Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works and I love all things tech
Speaker 1: and it's time for a Friday Classic episode. Get ready
Speaker 1: for this blast from the past from tech Stuff. So
Speaker 1: we are talking about toilets today. Yeah, it's gonna be ah.
Speaker 1: This episode is going to be flush with puns. Man,
Speaker 1: I can't take this already, and I know it's bad already, right,
Speaker 1: So before I really get into that, you know, there
Speaker 1: will obviously be some levity in this, but this is
Speaker 1: actually a very serious topic. And to kind of illustrate that,
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention something else. Now this is this
Speaker 1: is half a year away from us. But November nineteenth
Speaker 1: is World Toilet Day, which at first sounds kind of comedic, right,
Speaker 1: I'm think it's hilarious. It sounds funny. It's it's an
Speaker 1: event hosted by the World Toilet Organization. Still sounds at
Speaker 1: first when you think about it, because the mean toilet
Speaker 1: humor has become like a real it's a real industry
Speaker 1: into itself. But this is not about humor. It's actually
Speaker 1: the purpose of the day and the purpose of the
Speaker 1: organization is to help provide support for getting proper sanitation
Speaker 1: to the world's population. According to that organization, of the
Speaker 1: world's population still practices open defecation. That's a billion people.
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew a lot of people, did I
Speaker 1: didn't realize it was that high a percentage. Now I
Speaker 1: saw a figure back in I think two thousand nine
Speaker 1: that was two point five billion people. So clearly we've
Speaker 1: made some great strides in in raising sanitation levels, but
Speaker 1: there's still so much work to be done. And I mean,
Speaker 1: this is obviously something that we have to be concerned
Speaker 1: with because it can lead to you know, pandemics or
Speaker 1: at least a really bad outbreak of disease, not to
Speaker 1: mention just unpleasant living conditions. Well, you know what's funny
Speaker 1: is UM. I think part of it also is not
Speaker 1: just that people practice open defecation, but that a lot
Speaker 1: of them don't have access to sanitary drinking water as
Speaker 1: a result of their of their waste disposal. UM. But
Speaker 1: I have there are places, especially in um parts of
Speaker 1: rural India, where open defecation is practiced where the people
Speaker 1: are like you can put toilets in here all day long,
Speaker 1: We're not going to use them because we find open
Speaker 1: defecation as part of like wholesome country living. Is the
Speaker 1: way that I've seen it put like it's just part
Speaker 1: and parcel with being outside and you know, watching a
Speaker 1: squirrel run past you while you're pooping, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and like really taken in the whole scene. It's a
Speaker 1: cultural thing at that point. Yeah, where it goes beyond,
Speaker 1: it goes beyond, like it's it's not necessarily just the
Speaker 1: lack of facilities, it's this has become a way of life.
Speaker 1: I could understand that. I mean, I know there was
Speaker 1: even some reluctance in Japan to go from the uh
Speaker 1: the more trough like toilets that they used to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's much smaller percentage of the toilets in Japan
Speaker 1: are those, but they still do exist. But there was
Speaker 1: a large uh hesitate to use the word, movement trend
Speaker 1: to going toward more Western style toilets over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. I know, I'm sorry it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Chris Palette is only here in spirit, but he is here.
Speaker 1: You're channeling him pretty hard. Yeah, So let's go with
Speaker 1: a little history lesson before we get into how toilets
Speaker 1: actually work. Now, if you're looking for the earliest evidence
Speaker 1: of organized waste management systems, you look at Mesopotamia, which
Speaker 1: makes sense because that's where the original civilizations were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also a great song, but this would be back
Speaker 1: at the c E around approximately around that era, when
Speaker 1: you would see these organized systems for waste management. One
Speaker 1: thing I thought was really interesting was I watched a
Speaker 1: documentary about a neolithic village that was on the Orkney Islands. Uh,
Speaker 1: in Scotland. We call it scare Bray. That's the name
Speaker 1: we've given it. Because any actual records of this village
Speaker 1: haven't existed for more than a couple of thousand years.
Speaker 1: This village was forgotten. No one knew it was even
Speaker 1: there until there was a major storm that washed away
Speaker 1: some of the land that had grown up built up
Speaker 1: around on top of the village. Is amazing. Right when
Speaker 1: it was discovered, you immediately had a and uh there
Speaker 1: was an expedition, let's say, to uncover the village, but
Speaker 1: it was not led by anyone who's ever been actually identified.
Speaker 1: In other words, it was treasure hunters. I didn't probably
Speaker 1: didn't find anything really of value there. There was certainly
Speaker 1: no you know, hordes of gold and diamonds and jewels there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it wouldn't be until the nineteen thirties that a
Speaker 1: more organized archaeological dig would take place. And after that
Speaker 1: there was another storm and they had to actually shore
Speaker 1: up the area to protect it as an archaeological site.
Speaker 1: And what they found was that this tiny village, which
Speaker 1: dates to around three thousand BC in Scotland, had these
Speaker 1: homes that were very sophisticated. You would walk in, there'd
Speaker 1: be a large bed on the right hand side, a
Speaker 1: smaller bed on the left, which mirrors regular practices of
Speaker 1: the time where the husband and wife. The husband would
Speaker 1: have the larger of two beds. They had a fire
Speaker 1: pit hearth, but they also had a essentially a toilet.
Speaker 1: They had a stone cabinet with a hole cut so
Speaker 1: that you could sit down on it, with channels that
Speaker 1: lead out to the ocean, and ocean water with the
Speaker 1: tides would actually flush smart this, so these were flushing toilets.
Speaker 1: They weren't manual flush. You title flushed, so you had
Speaker 1: to wait, hey it's still flushed. Yeah, that's the important
Speaker 1: point and this took the waste away, right Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so all the way back to three thousand BC. Uh,
Speaker 1: the actual the whole area of scare Break. Its fascinating.
Speaker 1: So definitely look into that if you get a chance.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen him before. I've seen just the
Speaker 1: settlement pictures of the settlement. It is pretty advanced. You
Speaker 1: don't think of the Orkney Islands and three thousand b C.
Speaker 1: Is you know, the seed of civilization technology. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they had something going on. It's pretty surprising, yeah, because
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, when I think of of society
Speaker 1: civilization in the British Islands, I'm thinking closer to the
Speaker 1: Roman times. But it's pretty amazing how sophisticated was even
Speaker 1: back then. Uh. Ancient Greeks also they used sewage systems
Speaker 1: to channel waste away from living quarters. The Romans would
Speaker 1: even further. They would have these, especially if you were
Speaker 1: a very wealthy or powerful Roman. You might have a
Speaker 1: pretty styling, you know, bathroom, heated seats, heated marble seats, um.
Speaker 1: And it maybe private from what I understood, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, public bathrooms really took the public thing
Speaker 1: to the nth degree, where it was just like basically
Speaker 1: a long bench with different cutouts, you know, space not
Speaker 1: very far apart. Frankly, um, and you'd have maybe eight
Speaker 1: or ten, maybe fifteen. Yeah. I saw there was a
Speaker 1: public restroom in Syria. UM. I think was contemporaneous to
Speaker 1: to Greece. UM that sat like eighty and there's no partitions,
Speaker 1: there's no nothing. And it seemed to be um kind
Speaker 1: of a social endeavor where like you just said, are
Speaker 1: in chat with somebody while you're a pooping. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: kind of funny to think about how it was this
Speaker 1: communal social activity, or at least it wasn't separated from
Speaker 1: any of the communal and social activities, whereas today we
Speaker 1: have all these unspoken rules of of you know, no
Speaker 1: talking in the bathroom, to keep your dirty behavior to yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever seen it. There's actually
Speaker 1: if I'm a Shinima cartoon using the I think it's
Speaker 1: the sims where it's to illustrate the rules in the
Speaker 1: men's restroom. And rule number one is if there's a
Speaker 1: line of urnals, you take one on either end. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter which end, just it has to be on
Speaker 1: the end. The next person end has to take the
Speaker 1: one on the furthest end, and then as long as
Speaker 1: there's at least one empty one separating you and the
Speaker 1: next person, you can take one. But if there isn't,
Speaker 1: you gotta leave. Like like there's there was this crazy
Speaker 1: series of but it was a series of rules where
Speaker 1: and then the comedy came from the fact that you're like,
Speaker 1: this is kind of how guy has behave in the bathroom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for me, it's the cardinal rule is if there's two
Speaker 1: two stalls, um, and the doors shut on one, then
Speaker 1: both are occupied by by default. That must make it
Speaker 1: difficult here in this office because the bathrooms go uh,
Speaker 1: floor to ceiling with the doors and they're shut all
Speaker 1: the time. So that's that's different like that these bathrooms
Speaker 1: are prime real estate in my opinion. But if you
Speaker 1: remember in the last place where the first was headquartered,
Speaker 1: it was you know, just a partition and you can
Speaker 1: see feet and everything. And it's that's just to me,
Speaker 1: like we we really have advanced to the point where
Speaker 1: you know, it is a private act and um, it's
Speaker 1: not to be shared. It's not public. We're not in
Speaker 1: ancient Greece any longer. Um. And so if somebody's in
Speaker 1: a stall, you don't sit down next to him. I
Speaker 1: just I just really feel strongly about that. I can understand.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because when we get into advanced toilets
Speaker 1: like the Japanese toilets, they take that to the next
Speaker 1: level to create another another level of privacy for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat, Like you swipe your hand in front
Speaker 1: of a sensor and it takes you to the seventh dimension,
Speaker 1: completely out of anybody here. If you and Bubanza and
Speaker 1: that's it's in the ninth, isn't it. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he is, or the tenth. It's one of those. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the other things we can talk about
Speaker 1: before we move into the earliest flush toilet is that
Speaker 1: when you're looking at say Europe in the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: all the way up into the Renaissance. Uh, you're talking
Speaker 1: about especially like for you know, I think about castles.
Speaker 1: I do, I really do frequently think about castles. Um.
Speaker 1: Their facilities were pretty primitive. It was essentially a hole
Speaker 1: cut into the you know, like a like a stone
Speaker 1: seat some with a wooden panel on top of it.
Speaker 1: Uh that then had a channel that that slanted away
Speaker 1: from the wall and your your waist would drop down
Speaker 1: either into a cesspit, a moat, moat, sometimes just the ground.
Speaker 1: On the invading armies, that is also a possibility. And
Speaker 1: these were called garter robes, and they were also closets.
Speaker 1: They weren't just bathrooms, they were closets you would hang
Speaker 1: your clothing. Why because the ammonia from your urine would
Speaker 1: kill fleas. Oh wow, that is very surprisingly clever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not scar break clever, but it's up there. So
Speaker 1: if you're wondering when the first flush toilet comes along,
Speaker 1: it's actually a lot earlier than I had anticipated. It's weird.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I never came across this fact before.
Speaker 1: And it's one that, by the way, a lot of
Speaker 1: people in our office know. It comes from fift nineties
Speaker 1: six John Harrington, Yes, who was a cousin I think
Speaker 1: of um Elizabeth the first Yeah, he was her godson. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what it was. And he designed this flushing toilet
Speaker 1: or prototype of a flushing toilet for her. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: she probably didn't use it very much. She didn't admit
Speaker 1: to it. She was a queen, and technically, when you're queen,
Speaker 1: you can pretty much poop wherever you like, someone's going
Speaker 1: to take care of it. But he called it the ajax. No,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. John Harrington was a rake. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like Greg can Rake, you know, kind of like.
Speaker 1: He was known for passing around lewd poetry to the
Speaker 1: ladies of the court. He loved too. He was very
Speaker 1: clever and he loved being clever and so lewd poetry.
Speaker 1: Flushing toilets. Well, he called it the ajax as a pun.
Speaker 1: It's a pun on the term Jake's, which is a
Speaker 1: euphemism for toilet. It's like the John Jake's. So ajax
Speaker 1: is a pun on Jake's. And it had a pan
Speaker 1: into which one would do one's business and assister turn
Speaker 1: that you could pump water up into, and then a
Speaker 1: handle and when you pulled the handle, it opened up
Speaker 1: a valve that allowed the water from the cistern to
Speaker 1: come down and wash away what was in the pan
Speaker 1: down through a channel that would go out to assess
Speaker 1: pool onto an invading army or onto an invading army,
Speaker 1: as the case may be. As far as I know,
Speaker 1: he only built two. I think he built one for
Speaker 1: the queen and one for himself. Uh So it was
Speaker 1: an interesting idea did not catch on at the time.
Speaker 1: Uh really just showed his inventiveness to to look at
Speaker 1: the next approach to the flushing toilet. You have to
Speaker 1: go ahead by almost two years Alexander Cummings exactly, and
Speaker 1: he he invented something that ended up being very important
Speaker 1: for the flushing toilet, the S trap. Yeah, so much
Speaker 1: so that it's still basically the design of toilets today. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the pipes that you see that lead out
Speaker 1: from your toilet, and it's called an S trap because
Speaker 1: it's in that S shape, right, Yeah, or some people
Speaker 1: will consider it an upside down youthing like that. It
Speaker 1: all depends on one how much of it you can
Speaker 1: see and to exactly what implementation it is. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the you trap is another way of looking at an
Speaker 1: upside on you. Uh So. The important thing about this
Speaker 1: was that it would allow uh it would well trap
Speaker 1: water once it had gone down the pipe from coming
Speaker 1: back up, and it would also thus trap the smell, Yes,
Speaker 1: which is very important with sewers because if you're taking
Speaker 1: a piece of technology and connecting it to an open sewer, yeah,
Speaker 1: the smell is gonna be something. Yeah, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: how to take care of that, and he did with
Speaker 1: the s trap. Yeah, and it it was really a
Speaker 1: brilliant idea. Also so much strickland that like three two
Speaker 1: hundred years later, two fifty years later, Um, we're still
Speaker 1: using this guy's design. It is not been improved upon
Speaker 1: in two hundred and fifty years right there. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of other variations on it, but it has
Speaker 1: the basic design is still what we rely upon because
Speaker 1: it works as no moving parts for just that that pipe,
Speaker 1: so it can't break down in that sense. I could
Speaker 1: still get clogged. Maybe we'll talk a bit about clogs later. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know you gotta talk about it. I didn't. I
Speaker 1: did not know we were going to talk about clogs. Well,
Speaker 1: I apologize. If you want, you can check out for
Speaker 1: that part of the we'll go to my happy place.
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah, we'll just watch you kind of stare
Speaker 1: at space. Um. But it also he also invented a
Speaker 1: sliding valve between the bowl and the trap, which allowed
Speaker 1: some water to stay in the bowl after you flushed,
Speaker 1: so that it could hold on to the waist for
Speaker 1: the next time, and so you didn't just have just
Speaker 1: an empty bowl of waste and then put water into it.
Speaker 1: It was you know, it actually improved the performance quite
Speaker 1: a bit. And you had a lot of other inventors
Speaker 1: who followed, like Samuel Prosser, Joseph Brama, Thomas Tweeford. They
Speaker 1: all made improvements to the basic design of the toilet,
Speaker 1: but not a Mr. Crapper. You know, I was gonna
Speaker 1: save that. But yeah, let's talk about Thomas Crapper here
Speaker 1: for a second. But before we get into that, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you may have heard the somewhat apocryphal tale that the
Speaker 1: toilet was invented by a man named Thomas Crapper. Enough, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of those ha ha, Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?
Speaker 1: Alanis morrisse at moments, you know, I think it might be.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's like rain on your wedding day. It's
Speaker 1: like Thomas Crapper making a toilet it. But I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that's the way it goes. Um, Thomas Crapper, as
Speaker 1: far as we can tell, was actually a person. There
Speaker 1: are records of a Thomas Crapper who who held patents
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, and they're plumbing patents, and some
Speaker 1: of them in fact involve improvements to the water closet
Speaker 1: or toilet. But he didn't invent it, um, and he
Speaker 1: may not have had that big of an impact overall
Speaker 1: on the toilet evolution. It's just one of those facts
Speaker 1: that kind of got passed around, as you know, or
Speaker 1: one of those those tidbits against passed around the total truth.
Speaker 1: Plus he pronounced his name Creper. It's Creper beard, say, um,
Speaker 1: yeah it was. It's one of those things where I
Speaker 1: actually looked into it too, because I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I've always heard that as well, and I'm I'm curious
Speaker 1: where that came. Yeah, it is, it's got it has
Speaker 1: traction because it's just so delightful. Yeah. Yeah, going back
Speaker 1: to mid in the UK, that's when they passed the
Speaker 1: Public Health Act which stated that all new houses in
Speaker 1: the UK had to be built with a toilet. Very smart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great way of preserving your your various towns
Speaker 1: and cities from becoming overrun with filth. Right. But then,
Speaker 1: and this is still um in play today. There's a
Speaker 1: certain psychology around defecation, urination, expelling waste, right, and it
Speaker 1: can swing wildly from era to era. But at that time,
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteenth century, forcing the public to install
Speaker 1: indoor plumbing wasn't like the public was saying, yes, thank
Speaker 1: you government, we've been waiting to have to do this.
Speaker 1: It was more like, um, wait, you want us to
Speaker 1: put a toilet where next to the kitchen? What is
Speaker 1: wrong with you know? That's disgusting. We want to put
Speaker 1: this over in the back garden where you know, you know,
Speaker 1: and savor pot. It's mobile that we can put wherever
Speaker 1: and get rid of immediately, Like this is gross, Like
Speaker 1: you want us to hook it up to the sewer?
Speaker 1: What's wrong with you? Right? So there was like a
Speaker 1: certain amount of resistance to adopting this, whereas now, um,
Speaker 1: you know that's yeah, you want that, you want intoor plumbing,
Speaker 1: And it's based on the cultural attitudes toward expelling waste
Speaker 1: that that vary from time to time. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's hard. I mean, it's very easy for us to
Speaker 1: start looking at everything from our current perspective, right, It's
Speaker 1: very difficult to take ourselves out of that. But you
Speaker 1: do have to do that when you start talking about
Speaker 1: subjects like this, because it was a different world. I
Speaker 1: mean that people thought differently, and for for reasons that
Speaker 1: you can kind of understand when you think about it.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you think, well, now I've got
Speaker 1: a thing that dumps waste into a sewer, but I
Speaker 1: don't want any of that smell or nastiness or anything
Speaker 1: to get into my home. When before I had a
Speaker 1: portable thing I could actu they take it outside and
Speaker 1: dump it in a cesspool or whatever. It wasn't there
Speaker 1: wasn't a big change. Plus plus, it's like that's mine poop.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's poop, but it's I know where that poop
Speaker 1: came from, Whereas with the sewer, everybody else's poop has
Speaker 1: the opportunity to come into your house, yeah, which you
Speaker 1: don't know, you didn't want, don't want that. Another interesting
Speaker 1: point is I've been talking exclusively about people inventors and
Speaker 1: engineers in the UK. Now, when settlers came over to America,
Speaker 1: they did not come over with plans for toilets, and
Speaker 1: so the toilet actually had a parallel evolution in the
Speaker 1: UK and in the United States evolved in isolation basically
Speaker 1: a little bit, yes, with a little bit. I mean
Speaker 1: they obviously had some common history there, but it was
Speaker 1: largely engineers in the US who created very similar style toilets.
Speaker 1: In some cases, they were toilets that were lagging behind
Speaker 1: the technology by about twenty years compared to the UK.
Speaker 1: But you had folks like James T. Henry and William
Speaker 1: Campbell who were awarded a U S patent for a
Speaker 1: water closet toilet. Um. And that's where we really see
Speaker 1: it moving forward from that point on and to the
Speaker 1: point where they essentially merged like the the You know
Speaker 1: that we saw the United States adopt things like the
Speaker 1: s trap uh, making the toilets more useful. Um, do
Speaker 1: you know when toilet paper was invented? Toilet paper was
Speaker 1: invented in ninety eight, I predate nine, and I distinctly
Speaker 1: remember toilet paper. You were off by almost a hundred
Speaker 1: years when toilet paper was invented, didn't They used to
Speaker 1: use the series Robot catalogus corn Cob. There's actually some
Speaker 1: poetry that I've read where there's a discussion a giant.
Speaker 1: I forget what poem it is, but there's a giant
Speaker 1: talking about all the different things he has used to
Speaker 1: clean himself after after evacuation, including I think he determined
Speaker 1: that the most comfortable was the neck of a goose?
Speaker 1: Oh that is nice. Yeah, not not for the goose,
Speaker 1: but yeah uh so yeah, a toilet paper was in
Speaker 1: an but not marketed heavily until nineteen o two, so
Speaker 1: for more than a decade. Yeah, it just kind of
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I mean, why we got the
Speaker 1: series robot catalog corn Cobs. How do you look around
Speaker 1: your house and say, oh, yeah, corn Cobs. That's a
Speaker 1: good idea idea. Yeah, sure it's got traction, but pay
Speaker 1: a price for that track. Yeah, I I hesitate to
Speaker 1: hazard a guess to be honest, idea, I'll try some
Speaker 1: geese at home. All right, okay, well I'd like to
Speaker 1: apologize on behalf of Josh's geese here, so I'd like
Speaker 1: to sent to you my apologies for giving him the idea.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about how a toilet actually works. Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: So you got your basic parts of the toilet. You've
Speaker 1: got the tank, You've got the bowl in which you
Speaker 1: do your business, and then you have the siphon the
Speaker 1: s trap area that where the waist goes once you flush,
Speaker 1: which is technically part of the bowl. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just it's easier to talk about it as separate parts.
Speaker 1: But yes, you aren't correct. So inside the tank you
Speaker 1: have the flush valve. This is the valve that allows
Speaker 1: water to flow out of the tank and into the bowl.
Speaker 1: So when you press down a handle, yeah, there's that
Speaker 1: handle is connected by chain to that flush valve. That's
Speaker 1: the thing that lifts up and lets the water from
Speaker 1: the tank into the bowl. Yeah. And once the water
Speaker 1: is flowing down, like for most toilets, you no longer
Speaker 1: have to hold the handle down because just the water itself.
Speaker 1: Once the valve is an open position, it will remain
Speaker 1: open until the water level is low enough for it
Speaker 1: to close again. Yeah, they make it. It's light enough
Speaker 1: to float, yeah, right, because it's overcome suction thanks to
Speaker 1: the handle um and it's floating there, and then as
Speaker 1: the water drains out, its ability to float stop, so
Speaker 1: it falls back into place. Ideally. Ideally, Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: times obviously, if you have issues where maybe there's a
Speaker 1: hinge that's all too tight, or there's something off with
Speaker 1: the sela of on the the valve, that you may
Speaker 1: have to have that replaced, because otherwise water just continuously
Speaker 1: flows into the bowl and it never accumulates in the tank.
Speaker 1: I found that most of the time it's because there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of extra chain that's keeping the flush
Speaker 1: valve from sitting in suction from from generating. Uh. You
Speaker 1: you also have a second valve inside the tank, the
Speaker 1: filler valve. The filler valve is what allows water to
Speaker 1: go into the tank as well as into the bowl
Speaker 1: after a flush, so uh it needs to it refills
Speaker 1: the tank after you flushed it. So you flushed the tank,
Speaker 1: the water from the filler valve will start to pour
Speaker 1: into the tank to refill it. Once that that flush
Speaker 1: valve has shut uh. Some of that water also will
Speaker 1: go into the bowl to bring the level back up
Speaker 1: to the proper height. And then you've got a filler float.
Speaker 1: This is a yeah, this is a brilliant idea. The
Speaker 1: idea is that the filler float will rise to a
Speaker 1: certain level within the tank, and once it's at the
Speaker 1: proper level, it will activate a switch then turns off
Speaker 1: the filler valve, so so that way you no longer
Speaker 1: have water running in your tank. If you ever hear
Speaker 1: water continuously running in your tank, it means that float
Speaker 1: is not activating the switch properly, and you may need
Speaker 1: to take the lid off, and see what's going on
Speaker 1: with that float. Maybe it's stuck on something, or it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's the switch might be burnt out,
Speaker 1: in which case you would need to have that switch replaced.
Speaker 1: But that's what's causing that or this again, the flush
Speaker 1: valve could be not seated, populion waters just rushing out,
Speaker 1: says filler valve. Balloon isn't getting to that level where
Speaker 1: it's supposed to. It can trip the filler valve from
Speaker 1: turning off again, right exactly. Yeah, that could be another
Speaker 1: another cause for it. But you don't have to fear
Speaker 1: because even if the water is running, your toilet will
Speaker 1: very likely not overflow because it's been designed so that
Speaker 1: as the tank fills, even if it keeps filling and
Speaker 1: filling and filling, it's going to the overflow um tube,
Speaker 1: I guess, is going to direct that into the bowl. Right,
Speaker 1: So any water that comes above the height of the
Speaker 1: overflow tube will just flow down the tube. The tube
Speaker 1: leads to the bowl and water will flow into the bowl.
Speaker 1: And then you think, wait, wait, wait that cause it
Speaker 1: to flush. Yes, surely somewhere this thing's got to flood.
Speaker 1: What's the deal. Why doesn't it all Right, that's when
Speaker 1: we get into the siphon where my head pops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the sciphon gets a little for those who
Speaker 1: those of us who are many years away from basic physics,
Speaker 1: the scipen gets confusing. So the sciphon is designed so
Speaker 1: this is that that sort of upside down you or
Speaker 1: the s shaped pipe the top of that upside down
Speaker 1: you the peak there that's at the same level as
Speaker 1: what the toilet bowl, the level of water and your
Speaker 1: toilet bowl will be. Now if you were to pour
Speaker 1: more water into the toilet bowl, because there's there's just
Speaker 1: this open area between the siphon and the bowl. You know,
Speaker 1: putting more water in makes the water level rise on
Speaker 1: both sides, right, But if you're only putting in a
Speaker 1: little bit of water, that water will just rise up
Speaker 1: above the level of the bend and flow down the
Speaker 1: other side of the bend. Yeah, And and I should
Speaker 1: I want to point out that, um, this is your
Speaker 1: explanation is spot on, but would be exponentially easier if
Speaker 1: somebody were looking at a cross section of a toilet
Speaker 1: flushing s valve exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it would really drive
Speaker 1: at home. Yeah, because it's it's this is me trying
Speaker 1: to paint a picture of a toilet flush in words,
Speaker 1: yeah with physics. Yeah, so you've got you've got this
Speaker 1: this level here, and as long as the water is
Speaker 1: just flowing gently so for in other words, like a
Speaker 1: steady stream from the overflow too, then it's just going
Speaker 1: to gradually rise up til it hits above that you
Speaker 1: bend and then flow down the other side. And that's
Speaker 1: all that happens, because it's not it's not creating the
Speaker 1: siphon effect yet. Yes, So the water is in that
Speaker 1: in that s trap and in your toilet bowl, and
Speaker 1: on the other side of the siphon, in the tube
Speaker 1: that leads down to the sewer, that that air is
Speaker 1: imbalanced with the air that's in the toilet bowl, right,
Speaker 1: So you basically have air pressure balancing your water and
Speaker 1: keeping it in place. Yep, yep. And it's only if
Speaker 1: you were to fill that siphon, that s trap with
Speaker 1: water completely that that then things get out of balance.
Speaker 1: And here's where the siphon effect comes into play. So
Speaker 1: how does a siphon work all? Right? First of all,
Speaker 1: siphon's a bent tube you to move a liquid from
Speaker 1: a high evolution elevation rather over an obstruction and to
Speaker 1: a lower elevation. Done and done right. You could do
Speaker 1: this very easily by taking two cups, filling one cup
Speaker 1: with water, putting a couple of books down on a table.
Speaker 1: So you put the cup full of water on top
Speaker 1: of one of the set of books. Get a tube
Speaker 1: like flexible tube of some sort, submerge it in the
Speaker 1: water so that the tube fills with water. Put your
Speaker 1: thumb over one end of it, move it over to
Speaker 1: the other cup, which is on the source of the table. Yeah,
Speaker 1: make sure that the make sure that the end of
Speaker 1: the tube that you're holding ends up being lower than
Speaker 1: the level of water in the cup. Let go. Water
Speaker 1: will start to flow from the cup that's above to
Speaker 1: the cup that's blow even though the tube will arc
Speaker 1: so the water is technically flowing uphill. Yeah. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty neat Yeah. As long as the lower end of
Speaker 1: the tube going into the lower elevation glass um, as
Speaker 1: long as that is exposed to air, and as long
Speaker 1: as the end of the tube that's in the higher
Speaker 1: glass is under water, the air pressure in the tube
Speaker 1: is overcome and the suction effect takes place right. Well,
Speaker 1: kind of, except that the other. The tube in the
Speaker 1: lower elevation does not have to be above water. It
Speaker 1: can be. It can actually be completely submerged as well
Speaker 1: as long. What will happen is if the two water
Speaker 1: levels reach the same height uh and I mean same
Speaker 1: height relative to the table, then pressure is equalized and
Speaker 1: everything will everything is an equilibrium and water will stop
Speaker 1: to float. It's but as long as the elevated cup
Speaker 1: has a higher water level, water will continue to flow
Speaker 1: through that siphon. And the reason there are two reasons really.
Speaker 1: One is that water inside a chamber like that acts
Speaker 1: like a chain. It pulls itself along. The other reason
Speaker 1: is that you have I think of the the tube
Speaker 1: as an arc. Well, the tube that leads down to
Speaker 1: the lower elevation is longer. That side is longer than
Speaker 1: the side that's in the higher elevation. So the water
Speaker 1: that's in that part is heavier, and that weight is
Speaker 1: what's pulling water along inside the tube. And it's until
Speaker 1: until you hit equilibrium. So for a toilet to get
Speaker 1: it back to to the toilet example, and why it's
Speaker 1: important when you flush that water from the tank rushes
Speaker 1: into the bowl and it does so fast enough to
Speaker 1: completely fill the pipe that s trap. This activates the
Speaker 1: siphon effect, and the water pulls the waist and also
Speaker 1: all the rest of the water along with it through
Speaker 1: that s trap until it gets to a point where
Speaker 1: it has exhausted the amount of water that the tank
Speaker 1: has put into the bowl. And then air is introduced.
Speaker 1: And once air is introduced, the siphon effect stops. Right.
Speaker 1: So with a siphon, not only is the water flowing
Speaker 1: out of the bowl because there's so much water what
Speaker 1: about two or so gallons introduced to your toilet bowl
Speaker 1: in about three seconds that that siphon effect is produced
Speaker 1: in the s trap, right, Yeah, not only is that
Speaker 1: water flowing, it produces a type of suction, So the
Speaker 1: water in the bowl is sucked out and down the siphon.
Speaker 1: And then, yes, like you said, once the air is introduced,
Speaker 1: because the water and everything sucked out of the toilet bowl,
Speaker 1: the suction effect is cut off and everything goes back
Speaker 1: to the way it was before you flush the top. Right,
Speaker 1: that's when the filler valve can start to refill the
Speaker 1: bowl because now that there's no longer any more suction
Speaker 1: going on, the bowl water level can return back to
Speaker 1: what it was as well, And keep in mind that
Speaker 1: part of the s trap that you know you can't
Speaker 1: see because it's a solid pipe, but that also ends
Speaker 1: up filling to that same height as the water that's
Speaker 1: in the bowl. And then you're ready to go again
Speaker 1: once the tank its bowl anyway, Yeah, once you eat
Speaker 1: some kimchi yea. We talked about that before the podcast started. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, what other thing to keep in mind. You
Speaker 1: might say, well, why do we need a tank at all?
Speaker 1: Why not just have a water pipe going directly into
Speaker 1: the toilet and then when you flush, it just opens
Speaker 1: up a valve for a certain amount of time and
Speaker 1: it closes. And the reason is because unless you have
Speaker 1: insane water pressure in your house, you're not putting enough
Speaker 1: water in fast enough to fill that s trap completely
Speaker 1: to to activate the siphon effect. It's just going to
Speaker 1: trickle out like if your tank was overflowing exactly. So
Speaker 1: there's some buildings that I mean a lot of buildings
Speaker 1: that don't have UH tanks on their on their toilets,
Speaker 1: but that's because again they are directly connected to a
Speaker 1: very powerful water system, and thus you don't need a
Speaker 1: tank because the water pressure that's coming in is great
Speaker 1: enough to start that effect all by itself. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: sometimes it's even more terrifying noise than that. So that's
Speaker 1: your basic toilet, how your basic toilet works. But so
Speaker 1: glad we're past the siphon effect. Yeah, that's I feel
Speaker 1: like we just made it through the woods together. Now
Speaker 1: now we're going to go into the bright, gorgeous future
Speaker 1: of weird toilets. This is great. So let's talk Japanese
Speaker 1: toilets for a second. And I'm not talking about the ones,
Speaker 1: the trough ones, which we established. There are still some
Speaker 1: in Japan, and trough is one way to put it.
Speaker 1: More like, uh olyptical hole in the ground is another
Speaker 1: way you can describe it as well. On the floor.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so yeah, you straddle and then squat and
Speaker 1: then evacuate and then and then evacuate, evacuate the area.
Speaker 1: Like I would just be like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I did it right, and run one down the street. Um,
Speaker 1: like I can't read your language, and I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, that's kind of how I hobably react. I mean,
Speaker 1: I am, I'm being honest here, But no, the Japanese toilets,
Speaker 1: the the more western style ones have features many of
Speaker 1: them have features on them that put our Western toilets
Speaker 1: to shame. Hey, guys, hope you're enjoying this classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech stuff. Before we get into the final section,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the features toilets. Sorry, do
Speaker 1: you want? Do you have a favorite out of all
Speaker 1: of them? The air dry air dry, that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm big on the sound masking. Yeah, they they they offer.
Speaker 1: Most Japanese toilets that have all the bells and whistles
Speaker 1: offer a sound masking feature that's a flushing toilet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some of them now have also classical music, but which
Speaker 1: makes some white noise. I actually did a brain Stuff
Speaker 1: episode about what white noises and how it works. You
Speaker 1: should for superious. But yeah, it's the that those are
Speaker 1: so two of the very simple ones. But it also
Speaker 1: tends to have a couple of different options for washing
Speaker 1: your nether regions once you are finished. Yes, and depending
Speaker 1: on your gender, um, you should, I should say, depending
Speaker 1: on your sex, you should be very careful what option
Speaker 1: you choose when you're in Japan. Yeah, the day would
Speaker 1: be aimed for you know, ladies. And then you have
Speaker 1: rear washing, which is for you know, everyone, depending upon
Speaker 1: what activities you've got up to on that bathroom. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, so there's usually there's a picture of
Speaker 1: like a icon that looks kind of like a butt
Speaker 1: with some sort of stream of something directed at it
Speaker 1: that would be for washing your rear. The day usually
Speaker 1: has a icon of a lady somewhere on it, like
Speaker 1: there's a ponytail involved, Yeah, something like that to indicate
Speaker 1: what that was for. And uh, if you're wondering, like, well,
Speaker 1: ait a minute, I'm this sounds like this could be
Speaker 1: really unhygienic. The Japanese are very concerned with clean ling
Speaker 1: and so these are nozzles that are usually hidden away
Speaker 1: from the inside of the toilet bolts. Only when you
Speaker 1: press the button that they get there's like essentially a
Speaker 1: door that opens and the novel can come out. And
Speaker 1: they have nozzle sterilization technology to clean them between uses.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, they usually have buttons where you also
Speaker 1: have to like a stop button, so if you press
Speaker 1: one of these, it essentially goes until you tell it
Speaker 1: to stop. Yeah. And the person who wrote this, um
Speaker 1: this how to use a Japanese toilet post points out
Speaker 1: that before you choose either of these options, you want
Speaker 1: to press the stream power down as as low as
Speaker 1: it will go to start, and then you can adjust
Speaker 1: it upwards. Um. Here, she says that at the normal
Speaker 1: setting is equivalent to about a water pick, which on
Speaker 1: your you're done, you're junk. That's not good, that's really,
Speaker 1: that's terrible. It might come as a big surprise for
Speaker 1: that to to hit certain sensitive varia. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's setting it low and this. Some of them also
Speaker 1: have controls for the temperature of the water, not to
Speaker 1: mention the temperature of the seat. Uh. Some also, like
Speaker 1: you mentioned, have the air drying so that after you
Speaker 1: have had your rear washed, air dry it, which I mean, like, yes,
Speaker 1: that's cool, there's like the days and rear washing all
Speaker 1: that stuff, but you're not gonna stand up right afterwards.
Speaker 1: Just be what you have to have the air dryer.
Speaker 1: That's why, I mean, that's the best part. I agree,
Speaker 1: I agree. I mean, if if you're going to have
Speaker 1: these other features, you really knew do need the air
Speaker 1: dryer or else you're just like, well, I guess I'll
Speaker 1: be sitting here for a couple more minutes before I
Speaker 1: dare move. Another interesting thing to me about the Japanese
Speaker 1: culture um and it makes perfect sense. I totally understand it.
Speaker 1: But you know, in Japan, shoes are really considered to
Speaker 1: be quite dirty. That's one of the dirtiest pieces of
Speaker 1: clothing that people have. So it's customary, of course to
Speaker 1: take your shoes off and slip into house slippers before
Speaker 1: moving going into a house. Absolutely, bathrooms have their own
Speaker 1: sets of slippers, and it is quite a faux pod
Speaker 1: to mix the two together. Oh yeah, if you were
Speaker 1: to step out of a bathroom wearing bathroom slippers, you
Speaker 1: would shock people, especially if you did like a little
Speaker 1: dance like I'm American. Oh yeah, don't come on, and
Speaker 1: you can. You can usually tell the bathroom slippers um
Speaker 1: from they They have almost like a bit of a
Speaker 1: waterproof look to them. Usually they're a little shinier. They're
Speaker 1: made of they're not like um cloth. Usually they you
Speaker 1: could tell just using your your noodle compared to house slippers.
Speaker 1: You'd be like, these are probably the bathroom slipper toilet slippers.
Speaker 1: Or they might be brightly colored and you think no
Speaker 1: one would ever wear these anywhere else, or so maybe
Speaker 1: they have a poop emogy on them. It could be
Speaker 1: those are popular. Another feature you might find on the
Speaker 1: toilets is a deodorizer button. Yeah, also kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So I found a toilet if I may give a plug,
Speaker 1: Even though I should say I have no financial interest
Speaker 1: whatsoever in the Cohler company, but I have become a
Speaker 1: fan of their new me uh toilet. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't even begin to describe it. It's just so neat
Speaker 1: as far as the design goes. Um. Just go to
Speaker 1: just look for the new me toilet and U M
Speaker 1: I um. But one of the things they have is
Speaker 1: a deodorizer. It's like, um, basically a little vent where
Speaker 1: the the the odor is sucked in and run through
Speaker 1: a charcoal filter. Nice. Yeah yeah, I mean I when
Speaker 1: I read about the Japanese toilets, obviously there's some some
Speaker 1: humor that comes in that just from the cultural differences
Speaker 1: things like that, and which can seem very funny. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I am incredibly envious. I would
Speaker 1: love to have a lot of these features building two
Speaker 1: American toilets. Uh. There are there are some moves to
Speaker 1: improve toilet technology in various ways. Some of it is
Speaker 1: a conservation trying to find low flush toilets that'll still
Speaker 1: activate the siphoning UH technique, but not use as much
Speaker 1: water and a go very important. Did you see the
Speaker 1: no mixed toilet I did? Yeah, the the one that
Speaker 1: has met It has kind of like a ledge and
Speaker 1: and filter for UH urine and then behind that would
Speaker 1: be where Yeah, it's it's meant so that when you
Speaker 1: when you just have to urinate, you don't have to
Speaker 1: flush the toilet. Yeah, it doesn't flush at all, and
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, it collects the urine UM.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why the company that originally
Speaker 1: started making no mixed toilet stop making them is because well,
Speaker 1: number one, they didn't catch on very well, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of hesitancy UM. But the another reason is they
Speaker 1: they didn't quite have the infrastructure to collect the urine
Speaker 1: separately and send it off. Although environmentally speaking, it makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to separate urine from feces, especially
Speaker 1: UH and not flush urine because when you flush urine,
Speaker 1: you're introducing a lot of other stuff besides just the urine,
Speaker 1: Like if you are on pharmaceuticals, those a lot of
Speaker 1: that stuff is expelled and metabolized and expelled in your
Speaker 1: urine and it gets introduced into wet land areas and
Speaker 1: things like that, and all of a sudden you have
Speaker 1: frogs that are like have roid rage or something, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, or that like a rubbing themselves against walls
Speaker 1: because you took too much ecstasy the night before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, well, yeah, anything you're taking into yours, anything
Speaker 1: you're gonna excrete spin filtered through your kidneys, you're going
Speaker 1: to have some some other elements in there too, consumed.
Speaker 1: But so the nomaxed toilet collects this urine and sends
Speaker 1: it off for separate recycling. And then if you're really hardcore,
Speaker 1: you know Granola or your city is, then maybe it
Speaker 1: gets recycled into water and you drink that and pee
Speaker 1: it out again and again it becomes a closed loop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about that on Forward Thinking. We talked
Speaker 1: about that with systems aboard UM, the International Space Station
Speaker 1: ways of water reclamation, so that I mean, obviously, if
Speaker 1: you are in an area where you get very little
Speaker 1: water or it's very difficult to ship water to you,
Speaker 1: you have to make the best use of all the
Speaker 1: resources you have. Uh. There's some other things we can
Speaker 1: talk about as far as toilet advances, smart toilets, so
Speaker 1: sensor technology has gotten to the point now where it's
Speaker 1: it's very inexpensive, it's versatile, waterproof, It's entirely possible to
Speaker 1: design sensors that could uh measure your waste and and
Speaker 1: come up with actual information that could be relevant to
Speaker 1: your health. So I've also interesting examples like the idea
Speaker 1: of a sensor that could be an early pregnancy detection
Speaker 1: by detecting changing hormone levels. Um, it might analyze your
Speaker 1: wayte detect the bacterial infection, so it might tell you.
Speaker 1: It might even send you an indication saying you know,
Speaker 1: you need to take it easy for a little while,
Speaker 1: or maybe even you need to go see a doctor.
Speaker 1: With the right kind of software, you and this is
Speaker 1: not hard to do at all. You could even have
Speaker 1: one that could send a notification to your doctor, or
Speaker 1: even go further, have one that's linked to your doctor's
Speaker 1: calendar and your calendar and even create an appointment for you,
Speaker 1: so your toilet has all that for you. It's it's possible.
Speaker 1: It's not something that we're necessarily seeing everywhere, but it's possible.
Speaker 1: I could see some problems with this though, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, first of all, there's a real hesitancy
Speaker 1: by people to especially put their medical records out there,
Speaker 1: their health data. UM. I feel like those as as
Speaker 1: the advantages are the benefits of allowing the Internet of
Speaker 1: things or that that level of tech into our lives,
Speaker 1: especially with health um become obvious to more people, the
Speaker 1: more just relaxed everybody's going to become. I mean, think
Speaker 1: about it, five ten years ago, say five, the putting
Speaker 1: your credit card into a website to order something was
Speaker 1: still like really sketch you to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: And now enough people have done it that it's just
Speaker 1: it's just whatever. That's the norm. Yeah, right, And I
Speaker 1: think health our health information is going to go that
Speaker 1: same way. I can see that. The only thing I
Speaker 1: see as uh possible, well not the only thing, but
Speaker 1: one of the things I see is an impediment to
Speaker 1: this is how do you identify the person who is
Speaker 1: using the toilet at any given situations? So, for example, Josh,
Speaker 1: let's say I have you over and you need to
Speaker 1: use my restroom, and unbeknownst to me, you are carrying
Speaker 1: around a really awful bacterial infection that's poised to wreak
Speaker 1: havoc in your system. And so as you use my
Speaker 1: restroom and you flushed the toilet, it analyzes it and
Speaker 1: suddenly thinks that Jonathan has gotten really sick. Next thing
Speaker 1: I know, my doctor is calling me. Now I know
Speaker 1: about your health condition. Yeah, that's that's a very good point. Um.
Speaker 1: I would guess then if if toilets are analyzing us
Speaker 1: our health personally, then a toilet itself will become a
Speaker 1: much more personal thing. So maybe I have a dumb
Speaker 1: toilet as my guest toilet, and then my smart toilet
Speaker 1: is the only one that's in my master bathroom. Or
Speaker 1: here's another thing, Stop me if I sound crazy, stop
Speaker 1: You've got a biometric authentication system for your toilet where
Speaker 1: you have to scan like a thumb print or a
Speaker 1: retinal scant identify you before using it. Thus you can't
Speaker 1: possibly confuse to people, and you cannot flush until you
Speaker 1: have identified yourself. That's a good one. No, that's a
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes sense. My my wife and I
Speaker 1: have um an aria uh scale. Oh yeah right, it's
Speaker 1: like fitbit um and it can easily tell us apart.
Speaker 1: But because I mean, it just determines like wait and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Um, so it can it can easily
Speaker 1: tell us apart. But you know, maybe the seat does
Speaker 1: detect by weight, or there is some other detail about
Speaker 1: you that just by sitting on the toilet, uh, it
Speaker 1: says this is Jonathan or this is not This is
Speaker 1: someone who's broken into Jonathan's house to use this toil. Right, well,
Speaker 1: that would be another thing using your bathroom. Should I
Speaker 1: lock the door? Yes, and turn on bathroom webcam? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. And also the you know, deodorized, let's
Speaker 1: just go ahead and be suffe. So there are other
Speaker 1: potential old dangers, and one of those hacking. So there's
Speaker 1: already a story about a smart toilet hacking uh situation
Speaker 1: which happened back in two thousand thirteen. Ours Technica reported that,
Speaker 1: according to security firm trust Wave, the Enacts Status automatic
Speaker 1: toilet had a Bluetooth security vulnerability and it was a
Speaker 1: doozy so to speak. So the you know, when you
Speaker 1: pair to bluetooth capable technologies together, you generally have some
Speaker 1: sort of code that jet to put in in order
Speaker 1: to pair them. Not always, but a lot of them do.
Speaker 1: And the problem was they had hardwired the same master
Speaker 1: code in all of these toilets, and it was just
Speaker 1: zero zero zero zero, right, So any app for this
Speaker 1: toilet compare with any toilet just from being in the
Speaker 1: same area. Right, So if you are within bluetooth distance,
Speaker 1: which is pretty decent, I mean, you don't it's not
Speaker 1: that far, but it's not know, it's it's not like
Speaker 1: you could do it from two fifty feet away necessarily,
Speaker 1: But if you're close enough, like within the building or
Speaker 1: on the on the side of it or whatever, you
Speaker 1: can totally pair your phone with the toilet inside and
Speaker 1: essentially hijack someone's toilet, which you know you might think, well,
Speaker 1: why could you do? Well, this thing had the ability
Speaker 1: to open and close via a command on your phone,
Speaker 1: so that way you didn't have to touch the toilet seat.
Speaker 1: It also allows you to control things like the bidet
Speaker 1: or the rear washing uh nozzles, so you could you
Speaker 1: could turn it on like you could turn on one
Speaker 1: of those nozzles when no one's on the toilet and
Speaker 1: start flooding their bathroom, or you can do it when
Speaker 1: you realize someone's just gone into the bathroom and they
Speaker 1: haven't even really started yet. You could do it then
Speaker 1: and just laugh at the hilarious or close the toilet
Speaker 1: seat while they're mid you know activity, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's ironic about using an app on your phone to
Speaker 1: open and close the toilet seat. Would it be that
Speaker 1: the phone surface, this is the dirtiest sertency come in
Speaker 1: contact with. Yeah, I thought that might be where you
Speaker 1: were going with that. Yeah, guys, if you didn't know,
Speaker 1: if you have smartphones, got touchscreen, hits filthy. It's about
Speaker 1: the dirtiest thing you probably come into contact within any day,
Speaker 1: including the toilets. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing that might
Speaker 1: be uh, you know, a good competitor with that would
Speaker 1: be a keyboard. If you use a keyboard on a
Speaker 1: daily basis, that's probably pretty gross too. Yeah. So what's
Speaker 1: in the future for toilet's Probably we will see some
Speaker 1: more of these, uh these things that are common now
Speaker 1: in Japanese toilets kind of filter their way through to
Speaker 1: other ones. I imagine we'll see more moves to conserve water.
Speaker 1: It may even mean that we end up moving away
Speaker 1: from the siphon model and find a different model to
Speaker 1: deal with waste so that it does it's not reliant
Speaker 1: upon creating enough water to create this section, we'll have
Speaker 1: to wait and see. Uh, but we have to thank
Speaker 1: the brilliant men and women who came before us forging
Speaker 1: the path to make incredibly useful piece of technology, and
Speaker 1: also hope that we can continue to strive to get
Speaker 1: it to more people so that we can improve the
Speaker 1: quality of life for folks who who otherwise are in
Speaker 1: pretty rough you know, circumstances when obviously when cultures are
Speaker 1: going to adopt it. So, Josh, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me on the sand. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: This was a joy. It was fun. It was fun.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we were able to talk about this in
Speaker 1: a mature way with only a few terrible jokes on
Speaker 1: my end, relatively mature. We did pretty juvenile at times,
Speaker 1: but mostly maure uh. Of course, listeners, you can find
Speaker 1: Josh at the Stuff You Should Know podcast, which is
Speaker 1: the granddaddy of all the stuff podcast. Fantastic. I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's the oldest podcast that's still running from How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works and is uh fantastic. Guys, I gotta thank
Speaker 1: Josh Clark one more time for joining me on that
Speaker 1: classic episode. We talked a lot about all sorts of technologies,
Speaker 1: you know, since we recorded that, I actually got to
Speaker 1: travel to Scotland and I got to go to Scara
Speaker 1: Bray and I got to see the oldest flushing toilets
Speaker 1: in Europe. It was pretty amazing. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a great trip, not crappy at all. Anyway, if you
Speaker 1: guys enjoyed this episode, please let me know. Maybe there
Speaker 1: are other special classics that I should pull up. Because
Speaker 1: it's been hundreds of episodes and a lot of you
Speaker 1: may not have heard them. But if you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics that I should tackle on this show,
Speaker 1: give me a shout, send me an email. The addresses
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: both of those is text stuff h s W. Don't
Speaker 1: forget we have an Instagram account and you can go
Speaker 1: follow that and you can watch me record shows live
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays and Friday's at twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I hope to see you there and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how staff works dot com.