Matt Baker has unusual skills. He can catch a bowling ball with his face, juggle knives (and a knife baby), roll an apple off the back of his neck and spear it with a fork held in his mouth, and many other silly things.

He’s made a career out of such abilities. His first job was to play hacky sack across Europe (his sponsor was Snickers candy bars). And when he got back, he toured high schools across the U.S., which gave him lots of spare time. “I'd be in the middle of Indiana or Iowa, where there's not even a stoplight or a grocery store, and the only thing I had to do was practice,” he told me. And practice he did.

Matt retired from playing hacky sack professionally (though he’s thinking of picking it back up, as the sport is making a comeback) and now has a comedy and stunt show he performs at fairs, colleges, theaters, cruises, and elsewhere. He also realized he had wisdom to bestow upon the masses: “I am a firm believer that everybody does have an unusual skill,” he said. “They just might not know that it is an unusual skill.”

Matt wanted everyone to cultivate their own unusual abilities. The result is The Academy of Unusual Skills, a comedy-forward book that also teaches 100 unusual skills you can break out at dinner parties (handy, since several of them involve dinner plates) or use to entertain your friends, family, and/or enemies.¹

The book is also a fun read even if you don’t want to learn anything — the premise is it’s a textbook for a shady academy, where Matt as the dean and the mascot is a trash panda, and those asides make it an enjoyable read even if you don’t want to learn how to, for example, suck an egg into a bottle using fire.

I talked with Matt about his book, and what readers of all ages can take away from it. Here are the highlights.

“Everything is in the book is obtainable for anyone from 8 to 80 years old. I think everybody — an accountant, a 10-year-old, a lawyer — I think they can all learn these things, especially the easier ones in the first chapter. As dumb as some of them are, they're fun skills to know and have in the bag, because making a kid laugh, or making a waiter laugh at a restaurant, or breaking up the monotony of some serious conversation with some sort of silly sight gag, is nice to have — you never know when it can come in handy.”

“I started as a professional juggler, so I started with just explaining juggling and the various tricks you can learn once you progress. And then there are secondary skills that are subcategories of juggling, like manipulating a hat by throwing it up and catching on your head. And then I realized there's all these other things you can do, like making a chicken out of a towel, and a few stupid human tricks, and a few magic tricks.”

Padiddling, which is being able to spin something on your finger by just moving your finger, not like a Harlem Globetrotter, who will spin a ball and it can only spin for so long without you having to spin it with the other hand. With padiddling, you can actually spin a laptop or a pillow just by balancing it on your finger and moving your finger in a circular motion. I can't do that, really. I mean I can, but I wouldn't say I'm proficient at it.

There were also a couple that I used to do but had to relearn. There's a trick that is probably one of the hardest tricks in the book, where I balance a spoon on my nose and I drop it down and catch it in the back of my ear. I used to do that in my 20s, and I hadn't done it in 15 years, and I was shooting the video [Editor’s note: all the tricks come with videos you can watch as well] and I'm like, ‘Oh, I don't know if I can still do this.’ It took me a good half day to get it back.”

“There’s nothing special about me, and I've made an entire career out of this, and I think people view it as, ‘Oh, wow, like you must have practiced a ton!’ And that is true, but I'm not more coordinated than other people, it’s just I learned these skills, I practice them, and other people can, too.

These skills have opened up amazing opportunities for me through my life, and I hope that maybe people learning a few can open doors, or get a few laughs, or make a few friendships. They’ve been such an asset in my life, and they've opened up a level of silliness in my life that I think the world needs. I think everyone having the ability to be silly makes the world a better place, and makes your life a little bit more rich, too.”