NARRATOR: What happens when wood chipper meets catfish...
Is that an eye?
NARRATOR: ...and man defies gravity?
Good one.
-KEARNEY: That is unbelievable. -LIEBERMAN: So dangerous.
NARRATOR: What happens? "Time Warp."
KEARNEY: Uh-oh.
Oh, my...
NARRATOR: Take two guys whose slo-mo cameras
can and will stop the world in its tracks...
It starts out pretty asymmetric.
It has to move the mass of this thing out of the way.
Joseph, I need the widest-angle lens we have.
NARRATOR: ...add a high-tech laboratory
where anything can happen...
...and some of the world's wildest talents.
What happens?
One great thing about being a high-speed fanatic
is that you needn't go far to feed your warped obsessions.
In fact, some of us need look no further than our own yard.
Oh. All right. [Laughs]
I've never even touched one of those before.
-Really? -LIEBERMAN: Yeah.
NARRATOR: But for the sake of science,
our lawn is loaded with some customized weapons
of "grass" destruction,
like a custom-built transparent lawn mower
and an industrial-strength wood chipper.
What really happens on the cutting edges of lawn care?
What happens when these machines bite back?
Time to find out.
Do your best Bill Murray in the flower garden.
Nice.
NARRATOR: Our landscaper, Luis Casas,
starts us off with the basics -- an old-fashioned sickle.
The electric line trimmer does it faster
with a monofilament line stretched by centrifugal force
so the line acts as a blade.
Interesting, but not all that interesting...
which means it is time to upgrade
to our transparent lawn mower,
now with all built-in safety features removed.
Don't try this at home.
Our "Time Warp" cameras
will show us how sharp steel and speed
make easy work of any lawn.
LIEBERMAN: Whew!
Mowing the lawn doesn't usually make me nervous.
NARRATOR: This is a rotary mower,
where a single blade rotates about a vertical axis
at more than 3,000 rpm.
While mowing, you can destroy lots of things
lying hidden in the grass.
Some are expensive to replace.
-Have you hit sprinklers? -All the time.
So let's see what that -- That's gonna be fun.
NARRATOR: Fun?
LIEBERMAN: Hey! Part of that hit me in the shoulder.
NARRATOR: Scratch one sprinkler.
Seen at 18,000 frames per second,
it's hard to tell its real speed is 140 miles per hour.
The only worse than probably hitting a sprinkler
is probably hitting a person.
NARRATOR: Now we need to see what happens
when mower meets foot.
But how do you simulate a human foot?
-Canned ham. -Canned ham.
Plop that down.
It's about a 8 1/2 wide.
[Laughs] Quadruple "E."
Something like that.
LIEBERMAN: That's got to imitate pretty well.
[Engine turns over]
All right, man. Take it through.
-Oh! -Oh!
WOMAN: Gross. Sailed into the neighbor's yard.
-LIEBERMAN: Wow. - [Laughs]
Open.
Yeah.
-Mmm! - [Laughs]
That's delicious ham.
I'd like it sliced thinner, please.
[Laughs]
NARRATOR: Now, what happens when ham meets mower?
The tape tells the grim tale.
It's no joke.
More than 80,000 people are hospitalized every year
due to lawn-mower accidents in the U.S. alone.
But that mighty lawn beast is nothing
compared to the mother of all garden power tools...
The industrial wood chipper.
This baby turns massive tree limbs into fine mulch.
Now, you don't have to go to Fargo
to imagine what it might do to one of your limbs.
All right, Luis, we took your chipper here
and got rid of everything that made it safe.
So thanks for that.
There's your safety equipment for later.
All right, let's get started. You want to turn that on?
Behind him.
NARRATOR: To make certain it keeps on chipping,
we again removed all known safety features --
something you'll never do, right?
Let the games begin.
Is that an eye?
Ugh. God.
KEARNEY: That's disgusting.
You lookin' at me?
Nobody else here, nobody else.
-Oh! -Oh!
Let's go take a look. Nice stuff.
Come on in.
CASAS: Let's go.
-KEARNEY: Yeah! -LIEBERMAN: [Laughs]
NARRATOR: In our suburban living room/control room,
we reveal the dubious fruits of our labors.
That's disgusting. I'm covered in fish.
This is, uh... [Laughs]
This is what we did to your chipper.
CASAS: Awesome.
NARRATOR: The first cut is made by a spinning central blade,
and further destruction comes from four hinged steel blades,
or knives, rotating very fast.
Let's start with lettuce.
Lettuce inevitably leads to a watermelon.
Watermelon, it goes without saying, begets piñata.
The piñata candy obviously begs for a garnish of fresh...
catfish...
...culminating, of course,
into the organic deployment of a cinder block.
LIEBERMAN: This motor's got to be significantly different
than the lawn mower
because this has no kind of regulation at all.
It's just going no matter what.
You could really throw yourself into this thing,
and it wouldn't even notice.
NARRATOR: Back to our fresh-fish cam.
LIEBERMAN: Ew.
This is about your hand kind of consistency.
There's bone in there. Little bones.
NARRATOR: The chipper is all but invincible.
On average, three Americans lose their lives every year
while using this machine.
Well, now you can make a meal shake or something.
[Laughs] "That's terrific bass."
And the finale.
NARRATOR: We've just made the world's biggest snow cone.
And in glorious technicolor, no less.
KEARNEY: We'll be busy putting your chipper back together
for the next hour and 15 minutes.
-Well, let's go. -Yeah, do you have a warranty?
It smells like fish out here.
NARRATOR: And so as the sun sets over suburbia,
there's really nothing left to do, except the cleaning.
Hey, Mike Rowe -- I got a job for you.
NARRATOR: There's nothing quite like the Cirque du Soleil.
Their spectacular visions and high-flying phantasms
have awed millions across five continents of the globe.
So when the circus of the sun
promised to rise in our humble town,
we decided to head to a rehearsal
to see how the Cirque du Soleil gets that way.
Let's wrap up, guys. Let's go to the other side.
[Laughing] This is gonna be crazy.
NARRATOR: First up, 12 acrobats spring into action,
executing a perfectly coordinated effort
between pushers...
fliers...
and catchers.
It all begins with a good jump start.
VALLERAND: They have to be focused.
They have to be, like, in good shape
to actually being able to push that board.
And it requires a lot of strength, also.
LIEBERMAN: So it's not even
just the amount of push with the weight.
It's the speed that that weight gets transferred into the thing.
Wow.
NARRATOR: Now, when you think gymnast,
you think tiny balls of muscle.
Well, Vladimir Kuznetsov
is about 6 feet tall and weighs more than 200 pounds.
He's preparing to do two backflips
25 to 30 feet in the air.
The energy propelling his launch will come from two pushers.
Smooth as silk.
But at warp speed -- Whoa!
They could get hurt just bouncing back against a stand.
They do. Several times they get bitten by the board.
LIEBERMAN: Yeah, they were popped
right back into that frame.
And that thing could have ricocheted
and just hit them in their toes.
When they don't pay attention,
or sometimes they're being surprised
by the speed or the direction of where the board is going.
So they do get hit by the board.
NARRATOR: The board is made of flexible carbon fiber.
That allows it to bend and help launch the flier.
It's always storing enough energy to get the guy out there.
The leftover energy is the thing that's throwing the board
4 feet in the air afterward.
[Speaking native language]
MAN: That's ideal. Perfection.
No mistake.
[Laughter]
NARRATOR: Remember those tiny balls of muscle
we mentioned before?
Meet Irina Timofeeva.
Irina will flip 360 degrees
and land atop a four-man column in a split.
There's giants on top of giants.
Wow. He even grabs her hand for centering.
Give her a little bit of balance at the end.
NARRATOR: And at warp speed...
The secret to Irina's command of gravity
lies in her timing of the split.
Mid-flip, she's already starting to open up her arms and legs.
She slows down
by increasing what's called rotational inertia,
allowing her to land safely onto the catchers.
MAN: Okay, here we go.
NARRATOR: Perfectly timed deceleration
is critical for the next feat.
Dima Bareika will double the height of Irinaâs stunt
to complete five somersaults in the air.
LIEBERMAN: There it is.
It's just hard to process what's going on there
and how hard that actually is.
KEARNEY: And that he's got plenty of time.
I'm stunned by that.
LIEBERMAN: Whoo! That is amazing.
MAN: Whoo-hoo!
NARRATOR: Pulling legs to chest, Dima accelerates his flip.
Right now they're actually flipping while they're going up.
And then the third and fourth one is actually at the peak.
And then after that, the last one is on the way down.
NARRATOR: Like Irina, Dima must decelerate before landing
to avoid catastrophic impact.
By extending his arms and legs,
he increases his rotational inertia
and slows his body down enough to land.
And here's the really scary part.
Dima is just getting warmed up.
Gonna jump from this and land on the mat on the single stilt.
NARRATOR: Say what?
While Dima prepares,
we're going to get a little more down-to-Earth.
LIEBERMAN: You're cascade juggling with your feet.
MAN: Exactly.
NARRATOR: Now, all good Warpies must remember Chad Taylor.
How can we forget him?
The man juggled live chain saws.
Given that Chad's style didn't leave much margin for error,
our learning curve was rather steep on that day,
learning that a juggler, "A," needs impeccable timing
and, "B," never takes his eyes off the ball --
or, in this case, chain saw.
Now time for another advanced lesson.
Under the big top at Cirque du Soleil,
we found Anthony Gatto.
He's as mad as Chad but in a different way.
LIEBERMAN: Oh, there it is.
NARRATOR: Gatto is considered the ultimate juggler's juggler
and plausibly the best on Earth, holding several world records --
7 balls aloft for 10 minutes
and 350 continuous throws with 9.
There's not too many people that are doing that,
and there's definitely not many people
that can control it, you know?
They can just get them in the air.
NARRATOR: For those interested in Newtonian physics --
and you know who you are --
the time a ball spends in flight is proportional
to the square root of the height of the throw.
But unless you're working on a mathematical dissertation,
it's enough to know that to keep nine balls moving separately,
Anthony has to vary the speed as well as the height
of each throw.
That's unbelievable.
NARRATOR: Hoops, anyone?
Well, now I'm gonna try something more difficult,
and that is bouncing a ball on my head, juggling seven rings,
and trying to do a pirouette underneath five of the rings
and the ball that's bouncing on my head.
NARRATOR: He's kidding, right?
Okay.
NARRATOR: Just in case you're wondering...
No, we are not speeding this up.
But we can slow it down.
Wow. And the ball is still bouncing.
NARRATOR: Here it is at 500 frames per second.
A throw that's off by even 2 degrees can result in error --
not an issue for Anthony, even after tossing in a pirouette.
Remember Dima, the amazing flying man?
He's ready for his close-up and our showstopping finale.
VALLERAND: Okay, let's focus, everyone.
NARRATOR: The gymnast straps himself onto a single stilt.
Dima's gonna do two somersaults with two twists.
And he's gonna do it on this single stilt.
Of course he is.
So he's gonna jump from this
and land on the mat on the single stilt.
-Whoo! -Good one.
-KEARNEY: That is unbelievable. -LIEBERMAN: So dangerous.
NARRATOR: Let's watch that again.
There are many secrets to this Soleil.
Note the catchers that surround him.
They continually reposition the mat
while spotting Dima's every move.
Notice how Dima pulls his arms towards his chest
to gain momentum.
He throws them out again to decelerate.
And at the moment of landing,
the catchers release the mat directly under him
to absorb his impact.
You don't spot the landing for your feet.
You spot it for the stilt. That's a totally different...
LIEBERMAN: Yeah.
So he's on, like, a 5-degree angle?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Lift that back out.
NARRATOR: So, class...
Think we're ready to run away and join the Cirque du Soleil?
Stretching the limits of human ability is not for everyone.
Maybe we'll just stick with stretching our minds.
-There it is. -Hey, all right.
NARRATOR: If there's anything you'd like to see warped,
check us out on the Discovery Channel Website...
...and the warp you see just might be your own.
-Whoo! -Nice.