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Hello, everybody. We have a book coming out. It's called Stuff You Should Know. Colen an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things and you can preorder it now. That's right. It would mean a lot if you supported this book. You're going to love it. It's really great. It looks great. It smells great. It reads great. And how about this? Why don't you support indie bookstores by going to indie bound dog? Or even better, why do you support black owned businesses?

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Welcome to stuff you should know. A production of I Radios HowStuffWorks. And welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant right there in Jerry's, out there somewhere and stuff. You should know how to fold and talk, Ed.. So Gerri's in her office now? Yeah, I'm in the stuff you should know studio. That's right. I'm in Florida.

You're at your home studio or a home studio, right? You get like eight of them. You're Elvis, right? Which room is closest to me? And I'll just go in there where we're recording from today. And now Jerry is is like a ghost haunting the computer in here, recording it remotely.

Right. She's like, amazing. Oh, what's that? Yeah, she's she's like a ghost. You said it best. And she just texted me two minutes in and said, your levels are good. So it's great to go back to sleep. Jerry sounds about right.

So I was talking to Jerry earlier and she just reminded me we're talking origami today. She just reminded me that my first trip to Japan, I brought her back a paper origami crane and that she still has it. And I was thinking about that trip, Chuck, because on that trip, you, me took me to Japan.

Remember when you guys liked each other, you and Jerry? Yeah, we still do.

It's that crane that's keeping us French. That's right. But on that trip, one of the places you me took me was Hiroshima, right?

Sure.

And it is one of the neatest places I've ever been. I know I've talked about it before, but one of the things that you'll see there are just mounds and mounds of origami cranes. Yeah, like cranes. Like the bird. Basically the quintessential origami model. Not like building cranes. That's not what they're folding. You never can tell these days.

You know, Bob, the builder had a pretty good run for a while there, so it could have been. That's true.

But apparently one of the reasons you see those cranes is because there was a little girl from Hiroshima named Sadako Sasaki. Oh, man. The story. Yeah, I know. It's very sad. So she was, I think, to when the the U.S. dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and she was exposed to radiation at that tender young age and developed leukemia. And she died at age 12. But before she died, she started this project of folding a thousand paper cranes for in origami, which was kind of this long standing thing that was associated with like good luck or honor or dignity in hers, was that if you there's another one that if you complete a thousand cranes, you you have a wish.

And so this little girl, Sadako Sasaki, her wish was for world peace, but she died before she could complete the cranes, the thousand cranes.

And that is upsetting. But to end it on a more heartwarming note, her classmates got together and folded the remaining cranes in her honor when they were buried with her, which is at least a slightly uplifting ending. Right.

So when you go to Hiroshima today at this peace memorial that they've built, like a whole section of the city where the bomb went off has just been turned into this anti-nuclear, anti-war peace memorial. There's just tons of cranes that were created by schoolchildren kind of in honor of Sadakat Sasaki and for this wish for world peace. And if you stepped out of the studio and followed me into the living room, you would see a thousand paper cranes that you me folded just for me to, you know, who here at work has done that?

Who.

Yes. You know, which which one of your colleagues do you think would do this? I don't know me and I honestly don't know there's so many varied, complex, rich people that we work with that I can't even begin to guess I'm going to hazard a guess and say, Ben, uh, I could see been doing that.

What about the other Ben? Probably not.

OK, Pam Peacocke. Oh, OK.

Yeah, makes sense on our graphic designer who is an artist obviously. And I asked Pam actually if I could read her Facebook post when she completed it, because I think this is instructive on in and you tell me whether it jibes with you experience, OK, because it sort of is instructive on the art of origami. And it's more than just folding paper. It is meditative and it can be relaxing and healing and all those things. So Pam posted a photo of the final project and said this is what a thousand orgasmic cranes looks like and a pile on my coffee table tonight.

I met the goal on August 2nd. Twenty eighteen to fold a thousand cranes within one year's time. There were several reasons I wanted to take on the challenge. The meditative quality of folding origami to practice dexterity and fine motor skills, the fun and making a flat piece of paper into something dimensional and new to make a whole bunch of something. There's a certain satisfaction in that, but the biggest reason was to cultivate more discipline within myself. To commit to a long term ongoing project and see it through to completion is a big deal for me.

And she goes on to say she has a pretty long history about getting pumped up about a project and then abandoning it. And she found with two months left, she only had I'm sorry she had five hundred left to go.

Yes, ten months. Well, I think she just took some time off. Sure.

Well, yeah. I mean, that's that's how you're supposed to do it. You're not supposed to just sit there and do it in one fell swoop. It kind of misses a bunch of the point, you know. Yeah.

She said that she went several months without it, realized she had a couple of months and the clock was ticking. And she said I made the decision to recommit and push myself instead of letting it go. Like so many other things, I know I still struggle with those issues. But as an exercise growth, I feel like I've leveled up a bit and continue applying the strength and skills to my art, personal and professional lives.

Very nice. And she's like, and check out my finger muscles that do her.

Yeah, you miss middle name is stick to it oftenest. So I don't think she benefited in that sense, but there's definitely like a meditative aspect to it. And like when she was doing it for me was like I thought it was very sweet. And then the more I learned about it, the sweeter I realized how, you know, it was. It's I mean, to do that for somebody is pretty cool. And to do it for yourself to like Pam did is pretty neat as well.

I think it was also for you.

Me, she probably, you know. Yeah, I'm sure she got a tremendous amount out of it, too, you know, but it was one of those things where she just kind of work on it when she felt like, you know, there wasn't any rush or anything like that. So it did have like kind of a meditative thing for for sure. I used to think, stick to it if this was a weird middle name.

But when I saw it written down, like in the context of her name, it just look great.

You're like, I've been pronouncing that Alice all these years. That was so weird. So Pam said something that I saw other people mention, too, about Ogami is that it's transformative. Like she's taking a piece of paper and transforming it into something. Yeah. And there's this really amazing. It's so there's a definite Zen quality to origami paper folding. Right. And there's a documentary out there called Between the Folds and it's of course, of course, a PBS documentary, but it has this kind of Zen vibe to it, too.

It's really, really mellow and low key. But some of the stuff they're talking about and showing in there is just nuts. And I'll I'll talk about it from time to time. But there's this one guy in there named Michael LaForce, and he describes origami as a metamorphic type of art where like with painting, you're adding paint. So it's an additive kind of art with, you know, sculpting from like marble. It's a subtractive art with paper folding and origami.

You're you're taking the same thing. And it's the same thing that that is the finished product. You're not adding to or subtracting to it. It's still just a piece of paper, but you're transforming it into something else. And that is kind of the essence of origami itself.

Yeah, this one was one that I was so sure that we had done it before because this just smacks of stuff. You should know.

We love to cover Japanese topics, first of all. But I don't know, it just felt like surely we've done this. And I had to look I looked probably five different ways just to make sure that we hadn't done it.

Like what kind of smart way would we title this? And. Well, that's what I thought that was.

My fear was that it would be like called folding madness or something stupid like that.

Did you search folding that? So I just made that up, but what if that's the one that we already released? It did seem really familiar, but I think I'm probably just thinking about Bonzai, maybe, which I think is similar in a way, and not just because they're both Japanese disciplines, but I feel like the meditative quality and the the care and the precision and the spiritual aspect. I think they have a lot of overlap there.

One of the big differences, though, is that the origami doesn't involve plant torture like Bonzai does.

Well, in bonsai, there's no paper torture involved. So that's true. That's true. So when we talk about origami, we're actually talking about this is that is technically a subset of this larger thing that actually grew out of Ogami and ended up forming this kind of umbrella art form called paper folding, appropriately enough.

But origami, everybody kind of associated with Japan.

And the weird thing is, is when we talk about economy, which, by the way, we haven't really said it, but it's taking usually one sheet of paper and folding it in certain ways so that so that it it it becomes some other representation of something else or shape or something other than that. But the point of origami is that this this shape or this new represent a representation of like an animal or a person or something. It's all made just by a single sheet of paper typically.

And folding that paper. That's the whole key. Yeah.

And one of the other keys is, is that you're not gluing things. You're not cutting things. It's really just folding. And it can be very basic.

And I tried my hand at it today just to make some very basic things.

And I definitely get the I get the meditative aspect, although I was just doing it to try and do something sort of quickly for work and not in the style that you would normally do origami. Sure. I could see how if you applied that at your house, put on some good music, maybe turn the lights down a little bit, shut the door, keep keep your family far, far away and your animals far, far away.

I could see how it could accomplish that goal for me. I might start doing it.

Some hadn't thought about keeping the family far, far away because you me was when she was folding that thousand cranes, I'd be like, what?

No, you are now what number you are now.

Every time she called it a new one. Yeah, I think she probably was just an autopilot. Would you do. And you what you do over there, is this a crane to you making an ice cream for Howard. Yeah. Yeah. That would drive me nuts.

Yeah. So we should probably go over a few the terms, the term itself. Origami they say comes from Audu, which means to fold pretty, pretty smart and commy which is paper. So Oryu Commy apparently was the original term for it and it's kind of I guess just became origami, which as far as I could see does is actually not it's not actually a word. It's kind of an offshoot of Oryu and Commy.

Yeah. And if you go to I mean, you can make origami out of anything. They they talk about sticky notes and just copy paper, but you can actually buy Commy. OK, am I online. If you want to go into an art store these days, it might not be so easy to go into a store, but that's what it might be called. There are other kinds of paper that we'll talk about later, but paper is what you need.

If you want to be a paper folder, you don't need a bunch of other stuff, which is a very low fi art form. It's super cool in that way. And what you end up with is called a model. I guess you could call it an art piece or something if you're a little highfalutin, but it really just called models.

Yes, that's any any finished origami product. It's called the model. There's also so this article says you need two things for origami.

You need a sheet of paper and some imagination. But I would I would beg to differ. You don't even need imagination because there's so many what are called origami designs out there that are basically step by step illustrations of the different folds you need to make. So if you want to say make origami donkey, you as long as you have the paper in one of these designs, you don't have to have any imagination whatsoever.

Yeah, and when I was first reading this to you, I thought, well, you need paper and fingers.

But I realized that was quite ableist actually, because there is actually a style of origami from a British man named John Smith in the late 70s called Pure Land or Pure Origami. That is very basic and was created in part. So people who had some sort of physical impairment could still realise the joy in the meditative qualities of folding paper.

I saw that, too. That was the one that appeals to me the most because it's so simple. Yeah, same here. Also, check the. You know that the world's greatest archer is was born with no arms. I think we talked about that, right? I don't know. The Olympic torch thing? No, no, definitely not. No, because I just saw it this past Sunday, so it's not possible. We did. You just had a memory from the future.

It's pretty impressive. I'm in the Christopher Nolan movie, so I can't wait.

But I have to say, man, I am very disappointed to see movies starting to come out and the trailers saying only in theaters. I'm like, I didn't realize we were at that point again yet.

Well, I mean, his new movie, Tennet, is one of the it was one of the big ones back in the early spring when they were like, he's going to put it out in theaters. Even if he has to bump it a month or two, like he's not going to do an at home thing. He's not going to wait till next year. Yeah. And I think they're doing like pretty big time spacing and stuff. But I go into a movie theater now and it's one of my favorite places to go.

I know, like we talked about the other day and sneezing, how it's just so great to go see a movie in the middle of the day, you know?

Yeah. Can you imagine seeing a movie now and you hear someone sneeze? Oh, I would be out of there so fast I just start crying on the way to the movie theater.

I would not be at all comfortable about that right now.

So I think if I actually I think we should probably take a break. We've been yammering for 15 minutes. Oh, no, we've been it through the first two paragraphs.

So we'll come back after this and we'll talk about paper. Very key to origami right after this.

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So. All righty, it's paper you did paper doesn't like to be paper, did not like that. I thought about you earlier, by the way, sidebar. I was watching some old Mitch Hedberg stuff, and I immediately was like, oh, man, Josh would love this.

Somebody wrote in to say, You guys, have you heard about it? Was it was it based on a listener mail? Now, I don't know how I think it was just in my feed on my Facebook page and. Just I don't know what popped up, it was so good, his joke about the belt and the belt loops, I don't know about that one. What is the belt is holding up the pants, but the belt loops hold up the belt.

Who's the real hero here?

That guy was priceless. So good.

So paper is what you're going to need if you want to practice origami. And China invented paper and about 105 A.D., but it was a luxury item. They weren't so much into folding it or at least into artwork. They might have folded letters or maybe they just scrolled.

At that point I saw that they folded stuff into like gold paper gold nuggets and then set them on fire is offering offerings to ancestors.

So maybe Proteau or origami? Yes, definitely Proteau.

But in the 6th century, Buddhist monks introduced paper to Japan. It was pretty rare and expensive here as well and was used for, you know, special occasions and stuff like that. But as paper, it got a little more ubiquitous. Then they decided that they could start folding it in interesting ways and it wasn't a waste. Right. And it was affordable, I guess. Yeah.

As it became more affordable, folding became a lot more widespread. And as it became more widespread, people started doing kind of interesting things with it. Like you're seeing at first, it was just kind of reserved for special occasions, like weddings or there's one called the slide day. No shit SAHD. I was thinking of Shardey and it's like a zigzag pattern that they use to kind of denote like, like religious places or altars or something like that. And then somebody said, well wait, you can make a frog out of this, check this out.

And I think we're going we kind of took off and that's how it stayed, at least in Japan for several centuries, where it was they knew how to make a kite.

They knew how to make a box. They knew how to make cranes. Cranes were huge. Sure. And in fact, one of the first books on origami was called Folding One Thousand Cranes to see some zuda or yukata a thousand crane folding. So that was a big deal already all the way back in the 18th century. But finally in the I believe the 1930s, I think around 1937 there was a guy whose name was Akira Yoshizawa, and you cannot talk about origami or paper folding or paper or folding or Japan or shoes without mentioning Akira Yoshizawa.

This guy was this he was he single handedly took what it was a centuries old schoolchildren's craft by this time by the 1930s, rolled around that had been static for centuries and said, I'm going to turn this into an art form.

And he did. Yeah, big time. And by this point, it was widely referred to as origami, I think in the late 80s, I'm sorry, late. Seventeen hundreds it was still called or DeCota. And that was from that that book about the thousand cranes. But by this time it was origami. And he was a laborer for most of his life and he was a hobbyist as far as origami went. But he started writing out these diagrams and basically sort of these how tos.

And if you've ever looked at an origami book or something online, you know, if you don't know how to do it, there are these very simple, depending on the ultimate model that you want to end up with, these diagrams that you can just follow along these lines and fold and just kind of copy what you're seeing. And he was the first person to do this and eventually publish these in the 1950s in books.

And it was a really big deal, like it was already a popular thing in Japan. Previous to that, it was actually in Spain and some other parts of Europe thanks to the Silk Road. But it really sort of popularized that worldwide, I think, after his book.

Yeah, well, even before then, I think there was a magazine that celebrated like the New Year by commissioning him to do like the 12 signs of the Zodiac and origami. They put it on their cover. And so you can imagine for Japan, everything that had to do with origami was like, look at this kite that our kid made and now it's hanging on our refrigerator to the 12 signs of the Zodiac. And these things actually look kind of like a monkey.

And the fox looks amazing. And it's just what this guy did just completely blew everybody away. And very shortly after that, he devised that system, started having exhibitions around the world and became like this, this revered master of origami, like the first true origami artist, the one who said you can make an art form out of this.

And he decided to live like this kind of poverty. I don't want to say poverty stricken, but the adjacent poverty, adjacent life, very nice chunk where he's a. Ordered himself selling soup door to door. He sold something called Sudani, which is like a kind of a seaweed condiment that you put on rice. He thought he'd sold that door to door and he just made enough money to support his habit of origami. That's all he wanted to do.

But what's amazing about him is he was like the preeminent origami artist for decades. He made at least 50000 different models and different stuff to he. It is just look him up right now, Akira Yoshizawa. And he never sold a single one of them. He would lend them out for exhibitions. He would give them as gifts. But he never made a dime off of his origami. Yeah, and he's one of those that his reputation reached a point where he literally could have gotten rich selling his his models in the end.

Oh, yeah, for sure. But that's just he just wasn't about that. I love it. Very cool. Very, very origami esque.

Oh yeah. Totally. He's like, I'm not going to sell this stuff. No, that's not the point.

You know, what about ten grand for that rhinoceros is like maybe in the back room or meet me in the back room. Some of those animals, I mean, not just from him, but when you look up, you know, kind of the most amazing origami and and there are a lot of animals. We'll talk about that. But it's it's really just astounding. It is astounding.

One of the ways that he was able to take origami from a kite and I know I keep going back to a kite, but, you know, that's one of the base forms kind of where it was that taking it from a kite to like he very famously made this this gorilla. I think it's a gorilla that you almost always see in the background behind. It's it's a very good it's an ape. It's either a gorilla or or a Tyrannosaurus rex are going to be like, yeah, it's either gorilla or a car.

Right.

But but when he makes something, you can you know exactly what it is. But one of the things about his particular kind of art was that it wasn't like every single detail is captured. People have taken it to that. Paper folders have gotten to the point where it's like that guy, Michael Phos. Yeah. Created a huge easily two foot alligator, which is almost several metres, at least by my estimation, out of a single piece of paper.

And it has all of the armor, the scaly armour involved. Like there's a lot of detail. That's not what Yoshizawa was into. His was much more expressive and almost impressionistic. But you knew exactly what it was when you looked at it. And he was able to do this through a technique that he created called Refolding. Yeah.

And what folding is how you can round things out. You're obviously wetting the paper and that's how or, you know, dampening at least you don't want to get it too wet and you can manipulate it a little more and you can round things out and make it look a little more like a sculpture. But I really liked his style. It wasn't because it didn't seem like, boy, I'm out to wow you and impress you with just something that's so detailed it'll blow your mind.

They were detailed, but it wasn't like that other guy that you were talking about, Michael Lothos.

Yeah. Which is, you know, they're both great, but it just seemed a little more intuitive and organic in terms of what Yoshizawa was doing.

I think his technique screams. Oh, you like that? Not for sale. Yeah. Get out of my kitchen. And why were you here in the first place? Exactly. They're like, I work for Time magazine, but. But help yourself to some soup that I sell door to door. Exactly.

So I guess we should talk about, you know, if somebody has if someone's listening to this interest has been piqued and wants to know how to how to fold them, we should teach people, I think. Chuck.

Uh, yeah, well, we'll tell you the basics.

At least there are, you know, many, many, many types of folds. But you mentioned the Kate Bass or the gatefold. And I said that's one of the basics. And it is there. You can oftentimes start from a bass, which is just sort of your starting shape. That's your your point where you start and then get more detailed from there. And there is the bass, the fish bass, the bird bass and the frog bass.

And those are listed in order of difficulty from easy to hard.

There's a really great site called Paper Kawaii. It's spelled like Hawaii, but with a K, it means cute in Japanese. And the the person who runs that site has made a huge depository of resources and instructional videos and diagrams and everything you could possibly want. But she says that there's twelve bases or at least she instructs you on making twelve bases so it gets even richer than those four. Yeah.

I mean I got the the picture that that was the four most basic original bases and. I was probably sure that there were more, so there's some that there's some types of models that tend to pop up more often than others and animals are frequently created. And like I was saying, like, it's not it's not necessarily like you're going for ultra realism. It'd be impossible to make it ultra real because I don't know if we said this yet. Like, you're not supposed to use, like, scissors or glue or tape or anything like that.

Some people still use scissors every once in a while, but definitely you don't use glue or tape. That's not what's holding these together. These models are held entirely from different types of folds that you learn from doing origami. Like it's not just fold this direction, fold that direction. There's like reverse folds, there's sinks. There's all sorts of different interesting stuff you can do to make the paper take a certain shape that you wanted to and then also to hold itself in shape permanently from that point on.

That's right.

And there are a lot of ways that you can go about it. I would imagine that you me probably did it on like a coffee table or something, maybe.

Oh, no, but it should do it in her lap. OK, well, they could do it in the air. Yeah. I mean, that is when you're at that point then you're pretty skilled as an origami artist. If you are just using your hands and you are not putting it on anything hard, then that's pretty skilled. But I would say a beginner should probably use a desk or something. Oh yeah. With a little help, maybe a clipboard if you want to do it in your lap.

Sometimes people will use paper clips to help really get a nice fine crease in there. Yeah, I got the impression that that's allowed. Yeah. I mean anything's allowed. Come on. I mean any time you're talking about something that Japanese people do, they're not going to go in there and start screaming at you. Right.

If you're like to do it right, you may be at risk of dishonoring your ancestors, but nobody's going to judge you personally for it.

Yeah, but I would imagine a paper clip, too, might help if you don't have fingernails, if you're a fingernail biter and you just have just stubby nubs like I used to, then you should you should maybe get a little paper clip out that might help you along.

I've also seen them like a wooden letter opener. Yeah. Anything I've seen people use that to make a really, you know, tight crease or to poke of a fold into another fold, that kind of thing.

Hmm. What nothing. Did I accidentally get sexy or something? A couple of times. That's all right though.

You got gotta I got to keep moving along. So nothing to see here.

We should talk to you about a few of the different categories of origami. There are many, many categories that you can focus on if you want to kind of drill down into a specific discipline. One is called modular or origami, and that is when you have and I would encourage people, obviously not if you're driving, but to kind of look at pictures and follow along with a lot of these because it really drives it home. And it's also beautiful to look at.

But modular is when you use different sheets of paper, but you're generally kind of making the same shape and then bringing those together to form some larger piece from those same shapes.

Very beautiful. It really is. And with modular Chuck, that's one of the few types of of paper folding or origami that uses more than one sheet.

Right? Well, it's mind blowing about origami is when you're looking at just about any type aside for modular, despite what it looks like, it's probably just one sheet of paper. Yeah, it's just amazing. Some of the stuff that people are making is just ridiculously amazing.

You got action origami, which are kind of fun because these little guys can move sometimes. Obviously, it's going to take human manipulation. They don't just move on their own. Like you can't make a wind up toy or anything like that. But you can flip a bird wings sometimes a bird's wing or you might be able to make a frog that jumps.

Yeah. Or remember the Origami Fortuneteller, that little folded thing that you sure you could learn who you're going to marry or that kind of thing? Oh yeah. What what was that called? The Origami Fortuneteller, from what I saw.

I mean, we didn't call it that in elementary school. No, I could not find it. I could not find the name of it.

I know what you're talking about. What was it? Yeah, those are always fun.

There's something called Masche Mansion Apartment. Shack house. But I don't think that involves paper origami, but it's a similar game. Yeah. That Geovani plays that with her guest at the end of her JBI club episodes, the smash game. Sure. A lot of fun.

So that's different from the origami fortune teller. Yeah. Has nothing to do with paper. Yeah. You always end up married to Rob Lowe somehow, if you're lucky.

Well, that's called the fantasy game.

Let's see, what else can you do with Ogami people? Make origami out of dollar bills.

Yeah, I see those. I used to get those occasionally. When you if you've ever you work at a cash job like I worked at a convenience store, you're going to get some wiseacre that pays for cigarettes with a couple of crayons, some wiseacre people make them out of sticky notes like post-it notes is what most people call them.

From what I saw, it basically just ends up being Pikachu every time. Oh, yeah, because it's yellow and small. So, yeah, jewelry.

If you you can make jewelry or origami, I think you can certainly buy that kind of thing on Etsy.

And then one of the other styles that you see are schools is tessellations. And these don't know if it's a if it's a school in and of itself, but it's kind of like modular or origami where it yields like kind of repeating 3-D pattern, but it's typically made from just one sheet folded in, just not so intricate ways. I saw when a 3D hydrangea pattern on this little sheet that the person in the picture is holding. It covers about the top half of their hand.

But there is, I think, at least a dozen little hydrangeas folded into it and repeating, rotating.

It's just and then when you step back and you think that is one sheet of paper, somebody figured out how to fold perfectly because there's one thing that they don't tell you about Ogami that you figure out pretty quickly on your own. If you don't make the right folds in the right order. Yeah, you just, you just screw it up like it's never going to look quite right. Yeah, it's hard to undo a good crease.

I think that's where scissors come in sometimes. Yeah.

You know what I didn't do for this, which I usually do. I'm surprised I'll do it later is watch a good YouTube of someone doing something pretty complex.

Check out paper Kawaii. She's she's good. And it's also easy to follow too. Yeah. Does she get super detailed and stuff or is it a little more basic.

Both. It's basically everything you want and then there's also like a lot of instructional. Well she teaches you basic shapes. I don't think she gets into like Modula. Actually, it's not true. She does have modular stuff on there. She does it all basically. But she's also got a lot of stuff where, like, if you want to make a little gift box to put your gift in, she's got instructions on how to do that. So practical stuff as well.

So you can put origami in an origami box as a gift. You could. That's pretty mind blowing. It's amazing. What's neat, though, is all of her videos are set to Led Zeppelin. So that adds like an extra layer. Is it really OK? Bands like that be amazing, especially if it was really out of whack with what she was making to be great.

Yeah, I was just thinking maybe I can't think of it now. Come from the land of the ice and snow.

What's that immigrants all song don't do do do do it.

Yeah, but none of the following is keeping up with it. The song has to start over.

And of course if you're a fan of Blade Runner, you remember that has a nice origami motif, reoccurring motif in there with Edward James Olmos, his character.

I have no idea what you're talking about. You've seen Blade Runner. Yeah, and I know the character, but what does that oh, does he keep making origami stuff? He leaves it behind.

That's right. OK. And plays a key role sort of at the end of the movie. I don't remember that.

Yeah, it's good. It's a great movie, though. Sure. Did you see the second one?

Well, I've seen all the versions of the first one. And of course. Yeah, I saw the second one. I thought the second was really great. Yeah, it was very good. I loved it. And there's nothing that Ryan Gosling can't do. I know, right? I saw him in a hotel lobby once and I just wanted to kiss his handsome face. Did you know I should have to remember when we went to up once when we had our show on the Science Channel, it was fun.

We looked over and there's Fred Armisen and we waved like like we were yours anyway. Back like, I don't know who you are, but it's good to see you for the first time ever. The other funny thing, I don't know if you remember this on that trip was and for people that know the appearances where you if you have a TV show or something coming out the next year or quarter, is it yearly? Yeah. You gather at a place and all the press is there and you kind of just tell everyone what you're doing and they hopefully write about it.

But we saw Michael Douglas and Matt Damon passed us walking down the sidewalk and I was like, what are those guys doing together?

And like, little did I know what was driving. Man, that was such a good movie. It was awesome. I'd like to see that again soon, actually.

Yeah, it's on if you get a free trial, the HBO, Amazon Prime, I think it's on there right now.

Oh, man. I got to see that. Such a good movie.

Um, what's the technical origami I think is where we left off.

Well, yeah, we because we had already talked about pure land, right. Yeah. And this technical origami, from what I could gather, is this just the worksheets that you get sort of the how to or an actual style?

It's it's kind of both. So I think the thing about the style is that the worksheets, the diagrams are not step by step. It is a picture of the paper with every fold in it. But it's like if you went through the whole process of making this incredibly detailed, very technically precise origami shape and then unfolded it, but left all the creases in there and then took a picture of that, that's what the diagram is. But that doesn't say which one to do first.

No, which which I find very unnerving because that means that there are people out there who can look at that and tell how to do it. That's just by looking at it's amazing. And so in that that documentary Between the Folds, this is made back in 2008, I think. But they they really kind of documented this tension between this push toward more and more technical or origami and paper folding that's just pushing the limits in the boundaries of like, what can you possibly do that started to use like CAD and other computer programs to plot out, you know, what what folds you needed to make in order to make these really technical ones.

And then on the other side of that, pulling the other direction are the artists who are just like I just listen to, like my hands of my imagination and, you know, come up with these new folds. And there is this one French artist who makes masks and kind of almost talk and ask from like a 70s illustrated version of, like Lord of the Rings, maybe like like witches and wizards and things like that. And it's very like free form flowing in.

They're like, you know, when you get too technical, you lose like the emotion, you lose the art side of it. And then this one guy made the case. His name is long. I can't remember his first name, but he's just an amazing technical guy. And he said, you know, know, these technical people are figuring this out. They're making studies of stuff that you could eventually incorporate into larger art. So it's good that it's good to have both.

Yeah, I don't think there's a wrong way. I'm pretty sure his name is David Long.

Check him out. He's just up to some amazing stuff. All right, well, let's take another break and we're going to come back and finish up with a little bit on the kind of paper you might want to get if you want to try this out right after this.

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Hey, Chuck, I looked and we did not ever do an episode on paper unless we named it in a smart aleck way to. What you're right now, and we did toilet paper, the only paper, sure, I think they'd be interesting totally. We did one on grass. We can do it on paper.

Oh, absolutely. And paper, like we said, is what you want to buy. If you want to start practicing origami and Commy or Khoi paper is if you if you're not just, you know, if you want to step it up from just copy paper or something like that and you go to an art supply store, this is a good place to start. It is designed for origami and paper folding. It is very crisp, very thin, holds its shape really well, very easy to fold.

And it stays pretty it's pretty robust. Like after you fold it, it doesn't you know, it stays pretty strong.

Yeah. That's that's like if you go to a stationery store and you look for origami paper, that's probably what you're going to get. Is that Commy paper.

Yeah, I might have a nice pattern on it. Hmm. Usually square and you can get it in different sizes from like sticky notes as to the granddaddy size. Yeah.

There's, there's, there's also another kind of paper called Washi that is this, it's like thicker, obviously handmade at my so I have some of the the grains from the pulp still mashed into it and it is much harder to fold and keep a tight creason, but it's much better for using when you're when you're doing like wet folding technique, which is where, you know, if we ever said you damp in the paper, you don't get it wet, but you dampen it so that it folds more than creases and then it'll hold that shape as it dries, too.

Yeah. And it said in the article, which, by the way, came from HowStuffWorks, Dotcom or old website, that it's very costly. And I looked it up and I saw some. And it seems to me like you can't like if you want Washi, it's coming from Japan. I saw some stuff on Amazon that they call washy paper, but it is not wacky.

I got you. But it was. Yes, more wishy washy. All right, Dad.

And it was 50 bucks for a roll that was 16 inches by 32 feet, though, which is now OK.

Like 50 bucks is a lot of money for paper, but 32 feet, you know, that's a lot of paper. Sure.

That's nothing to see. That's a pretty good price on washiness. So that's what I thought you were trying to do, Granddad. Yeah. First on my glasses, they said that, uh, what about the foil?

That's another thing that I thought was Commy. But there are two different things.

Yeah. It's often called Japanese foil. It's just paper with a foil backing on one side in the foil comes in different colors. So it can really make your origami paper crayon pop.

Yeah. And you can bake cookies on it when you're done. And you said something earlier about how Commy might have like a pattern on one side or one color on one side, one color on another side that actually fools a lot of people into thinking that they're looking at origami model that's made for more than one type of paper. Sure. But it's actually just two sided paper that's just still one sheet. Like, just just remember this. When you're inevitably going and looking at pictures of origami today, most of that is just one big or small sheet of paper.

And the other cool thing here at the end, which I think we should mention, and this is very, very neat, is it is art and it is a hobby and it is Zen like, but it has practical applications in the world at large, like when you think about manufacturing things that need to be folded into a small space where better to look than an origami master to say like, hey, how would you fold this airbag into this thing?

Or the solar array? Like, how can we make this large thing small, even if only for packaging?

And Yoshizawa is like, I've died, leave me alone. I've given up or gone these days ago. Didn't I tell you I hated money? Right. But what about ten thousand dollars? Is that the magic number for him? I guess so. Everybody's got a price.

Even Yoshizawa and origami is great for the classroom, for younger kids. Help teach geometry and stuff like that. Yeah, really, really good stuff.

I got one more sweet, yummy story with origami. Her her dad is in the hospital has been for a while and he was in ICU for a little while. And thanks to covid we couldn't visit and we couldn't even send flowers like they were super on lockdown trying to keep everything out. So she folded some paper flowers and sent them to him and he had them on his bedside at his bedside with them, which he said he credits one hundred percent for helping him get.

Well, that's amazing. And they allowed that, huh?

They did the flowers, but paper flowers is OK. Interesting. Yeah. Folded by human hands. Exactly. Very clean human. And I can assure you, sure, I mean, I'm glad they allowed it. That's great. So, by the way, Bob, we're wishing you hear stuff you should know a good and healthy recovery. And we'll see you home soon. Absolutely. Thanks, Chuck. If you guys want to know more about origami, you can start looking it up, get yourself some paper.

That's another thing we said that I think we should point out. You don't have to have Commy or Washi or Foil or anything like that. You can just you can use copy paper to start if you want whatever's handy. Just go ahead and have some fun with it. That's the point. Have some fun. And since I said have some fun, it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm going to call this sexy sneeze. I remember when we talked a little bit at the end of the sneezing episode about a sneeze is being linked to orgasms and and sexual pleasure. Yeah. And arousal. Yes.

Well, we heard from Darcy about that. She said, hey, guys, I'm an avid listener. I've been listening to all of your episodes. And this is the first time I've ever thought I really should send them an email about this. Uh, I'm trying to keep it family friendly, but in your discussion during sneezing was sneezing when becoming sexually aroused. In my case, my nose becomes very runny and I often do the my nose is running, sniffing during amorous activities.

I don't always end up sneezing, but I can tell you that there's a direct link in my body from my nose to other areas. And she said the uncensored version is I know it's been a good time when my nose starts running anyway. I just want to share my experience, keep on finding stuff to talk about and I'll keep listening. And that is from Darcy. And she did say I could read this and just use her first name.

Thanks a lot, Darcy. That's very brave of you. You're not even in an Internet chat room and you're admitted. That's right. It's way to get interesting stuff. It really is. If you want to be like Darcy and write in something interesting about yourself, we want to hear it. You can send it off to Stuff podcast that I heart. Radio dotcom. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart radio, because the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hi, I'm Ali Wentworth. How do I grow a teenager in a pandemic? Well, that's exactly what I want to find out in my new podcast.

Go ask Ali. I'm asking experts to help me answer that question. For example, are quarantine teenage girls more apt to Instagram nude photos? Are they somehow going to end up on the dark web? Are teenagers getting ripped off by their new virtual education? And how do we deal with their overwhelming anxiety and uncertainty? And are they losing empathy? I'll be talking to experts and friends like my friend Brooke Shields. She'll reveal how her complicated sexual upbringing has influenced how she is as a mother to teenage girls.

It's a new world and how we raise these young humans in it determine our future. So let's share some real experiences with all new episodes releasing every other Thursday. Listen to go ask Ali on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Heilemann, host of the podcast Hell and High Water from the Recount, America in Twenty feels like Apocalypse Now again.

And this podcast, I'll explore the turmoil and upheaval roiling the country.

You've heard the phrase come hell or high water.

Well, right now we're facing both hell and high water, and it's going to leave a mark to understand this moment better.

I'm calling on the people who shape our culture in politics, entertainment, business, tech and beyond.

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