Today I’m joined by Aidan Oldenburg from Team USA curling, who competed at the 2026 Winter Olympics. We talk about how he got into yo-yoing, what tricks he’s practicing now, and whether yo-yoing could ever become an Olympic sport.

There's a bonus tutorial for Gondola, an original trick of mine, at 20:10.

PopCast #10: In this episode of PopCast, I talk about a new gyroscopic bind called the "Flopsicle" and some big news about the upcoming yo-yo emoji!

My yo-yo shop: https://doctorpopular.com/shop/
See my original emoji proposal: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2018/18129-yo-yo-emoji.pdf
Knot Creators: https://knotcreators.com/
One Drop long string: http://onedropyoyos.com/store/
Support my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/docpop

"Welcome to PopCast, a crowd sponsored yo-yo show, my name is Doc and I have some exciting news but first, I just wanted to give a shout out to my patreon backers who help make this show possible. Stick around to end of this show to find out how you can become one of my sponsors and win some free yo-yos.

Okay, last year I started working on a proposal for an emoji yo-yo… no, not a yo-yo with an emoji, but an official yo-yo shaped emoji that everyone can use online.

A few years before that, my friend Jen8Lee had successfully petitioned the Unicode Consortium for a dumpling emoji. Since then, she and her friend Alex created this thing called Emojination to help people like me submit emoji proposals.

Well, I’m excited the yo-yo emoji has officially been approved! The yo-yo emoji is happening!

Now obviously the Unicode Consortium, are hesitant to just keep adding more and more emoji, so the first thing you have to do is write this proposal for why the world needs a yo-yo emoji. You have to show the item is popular enough to warrant an emoji. And you have to be ab

For the most part, the proposal was pretty easy to write. When I talked about it to most people, they’d say “You mean there isn’t a yo-yo emoji already?” I mean, fucking curling has an emoji. Curling! 🥌 We care about curling once every 4 years.

So I just had to write a little about the history, show some example uses, and then just do a ton and ton of data to show how much more popular yo-yoing is compared to something like juggling, which has an emoji.

So the yo-yo emoji has been accepted and will be coming to Unicode version 12, which is slated for March of 2019. Thats a long time from now. I’ll be an old man then. Older.

So the yo-yo emoji is coming! Tell your friends. Now I wanna show you a neat new trick I’ve been playing with.

0:00 Intro
0:45 How I got the yo-yo emoji added to unicode
4:31 Flopsicle yo-yo trick tutorial (gyroscopic bind)
7:24 Wrapping up and thanks to Patreon backers
So that move is called the flopsicle, if you play around with it, please share it on Instagram using the hashtag popcastyoyo. You can also see that hashtag to see some tricks other people have learned from previous episodes, like this video of Josh Prokay messing with friction mounts.

The yo-yo I was using this week is a Bolt Part 2, which have just arrived at my home and will be on my shop DoctorPopular.com soon.

If you like this show, you can sponsor it on Patreon.com/docpop. Sponsors also get other perks like 10% off of yo-yos from my site, DoctorPopular.com and all of my sponsors get entered into a monthly yo-yo giveaway. This month, one of my sponsors will win a Shibari from KnotCreators.com, and next month I’ll be giving away a brand new top secret prototype from One Drop yo-yos.

I’m halfway to reaching my next goal of producing more PopCast videos, so please help support the show to make that happen."

#popcastyoyo

Human-Made video by Doc Pop with no use of generative AI ❤️

This is a tutorial for a yo-yo trick called Fake Plastic Trees. Filmed at SoMa Skatepark in San Francisco using an XL yo-yo and an Icarus yo-yo.

Original music at the end of the video is "Printer Not Printing" by Doctor Popular.

Human-Made yo-yo tutorial and music by Doctor Popular ❤️

After a five-year hiatus, I had the chance to yo-yo on the big stage again; opening for Mei Ehara with members of the East Bay Yo-Yo Club. Thanks to David Ung for the invite and for use of some additional photos and footage in this video.

Edited by Clifton B.

Music:

• Check out Mei's new album "All About McGuffin" here https://meiehara.bandcamp.com/album/all-about-mcguffin
• Mikah 9's "Life or Death (Clicktrack Version)" appears on his album Timetable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvUry4lkNJI

Social:

• East Bay Yo-Yo Club https://www.instagram.com/eastbayyoyoclub/
• David Ung https://www.instagram.com/david0ung/
• Coff https://www.instagram.com/coff.cofff/
• Mei Ehara https://www.instagram.com/mei_ehara/
• Doc Pop https://www.instagram.com/docpop & http://mastodon.social/docpop

Human-Made video by Clifton B. and Doc Pop without the use of generative AI ❤️

Shawn was a yo-yoer and photographer based in El Paso, Texas. He had a wife and a loving family, and within the yo-yo community, he was best known for his incredible photography — which he shared as @yotoyimages on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

He had an amazing imagination and a real gift for capturing yo-yos in ways no one else could. I was a huge fan of his exploded-view photos, where every part of the yo-yo seemed to hover in midair.

Shawn inspired a lot of people, myself included. I was lucky to collaborate with him a few times, including on a yo-yo we made together called the Shawn Exploder. But what I’ll remember most is his creativity, his kindness, and his love for this little community we’re all part of.

We’ll miss him deeply.

A few years back, I asked Shawn to share some behind the scenes footage from one of his yo-yo shoots. I’m really glad I did, it’s great to hear his voice again. You can see that clip about 16 minutes of this video https://youtu.be/nCuaiO7xeTc?si=uJW99Q4Ur8G6_dmX&t=935

In this episode of the PopCast yo-yo vlog, I visit The Magic Patio, a secret magic theater in San Francisco, to meet up with magician Andrew Evans. I’ve created two original yo-yo tricks with a magical twist; one where a yo-yo starts off-string but ends on-string, and another that magically restores a cut string. Can a professional magician figure them out?

Filmed at: ⁨@TheMagicPatio⁩ in San Francisco https://www.themagicpatio.com/
Edited by Clifton B
Featuring original music by Doc Pop (incorporating a licensed sample by Hainbach https://www.patreon.com/c/hainbach)

0:00 Intro
3:01 Doc's Yo-Yo Magic Tricks
5:00 Cut and Restored String (Explained)
7:41 Straw Trick
9:53 Offstring/Onstring (Explained)
14:00 The Washing Machine
14:40 Andrew'w Magic Tricks
17:38 Wrapping up

PopCast is a crowdsponsored yo-yo show. Huge thanks to John Anderson, Taka from Spingear, Doc Lucky, and the rest of my sponsors on https://www.patreon.com/docpop

Alex Garcia's freestyle at the 1998 US National Yo-yo Contest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9crvRfAaYM
Jennifer Baybrook's Yo-Yo Hall of Fame Inductee video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9GRu2g-cW0

0:00 Chocolate tour
1:06 A brief history of Hawaii's influence on yo-yoing
1:49 Sandy Beach
4:00 Jennifer Baybrook Interview
9:36 Honolulu Street Art
10:40 Alex Garcia Interview
16:51 Falling Mangos trick
18:00 Wrapping up