WEBVTT - Invention Playlist II: Toilets, Part 1 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:11.920 Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:14.200 I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I got a question for you. 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:18.160 Have you ever been to like a festival or big 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:22.799 public event where the organizers did not get enough porta potties? 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:28.200 Probably so, probably so. Um, it's I mean, it's it's 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:31.080 a weird it's a weird equation you have to work out, right, 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:34.040 because you need to have the approximate number of porta 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:36.920 potties for a given event. And at the same time, 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:40.040 like I've definitely I've been to events where people care 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:42.040 more for the porta potties, Like there's more of a 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.560 communal effort to like, let's let's look after these porta potties. 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:48.120 Let's even go in there and clean the porta potties 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.360 right to ensure that things don't get too vile too fast. 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:54.400 Like if there's if it's a multi day event, people 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:56.520 might be more respectful of the fact that people will 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.360 need to continue to use these over a period of 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:01.600 time than if it's just like a it's you know, 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:03.520 this is going on for a few hours, let's just 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:07.600 go total war on these facilities. Uh. I've been to 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:11.319 a one time went to a beer tasting festival in 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.520 North Carolina where they did not get nearly enough porta potties, 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:18.319 and I remember feeling like, this is the closest thing 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:21.600 I've ever felt to like a Mad Max type scenario 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:24.800 in real life. People were losing their minds, Like when 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:27.160 when you don't have a place you've been drinking beer 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:29.080 and then you don't have a place where you can 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.920 legally and uh in uh in a in a polite way, 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:37.240 go to the bathroom, things start to get dire really fast. Yeah, 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.080 and I'm guessing there's probably a lot of indiscriminate aiming 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:43.800 from male urinators at this these particular events. Yeah, there 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:46.440 was also a you could tell just like this all 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:50.440 over the place, frantic search like ants foraging about looking 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:53.200 for other places they could go apart from really far 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:56.200 too few porta potties that were swarmed by people waiting. 0:01:56.840 --> 0:01:59.800 But you start doing some very odd math if you're 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:01.720 in a situation like that, or even if you're not, 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:03.520 even if it's not that bad you're just waiting in 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:05.960 line to use a porta potty at least I find 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:07.920 I do. And one of the questions that I think 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:12.800 you inevitably start pondering is how much exactly do people 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:15.480 poop in a lifetime? Like how much do I poop 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.520 in a year? How much do does does my whole 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:23.200 household poop in? You know, in twenty years? Yeah, though 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:25.399 these are not necessarily factors that are going to help 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:28.840 you out for you know, weekend music festival. No, no, 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:31.399 but I mean you have to imagine that there's some 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:34.520 kind of rough math along those lines going in. I 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:37.600 guess it's less for the festival. It's probably less thinking 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:40.040 about the total mass of poop and more about like, 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:42.120 I don't know how many people and how often they'll 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:44.000 need to go, because it's not like the things are 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:46.440 going to be filled up and overflowing at least hopefully not. 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:49.440 But yeah, that is the thing that you can start 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:53.000 wondering about, and it's a weird question once you actually 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.600 get the answer. I I found an article that addresses this. 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:00.639 It was a article on Live Science by Mindy Weisberger 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:04.200 addressing exactly this question full on with an interview with 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:09.079 a like health professional who had the dirt. So it's 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:11.800 impossible to answer this question exactly how much you poop 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:15.000 in a lifetime, because of course everybody's different, there's different 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:17.920 average fecal mass production, there's different lifespan and all that. 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:21.000 But it's actually fairly easy to get some average figures. 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:24.160 So the article sites Kim Barrett, a professor of medicine 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:26.960 at you See San Diego, and Barrett says, on average, 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.239 men and women have roughly one bowel movement per day. 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:32.600 Though if you have more than that or less than that, 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:36.480 don't panic. There's a normal range that's more and less. 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:40.840 It's okay. But the daily average amount of feces produced 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.560 by mass by a person an adult is usually about 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:46.760 fourteen to seventeen ounces or about four hundred to five 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:50.760 hundred grams. And from there, Weisberger does some simple math. 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:53.920 Quote starting with an average daily amount of about fourteen 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:56.640 ounces or four hundred grams, the total poop production in 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.400 a week's time would be about six pounds or two 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:02.040 point eight kill grams. In a year, a single person 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:04.600 would yield about three hundred and twenty pounds or a 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:09.280 hundreds of poop, just a little more than an adult panda. Ways, 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:11.640 al right, so when when one here's the sort of 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:15.520 drill sergeant cliche of like I've I've craped bigger than you. 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:18.120 That's probably true. If you're looking at a like a 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:21.839 year's worth of defecation, Well, that starts to call to 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:24.560 mind this thing that it got me thinking about. It 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:27.799 makes it got me thinking about how as people get older, 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:30.880 often their bodies shrink. Right, you know, after adulthood your 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:34.200 body can actually physically shrink. You don't continue getting bigger 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:37.240 and bigger as life goes on. And yet there's this 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:42.599 invisible phantom of biomass following every person around throughout the years, 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:45.919 and no matter what, it's always getting larger and larger 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:49.560 the older you get. It is the phantom mountain of 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:53.760 combined mass of all the feces you've ever produced. Like 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:56.320 like a big poop golem following you around, you have 0:04:56.480 --> 0:05:00.599 an invisible phantom poop golem that follows you everywhere and 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:04.680 only gets bigger with age. So so this means that, 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:06.479 like if you live to the age of seventy six, 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:09.520 Weisberger does the math, on average, you'll produce like twenty 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.880 four thousand, three hundred and twenty pounds or eleven thousand 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:15.800 and thirty kilograms of poop in your lifetime. If you 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:18.320 live to eighty one, it's more like, it's close to 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:23.000 twenty six thousand pounds, are close to twelve thousand kilograms. Quote, 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:25.440 So a lifetime of a woman's poop, because of the 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:27.800 average female lifespan is about eighty one years in the 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:31.760 United States. Uh, the average lifetime of a woman's poop 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:34.960 weighs as much as three adult male hippos. But if 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:37.599 you follow the same averages we've mentioned a minute ago, 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:40.240 think about those people who lived like a hundred and twenty, 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.680 you know, the super supercentenarians. Uh. One of these people 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.160 who lives to like a hundred and twenty has created, 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:48.920 by the end of their life a phantom poop mountain 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:52.000 or one of these poop golems of thirty eight thousand, 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:55.000 four hundred pounds or about seventeen thousand, four hundred and 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:57.520 twenty kilograms. I was trying to find an object to 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:00.080 compare this to. It's close to the weight of a 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.480 number of lighter combat vehicles like the M twenty four 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:06.839 Chafe light tank first used by the Americans in World 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:10.200 War Two. Just imagine this. If you live to a 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:13.080 hundred and twenty, over the course of your life, you can, 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:18.000 on average poop a tank. All right. Well, Uh, let's 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:22.120 think about these poop golems. Um, obviously they cannot live 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:25.520 with us. They might live elsewhere. And that's why that's 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:27.960 where we get to the subject of today's episode and 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:30.040 the episode to follow this, because this is gonna be 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.080 a two parter and we think you'll love this one, 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:34.800 but episode number two is going to be real doozy. Yes. 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.120 So yeah, that's that's the subject of our episodes. It 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:41.440 brings us to the technology of the toilet and ultimately 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:45.440 the concept of the flush toilet. Um. So, I think 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:48.760 in today's episode we're gonna be focusing primarily on sort 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:51.640 of the history of toilet technology, what we what we 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:55.040 were dealing with, like the problems faced by disposal of 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:59.640 human waste and and toilets before the flush toilet was invented, right, 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.080 And then in the next episode we'll meet the power 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.320 of the flush. But so, I think one of the 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:09.279 things to think about is that the problem of what 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:12.640 to do with human waste only really becomes a huge 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:17.240 issue once you have sedentary lifestyles and civilization, Like once 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:20.320 you get a lot of people living in roughly the 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:24.840 same place and not constantly moving right absolutely, Uh, you know, 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:26.920 I was looking back at one of my favorite books 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:30.000 on hygiene clean a History of Personal Hygiene Impurity by 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.320 Virginia Smith, and she points out that making sure that 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:37.080 your poop is somewhere other than your immediate living environment 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.520 has always been just a universal human behavior. It's just 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.680 part of of our our species and certainly see this 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.360 in any number of species as well. Um, I mean, 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:49.520 you see like dogs would rather go poop somewhere far 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:51.320 away from where they live, you know, they don't want 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:53.920 to poop in their den right, and they're they're even 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:57.120 you know, we've talked about coprophagia. There even like some 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:00.520 ideas and science about like when a dog ends up 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:03.160 pooping in its house this may come from like an 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.680 instinct to the fact that sometimes dogs will then eat it, 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:09.440 which seems gross to us, is actually something to like 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:13.400 prevent possible parasite eggs from hatching in it, because there 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:15.640 can be a health risk from poop staying around in 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:17.680 your living areas. Yeah, and if you want to hear 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:19.520 more about this stuff, Toble your mind has an entire 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:22.080 episode about animals eating poop. That's right. We're not going 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.120 to be focusing on eating poop today, except in the 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.680 sense the toilet eats poop if you will, Yeah, you can. 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:31.280 You can look at it that way for sure. So 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:34.400 you know, back when we were just nomadic creatures, we 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:36.640 didn't have to worry about this is so much. You 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.520 you poop where you had to poop, You did whatever 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.920 you needed to do to to hide the feces. But 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:45.600 then you're going to be moving on. You're not going 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:47.960 to stay in that immediate area, and you're probably there 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:51.240 aren't that many of you anyway, like any given group 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:54.800 of human nomads. Uh, it's not going to be the 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:57.760 size of of a of a village or the stuff 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:00.880 certainly the size of a large metropolitan area. Now, that 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:04.600 doesn't mean there are no dangers associated with defecation at 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:06.440 this stage. Even though you're not gonna have nearly as 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.000 much of a problem with what to do with the excrement, 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:12.160 you are still like when you when you go to 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:15.719 go to the bathroom, you're putting yourself in a vulnerable state. Absolutely. 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:20.160 I mean, poop itself opens up vulnerabilities. And you see 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.040 this in any number of animals that have various methods 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.960 for hiding their own poops. Sometimes it's essentially self hiding, 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:30.720 such as the way a goats poop will rolled away. Goats, 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:34.600 you know, often would favor hilly environment so that the 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:38.120 poop rolls away hides itself. Cats, on the other hand, 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:40.240 of course, or are known for their uh their their 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:43.520 skillet bearing their poop uh and thus hiding it from 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:46.480 from larger predators, because that's the fear, right, is that 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:51.439 your fecal matter is h is a signal. Uh, it's 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.600 an it's a it's an odor that is letting anyone 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:57.120 with a nose to smell it know where you are 0:09:57.240 --> 0:09:59.960 and perhaps what degree of healthier in as well. Yeah, 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.480 if you are a prey animal, it shows you where 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:04.760 a predator can come get a meal. If you're a predator, 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.880 it can scare off prey animals. Uh. There's a paper 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:10.560 that looked into into some of this. It's a two 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.840 paper called the Control of Defecation in Humans and Evolutionary Advantage. 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:18.640 The question mark part of it there by Italian bowel 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:25.559 experts G. Bessatti and V. Villainacci. And they did something 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:29.360 interesting here. They ran a human fecal sample. Uh. They well, 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:32.200 they use both a modern and an ancient example through 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:38.360 complex gas uh chromatographic mass spec spectrometric analysis, and they 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:42.520 discovered that quote, human feces are rich in volatile compounds 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:46.640 likely to be identified by potential predators. And so they 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:49.760 went on to argue that the high predation risk for 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:54.920 ancient hominids by large carnivores suggests something rather amazing about 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:59.880 our pooping powers. Quote. We hypothesize that the voluntary control 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.240 defecation by our ancestors, together with greater brain volume or 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:07.679 rex stature, opposable thumbs, and other changes, may have contributed 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:10.960 to the successful march of hominids along the road of evolution. 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.640 In fact, by deciding when, how and where to defecate 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:18.960 may have several advantages in the complex prey predator relationship, 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:22.840 because spores are left in places undetectable by predators, or 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:26.920 there are no fecal tracks who sent maybe easily individualated 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.640 by prey. So they propose that choosing carefully where to 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:33.240 poop maybe an important part of what kind of animal 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:37.360 we are exactly so, But but even from an early 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:41.319 point um, as a Virginia Smith points out, Neolithic people's 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.160 they made use of midden piles, so you would have 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:47.200 an area in which you're living and if you need 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:50.679 to to poop you're either pooping beyond the area in 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:53.440 which you're living, or you're taking your poop and dumping 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:56.079 it out there in in the midden pile. And there 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:58.640 are you know, a few different systems that that one 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.560 can use here, one of course, is the dry sewer 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:04.640 system and UH and this is this will remind probably 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:06.400 a lot of people of a cat box, because they 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:10.680 a cat's litter box is a dry sewer system. UH. 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:14.480 That this would have been an indoor bucket of sand, 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:17.719 ash or dirt that one would defecate into. And then 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:21.839 you could take that dirt, sand or ash outside, take 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:23.360 it to the mid and bile dump it out and 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:25.160 you're done. Or you could do it in the inverse. 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:27.240 I mean this is actually still a common method and 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:29.960 dry pit latrines around the world. Like if you've got 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.480 an outhouse and it's just a pit latrine. UM, a 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:36.280 common thing to do to help prevent smells and and 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:39.280 help keep things from getting too nasty is after you 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:41.920 do your business in the pit, you've got a bucket 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:44.679 of like old coal ash or something like that, or 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:48.720 lime or something in the uh in the outhouse, and 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.200 you scatter that on top and that helps contain smells 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:53.360 and so forth. Now, of course, the wet sewer system. 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:55.000 We're gonna get more into that in a bit, but that, 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:57.600 of course is ultimately what we have today in much 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:00.080 of the world, where you certainly a flush toy it 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:02.720 as an example of this, right, and that simply derives 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:07.800 from sort of the the ingenious mechanical action of water flow. Right, 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:10.280 if you have to if you want to, say, poop 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:12.559 in a chamber pot or in a bucket or something 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:16.160 like that, you've got to physically remove it yourself from 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:19.679 where you are. If you are to poop into moving water, 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:22.560 then the moving water can remove your waste for you, 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:24.760 and you don't have to do that, right, Or I 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:27.440 guess one could poop into a container of water that 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:30.920 is not moving and then you remove that yourself. That's 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.440 also a possibility, I guess it is. Now the other 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:35.800 there are all kinds of things you can poop into, 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:38.240 and I imagine people have tried all of them at 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.760 one point or another. Now, beyond this dry wet distinction, 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:45.720 there's another important one that Smith points out, and she 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:51.320 says that toilet culture divides sharply into wiper and washer culture. Yeah, 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:53.800 and this is of course is just how one cleans 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:57.959 one's bum. Toilet deification. Yeah, like toilet paper versus like 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.680 b day or wet wipes or something like that. Yeah. Now, 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:04.280 most ancient culture, she points out that they were wipers, 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:06.840 so they would have used certainly paper if it was available. 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:10.360 Of course, for the longest paper was Um, it was 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:15.120 a rarity. So you're gonna probably depend on things like grass, leaves, sticks, 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:19.040 corn cobs, mud balls, and of course stones I've commonly 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:21.600 seen sided. I'm trying to imagine this. I just see 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:24.960 it pop up in like articles about ancient toilets that 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:28.760 people would use bits of broken pottery to clean themselves. 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:30.960 That I see that sited. But I'm just trying to 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:33.280 picture it, and it will not picture it. But you 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.880 know it, it seems it seems a little little risky. 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:40.000 Well it it drives down just the ridiculousness I think 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:43.560 of any wiping culture, because I feel like ultimately washing 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:47.400 culture has the stronger argument. Um, and washing culture is, 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.200 of course, instead of using even paper, what have you 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:54.400 simply depended more or exclusively on running water or spraying 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.640 water or water poured from an apparatus. That the the 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.040 sort of lubricant power of water. It's taking the principle 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:03.920 of the flush toilet to your own skin, right. And 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:06.360 you know, this is the standard in many parts of 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:12.200 the world, you know, particularly say in Islamic and Hindu cultures. Um, 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:14.760 I mean you will even find this. Uh, if you've 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:16.920 ever traveled abroad, you may have encountered this. But I 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:19.400 have also I know people who like purchased a house 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:22.000 in the Atlanta area and they're like, I don't know why, 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:25.800 but there's a vegetable sprayer installed next to my toilet. Well, 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:28.640 that is it's a bid day sprayer. That's the that's 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:31.720 the simply a means of of washing one's bum after 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:35.800 one has defecated, and it's a rather elegant solution. I would, 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:38.360 in my opinion, hard to argue there. I mean, yeah, 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:41.360 water gets things cleaner than than without water. I mean 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:43.760 it's not a perfect analogy, but imagine if I gave 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:46.920 you the option of would you rather be able to 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:49.960 take showers or just wipe yourself down with some paper 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:52.800 towels to clean your body? Absolutely, I think most of 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:55.080 us would probably choose the running water if it is 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:58.120 an an option. Uh. That being said, for many of 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:01.160 these cultures, running water is not an option. You know that, 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:03.520 then that's one of the main reasons that you're seeing 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:07.160 the wiping method as the primary method in these in 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:12.480 among ancient peoples. Now, for the most part, this this worked, right, 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:16.600 they were able to sort of roll with very simple 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:20.520 um sewage systems. Just simply get up and move on 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.360 because you're nomadic, or if you're living in a small area, 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:25.840 just keep it on the outside of your your living environment. 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:29.560 But the thing about humans is that we inevitably did 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.400 a number of things. We overcame all of our predators. 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:36.480 We we conquered the natural world and innovented to agriculture, 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:40.040 and then we started more move and then we started 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:45.840 building cities. We started building just increasingly large, cramped complex 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:51.600 um just accretions of human population, which of course is 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:54.880 one of the reasons we have have so many wonderful 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:57.400 things in our culture. But also it created a lot 0:16:57.440 --> 0:16:59.920 of problems. Yeah, of course the city comes with many 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:03.040 wonders for good and ill, and it just I mean, obviously, 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:05.600 how to deal with human waste is a major one 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:08.280 of the ills, right, is one of the biggest problems 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:10.719 that you immediately face as soon as you decide to 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:15.080 create crowded, sedentary civilization. Cramming a bunch of people close 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:17.480 together and having them all live there and not leave 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:20.000 and what to do with human waste has long been 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:23.040 I think one of the single most important and consequential 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:27.720 problems in the design of human civilizations. Like think about okay, 0:17:27.720 --> 0:17:29.840 if we go with those numbers earlier, like the you know, 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:34.399 fourteen ounces or whatever average a day, a household of 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.480 five people is producing on average like thirty pounds of 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:41.440 feces a week. An apartment building of fifty people produces 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:45.640 like three hundred pounds a week. Obviously, people don't want 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.600 that stuff hanging around. So where does it go and 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:51.239 how does it get there? If you okay, so if 0:17:51.240 --> 0:17:54.680 you're in a city, you can't walk outside the outskirts 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:56.119 of the city every time you need to go to 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:58.400 the bathroom and go to like a midden pile outs 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:00.880 you know, where nobody is I mean will come back 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:03.680 to it. To a certain extent, you can, but that's 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.560 only going to scale for so long, right, Like residents 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:09.639 of New York City cannot go to New Jersey to poop. 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:13.520 It's just you can't leave. If you have to leave 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.800 Manhattan to poop, then I mean, why you can't really 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:19.920 live in Manhattan. And even then that's not a good idea, 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:23.399 especially when you've got lots of people crowded around open defecation, 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:25.879 even if it's in in a place separated from you, 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:28.360 if it's often a midden pile or something like that, 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:30.560 that can lead to negative health outcomes. And we'll talk 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:32.959 about that in a bit um. But so, yeah, so 0:18:33.000 --> 0:18:34.960 you don't want all that stuff hanging around. And it's 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:38.159 not just because we don't esthetically like the idea of 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:40.720 feces piling up in the streets and alleys around our 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:44.439 homes because it's gross. It can actually be dangerous to 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:48.399 be exposed to untreated human waste, like untreated sewage. Getting 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:52.560 into water sources is especially dangerous. This can spread water 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:55.199 borne diseases like diarrhea, which you know is one of 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.000 the biggest killers of children around the world. And in 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:01.359 terms of infectious disease, and then like a cholera, I mean, 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:04.440 cholera has been just one of the most awful diseases 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:07.320 in human history and it's still kills tens of thousands 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.280 of people every single year, I mean even today. And 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:14.159 this generally is it's the fecal oral route of disease transmission. 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:15.920 It's kind of gross to talk about, is but it's 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:20.560 when sewage contaminates sources that end up going into people's mouths, 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:23.320 like drinking water, like soil that you know that ends 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.199 up in food um. And so for this reason, like 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:28.720 you know, I was reading this the thing by the 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:32.200 United Nations about the sort of their toilet initiatives trying 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:36.440 to get toilets and clean sewage sewage disposal systems to 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.320 people around the world, and and they say, bluntly, toilets 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:43.040 save lives. We should think about that because obviously, the 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:45.560 toilet is a nice thing to have. It's a good 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.480 convenience that makes life more esthetically pleasing, but it's also 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:51.320 like a life or death question, right, And and it 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:53.480 is so easy to take it for granted just because 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.439 it's this it's this thing that we're we're grateful for 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:58.239 it when we have it and when we need it, 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:01.760 but we're also very well ing to forget it and 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.080 and and probably not plan our life around it too 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:07.320 much unless we absolutely have to. Yeah, And and one 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:09.520 way to definitely know that you shouldn't take it for 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:11.880 granted is to think about all the people who are 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.280 around the world who are deprived of these amenities. Like 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:18.240 according to the World Health Organization and UNI SEF, about 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:21.600 sixty percent of the global population either don't have a 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:24.120 toilet in their home or they don't have one that's 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:28.280 safely removes uh removes human ways. So they might have one, 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:30.560 but it doesn't maybe it just goes into a place 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.800 where it re enters drinking water areas and stuff. Among 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:37.520 the facts they said also is that like almost nine 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:42.000 hundred million people worldwide still regularly practice open defecation just 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:44.520 out you know, they have to go wherever, like in 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:47.199 a latrine field or or something like that. Yeah, it 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:50.040 just means somewhere that is not being captured or treated. 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:52.880 Like if you had if you had a properly dug 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:55.520 pit latrine, that would not count. But so you're going 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:58.320 somewhere in the open, like an open pit or something. 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:02.080 And then this was crazy. So they say globally about 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:07.200 eighty percent of wastewater generated by human civilization flows back 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:12.960 into the ecosystem without being treated. Without being treated. Yeah, um, 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:15.760 I mean it's just ramping around the world that this 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:18.680 obviously is going to have be having lots of negative 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:22.240 environmental consequences, but also negative health outcomes for humans. And 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:24.960