Speaker 1: Hey, I'm welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's
Speaker 1: Chuck and Ben's here too, sitting in for Dave.
Speaker 2: Ben.
Speaker 1: This is short stuff, the New Reality.
Speaker 2: That's right. I'm glad that you found this because I
Speaker 2: have experienced this in a slightly different way, and I
Speaker 2: never knew that it was a thing, and now I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had no idea it was a thing either.
Speaker 1: I don't remember where I heard of this. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: you me, it just seems like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: she would have sent me. But we have to shout
Speaker 1: out McGill University, IFL Science and Science Times for helping
Speaker 1: round this idea hour this story out. But we're talking
Speaker 1: about something called the Marico Aoki phenomenon, which is a
Speaker 1: very specific phenomenon. It's where some people go into a
Speaker 1: bookstore and are overwhelmed with the urge, sometimes an urgent
Speaker 1: urge to poop in that bookstore, not like in the
Speaker 1: aisles of the bookstore, but to go to the bathroom
Speaker 1: in the bookstore to poop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so here's my story. In high school, still one
Speaker 2: of my very best friends, Jim, I say, you know, Jim,
Speaker 2: Jim and I had an afternoon radio show, which was
Speaker 2: over the intercom of the school, and it was basically
Speaker 2: instead of the principal reading the daily announcements, we asked
Speaker 2: if we could take it over and round it out
Speaker 2: with jokes and top ten lists and what have you.
Speaker 2: So we had WRHS was our dumb little show.
Speaker 1: So wait, this was officially sanctioned. It wasn't pirate School Radio.
Speaker 2: No, no, no. It was us in the principal's office
Speaker 2: like on the microphone every day. I mean that was
Speaker 2: looking back, it was the start of stuff you should know,
Speaker 2: which is funny. Oh wow, But we did. When we
Speaker 2: would meet to write the show. Every day, we would
Speaker 2: meet in the empty auditorium where they did school plays,
Speaker 2: and every time we were in there, both of us
Speaker 2: had to poop and we used to laugh about it
Speaker 2: and talk about it. And now that I see sort
Speaker 2: of some of the similarities between that empty, quiet auditorium
Speaker 2: and a sort of a large, maybe cavernous, quiet bookstore,
Speaker 2: I now know this is a thing.
Speaker 1: I was not expecting a personal anecdote from you for
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this goes back to the eighties, Jim
Speaker 2: and I. He'll laugh when I tell him this is
Speaker 2: an actual thing.
Speaker 1: Well, that's appropriate because the Marico Aoki phenomenon goes back
Speaker 1: to the eighties too, all.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so we should probably talk about where it
Speaker 2: came from, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it came from a Japanese woman named Mariko Aoki.
Speaker 2: That's right. And she sent a letter to a magazine
Speaker 2: in what nineteen eighty five and the issue of han
Speaker 2: no Zashi? Is that right?
Speaker 1: Close enough?
Speaker 2: How would you say it?
Speaker 1: Han no Zashi?
Speaker 2: Didn't that what I said?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay? And she wrote a letter to the you know,
Speaker 2: like a letter to the editor kind of thing, where
Speaker 2: she said, I'm not sure why, but since about two
Speaker 2: or three years ago, whenever I go to a bookstore,
Speaker 2: I'm struck by an urge to move my bowels. They
Speaker 2: printed it, just the letter to the editor, and then
Speaker 2: got so many responses from people saying me too, that
Speaker 2: the next issue had a fourteen page feature article on
Speaker 2: the headline was the phenomenon currently shaking the bookstore industry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it became like such a thing that it
Speaker 1: took her name, Marico Aoki. Even though there has been
Speaker 1: people have turned up mentions of this kind of thing
Speaker 1: as far back as the fifties, I could not find
Speaker 1: any original source material of that, but I think I'm
Speaker 1: willing to take IFL Science on their word if they
Speaker 1: were the one where I got it from. But in
Speaker 1: Japan it kicked off like a trend, right, So there
Speaker 1: were kind of like game show informal studies of what
Speaker 1: exactly was going on, and they did turn up some data,
Speaker 1: not exactly like you know, peer review shorthy data, but
Speaker 1: they found that about ten percent of the respondence in
Speaker 1: Japan feel the urge to poop when they go into
Speaker 1: the bookstore. So the Marryoki Aoki phenomenon is it covers
Speaker 1: about ten percent of the population. I'm squarely in the
Speaker 1: ninety percent. You're apparently in the ten percent.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I haven't tested it with a bookstore,
Speaker 2: but there are similarities between. For us, it always felt
Speaker 2: like like Jim's theory was that it was a big
Speaker 2: being alone in a very big, large, empty quiet.
Speaker 1: Space like a colon.
Speaker 2: I guess so, but you know, a bookstore isn't empty,
Speaker 2: but it's not like going to a concert. It is
Speaker 2: generally pretty quiet, so and there's like some there's a
Speaker 2: privacy aspect I think to a bookstore. I mean I'm
Speaker 2: thinking larger bookstores, not like you know, the tiny mom
Speaker 2: and pops, which I love. So I don't know that
Speaker 2: was his theory. Lease, so I guess I'm in that
Speaker 2: ten percent. I'll go to a bookstore and I'll let
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: We'll report back for sure. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: we should live stream on stuff. You should know, like
Speaker 1: one of our social it's true.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you might He'll be right back. Should
Speaker 2: we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll come back
Speaker 2: and talk about some of the theories right after this.
Speaker 2: If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
Speaker 2: listen to Chuck selfus.
Speaker 1: Chuck, I think I speak on behalf of at least
Speaker 1: half of the people listening. Would you and Jim go
Speaker 1: poop at the same time, or would you like take turns?
Speaker 2: I don't remember that part. I don't even know if
Speaker 2: we went and pooped or if it was just like,
Speaker 2: oh I got a poop, I see, I see.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, so yeah, anyway, we're back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're back. There is no like serious science probably
Speaker 2: about this, but there are a lot of pretty interesting theories,
Speaker 2: and one of them is something that we've talked about.
Speaker 2: In fact, we did a whole show sort of, didn't
Speaker 2: we about the gut brain axis we did.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: It's something about like when you approach the front door
Speaker 2: of your.
Speaker 1: House, that's the brain bladder connection.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I think this is kind of similar though, right, No, totally.
Speaker 1: I think the second theory, the smell of books, which
Speaker 1: we'll get to, is more brain bladder connection. But the
Speaker 1: gut brain axis would have come up in I guess,
Speaker 1: like I can't remember what it was, but we talked
Speaker 1: about like a whole episode about how there's neurons in
Speaker 1: your gut and like your brain and your gut, your
Speaker 1: central nervous system and your enteric nervous system communicate to
Speaker 1: one another. And so that's probably the likeliest explanation for
Speaker 1: why somebody would feel the urge to poop in a bookstore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are some other you know. To me, I
Speaker 2: think it's all of these things added together. There is
Speaker 2: that there is also this sort of connection of like
Speaker 2: people like reading on the toilet has long been something
Speaker 2: that people do, right. People are on their phones now,
Speaker 2: but in the old days, you had that magazine. Rack
Speaker 2: still got a magazine right next to my toilet, and
Speaker 2: we'll read a good magazine. So that connection. Maybe that
Speaker 2: subconscious thing of when you're among those books, your sphincter
Speaker 2: just a moocks, just a little bit, maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So whatever it was, whatever, if it's
Speaker 1: like the smell of books, that's kind of usually put forth.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is that you associate with a bookstore, and
Speaker 1: then you poop in the bookstore. That's where your gut
Speaker 1: brain access would take over and you develop this association.
Speaker 1: So when you walk into the bookstore, your brain goes, hey, gut,
Speaker 1: we're in a bookstore. You better get busy pooping.
Speaker 2: Yeah, makes sense. Another one, of course, is a bookstore
Speaker 2: oftentimes there's a lot of squatting. Yeah, if you want
Speaker 2: to book down on that bottom shelf, or you want
Speaker 2: to peruse for a little while on the bottom, you're
Speaker 2: going to be squatting down. And humankind didn't evolve to
Speaker 2: poop like we poop. Now you're supposed to squat. And
Speaker 2: if you've ever in in that dead squat position with
Speaker 2: your butt just barely above the ground and all your weight,
Speaker 2: like everything lines up in such a way to where
Speaker 2: your body goes, oh, it's go.
Speaker 1: Time, it's time, yeah, and he goes.
Speaker 2: So you're in there already, it's quiet. You got the
Speaker 2: smell of the books you're squatting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how could anybody not poop?
Speaker 2: You may have a coffee, that's a big one.
Speaker 1: A lot of people say, yeah, people drink coffee and
Speaker 1: bookstores and coffee makes you poop.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think it's like all this stuff sort
Speaker 2: of adds up to, oh my god, I'm in a bookstore.
Speaker 2: I've got to go.
Speaker 1: There's another theory that isn't specifically identified as from Japan.
Speaker 1: But if it's not from Japan, I will eat my
Speaker 1: hat and I don't even have a hat. I'll go
Speaker 1: buy a hat to eat it. If this isn't a
Speaker 1: Japanese theory, that because life is stressful, when you walk
Speaker 1: into a bookstore, a bookstore is very calm, and so
Speaker 1: you feel relieved and so you want to leave yourself.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever seen you wear a hat.
Speaker 1: I've got a like a mud hens hat that man,
Speaker 1: my hair has to be pretty messed up for me
Speaker 1: to wear it, but that's my hat.
Speaker 2: I don't think i've ever seen you in a hat
Speaker 2: in sixteen years.
Speaker 1: Well, that's by design.
Speaker 2: I've seen you in shorts maybe twice.
Speaker 1: That was by design as well. What do you think.
Speaker 2: You get some nice legs thanks, And then of course
Speaker 2: you have to think about or at least consider the
Speaker 2: frequency illusion aspect of this. It's a type of confirmation bias,
Speaker 2: whereas once you know this is a thing, you start
Speaker 2: to just it's in your head all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: and you're making that connection where it previously didn't exist,
Speaker 2: So you know, you have to kind of consider that
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what skeptics say. They say there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as the Mark Aoki phenomenon, that actually it's it's
Speaker 1: people just have heard of it, and maybe she had
Speaker 1: some sort of Pavlovian training where like the smell of the
Speaker 1: books made her want to poop, but just talk about it.
Speaker 1: It getting published and becoming a thing in Japan, then
Speaker 1: traveling around the world, people started saying like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've pooped in bookstores too, So then anytime they poop
Speaker 1: in a bookstore from that point on they notice it.
Speaker 1: It confirms their theory that they're susceptible to the Ma
Speaker 1: Aoki phenomenon, and it just becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1: But at the same time they're also ignoring all the
Speaker 1: times they go to the bookstore and don't poop, or
Speaker 1: they go to pet Co and have to poop. You
Speaker 1: don't want to do although you could just poop in
Speaker 1: the aisle and blame it on the dog. But still
Speaker 1: that's part of the frequency illusion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So I'm curious to hear from people
Speaker 2: two types of people, people that have experienced this, whether
Speaker 2: in a bookstore or like my situation, like a large
Speaker 2: empty room, or bookstore employees who are like, dude, you
Speaker 2: don't know that the nightmare that we live.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine, you know, Yeah, I hadn't thought
Speaker 1: about that. Man's better thought for the bookstore employees.
Speaker 2: Huh, wasn't there Seinfeld where George had to go to
Speaker 2: the bathroom in a bookstore?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he found the pastoral scenes very conducive to and
Speaker 1: then Elaine cuts him off. He had to buy a
Speaker 1: book because he took it in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: That's funny.
Speaker 1: There you have it, a book of Impressionist paintings. If
Speaker 1: you well, no, this is not a regular stuff you
Speaker 1: should know episode. Even though in this episode we found
Speaker 1: out the origin of stuff you should know, even I
Speaker 1: didn't know the origin story. And since I'm so hyped,
Speaker 1: I think that can only mean that short stuff is out.
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