Speaker 1: Happy weekend, folks. In old podcast time, it is December
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen. In modern podcast time, it's two thousand twenty. One.
Speaker 1: Thing that has not changed between two thousand sixteen and
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty is how porta potties work. It's an
Speaker 1: interesting topic, believe it or not. I remember really enjoying
Speaker 1: this episode. Uh, don't really enjoy porta potties, but it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a neat thing to research, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, So give it a listen. Why don't you
Speaker 1: how porta potties work? Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant, Jerry Master, Ace Roland. Uh, and this
Speaker 1: is stuff you should not Yeah, poopy edition. This one's
Speaker 1: gonna get disgusting. Yeah, I mean, I don't think you
Speaker 1: need trigger warnings when the title of the episode is
Speaker 1: got porta potti in it, But um, we'll just throw
Speaker 1: it out there. We're gonna be talking about poop and yeah,
Speaker 1: and so if you're having lunch, maybe just put that
Speaker 1: chili dog down the gag easily. Yeah, you know, sure, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll check. I don't think we can put it off
Speaker 1: any longer, you know that kind of beat it out. Um.
Speaker 1: I kind of like how this article actually starts though
Speaker 1: by Dave Ruse. He talks about the Taste of Chicago.
Speaker 1: Oh is this a Ruse jam? Yes, it is good.
Speaker 1: So he talks about how if you go to the
Speaker 1: Taste of Chicago, right every every July, they hold it
Speaker 1: at the Grant Park alongside the Lake. When was our
Speaker 1: show there, by the way, was that July? No, it
Speaker 1: was chillier than that. I think it was October. Okay,
Speaker 1: they had something had happened in Grant part because I
Speaker 1: remember seeing hundreds and hundreds of Porter potties on the
Speaker 1: drive in. Oh really yeah, so somebo they just always
Speaker 1: have them there. No, I don't think so. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: for the Taste of Chicago, they definitely have Porter potties.
Speaker 1: In fact, for two thousand and fourteen, and we should
Speaker 1: say there's like a million people that come through this
Speaker 1: thing over the course of the week. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of folks, it really is. Have you ever been to
Speaker 1: Atlanta's Taste of Anything? Uh? No, I haven't either. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's I don't think a million people show
Speaker 1: up for it. It makes me want to go try
Speaker 1: Chicago's um But so you've got a million people. UM
Speaker 1: and Service Sanitation, Inc. Which is the company that landed
Speaker 1: the Porter Potty contract crunch the numbers. Looked at the
Speaker 1: food that was going to be there, uh said, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have some beer. Yeah, okay. They carried the one
Speaker 1: and they came up with three eighty regular port of potties,
Speaker 1: twenty eight wheelchair accessible porta potties, and eighty hand washing stations.
Speaker 1: They have soap and fresh running water. Not bad, right,
Speaker 1: So here's the thing, Like, that's great. They delivered all
Speaker 1: those things. But had they just walked away and said,
Speaker 1: see at the end of Taste of Chicago, it would
Speaker 1: have been a living nightmare for everyone involved. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be it would be more than the taste of Chicago.
Speaker 1: Be the sickening smell of Chicago. Yeah, that would have
Speaker 1: been bad. Because well, we'll get into it. But Porter
Speaker 1: Potty sometimes you can leave them come back a week
Speaker 1: later and just take them away if it's like a
Speaker 1: temporary work site or something. But sometimes when you're selling
Speaker 1: beer and chili, you need to come at the end
Speaker 1: of every day and clean those suckers out. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that's what they did. They came at nine when everyone
Speaker 1: was sleeping from well, I guess if you went to
Speaker 1: bed at nine pm, that's what I'm sleeping. But they
Speaker 1: would come every night from nine and I pm to
Speaker 1: three am, and they would work. And here's the thing,
Speaker 1: like porta potties, it turns out I was overthinking them.
Speaker 1: I thought there was maybe a little more going on. No,
Speaker 1: they are they are self. I don't. I really don't
Speaker 1: know what I thought. It escaped me as as the
Speaker 1: reality of porter potties sunk in my my delusions about
Speaker 1: my illusions about them kind of um escaped me and
Speaker 1: trickle away. And now I can't remember what they were
Speaker 1: up port potty, right, Sure I have, But I was
Speaker 1: like holding my breath and like like just barely had
Speaker 1: my eyes open because I didn't want any germs to
Speaker 1: get on my eyeballs. Um, So I wasn't paying that
Speaker 1: much attention. It's an in and out kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: It turns out that like when you serve as supporter potty,
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're showing up with a trunk
Speaker 1: truck as a tank with a vacuum on at a
Speaker 1: pressurized tank. Um, and you are sucking the contents out
Speaker 1: of that porter potty and then you put it in
Speaker 1: the truck, you drive off, and you dump it off
Speaker 1: at the waste treatment plant of your local city or town.
Speaker 1: It's like a gigantic wet back. Yes, it is for
Speaker 1: poo poo and pep Yes, and a very dangerous one.
Speaker 1: I saw at least one story um in a porter
Speaker 1: potty trade magazine that of somebody who I've read a
Speaker 1: bunch of those, in a magazine called it's called Portable
Speaker 1: Restroom Operator TRO. It's a it's a good mag man.
Speaker 1: They actually found um uh this one issue online going
Speaker 1: all the way back to two thousand nine that I
Speaker 1: was looking for. So they they're legit, but they could
Speaker 1: have been a little more fun with the name and
Speaker 1: pro well. I think they're they're saying like, hey man,
Speaker 1: all the fun you want, but we're saving your behind.
Speaker 1: Hey see that that sounds like a slogan. I think
Speaker 1: I'm sure it is. Well, they do point out a
Speaker 1: couple of the slogans because porta Potty Companies or porta John's,
Speaker 1: Jiffy John's Portloo if you're in England, Toy toy if
Speaker 1: you're in Malaysia. Yeah. Uh. They're very famous for having
Speaker 1: pretty fun penny um slogans like we're number one in
Speaker 1: the number two business. Not bad, No, it's not bad.
Speaker 1: No one, there's no one takes care of our business,
Speaker 1: like Mr John. Sure I saw that too. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: there's also one called got to Go, but it's spelled
Speaker 1: really impressively. Um it's g It's all one word and
Speaker 1: it's lower case, so it's super mod g O T
Speaker 1: you with an oom l out g O. I love it. M.
Speaker 1: Do you like that one? Yeah? I just I thought
Speaker 1: you were going in a different direction. I thought it
Speaker 1: was going to be a little more like g E
Speaker 1: A U X. No, that's like if they were in
Speaker 1: Louisiana maybe, Yeah, that's what I thought. Sure, No, this
Speaker 1: is this had an oomlout. That's what got me. And
Speaker 1: that's why you love Motley Crue so much. Sure it
Speaker 1: is all right? So, um, should we talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the history. I think so, all right, Well
Speaker 1: we need to go back to World War two in
Speaker 1: this case, and um, because World War two was going on,
Speaker 1: there was there was there was a need for more
Speaker 1: poopers essentially right because they had like manufacturing plants popping up,
Speaker 1: they had temporary manufacturing plants going up. They had places
Speaker 1: where they didn't want to build full service, permanent bathrooms
Speaker 1: all over the place. All of a sudden, these people
Speaker 1: needed to go potty. Um what I saw. I saw
Speaker 1: a few different origin stories, but the one I saw
Speaker 1: the most frequently was that the um shipbuilding docks at
Speaker 1: Long Beach are in World War Two. They're building warships
Speaker 1: for the US. The guys working the docks would have
Speaker 1: to working building the ships would have to get on
Speaker 1: a rowboat and go back to the dock to use
Speaker 1: the bathroom. And this is no good. And they were like,
Speaker 1: this is a terrible waste of time. Can we just
Speaker 1: get something down the ship? So they started building temporary
Speaker 1: what amounted to the first porta potties there on the
Speaker 1: ships for them to use. Yeah, and these first ones, UM,
Speaker 1: you can look up a picture of the Andy Gump.
Speaker 1: Is that what it's called. I didn't see. I gotta
Speaker 1: look that up. I think it's the Andy Gump, like
Speaker 1: one of the just type in like nineteen forties porta
Speaker 1: potty and there will be a picture, and it's basically
Speaker 1: this big heavy metal square. Sometimes they were would but
Speaker 1: they were super heavy and they weren't easily transported. Um
Speaker 1: they you know, this is pre uh using like chemicals
Speaker 1: which we'll get into to help break these the poop
Speaker 1: poo down and stuff. So it was just a disgusting affair.
Speaker 1: I'm having trouble right now. I see the indycomer. You
Speaker 1: see it. Wow, it looks like, um, it looks safe
Speaker 1: to be in. You know what it looks like. It
Speaker 1: looks like what they used on mash Yeah, like the latrine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same idea. Basically, Yeah, it's just a latrine. You could
Speaker 1: take places. But I came across this really cool little
Speaker 1: thing on a website about World War two fighter pilots,
Speaker 1: and um, with World War Two came along planes that
Speaker 1: could stay in these bombers, I could stay in the
Speaker 1: air for a lot longer. And they started to think like, Hey,
Speaker 1: these these dudes are up there for like you know,
Speaker 1: ten to fourteen hours, we have to come up with
Speaker 1: ways for them to go to the bathroom. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like you don't think about that, Like when
Speaker 1: we the frost Bite episode, I certainly didn't think that
Speaker 1: they were up there getting frostbite because it was so
Speaker 1: you know, cold. Also didn't think that they were up
Speaker 1: there so long that they couldn't use the bathroom. They
Speaker 1: had to hold it right, So yeah, And the earliest
Speaker 1: ones were, well, here's a funnel and it's attached to
Speaker 1: a tube and it leads out of the plane, so
Speaker 1: go ahead and p Yeah, and that's basically just for
Speaker 1: like the pilot and co pilot right this relief tube. Um.
Speaker 1: After that they're like, well, what if we have to poop? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they said, can you get your hands on a produced crate?
Speaker 1: And the crew would say like, well, yeah, sure, we
Speaker 1: have produced creative course, what are we commies and the
Speaker 1: people in charge to say, We'll poop in that? Take
Speaker 1: that up in the plane and just pooping that, buddy,
Speaker 1: and maybe wash it out when you get down here
Speaker 1: and put it back in for later use, or maybe
Speaker 1: just get a new crate. I guess if you're not thrifty.
Speaker 1: Eventually they came up with something called the Elson E
Speaker 1: E L S A N. It's a chemical toilet and
Speaker 1: it was really kind of one of the first little
Speaker 1: porta potties. But if you look up Elson and on
Speaker 1: the images on Google you will find that it's it
Speaker 1: looks like nothing more than a metal oil can that
Speaker 1: you sit on. It's basically what it was pretty much. Um,
Speaker 1: and you're all they're exposed. I mean, there's no room
Speaker 1: that this is in. You're just doing this in front
Speaker 1: of you know, your all your buddies on the plane,
Speaker 1: right like prison. Sure, and that I mean that that
Speaker 1: Elson toilet was still I mean as primitive as it was.
Speaker 1: It was an advancement, but it had certain problems, right
Speaker 1: like if you were flying through turbulence, yea, that Elson
Speaker 1: would spill its contents out into the plane. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a few quotes here. I'd like to read a couple
Speaker 1: of these from some of these fighter pilots. Um, here's
Speaker 1: one and this is from a British pilot. While we
Speaker 1: were flying in rough air. This Devil's convenience often shared
Speaker 1: its con tense with the floor of the aircraft, the
Speaker 1: walls and ceiling, and sometimes a bit remained in the
Speaker 1: container itself. It doesn't take much imagination to picture what
Speaker 1: it was like trying to combat fear and airsickness while
Speaker 1: struggling to remove enough gear in cramped quarters and at
Speaker 1: the same time trying to use the bloody Elson. If
Speaker 1: it wasn't an invention of the devil, it certainly might
Speaker 1: have been one foisted on us by the enemy. When
Speaker 1: seated in frigid cold, amid the cacophony of roaring engines
Speaker 1: and whistling air, away from what should have been one
Speaker 1: of life's peaceful moments, the occupant had a chance to
Speaker 1: fully ponder the miserable condition of his life. This lowsome creation,
Speaker 1: invariably overflowed on long trips and in turbulence, was always
Speaker 1: prone to bathe the nether regions of the user. It
Speaker 1: was one of the true reminders to me that war
Speaker 1: as hell. You don't think about this stuff. You hear
Speaker 1: about all the glory of being like a bomber pilot.
Speaker 1: You don't think about sitting on a can and having
Speaker 1: your your friends poop and pe slash up on your fannie.
Speaker 1: Sorry to those in the UK, weies doesn't even make
Speaker 1: sense in that context. That means something different here in
Speaker 1: the US, right, but right so, uh yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: the first I guess. Chemical toilet, which is a designation
Speaker 1: of a porta potty, right, like a porter potty is
Speaker 1: a chemical toilet, but not all chemical toilets or porta potties,
Speaker 1: But a chemical toilet is any kind of toilet where
Speaker 1: you have um something in there that's intended to break
Speaker 1: down waste. And actually I don't know that an els
Speaker 1: In toilet, I guess it was a chemical toilet. I
Speaker 1: see now, But that's gross because in addition to getting
Speaker 1: the rest of the cruise poop and pa slopped up
Speaker 1: against your rear end, um, so too, were you getting
Speaker 1: very very hazardous chemicals as well. Yeah, so that's a
Speaker 1: good man. That guy may have had his buttocks removed
Speaker 1: after the war. Uh. One of the uses of the toilet,
Speaker 1: they said that this is supposedly very true. It was
Speaker 1: that some members of the Royal Air Force UM actually
Speaker 1: jettisoned the Elson toilets with their bomb payload onto German targets,
Speaker 1: so they would drop these toilets full of pooh on
Speaker 1: the Germans. And Uh. There was an American too, had
Speaker 1: a great quote about peeing through the little hose. He said,
Speaker 1: as the urine ran through the tube, it turned to
Speaker 1: ice and dropped like topaz colored hail to the ground.
Speaker 1: I like to imagine every time I urinated over Germany.
Speaker 1: My my acidulous projectile would plank on some Nazi Burger's
Speaker 1: aryan nose poetry. Yeah, there's some more good stories in here.
Speaker 1: You should, uh man, I don't remember which website it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to. I have to post that later on
Speaker 1: Facebook and I'll tweet it, all right. So that's the
Speaker 1: the war effort that eventually ultimately led to the creation
Speaker 1: of the porta potty, right, and again, like there were
Speaker 1: already latrines that had already been out houses. And the
Speaker 1: difference between an outhouse and a porta potty is that
Speaker 1: an out house is basically some sort of rigid structure
Speaker 1: that's intended to be permanent or semipermanent, permanent that's dug
Speaker 1: over a hole in the ground. That's it. A porta
Speaker 1: potty is a self contained unit that has a place
Speaker 1: where the waste goes, and it's held inside that unit
Speaker 1: rather than like put into the ground, which is extremely
Speaker 1: dangerous that we learned a very long time ago. Pooping
Speaker 1: in holes in the ground is not a good way
Speaker 1: to go as far as public health is concerned. It's not.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the legitimate um marks in the
Speaker 1: favor of porta potties. Is gross, as as most people
Speaker 1: who have ever used one thinks they are. They're actually
Speaker 1: um quite beneficial to public health. Yeah, and they're green too.
Speaker 1: Saves a lot of water. Yeah. I saw um a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy billion leaders a year, about a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five million gallons a day in the U
Speaker 1: s alone. Crazy. Yeah, So, um, you want to take
Speaker 1: a break for a second. Yeah, we'll break in. We'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the evolution of the
Speaker 1: port of John right after this y s game that
Speaker 1: you should know, that you should know, but Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: all right, chuckers. So we're talking about the evolution of
Speaker 1: the port porta john. You've got the Andy Gump, you've
Speaker 1: got the Elson toilet, and then finally, in actually the sixties,
Speaker 1: you have what is the what we think of as
Speaker 1: a porta potty. Um. A patent was developed by a
Speaker 1: guy named George Harding Um and he called it for
Speaker 1: a portable toilet Cabana and it was made from plastic
Speaker 1: and um. Although he had the patent for it, the
Speaker 1: guy who actually gets credit for actually creating the first
Speaker 1: real modern port to john reporta potty was a guy
Speaker 1: named Um Harvey Heather, and he created what's called the
Speaker 1: strong Box. Great name. Did you see Have you seen
Speaker 1: the strong Box? Oh? You did? That's what I went
Speaker 1: and found the December two thousand nine UM issue of
Speaker 1: Pro magazine. Um to find because I saw a reference
Speaker 1: that they had published a picture of it, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't find it anywhere else. Those things are ugly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't a great looking Uh. It's not
Speaker 1: like the fantastic porter John say have today, just so
Speaker 1: gorgeous to look at right now. This thing was ugly,
Speaker 1: had had no alibi. Uh. Yeah. And these were made
Speaker 1: of fiberglass, which um, it was good. It was lightweight
Speaker 1: but um, and it was sturdy. It was as sturdy
Speaker 1: as metal or wood, and it was a lot easier
Speaker 1: to clean. But the problem with the strong Box and
Speaker 1: the fiberglasses it was a big kind of one piece mold. Um.
Speaker 1: It was dark inside, which was not good. They weren't
Speaker 1: stackable as far as transporting them, and so that just
Speaker 1: made it really expensive to get them where they needed
Speaker 1: to go and back again. It did. And the fact
Speaker 1: that like it was completely opaque um and there was
Speaker 1: no light that could get in. That's that's an issue.
Speaker 1: Plus I also get the impression that the floors could
Speaker 1: get pretty slick and you could fall and die of
Speaker 1: positional asphyxiation and important you. Yeah, and they were also
Speaker 1: fiberglasses pretty fragile, so they would break a lot uh,
Speaker 1: fiberglass absorb odors, which was not good. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: shortly after the fiberglass came along, someone said, you know what,
Speaker 1: how about poly ethylene um. This is what we will use.
Speaker 1: And George Harding, who you mentioned, co founded the Polly
Speaker 1: John Corporation, and he started building the polyethylene portable toilets
Speaker 1: that were much better because they lasted longer. They would
Speaker 1: last like a decade. Although I would not want to
Speaker 1: use a nine year old port of John. Well, so
Speaker 1: the that picture of the strong box that was published
Speaker 1: in Pro magazine apparently had been out in service. It
Speaker 1: was still in service, and it had been built like
Speaker 1: thirty years before. Well, yeah, you would know that your
Speaker 1: company could not have cared less about you if you
Speaker 1: show up to your job site and there's a strong
Speaker 1: box there. Yeah, and that's what you're expected to use,
Speaker 1: with all of the with all of the possible choices
Speaker 1: that your company could choose from, and they went with
Speaker 1: the strong box. They don't care about you or your happiness.
Speaker 1: The polyethylene. The other good thing about them where they
Speaker 1: were assembled into different parts and pieces, so it made
Speaker 1: them a lot easier to transport, a lot cheaper. Uh
Speaker 1: and if apart broke, you might be able to replace it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that that is kind of good. Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 1: So hooray for poly ethylene toilets. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that George harding Um created in his patent that
Speaker 1: I noticed was a ventilation system. This is a big improvement,
Speaker 1: right for sure, because when you're just piling human waste
Speaker 1: upon human waste into a hole, um that it's going
Speaker 1: to create gases, noxious gases, because bacteria is going to
Speaker 1: start decomposing that waste, and as a byproduct of the decomposition,
Speaker 1: they're going to produce what we see what we experience
Speaker 1: as rotting fecal material. Right. Yes, not just that it's stinky,
Speaker 1: it's dangerous. It is dangerous and as that gas tries
Speaker 1: to find a way to escape upward, if the only
Speaker 1: hole available to it is the toilet that you're pooping
Speaker 1: or peeing into, those gases are going to come out
Speaker 1: of it, and you're going to vomit while you pooper
Speaker 1: p as well. So what George Harding had I told
Speaker 1: you this phone is going to be cruts. What George
Speaker 1: Harding figured out was that if you could just basically
Speaker 1: create a pipe venting off that gas upward and out
Speaker 1: of the porter potty, people would be willing to use
Speaker 1: porter potties a lot more. And that was a huge improvement. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also said, how about we make this rooftop translucent
Speaker 1: white so we can let in some natural light at least,
Speaker 1: why don't we improve the flooring so that it's not
Speaker 1: as slippy and um, maybe even further down the line,
Speaker 1: we'll have porter potties that have a little urnal that's separate,
Speaker 1: so you don't even have to sit your butt down
Speaker 1: on that most horrid of places. Right yep, what about
Speaker 1: the roll around toilet? Did you see these? Yeah? Those?
Speaker 1: I mean that it makes sense. So basically, if you
Speaker 1: are on like a job site right um, where there
Speaker 1: are like different multiple stories being built and you're up
Speaker 1: on one of the higher stories, it's the same thing
Speaker 1: as when you're working in the shipyards building a ship.
Speaker 1: You don't want to have to come all the way
Speaker 1: down to use the bathroom. So they created porter potties
Speaker 1: that were a lot more mobile that could be um
Speaker 1: hoisted by cranes. UM just two different different levels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you look up roll around toilet, it basically looks
Speaker 1: like one of those UM coolers that has the two
Speaker 1: wheels and the handle and you can pull the cooler around,
Speaker 1: except it's larger and UM sitting above the wheels is
Speaker 1: a is a urinal. Right. I don't see how you
Speaker 1: go poopy in those, so maybe maybe that's when you
Speaker 1: go downstairs. Uh yeah, I don't know either, because it's
Speaker 1: not enclosed or anything. I mean, it's just wide open,
Speaker 1: just like prison. And there's actually a great um a
Speaker 1: great scene from I think the First Police Academy starring
Speaker 1: our friend and Twitter followers Steve Guttenberg goots and UM.
Speaker 1: I think it's Mauser who uses a porter potty and
Speaker 1: Steve Guttenberg goes over and gets some crane operator to
Speaker 1: lend him the crane and now it's Mauser's um, his
Speaker 1: right hand man. I don't remember that guy's name, but
Speaker 1: they lift the porter potty up while he's inside using it.
Speaker 1: It's hilarious, wacky, wacky stuff and sus uh. And then
Speaker 1: if you really are living the good life, or you
Speaker 1: have a maybe a really nice upscale wedding that's out
Speaker 1: in a remote area, you don't want to bring in
Speaker 1: just even the nicest polly ethylene porta John won't do.
Speaker 1: You will bring in what we call in in the
Speaker 1: movie business a honey wagon. Um. It is a restroom trailer.
Speaker 1: And these are actually nice. They are have running water,
Speaker 1: they have dolls, they have porcelain uh, toilets, it's all partition.
Speaker 1: They have sinks and running water and mirrors, hand towels.
Speaker 1: It's like a rolling trailer full of toilets. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: you can breathe through your nose in these things. You
Speaker 1: can lay down on the floor if you wanted. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And apparently these first started in nineteen eight four Polly
Speaker 1: John in Columbus, Ohio, go by guys. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: original trailer was eight stalls or as we said in
Speaker 1: the movie business, and eight banger at three journals, and
Speaker 1: it was thirty two ft long. And now there are
Speaker 1: nineteen companies manufacturing luxury restroom trailers around the world today. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw one in um like that they market for
Speaker 1: like outdoor weddings and stuff like that. They said, all
Speaker 1: you need are like I think six outlets maybe six
Speaker 1: D and twenty bowl outlets. Yeah, and like standard garden
Speaker 1: hose connection. And you've got yourself a luxury porter potty
Speaker 1: trailer for your next remote black tie event, right, which
Speaker 1: I mean even people in black tie got a p Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: so you might as well take it easy on him
Speaker 1: with a nice looks trailer. That's right. So, speaking of Chuck,
Speaker 1: you want to you want to take a break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to a real bathroom and hug it,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to get a crane operator to probably
Speaker 1: a prank on you. All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: That's y s games a little bit that you should know,
Speaker 1: y sk should know. But Josh Clark, okay, Chuck, Yep,
Speaker 1: we can't put it off any longer. We gotta go inside.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go inside, deep dive into the bowels of
Speaker 1: the porta pott Oh my gosh. Okay, okay, you're ready, Yeah,
Speaker 1: catch your snorkel. Okay. So when you look into a
Speaker 1: porter potty, you may notice that the stuff that's inside
Speaker 1: the bowl or inside the holding tank is blue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's in brown, sure, yeah, but it's more blue than brown.
Speaker 1: And that's no accident, that's right. Any porta potty is
Speaker 1: going to use a deep blue dye. In the entire purpose,
Speaker 1: from beginning to end of the blue dye is to
Speaker 1: visually mask the presence of human feces. Yeah, they don't.
Speaker 1: They don't want you looking down there and seeing. Uh
Speaker 1: if it was just like clear, like it's already disgusting,
Speaker 1: You're you're getting the full experience from the smell alone.
Speaker 1: You don't need the visual and and you don't pooping
Speaker 1: these things to you? Oh no, okay, No, I I
Speaker 1: think I would just put my pants and walk around instead.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think I would. I certainly don't remember.
Speaker 1: It's possible I blacked out that memory, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I ever have it, like the first Lallapalooza, right,
Speaker 1: I The only time I pooped in these I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's been like some extreme emergency. But the only time
Speaker 1: I can really recall is when Emily and I were
Speaker 1: getting our master bath built at our house. Um, we
Speaker 1: had our own we had another little bathroom kind of
Speaker 1: you know, a little small guest bathroom, and we shared that,
Speaker 1: and then we had a construction toilet on site because
Speaker 1: they were doing construction. And so I would get up
Speaker 1: in the mornings because I didn't want to. I want
Speaker 1: to be a good husband, you know, and not ruin
Speaker 1: Emily's day in morning, um by getting in there first.
Speaker 1: So I would, I would get my newspaper and I
Speaker 1: would walk outside in my slippers and use the port
Speaker 1: to john in my driveway every morning. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it was pretty clean. It was yours, right,
Speaker 1: it was great. It was me and like, you know,
Speaker 1: two or three dudes there you go, that's that is doable.
Speaker 1: Festival taste of Chicago, Like, yes, there's there are like
Speaker 1: of course, like surely if you're sharing a porter potty
Speaker 1: with a couple of other people that you have to
Speaker 1: look in the eye here there, you're gonna take care
Speaker 1: of it. But if it's random drunk strangers or people
Speaker 1: on drugs or something like that, you, uh, it's gonna
Speaker 1: get messy awfully fast. And and again it's more and
Speaker 1: more people use it, that blue dye becomes more and
Speaker 1: more important. Right as it does, there's also gonna be
Speaker 1: a fragrance that they're gonna add to hopefully mask the
Speaker 1: odor and apparently well, I was reading in some uh
Speaker 1: some trade magazines, and I haven't experienced it myself, but
Speaker 1: I did get the impression that they have come a
Speaker 1: long way as far as fragrance goes. Yeah, like I saw, um,
Speaker 1: you can get bubblegum fragrance. It doesn't sound good vanilla
Speaker 1: um that comes from just standard use to the taste
Speaker 1: of Chicago. Yeah, I mean, you know me with fragrance
Speaker 1: this period, it's it's even worse to me, um everything bagel. No.
Speaker 1: But like I came across the site and there's like
Speaker 1: a Jaguar brand porta potty fragrance additive, and they have
Speaker 1: like any fragrance you can imagine. Wow. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: the finally final thing you're going to see down there,
Speaker 1: or that it's going to be down there are biosides
Speaker 1: to kill the bacteria and microbes and um. It used
Speaker 1: to be that they would use formaldehyde uh to take
Speaker 1: care of that, but more and more wastewater treatment plants
Speaker 1: UM started saying, hey, we can't properly dispose of that
Speaker 1: stuff now carcinogen, and we don't feel good about it.
Speaker 1: So they've been phasing that out over the years going
Speaker 1: a little greener and now um they actually use enzymes
Speaker 1: like in official enzymes and microbes that feed on this stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: they feed they helped break down the poop, and they
Speaker 1: also feed on the bacteria that causes the smells. Right,
Speaker 1: So they're making the poop and nert but they're also
Speaker 1: naturally cutting down and smells, which I just find fascinating. Um.
Speaker 1: They also, since it's capable of breaking down UM bacteria,
Speaker 1: it's also capable of breaking down um any organic material,
Speaker 1: so that if you use the right kind of toilet paper,
Speaker 1: they'll break down the toilet paper as well. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: just basically magic in a in a porter potty. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they the other benefit there is they don't need
Speaker 1: to be emptied as often UM if it's doing the
Speaker 1: job like it should. Yeah. UM weather has an effect obviously,
Speaker 1: if you're in Georgia in the hot summer, things are
Speaker 1: gonna get even worse. I imagine Chicago in July is
Speaker 1: probably no picnic either, and the taste of Chicago. No
Speaker 1: one's gonna go to the taste of Chicago anymore. They're
Speaker 1: like attended stop by this year. You don't know what's
Speaker 1: going on, but when temperatures go up, bacteria go to
Speaker 1: work even harder, and things are just gonna smell even worse.
Speaker 1: So they might actually use more chemicals in the summer
Speaker 1: um or more chemicals, especially if it's a summer festival.
Speaker 1: And then conversely, I saw this, I guess it was
Speaker 1: a blog post by a Porta Potti worker that was
Speaker 1: published on Cracked and um, they basically just went over
Speaker 1: most of the stuff you can imagine, but just crazy
Speaker 1: stuff that they found. Um. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that they made reference to is that the worst thing
Speaker 1: that they can encounter is um a frozen waste, because
Speaker 1: they said, once that happens, you have to break it
Speaker 1: up by hand. Oh, so to protect to defend their
Speaker 1: people from having to do this, they well, typically in colder,
Speaker 1: colder areas during the winter, they'll they'll create a briny mixture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that will have a lower freezing temperature, like the Minnesota
Speaker 1: ice Fishing festival, Right, But eventually you're going to reach
Speaker 1: a point where it's cold enough that it's it's freezing
Speaker 1: no matter how much salt you add to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I did see one of their little tricks of
Speaker 1: the trade is they put a a cake of this
Speaker 1: rock salt in the urinal, so you go peepy on it,
Speaker 1: and as you peep on it, it just adds a
Speaker 1: little more salt slowly throughout the day. Right. The only
Speaker 1: issue with those is that you have to keep the
Speaker 1: deer away because they love salt licks. You like that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm ashamed of basically every joke I've made this whole episode.
Speaker 1: I don't feel good about myself right now. All right,
Speaker 1: so let's finish up by talking about the really the
Speaker 1: worst part of this. If you're one of like eight
Speaker 1: people still listening, right, Uh, if you're still listening, then
Speaker 1: we'll finish up with the worst part, which is servicing
Speaker 1: these things. And we talked about it. It's like a
Speaker 1: wet back. You suck it out, drive it to a
Speaker 1: waste water plant. But uh, you have to add new water.
Speaker 1: You have to add new blue junk, uh and some
Speaker 1: more dry solution. And I saw I saw like a
Speaker 1: ratio of one to one about fresh water to solution.
Speaker 1: We don't want to mess that up. Uh. And you think, like,
Speaker 1: all right, so that's pretty gross and everything. But um,
Speaker 1: especially at like a music festival or something, there's stuff
Speaker 1: everywhere like you've been in these There's there's urine everywhere,
Speaker 1: there's poop and places where you think, like, what in
Speaker 1: the world of someone doing in there, and they have
Speaker 1: to be cleaned out by somebody. It's an awful job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's um stuff that people drop down there. Like if
Speaker 1: you use the sock to wipe your bottom with and
Speaker 1: you just deposit the sock into the porta potty, that's
Speaker 1: gonna as you comp up the tank or the pump. Um.
Speaker 1: So they have to get that kind of stuff out first.
Speaker 1: About your cell phone, cell phone, Yeah, apparently they find
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff, especially things like phones, wallets full
Speaker 1: of cash, jewelry, drugs. Yeah, guns. Uh. That crrarect guy
Speaker 1: said that, Um he had a friend who showed up
Speaker 1: at a porta potty where they just found a body.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, the thing now in the porta potty,
Speaker 1: not in the actual hole. That's just cruel. Yeah, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: they find all sorts of stuff because almost everybody would say,
Speaker 1: well that's gone. I'll just have to get a new
Speaker 1: identity because I dropped my whole wallet into porta potty. Actually,
Speaker 1: I saw a stat where five percent of people that
Speaker 1: go into porta potties don't come out at all, so right,
Speaker 1: the dead body scenario makes sense. They end up in
Speaker 1: the other dimension from phantasm uh. And then our article says,
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario if you're a porta potty service
Speaker 1: person is uh that the porta potty Well, there's two
Speaker 1: worst case, one worse and one way worse. One is
Speaker 1: if it just gets knocked over, either by a car
Speaker 1: hitting it or the wind, or some jerk who thinks
Speaker 1: it's funny, that's not cool knocks it not cool at all,
Speaker 1: knocks it over on purpose. But the ultimate ultimate worst
Speaker 1: is if it tips over on its door. That's its
Speaker 1: achilles heel, any porta potties achilles heel, because what happens,
Speaker 1: all of the stuff that's in the holding tank gets
Speaker 1: dumped out. When it's facing on its front on the door,
Speaker 1: all of the stuff is liable to come out, and
Speaker 1: it does, especially when they pick it back up. It
Speaker 1: just slashes around everywhere and the poor porter potty service
Speaker 1: operator has to wash this thing out. And those are
Speaker 1: the worst. Like like somebody can put poop like on
Speaker 1: the ceiling or on the walls or something that's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: But when it falls on its front on the door
Speaker 1: and everything slashes out. It gets everywhere, so you have
Speaker 1: to like inside to clean the whole thing. And at
Speaker 1: the very least, it takes them a lot more time
Speaker 1: and screws up their entire day's schedule. At the worst,
Speaker 1: they're in there cleaning a filthy porter, potties, nook and
Speaker 1: crannies from the inside. Yeah, I would just say it
Speaker 1: fell off the truck, boss, right, Sorry, it's in that
Speaker 1: phantasm dimension, boss, didn't they Jack asked, do one of
Speaker 1: these like put one of them in there and tip
Speaker 1: it over or something? Yeah, I'm sure I think they
Speaker 1: did that when they were like four. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: they did, like I had a crane lifted and turn
Speaker 1: it over something. I don't know. No, you're thinking police
Speaker 1: Academy and also police academy, giegs. You don't have to
Speaker 1: write in it was Police Academy three. So I was
Speaker 1: about to say, I didn't remember that. You didn't see what? Nah?
Speaker 1: I think I petered out after two. Even three might
Speaker 1: have been the best of all of them, which is
Speaker 1: that what was the full name of it? Uh? Citizens
Speaker 1: on Patrol? Okay, it's the one where Bob gold Thwaite,
Speaker 1: like goes over from his life of crime to being
Speaker 1: a junior police academy guy. Yeah, I love Bob Goldthwaite.
Speaker 1: But good, he's great. Can we stop, sure, man, Okay,
Speaker 1: we have to say you got anything else? No, okay, Chuck? Well,
Speaker 1: actually I do know. If you see these porter potty
Speaker 1: service people in your neighborhood, if there's construction going on,
Speaker 1: you see them, bring in the truck, just flash a
Speaker 1: nice smile, give him a tip of the cap. It's
Speaker 1: a really gnarly job. And like they say, somebody's got
Speaker 1: to do it. They're making a living. Like they've got
Speaker 1: a job. They went out and got that job to
Speaker 1: make money and provide for their family. And don't forget,
Speaker 1: they're defending public health and they're saving a significant amount
Speaker 1: of water. So there you go. Nice Chuck, all right,
Speaker 1: good way to finish. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about porta potties, you can type those that hyphenated word
Speaker 1: on the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And since I said hyphen it's time for listening. Now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this quick. John Clase uh direction or
Speaker 1: John please exactly. Congratulations on an absolutely marvelous episode concerning
Speaker 1: Monty Python guys, it's great to hear so much of
Speaker 1: the history of the group. Well done. One bit of information.
Speaker 1: I happen to see John Clease present a one man
Speaker 1: show a few years ago in Carmel, California. He just
Speaker 1: stood on stage and talked for about seventy five minutes. Um, boy,
Speaker 1: that's a good gig. He discussed his life in general,
Speaker 1: Python in particular, and lots of things. Other things he noticed.
Speaker 1: Noted that his name is pronounced to rhyme with cheese
Speaker 1: rather than fleece. In fact, his surname was originally Cheese,
Speaker 1: but his father changed it to please. Uh. This was
Speaker 1: a good thing for the Sun being named John because
Speaker 1: he did not want to go by Jack Cheese. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess not, so it's John Klees. Never knew that
Speaker 1: that's from David Hewitt. Yeah. And um, I also want
Speaker 1: to say, chuck. Somebody called us out for not mentioning
Speaker 1: Carol Cleveland. She was, for all intents and purposes, the
Speaker 1: seventh member of Monty Python. Yeah, we felt terrible because
Speaker 1: she was in our notes and we mentioned her and
Speaker 1: lavish praise on her and our runthrough that we did
Speaker 1: in the studio, and it was just one of those
Speaker 1: live show things that got biased. Yeah, so sorry, Carol Cleveland.
Speaker 1: We uh, hats off to you. We appreciate your work
Speaker 1: and we're sorry we'll left you out, agreed. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me, your Chuck,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us I'm at joshuam Clark and
Speaker 1: there's also s y s K podcast Chuck sat Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant on Facebook and at Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: on Facebook. You can send the both of us and
Speaker 1: Jerry an email to stuff podcast at how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com and has always hang out with us at
Speaker 1: our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
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