Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Flightless Bird: Toilets

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

This week on Flightless Bird, David sets out to discover why the water level on American toilets is terrifyingly high, almost filling up the entire toilet bowl. Joined by Monica, he tries to figure out why it’s so hard to find a public restroom and why the gaps in the doors are so big. David talks to urban sociologist and toilet expert Harvey Molotch, who explains why public restrooms unchanging - segregated into male and female sections - seem to be locked in time. We discover why so many horror films feature scary scenes in toilets and talk to a plumber about his biggest toilet disaster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander who ended up accidentally marooned in America, and I want to grasp what makes this country tick. And something I'm grasping a lot at the moment? My bladder. Because while America may be the land of plenty, it's definitely lacking one key thing. Toilets. According to the World Public Toilet Index, America is truly pitiful when it comes to its number of public restrooms. Iceland has the most impressive toilet stats,

with 56 toilets publicly available for every 100,000 people. New Zealand's in third place, with 45 toilets per 100,000 bladders and bowels. America has a pitiful 8 toilets per 100, people a dead tie with botswana to find out what was going on i knew i'd need to take a metaphorical deep dive into the toilet bowl of america and flush hard so drop your pants and sit down on your nearest porcelain throne this is the toilet episode. Flightless, flightless, flightless bird touchdown in America. I'm a flightless bird touchdown in America. Are you surprised by those stats? 100%. Right off the bat, I am very shocked.

The only close to peeing in my pants incident I've ever had was in England. And I kept thinking, why the fuck aren't there bathrooms here? For me, America was the land of toilets, the land of public restrooms. And England didn't have any. I was super pissed. You had to pay. If you went into Starbucks or something, you land of public restrooms. And England didn't have any. I was super pissed. Like you had to pay. If you went into Starbucks or something, you'd have to buy something. You'd have to pay in order to go to the bathroom. It's the worst feeling in the world being caught loose like that. The worst experience I've ever had with needing to go to the bathroom was at

Universal Studios here in America. And I went to line up on the lot tour and I was already busting when I went to join the line it was at the end of the day I was with my friend and so it was an hour of line busting and then we got onto the little trolleys and by then I was in agony and then they specifically said once this starts you can't get off this ride because we're going to be on the lot and so my brain just panicked oh my god and then towards the end of that tour, it was proper agony. I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die. And there's a bit of the tour where they, it's like a stunt bit where they release torrents of water down a cliff and it just rushes towards you and under you and around you. And it was like death. Wait, wait, David. Did you just pee? No, I didn't.

I was considering all the options. I was with my friend from New Zealand. I considered just letting loose. Yeah, especially when there's water. It wasn't on us. It was under us. So it would have just been pissing in a bus. But all I was thinking is this is going to back up somewhere and go.

Because you can hurt yourself if you hold on too long. Well, yeah, lots of stuff can happen. Bladder infections, UTIs. It's really awful. Yikes. I went and talked to a few other people for this episode about if they had the same problem as me, because I thought maybe it was just me that couldn't find toilets.

And this is what they said. Restrooms seem very difficult to access in America. You can never find one. What's the deal? What's the trick? Well, I would say it's even harder for women. During the pandemic, we live in Colorado. A lot of the public bathrooms were closed. On a road trip, I would pull over to a rest stop or McDonald's always works. A lot of like public places have codes on the bathrooms.

In Chicago, people make lists of the bathroom codes. I've seen it on like Twitter. It's like if you're on state and lake the code to this bathroom is 1224 or something like that. Just be really nice and maybe lose the accent and kind of give them a southern accent because that tends to work a little bit better. Hey can I borrow your bathroom? And then they're just like oh you're so cute and then yes. You don't think the New Zealand accent will cut it? Maybe. My question to you, Monica, is it getting worse out there? Like, do there used to be public restrooms everywhere and it's less now?

God, I wish I was more informed on this. I personally don't have to pee very much, almost never. Oh, amazing. What? I think I'm pretty dehydrated really is the truth for water i'm rarely in a position where i'm like where is the nearest bathroom and i guess it's true there aren't on the side of the street just public restrooms and i guess in other countries there are when we were in england last the besides me, used a public restroom that looked just disgusting. You couldn't have paid me to go into what Dax and Kristen and the kids were.

Oh, my gosh. Dax just told me legally he can't say anything, but he is in the room. It was France. It was on the way to the Eiffel Tower. And yeah, it was just like this little kind of stand in the middle of the street where they went. Oh, my God. It was so disgusting, though. I was just spraying them down with hand sanitizer after. Yeah, because in New Zealand, there's a lot of public restrooms anywhere.

If you're in any little town or anywhere, there'll be like a public restroom block. And it's marked. There's like street signs that guide you there. Are they nice? Like, are they taken care of? No, they're not great. You'd want to squat probably rather than sit, I'd say. Okay, sure. But you're much more likely in New Zealand to go to a public restroom than to have to go to a Starbucks or a McDonald's or something like that. Interesting. Or a rest stop. I'm also confused about the terms because I always say toilet. And when I say toilet, I don't just mean the object but I mean like the block of toilets restrooms you say restrooms so if it ever gets confusing in this episode it's because whenever I say toilets I generally mean restroom okay because

yeah when you told me we were doing an episode on toilets I was like I don't really understand what the difference is between our toilets and theirs. But that makes sense. Maybe this is me being defensive of America. I'm kind of like, why? Why do you want a toilet? What's the big deal? Like, go into a McDonald's. What's the big, huge benefit of having all of these nasty restrooms all over the place? I guess you're coming from a perspective of having this amazing ability

where you don't have to urinate all the time. Okay, that's true. Whereas I don't have it. Like, I'm constantly needing to urinate all the time because I drink so much true. Whereas I don't have it. I'm constantly needing to urinate all the time because I drink so much water and liquids. And so I'm always needing to get rid of it. So for some, it's a real problem, I think. Okay, but also guys just pee on the street.

Yeah, you can. We have a huge advantage. They've got this amazing system in Amsterdam where in the middle of a public square, they'll just have urinals set up. They're open. And so you just go up back to everyone else. There's little dividers in between and you just let loose in the open air. They're so free over there. They're not worried about people exposing themselves. No, but that's the thing. I'm curious and I don't know the answer to this,

but there's a big thing. Cause you always say, if you're a guy, you can just go like we in a bush, but technically you can't be getting your penis out willy-nilly everywhere. It's illegal, but I do think you can do it. You can find yourself a little nook and do it. I mean, you've done it, right? As long as you're private. Yeah, on the road trip for the tour with Rob, we stopped by the road. Beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean.

Yeah. And we were weeing behind a rock. And we thought we'd found a really quiet place to wee but as we were both weeing separately we weren't next to each other behind this rock we could suddenly just smell the urine of a hundred thousand other people that had stopped at that same rock oh my god and it was truly we found like the the proper like open public restroom we just didn't know about wow that's incredible it was so foul so the shepherds often do this thing which i guess this is indicative of how few bathrooms there are or just dax's reluctance to stop on a car ride but they pee in the car they'll bring

cups oh my god that is insane what they will bring cups and they will literally pee. And I've always thought that is so horrific. It's horrific. I was really anti that. And then one time me and our friends Laura and Matt, we were driving Lincoln, little Lincoln, to the sand dunes to meet her father. And she had to pee really bad. And I was like, well, she's used to this, I guess. Here's a cup. And she did. And then I'm just holding her pee for seven minutes before

we decided I should probably get rid of this. I mean, it's an incredible school to have. Yes. Just to circle back on this, I was in Beverly Hills. I had to pee really bad. And I was like, what am I going to do? It is true. I guess if there were public bathrooms, my life would have been much easier. But I was like, what am I going to do? Home is too far away. I can't go to a restaurant. What do I do? So I peed in the car.

I peed in a cup. In a cup? Uh-huh. I did it. I'm so, and then what? You've just got, this is mind-blowing. Because I also thought it's difficult. It's obviously, it's much easier for a guy to wee in a cup.

It's a skill to learn. So, congratulations. Thank you. It was scary. I mean, of course, it's scary. Like, are you going to spill? What do you do with it? Do you throw it out the window or just down the hatch?

Down the hatch? No, no, no. I threw it on the ground. Not the cup, just the pee. It's really thrilling stuff to know. I wanted to learn more about toilets in general. So obviously my documentary for this episode is about toilets, but it starts somewhere much smaller where my journey thinking about toilets started. So I hope you enjoy my journey into the toilet bowl. toilet started. So I hope you enjoy my journey into the toilet bowl. I remember the first time I gazed into an American toilet and the emotions I felt. I think about that moment every time I flush. I was puzzled by what I saw. Unsettled. I assumed the toilet in front of me must have been blocked.

I moved to another stall, but no, it was exactly the same. The water in the bowl was almost up to the rim. I sat down, terrified that my testicles or god forbid my penis would come into contact with the water, dunked underneath like a Sunday baptism. See, back in New Zealand, the water level in our toilets is much, much lower, but American toilets are filled to the brim, and dunking or splashback is a real concern. As I flushed, I watched all the water disappear down the pipe. The water spirals in the opposite direction to New Zealand.

If you want to know what hemisphere you're in, just find your nearest toilet and flush it. I knew where I was. America. And I knew I needed to understand why there's so much water in American toilet bowls. I tried cold calling various plumbers. All right, plumber, let's see. But all of them seemed very confused, very busy, or a combo of both.

So I put out a more specific request on some plumbing Facebook groups, and it's there I found Eric. Hello. Hey, is that Eric? This is. Hey, it's David Farrier calling. Where are you again? Omaha, Nebraska. It's home, man. I love traveling, but this is home, and I like it here. But enough small talk. I needed answers. The first time I saw an American toilet, I thought it was blocked because the water was so high, and I'm just wondering if you as a plumber can tell me why this is. Well, we like to get splashed when we use it. I knew it.

No, that's not it. You know how a siphon works, correct? The water is higher, the pipe is smaller. No, I know nothing. I'm an absolute idiot, but you need to explain this to me like a real dummy. Okay. So the wash down toilet, for instance, the ones you guys have over in new zealand it's basically a wider bowl a wider drain on the base of the stool and the water level's lower in

there so the water comes out of the tank and just washes down flushes through the bigger part of the bowl and that little trap that blocks the sewer gas from coming up wash down toilets are smaller and they're round the water just goes down and washes out the waste. So yeah, so the cistern, that thing that sits at the top is full of water. I flush it in New Zealand and water just gushes out into the bowl, fills it up and that gets sucked out the pipes. It doesn't get sucked out, it gets flushed down. So basically New Zealand flushes while America sucks. The siphon, you have a larger outlet, like the outlet on your toes over there, maybe almost three inches. Ours are an inch and a half, maybe two inches. That's a lot smaller.

So when that water comes out of the tank, it fills up that bowl. And then as it fills up the bowl, it almost looks like it's going to overflow. And then that inch and a half pipe fills up with water and creates a vacuum, creates a siphon and pulls all that water out of the bowl. And that's where your flush is at. So in New Zealand, we're pushing the poo out. In America, you're sucking it out. Correct. And that's why we have more blockages than you. But you have more, what would you call them over there? I don't know. Skid marks, marks on the bowl? Yeah, we do.

We don't have those. I was getting sidetracked and frankly learning too much. But there is so much to learn. And things are so strange here in America compared to back in New Zealand. Fellow Kiwi Jermaine Clement tweeted this the other day. I only just noticed Americans call toilet paper bath tissue. And now I have questions about how they use it. I agree with Jermaine. Bath tissue makes it sound like you're about to bathe with it or dry yourself off with it after a bath. I have so many more questions about American toilets, including why public toilets are so rare here. There is an organization called the American Restroom Association, which I'm a proud member of the board of directors. This is Harvey Mollich. I'm a professor of sociology, most recently at New York University. Harvey's also an urban sociologist,

which means he studies cities and how we humans use them. And in the bowels of every city is the toilet, the public restroom. That's Harvey's area of expertise. He has a book on Amazon that's simply called Toilet. It's straight to the point. And it turns out Harvey's been taking even more notice of water levels than I have. And not just in America. German toilets, what you deposit in the toilet, shit, as it is colloquially known, the shit sort of sits on a shelf. I've seen those, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Whereas the Anglo world, Britain and America, it goes into the water. And the theory I've heard for that is that you want as little time as possible from it leaving your body to hitting the water so that the smell

doesn't explode into the air. That's the theory I heard. No, there are pros and cons, and the smell is better if it gets buried in water, but the capacity, for example, to see if there are any health issues in the feces, you're deprived of that. So yeah, in Germany, your poo falls directly onto this little shelf, barely covered in water, so you can look down and see exactly what you've produced. Americans aren't into that shit. The last thing an American wants to do is look at their poo.

They want it under a foot of water and flushed at the first possible opportunity. The other reason I heard that the water levels are so high is a cosmetic reason. It means there's less streaking of shit down the side of the bowl because it goes straight into the water. Whereas in your German toilet where it sits on the shelf, suddenly you've got streaks galore. And Americans don't want to be cleaning toilets. They just want it to magically be clean to start with.

So these are all good theories of national culture. But for me, the main sticking point, as it were, is that it's very difficult to change. And the other thing we haven't talked about is the industrial sunk cost in plumbing. And so these things depend on plumbing codes, the sizing of the pipes that are coming in, the velocity, gravity. And that's a law. Yeah, there's no changing that. No. So it's not like other consumer goods.

It is hardwired. Sunk cost is working against you in terms of making any change. It's what Eric had told me about, that inch and a half pipe. That dictates how American toilets can function in a way. I'd never thought about toilets in this way before. All the things that make a toilet a toilet. What makes it function in a certain way and how the infrastructure that a toilet has to hook into limits what it can do. Other things limit toilets too, especially the ones found in public restrooms. When I'm talking to architects

and working on architectural projects, the restroom in general is not much discussed. And that silencing is very consequential when we come to things like innovation. And so it means that you do it the way you've always done it. The capacity to change is very limited. The countertops are discussed, the marble being used in the floor, but the actual partitions, the toilets themselves, no discussion goes to those items. Yeah, toilets haven't changed at all. I feel like when you walk into a toilet stall, and I can only talk as someone who's used male toilets or maybe unisex toilets you've got these rickety dividers in there it's the same sort of urinal I feel like the only technology that's changed is maybe like the automatic soap dispensers I feel like everything

else is pretty much the same right yes the American restroom is frozen in time. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Flightless Bird is sponsored by Athletic Greens. I started taking AG1 because I was taking a terrible supplement that made me want to throw up, and I wanted something that tasted delicious. It's super healthy, but it has a kind of mild tropical taste that I actually look forward to each morning. I like it because I like to cut corners. I want to get all my vitamins and all the good stuff, the superfoods, the probiotics.

I want it all. But with Athletic Greens, it's so easy. It's all in that one pack. And with AG1, you're absorbing 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, whole food source, superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens to start your day right. It's perfect. It supports better sleep quality and recovery. And your subscription comes with a year supply of vitamin D, which is so important when we don't get as much sunlight. AG1 is a small micro habit with big benefits. It's one thing you can do every single day to take great care of yourself. Right now, it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition. It's just one scoop in a cup of water every day. That's it. No need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. To make it easy,

Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com slash flightless. Again, that is athleticgreens.com slash flightless to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Flightless Bird is supported by The Lost Debate. Whenever you look for news, you may feel forced to choose between echo chambers and mainstream media and conspiracy-obsessed alternative media. That's why you should check out The Lost Debate. It's a podcast and YouTube show for political eclectics who want to escape their media bubbles.

They cover the latest news, ideas, and trends that mainstream media often just overlooks. Instead of being at each other's throats, they focus on bringing new perspectives to the table and constructive debates that sound less like crossfire and more like discussions between real people, because they are real people. We're all about bridging the gap and having open conversation without alienating our opponents. So this is right up our alley. We really enjoy it. It does feel like you're in a room with these really smart, kind people who just want to figure things out. Yes. The Lost Debate is hosted by Ravi Gupta, a former staffer for Obama and school principal who founded Arena, an organization that has trained thousands of campaign staffers

and helped elect hundreds of candidates. Corey Bradford, a political organizer from the Deep South turned TikTok star who once hosted a Fox News radio show, and Ricky Schlott, a Gen Z New York Post columnist and libertarian fighting to protect free speech. So we got it all. Join the conversation. Check out The Lost Debate today. New episodes drop twice a week. Find The Lost Debate on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows. or wherever you get your shows. Harvey wasn't always obsessed with toilets. It's not like he was born with a toilet fetish.

His interest grew up till he interviewed a designer in their studio and then noticed what they were designing. In one case, I look around and there's just lots of toilets, drawings of toilets and images of toilets and mock-ups of toilets. And I realized I'm in the world of toilet design. Suddenly, this thing that all of us use every day but never really talk about was at the center of Harvey's every waking thought. The lavatory, the restroom, the washroom, the loo, the toilet, or Harvey's favorite word, shithole.

Before talking to Harvey, I'd never really thought much about restrooms before. How they barely change, locked in time like Paul Rudd, never aging, never changing. Even the way they are divided into male and female seems very old-fashioned. We're having all these discussions about gender all over the world, but certainly in the United States. And I feel like just even that setup of male and female is like a step back in time, almost. Do you think that's fair?

I think it's very fair. Really, we've had a century, which is not very long, really, of changing away from, as we call it, the binary on so many realms. What a woman doctor, what a woman architect, what a woman professor. And now that's all been pretty much cleared up and cleaned up and it's on its way. But when the woman architect is talking to the man architect and somebody's got to go to the bathroom, then boom, separation. One goes in one direction and the other goes in the other direction. So it's the last bastion of arbitrary separation. And I think it's needless. The more I think about the separation, the weirder it gets. I think back to every live show I've ever been to, a festival or a film or a sports game,

and how the line for the male toilets is usually so much shorter than the female line. But I'd never thought about why. Gosh, there's just so many relevant issues. One is that women have different bodies. Women menstruate, which adds time. And then they're culturally different. They're often wearing different kinds of clothing and jewelry and whatnot and more to do. They tend to have more hair on their head and that has to be arranged in specific ways. So it really invites

the discussion. To what extent in gender relations do we allow for culture? To what extent do we acknowledge that women have different bodies which require different facilities? And one solution, which is very much supported by the American Restroom Association, of which I'm a part, in order to deliver equality, you have to deliver larger resources to women as a group compared to men as a group. It's not to be charitable. It's actually to deliver equal opportunity. And to do that, you have to provide unequal resources to one group as opposed to the other. Look, in short, male toilets have urinals. We're stacked up in there like sardines, whereas female toilets have to use stalls,

which take up more room. That's right. And so in the US context, the nickname for the solution is potty parity. And that, by the way, throws you up against one of the commonplace ways of dealing with public restrooms architecturally. If you go into auditoriums, especially, you will see you enter in the middle of the auditorium, and on one side is the men's room, and on the other side is the women's room. And they're drawn absolutely symmetrically by the architects, which then makes it very difficult to do parity. Potty parity. There's another factor in all this too, and I've been acutely aware of it while talking to Harvey this whole time. This male and female divide that's so very black and white, and it leads to problems when, say, trans people want to use the bathroom. Labels suddenly become a big stress.

Now at 10, a violent restaurant confrontation cell phone video shows transgender women put in headlocks and dragged out by bouncers. How do we begin to deal with making everybody comfortable, and especially minorities who can at times feel incredibly unsafe, literally just using a toilet? I grew up in Maryland, which is a quasi-southern space, and there were separate colored and white even in my lifetime with signage and one of the things you can do is take down all signage except the word toilet or the word in canada they say washroom and of course in britain they say loo and everybody's avoiding you know shithole or whatever eliminate the designation altogether and you're done. It all seems so simple, but is it really? A good toilet design I've seen is there's almost like a shared wash-up space when

you walk in and then you just go into like a row of cubicles and anyone can use them. There's no urinals whatsoever. Is that a good system? I think it's a good system. They're not mutually exclusive. So you can have, for example, a common wash-up area and still have urinals on the scene. If the urinals, again, that's where the architects, designers come in, that you can have them a little bit segregated or veiled to use a gender technique so that the women who do feel offended or worried, or men, by being in the presence of men exposing their genitals. And by the way, there's nothing safer than a man who's peeing. We are pretty useless when we're peeing. I mean, we're so busy trying to aim, many of us can't even do that. So you get all your wishes and from the knowledge that you have

about good toilet use, what does a toilet look like to you? What does a restroom, a shitter, look like in your perfect land? Well, first of all, take down the signs, male and female. I've worked with architects on, let's call it utopian designs. And architects, many of them are very progressive and eager to take on challenges, whatever design issue you want to raise. And so there are ways of having women users feeling comfortable, making them more comfortable among men. That's a big problem in terms of design. And there are ways of doing that creatively. So for one thing, if you take down the signs, you will just have more people around, which becomes a way that women can be made safer, not only feel safer, but you increase the number of people.

Men are not all intrinsically rapists. In fact, the vast majority are not. So if you just have more people, and that's an important principle in criminology, you will decrease the likelihood of troubles. Sure, not all men are into sexual violence, but some are, and that's the problem. Toilets can be scary, isolated, and unknown. While I've been talking to Harvey, I've been thinking about how toilets often end up in horror films. I'm sure film students have written entire papers about this. In one of the last Halloween movies, there's this scene where a woman is alone in a toilet.

She hears footsteps approaching, and suddenly a hand appears over the top of the stall. It opens, dropping something onto the floor. They're human teeth, and suddenly a horror scene unfolds and it plays on all those fears we get from toilets a scary man trying to open the door and having to crawl between stalls on a dirty disgusting floor as locked doors are rattled and pushed i think horror like this plays on real fears of public restrooms in america there's a lot of gaps where your feet are. And what's up with those gaps? I know.

Let's mind that gap for once. What's going on? I keep getting back to my song again and again. You can't talk about it. So anything that you don't talk about stays the same. And it means that the architect, the remodeler, the contractor knows just who to call and order that same old crap again and again and again. There are various rationales. So for one thing is by having the gap on the bottom, it means that the mop can go under easily. That's one story. Okay. Homophobia and fear of rape. So it means that

if you have a private space for people that other people can't see in, then God knows what they can do in there. And that includes having sex, reading the New York Times, or doing drugs. So many phobias, many fears and anxieties can be played out. It's like the toilet seat. I don't know what could go on, but I don't want to know. It's just a zone of traffic that I don't want to know about. And it's easiest to just order these partitions along XYZ paths. And I know it'll also meet the building code requirements because everybody else is doing it. It's a specifically American solution with the large gaps above, the large gaps below, and even between the seams. That's another thing I've noticed. I've been sometimes sitting on

toilet. I look up, there's a great big gap all the way down the side. I feel like very exposed. Indeed. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Flightless Bird is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Whether you're struggling with grief, relationships or stress, or just having trouble sleeping or meeting goals, online therapy might be for you. We talk about this ad nauseum. We are so pro working on your mental health and going to therapy and just having someone to talk to your life about because your friends don't always want to hear it. They get really sick of it. And to be honest, it's really good to have someone that's actually smart and out of your circle, someone that's independent and that actually can give you good advice. In New Zealand,

we're not really into therapy. And part of the relief about being in America is that it's kind of just accepted and the services like this, which make it so easy. Yeah, I love it. You can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. You don't have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room. The therapists have a broad range of expertise, which may not be available in your area. And yeah, this is available to clients worldwide. You can log into your account anytime and send a message to your therapist. BetterHelp is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so they make it easy and free to change therapists if you need to. Visit betterhelp.com slash bird and join over 2 million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. In fact, so many people have been using better help. They are recruiting additional therapists in all 50 states. Flightless bird listeners get 10% off their first month of online therapy at better help.com slash bird. That's better. H E L P.com slash bird.

That's betterhelp.com. There is so much paranoia around the toilet, and it doesn't just come down to what we can see and hear. When I was at school, there was always a myth going around that you could catch STDs or STIs from toilet seats, and I feel like that still is an idea that exists in the world, that you'll somehow pick up a genital disease from a toilet seat or some other disease. I feel that idea is still incredibly strong. Or some other.

I think that's the phrase. You don't know what. If somebody says STD, oh yeah, yeah, STD. But it's more almost magical thinking of something awful has been left on that seat by another human being who has been on that seat. And I must admit, I've been in public seats and I feel the warmth of the prior man. It's very worrisome. It's a very intrinsic human thing that you don't want to feel that warmth from the previous bottom. Like you don't. You want it to be freezing cold. It's a title of something, the warmth of the

previous bottom. I think you really have something there. For some, the warmth of the previous bottom is too much to bear and they shut the door on the public restroom altogether. But see, here's some other things. People don't want to use them even in their offices. So they'll go to a different floor of the building or they'll leave work early. So that's man hours lost, as we say. So it has many repercussions. Yeah, I've got an old colleague and friend, we'll call him Dan. He refuses to use the work toilet. He'll notoriously, if he comes to visit any friend's house, he'll use the toilet immediately because he hasn't used it at work. He'll like refuse to do it. I don't know if it's a phobia or just a cleanliness thing. Who knows? That I also have done informal research on

and no, that's quite common. Going to a different part of the building. I mean, there are various, see, this is all like a silent world of people ad-hocing their way to some kind of solution. This has me thinking about how we use the restroom and the stereotypes of it all. I think of how gross men's restrooms are and can understand why people want to avoid them altogether. You go to any men's restroom, we're a mess. Like we can barely get things in the bowl. Should we just keep us separated? Well, there's various issues. So one is men need workshops in which they can be taught

how to get their pee in the bowl. That shouldn't be a huge hurdle in life. I have to report to you that I've done some research on this, that women don't have a clean record. Women, again, this is in the US, there's a phobia about the toilet seat, which is bizarre. And the medical authorities will tell you that really you're safe on a toilet seat. We all are. But some women, they don't want their skin touching the toilet seat. So they hover. And some women are not good. Hovering is hard. Oh, there's a lot of muscles being put to use for the hover. Which have been weakened by the fact that we have toilet seats in the first place and use them that way. As opposed to in some cultures, people, you see them squatting for hours and we can't squat

because those muscles are gone. Yeah, we've lost the ability because we just sit on our lazy asses all day. Perfectly, perfectly expressed. And they hover and they miss. And so their seats have pee on them. Well, once you have any pee on a toilet seat, no one will indeed sit on it. It's a domino effect. I found all this talk of American public toilet culture so interesting, I'd forgotten about my original goal, to find out why I was always bursting to go to the toilet in the USA. Why does America have an average of only 8 toilets per 100,000 people? A dead tie with Botswana. I feel like access to toilets has become harder, like sometimes if you need to go it can be really hard to find a public toilet, right? Is it getting

harder or is it just my imagination? It's historically getting much harder. So New York subway stations, every significant station had a men's room and a women's room. You can see the carvings of the words in the tile in some cases, but they're all gone. That's it right there, a massive number of absences. Yeah, and is it just city budgeting?

Is it just people not wanting to put the resources into cleaning and maintaining them? Or is it a safety thing? What is going on? I think it's all of the above. I think that public restrooms have gotten a very bad name and very stigmatized, and they've used the term domino effect. So if you don't maintain them properly, they will become disgusting. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And they'll become unsafe because the best safety is other people. The United States now has a massive infrastructure program. And yet the very word toilet has not been uttered by anyone or the phrase restrooms. We have this massive program of building. This is the moment to do it. And there are all kinds of ways much beyond anything we've talked about.

If you're going to put a skyscraper up in New York, there should be a fucking toilet. Now that's a battle cry. But a battle cry that's largely unanswered. I know this because any road trip I go on in America, the main place I've managed to find public restrooms is less a public restroom and more a chain of coffee stores. Because to me, the Starbucks logo says toilet as much as it says coffee. Well, you put your finger on it, which is Starbucks is the public restroom of America. It is, right? It's not just me. I'm a bit nervous bringing it up because I'm like, is it just me doing this? No, no, no. I've had students researching it. Just watch who comes into Starbucks,

who orders food, and who just goes into the bathroom and never order any food. So you've had students studying this specifically. I love this. Yes, yes. Again, in New York, in Astor Place, which is a very major facility, the majority of people come in to use the toilet. They don't come in to buy food. So Starbucks is stuck with this role in America of being the public restroom of our democracy. What can people do in society to actually become engaged in this conversation?

Ah, that's the line I've been waiting for. You can join the American Restroom Association. What a sell. Sell it to me. It does things like lobby congresspeople and political agencies and mayors to provide more restrooms and to make them more humane, to maintain them in a clean way and to broach the subject. Add, for example, a budget meeting. Again, take away the stigma. We need more toilets. Citizens, join me. Now that's a motivational speech, worthy of Braveheart.

And I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. Before I ended my American toilet journey, I wanted to talk to Eric the plumber one last time. I wanted to know what he liked better, New Zealand toilets or American toilets, high water level or low water level, flush or suck. What was Eric's ride or die? Well, you know, you got your advantages and disadvantages of each one. I think it's more or less what you're accustomed to. I'm accustomed to not having that smell or not having to clean the toilet every time I use it. You guys are more apt to have that water, no risk of splash and no plunger next to it because it never plugs up. You're right. Because in every American toilet I've been to at friend's houses,

there's usually a plunger around. And in New Zealand, that's not really a thing. We've got the toilet brush because we're always having to clean it, but no plunger. So yeah, you pick your weapon. You want a brush or a plunger? I personally would rather have a brush because the plunger gets messy. And it's always awkward if you're at somebody's house, you know, and the toilet backs up and you're at dinner and it's like, what do you do? What do you say?

I'd say the advantages of the siphon toilet, they're quieter also. They can save water too. Your wash down toilets will save more water. But sometimes you may know from experience that you have to flush those toilets more often to get rid of the marks. So are you really saving water? Maybe not. Nobody knows because no one else is in there with you. Before I left Eric, I had one last question. It's a hack question, really. I wanted to know his worst encounter with a toilet. I've been plumbing for 30 years and toilet stores are pretty horrific, you know. They're not like the ones you maybe want to share.

But no, please do. I want to know your worst. I want to know what you tell people when you're really drunk. It's like the worst thing that's ever happened. Yeah, I get the worst one was when I was a third-year apprentice, and they told me I had to go fix the toilet. It was broken. It wasn't flushing.

So I walked into this house, and they go, the bathroom's in there. The toilet was full of waste, and the tub next to it was full. So they'd been broken for a while. Yeah, I left. I didn't fix anything, but that was the worst scene I walked into. Oh, yeah. I suppose the most interesting toy I've worked on are the old 1910, 1920 wall hung where the tank is way up above on the wall. And they're very beautiful.

And they have the beautiful chrome piping and beautiful pens and the wood tank. I enjoy restoring stuff back to its original state when people want to keep that period correct pictures. And those are nice to us too because it's a lot of head pressure that goes and flushes it down. It actually brings another question. I feel like in films, they're always like hiding drugs in toilet systems and in tanks. Have you ever come across anything like in a toilet that was hidden? You find the booze in the tank once in a while, the little fifth of whiskey or the fifth of vodka. You'll see those in there because it keeps it cold.

Yeah, right. Never found the stash, never found the contraband of whiskey or the fifth of vodka, you'll see those in there because it keeps it cold. Yeah, right. Never found a stash, never found a contraband in any of the toilets, though. Damn it. Well, you can always hope, right? Yeah, there's always that dream, I guess, yeah. We've come a long way in our day and age. We used to crap in a hole, and now we have water. We have toilets, and it's a great thing. It's a great thing.

What a ride that was. It's a great thing. It's a great thing. What a ride that was. It's a journey. I love Harvey. He mixes fun with real pathos. Yeah, he dropped a lot of knowledge. He did. One thing I really liked that he said, equality really means equality of opportunity, not just exactly the same thing.

Although then I was confused because it seemed like he did want it to be all one shared environment. He was more talking about when architects design toilets or restrooms at the hall or any venue, they just make it exactly the same size. So male area is the same, female area is the same, but they shouldn't be. One needs to be much bigger. So in that sense, he was talking about it but like ultimately i think he just wants everyone using the same space not to divide them into two and then to make those as good as possible i mean as a woman i understand i think it is a little scary to think that i'd be sharing a bathroom with a man what if it's just me and one scary man in there but i really liked the evidence he put forth that really all it does is just invite more humans.

More people in that space. Yeah. I was thinking of it's like New York. Everyone says it's safer to walk around New York than it is LA because there's just more people out all the time late at night. Yeah. And I mean, really, if someone wants to harm you, the sign on the bathroom is probably not going to deter them. Yeah, totally. If they're going to do something bad, they're going to find a way to do it.

They're going to come in there, even if it's a girl on the sign. We've definitely been conditioned to think there's a lot of fear around that and that there should be a separation. So I like that conversation. As a guy, I feel a bit uncertain going into any toilet block if there's no no one else in there even the design of them because they're meant to be private right and it instantly makes them scary because you walk in and you don't know what's around the corner or like who's in there oh that horrible how uh it's such a horrible scene in halloween in public restrooms here have you noticed the gaps everywhere like up the seam up the side because in new zealand if you use a restroom, you're pretty much sealed in. So I've never noticed that there was so much space until

the bathroom at British Airways at LAX. Yeah, LAX is bad. Right. No, but the British Airways, okay, in the lounge at LAX does not have it. It's still a restroom with stalls, but you are closed in. And isn't that the best feeling? Oh, my God. I felt so safe. I loved it so much. And it was the first time that I was like, oh, why aren't all bathrooms like this?

I'm just used to all the space and being able to see people's feet and smell everyone's shit like just i'm just used to that until i had this experience and i was like wait yeah why aren't they all like this yeah that's one of the first things i noticed it was at a public restroom i think at lax when i flew in and i used the bathroom and i was so surprised at just how much i could see out of the bathroom stall and then when you can see out, people can see in. Yeah. No one wants that, you know? Ew. But then there is that thing as well of having gaps increases safety because you can see who's under there and what's going on. You can see the feet.

I guess. But you could still hear people. If you needed to scream or something, people would still hear you. Yeah, that's true enough. Yeah. There's also that thing where they use as like hookup spaces for some people as well right so the gaps i suppose are meant to decrease the worry about that happening i know but then this goes back to the same thing as earlier like if people want to

hook up they're gonna they're not going to be deterred by the space under the bathroom they're gonna do it regardless so like at least give other people the privacy yeah we deserve what did you think about his comments on the cleanliness or otherwise of female toilets because i haven't been in one they are disgusting are they yes i was totally on board with everything he was saying plus i do hover yeah and i'm part of the problem. I'm part of the bad cycle. But you've got that cup thing down. If you can wee in a cup, you can hover on a toilet, I would argue. I'm pretty good at hovering. I've been doing it my whole life.

They are gross. There's pee everywhere. Sometimes there's shit left in. And maybe that's because the person doesn't want to touch the flush. I don't know. Sorry not to make it so gross. But then there's an added element, of course, in female restrooms with med stations. Totally.

And we dispose of those. And I imagine some people aren't. They're probably just throwing them into the bowl, not into that little thing you need to put them into, the tin, the tampon tin. Exactly. So it's a mess in there. I don't think we're doing any better than the men are. I really don't. I kind of find that comforting in a way because I think men do get often insulted for just how awful we are.

But it's nice to know that we're all awful together. We really are. I also am guilty of being the person who would definitely go to another floor. I don't like having excrement of any kind nearby people. Yeah, I can't use the bathroom if people are listening. When I worked in a newsroom in New Zealand, I could never go to the main bathroom bathroom. I had a secret bathroom I'd use and it was an accessible toilet and it was huge. It's huge room. It locked the door, one toilet, no one disturbed you. It's nice. And yet that's the politics of it. Like I probably shouldn't have been using it because I didn't

need an accessible bathroom. Then it's not like there were people lined up outside when I left. When I'm at hotels, if I'm sharing a room with someone i'll normally go to the lobby and yeah that's probably bad i'm sure people who are in the lobby need to use the restroom you've got one in your room you're off like using that one just walking down in my pajamas yeah but i tell you if you're sharing a room you don't want to be the one like they've got nowhere to go. They're locked in a room with you. I do think that is very American. Like we are afraid to be gross. We need to be pure, especially for women. We have a friend who says like, I've never pooped.

She's obviously kidding, but she really wishes that was true. That's her life mentality. Yes. That's her identity. I've never pooped. We are like shamed for it or something. Like it's gross, which I liked the part about the German bathroom having a shelf.

First of all, that's disgusting to me, but Germans, we talk about this all the time on armchair expert. Germans are kind of obsessed with poop. Like they talk about it all the time. They love it. It's not shameful there.

It's out in the open. They're shitting on these shelves. It's just, it is what shameful there. It's out in the open. They're shitting on these shelves. It's just, it is what it is. It's literally in the open. Yeah. Because it's something I'd never thought about before. I never want to look at my poop. Awful.

Like, get rid of it. But it is a sign of your health. It is. Even how many bowel movements you're having a day. All this is vital information about our diet and our bodies. And yet we're just like, oh, we don't want to even think about that stuff. We don't. We're afraid. We don't want to smell. We don't want it associated with us. So when I started taking my seizure medication, I was on

it for like a month or something. And then one day I took my morning BN and I looked down and I saw the pill. Oh, it's just in there embedded I saw the pill. Oh, it's just in there embedded. The whole pill. Oh, it had not dissolved into the bod. And this is an example where I was like. No, that's a perfect example. I need to know if my pill isn't getting absorbed into my body.

That's hugely important. Like you literally want to stop having seizures. Exactly. So in that case, it was very helpful to be able to see, and I was able to see. No, I think that's a great, not embarrassing. And let's get over the embarrassment of poo. Let's be like Harvey. We all need to talk about this stuff.

Yeah, I'm going to join the American Restroom Association. I've had two terrible times in a toilet. Okay. First one was my first year out of home. I was at university. I was in the toilet. Okay. First one was my first year out of home. I was at university. I was in the hostel. I sat down on a toilet and it immediately, the whole thing just broke. And it was basically the water was just flooded the entire restroom. Oh my God. And I just got up and left. I was like not dealing with it, not telling anyone out of there. No one saw me exit. I was like a ghost.

Brilliant. The other worst thing that's happened to me was on a plane i went up to use a plane toilet been sleeping it's a 12-hour flight went to use the bathroom opened it and there was just a woman sitting there using the bathroom mortified immediately slammed it just instantly let's get out of the situation instead of apologizing i was going to leave it open and say, I'm so sorry. Just slammed and looked awful. I looked awful and mortified. Did you run back to your seat? Went back to my seat.

I waited for about 10 minutes. I really needed to go. I went back, opened it again. Still the same woman. Still there. Still unlocked. I felt like the most pervy I've ever felt. I just thought everything was awful.

Just to double up on that. I had a lock. That's the thing. I ended up using that toilet a couple of hours later. I had a lock. Oh, wow. Maybe she might have wanted you to come in there. Look, maybe.

Going on the look on her face, she definitely didn't. And I still feel bad about it. But the twice thing was a true nightmare. That's incredible. I loved this episode. How honestly informative i can't believe we're doing so poorly on the world scale world scale exactly i really am surprised by that harvey throughout the whole conversation he had a sense of humor but there is like an underlying i mean he said fucking he was angry at one point yeah you know underlining frustration at the lack of change.

He's with the American Restroom Association. You know, he's passionate about making American toilets better. He wants more of them. Make American toilets great again. Make American toilets great again. I feel like he's making no leeway. He's got this great book, Toilet, on Amazon. I recommend it for all of you.

Yeah. There's no changes happening because no one wants to talk about it. But we are. One thing I was thinking about, bidets. Yeah, bidets are fantastic. Are they taking off here in America? Because New Zealand's got one or two in the country. I feel like there's a few more here.

I think they're becoming more and more popular here. There's a brand, Tushy, that's kind of made bidets more accessible for any toilet. I'm so for them. However, I am not for them publicly. That would gross me out. How come? I just don't want what's washing my butt to then wash another butt that then will maybe come back to my butt.

I guess maybe it's the same thing as sitting on the seat, that whole thing. It's not like the water's recycled, is it? Right. So it should technically be okay, but I know what you mean. I it's the same thing as sitting on the seat that whole thing it's not like the water's recycled is it right so it should be technically be okay but i know what you mean i'd have the same worry yeah and also harvey was talking i wasn't in the documentary but he said that and i didn't realize this but bidets are kind of had a bad rap in america for a while because people uh implied that it was a sexual thing because you'd go to France to see a prostitute and that's where the word bidet came from. So for a while, that's why there was like a bit of like,

oh, should we use this thing? Because it was sort of associated with France, which is a place of prostitution and dirtiness. Interesting. I did not know that. Speaking of knowledge and facts, we do not call it bath tissue. What is he talking about?

He posted a photo of it. It was like a toilet roll, and it was called bath tissue. We call it toilet paper. Okay. He must have seen an off-brand something. I think there's some brands that'll label it bath tissue, but that's not in the vernacular. Maybe the label might say it. So that shocked you as much as it shocked Jermaine. That's not real. No one refers to it.

No one would know what you were saying if you said bath tissue. Okay, that's good to know. I just had to clear that up. That's really good. I did learn another thing when I was researching this about the Larry Craig scandal. Larry Craig was a Republican senator from Idaho. And in 2007, he got done for cottaging. And cottaging is gay slang for when

you have a gay man or a man who wants to sleep with other men goes into a urinal and they'll slide their foot under the stall. And there's a variety of signals you give if you want to hook up. But there was a cop in the other stall and so poor old larry craig went in there popped his little foot under the cop caught him and it turned into what i understand was like quite a public sort of embarrassing court case for him because he was trying to excuse the behavior he said i just had a wide stance my foot just slipped under and then another part of it was he put his hand under into the other stall but in the court case he argued that he was picking up a bit of paper on the ground so it just turned into this huge thing but it got me thinking about how

that whole divider thing despite being put in the gap under the door to stop sort of hookups in some cases it actually adds to them and that's a whole other world going on and also cottaging is called cottaging because in the uk toilets used to be in like little cottages oh wow so that's what i learned is it illegal to have sex in a public bathroom it is yeah you can't do it but that adds to the danger which makes it fun which makes people want to oh i mean almost everyone i know is in a relationship has had sex in a public bathroom with their partner. They do it.

Yeah, right, right, right, right. Is it illegal to ask someone to have sex in the bathroom without doing it? That is a good question. What was illegal about the proposition? Yeah, well, it turned, I actually embarrassingly don't know the outcome of that case, but it was like a big deal.

I think, you know, he had to pay like a $500 fine. Stick like a 20 with it or anything. No, exactly i'm pushing back on this why yeah i think two consenting people should be able to do what they want exactly i guess it's because it's in public it's like weeing in public you're exposing yourself it seems like a homophobic thing totally i don't think any heterosexual couples getting in trouble. And the thing is, the whole reason cottaging started, this idea of gay hookups and toilets, is because there was so much homophobia. And that's the only place that people could go to do that. Yeah.

Because there were no gay clubs or anything. So it ended up being the toilet. Right. And you're right, Rob. Yeah, now it's illegal. It does seem pretty. Like why? Just let people do what they want.

Just do what you want. Yeah. Well, this was great. I mean, I think both of us got at least 20 or 30% more American. I think we did. I feel much smarter after talking to Harvey. And I feel much more patriotic towards this country, even though your toilets are weird. There's so much water in that bowl.

We suck. Sometimes that water level gets so comically full. Yeah, uh-huh. You've noticed that? Oh, yeah. Like it gets worrisome sometimes. Our toilets do clog a lot. You're always wondering, is this going to be the time?

It's literally a true nightmare. Luckily, I have pretty soft stools, so I'm never that concerned. Always good to learn about you, Monica. All right. All right. See you next time. See ya. Always good to learn about you Monica Alright Alright See you next time See ya