Origami: Folding Goodness

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change your life forever for the better. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant right there, and Jerry's other somewhere. This is Stuff you Should No, the Fold and Tuck edition. So Jerry's in her office now, yep, I'm in the Stuff you Should Know Studio that's right in Florida. You're at your home studio or a home studio, right,

you got like eight of them. Right, You're at Elvis. Which room is closest to me by baby, I'll just go in there while we're recording from today. Man uh. And now Jerry is is like a ghost haunting the computer in here recording it remotely, right, She's like, amazing, what's the Yeah, she's she's like a ghost. You said it best. She just texted me two minutes in and said, your levels are good. So that's great, go back to

sleep chairs. Sounds about right. So I was talking to Jerry earlier and she just reminded me we're talking to Origami today. She just reminded me that, um, I'm my first trip to Japan. I brought her back a paper Orgami crane and that she still has it and was thinking about that trip, Chuck, because on that trip Umi 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 friends. Um. But on that trip, one of the places you 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 UM like cranes like the bird, basically the quintessential origami model, not like building cranes, and that's not what they're building. You never can't tell these days.

You know, Bob the Builder had a pretty good run for a while there, so it could have been. But apparently, UM. One of the reasons you see those cranes is because there was a little girl from Hiroshima named Sadako Sasaki. Yeah, I know, it's very sad. So she was I think too when um the US 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 twelve.

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 UM, and hers was that if you there's another one that if you complete a thousand cranes UM, 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 and the thousand cranes, and that is upsetting. But if to end it on a more heartwarming note, her classmates got together and folded the remaining cranes in her honor and they were buried with her, which is at least a slightly uplifting ending. Right. Um, So when you go to Hiroshima today, um at this peace memorial that they've built, like a whole sex into the city where the bomb went off has just been turned into this

anti nuclear, anti war peace memorial. Um. There's just tons of cranes that were created by school children kind of in honor of Sadako 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 be folded just from me too. You know who here at work has done that? Who guess you know which? Which one of your colleagues do you think would do this? I don't know, man,

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? Okay, Pam Peacock, Okay, yeah, our graphic designer

who is an artist easily and Um. I asked Pam actually if I could read her Facebook post when she completed it, because I think this is instructive on uh and and you tell me whether it jibes with Humi's experience, because it's sort of is instructive on the art of oregamy. And it's more than just folding paper. It is meditative and can be relaxing and healing and all all those things. So Pam posted a photo of the final project and said, this is what a thousand orgamy cranes looks like in

a pile of my coffee table tonight. I met the goal on August 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 oregamy, 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 in see it through to completion is a big deal for me. Uh. And she goes on to say she has a pretty long history about getting pumped up about a project and then abandon it. And she found with two months left she only had I'm sorry, she had five hundred left to go, so 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. You're

not supposed to just sit there and do it. And one fell swoop, but 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 sticking, 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'll still struggle with those issues, but as an exercise growth, I feel like I've leveled up a bit and continue applying these strength and skills to my art, personal and professional lives very nice and she's like, can check out

my finger muscles that do they're ripped? Yeah, Yubi's middle name is stick to itiveness, So I don't think she benefited in that sense, but there's definitely like a meditating of aspect to it, And like when she was doing it for me, it 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 a I mean, to do that for somebody, uh, is pretty cool, and to do it for yourself to like

Pam did, it's pretty neat as well. And I think it was also for you me she uh yeah, probably know, um yeah, I'm sure she got a tremendous amount out of it too, you know. But it was one of those things where she would just kind of work on it when she felt like it. 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 a stick tuitiveness was a weird middle name, but when I saw it written down like in the context of her name, it just, I don't know, it looked great. You're like, I've been pronouncing that Alice all

these years. It was so weird. So Pam said something that UM I saw other people mentioned too about origami is that it's transformative, like she's taking a piece of paper and transforming it into something and there's this really amazing seeing It's so there's a definite zen quality to origami paper folding, right. And there's a documentary out there called UM Between the Folds, and it's of course, of course a PBS documentary UM, 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 and there's just nuts um and I'll talk about it from time to time. But there's this one guy in there name Michael la Fosse, and he describes origami as um 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. In origamy, you're you're taking the same thing and it's the same thing that that um is the finished product. You're not adding to it or subtracting to It's still just a piece of paper, but you're transforming it into something else, and that is kind of the essence of Origanti itself. Yeah, this one was one that I was so sure that we had done it before because it's just smacks of stuff you should know. Uh, we'd 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. You're 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 madness? That 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 um, 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 overlapped there. One of the big differences though, is that, um, the that origami doesn't involve plant torture like bonsai does. Well in

bonsai does isn't. Uh, there's no paper torture involved. So that's true. That's true. So um, when we talk about origami, we're actually talking about this that is technically a subset of this larger thing that actually grew out of oregami and ended up forming this kind of umbrella art form called paper folding appropriately enough, but origami everybody kind of

associates that with Japan. And the weird thing is when we talk about ogamy um, 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 becomes some other representation of something else or of shape or something other than that. But the point of origami is that this this shape or this new represent 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. Uh. And I tried my hand at it today just to make some very basic things. And I definitely get the UM, I get the meditative aspects, although I was just doing it to try and do something sort of quickly for work and not in this style that you would normally

do origami. 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 mean was when she was folding that thousand cray means I'd be like, what number are you on now? What number

are you on now? Every time she folded a new one. Yeah. I think she probably was just an autopilot, which you do answering you what you're doing over there? Is this a crane too? Are you making another crane? Yeah? Yeah, that would drive me nuts. Yeah. Um, So we should probably go over a few of the terms. Um. The term itself or gami they say, comes from order, which

means to fold pretty pretty smart. And then kami, which is paper, so uru kami 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 oru and kami. Yeah, and if you go to UH, I mean you can make origami out of anything. They talk about sticky notes and just copy paper. But you can actually buy kami okay a m 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 um, 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. Um. I guess you could call it an art piece or something if you're

a little high flutin, but you're really just called models. Yes, that's any any finished origami product is 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 the difference. You don't even need imagination because there's so many what are called oregamy 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 a oregamy, donkey you. As long as you have the paper and one of these designs, you don't have to have any imagination whatsoever. Yeah.

And when I was first reading this too, I thought, well, you need paper and fingers, But I realized that was quite ablest actually, because there's actually a style of origami from a British man named John Smith in the late seventies 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 realize 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. Um. Also, Chuck, did you know that the world's greatest archer is Um was born with no arms? I think we talked about that, right, I don't know. No, definitely not no, because I just saw it this past Sunday, so it's not possible we did you you just had a memory from the future that's pretty impressive 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 on

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 Tenant 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 gonna wait till next year. And I think they're doing like pretty big time spacing

and stuff. But I ain't go into a movie theater new and it's one of my favorite places to go. I know, like we talked about the other day and sneezing, um, 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? 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 actually, I think we should probably

take a break. We've been yammering for fifteen minutes. I know we've made it for through the first two paragraphs. So we'll come back after this and we'll talk about paper. Very key to Oregon me right after this. Alrighty, I teased Paper, you did. Paper doesn't like to be teased. 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, man, Josh would love these. Somebody wrote in to say, you guys, have

you heard about what was it? It? Was it based on a listener mail. No, I don't know how. I think it was just in my feed on my Facebook page and I just I don't know. It popped up. It was so good joke about the belt and the belt loops. I don't know about that one. What is it? 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 gonna need if you want to practice origami. And China invented paper and about one oh five a d. But it was a luxury atom. They weren't so much into folding it, or at least into artwork, and 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 offering to ancestors. So maybe pre prot origami, Yes, definitely prot But in the sixth century Buddhist monks introduced

paper to Japan. It was pretty rare, uh and expensive here as well, and was used for you know, special occasions and stuff like that. But as paper get got a little more ubiquitous than they decided that they could start folding it in interesting ways. And it wasn't a waste, right, it was affordable, I guess. Yeah. As it became more fordable, folding became a lot more widespread, and as it became

more widespread, people started doing kind of interesting things with it. Um, like you're saying, at first, it was just kind of reserved for special occasions like weddings or um. There's one called the slaw Day no she day s h I d e. I was thinking of arda um and it's like a zigzag pattern that they used to kind of denote like um, 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 our agony kind of took off. And that's 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 UM and in fact, one of the first books on origami was called Folding one Thousand Cranes UM. Let's see Somemba zuru orikata um a thousand crane folding. So that was a big deal

already all the way back in the eighteenth century. But UM finally in the I believe the nineteen thirties, I think around seven, there was a guy um 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 the centuries old school children's craft by this time, by the nineteen thirties, 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 eight I'm sorry, late seventeen hundreds it was still called orri kata 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 two's, and if you've ever looked at an origami book or something online, you know they if you don't know how to do it, they're these very simple, depending on the ultimate model that you want to end up with, uh, 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 published these in the nineteen fifties in books, and uh, it was a really big deal, Like it was already a popular thing in Japan. Um. 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 it 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 twelve 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 oregamy was like, look at this kite that our kid made and now it's hanging on our refrigerator.

Um to the twelve signs of the zodiac, and these things actually look kind of like a monkey and the fox looks amazing, and um, 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 origamy, 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 um uh poverty.

I don't want to say poverty stricken, but he poverty adjacent life, very nice, chuck, where he supported himself selling soup door to door. Um. He sold something called um sukadani, which is like a kind of a seaweed condiment that you put on rice. He'd sold. He'd sold that door to door, and he just made enough money to support his habit of um origami. That's what all he wanted to do. But what's amazing about him is he was like the pre eminent origami artist for decades. He made

at least fifty thousand different models. Um and he it is just look him up right now, Akira Yoshizawa, um and he never sold a single one of them. He would lend him out for exhibitions, he would give them his 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

very like very origami yesque Yeah totally. He's like, I'm not gonna sell this stuff. No, that's not the point, don't What about Tim Grant for that rhinoceros, like 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 uh, and there are a lot of animals and we'll talk about that, but it's uh, it's really just astounding. It

is astounding. One of the ways that he was able to take orgami from a kite and I know, I keep going back to a kite, but you know one of the base forms kind of where it was at um taking it from a kite to like he very famously made this um this gorilla, I think it's a gorilla um that you almost always see in the background behind him. It's a it's a it's an ape of it's either a gorilla or or Tyrannosaurs rex at he'd be like, you see, it's either gorilla or a car. Right.

But but when he makes something, you can you know exactly what it is. Um. But one of the things about his particular kind of art was that it wasn't like every single details captured. People have taken it to that paper folders have gotten to the point where it's like, um, that guy Michael A. Fosse created a huge, easily two foot alligator, which is almost several meters at least by my estimation, um, out of a single piece of paper. UM. And it has all of like the armor, the scaly

armor involved, Like there's a lot of detail. That's not what um Yoshizawa was into. His was much more expressive and um almost um 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 wet folding. Yeah, and wet folding is how you can round things out. Um. 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. UM. But I really liked his style. It wasn't because it didn't seem like, uh boy, I'm out to all you and impress you with um, 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

la Fosse. Yeah, which is you know, they're both great, but it just seemed a little more intuitive and organic. Uh. In terms of what Yoshizawa was doing. I think his technique screams, oh you like that not for sale, 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 doing exactly. So, Um, I guess we should talk about, you know, if somebody has, if someone's listening to this, interest has been peaked and wants to know how to how to fold them. Um, we should teach people, I think, chuck. Uh, yeah, well we'll tell you the basics at least. Um, there are you know, many, many, many types of folds. But you mentioned the kite base or the kite full old, and I said, that's one

of the basics, and it is there. You can oftentimes start from a base, which is just sort of your starting shape. Um, that's your your point where you start, and then get more detail from there. And there is the kite base, the fish base, the bird base, and the frog base, 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 um, instructional videos and diagrams and everything you could possibly want. But um, 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 that's I got the picture that that was the four most basic original basis, and I was I was

probably sure that there were more. So, Um, there's some that there's some types of models that tend to pop up more often than others, and animals are frequently created. Um. And like I was saying, like, it's not it's not necessarily you're like you're going for ultra realism. It's would be impossible to make it ultra real um. Because I don't know if we've said this yet, Like you're not supposed to use like, um, scissors or glue or tape

or anything like that. Um. And some people still use scissors every once in a while, but definitely you don't use glue or tape. That's not what'sh holding these together. These models are held entirely from different types of folds that you learned from doing or a gami like. It's not just fold this direction, fold that direction. There's like

reverse folds, their sinks. There's all sorts of different and 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, Um, you me probably did it on like a coffee table or something. Maybe, oh nobody should do it in her lap? Okay, well then you can do it in the air. Yeah,

I mean that is uh. When you're at that point, then you're pretty skilled as an origami artist. If you are just using your hands and you're not putting it on anything hard, then that that's pretty skilled. Um. But I would say a beginner should probably use a desk or something 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, anytime you're talking about something that Japanese people do, they're not gonna 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 two might help if you don't have fingernail Also, 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 um like a wooden a letter opener kind of thing. People. I've seen people use that to make a really you know, tight crease, or to poke a fold into another fold,

that kind of thing. What nothing, did I accidentally get sexy or something a couple of times? That's all right though, poke? Oh you guys, Well, this is 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 um discipline.

One is called modular or a gamy, and that is when you have U And I would encourage people obviously not if you're driving, but to kind of look up pictures and follow along with a lot of these because it really d lives at home and it's also beautiful to look at. But modular is when you use um different sheets of paper, but you're generally kind of making the same shape and then bringing those uh 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 um of paper folding or a gamy that uses more than one sheet. Well, it's mind blowing about origamies 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've got action orgamy, which are kind of fun because these little guys can move sometimes obviously it's gonna take human manipulation. They don't just move on their own, like you can't make a wind up to way or anything like that. But you can flap a bird wings sometimes a bird's wing, or you might be able to make a frog that jumps. Yeah, or remember the origami fortune teller, that little folded thing you could learn who

you're gonna marry or that kind of thing. Yeah, what what what was that called the oregonmy fortune Teller? From what I saw, I mean, we didn't call it that in elementary school, and I could not find it. I could not find the name of it. I know what you're talking. What was it? Yeah? Those were always fun. There's something called mash Mansion Apartment scheck House, but I don't think that involves paper or a gami. But it's

a similar game. Yeah that. Janet Varney plays that with her guests at the end of her j V Club episodes. The match game sure a lot of fun. So that's different from the Origami fortune Teller. Ye, has nothing to do with paper. Yeah, you always end up married to Rob Low somehow if you're lucky. Well, that's called the fantasy game. Um, let's see what else can you do with origami? Chuck, 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 convenient story, You're gonna get some wise acre that pays for cigarettes with a couple of cranes. Some wise acre. 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've you can make

jewelry or a gamy. I think you can certainly buy that kind of thing on Etsy. And then one of the other styles that you see um or schools is tessellations. I don't know if it's a if it's a school in and of itself, but it's kind of like modular or a gami or it yields like kind of repeating three D patterns, but it's typically made from just one

sheet folded in just not so intricate ways. UM. I saw in a three D hydrangea pattern UM on this little sheet that the person in the pictures holding it covers about the top half of their hand, but there's I think at least a dozen little hydranges folded into it and repeating room. 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 orgami that

you figure out pretty quickly on your own. If you don't make the right folds in the right order, you just you just screwed up. Like it's never gonna 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.

Does she get super detailed and stuff or is it a little more basic both, it's it's basically everything you want. And then there's also like a lot of instructionals well, like she teaches to base shapes. I don't think she gets into like modular but actually it's not true. She does have modular stuff on there. She does it all basically um, 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 instructionals on

how to do that, so practical stuff as well. So you can put Oorgamy 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 um led Zeppelin, so that adds like an extra layer? Does it? Is it really? Okay? Man? I was like, that'd be amazing, especially if it was just really out of whack with what she was making, it would be great. Yeah. I was just thinking, maybe, uh, well, I can't think of

it now. Come from the Land of the Ice and snow. What's immigrant immigrant song do? Yeah? But none of the folding is keeping up with it. The songs has to start over, over and over. Of course, if you're a fan of Blade Runner, you remember that has a nice um origami motif reoccurring motif in there with Edward James almost as character. I have no idea what you're talking about. You've seen Blade Runner, yeah, and I know the character, but what is it? Oh? Does he keep making origami stuff?

He leaves it behind, right, okay? And uh it plays a key role sort of at the end of the movie. I don't remember that. Yeah, it's good, a great movie though. Did you see the second one? Uh? Well, I've seen all the versions of the first one, and of course he has all the second one. I thought the second one was really great. Yeah, it was very good. I loved it. And there's nothing that Ryan Goslin 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? Do you remember when we went to upfronts once when we had our show on Science Channel. We looked over and there's Fred Armison and we waved like like we were peers any way back, like I don't know who you are, but good to

see you for the first time ever. The other funny thing I don't know if you remember of this on that trip was uh and for people that know, the upfronts is where you if you have a TV show or something coming out the next year or quarter is it yearly you gather at a place and all the presses 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 it was coming. Man, that was such a good movie. It was awesome. I'd like to see that again soon. Actually it's on if you get a free trial the HBO on Amazon Prime. I think it's on there right now. Man, I gotta see that. Such a good movie. Um, let's see Technical Oregony.

I think is where we left off. Well, yeah, we because we had already talked about pure Land, right yeah, and this technical Oregonmy from what I could gather, is this just the worksheets that you get sort of the how to? Or is yourn actual style. It's it's kind of both. So I think that that's thing about the style is that the work she's 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 or a gami 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. 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. It's just by looking at that.

And so in that UM that documentary Between the Folds, this is made back in two thousand and eight, I think, but they really kind of documented this tension between this push toward more and more technical or a gami and paper folding that's just pushing the limits and the boundaries of like what can you possibly do? UM that it started to use like CAD and other computer programs to plot out, you know, what what folds you needed to make in what order to make these really technical ones.

And then on the other side of that, pulling the other direction, or the artists who were just like I just listened to like my hands and my imagination and you know, come up with these new folds and um there's this one French artist who makes masks and kind of almost Tolkien esque from like a seventies illustrated version of like Lord of the Rings maybe, um, like like witches and wizards and things like that, and it's very like free form and flowing and 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, no, 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 gonna 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 for this, Hey, Chuck, I looked and we did not ever do an episode on paper, unless we named it in a smart alec way too. Uh, what you're writing on We did toilet paper? Do you want sure? And I think that'd be interestingly. We did one on grass.

We can do one on paper. Oh absolutely. Uh. And paper, like we said, is what you want to buy if you want to start practicing origami and kami or coit 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. Um, that's that's like if you go to a stationary store and you look forward gami paper, that's probably what you're gonna get, is that comi paper. Yeah. I might have a nice pattern on it. Uh, usually square, and you can get it in different sizes from like

sticky note size to the Granddaddy's size. Yeah. Um, there's there's Uh. There's also another kind of paper called washy um that is this um. It's like thicker, obviously handmade. It might still have some of the the grains from the pulp still mashed into it. Um, and it is much harder to fold and keep like a tight crease in. But it's much better for using when you're when you're doing like wet folding technique, which is where you don't know if we ever said you damp in the paper.

You don't get it wet, but you damp in it so that it it folds more than creases, and then it'll hold that shape as it dries to Yeah. And it said in the article, which by the way, came from house stuff works dot com or world website, um, that it's very costly. And I looked it up and I saw some and and and it seems to me like you can't like if you want washy, it's coming from Japan. I saw some stuff on Amazon that they call washy paper, but it is not washy, but it

it's more witchy than washy, alright dad, um. And it was fifty bucks for a role that was sixty inches by thirty two feet though, which is okay. Um, Like fifty bucks is a lot of money for paper, but thirty two ft it's nothing. You know, that's a lot of paper. Sure, yeah, that's nothing. That's a pretty good price on washy. That's what I thought. You're just turning into granddad. Yeah, for my glasses. And I said that what about the foil. That's another thing that I thought

was cami, But um, there there are two different things. Yeah, that's it's so often called Japanese foil. It's just paper with a foil backing on one side, and the foil comes in different colors, so it can really make your origami paper cream pop. Yeah, and you can bake cookies on it when you're done. And you said something earlier about how um kami might have like a pattern on one side, or one color on one side one color

on another side. Um, that actually fools a lot of people into thinking that they're looking at an origami model that's made from more than one type of paper, 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. Uh, most of that

is just one big or small sheet of paper. Uh. 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 in like, but it has practical applications in the world at large. Um 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 air bag into this thing

or this solar array? Like, how can we make this large thing small? Even if only for packaging? And Yoshi's I was like, I've died, leave me alone. I've given up. Didn't I tell you I hated money? Right? But what about ten tho dollars? Is that the magic number for him? I guess so everybody's got a price, even you shoes out. Uh and Oregony is great for the classroom for younger kids to help teach geometry and stuff like that, really really good stuff. Um. I got one more sweet Yumi

story um with Origami. Her her dad is in the hospital, has been for a while, and he was an ICEU 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 um, she folded some paper flowers and sent them to him, and he had him on his bedside, at his bedside with him, which he said he credits for helping him get well. And that's amazing and they allowed that. Huh they did

no flowers, but paper flowers is okay. Interesting folded by human hands exactly, very clean human hands. 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 here stuff you should know, a good and healthy recovery, and we'll see you home soon. 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 kami or washy or foil or anything like that. You can just you can use copy paper to start if you want whatever is handy. Um, just go ahead and have some fun with it. That's the point. Have some fun. Uh. And since I said have some fun, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this sexy sneeze.

Remember when we talked a little bit at the end of the Sneezing episode about sneezes being linked to orgasms and and sexual pleasure, Yeah, and arousal. Yes, Well we heard from Darcy about that. She said, Hey, guys, have an avid listener, 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. I'm trying to keep it family friendly. But in your discussion, uh,

during sneezing was sneezing when becoming sexually aroused. In my case, my no is becomes very running, and I often do the my nose is running sniff thing 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 wanted to share my experience. Keep on finding stuff to talk about and

now 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. And that's right way to get interesting stuff. It really is. If you want to be like Darcy and right in something interesting about yourself, we want to hear it. You can send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of

iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works For more podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite ships.