Rodney Mullen on Science and Skateboarding

0:00Rodney Mullen:As humans, we have a tendency to categorise things and put them into boxes. It helps us make sense of the world. But sometimes these boxes can become isolated silos. Take art and science as one example. We forget that by creating interaction between these silos, we can create things that are more innovative and impactful. So to tell us about science and skateboarding and how beautifully linked they are, we're joined by Rodney Mullen.

0:34Rodney Mullen:Rodney Mullen, thank you so much. I say for joining us today, thank you for letting us into your beautiful home, I should say. I'm going to start off by asking if you can introduce yourself in your own words, including the way that you've ended up becoming an engineer, an innovator, and of course, a professional skateboarder. Thank you.

0:55Suze:Well, first, I'm honored to have you. This blows my mind. Ultimately, I'm still just a skateboarder. I started out as just a kid who loved math and watching how pieces fit together, played normal sports. and when I watched someone skate there was something the freeform nature of it it to me it showed so much potential without so many rules and regulations of learning a perfect swing more puzzles so I kept that in mind and as I started to look at tricks more as just puzzles almost from a mathematical engineering kind of problem of breaking them into components that line of thinking was so embedded in me because as a kid it's all I loved to do you know back then pre-legos erector sets were just nuts and bolts versions of the same and by the time I started skating it quickly translated into looking at everything from a perspective of of force, leverage, conservation of energy.

2:07Suze:And quickly I started to outpace people in the neighborhood. Soon enough, they'd become best in the neighborhood, best in the city, state. And I remember flying out to California the first time. I grew up on a farm with no sense of what anyone else was doing. and by the time I made it out there I realized all the people I'd see in the magazines they were were all kind of pack animals they were following their own thing and for as athletic or talented as professional as they seemed they were still in the same direction and I think the isolation in itself combined with looking at things in their compuited form.

2:56Suze:It made me veer off into my own direction. And so I was brought back the next year for a world championship skating as a pro. I just turned 14 a few days prior. And I won the contest. And for the life of me, I didn't think I deserved it because I wasn't going their direction. I was doing my own thing. because this paradigm of do everything you can to be distinctive but not in the way everyone else does that is so in line with the general culture of skateboarding itself and why I fit and I realized for as much as I felt like an outsider in regular ways or even in school and the courses and the science stuff which was always my heart I was always as much of an outsider.

3:51Suze:I didn't fit into any of that stuff. And skateboarding gave me that outlet as an outsider who felt a sense of belonging among other outsiders who are creating their own path. That mentality has stayed with me ever since. And now fast forward to where I am, holding a title, I think I defended it, 35 out of 36 times. And even the credit that I'm given Godfather of Modern Street Skating or whatever,

4:28Suze:I just see it as I don't deserve that. I was just doing my thing. Because very simply, just doing what I've described. And the older I get, and I've always stayed closer to science, the people that I admired, composers in music, you know, Beethoven, you know. Third Symphony, he broke away from Mozart and the rest because self-exile, death. I always liken that to my skating in isolation, you do your own thing. So skateboarding to me, I see is this fusion of kind of an art and an engineering, and sure there's some athleticism, but it's also about looking at things anew and what they could be instead of what they are and for as much as I know which is a little bit I'm not claiming any particular expertise but because I've been ushered into so many media lab for example at MIT and when I meet these kids these kids, you know, 26, 27 we're working on PhDs when I meet them, sure, for whatever technical background I have, I think the part that I relate to most is that same spirit.

5:51Suze:This is what makes them great scientists, I believe. Why they're there. Because they're looking at the world in similar ways. And the way they see their role is, but what can we do for the rest in our new direction? So this is oddly the way all of these things unfold and connect.

6:15Rodney Mullen:You say oddly, but I think the way you describe it makes it sound so synergistic. It makes sense. You know, skateboarding in many ways is sort of a balletic physics, really. And I think that really lends itself to a lot of the things that you've contributed to the sport, not just in the innovation of a range of different moves, you know, the flat ground Ollie being maybe the one I refer to as the gateway to so many other things that you have helped develop, but also in your work as an engineer and as an innovator, because you have worked not just in MIT Media Lab, but you've actually developed your own inventions and innovations in skateboarding as well, which have shaped the culture of street skating.

7:06Rodney Mullen:Can you tell me a little bit about that? What is it about engineering and innovation that excites you?

7:13Suze:Thank you. I... Sure, yeah. So the OLLI itself, giving credit for it, I think what it did, perfect description, a gateway. It wasn't recognized at all. I remember doing it in a contest in 82. I think I got a Thrasher cover later doing flat ground all the way. No one cared for years until street skating started to emerge, which was an infrastructural change where the insurance companies were suing the skate parks. They were going out of business. It was pushing kids into the streets. And so I became very attuned to culture. wind is an invention an idea because so many of the tricks we develop they're hard they're really hard and you do them for the sake of being hard it's a test that's our nature but you can't always predict it can't always be you can barely predict at all what will have relevance and so the Ali itself set dormant until the environment changed and unleashed people to look, simply look at the world a little differently.

8:38Suze:Of, oh yes, stairs, handrails, ledges, all of it, natural transitions, banks, all of it opens up this opportunity to skate in a new way that wasn't, I should say the equipment at the time was not optimized for that. It was optimized for floating and landing on something stable. They were bigger, wider. And it wasn't until people started to go a little bit rogue and renegade, even from the big companies at the time, they wouldn't develop. They even had the ideas of double kicks, for example. That was a big innovation in skateboarding. People thought of it, of, yeah, you need a kick on the tail.

9:23right if a board right from head to toe right goes this way they were always kick in the back basically flat eventually a little bit of concave I wish for skating pools vert to keep you in and no one thought of oh yeah there's

9:41Suze:we need more symmetry and it wasn't till this breakaway culture of street skating started to go rogue almost in spite of the bigger companies that wanted to hold it to the idea of what they thought it was. So we all, as skaters, become very attuned to do things your own way. Make you tinkers. So that, coming from freestyle, we had very small boards. We opened our own company. That was one of the first innovations, the double kick. We joked because it was so ridiculous, we turned it upside down and called it the double dip, like an ice cream. My friend Rocco did that. Likewise with the board themselves, we started to very quickly see how people were using them, not as we were sort of told to by the magazines or the forces that be type of thing, but for what the kids were skating, for what their environment was, is, yeah, this thing is, I'm hucking it around, it's holding me back, so, okay, I'll make you a smaller one, so I would spend all my days at the wood shop.

10:45Suze:there was a certain few years in those early... as street skating was being born, where the boards changed so rapidly from wheel shapes to the truck sizes to even the weights themselves, the design themselves to save aluminum and hollow kingpins and hollow... all this stuff started to become optimized for how to use it best in these environments that are native to us. And it didn't necessarily preclude or make old or obsolete necessarily old designs because people need big boards, long boards if you're skating downhill. What it did is it expanded the horizon, but it let the people actually doing it participate and get a feel for it.

11:32Suze:I worked at the urethane companies because I'd come from chemical engineering. I remember that what you have is a big book back then of all the different molecules. And you're looking at, you know, Polyurethanes are sophisticated. What is durable? They're different tests. You still need rebound, but you can't have it tear. A lot of those need to be optimized. They're pushing against each other. So I remember you'd look at the mod. They let me in the back door once I recognized the molecules and I proved to the chemist on hand, oh yeah, step back here. So I would go through the pages looking for the triple bonds and going, oh, this looks like it won't tear as much.

12:09Suze:He would cook it up for me. And of course, everything's in how you do it, right? How you cook it. And I would go test it because at that stage, all the chemistry I knew, which was substantial, and I was being coached along by a professional, at some point, you just have to ride it. And it was that feeling. And I would pick it up within five feet of, no, no, not this. It's perfect for this, the rollability, but it, it moves too much, so we have to push them, we have to optimize. And so that accelerated sense of knowing the science and the feel are what really brought, you needed to have them both.

12:50Suze:One skill set only takes you so far and it'll be dead-ended. And to be able to communicate both, to be able to sit in the middle, again, which brought me back to original skateboarding, is I looked at the art of it, I feel that, I know I could feel the movement, but at the same time I would always step back to the physics of a for what you feel you should be standing in the not looking at all of this but looking at the opposite everything is in your upper body not your lower body so I would look at things and again the component forms from a physics perspective I started to do the same things more and more to the products we're developing and that I've been given a lot of credit for skateboarding the boards themselves wouldn't be where they are and all that stuff so yeah that's what I brought to skateboard.

13:37Rodney Mullen:I mean it's amazing a couple of things that you talk about make me think of so many other conversations I've had Esther Dyson recently said in in one of our Tilda shorts that perhaps rather than doing more research we can take a moment and really meaningfully interrogate all the information we've already created, all the knowledge that we've already created, because so much of it has been overlooked for its time until it's useful. And this is what makes me think of your flat ground, Ollie, that in 1982, you did it and everyone went great and until they needed it to enable them to do other things.

14:20Rodney Mullen:So I find that really interesting. But I also really want to pick up on this discussion of what is effectively community engagement and co-production in innovation research and development. We know that a range of different minds tackling one problem gives us a range of ways of overcoming that problem. How do you think we can encourage more community engagement in innovation? Because you've been involved in a range of things like, you know, in MIT Media Lab, but also in many of the talks that done, many of the other visiting positions that you have had as an inventor, as a creator, as an academic and as a professional skateboarder.

15:02Rodney Mullen:How can we encourage more community engagement for innovation do you think?

15:07Suze:Thank you. The Smithsonian took me in and we worked together. They did

15:13Rodney Mullen:something called In a Skate because they recognized just this, that you're bringing in a fusion of,

15:22Suze:sure, there is science there. From people who are not necessarily, they wouldn't consider themselves science, and yet they're doing science. So let them understand that, hey, guess what? Open your eyes to what you already know and feel intuitively, but let us help you brush up and recontextualize a lot of those old principles and dusty books in the world around you, whether it's music, video editing, how you skate, what you're building to skate, because there's a lot of that, the DIY stuff. And for people, again, all over the world, some people come from areas that are historically, because that's how we're made, they're hot spots.

16:07Suze:People are good at one particular thing because, oh yeah, because they grew up around legendary skate park that was full of the best pools, or California and its pools, right? Or in other places all over where it just happened, say Barcelona for example, where the environment themselves in a very particular way it lends itself to be skating and what is really classical what we think of as street skating. So there's hot spots all over that create little potent, what do you call them? Hot spots is the best, little Silicon Valleys, yet for completely different, or I should say at least slightly different perspectives.

16:52Suze:And each will add something to skateboarding that the other is not going to come up with no matter what. Some, you know, mega ramp is another big thing. That in itself came from a dude who was really good with moto stuff, Danny Way. He's a genius. He's a physical genius, whatever he does. And he comes from that. He's used to that long air time. That stuff has to be baked in. So sometimes different people who are not necessarily the ones you would think who would make the advancements, they'll have something baked in based on either environmental, historical, maybe doing another sport that's resonant, and suddenly give a contribution that none of these others would ever do.

17:32Suze:And they have all the best stuff, the companies, the places to skate, the good weather, whatever it is, you would expect all the advancements, but they're not coming. It takes someone else from an entirely different environment. I think one of the better forcing functions that skateboarding has too is that we've always rebelled against the general metrics of contests. There's a good mockumentary called Best in Show, right? Goofy dog stuff.

18:03Rodney Mullen:The dog movie, as I call it.

18:06Suze:That's what contests are. You're cruising around a little chorus, doing what looks good in a couple of minutes or 45 seconds, whatever you run. And now it's legit. I don't mean to be disparaging, but I have a right to talk because I spent 10 years of my life devoted to best in show. And it made me consistent. It made me good at that. Like people become good at school, but they don't offer anything outside. Likewise, contests themselves don't, the winners of the contest don't necessarily, the community doesn't necessarily care to that. You can prove that by board sales, by general influence. The people who change things are in fact not only not the contest winners, they're often not the most beautiful skaters, the perfect athletes.

18:54They often look sketchy, but that's part of what makes them cool.

18:59Suze:what does give them cachet, what does give them merit, what gives them... We are measured by the contribution we make to the community. And that may take years through video parts. That's the classical way of this dude's video part. He's a legend because he did that part, that part. Oh, and by the way, yeah, he won a few contests. Or he never did better than top 20. These are the guys who have the most respect in skateboarding Because the culture itself, how we earn and share and rise to prominence in the community to matter, is by the nature of our contribution. And that's not like a zero-sum thing.

19:41Suze:It's taking from what other people do and taking a new, fresh perspective. That is an overall forcing function instead of this zero-sum game of you win, you lose. That in itself lends towards sharing. and that breeds a healthier, more progressive, because we all understand, we know what it takes to change things, and we know you have to untether. It's not by doing something as good as the next guy and slightly better, it's by doing it and taking it in another direction. And that in itself, this, hey man, it's not win or lose, we're in this together. That mentality is something that I think is worth sharing.

20:24Suze:I think even Jet Propulsion Lab, I went there and I found myself, what do they want with me? They wanted something from us. How can we translate that to what we do? And it was just beautiful. So anyway, I think that there's a lot to be gained from culture itself. How do we include other people by not these classical metrics and stuff? We rebel against those metrics. We prioritize overall contribution from a different perspective.

20:52Rodney Mullen:I think that's a perfect way to lead into my next question which is something that you and I are both very passionate about and it sounds odd when I say it speaking to a professional skateboarder but that thing is failure and the value that failure plays in successfully innovating towards something that really makes a difference. Do you think we need to do more to embrace failure and really understand the value of it? Does it need a whole rebrand and a refresh?

21:26Suze:Thank you. Yes, I wish a friend of mine, he's awesome. He sees crazy things by the nature of his work. And he goes, I wish I could tear up my eyes and put them in your head. In a similar way. in our community. Most of what you see through YouTube, the videos, it takes days, if not weeks, if not longer, especially you get hurt and you have to heal up for a few months and go back to something to be able to finally do it. We often make tricks only once. And as long as that pushes it forward, that's all that matters because someone will take that and normalize it. They will. eventually that stuff we did one time that's what kids are doing today they're doing it

22:19Rodney Mullen:three out of five yeah like you're impossible so it is to say that the nature of our community

22:28Suze:most of what we do is fall and get back up again which shapes you in a way that undergirds your very thought processes you can't just wake up oh i'm going to toughen up it doesn't work that way you have to hurt you have to feel you have to get up and go after it again when everything is screaming no if you do that enough a lot of time it's like love i think it's the nature of love right it's not all roses right relationships and but you keep going back to it because you love it. What else would you be doing? It's who you are. That is, in terms of skating, a lot of us like, for example, schoolyards or some rail or whatever it is.

23:19Suze:You've got to deal with security. You can only hit it at a particular time. You go in there and you give it all you have. Things are cramping and you're hitting. You hit so many times that eventually every time you touch it, your body is just ringing. You get through the end of it. you almost there you landed or sometimes you flick it right but you don't have the courage to throw your feet on you like oh my god I had it it was the one perfect one and I you'll see guys punching themselves in their head and you go home at the end of there you failed not because you fell a thousand times but because you couldn't bring it home you do that enough it changes something in you that hardens you I know you know this expression all dressed up and no place to go.

24:02Suze:There are lots of incredible athletes, guys who are like much better specimens certainly than I or a lot of the best skaters whoever. They have everything but the one thing they lack is the only thing you can't give them which is how do you handle failure to get back up and go again and to wake up in the night like oh wait I know what it is. You go out fresh and a lot of times you'll make it right away the next day as soon as you warm up. So my point is by embracing failure and having a community that understands of what it takes, the nature of what skateboarding really is. Kids go to demos these days, you watch, and you'll be happy to see someone make three tricks, you know?

24:47Suze:Like three good tricks. And most of it is just bailing all day. That's what skateboarding is. We all get that, and it shapes us proportionally. We get it. So when you go to other areas, you're like, gosh, that's so crazy. I think it's what made us so good at business because we're so good at failing, recognizing, and trying stuff. Yeah, just try. The flip side, there is an overhype of fail faster, all that stuff. You know, maybe if you're coding, I guess it depends on what you're coding, but in skateboarding, if you fail a certain way, you might not come back from that. There is a lack of realism of like, just fail faster.