WEBVTT - BrainStuff Classics: What's the History (and Future) of Toilets?

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,

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<v Speaker 1>Lauren voel Bomb here with a classic episode of the podcast.

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<v Speaker 1>This one gets down and dirty into the history and

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<v Speaker 1>future of waste technologies because the basic design for toilets

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<v Speaker 1>hasn't changed in about three hundred years. Hey brain Stuff,

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<v Speaker 1>Lauren vogel Bomb here. Consider the flush toilet. It's a

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<v Speaker 1>fascinating device if you think about it. This giant porcelain

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<v Speaker 1>chair is installed into every modern American bathroom, using up

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<v Speaker 1>gallons of precious drinking water every day to whisk your

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<v Speaker 1>urine feces into oblivion. Better known as the municipal wastewater

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<v Speaker 1>treatment plant nearest you every time you flush. But have

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<v Speaker 1>you ever considered what else we could be doing with

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<v Speaker 1>our poop and pea? You probably don't really want to

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<v Speaker 1>think about it, and neither does pretty much anybody else,

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<v Speaker 1>which is why the flush toilet we twenty first century

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<v Speaker 1>humans use hasn't changed much since it was first patented

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<v Speaker 1>in seventeen seventy five by a Scottish watchmaker named Alexander Cumming.

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<v Speaker 1>Cummings toilet was a slightly altered version of the commode

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<v Speaker 1>designed for Queen Elizabeth the first by her godson, Sir

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<v Speaker 1>John Harrington in fifteen ninety two. Cummings had an S

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<v Speaker 1>shaped pipe, two trap bad odors, while Harrington's had not,

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<v Speaker 1>of course, self flushing toilets. Heated seats in those vacuum

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<v Speaker 1>boddies like you see on airplanes and tour buses came later.

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<v Speaker 1>But our one and done attitude towards commode innovation probably

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<v Speaker 1>comes from the fact that we simply don't want to

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<v Speaker 1>think about poop that much. We spoke with Deanna McDonough,

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<v Speaker 1>a professor of industrial design in the Beckmann Institute of

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<v Speaker 1>Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at

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<v Speaker 1>Urbana Champaign. She said, within the American culture, there is

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<v Speaker 1>still a resistance and reluctance to discuss body waste. The

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<v Speaker 1>toilet has remained relatively unexplored, I think because we're failing

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<v Speaker 1>to realize that, to quote a British saying, where there

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<v Speaker 1>is muck, there's brass. We are failing to see the

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<v Speaker 1>potential opportunity our modest toilet is offering us because the

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<v Speaker 1>notion of immersing yourself in such a product makes us

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<v Speaker 1>all feel so uncomfort But going to the bathroom isn't

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<v Speaker 1>something we've always been squeamish about long ago. It was

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<v Speaker 1>just another experience, an opportunity for relaxation and hanging out.

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<v Speaker 1>The ancient Romans used toilet time as a time to

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<v Speaker 1>catch up with their friends. In the year three hundred

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<v Speaker 1>and fifteen BCE, Rome had one hundred and forty four

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<v Speaker 1>bustling public toilets lined with stone benches with keyhole shaped

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<v Speaker 1>cutouts situated all along them, where people would sit together

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<v Speaker 1>and do their business and maybe some gossiping too. Later

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<v Speaker 1>in medieval England, you could be walking down the street

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<v Speaker 1>and someone might throw the contents of their chamber pot

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<v Speaker 1>out the window onto you. Oops. They might say sorry

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<v Speaker 1>about it, but it would kind of be on you

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<v Speaker 1>for walking too close to their house. Fancier medieval people

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<v Speaker 1>used a garter robe, a little closet stuck onto the

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<v Speaker 1>side of a castle with a hole in the floor

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<v Speaker 1>that emptied into a moat or cesspit. Clothes were also

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<v Speaker 1>kept in the garter robe because it was thought stench

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<v Speaker 1>of human waste would keep the fleas and moths out

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<v Speaker 1>of the garments. Public guard robes in London emptied directly

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<v Speaker 1>into the Thames, which was an unbelievably poor our public

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<v Speaker 1>health move As the population of Europe grew over the

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<v Speaker 1>course of the eighteen hundreds, up to one hundred people

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<v Speaker 1>would share the same public garderobe, and the waste just

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<v Speaker 1>washed into the rivers, tainting the drinking water supply, which

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<v Speaker 1>explains why so many outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, and other

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<v Speaker 1>waterborne diseases bedeviled nineteenth century Europeans, resulting in more than

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<v Speaker 1>half the working class population dying before the age of five.

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<v Speaker 1>It was a mess as a result of a particularly

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<v Speaker 1>hot summer in London in eighteen fifty eight, when the

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<v Speaker 1>smell of rotting sewage made living in the city completely unbearable,

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<v Speaker 1>Parliament commissioned the construction of the London Sewer, which was

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<v Speaker 1>finished in eighteen sixty five. Deaths resulting from waterborne diseases plummeted,

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<v Speaker 1>and cities all over the world followed suit and constructed

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<v Speaker 1>their own sanitary sewers. The toilet patented by Coming eventually

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<v Speaker 1>became standard in houses in wealthy countries all over the world,

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<v Speaker 1>along with slight variations patented by others like Thomas Crapper

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<v Speaker 1>yes that's his real name, whose contributions to the overall

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<v Speaker 1>design of the toilet were minimal, but whose legacy indoors

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<v Speaker 1>because he made sure his name was on all of

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<v Speaker 1>his products. And hey, it's great that fewer people are

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<v Speaker 1>dying due to poor sanitation in these places anymore. But

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<v Speaker 1>the toilet is due for an upgrade. So what do

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<v Speaker 1>we need our new toilets to do? MacDonough said, toilets

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<v Speaker 1>offer a relatively unexplored territory that offers significant potential in

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<v Speaker 1>respect to healthy living and healthy aging. As individuals are

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<v Speaker 1>taking more responsibility for their health, eating habits, and well being,

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<v Speaker 1>the bathroom offers a somewhat blank canvas for us to

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<v Speaker 1>integrate intuitive technology to support the individual. Imagine a toilet

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<v Speaker 1>that could tell you how hydrated you were, whether you

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<v Speaker 1>were deficient in particular vitamins, warn you of blood in

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<v Speaker 1>your stools, and changes in your hormones. We literally flush

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<v Speaker 1>all that information away each day in the form of

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<v Speaker 1>waste matter, so we could find out a lot about

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<v Speaker 1>our own health from our toilets. But according to the

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<v Speaker 1>Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which launched there reinvent the

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<v Speaker 1>toilet Challenge back in twenty eleven, the next generation of

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<v Speaker 1>toilets will also be able to kill pathogens, compost human waste,

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<v Speaker 1>and keep up with the fast urbanization of the twenty

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<v Speaker 1>four century, and all that without sewer infrastructure, electricity, or

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<v Speaker 1>a water source. They might even be able to mine

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<v Speaker 1>our waste for valuable elements like phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium,

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<v Speaker 1>and separate solid and liquid waste in order to use

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<v Speaker 1>them to make things like building supplies. But will the

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<v Speaker 1>new toilets look very much different from the one in

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<v Speaker 1>your bathroom now or the one Sir John Harrington made

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<v Speaker 1>for Queen Elizabeth in the sixteenth century. Probably not much,

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<v Speaker 1>unless you've got any bright ideas. Today's episode is based

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<v Speaker 1>on the article who Invented the Toilet? A Brief History

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<v Speaker 1>of the flush on how stuffworks dot com, written by

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<v Speaker 1>Katherine Whitbourne and Jesslynshields. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio

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<v Speaker 1>in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com. It is produced

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<v Speaker 1>by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit

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<v Speaker 1>the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

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<v Speaker 1>your favorite shows.