Citation Needed - History of the Toilet

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

A toilet[n 1] is a piece of hardware used for the collection or disposal of human urineand feces. In other words: "Toilets are sanitation facilities at the user interface that allow the safe and convenient urination and defecation".[1] Toilets can be with or without flushing water (flush toilet or dry toilet). They can be set up for a sitting posture or for a squatting posture (squat toilet). Flush toilets are usually connected to a sewer system in urban areas and to septic tanks in less built-up areas. Dry toilets are connected to a pit, removable container, composting chamber, or other storage and treatment device. Toilets are commonly made of ceramic (porcelain), concrete, plastic, or wood.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet

Yeah, it's the murder show, which one? The one with the white guy. Guilty or not guilty? Check question, he's white. Oh, yeah. Oh, hey guys, this I'm in a fucking kill. Am I you fucking shitting in the middle of the studio? This could be worse, Cecil.

He went through the trouble of installing a toilet at least. Man, installing a toilet. What are you talking about? I just carry this with me and set it down whenever I have to go. Killing him was never really off the table, though. He never off the table. Why are you sitting on a free standing toilet in the middle of the studio? Well, no, what this week's essay is all about the history of the toilet.

So I thought I would take a man to talk about the history of the toilet, so I thought I would take a MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Nope. Be sure to contact your doctor. If your bowel movements have more than a pint of blood in them. Yeah, good call. I'd go with less even. Yeah. All right. That's it. And without the wonderful invention that is the toilet, we wouldn't be able to eat like eat like, hold on.

Why does your toilet have googly eyes on it? My toilet has a name. Thank you. His name is Hampton. Of course he is. And Hampton likes poopies. Isn't that right Hampton? That's right, Eli! I love poopies! I'm- Okay, I'm gonna be sick. I think I'll join you.

Oh, don't go! I like pukeies too! Come back! Feed Hampton! Feed Hampton. Feed Hampton. Hampton said. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject. Read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend to wear experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Tom and, well, I'm just as disappointed disappointed by that as you are but I can't take all this crap

alone also joining me are two men whose diets haven't produced a solid shit in their entire lives. NOA ANDY LINE! I can produce shit! Alright so as evidence of my shit producing skills everyone on this podcast has called me an asshole in the last 25 minutes. I'm pretty sure at this point I just shit the ghosts of all the shits I should have taken. And also joining us tonight, two men for whom getting up from a squatting position would require a block and tackle. Ethan Cecil.

It's called a bullflex, Tom, and it's one of such amazing shape as you're well aware. It's such a good joke. Jokes on you, Tom. I have these newfangled adult diapers. I can shit in literally any position. I'm an astronaut diapers. I love it. All right. Before we get too deep into the mud, let's pause for just a second to acknowledge our patrons.

Without our patrons, the internet would be bereft of the kind of high brow intellectual comedy you get here on citation. I mean, just imagine it. The whole of the internet and nowhere to go for a touch of low brow levity. Why? It'd be nothing but white papers and long form journalism. So you like the internet. You'll want to make sure to give us some money.

Otherwise, maybe just pull the plug and the whole goddamn thing. So stick around to the end of the show and we'll to make sure to give us some money. Otherwise, maybe just pull the plug and hold goddamn thing So stick around to the end of the show and we'll tell you how to give us money That out of the way tell us Eli what person plays thing concept phenomenon or event Will we be talking about today? I will be discussing the history of my toilet. So a blood blood slurry Solid no, no, no, blood, slurry, solid. Nope, nope, nope, nope, sleep. Sleep toilet. Not your toilet, Eli. Is the topic?

Okay. Yeah, also go to the hospital. No. No, don't say no. Go to the hospital. Hey, you read the whole article, presumably on the shitter, pretending you were method acting. Again, are you ready to mourn your blown O ring and teach us some crap?

Game on. All right, man, let's start this shit. All right. Well, before we get to that, Tom, just an important side note about the Mesopotamians for historical context. No, but no one is not writing the essay and I was looking important. I know about the Mesopotamians for historical context. I know about the Mesopotamians for historical context. The Mesopotamians were shitting constantly, just all the time. Metamusal Potamians. Yeah. So they fired up a civilization around 3,500 BC and started shitting right away. But they didn't really worry about it too much.

The name of their civilization loosely translates to between the rivers of shit. So they didn't make a big push to invent the first toilet. Well, by most accounts, that honor goes to the Scots of Skara Bre, a Neolithic settlement that began around 31 ADBC in the Orkney Archipelago on an island called mainland because fuck me. These are almost certainly my direct ancestors. And they built drains running under their houses, often with a little cubicle around their drain hole. The guy from office space comes in your cubicle, heater, what's crappin'ing? You know what this open hole filled with shit in the middle of my house needs?

A privacy screen. A privacy screen exactly. I can't see the smell that way. So heath the first and his idiot fucking friends from the island of mainland, they left me in the first waste-sposing toilet. But the people who built the first urban sanitation system were part of the Indus Valley civilization of South Asia. Starting around 2,800 BC,

they started installing toilets into the outer walls of houses with vertical shoots that fed into a network of street drains. Eventually, entire cities were built in which every house had its own water cleaning toilet that connected to a covered sewer system that emptied into a community cesspit. And then they'd empty these pits every so often into a different pit, I guess, just a different

shed pile. It's at a pit's called New Jersey. Is that why people keep bringing buckets of shit to my house? I thought it was a housewarming thing. That's just that we figured you couldn't tell the difference. So vegan brownies. I can't. And a few other early civilizations were definitely working with toilets as well.

For example, the palisette canosos on the island of Crete was built around 1700 BC and had latrines with large earthenware pans that were connected to a water supply and emptied into terracotta pipes. And around the same time, settlements in Southeast Asia also had shitting technology. A recent dig by archaeologists in southern Vietnam discovered toilets and also a collection of very valuable coprolites or shit fossils that told us about the dietary habits of those people. You have to be on paleo for a really long time to shit fossils. You have to.

And one other ancient salvation that needs to be mentioned is, of course, Rome. Right. Because if you're going to talk about shit, I know. Exactly. So around 800 BC, they started building a sewer system, mostly for the purpose of draining unwanted standing water from low lying areas of the city. But over the next several centuries, they really ramped it up. And around 600 BC, they built something called the Khlohaka Maxima, which loosely translates to the greatest sewer ever.

Never missed a chance to self congratulate the Romans. You got to get it. Well, for all they knew at the time, I mean, Europeans wouldn't discover New Jersey for another thousand plus years. And eventually, they put together a large network of sanitation drains that connected to the Khloakah maxima and emptied into the Tiber River. And here's a description from a first century Greek historian named Strabo. Quote, almost every house has water tanks

and service pipes and plentiful streams of water. The sewers covered with a vault of tightly fitted stones have room in some places for hay wagons to drive through them. End quote. Clock of maxima is both the best and worst circus oleshow. If you think I won't fly to Vegas right now to watch a Chinese teenager juggle turds in a glass pyramid, you are not the woman I married. I wouldn't think that for a second.

Eli, okay, so question. What were the shitting that they needed sewer pipes you could drive wagons through? Wait, you're asking because you're jealous, right? So to despite the impressive network of drains lots of people reluctant to connect their house toilet to the city sewer system Apparently they didn't feel like spending time and money on a special Toilet rat entrance into their homes feel like spending time and money on a special toilet rat entrance into their homes. It's a good idea.

And they were also afraid of methane gas fires that were known for shooting giant fireballs through the sewer tunnels and open seats of public toilets. That's like two out of three dangers of the fire swamp right there. Well, yeah, but to be fair, when it comes to toilets, it's that third one you really got to worry about, right? Go to a Roman cat sink in into his litter box. I mean, you have to have the fireballs to clear out the rafts. That's just common sense. All parts of self-cleaning toilets. And speaking of public toilets, the Romans are famous

for their public bath houses, some of which are actually still intact today in the form of shit museums, I guess. I cannot be the only one booking a ticket to Rome right now. It's we everyone else. Yes, credit card. And if you haven't seen these before, picture the, remember those, his and his Blumpkin toilets we saw at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Blumpkin.

Yeah. Now, picture a giant room of those all facing inward with no barriers and just so much eye contact. And now picture everyone passing around the communal sponge on a stick for wiping that they really, really had. This is like, Rigglyfield. It's like having a shitting trough, you know? Oh my God. Is that one guy won't stop making jokes? Why be more than one? So you play with a joke. play with the it's it's

the spudging seems like a call back to our fecal transplant episode of that that yep and fun fact according to historian lord amulery one of these public toilet lobbies was created following the death of Julius Caesar he was murdered in the hall of Curia in the theater of Pompeii, and this was immediately converted into a community shit room because

of the dishonor that it had witnessed. And if Eli took a shit in there, it would have the same amount of blood as before. So, okay, so wait, they shot on his grave in his honor. Yep. Fun fact, the Saudi embassy in Turkey has now been converted into an applebee's for much the same reason. Put the joke. Hahaha. Try our new Kishoggi burger. It's delicious.

If we need you to die for. Hahaha. Hahaha. They serve it and the bun has a bone sign the time. Hahaha. Hahaha. Hahaha. Yeah, so the public toilets were not everyone's favorite. This also seems to require rather more commuting and planning than taking a shit would really accommodate more.

Yeah, braggie. So lots of people dealt with waste disposal using other methods. For example, city streets would often have large receptacles where you could dump your chamber pots. And there were people called Fullers who would collect the urine and then sell it to textile mills who needed urine during their manufacturing process, apparently.

Sure they did. Well, here's another tank of urine for you, Ac'm serious. Thanks. This is this is perfect. Thank you Yeah, you know, I haven't been meaning to ask you how do you use that urine in the textile business? That's what what down Here, you know, how do you use it? What do you need it? Oh? It is for the loom solvent. Loom solvent, huh? Yep, those are the words I said.

Okay, cool. Cool. I'm gonna go then. Cool, cool. Loom solvents. Yup, and apparently it was pretty standard for people to bring their personal chamber pot Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a weird doggy bag situation at the restaurant. Right. And I was just, well, the way you, the way you phrase it, I just pictured somebody going into the bar going, hey, check this one out, guys. I mean, you're like, you're so kind again.

Paying customers only. Yeah. So, another fun detail. The Romans eventually enacted laws about waste disposal to deal with everyone who wasn't connected to the sewer system. Apparently a bunch of these people were just dumping their chamber pots out their window onto the street.

So the Senate set up official penalties for P and Poo assault from a window. The violator had to pay damages to anyone they hit with the waste, assuming it caused an injury. But the rule was only in effect during the daytime. There's some reason. Yeah, I mean, if you're walking around in night, you're just asking for it, though. You know, just in Rome, everyone's dressed like the front row of a Gallagher show just headed to toe in a poncho and crying. Racist.

So the toilet technology from was pretty much the high water mark for centuries. During the Middle Ages in Europe, for example, they never really moved past the idea of backyard ship pile. If you were lucky, your pile would get empty occasionally by a tradesman known as a gong farmer who separated the liquid from the solid, hopefully using a merry go round like centrifuge device. That's what I'm figuring in mind, anyway. Or maybe a fan. Once they had the solids all collected, which they referred to as night soil, they'd sell

it to farmers as fertilizer. Some farmers actually got smart about it, and they'd cut out the middleman by just inviting people to shit in their fields directly. Agbithias, I've been, uh, I'm a shit in your field for a month now. What are you growing with? Loom solvents. Oh, who's this? And, uh, royal castles, they did slightly better during this period, but not by much.

They'd usually have a little room off to the side of the building that had a bench with a hole in it. And this often had a shoot leading into the moat, which was good defense during an attack, but it was a ring of wet shit surrounding your house, all those other times, there wasn't an attack. And even during an attack, it didn't really stop anybody. It just made them extra angry by the time they got there. So they'd get inside and you know, you definitely get smeared with shit,

100% of the time by attackers, because they were pissed. All right, with our back portacolus finally breached, let's take a quick break and try to forget what we've learned and why we're learning it with a little apropos of nothing. Sir, really us get in you. Yes, I'm pretty much every Roman Emperor ever take a look at this. Look at this Sir, really us I'm gonna call it the cloaca Maxima, it's gonna be huge literally. It's gonna be wow wow. Yeah, this is um Suer system. I'm looking at not just any system Sarah the biggest and the best in the world We're gonna make Rome not just any systems, Sarah, the biggest and the best in the world. We're going to make Rome shit again.

All right, fantastic, sir. Fantastic. Everyone's going to love it. Right? Okay, yeah, just one question. Does it lead directly into our water supply? The river type. Yeah, it does. But you know, avoid a floater and you're probably fine, right? Actually, guys, the Romans were well aware

of the legal joker. Let's get out of the sketch. Let's go. I ain't, eat you. All right, you wanna go make hard-eye contact in a public toilet? Try and stop me. Yeah, that didn't get any better at all actually. Heath, when you were last talking and we were listening, we were regretting allowing

you to pick topics for this show. I think you just finished telling us about the humble origin of medieval poo rivers. Yeah, I mean, there's more of that. There's more of other humbles, right? No, origins, sure. So now that we've got a pretty good background on the origins of the toilet, I think it's time to get into the modern evolution of this beautiful,

beautiful device that we all know and love today in the developed world. A device that we all have a wonderful, intimate connection with, the flushing toilet. Who is excited? Oh, look at Mr. Bragg over here. Ooh, my toilet flushes. Some of us bought a 200 year old house heat.

Yes. No, I'm with you. The fact that sliced bread even gets an honorable mention is a real testament to how much we just take those motherfuckers for granted, right? Yeah, seriously, right? There's no panic in the world as perfect as when that thing backs up and you can't fix it.

It's like a special kind of panic where you seriously contemplate just putting your shoes on and like leaving forever under an assumed name using that birth certificate and so secure number you bought just in case it's that. Yeah, Tom, I've dove out of three windows in my life, all for that reason. Yes, absolutely. So the original prototype was created by Sir John Harrington of England

who created a flushing toilet with a raised tank. And he published his design in a book entitled A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject, The Metamorphosis of Ajax in 1596, which is a super clever title, by the way, with a pun based on the fact that the toilet was often called The Jakes at that time. You guys got it? No.

Oh my God. The Met incarnate Sir John Harrington. That a men of glasses of Ajax. Ajax. Anyone? Anyone at court? Get that? Ignolated. No. Later cheese. What is Ajax? It's a cleaner also that you could use on a toilet. Didn't even realize that angle at it until there's no. No, good question.

I don't like Harold's getting better. And the book that I was just talking about with that amazing title was a political allegory that ridiculed British royalty, including Harrington's Godmother, Queen Elizabeth, the first. And for some reason, Harrington included a detailed explanation of his tactical specs for a toilet that he'd built in his house in that book. Well, despite being mad about the political critique, the queen realized his thing was

fucking awesome and had him install one for her at Richmond Palace. I feel like that was an awkward meeting, right? I didn't know. I right? I want to change our current patent process so that everything we try to patent also has to have a long and fanciful satirical political discourse attached to it. The world was more fun back then. So, Arngdon's toilet was a big step and getting the queen on board was obviously a big deal, but it never really took off. The flush toilet didn't start becoming a mainstream item until about 200 years later,

when a guy named Alexander Cummings invented the S-shaped pipe under the bowl that traps an arc of water in the lower curve and blocks the smell of the sewer system from going up the pipes into every single bathroom. That was the clincher. Toilets were the next big thing at that point. All right. What happened next, teeth? So throughout the 1800s, flushing toilets got huge. They're like the swimming pool size or what? Call that the American standard now. And London was the shit capital of the world at this point. The original Brexit. And that older blocking S-pipe was really selling it. Unfortunately, that all becomes meaningless

when your entire city becomes a shit-themed water park and has a public health crisis called the great stink Our regular listener might remember that from episode 52 Yeah, that being said this led to a renaissance in sewage and toilet technology As the great stink was ramping up innovators like George Jennings were already hard at work on a solution innovators like George Jennings were already hard at work on a solution. At the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, Jennings installed the first public pay toilets in the Crystal Palace and they were a huge hit. During the exhibition, over 800,000 people paid a penny to use the new devices and that fee included a clean seat, a towel, a comb, and a shoe shine. What the fuck were they eating back then that they were shitting out towels?

Not sure, but as a result of this, the phrase, to spend a penny actually became a euphemism for taking a shit for a while. Now, another major player in the shit game emerged in the 1880s when Prince Edward hired a plumber named Thomas Crapper to install flush toilets in several of the royal palaces. Crapper went on to invent a variety of new toilet features and became the first person to display toilet stuff

in a department store showroom. This made his name synonymous with the technology, but as we already learned, contrary to a popular myth, Crapper was not the original inventor, and the word crap actually comes from middle English well before his time. There's also a popular belief that the toilet nickname John came from John Harrington,

but this is disputed by nerds who ruined everything because that would have been awesome. It's probably some Peggy Sue fan fiction where he goes back in time and invents the toilet. Either way, I'm pretty sure that wasn't a nickname Thomas Krapper was like going for, you know? I say Thomas Krapper, you've done a bang up job installing these lavatories in the Royal Palace. Well, I'll say to you, Johannes, thank you, sir.

I'll make sure it's known that you were the man who did this job expect more business, sir. Well, thank you, Sion. That's great to hear. Is that a crapper toilet? People will say, yes, that's a crapper, I'll say. Well, I don't know the Charlie. Soon, far and wide, people will say, I've got to use the crapper. Have you seen my new crapper? You'll be a household name, Thomas Crapper. Mark my word.

Oh, why didn't I become an electrician? Ooh, like that genius John Dildo, eh? And one other major event in the evolution of the shitting experience happened around 1890 with the release of commercial toilet paper rolls Yeah, oh indeed you like fan. Oh indeed before this people have been wiping with all different stuff over the centuries We already talked about the communal sponges of the Roman public toilets. Oh my god. I was real. That was a real thing 100% real time.

And other methods throughout history included scraps of paper and cloth and various plants, rocks, and of course, rocks, wait, what rocks? Paper beats rock every time we should have known better from the start. Right. But despite all the drawbacks of an equated wiping technique, the commercial T.P. wasn't successfully marketed until 1902, which means there were about 12 years of people caked in shit, scoffing at the crazy kids and they're not being caked in shit. They're all like, are millennials ruining the scraps of paper market. They're called ballots, Cecil, and yes. Yes, we are.

We're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like,

we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like,

we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, we're gonna be like, hotnell ultra comfort care. I feel like I need to point out that everyone who's not using a bidet is a filthy goddamn savage. Hard to great. Hard to great. You're people are crazy. Dude, we've had the bidet since the early 1700s, but it's only a standard thing in certain parts of the world. And for some reason, the United States is not one of those places. So most of us are walking around with a good deal of shit smear at all times between a shit and our next shower.

Like imagine getting shit on your arm or like your neck and you just do a quick wipe down with a dry napkin. That's fucking insane. But we're fine without a big day. It's revolting. It's absolutely revolting. You need water for that job. Oh, gee, I wonder what it is that he, the Japanese,

and the French haven't come, and that makes them all enjoy spraying warm water on their fart buttons. I'm humanity, you know. Yeah, I was gonna say a hole between their butt cheeks, who doesn't want that? I don't even need to shit first. Who does it?

This is our controversy. I know shit bought my wife a fancy Japanese toilet as a gift last year and it nearly replaced me. I can't not say that this is the key to a happy marriage, but I am saying that this is the key to a happy or marriage. Thank you, exactly, all the votes. Okay, so now we've got a solid background on the origin story. It's time to talk about some of the most famous toilets in history. Of course it is.

Of course it is. Exactly. But with so many amazing examples, it's impossible to mention all of the important ones. So I spent the last few weeks whittling down my list into a top five. So I spent the last few weeks wittling down my list into a top five. And here we go with the countdown at number five. Actually, number six, honorable mention. We have the death toilet of Elvis Presley, whose body was found on his bathroom floor next to his toilet with his pants around his ankles. Honourable mentions also go to the death toilets of Lenny Bruce, King George II, and Catherine the Great who all died in similar fashion.

But for Elvis, it was especially rough. He was on all kinds of drugs at the time, which meant he was always constipated and also his colon was descended. And he basically gave himself a heart attack by pushing too hard. So that's why you get a squatty potty. That's why you got to have one of those. Yeah. I think the problem was is that Elvis is trying to pass a jailhouse rock. That's right. I feel like every time Eli survives another shitty shakes a frustrated fist at Elvis, like one of

these days, man. I'll catch you, the king. I'll catch you. And one more honorable mention at number 5.5. We have Marcel Duchamp's 1917 art piece called Fountain, which was literally just a urinal. And despite how that's fucking stupid, it's considered by many to be one of the most important pieces of art in the 20th century. It's not even a full toilet. It's just a urinal, so it doesn't really make the cut. Yeah, and any fountain is a urinal if you try hard enough, I mean.

Same goes for any modern art, really. If you're archelly, it's the fountain of youth. We go for real with the top five. At number five, we have a solid 18 karat gold toilet created by Italian sculptor Maurizio Catalan for his 2016 exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The piece was fully functional and he installed it in one of the museum's public restrooms where idiots would stand in a really long line so they could shit into gold. Eli, did you seriously stand on that line?

Yes. Wow. Okay. But I got to shit into gold. Yes. Well, I peed into gold. That was too nervous, the line was. But more importantly, these people wanted to have

an obnoxious story about how modern art is legitimate that they could tell their friends and pretend to be smart like Eli clearly did as well. But again, just shitting on a Pollock is easier, the line is sure. And I challenge anyone to notice after this. They're gonna fail that challenge. Solid 18 character. I'm not saying I would steal the lid. I would steal the lid. I would give it an upper decker just to be an asshole. All right. At number four, we have the toilet of Adolf Hitler himself from his official

third Reich yacht. At the end of World War II, that ship got taken back to the U.S. by Allied forces and destroyed in a scrapyard in, of course, the state of New Jersey. And got back to Jersey. And that's when some garbage person from Jersey was like, yeah, I'll buy Hitler's toilet. That sounds fun. And he installed it in the bathroom at his auto repair shop. He eventually sold that business to another garbage person from New Jersey named Greg Kofeld, who somehow realized he owned Hitler's toilet. And he tried to sell his newfound Nazi memorabilia in 2014. Hopefully that failed and continues to fail and he has to feel like Nazi every day after

coffee. He'll I just read Yelp reviews before you take your car into some random place and are never heard from the man. I know. Is it more or less Jewish to shit and to hit there's toilet. It's a lot of defiant upper decker would be defiant for sure. I like it. I like it. All right, at number three, we have the infamous toilet number six in the men's room of the Minneapolis airport.

And of course, that's where former Senator Larry Craig tried to solicit some gay sex from the guy in the next stall. This is so great. Despite spending his entire career as a bigoted Republican who consistently voted against gay rights. Side note, it's illegal to do that in a public restroom. You don't have to solicit sex in a public restroom. Other side note, the guy in the next stall was an undercover cop. So when Larry Craig started tapping his foot and moving it under the stall closer and closer to the cop and foot and moving it under the stall closer and

closer to the cop and then reaching his hand under the stall as well to do some kind of hand signal, the cop responded by showing his badge under the stall. At which point Larry Craig said no. After being arrested, Craig tried to claim he needs to shit with a very wide stance. He's a wide stance type of shitter. And he also needs a good deal of choreography along with the shitting apparently. Craig is just like, look, I can't go unless I get a series of high and low fives from the guy in the stall next to me.

It's a serious matter to condition. I just love the response of no, but why are the police here? They should be inside getting the prince from finger. And at number two, we chose the top spot in toilet ranking. Well done, yes, at number two. We have the zero gravity toilet devised by NASA for shitting in space. Well, apparently everything you excrete just kind of floats around and gets everywhere without gravity.

So they had to come up with an air pressure system that sucks the waste from your exit points and down into the plumbing right away. At first, they would then just eject the waste into space, but they quickly learned that your ship at that point is just floating around in a cloud of poo. So that was a problem. Now, they direct the solid waste into a chamber that exposes it to the vacuum pressure of space, which kills bacteria, and they keep the sterilized waste in space, Tupperware for disposal of the Earth. And then they recycle that toilet air back into the cabin, real. They cruise is pissed because they just stole the title of world's most expensive

Dutch oven. Today I learned that being an astronaut isn't all glamour in the occasional explosion. It also means you would spend your entire trip just fermenting in each other's farts. All right. And here we go. At number one, we have my nomination for the greatest toilet in history. Tom, you know what the fuck I'm talking about. I have this toilet.

It's called a photo. And it comes from Japan, which is the modern day paradise of super advanced toilet technology. Their toilet culture is fucking fantastic. Available features on the Toto include a remote control bidet on a robot arm, a built-in ass dryer for after the bidet. Automated air fresheners, a self-cleaning heated seat, and even data ports to integrate with your phones and tablets.

And what I just listed, that's just a few of the basics. If you go custom, it becomes a way of life. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing they put together the total. I have like 100% not joking. I have the total S350E. What?

What? What's so happened? I love this. This thing has scared the kids. It has surprised the hell out of the nanny. It's thrilled house guests. And when I leave the house, I am packing this thing like it's fine, China, and taking it with me.

It's got a rodeo crew just carrying it around in cases. Oh, it's amazing. There's a just took a shit Facebook sync option, isn't there? There has to be an Instagram filter. No. It's a data dump. All right. So does anybody else feel like if we dug into the financing of Japanese toilet research,

eventually we just find a huge team of porn actresses saying, see how much fun it can be when it gets in the bowl. Other options. But I can actually confirm this stuff personally about Japanese toilet culture in general. We were in Tokyo for a few days in 2017. And even though we stayed at a relatively low budget hotel, the toilet I had in my tiny little baby room was absurd. It actually took me about two hours of research before I could even operate the machinery,

but it was so worth it. Turns out my basic little room had a fucking supercomputer ninja escort all in one. Taught me kung fu like I was Neo. It... Quit me with an Iron Man suit at one point, which was awesome. I flew around to post-original poetry and read it to me in a very soothing voice.

It didn't even charge extra for shitting stuff. Like you'd expect from like a pro. And that wasn't even close to the toto. This was like like the Hyundai of Japanese toilets that I had there and it was still Amazing all right, and if you had a summarize what you've learned in one sentence What would it be? Well first of all Japan gets me but More importantly to answer everyone's dumbass burning question

Toilets do not flush in a direction based on which hemisphere they're in, north or south, and the Coriolis effect is completely unrelated. All right, terrific. And are you ready to waste some more of our time on a quiz? I am coming to your house to use that total as we speak. Drive up, buddy. Drive up.

It's all yours. That's me at the door right now. Do you hear that? All right, so if you seem super excited about this topic, this is probably something you've given a lot of thought we speak. Drive up, buddy. Drive up. It's all yours. That's me at the door right now. Do you hear that? All right. So if you seem super excited about this topic, this is probably something you've given a lot of thought to. It is.

I met my question, but yeah. What will be the next big thing in shit? A, a toilet that can sense automatically if you've oriented the toilet paper so that it hangs off the front or the back of the roll and automatically removes all the oxygen from the room if it's off the back. You have cats know who is it? You're hitting the back. You're hitting it. If you don't have it facing the front, oh my god.

It's a fucking matter that I have cats. I will murder you. And you don't have cats. So whatever excuse you think that is, you don't have it. I grew up in a house that was always ready for cats ready for cat B It doesn't prevent that's ridiculous. It does that is ridiculous B a Pristetic toilet that permanently attaches to Eli's ass so that we can make it through a tour in under four hours Will it be C three C shells?

Will it be C three C shells? Oh, D the Senate majority. Oh, okay. Definitely C the C shells. I keep three shells next to my toilet just hoping to one day figure that out. I just pondered. I haven't even one day. All right. Was that correct? Thank you.

That was correct. I said it, but Eli just started talking too quickly. Don't you fucking interrupt, Noah? All right, Heath. What was the name of Thomas Krapers' autobiography? Was it, A, a load of crap, speed, the crappin'ing, or C, take your tail or of crap. Speesy. Speesy. The crappin'ing. Or C, take your tailor soldier crappin'. You thought the first one was easy.

You couldn't even do stinker tailor soldier crapper. Come on. Stinger. All right. I'm pretty sure it's actually D, eat spray love. All right. All right, he's after you take a shit's creek, what do you flush down the Nazi toilet? A Gestapo? Shit's creaky 14 turns. See Pugenex?

Steve King. Oh, I'm going secret answer E, the diarrhea of an oh so close, so close. It was actually Steve King. It was. It should always be. Obviously it was well done Cecil. You stumped heath. Oh, I get to pick the next week winner. I'm gonna pick Noah for our 100th episode. He's probably going to write, you know, like on the base 10 number system or something, I'm sure it's going to be. Oh, God. No, trust. It would be base 12 if he was going to write about it. I know you're right. It would be. Base 12 is so superior. You can't because it divides. Oh, my God. We're not doing it until it's your way. You can divide into the next week. Next week is your week. You could do quarters.

You could do quarters with that in third. All right third day well for Cecil Noah Eli and he I'm Tom interrupting and talking over you now and thank you for hanging out with us today we'll be back next week by then Noah unfortunately we'll be an expert on something else love you to time now then you can get links to all of our other products by heading over to citation pod dot com like to help keep this show going irregular, you can make a video episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod. It's all shitting. Leave us a five star review everywhere you can.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, check the show notes, be sure again, check out CitationPod.com. And remember, you can sanitize the communal sponge by running it through the dishwasher, but then you'll need to buy a new dishwasher. I'm sorry, excuse me, is this a seat taken? Oh, my- Oh, no! I'm so much.

Can I buy you a drink? I'll make you. Thomas Crapper, nice to meet you. Wait a second, are you the toilet guy? Well, actually, I do a lot of different things. There's a lot of stuff I installed in the Royal Palace. Oh my god, that's John Dildo, excuse me! Stupid John Dildo.