hello? Hello, lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo. Hi. Everybody's here. Next, producer Matt Kielty and contributing editor Heather Radke. Yeah, so what do you guys have? I actually feel like this is going to be close to Lulu's heart. I've been thinking about Lulu the whole time. Really? It's about...

A ragtag group of women making their way in the world today. I already hate it. I don't know. I already hate it. Watch if it's out. Just kidding. All right. So we're going to take you back to 2001. To a group of ragtag young women. Total ragtag.

One of whom was Kate. Kate Darmody Burke. How do you want me to... However you want. Ashley. I'll go Ashley Gursick Murphy. I'm Shelby Klopak. And Shelby. Oh, gosh. I screwed that up. So, Kate, Ashley, Shelby. And all three of them were lacrosse players. Okay. So, lacrosse...

It's like sticks with little nets. You throw a ball around. Okay. So all of them had finished high school and they all wanted to play lacrosse in college. But, you know, they weren't going to play at like... Lacrosse Nation. University of Virginia or... On top of the mountain once again, Maryland. University of Maryland. Is your national champion. Yeah.

These very storied programs. They weren't getting recruited by these top schools. They kind of figured they would just like play at some small school, stay somewhere near home. Yep. Well, so insert Kelly Amante-Hiller. You could call the Mia Hamm of women's lacrosse. Two-time player of the year. National champion at Maryland. She came to one of my soccer games. She was going around the East Coast trying to recruit women to come play for her at Northwestern University. But the problem was...

Northwestern didn't even actually have a team. Yeah, because Northwestern, it's in the heart of the Midwest, just outside of Chicago. And back then, lacrosse was not a Midwest sport. It was an East Coast, like, Mid-Atlantic thing. But Northwestern had hired this, like, first-time head coach to basically build a program from scratch. She was, like, 26, right?

Oh, you're like a little kid. But when she went recruiting, she would ask these girls point blank. Do you want to be a national champion? And we're sort of like, I mean. What? I remember giggling and laughing, but there was no smile on her face. I thought this lady is crazy slash I love her.

So she managed to get a team together. Just picture a lot of really intense, short East Coast ladies making their way to the Midwest. She was pulling people from everywhere. She got these twins who she found on the street just jogging. Asked them if they wanted to play lacrosse. They thought lacrosse was a town in Wisconsin. They don't even have a practice field. They practice on the flag football field. But early on, she sat him down and she said to him, we will be national champions.

And we need everybody to buy in. You know, I say jump, you say how high. She had us boxing and doing yoga and meditating. They did these things called affirmation circles. We would go around and tell each other positive things about us. You know, oh, you're so fast, Jenny. Your shot is so strong, Ashley. And Kate told us... We drank the Kool-Aid. She told us we could do anything and we really just believed her. And so, that year...

This group of mostly freshmen hit the field and they lost a lot of games. They go five and ten. Five and ten. Five wins, ten losses. Five wins, ten losses. It's pretty bad. Their second year...

They go eight and eight. Third year, they go 15 and three, which means they made it to the playoffs, but they ultimately lost in the quarters to UVA. I went to UVA, so I could be go who's. But then their senior year, they go undefeated. And they actually make it to the national championship game where they have to play UVA again. Are you building up a Mighty Ducks here? But then they get to the finals and blow it? Like, is that the flop? No, no, no, no, no, no.

They win. Northwestern University Wildcats. They win. They win the championship. The bench clears. First time in a championship game and national title winners. They're like hugging, crying, jumping, laughing. I mean, it was the most incredible. You know, I now have two children and that's pretty incredible. But truthfully, the most incredible experience of my life. We went nuts. And then I will never forget being in the locker room

And Kelly talking about just how proud she was. And then we get to go to the White House. Which is where this story sort of flips. It's July 2005. They go to D.C., they get all dressed up, and they go to the White House. It smelled and felt distinguished. You know, it's the White House. They get to see Lincoln's bedroom. They walk around the Rose Garden. And then they get ushered into this room where in the corner... There's almost stadium seating kind of bleachers. So the whole team goes over, takes their place, and then in walks...

George W. Bush. He's got on a suit and tie. Comes over, congratulates the team. They give him a couple of lacrosse sticks. And then some photographer says, okay, everyone look up here. Three, two, one.

A few days later, Shelby gets a call on her cell phone. But I didn't recognize the phone number. And I picked it up and it happened to be some reporter. I don't really recall from where. And then she was asking me, you know, just different questions about winning a championship and going to the White House. And then all of a sudden...

It took a turn because she said something of, did anyone say anything about your foot attire? I said, excuse me? And the reporter went on to say, well, in the White House photo, you were clearly wearing flip-flops. And that could be considered disrespectful or inappropriate. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm sorry, I have to go. She hangs up and she's like,

Oh, God. Because she wasn't the only one who was wearing flip-flops that day. No. Kate was one of them. My cell phone starts ringing at five in the morning. It was a reporter asking her about her flip-flops. She says a day later. The story broke. First it was in the Chicago Tribune. Then USA Today. White House flip-flops flap. NBC. White House footwear fans flip-flop kerfuffle. ESPN. NPR. CBS. Ladies, good morning to all of you.

Kate and Shelby were on the Today Show. And their mothers are on the show. And then a shoe expert. Saying that we should have been wearing a full-heeled closed-toe shoe. All because of this photo where a few young women are wearing flip-flops. Wait, actually, can you show me the picture? Yeah, hang on.

Or maybe just, maybe Google. Yeah, hold on. I'm just searching lacrosse White House flip-flops. Are you searching? Okay. You'll see the picture. Okay, I see the picture. It's a totally innocuous. Such an innocuous picture. It's like such a generic photo op photo of the president holding two lacrosse sticks.

And then all of these women... But look at their feet, Latif. But it's just so nothing. Oh, is it, Latif? Is it really nothing? Yeah. It seems so nothing. Wait, do you guys, as humans, Matt and Heather, do you actually think it matters? Really? What do you mean? Matters in what sense? Well, with Talatif just being like, oh, who cares? I don't think it matters. Like, I don't think they should have been shamed for wearing flip-flops at the White House. But I think...

I think it very much matters that these things happen. That they were. Because it tells us something about us. Yeah, and so to that point, we ended up calling up... Oh, Alexis is back. I'm back. Oh, Alexis is back. Hi. This presidential historian, Alexis Coe. Because as we kept reporting on the story and trying to answer Latif's question, why does this matter? We kept coming back to the scene of the crime.

The White House. If we just go back, let's go back to like the early, like the formation of the White House. When Washington first took office, the White House was an idea that they would get to. So at first when Washington was president, he lived in New York. And then in Philadelphia. But he knew that there needed to be a permanent residence for the president. Presidential house, as they would call it. And his big thing was whatever they end up building. There can be no markings of monarchical rule.

Like, no gilded doors and a big arched gateway. He was like, I'm Mr. President. Right. It's not a presidential palace. Because the idea is that the government, the democracy is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people. But Washington was in a tricky situation because he liked the finer things in life. He liked sumptuous fabrics, plush suits, purple carriages. The example Alexis gave us that's, like, excellent for this very thing is...

For his inauguration. He orders a simple homespun brown suit. But if you look down at his shoes, he's wearing diamonds. What? Shoes with diamonds on them. What? He's wearing diamond buckles. Wow, GW. And so under Washington, what we ultimately end up with

for a president's home is definitely not a palace, but it's also, I mean, it's a mansion. When it was built, it was the biggest house in all of D.C. It's like a conflicted, confused space all the way through. You know, the White House is built by enslaved people. The first handful of presidents besides Adams are all slave owners. They're like fancy Southerners who are trying to figure out how to also be slaves

Democratic, which is like these are like the primordial problems of American democracy, like who's who gets to be inside of it and who's not inside of it. It's like all the stuff that's kind of like baked into the the formation of the country is also baked into the formation of the White House. And so this is where it gets kind of fascinating because.

For example, both the House and the Senate have rules for dress code. Like they have dress codes. They have rules for decorum. Like the White House doesn't have anything that's codified. And so what the White House becomes is this space where in each administration, they can sort of dictate what the White House ought to be and kind of like demonstrate what they think is

our country should be. You know, it's played out in the Christmas, like what Christmas trees the first lady chooses. And, you know, I was immediately thinking about that. Melania's trees. Yeah. And there's like, you know, George Bush banned blue jeans in the White House, but Obama would let staff workers work without their suit jackets on. Yeah. Like all these questions of formality and taste are really questions about like, what is the White House? And in some sense, like, who is America? Yeah.

And the lacrosse players, when they flopped onto the floor of the White House...

They were kind of unwittingly walking right into the middle of this question. You know, there wasn't a set of rules where it felt like we were doing something wrong. That's Kate again. I had no idea until my brother was the one that yelled at me. I mean, they thought they were wearing nice shoes. Yeah, you know, the more I reflect on it... Shelby again. I wonder if anyone would have even thought twice about what a men's team wore on their feet. And I think one of my favorite things about this whole thing...

is that when these women went on the Today Show, when they were basically asked to appear on national television to apologize for having worn flip-flops to the White House, this ragtag group of women who had won this national championship against all odds, they walked up onto the stage at NBC's Studio 1A in New York City and

wearing matching flip-flops. At any point when you got to the White House, did you look around and say, ooh, maybe this is a little inappropriate? Not at all. No? No? And that was, you did that on purpose. That was sort of like... Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. They asked me, now what makes a champion?

Let me tell you, we stood tall, put up a fight. No fear, that's what champions look like. So all my girls make them look twice. That's right, that's what champions look like. All right. Okay. So next up, we are going to a place where flip-flops are not only allowed, they are celebrated. Okay. The pool. Fun. Fun.

Fun is not exactly the word I use to describe this story. It's a – it's kind of the story of an ethical conundrum. That's how I would put it. And it involves an Olympian, a global pandemic, and –

because I roped him into it, our colleague David Gable. Oh, and a flop, too. All right. Lachif calls me, and he said, have you ever heard of Greg Louganis? And I said, I'm a gay man who's 64. Of course I've heard of him. Okay, so...

We're talking about the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Welcome to day four of our coverage from Seoul, Korea. Greg Louganis is both a platform and springboard diver. And at the prior Olympics, he gold medaled in both. No diver has ever won back-to-back gold. Greg Louganis is expected to do that here in Seoul. Going into the 1988 Olympic Games, I was the favorite. That's Greg. And then in the prelims, fortunately it was prelims.

Something Greg never expected to happen happened. Yeah. We're at the diving venue, Chompshell Indoor Swimming Pool, the preliminaries of the men's three-meter springboard. Greg has done eight dives. He steps up to the board for his ninth dive. Wait, I feel like I need a visual. What does he look like then? Oh, my gosh. He's like Hollywood handsome. Wavy, dark hair, fit body like the Calvin Klein ads in Times Square.

And you can see his concentration. Like, the whole world falls away, but the whole world is actually watching him. And then... I got set. Takes three steps. Jumped up off the board. About six feet up in the air. Swings his legs over his head. Starts a backflip. Goes around once. Twice. And then I heard this big hollow thud. And I go crashing into the water. Oh, God.

You see people sitting in the stands and their hands are over their mouths in shock. I was thinking, what the hell is that? And then I realized that was my head. Now we'll go back and look at it in slow motion. What happened?

Greg did not get his weight far enough over the end of the board. Watch his hips in relation to his heels right there. His weight is too far back. Kind of amazingly, he just pops up out of the water. Yeah, and he swims to the edge of the pool. I made my way over to my coach, Ron O'Brien. And the coach is pushing the blood up into his dark hair so that the blood running down his neck isn't showing. Turns out he split open his scalp.

at the back of his head. So he walks away from the pool, gets brought back into a training room. A strong medical staff was there. And they stitch him up. Four temporary stitches. The first emotion that I felt was I was embarrassed. You know, and of course the world's watching. But there was one thing the world didn't see. And that's actually what drew me to this story. Because inside this very public moment, this very public flop, was a secret that Greg wouldn't actually reveal until years later.

You hit your head and there may have been blood in the water. Why were you terrified? Because Ron O'Brien and myself were one of the few people in the stands that knew that I was HIV positive.

The man considered to be the greatest diver in Olympic history has announced today that he has AIDS. So when Greg finally reveals his status to the world in 1995, it was huge. Please welcome Greg Louganis. He was on all the shows. He was on Oprah. Greg has come forward. Sally Jessie Raphael. He is publicizing a past. And in these interviews, the same questions or kinds of questions keep coming up. How would a smart guy like you

Practice unsafe sex. On Larry King. I'm not following. How'd you get AIDS? And then, once you knew you had it and you were going to the Olympics, Barbara Walters asked, why didn't you tell anybody? I didn't anticipate hitting my head on the board. I didn't anticipate, you know, blood. That's something that you don't, I didn't think about at the time.

But you didn't tell the Olympic Committee. You didn't tell anyone. I was encouraged not to. Greg told Barbara that he had told his coach, but almost nobody else. Because, like, if he was HIV positive, he wasn't allowed at the country. That would have been a—he probably would have been barred from the Olympics. He probably would have been— Wait, wait, wait. He was in Seoul, but if he had disclosed his status, he wouldn't have been allowed? Yep. Why?

Wow. There was a list of countries that had it announced, you may not enter the country if you test HIV positive. Right. And if he had announced it while he's there, he would have been sent home immediately. But Barbara Walters just kept asking him. When you hit your head and there was blood perhaps in that water, what did you think?

That's where I became paralyzed with fear. I watched that going, stop beating this guy up for fuck's sake.

10 minutes of his life. Yeah. I mean, it is hard to watch. And I think even then, like people mostly knew that HIV couldn't even be transmitted that way. Like the pool was so big, the water was chlorinated, you know, so it does, there's part of it that does feel like it's just like everyone ganging up on the gay guy. But there is, I don't know, there is one part of it

That feels like a fair question to me. And that's like when I think about the doctor, right, the guy who was stitching up Greg's head, he wasn't wearing latex gloves.

And so he was stitching them up. Like if he had pricked his finger with that needle, he could have contracted HIV. To me, that moment, that is very morally complicated. Yeah. One of my fears was, you know, well, what is my responsibility knowing that I'm HIV positive? Yeah. You know. Was that like a, like, was that like a, like a, like a. No, it just is. It's like, what do I do? Well.

What's the next right step? Did you know the doctor wasn't wearing gloves? I didn't see it. I had my face down and I didn't have eyes on the top of my head. And that's just it. You don't know what you don't know. You're dealing with the situation in that moment. What is your, like, just walk me through your internal monologue. Well, you know, the thing is, I mean, one thing that I learned is

Just through practice, through my years and years and years of performing, is always asking myself, what do I have control of? Usually not much. Okay, there were no latex gloves. Okay, that's not in my control. And so it's basically letting it go.

After we talked to Greg, I just like I kept thinking like he's he's right. There's nothing he could have done about the accident. Nothing he could have done about the doctor not wearing gloves. But I did keep thinking like he did have control over whether or not he told the guy. Yeah, but you're making it sound so simple. Put yourself in his shoes, Greg.

Put yourself in his speedo and think about what just happened, all that's at stake. Right. You know, when he came out as HIV positive and gay, I'm relieved and feeling like I'm not the only one who's thinking about this kind of thing. I think me and HIV positive people around the world, because I tested positive in 87, a little earlier than he did. And I got this job anyway.

to sing at Tokyo Disneyland and I needed this job really badly. And I was very familiar with that list of countries that you're forbidden to enter. And Japan is on there too. I'm coming into Narita Airport outside Tokyo

in this very formal, very polite, English but Japanese thought kind of sign. It says, hello, if you are HIV positive, please step over here and register. And I remember walking under that going, you have got to be kidding me. I am not saying a word. So when I'm hearing Latif go back about what were you thinking at the moment,

Well, you kind of think about that moment every day of I'm in the kitchen and I'm having dinner with friends and I cut myself and what do I do? I'm not going to announce to everyone I'm HIV positive, but I'm going to make sure I clean it up, run it underwater, get it bandaged up, and have my heart stop pounding. So to zoom in on did you make the right choice in that moment when you're getting stitched up is an understandable question. But, I mean, think about...

All the secrets you got to keep because you have to keep them. The part of that that I like, yeah, that I like really hadn't considered was this feeling that it's like this one moment. However, you know, highly public it was. It was just like one moment in a string of so many moments like this. Yeah. So I guess to end the story of this moment.

What happened next? They checked him over. Okay, so Greg finishes getting stitched up and he goes to talk to his coach. He said, you know, you can pack up. You don't have to get back on the board. We could just go home. But I was in fifth place.

I turned to my coach and, you know, I said that we've worked too long and hard. He said, okay. They're not going to go home. They're going to keep going. So he gets back on the board. I heard an audible gasp from the audience. I remember watching it and I just held my breath for you to take that next dive. Yeah, because you didn't know what was going to happen, right? Oh. I didn't know what was going to happen either. But it's the Olympic Games.

First dive, nails it. It was the highest scoring dive of the Olympic Games. Does the next dive. And he's going to the finals. Right. Next night in the finals, he wins gold in the springboard. And then... The final dive of his competition. He's up for gold on the platform. His last chance. A dive takes less than three seconds. Oh!

Mugenas wins his second gold medal of these Olympics. You did it, buddy. Becoming the first man to win both the platform and the springboard competition in two Olympic Games. Coming up, two more flops, one into the water, and one out of it. Lulu, Radiolab, that was me flopping. It's a flop show. Flop show. All right. Our next flop comes to us from... Flippity floppy. Okay. Flippity flop. Yeah. Producer Rachel Cusick. All right.

I'm going to start by telling you about a time when I didn't flop, but I wished I had. Oh, the flop that got away? Exactly. All right, Rach, please explain. Okay. So last summer, I was in Utah with a friend and it was just brutally hot. It was so hot that we were in a parking lot and the temperature read 114 degrees. That is my friend who I was with. Her name is Tamar. And Tamar being Tamar, she went onto Google and found

a public pool for us to go to. So we drove a few towns over, put on our bathing suits, and walked out on the deck. And it's clearly like the place to be on a day like today. Pool noodles, slapping the water, and like all this laughter. And the centerpiece of it all was the diving board.

Now, Tamar is like immediately giddy. These are my people, the people at the diving board. She leaves me behind and gets in line with a range of six-year-olds to 12-year-olds. She got onto the highest diving board and jumped. And she just looked so happy, like so perfectly carefree. But that's not how I felt at all. Why? Why?

Growing up, I just was the one in my family who was the heaviest and in my friends who was the heaviest. And so as I grew up, the pool was where I was at my most vulnerable. Like there wasn't any hiding from clothes. And so I kind of trained myself to be as small as I possibly could at the pool. So that day in Utah, I'm at a crowded pool of strangers. And I'm like, how can I get myself in that pool as fast as possible, but also like as quietly as possible?

I'm like looking at the pool, searching for the corner furthest away from the eyes of the diving board. Like the cool lifeguards, they were off to the left. I got to like stay away from them.

Meanwhile, I was 25 years old. I'm like a great person. Like I should not be strategizing away from the lifeguard in the bucket hat, but that's where we were that day. And then I see that there's like awkward kids in the corner. So I head their way. I look both ways to make sure no one's watching me. And then slowly, carefully, like I'm putting a potato into a pot of boiling water. I slink my body into the pool. So it's just disappeared. Totally.

You this entire time, Rach, just so you know, were just kind of like bathing with all of your body submerged except for your shoulders and your head. It's like an alligator. You look kind of like, not sad, but just let down. I feel like almost you shut down in a way. And she was right. Like, I felt defeated. Like a kid who got bullied by myself. Yeah, that's not good. It wasn't good.

So that was what happened back in July. And then this flop show comes along, and pretty much the minute we get this prompt—

I turned on YouTube and started binging videos of belly flops. And I was spending hours doing this. That was postcard belly flopping. I will show you how to do it from any height. I watch people who are giving tutorials. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Oslo, Norway, World Championship of Duds. I learned that the Norwegians have a national sport dedicated to the belly flop. I became...

Obsessed with the belly flop. And I didn't even know why. Like, I'm staring at these videos of belly flops, the way that you stare at your fridge when you're really hungry and you don't even know what you need to eat. But then I watched this one video. It's these manta rays that jump out of the water and then they like kind of sail and then they plop down like a pancake. The higher they leap,

The bigger the bang. These manta rays and their belly flops, they are the opposite of me in that pool last summer. And watching them, I was like, I want someone to teach me to do that. All right, after you, folks. Okay.

And so... Okay, let's go change. We'll see you in a minute. Annie McEwen and I... You never know where life will take you. Drive up to Boston and belly flop with the ultimate belly flopper. I'm Chris Miller. I'm Lulu Miller's father. And I think that's why I'm here. But it is true that I have been belly flopping for...

About 70 years. As I know, you guys were like, we need someone. And I was like, I've got a real B-lister. Like he's got no plans. And it's one of his only. Oh, it smells great.

So the three of us meet up at a hotel pool. We're out on the deck and even though it was November, the pool was empty, like no one was there. I still felt that feeling from the summer lurking. But honestly,

Honestly, the minute that feeling bubbled up for me, Lulu, your dad, was like, You want to have a demonstration first. Can you demonstrate to start? All right. It's just a matter of starting to dive, but not arching. And he just kind of flings his body. That is the most amazing scene! And it just is, it's dazzling. It's awful! Really?

And then it was my turn. Oh, God, am I going to? Oh, this feels like big leagues. So I kind of stand like a plank with my feet at the edge of the pool in the deep end. Don't bend your knees. Chris is coaching me from inside the pool. You don't have to control anything on your body. You just do it. And then I kind of surrender to gravity and then just let my head get carried down. Oh, no.

And the first thing I heard when I popped my head out of the water was Chris cheering me on. And so there was this weird tension between like pure pride and pain. You don't get like a smack in the face. You get a smack in the head. You know, there's always a price for pleasure. But soon the pleasure of the flop outweighed the pain of it. And so I just kept flopping. All right.

How many times did you belly flop? I would say at least like 15 to 20. What does your body feel like right now? My body feels like it's been smacked by like one giant ball. You know, and that means you're doing it right. Every time I would emerge being like, that was the most painful thing that's ever happened. Hey, your chest is getting a little red there. Try it again. Wee!

But we do it again. And again. And again. Now you can do this with running. I understand less and less. Meanwhile, Annie's standing on the side being like, I have no idea what's going on. You guys are massacred! But it didn't matter because it felt like I was making up for all the years I didn't get in the pool that way. One, two, three. And I was feeling freer. You're hurt.

Eventually, I became one with the flop. And Chris and I took on the pool, just like the Manta Rays. Should we do a double flop? Okay. And when I emerged from that last flop, I felt, at least in that moment, triumph.

But also the worst headache I've ever had in my life. Oh, God. Yeah, I think there's got to be a PSA announcement at some point. My entire front of my body is popped blood vessels. Like, my legs are still blue. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, my God. I, like, called my doctor the other day, and I had to, like, have the most shameful intro on the phone to be like... So I was, like, repeatedly belly flopping on Monday night. And I was like, oh, my God.

And I just want to know, like, do you think I need to come in for a scan? But I think it's okay. She thinks it's fine. And I just need to take it easy the next few days. All right. Thank you, Rach. Thank you, Dad. I think. And for our final flop, I'm going to flop us right on out of the water.

on the land. It is time. What does that mean? It is time to look at a fish flopping around awkwardly on land. A fish flop. Okay. Okay. All right. So, you know, this is kind of. I don't think I've ever actually seen this before. Really? No, I don't think I've seen that. Okay. Well, allow me to conjure it for you. Picture a beautiful scaled creature lying on a dock, trying to move, heaving up,

And then flopping down. And then heaving up. And flopping down. Getting nowhere, you know? Like a last gasp kind of thing. Exactly. And I think since the first time I saw it, it's just been burned into my brain as the saddest, most pathetic movement in nature. However, a few weeks ago... Rolling on up on the shed aquarium.

I met someone who watches fish flopping almost every day, and she completely reframed how I see it. My name is Rachel Zak, and I'm a senior aquarist on the special exhibits team at the Chet Aquarium. Hello, turtle. Adorable turtle. So Rachel walked me around all these massive tanks of clownfish and sharks. And I'll show you the ribbon eels. Sea dragons and puffer fish. Grumpy frog.

And first of all, she explained that every species of fish has its own little distinctive flop. I had this question last night, would an eel flop? Or would it just like wriggle like a snake? Oh no, they flop. And the thing that really holds them all together is that none of them, none of these flops are what she would call pathetic.

In fact, when she sees a fish flop, she thinks, That's an awesome behavior. That's exactly what they're supposed to do. It's part of how they survive. Flopping is effective. Like a fish that you drop on a pier flops enough to make its way to the end of the pier. I mean, there's an achievement there. So there's a real, there's skill, there's technique. There's just a ton of power.

It's just flailing, right? Like, how much technique is there? Well, the voice you just heard is Alice Gibb, a biologist at Northern Arizona University, who for the last decade has been filming fish flopping on desks in her lab. So let me talk about flops. Yeah. She filmed all different kinds of species. And when she played the videos back in slow-mo and watched what's really going on inside that motion, she saw that the fish...

is doing something that seems impossible. Have you ever watched somebody dribble a basketball and they start it flat on the ground and they tap it just gently? And if you tap it and tap it and tap it, you can start the ball bouncing up and down in bigger and bigger and bigger arcs. So the fish somehow... Bounces itself. And at a certain point, they kind of jerk up onto their tail. It's almost perpendicular to the ground at this point. And then...

They launch forward, often into the water. Wow. Fish didn't learn to flop because we dropped them on decks, right? Fish learned to flop for many different reasons. Grunion, which is a kind of fish, actually flops out of the water for their baby's sake. So they'll like flop up

up onto the sand, lay eggs so underwater creatures can't get them, and then flop back down into the water. They are rock stars. Or there are other fish. Killifish. That flop because they live in these tiny little pools, and sometimes there might only be one in a pool. And the males, they need to find females to breed with. They'll just kind of flop like 10 times the length of their body into another pool. In a human-centered world, when people talk about

I flopped down on the couch or something seems to imply maybe an uncoordinated movement that then is followed by no movement at all. Yeah. Right. Like it sort of implies that you've hit a dead end. But that's not what's going on with the fish on land. Right. Because even the flops, which I think are called flops because they appear uncoordinated, they have the ability to maybe take something that could be a dead end and turn it into another chance. Yeah.

But like a fish flopping back into the water, like how often could that possibly work? Okay, well, probably not that often. But sometimes, but not that much. Yeah. But, you know, the thing it makes me think of is like when you think about us, like we were ocean creatures at the beginning before we became land creatures. And for us to have gotten to the land at all, ever,

Like, that was probably the first way it happened. Like, we're only possible because of fish flops. That there was this moment, there was this pivotal fish flop without which we would not exist. Boom. Right? Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. We don't need to say any more. Okay. All right, that'll do it. ♪

This episode was reported and produced by Annie McEwen, Sindhu Jnanasambandam, Soren Wheeler, Alex Neeson, Tanya Chavla, Heather Radke, Matt Kielty, David Gable, Becca Bressler, Rachel Cusick, and Pat Walters, with additional sound design and mixing from Jeremy Bloom. Special thanks to Caitlin Murphy, Dana Stevens, David Novak, and Pablo Pinero-Stillman. And

thank you for listening on what was a probably felt like a very flimsy premise at the beginning but maybe was we'll be back with more episodes next year next year bring it on

Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasir are our co-hosts, Susie Lechtenberg is our executive producer, and Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Cusick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhunyana Sambandham, Matt Kilty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Khari,

Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.

With help from Tanya Chawla and Sarah Sonbach, our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Chabot. This is Ryan Percy calling from Stouffville, Vermont. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Thank you.

Science Reporting on Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.