Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? It is time for
Speaker 1: a tech Stuff classic episode. This episode originally published March eighteenth.
Speaker 1: It is titled tech Stuff Gets Flushed Back when I
Speaker 1: was really clever with my titles and I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: So we are talking a mount toilets today. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be h This episode is going to be flush
Speaker 1: with puns. Man, I can't take this all right, and
Speaker 1: I know it's bad already, right, So before I really
Speaker 1: get into that, you know, there will obviously be some
Speaker 1: levity in this, but this is actually a very serious topic.
Speaker 1: And to kind of illustrate that, I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: something else. Now this is this is half a year
Speaker 1: away from us. But November nineteenth is World Toilet Day,
Speaker 1: which at first sounds kind of comedic, right, I think
Speaker 1: it's hilarious. It sounds funny. It's it's an event hosted
Speaker 1: by the World Toilet Organization. Still sounds at first when
Speaker 1: you think about it, because the mean toilet humor has
Speaker 1: become like a real it's a real industry into itself.
Speaker 1: But this is not about humor. It's actually the purpose
Speaker 1: of the day and the purpose of the organization is
Speaker 1: to help provide support for getting proper sanitation to the
Speaker 1: world's population. According to that organization, of the world's population
Speaker 1: still practices open defecation. That's a billion people. I mean,
Speaker 1: I knew a lot of people, did I didn't realize
Speaker 1: it was that high a percentage. Now I saw a
Speaker 1: figure back in I think two thousand nine that was
Speaker 1: two point five billion people. So clearly we've made some
Speaker 1: great strides in in raising sanitation levels, but there's still
Speaker 1: so much work to be done. And I mean, this
Speaker 1: is obviously something that we have to be concerned with
Speaker 1: because it can lead to you know, pandemics or at
Speaker 1: least a really bad outbreak of disease, not to mention
Speaker 1: just unpleasant living conditions. Well, you know what's funny is UM.
Speaker 1: I think part of it also is not just that
Speaker 1: people practice open defecation, but that the a lot of
Speaker 1: them don't have access to sanitary drinking water as a
Speaker 1: result of their of their waste disposal. UM. But I
Speaker 1: have there are places, especially in um parts of rural
Speaker 1: India where open defecation is practiced, where the people are like,
Speaker 1: you can put toilets in here all day long, we're
Speaker 1: not going to use them because we find open defecation
Speaker 1: as part of like wholesome country living. Is the way
Speaker 1: that I've seen it put like it's just part and
Speaker 1: parcel with being outside and you know, watching a squirrel
Speaker 1: 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 light 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. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: also a great bift two songs, But this would be
Speaker 1: back at the b c E. Around approximately around that
Speaker 1: era when you would see these organized systems for waste management.
Speaker 1: One thing I thought was really interesting was I watched
Speaker 1: a documentary about a Neolithic village that was on the
Speaker 1: Orkney Islands, uh in Scotland. Um, we call it scare Bray.
Speaker 1: That's the name we've given it. Because any actual records
Speaker 1: of this village haven't existed for more than a couple
Speaker 1: of thousand years. This village was forgotten. No one knew
Speaker 1: it was even there until there was a major storm
Speaker 1: that washed away some of the land that had grown
Speaker 1: up built up around on top of the village. Is amazing.
Speaker 1: Right when it was discovered, you immediately had a and uh,
Speaker 1: there was an expedition, let's say to uncover the village,
Speaker 1: but it was not led by anyone who's ever been
Speaker 1: actually identified. In other words, was treasure hunters 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 pit,
Speaker 1: a 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 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, it's the important
Speaker 1: point in 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 breaks fascinating. So
Speaker 1: definitely look into that a get a chance. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've seen it before. I've seen just the settlement pictures
Speaker 1: of the settlement. It is pretty advanced. You don't think
Speaker 1: of the Orkney Islands and three thousand b C. Is
Speaker 1: you know, the seed of civilization technology. But yeah, they
Speaker 1: had something going on. It's pretty surprising, yeah, because I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, when I think of of society civilization in
Speaker 1: the British Islands, I'm thinking closer to you, the Roman times.
Speaker 1: But it's pretty amazing how sophisticated was even back then. Uh.
Speaker 1: Ancient Greeks also they used sewage systems to channel waste
Speaker 1: away from living quarters. The Romans went even further. They
Speaker 1: would have these, especially if you were a very wealthy
Speaker 1: or powerful Roman. You might have a pretty styling, you know, bathroom,
Speaker 1: heated seats. He did marble seats, um and it maybe
Speaker 1: private from what I understood, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: public bathrooms really took the public thing to the nth degree,
Speaker 1: where it was just like basically a long bench with
Speaker 1: different cutouts, you know, space not very far apart. Frankly, um,
Speaker 1: and you'd have maybe eight or ten maybe fifteen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw there was a public restroom in Syria. UM.
Speaker 1: I think was contemporaneous to to Greece. Um that sat
Speaker 1: like eighty right, and there's no partitions, there's no nothing,
Speaker 1: And it seemed to be um kind of a social
Speaker 1: endeavor where like you just sit there and chat with
Speaker 1: somebody while you're pooping. Yeah, it's kind of funny to
Speaker 1: think about how it was this communal social activity, or
Speaker 1: at least it wasn't separated from any of the communal
Speaker 1: and social activities, whereas today we have all these unspoken
Speaker 1: rules of of you know, no talking in the bathroom,
Speaker 1: you keep your dirty behavior to yourself. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've ever seen it. There's actually if I'm
Speaker 1: a Shinima cartoon using them, I think it's the sims
Speaker 1: where it's to illustrate the rules in the men's restroom,
Speaker 1: and rule number one is if there's a line of urinals.
Speaker 1: You take one on either end. It doesn't matter which end,
Speaker 1: just it has to be on the end. The next
Speaker 1: person and has to take the one on the furthest end.
Speaker 1: And then as long as there's at least one empty
Speaker 1: one separating you and the next person, you can take one.
Speaker 1: But if there isn't, you gotta leave, like like there's
Speaker 1: it was this crazy series of but it was a
Speaker 1: series of rules where and then the comedy came from
Speaker 1: the fact that you're like, this is kind of how
Speaker 1: guys behave in the bathroom. For me, it's the cardinal
Speaker 1: rule is if there's two two stalls, um, and the
Speaker 1: doors shut on one, then both are occupied by by default.
Speaker 1: That must make it difficult here in this office because
Speaker 1: the bathrooms go uh floor to ceiling with the doors
Speaker 1: and they're shut all the time. So that's that's different
Speaker 1: like that these bathrooms are prime real estate in my opinion.
Speaker 1: But if you remember in the last place where aust
Speaker 1: the First was headquartered, it was, you know, just a
Speaker 1: partition and you can see feet and everything, and it's
Speaker 1: that's just to me, like we we really have advanced
Speaker 1: to the point where you know it is a private
Speaker 1: act and um, it's not to be shared. It's not public.
Speaker 1: We're not in ancient grease any longer. Um. And so
Speaker 1: if somebody's in a stall, you don't sit down next
Speaker 1: to I just I really feel strongly about that. I
Speaker 1: can understand. And it's interesting because when we get into
Speaker 1: advanced toilets like the Japanese toilets, they take that to
Speaker 1: the next level to create another another level of privacy
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah, it's pretty neat, Like you swipe your
Speaker 1: hand in front of a sensor and it takes you
Speaker 1: to the seventh dimension, completely out of reach of anybody here.
Speaker 1: It's you and and that's it. He's in the ninth,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah, I think he is, or the tenth.
Speaker 1: That's one of those. Yeah. So one of the other
Speaker 1: things we can talk about before we move into the
Speaker 1: earliest flush toilet is that when you're looking at say
Speaker 1: Europe in the Middle Ages all the way up into
Speaker 1: the Renaissance. Uh, you're talking about especially like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think about castles I frequently. I do, I really
Speaker 1: do frequently think about castles. Um. Their facilities were pretty primitive.
Speaker 1: It was essentially a hole cut into the you know,
Speaker 1: like a like a stone seat, sometimes with a wooden
Speaker 1: panel on top of it. Uh that then had a
Speaker 1: channel that that slanted away from the wall, and your
Speaker 1: your waist would drop down either into a cesspit, a moat, moat,
Speaker 1: sometimes just the ground. On the invading armies, that is
Speaker 1: also a possibility. And these were called garter robes, and
Speaker 1: they were also closets. They weren't just bathrooms. They were
Speaker 1: closets you would hang your clothing because the ammonia from
Speaker 1: your urine would kill fleas. Oh wow, that is very
Speaker 1: surprisingly clever. It's not scar break clever, but it's up there.
Speaker 1: So 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 back before.
Speaker 1: And it's one that, by the way, a lot of
Speaker 1: people in our office. It comes from fift nineties six
Speaker 1: John Harrington. Yes, he was a cousin I think of
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: queen you can pretty much poop wherever you like. Someone's
Speaker 1: going to take care of it. But he called it
Speaker 1: the ajax. No, here's the thing. John Harrington was a rake.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he was like Greg ken hear level rake,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like. He was known for passing
Speaker 1: around lewd poetry to the ladies of the court. He
Speaker 1: loved too. He was very clever and he loved being
Speaker 1: clever and so lewd poetry flushing toilets well, he called
Speaker 1: it the ajax as a pun. It's a pun on
Speaker 1: the term jake's, which is a euphemism for toilet. It's
Speaker 1: like the john it's the jake's, So a jax is
Speaker 1: a pun on jake's. And it had a pan into
Speaker 1: which one would do one's business and assist turn that
Speaker 1: you could pump water up into, and then a handle
Speaker 1: and when you pulled the handle, it opened up a
Speaker 1: valve that allowed the water from the cistern to come
Speaker 1: down and wash away what was in the pan down
Speaker 1: through a channel that would go out to assess pool
Speaker 1: onto an invading army, or onto an invading army as
Speaker 1: the case may be. As far as I know, he
Speaker 1: only built two. I think he built one for the
Speaker 1: queen and one for himself. Uh So it was an
Speaker 1: interesting idea, did not catch on at the time. Uh
Speaker 1: it 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 hundred years Alexander coming exactly,
Speaker 1: and he he invented something that ended up being very
Speaker 1: important for the flushing toilet, the S trap. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: much 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: consider it an upside down you or something like that.
Speaker 1: It all depends on one how much of it you
Speaker 1: can see and to exactly what implementation it is. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the U 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 that? And he did with the
Speaker 1: s trap. Yeah, and it was really a brilliant idea
Speaker 1: and also so much so strickly 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. Has 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 yet, I'll go to my happy place.
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah, we'll just watch you kind of stare space. Um.
Speaker 1: But it also he also invented a sliding valve between
Speaker 1: the bowl and the trap, which allowed some water to
Speaker 1: stay in a bowl after you flushed, so that it
Speaker 1: could hold on to the waist for the next time,
Speaker 1: and so you didn't just have just an empty bowl
Speaker 1: of waste and then put water into it. It was
Speaker 1: you know, it actually improved the performance quite a bit.
Speaker 1: And you had a lot of other inventors who followed,
Speaker 1: like Samuel Prosser, Joseph Brama, Thomas Twyford. They all made
Speaker 1: improvements to the basic design of the toilet. We're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick bathroom break, but we'll be right back
Speaker 1: with more tech. Stuff gets flushed. Okay, So you may
Speaker 1: have heard the somewhat apocryphal tale that the toilet was
Speaker 1: invented by a man named Thomas Crapper. Apply enough, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of those ha ha. Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?
Speaker 1: Alanis Morris 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, But I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that's the way it goes. Um. Thomas Crapper, as far
Speaker 1: as we can tell, was actually a person. There are
Speaker 1: records of a Thomas Crapper who who held patents in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century and their plumbing patents, and some of
Speaker 1: them in fact involve improvements to the water closet or toilet.
Speaker 1: But he didn't invent it um, and he may not
Speaker 1: have had that big of an impact overall on the
Speaker 1: toilet evolution. It's just one of those facts that kind
Speaker 1: of got passed around, as you know, or one of
Speaker 1: those those tidbits that gets passed around. The total truth.
Speaker 1: Plus he pronounced his name crep it's crepe Um. Yeah
Speaker 1: it was. It's one of those things where I actually
Speaker 1: looked into it too, because it was like, well I've
Speaker 1: always heard that as well, and I'm curious where that
Speaker 1: came out. Well, yeah it is. It's got it has
Speaker 1: traction because it's just so delightful. Yeah yeah, uh. Going
Speaker 1: back to mid forty eight in the UK, that's when
Speaker 1: they passed the Public Health Act which stated that all
Speaker 1: new houses in the UK had to be built with
Speaker 1: a toilet. Very smart. Yeah, it's a great way of
Speaker 1: preserving your your various towns and cities from becoming overrun
Speaker 1: with filth. Right. But then, and this is still um
Speaker 1: in play today. There's a certain psychology around defecation, urination,
Speaker 1: expelling waste, right, and it can swing wildly from era
Speaker 1: to era, but at that time, in the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: forcing the public to install indoor plumbing wasn't like the
Speaker 1: public was saying, yes, thank you government, we've been waiting
Speaker 1: to have to do this. It was more like, um, wait,
Speaker 1: you want us to put a toilet where next to
Speaker 1: the kitchen? What is wrong with you? No, that's disgusting.
Speaker 1: We want to put this over in the back garden
Speaker 1: where you know, you know, achiever pot. It's mobile that
Speaker 1: we can put wherever and get rid of immediately, Like
Speaker 1: this is gross, Like you want us to hook it
Speaker 1: up to the sewer? What's wrong with you? So there
Speaker 1: was like a certain amount of resistance to adopting this,
Speaker 1: whereas now, um, you know, it's yeah, you want that,
Speaker 1: you want indoor plumbing, And it's based on the cultural
Speaker 1: attitudes toward expelling waste that that vary from time to time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's hard. I mean, it's very easy for
Speaker 1: us to start looking at everything from our current perspective, right,
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to take ourselves out of that. But
Speaker 1: you do have to do that when you start talking
Speaker 1: about subjects like this. Because it was a different world
Speaker 1: I mean 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 four I had a
Speaker 1: portable thing, I could actually take it outside and dump
Speaker 1: it in a cess pool or whatever. It wasn't there
Speaker 1: wasn't a big change. Plus plus, it's like that's my poop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's poop, but it's I know where that poop came from.
Speaker 1: Whereas with the sewer, everybody else's poop has the opportunity
Speaker 1: to come into your house, yeah, which you don't know,
Speaker 1: you didn't want, don't want that. Another interesting point is
Speaker 1: I've been talking exclusively about people inventors and engineers in
Speaker 1: the UK. Now, when settlers came over to America, they
Speaker 1: did not come over with plans for toilets, and so
Speaker 1: the toilet actually had a parallel evolution in the UK
Speaker 1: and in the United States evolved in isolation basically a
Speaker 1: little bit, yes with 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 tech anology 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 ninety eight, and I
Speaker 1: distinctly remember toilet paper. You were off by almost a
Speaker 1: hundred years when toilet paper was invented, didn't They used
Speaker 1: to use the series robot catalogs Corn Cob. There's actually
Speaker 1: some poetry that I've read where there's a discussion a giant.
Speaker 1: I forget what whim 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. The toilet paper was in
Speaker 1: but not marketed heavily until nineteen two, so for more
Speaker 1: than a decade. Yeah, it just kind of I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, why we got the series robot catalog Cobs.
Speaker 1: How do you look around your house and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: corn Cob, that's a that's a good idea, bad idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sure it's got traction, but pay a price for that track. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I hesitate to hazard a guess, to be honest,
Speaker 1: idea to have some at home? All right, okay, well
Speaker 1: I'd like to apologize on behalf of Josh's gee. I'd
Speaker 1: like to extend to you my apologies for giving him
Speaker 1: the idea. 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. Yes,
Speaker 1: so when you press down the 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 so it's light
Speaker 1: enough to float. Yeah, right, because it's overcome suction thanks
Speaker 1: to the handle um and it's floating there, and then
Speaker 1: as the water drains out, its ability to float stop,
Speaker 1: so it falls back into place. Ideally. Ideally, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are times obviously, if you have issues where maybe there's
Speaker 1: a hinge that's a little too tight, or there's something
Speaker 1: off with the sela of on the the valve, that
Speaker 1: you may have to have that replaced, because otherwise water
Speaker 1: just continuously flows into the bowl and it never accumulates
Speaker 1: in the tank. I found that most of the time
Speaker 1: it's because there's a little bit of extra chain that's
Speaker 1: keeping the flush valve from sitting in suction from from generating. Uh.
Speaker 1: You you also have a second valve inside the tank,
Speaker 1: the filler valve. The filler valve is what allows water
Speaker 1: to go into the tank as well as into the
Speaker 1: bowl after a flush, so uh it needs to it
Speaker 1: refills the tank after you flushed it. So you flushed
Speaker 1: the tank, the water from the filler valve will start
Speaker 1: to pour into the tank to refill it. Once that
Speaker 1: that flush valve has shut uh. Some of that water
Speaker 1: also will go into the bowl to bring the level
Speaker 1: back up to the proper height. And then you've got
Speaker 1: a filler float. This is a yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: brilliant idea. The idea is that the filler float will
Speaker 1: rise to a certain level within the tank, and once
Speaker 1: it's at the proper level, it will activate a switch
Speaker 1: then turns off the filler valve, so so that way
Speaker 1: you no longer have water running in your tank. If
Speaker 1: you ever hear water continuously running in your tank, it
Speaker 1: means that float is not activating the switch properly, and
Speaker 1: you may need to take the lid off and see
Speaker 1: what's going on with that float. Maybe it's stuck on something,
Speaker 1: or it's you know, it's it's the switch might be
Speaker 1: burnt out, in which case you would need to have
Speaker 1: that switch replaced. But that's what's causing that or this Again,
Speaker 1: the flush valve could be not seen and popular in
Speaker 1: water is just rushing out, So that's filler valve. Balloon
Speaker 1: isn't getting to that level where it's supposed to where
Speaker 1: it can trip the filler valve from turning off again,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Yeah, that could be another another cause for it.
Speaker 1: But you don't have to fear because even if the
Speaker 1: water is running, your toilet will very likely not overflow
Speaker 1: because it's been designed so that as the tank fills,
Speaker 1: even if it keeps filling and filling and filling, it's
Speaker 1: going to the overflow um tube, I guess, is going
Speaker 1: to direct that into the bowl. Right, So any water
Speaker 1: that comes above the height of the overflow tube will
Speaker 1: just flow down the tube. The tube leads to the
Speaker 1: bowl and water will flow into the bowl. And then
Speaker 1: you think, wait, wait, wait that cause it to flush. Yes,
Speaker 1: surely somewhere this thing's got to flood what's the deal.
Speaker 1: Why doesn't it all right? That's when we get into
Speaker 1: the siphon where my head pops. Yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: sciphen gets a little for those who those of us
Speaker 1: who are many years away from basic physics, the scipen
Speaker 1: gets confused. So the siphon is designed. So this is
Speaker 1: that that sort of upside down you or the s
Speaker 1: shaped pipe the top of that upside down you the
Speaker 1: peak there that's at the same level as what the
Speaker 1: toilet bowl, the level of water and your toilet bowl
Speaker 1: will be. Now, if you were to pour more water
Speaker 1: into the toilet bowl, because there's there's just this open
Speaker 1: area between the siphon and the bowl. You know, putting
Speaker 1: more water in makes the water level rise on both sides, right,
Speaker 1: But if you're only putting in a little bit of water,
Speaker 1: that water will just rise up above the level of
Speaker 1: the bend and flow down the other side of the bend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and I should I want to point out that, um,
Speaker 1: this is your explanation is spot on, but would be
Speaker 1: exponentially easier if somebody were looking at a cross section
Speaker 1: of a toilet flushing s valve right exactly. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would really drive at home, Yeah, because it's it's
Speaker 1: this is me trying to paint a picture of a
Speaker 1: toilet plush in words, yeah, with physics. Yeah, So you've
Speaker 1: got you've got this this level here, and as long
Speaker 1: as the water is just flowing gently so for in
Speaker 1: other words, like a steady stream from the overflow too,
Speaker 1: then it's just going to gradually rise up till it
Speaker 1: hits above that you bend and then flow down the
Speaker 1: other side. And that's all that happens, because it's not
Speaker 1: it's not creating the siphon effect yet. Yes, So the
Speaker 1: water is in that in that s trap and in
Speaker 1: your toilet bowl, and on the other side of the siphon,
Speaker 1: in the tube that leads down to the sewer, that
Speaker 1: that air is imbalanced with the air that's in the
Speaker 1: toilet bowl, right, So you basically have air pressure balancing
Speaker 1: your water and keeping it in place. Yep, yep. And
Speaker 1: it's only if you were to fill that siphon, that
Speaker 1: s trap with water completely that that then things get
Speaker 1: out of balance. And here's where the siphon affect comes
Speaker 1: into play. So how does a siphon work all? Right?
Speaker 1: First of all, siphons a bent tube used to move
Speaker 1: a liquid from a high evolution elevation rather over an
Speaker 1: obstruction and to a lower elevation. Done and done right.
Speaker 1: You could do this very easily by taking two cups,
Speaker 1: filling one cup with water, putting a couple of books
Speaker 1: down on a table. So you put the cup full
Speaker 1: of water on top of one of the set of books.
Speaker 1: Get a tube, like a flexible tube of some sort,
Speaker 1: submerge it in the water so that the tube fills
Speaker 1: with water. Put your thumb over one end of it.
Speaker 1: Move it over to the other cup, which is on
Speaker 1: the surface of the table. Yeah, make sure that the
Speaker 1: make sure that the end of the tube that you're
Speaker 1: holding ends up being lower than the level of water
Speaker 1: in the cup. Let go. Water will start to flow
Speaker 1: from the cup that's above to the cup that's blow
Speaker 1: even though the tube will arc so the water is
Speaker 1: technically flowing uphill. Yeah, which is pretty neat. Yeah. As
Speaker 1: long as the lower end of the tube going into
Speaker 1: the lower elevation glass um, as long as that is
Speaker 1: exposed to air, and as long as the end of
Speaker 1: the tube that's in the higher glass is under water,
Speaker 1: the air pressure in the tube is overcome and the
Speaker 1: suction effect takes place right well kind of, except that
Speaker 1: the other the tube in the lower elevation does not
Speaker 1: have to be above water. It can be. It can
Speaker 1: actually be completely submerged as well as long. What will
Speaker 1: happen is if the two water levels reach the same
Speaker 1: height uh and I mean same height relative to the table,
Speaker 1: then pressure is equalized and everything will everything is an
Speaker 1: equilibrium and water will stop to float. It's but as
Speaker 1: long as the elevated cup has a higher water level,
Speaker 1: water will continue to flow through that siphon. And the
Speaker 1: reason there are two reasons really. One is that water
Speaker 1: inside a chamber like that acts like a chain. It
Speaker 1: pulls itself along. The other reason is that you have
Speaker 1: think of the tube as an arc. Well, the tube
Speaker 1: that leads down to the lower elevation is longer. That
Speaker 1: side is longer than the side that's in the higher elevation.
Speaker 1: So the water that's in that part is heavier, and
Speaker 1: that weight is what's pulling water along inside the tube.
Speaker 1: And it's until until you hit equilibrium. So for a
Speaker 1: toilet to get it back to to the toilet example,
Speaker 1: and why it's important when you flush that water from
Speaker 1: the tank rushes into the bowl and it does so
Speaker 1: fast enough to completely fill the pipe that s trap.
Speaker 1: This activates the siphon effect, and the water pulls the
Speaker 1: waist and also all the rest of the water along
Speaker 1: with it through that s trap until it gets to
Speaker 1: a point where it has exhausted the amount of water
Speaker 1: that the tank has put into the bowl. And then
Speaker 1: air is introduced, and once air is introduced, the siphon
Speaker 1: effect stops. Right. So with a siphon, not only is
Speaker 1: the water flowing out of the bowl because there's so
Speaker 1: much water what about two or so gallons introduced to
Speaker 1: your toilet bowl in about three seconds that that siphon
Speaker 1: effect is produced in the s trap, right, Yeah, not
Speaker 1: only is that water flowing, it produces a type of suction,
Speaker 1: So the water in the bowl is sucked out and
Speaker 1: down the siphon. And then, yes, like you said, once
Speaker 1: the air is introduced, because the water and everything sucked
Speaker 1: out of the toilet bowl, the suction effect is cut
Speaker 1: off and everything goes back to the way it was
Speaker 1: before you flush the top. Right, that's when the filler
Speaker 1: valve can start to refill the bowl because now that
Speaker 1: there's no longer anymore suction going on the bowl, water
Speaker 1: level can return back to what it was as well.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind that part of the s trap
Speaker 1: that you know you can't see because it's a solid pipe,
Speaker 1: but that also ends up filling to that same height
Speaker 1: as the water that's in the bowl. And then you're
Speaker 1: ready to go again once the tanket's bowl anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: once you eat some kimchi. We talked about that before
Speaker 1: the podcast started. Um, but yeah, one other thing to
Speaker 1: keep in mind. You might say, well, why do we
Speaker 1: need a tank at all? Why not just have a
Speaker 1: water pipe going directly into the toilet and then when
Speaker 1: you flush, it just opens up a valve for a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time and then closes. And the reason
Speaker 1: is because unless you have insane water pressure in your house,
Speaker 1: you're not putting enough water in fast enough to fill
Speaker 1: that s trap completely to to activate the siphon effect.
Speaker 1: It's just going to trickle out like if your tank
Speaker 1: was overflowing exactly. So there's some buildings that I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of buildings that don't have UH tanks on
Speaker 1: their on their toilets, but that's because again they are
Speaker 1: directly connected to a very powerful water system, and thus
Speaker 1: you don't need a tank because the water pressure that's
Speaker 1: coming in is great enough to start that effect all
Speaker 1: by itself. Yeah, or sometimes it's even more terrifying noise
Speaker 1: than that. So that's your basic toilet, how your basic
Speaker 1: toilet works. But so glad we're past the Siphon effect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I feel like we just made it through the
Speaker 1: woods together. Now now we're going to go into the bright,
Speaker 1: gorgeous future of weird toilets. This is great. So let's
Speaker 1: talk Japanese toilets for a second. And I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about the ones, the trough ones, which we established there
Speaker 1: are still some in Japan, and trough is one way
Speaker 1: to put it. More like uh oolyptical hole in the
Speaker 1: ground is another way you could describe it as well.
Speaker 1: On the floor yeah yeah, so yeah, you straddle and
Speaker 1: then squat and then evacuate and then and then evacuate,
Speaker 1: evacuate the area. Like I would just be like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I did it right, and run one
Speaker 1: down the street. I mean, um, like I can't read
Speaker 1: your language, and I'm so sorry. Just yeah, that's kind
Speaker 1: of how I probably react. I mean, I am, I'm
Speaker 1: being honest here, But no, the Japanese toilets, the more
Speaker 1: Western style ones have features. Many of them have features
Speaker 1: on them that put our Western toilets to shame, like
Speaker 1: just phenomenal. Alright, we got a little bit more to
Speaker 1: say on this topic. Before we get to that, though,
Speaker 1: Let's take another quick break, so let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the features. That's good, fine, sorry, do you want?
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite out of all of them?
Speaker 1: The air dry air dry, that's pretty amazing. I'm big
Speaker 1: on the sound masking. Yeah, they they they offer. Most
Speaker 1: Japanese toilets that have all the bells and whistles offer
Speaker 1: a sound masking feature that's a flushing toilet. Yeah. Some
Speaker 1: of them now have also classical music, but which makes
Speaker 1: with some white noise. Um. I actually did a brain
Speaker 1: Stuff episode about what white noises and how it works.
Speaker 1: So you should check for superiors. But yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: that those are so two of the very simple ones.
Speaker 1: But it also tends to have a couple of different
Speaker 1: options for washing your nether regions once you are finished. Yes,
Speaker 1: and depending on your gender, Um, you should, I should say,
Speaker 1: depending on your sex, you should be very careful what
Speaker 1: option you choose when you're in Japan. Yeah, but day
Speaker 1: would be aimed for you know, ladies, and then you
Speaker 1: have rear washing, which is for you know, everyone, depending
Speaker 1: upon what activities you got up to on that bathroom.
Speaker 1: Um and uh, yeah, so there's usually there's a picture
Speaker 1: of like a icon that looks kind of like a
Speaker 1: butt 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: wait 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 hitten away
Speaker 1: from the inside of the toilet bowlts only when you
Speaker 1: press the button that they get there's like essentially a
Speaker 1: door that opens and the nozzle 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. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: on your on your on your junk. That's not good.
Speaker 1: That's really, that's terrible. It might come as a big
Speaker 1: surprise for that to to hit certain sense to variation. Yeah, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's setting it low and does 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: to 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 the 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, I don't, and you can.
Speaker 1: You can usually tell the bathroom slippers um from They
Speaker 1: have almost like a bit of a waterproof look to them.
Speaker 1: Usually they're a little shinier, they're made of they're not
Speaker 1: like um cloth. Usually they you could tell just using
Speaker 1: your your noodle compared to house slippers. You'd be like,
Speaker 1: these are probably the bathroom slipping toilet slippers. Or they
Speaker 1: might be brightly colored and you think no one would
Speaker 1: ever wear these anywhere else, or maybe they have a
Speaker 1: poop emogy on them. It could be those are popular.
Speaker 1: Another feature you might find on the toilets is a
Speaker 1: deodorizer button. Yeah. Also kind of interesting. So I found
Speaker 1: a toilet if I may give a plug, Even though
Speaker 1: I should say I have no financial interest whatsoever in
Speaker 1: the Cohler company, but I have become a fan of
Speaker 1: their new me uh toilet. Oh yeah, I can't even
Speaker 1: begin to describe it. It's just so neat as far
Speaker 1: as the design goes. Um. Just go to just look
Speaker 1: for the new me toilet and U M I um.
Speaker 1: But one of the things they have is a deodorizer.
Speaker 1: It's like, um, basically a little vent where the the
Speaker 1: the odor is sucked in and run through a charcoal filter. Nice. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I when I read about the Japanese toilets,
Speaker 1: obviously there's some some humor that comes in that just
Speaker 1: from the cultural differences things like that, which can seem
Speaker 1: very funny. But at the same time, I am incredibly envious.
Speaker 1: I would love to have a lot of these features
Speaker 1: building two American toilets. Uh. There. There are some moves
Speaker 1: to improve toilet technology in various ways. Some of it
Speaker 1: is a conservation trying to find low flush toilets that'll
Speaker 1: still activate the siphoning UH technique, but not use as
Speaker 1: much water and a go very important. Did you see
Speaker 1: the no mixed toilet? I did? Yeah, the the one
Speaker 1: that has met It has kind of like a ledge
Speaker 1: and and filter for U urine and then behind that
Speaker 1: would be where go. Yeah, it's it's meant so that
Speaker 1: when you when you just have to urinate, you don't
Speaker 1: have to flush the toilet. Yeah, it doesn't flush at all,
Speaker 1: and 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 UM pharmaceuticals, those a lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff is expelled and metabolized and expelled in
Speaker 1: your urine, and it gets introduced into wetland areas and
Speaker 1: things like that, and all of a sudden you have
Speaker 1: frogs they're like have roid rage or something, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: or that like a rubbing themselves against walls because you
Speaker 1: took too much ecstasy the night before. Yeah, I mean, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: anything you're taking into yours, anything you're gonna excrete spin
Speaker 1: filtered through your kidneys, you're going to have some some
Speaker 1: other elements in there too, consumed. But so the the
Speaker 1: no mixed toilet collects this urine and sends it off
Speaker 1: for separate recycling. And then if you're really hard core,
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 it's versatile, water waterproof. It's entirely
Speaker 1: possible to design sensors that could uh measure your waste
Speaker 1: and and come up with actual information that could be
Speaker 1: relevant to your health. So I saw some interesting examples,
Speaker 1: like the idea of a sensor that could be an
Speaker 1: early pregnancy detection by detecting changing hormone level. Um. It
Speaker 1: might analyze your waste detect the bacterial infection, so it
Speaker 1: might tell you. It might even send you an indication
Speaker 1: saying you know, you need to take it easy for
Speaker 1: a little while, or maybe even you need to go
Speaker 1: see a doctor. With the right kind of software, you
Speaker 1: and this is not hard to do at all. You
Speaker 1: could even have one that could send a notification to
Speaker 1: your doctor, or even go further, have one that's linked
Speaker 1: to your doctor's calendar and your calendar and even create
Speaker 1: an appointment for you, so your toilet does all that
Speaker 1: for you. It's it's possible. It's not something that we're
Speaker 1: necessarily seeing everywhere, but it's possible. I could see some
Speaker 1: problems with this though, well yeah, I mean, like, first
Speaker 1: of all, there's a real hesitancy by people to especially
Speaker 1: put their medical records out there, their health data UM
Speaker 1: at feel like those as as the advantages or the
Speaker 1: benefits of allowing the Internet of things or that that
Speaker 1: level of tech into our lives, especially with health um
Speaker 1: become obvious to more people, the more just relaxed everybody's
Speaker 1: going to become. I mean, think about it, five ten
Speaker 1: years ago, say five, the putting your credit card into
Speaker 1: a website to order something was still like really sketch
Speaker 1: you to a lot of people, And now enough people
Speaker 1: have done it that it's just it's just whatever, that's
Speaker 1: the norm. Yeah, right, And I think health our health
Speaker 1: information is going to go that same way. I can
Speaker 1: see that. The only thing I see as uh possible,
Speaker 1: well not the only thing, but one of the things
Speaker 1: I see is an impediment to this is how do
Speaker 1: you identify the person who is using the toilet at
Speaker 1: any given situations? So, for example, Josh, let's say I
Speaker 1: have you over and you need to use my restroom,
Speaker 1: and unbeknownst to me, you are carrying around a really
Speaker 1: awful bacterial infection that's poised to wreak havoc in your system.
Speaker 1: And so as you use my restroom and you flushed
Speaker 1: the toilet, it analyzes it and suddenly thinks that Jonathan
Speaker 1: has gotten really sick. Next thing, I know, my doctor
Speaker 1: is calling me. Now I know about your health condition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a very good point. Um. I would guess
Speaker 1: then if if toilets are analyzing us our health personally,
Speaker 1: then a toilet itself will become a much more personal thing.
Speaker 1: So maybe I have a dumb toilet as my guest toilet,
Speaker 1: and then my smart toilet is the only one that's
Speaker 1: in my master bathroom. Or here's another thing, Stop me
Speaker 1: if I sound crazy. Stop You've got a biometric authentication
Speaker 1: system for your toilet where you have to scan like
Speaker 1: a thumb print or in retinal scan to identify you
Speaker 1: before using it. Thus you can't possibly confuse too people
Speaker 1: and you cannot flush until you have identified yourself. That's
Speaker 1: a good one. No, that's a I mean, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: My my wife and I have um an aria uh scale.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah right, it's like fitbit um and it can
Speaker 1: easily tell us apart. But because I mean, it just
Speaker 1: determines like wait and all that stuff. Um, so it
Speaker 1: can it can easily tell us apart. But you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the seat does detect by weight, or there is
Speaker 1: some other detail about you that just by sitting on
Speaker 1: the toilet, uh, it says this is Jonathan or this
Speaker 1: is not This is someone who's broken into Jonathan's house
Speaker 1: to use this toilet. Right, well, that would be another
Speaker 1: using your bathroom. Should I lock the door? Yes, and
Speaker 1: turn on bathroom webcam? Right? Yeah, there you go. And
Speaker 1: also the you know, deodurize, let's just go ahead and
Speaker 1: be safe. So there are other potential dangers and one
Speaker 1: of those is hacking. So there's already a story about
Speaker 1: a smart toilet hacking situation which happened back in two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen. Ours Technica reported that, according to security firm
Speaker 1: trust Wave, the Enacts Status automatic toilet had a Bluetooth
Speaker 1: security vulnerability and it was a doozy so to speak.
Speaker 1: So the you know, when you pair to bluetooth capable
Speaker 1: technologies together, you generally have some sort of code that
Speaker 1: you have to put in in order to pair them.
Speaker 1: Not always, but a lot of them do. And the
Speaker 1: problem was they had hardwired the same master code in
Speaker 1: all of these toilets, and it was just zero zero
Speaker 1: zero zero, right, So any app for this toilet compare
Speaker 1: with any toilet just from being in the same area. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you are within bluetooth distance, which is pretty decent,
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't it's not that far, but it's
Speaker 1: not you know, it's it's not like you could do
Speaker 1: it from two fifty feet away necessarily, But if you're
Speaker 1: close enough, like within the building or on the on
Speaker 1: the side of it or whatever, you can totally pair
Speaker 1: your phone with the toilet inside and essentially hijack someone's toilet,
Speaker 1: which you know you might think, well, why could you do? Well,
Speaker 1: this thing had the ability to open and close via
Speaker 1: a command on your phone, so that way you didn't
Speaker 1: have to touch the toilet seat. It also allows you
Speaker 1: to control things like the bidet or the rear washing
Speaker 1: uh nozzles, so you could you could turn it on
Speaker 1: like you could turn on one of those nozzles when
Speaker 1: no one's on the toilet and start flooding their bathroom,
Speaker 1: or you can do it when you realize someone's just
Speaker 1: got into the bathroom and they haven't even really started yet.
Speaker 1: You could do it then and just laugh at the
Speaker 1: hilarious or close the toilet seat while they're mid you
Speaker 1: know activity, you know, you know, it's ironic about using
Speaker 1: an app on your phone to open and close the
Speaker 1: toilet seat. Would it be that the phone surfaces the
Speaker 1: dirtiest service to come in contact with toilet? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought that might be where you were going with that. Yeah, guys,
Speaker 1: if you didn't know, if you have smartphones, got touchscreen,
Speaker 1: hits filthy. It's about the dirtiest thing you probably come
Speaker 1: into contact within any day, including the toilets. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The one thing that might be uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: good competitor with that would be a keyboard. If you
Speaker 1: use a keyboard on a daily basis, that's probably pretty
Speaker 1: gross too. Yeah. So what's in the future for toilet's
Speaker 1: Probably we will see some more of these, uh these
Speaker 1: things that are common now in Japanese toilets kind of
Speaker 1: filter their way through to other ones. I imagine we'll
Speaker 1: see more moves to conserve water. It may even mean
Speaker 1: that we end up moving away from the siphon model
Speaker 1: and find a different model to deal with waste so
Speaker 1: that it does it's not reliant upon creating enough water
Speaker 1: to create this section. We'll have to wait and see um,
Speaker 1: but we have to thank the brilliant men and women
Speaker 1: who came before us forging the path to make incredibly
Speaker 1: useful piece of technology, and also hope that we can
Speaker 1: continue to strive to get it to more people so
Speaker 1: that we can improve the quality of life for folks
Speaker 1: who who otherwise are in pretty rough you know, circumstances
Speaker 1: when obviously when cultures are going to adopt it. So, Josh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me on the sand.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. This was a joy. It
Speaker 1: was fun. It was fun. I'm glad we were able
Speaker 1: to talk about this in a mature way with only
Speaker 1: a few terrible jokes on my end, relatively mature. We
Speaker 1: did pretty juvenile at times, but mostly I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff that published way
Speaker 1: back in the halcyon days of If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: please reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: the show is text Stuff h s W. I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Y tex Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.