Good Job, Brain! - 18: Splish Splash I Was Taking A Bath

Episode Date: July 2, 2012

Squeaky clean fun facts behind the things you use in the bathroom: why does orange juice taste weird after brushing your teeth? Mind-blowing truth behind shampoo, what Listerine was really made for, toilet tidbits, and both low and high tech regarding the Japanese public bathrooms. ALSO: Band name origin quiz, and the trick to identifying the countries in Central America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, Wickedly, wily and wonderful wizzes. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offi trivia podcast. This is episode 18, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your, and this is submitted by one of our listeners. Encyclopedic and eloquent entourage of educated and enjoyable envoys of

aesthetic exposition. Whoa. Good job. I'd look for eggheads in there. By Mr. Ed Budner. Thank you. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris. Yeah, we got some

phenomenally awesome news last week. Apple released their official podcast app, and we were featured on a lot of their promotional stuff. That was pretty cool to see. And for Apple to be like, this is worth featuring is very humbling.

So thank you. Thank you so much iTunes and Apple. And to be in the company of CNN. NPR. Most impressive to me was a cookie monster. Oh, yes. So thank you guys. So thank you guys.

Because of this, we actually got a lot of questions via email, Twitter, and Facebook about just us in general. Who the heck are you, Pierre? Who are you guys? So we have a couple of questions, and let's just start with a big one. This is from Catherine Smith on Twitter, and her question is, how did you all meet and get together to form your trivia team? Well, Karen and I were just getting dinner.

Now, we had known each other since, like, 2005 or so, and we were just trying to find somewhere to go. And there was this English pub that was down in San Francisco's Financial District that I'd always looked at and that, oh, I want to go there and try it. You know, we'd never had the chance to, and so we're like, okay, we'll just go in here and we'll try this. And we sit down, and it just so happened to be in the middle of trivia night. And Karen said to me, like, listen, Chris, if we can't join in on this trivia game, we have to leave. Because I, like, you couldn't just sit there and listen to trivia without participating in trivia. Because I think that all of the trivia nerds, you have that impulse of, oh, I know this, so you just want to shout it out. So, yes, we were able to join in at the very, at the tail, tail end of the trivia game.

We were able to play like two rounds of trivia. We just kept going back there the next Thursday and the Thursday after that and just kept adding friends. First, well, we added our friend Rob, who moved away. But then it was actually me and Karen and Rob and Colin. You came on. So Karen and I had started working together. I noticed that she kept going to trivia and she'd asked me to come out a couple weeks. Like, hey, you know, are you good in this area trivia?

Good in this area of trivia. She's kind of scoping me out. Well, so the thing is, we were bad. Yeah. We were really bad. Right. We were doing okay. Compared to teams of six or ten people, we weren't good.

And there were obvious gapes in our knowledge, which is mainly music and sports. Well, I think, yeah, I remember you were particularly impressed that I had some sports knowledge. We needed a sports person. The only zero round that we've ever had was Karen and I trying to do a sports round together. Big fat zero, goose egg. That was really bad. Couldn't even get one. Couldn't even get one question.

So, of course, being a trivia nut, I happily joined the team. Rob, as you say, moved away, and Dana, who also worked with us. You guys were trying out subs, and you asked me, and I was like, yes. You want to go? It sounds awesome. And then I went, and we happened to win that night, and I was like, oh, this is the best. The intoxicating feeling of winning, yeah. And it's a good on-the-job interview, too, as well, yeah.

I was like, well, I did contribute to your win tonight, so I think you should consider me for the position. And we won the Bay Area Finals, and we, like, the sweat was pouring off of us. We're like, they must have made a mistake, right? Right, right, right. One of the best moments of our lives was the night we won the Bay Area Trivial Finals. It still is. And the thing is, we're not, we're not that good. No, well, we're good.

It takes equal parts, still and luck. I think, like, anything, any kind of success takes still and luck, and we've been, and we've had both. The questions just happened to fall our way that night, and, you know, we just happened to be there with the right answers at the right time. It was great, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, it's so much fun. That's how this team got together.

And hopefully this will inspire you to join up some friends and go to your local pub tribune. So let's head on to our general quiz section. A pop quiz hot shot. Okay, so I have a random Tribal Pursuit cart here and we have your barnyard buzzards ready. And so I have to say first, the Trivial Pursuit I bought is your normal,

standard modern trivial pursuit that you see in a you know Walmart or or Target or a game store but I didn't know that nowadays they have pictures on trivial pursuit cards and so I actually had to modify some of the questions because in this case they just showed a picture of a compass and says what is this and obviously that doesn't really work on air also that's a pretty lame question I modified some okay just to warn everybody so let's do geography blue wedge what noted geographical standard passes through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in southeast London.

The Greenwich Mean Time line, the time something, something? Oh, this is wrong. On the right track, on the right track. Is it the Prime Meridian? Correct. The Prime Meridian. Which is what they base Greenwich Mean Time on, right? So it is zero on the longitude.

And okay, pop culture. Pink Wedge, what show features President David Palmer? Twin Peaks. Incorrect. Laura Palmer. And she's dead. And she was not president, so far as I am. I don't watch the show, but I believe that's 24.

Correct. Yellow Wedge. Fon Hall was the infamous paper shredding secretary of what participant in the 1980s Iran-Contra Affair. That was Oliver North. Correct. Purple Wedge. Enroll dolls Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

What does Arthur Slugworth ask Charlie to steal from Willy Wonka's factory? Oh, sorry. That would be an everlasting gobstock. Correct. Green Wedge for science in late 2006, the population of what species inexplicably fell by millions? Bees? Correct. Honeybees. We talk about that a lot. Right, right.

Okay, last question, orange wedge. Which was not an 80s fashion trend? Leg warmers, shoulder pads, Kate spade bags, or guest jeans? Oh, Chris. Kate spade bags. Correct. Even the guys know that. Designer launched her handbag line in 1993. That's going to say it was 90s.

Or the other ones, leg warmer, shoulder pads. Like warmer, shoulder pads, and guest jeans. James. Couldn't think of the name Oliver North, but knew about 80 seconds. Bizarro world. Good job. That's not so bizarre, Chris. And we also have a Kickstarter-backer question. This is from Ernesto from Brownsville, Texas. And he asks, in 1945, the United States tested the first nuclear weapon. Since then, seven countries have claimed to develop their own nuclear weapons program. What are those countries? Okay. Let's just, let's just say it out.

Oh, okay, all right, okay, so China, claim China, North Korea, correct, Iran, Soviet Union slash Russia, Russia, correct, France, I believe. Correct. Didn't I, Iran did not, haven't they said that they were working on nuclear weapons? India and Pakistan. Correct, correct.

Because the keyword is claimed to have. Oh, claimed to have. Right, so India and Pakistan, I know. How many are we at there? We, one more, so far we have Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and one more. U.K. Right.

U.K. And there are others you say, like, I know Israel would not be included because they don't, they have strategic ambiguity. They'll neither confirm nor deny that they have nuclear weapons. I see. I see where we're going with this. Good job. Brains.

Let's jump into our topic of the week. Kind of weird. We're going to take a trip to the bathroom. Together. Together. Why, together, all of us. And you say you've got me out of your soul. system, I've been flushed from the bathroom of your heart.

Very universal, but not a lot of people think about the different trivia. I like to think that, you know, we're accused of having a lot of poo jokes. I like to think that we can approach us in a much more high-brown manner. You know, we can talk about the bathroom and do it in an educating and lightning way. Let's not joke about it, though. Let's really talk about it. Today, on a very special episode of Good Job Brain. The straight dope about poop.

The straight poop. But it's not just about poop. I mean, we love talking about poop. Yeah, all the time. You know, don't get me wrong. There's a lot more that goes on in there, right, yes. So say, you know, let's frame this, like, as if you're going to the bathroom. You just woke up in the morning, and you're going to the bathroom, and this is your morning

ritual. Right. First thing you wake up, you wash your face. Of course, you brush your teeth. I have some interesting fat toys. in stories about toothpaste. Ah, yes. And toothpaste, and I didn't really think about this, and now it makes so much more sense,

I always thought it was the toothbrush that kind of polishes your teeth as you're brushing your teeth. But really, toothpaste in itself is an abrasive pace. It's wet and, you know, squishy, but really it's made out of really, really, really tiny, tiny abrasive particles in there that's supposed to polish and clean your teeth. It's like a polish, right. Yeah, you're polishing your teeth. Right.

It's not like just something delicious to taste while you're running. No, no, no, doing something. And before toothpaste was invented, people use, man, all kinds of weird stuff. Before toothpaste, there was the very popular, and in some country still in use, tooth powder. Sure. Dip your finger in powder, and you kind of scrub your teeth with your finger using this powder and cleans away. But even back then, before tooth powder, people used a bunch of weird stuff. They used basically dry and rough things as an abrasive to clean their teeth,

such as crushed eggshell. Oh. Good protein source, too. Bleeding gums. Burt. Who's of animals. Okay. And charcoal.

Okay. I guess I can see the charcoal. It's kind of abrasive a little bit, and it cleans the odor, too, I suppose. Yeah. At first I was like, whoa, charcoal. Wouldn't that just make your whole mouth black and ashy and stuff? But then I thought about, you know, they used charcoal for so many filtration systems, right? Like Britta.

You're a normal Brita water filtration system. It does absorb. of a lot of impurities and toxins and whatnot. I would say probably the biggest revolution in toothpaste or teeth cleaning would be the invention of the tube of toothpaste, which was inspired by paint tubes, tubes of paint. Like artists paint tubes? Yep. So Dr. Washington Sheffield from London, he had his own toothpaste cream, and he had the

idea of using toothpaste tubes when his son went to Paris and saw a bunch of painters. They're like, hey, we can use this. sadly, at first the toothpaste tubes were made out of lead Oh, yeah, that's a shame. Good thing, good thing we learned from our mistakes. Trial and error.

Yep. But one of the biggest mysteries for me regarding toothpaste is have you guys ever drank orange juice or ate things after just brushing your teeth? It's orange juice is the worst. It's just that weird, bitter kind of, what is it?

Yeah, what is it? Why does it taste weird? Well, my understanding was the toothpaste, like it killed off the sweet taste buds. I didn't know, I killed them, but like it sat on top of them or, you know, the molecules bonded or something happens where, like, you can't taste sweet anymore. So all you're tasting is the bitterness of the orange juice, but I don't know if that's true enough.

You're on the right track. Specifically, there are two things. There's stanias fluoride and there's sodium laurel sulfate. Stanias fluoride, and I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it right, in toothpaste, it's used as to kill bacteria. And sodium laurel sulfate is used as like a wetting agent and a foaming agent. It's a sort of fact on. Both of those things, you're right, it does somehow suppress the receptors of our taste buds that particularly taste sweet.

And so it kind of blocks it out. And we are unable to pick up sweet notes of food and drink. And if that wasn't enough, they also do a lot of crazy science magic, such as breaking down phospholipids on our tongue and somehow enhances the bitter. So it's like the one-two combination, so it's not only strips away the sweet, but amplifies the bitter. Yep. Got it.

And that's why things taste weird. And toothpaste throughout the years, there are a lot of different flavors. In modern times, we have a lot of, like, weird novelty flavor. There's bacon toothpaste, and there's, like, pickle toothpaste and cupcake toothpaste. Not that, you know, anyone actually really loves brushing your teeth with it. It's just kind of, like, as a novelty. In Korea, they have pine flavored. Pine?

Yeah. Oh, it tastes like Christmas. And, of course, Japan has a whole crazy load of different toothpaste flavors such as curry. There's also chocolate toothpaste, aloe vera toothpaste. Not that people actually use these things. I don't know. They're more like novelties. Yeah.

But this might or might not be a novelty. Let's hope it's not. I found a vintage retro ad in American magazine back in 1961 in a magazine called House and Garden. And this is an advertisement for toothpaste that is flavored with whiskey. Whiskey flavored toothpaste. And I'm going to read the exact copy from the ad. Genuine six-proof stuff. Scotch and bourbon.

So not only just scotch and scotch and, yes, scotch or bourbon, depending on your taste. And it says, why fight oral hygiene? Enjoy it. Here's real he-man toothpaste. Best argument yet for brushing three times a day Two and a half ounce tubes flavored with the real thing Scotch or bourbon

Night before feeling on the morning after rinse with soda instead of water if you prefer Scotch and soda One dollar per tube That's pretty brilliant Six proof stuff There you go

Well they didn't have sense Okay so first of all I didn't have Sensenine back in the day And a lot of people would use whiskey On a sore tooth On a sore tooth Yeah or something Right, right. Can you just imagine some dude trying to get drunk and just like bought a whole bunch of toothpaste and just like squeezing it? Yes, yes I can. Yeah. So speaking of rinsing, I wanted to talk a bit about mouthwash, but specifically about Listerine, which is like the granddaddy of all mouthwashes. At least. And the most painful. Yes. It's the alcohol based. That's how you know it's working. It hurts. It's killing all the germs. So Listerine. For some reason, I thought it was made by Joseph Lister, who.

Wait, it isn't? It's not? It was not made by Joseph Lister. Yes, it was named after him. Yes, it was named after him. Oh, okay. Because he was the pioneer of sterilizing surgical equipment, so it sterilizes your mouth. It was actually developed to sterilize surgical equipment, and they named it after him.

It certainly tastes like it. Zing. So it wasn't even for consumption. It was made for equipment at first, and then they realized that you could use it on your... And they were really trading on his name as the pioneer of sterile environment. then one day the local drunk ran out of whiskey-flavored toothpaste and started shugging the surgical sterilization equipment

and realized hey this tastes pretty good and had the best breath of everyone in the whole town of all the hobos the end I mean that's not right but it's not that far off really like I'll tell you a story so it started being sold over the counter in 1914

and then by the 20s they've kind of figured out their marketing Well, they were marketing it as a way to get rid of halitosis. And their ad was, like, this woman is thinking about a man. And she's like, oh, could it work? But he has such bad breath. You know, like that's kind of their tone of it and use Listerine. And then she won't have this, like, dilemma about whether or not to date a guy with bad breath. And before this, bad breath was not like this big.

It wasn't a big social. Right, right. Right. Yeah, they created the idea of halitosis, basically. Listerine created the idea of bad breath being like a big deal. It was a solution in search of a problem. Yes. Got it.

But other things Listering cured include dandruff, cured dandruff. They claimed it cured. They tried in addition to... In fact, you would not have any hair at all if you... Also, gonorrhea. Okay. They were marketing it for a while as a cure for the cold, common cold, but the FDA told them they had to stop.

Hold on. Yeah, hold on. I think I have the same question Karen does. It's... This is applying listeries. Yes. As except for gonorrhea, do I drink it, or do I, is it a topical application? It's a topical.

Okay. All right. Enough said. No. But they were told they couldn't tell people that. No. And just about every decade, there's a claim about what let's drink and do, and then they get sued and they have to stop claiming it. So tingling. Yeah, it's burning. So it's working, obviously.

It does make me think it's working and all the germs are dying right now. I totally agree. Although I'm sure it's not necessary. Same thing. I just feel like, oh, I can feel it burning, and it must be doing something good in there. Brain wash. We're brainwashed. Yeah. Or mouthwashed. Mouthwashed. And, of course, you know, after brushing your teeth and rinsing your mouth, you'd probably take a shower. You're going to hop in the shower. Right, exactly.

Hop in the shower and wash yourself with some soap and wash your hair with some shampoo. One can only hope. One can only hope. You know, you may have a different procedure. You may wash your body with listerine. You'll be sterile. I'm sterile for work. Do you guys, doesn't want to know or want to take a guess, where we get the word shampoo? Do you know where it comes from? Oh, man. What language is the source?

I think my fiancé and I looked this up once because we were in, like, Paris. And, of course, in the hotels, the bottles are like, do shampooing. You know, I'm like, well, where does this really come from? I can't remember. I hope it's not the poop. No, no. The origin is a Hindi. It actually comes from a Hindi word.

Champo, which really comes from the verb meaning to massage or to need. Yes. Okay. And so going back, you know, traditionally the Indian traditional process of a shampoo would be sort of an herbal, oily mixture that they would need into the scalp and it was fragrant and felt really good. But like really the emphasis was on sort of the massaging, kneading part. And then that practice sort of made its way into England and then over time the herbal,

oily treatment sort of fell out and became focused more on the application of soap. It was really just soap on your hair and now there is a difference between soap and shampoo. And I'm not going to turn this into science hour here, but soap, basically, soap, anyone can make soap. It just comes from fat. It's pretty simple. You boil fat and the, and you mix in something that's alkaline, you know, lie or ashes. You know, you mentioned charcoal earlier, so maybe there's something there.

And essentially, it'll create the soap out of the fat. It's a really simple process. And people would use soap on their bodies, on their hair, on their dishes, on their dog, on their house, everything. But, you know, if you've ever cleaned your hair with soap, you know, there's two problems. It makes it super dry. And it kind of has that weird residue. on it. So in World War I, in Europe, they needed supplies of glycerin. Now, glycerin is a byproduct of soap. And so what a lot of citizens were doing was really conserving grease and soap and it was

going toward making munitions for governments to fight war. So what people needed was a way to clean things that was not so heavily dependent on fats and lipids. And so German inventors basically came up with the first detergents, what we call detergents now, which is a way of cleaning things that doesn't require fat to make them. So this is really smart. So Karen, you mentioned earlier, sodium laurel sulfate, which is what they invented.

Wow! So that is the premier surfactant. So it's a foaming element, and it basically, it's a wetting agent. So you can mix things in with it and they'll mix with water. And then you can put in your mouth

and make orange juice taste weird. That's right. That's right. So they took that and bundled it with other chemicals that basically do the same thing on grease that soap did, but you didn't need to have grease to make it. and they could use it to clean guns and tanks and also people. So shampoo is really detergent for your hair.

So that's why if you look at almost any bottle of commercially made shampoo, you'll see somewhere on the label sodium laurel sulfate or a related compound sodium lorith sulfate, which is the surfactant that lets it wet your hair and brings in the agents that will do the cleaning. It's just hair detergent. It is hair detergent, and it's not soap, strictly speaking, although they do do a lot of the same things. Someone, someone on one of the iTunes review said that he got sick of me saying like, oh, I can't, I can't help it. I'm going to try. No. So it's important you do it. It gets it pumped up. It is. It's amazing. It's part of the chemistry.

So again, I don't want to get too into science hour, but the advantage of detergents over soap is they bind with the grease pretty much instantly. You don't, like soap, you need to work it with your hands, which is why, you know, you have to manipulation. So all of the other ingredients in shampoo are really just there for visual or psychological benefit. they add thickeners because it feels better in your hair. All the foaming and sudsing and shampoo has nothing to do with the cleaning process. They add essentially bubble bath and sudsing agents because people didn't feel like, oh, it's not sudsing, it's not cleaning. That's what I always thought.

The sudsing, the foaming, the thick kind of perlessent look that has nothing to do with the cleaning ability of shampoo in your hair. It's just to make it feel like it's really doing something. Oh, man. It's for consumer appeal. Right, right. But I'm sure that you guys probably would all agree The most brilliant part of consumer appeal and shampoo

Was the invention of the phrase Lather, rinse, repeat Use twice, basically And again, the lather rinse repeat is about a consumer appeal You know, essentially to get you to use the shampoo faster Yeah And a lot of people will say, well, it feels different And it does feel a little bit different

It does feel because your hair is clean You're getting more conditioners on there, that's right So the first pass through, cleans off all the grease And leaves some conditioners The second pass-through, there's no grease to take away, so you're just adding more conditioners, but you're not making it any cleaner. I do that. This is crazy. I do it, too. It always feels like that second pass-through is the real one. You're like, oh, yeah, because it foams up so well because there's nothing to get in the way of the foaming.

Lies! It is. The first commercially available shampoo with synthetic strefactants and detergents was D-R-E-N-E, which came out in the 1930s. And it really, that was one of its selling points, was this all sort of all-new technology of synthetic surfactants and cleaning. So that, in a nutshell, is the difference between shampoo and soap. And why these bottles are lying to me. Right. Well, you know, it's, you know, I remember there were days as, you know, a college bachelor where you use one bar for everything.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But some people swear it's like, oh, I can just use dist detergent for my hair. They have. On a fundamental level, you can. I forget if it's Axe or Old Spice, probably both, but they've got, like, hair and bodywise. for men, you know, just so you can use one thing for everything. I just wanted to, I just wanted to point out that, I mean, after I take a shower, I go straight to the medicine cabinet and load myself up with my daily regimen of various

and sundry pills and medicines. We can save drugs, I think, in general can be an entire episode on their own. But I started looking into this a little bit, like, oh, what's in your medicine cabinet, that kind of thing? And I found out something that I did not know that I thought was kind of interesting and wanted to share. Besides the fact that they are both, obviously, drugs, what do heroin and aspirin particularly have in common? Oh, I know.

They were both originally trade names. Indeed. Of the Bayer Company. Yes. Yes. And we're sold side by side. Over the counter. Aspirin for headaches and heroin.

Bayer brand heroin was a cough medicine. Oh. Yeah. And I mean, most cough medicines today are still narcotic based or opiate based. It's just really effective at suppressing cough. Right. It was because methadone was so awesome. some suppressing cough so they decided to

oh let's try to make a compound that isn't as addictive as methadone so they came up with this new comment and called it heroin can you imagine this day when you could just casually stroll into your corner druggist and get a bottle of Coca-Cola with real cocaine and oh I'll have some bear heroin

for my cough with my top hat and spinning my cane and just be like my good man I would like the bottle of your finest heroin and of course aspirin used to be a trademarked trade name of Bayer and, of course, it is now passed and it has become genericized. So is heroin.

I think they were a little bit less sad to not have that connected with that. Yeah, they don't seem to be fighting to protect their marketing rights to that one quite as not as much. All right, we're going to take a quick mnemonic break from all this bathroom talk. We'll get back to, you know, the real stuff, which is poop that we're going to talk about. We'll get there. Yeah, we'll get there. You'll see.

And so this week's mnemonic, it is to help you memorize. and identify the countries in Central America. This is good, because we always get these little geo quizzes of where the country names are blanked out, and it's what country is this? And there's a little X on it. For whatever reason, you're shown a line map, unnamed line map of Central America. Now you can name all the countries with this little mnemonic. Here's the order.

The thing is, Central America is kind of shape like an S, like a tilted S. So it's hard. I was thinking, well, I can go from left to right, but that gets a little. bit weird because some countries kind of start the same line and then if I can go north or south and that's kind of weird too because like do I count the topmost part of the country line. Basically we're following the curve of the S from the very top. And so here are the countries. Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, not Ecuador. Ecuador is in South America. It's El Salvador. Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. And so the mnemonic is Baby Godzilla.

eats hot dogs not cocoa puffs i like that baby godzilla eats hot dogs okay so what is it belize guatemala eats el salvador not ecuador honduras nicaragua costa rica costa rica panama okay baby godzilla eats hot dogs not cocoa which makes perfect sense i would believe they would be carnivores baby godzillas and so yeah they wouldn't want cocoa puff they want something meaty and portable like a hot dog i like that one that's a good thing that's a good one that's a good one that's a good one. So there you go. Hopefully this will come in handy for you in your lifetime. Probably not. That's why we call it trivia. Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers podcast. I want to invite you to join me on the voyages and journeys of the most famous explorers in the history of the world.

At the Explorers podcast, we plunge into jungles and deserts across mighty oceans and frigid ice caps, over and to the top of Great Mountains, and even into outer space. These are the thrilling and captivating stories of Magellan, Shackleton, Lewis, and Clark, and so many other famous and not-so-famous adventures from throughout history. So come give us a listen, we'd love to have you. Go to Explorespodcast.com, or just look us up on your podcast app. That's the Explorers Podcast. It feels really good to be productive, but a lot of the time,

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wherever you get your podcasts. That's Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day, wherever you get your podcasts. So let's get back into the bathroom and really talk about the main event of the big show. We really know how to sell it. All right, well, we can't talk about the bathroom without talking about the toilet.

So let's just get right to it. So I'm going to try and do this in a very educational... Let's dive in, if you will. drop us off at the pool this used to be such a nice little podcast we had here it's hard to talk about the modern flush toilet without talking about two names and you guys can probably guess what one of these names is

John Crapper Mr. Thomas Crapper who is actually very often misnamed as John Crapper but Thomas Crapper And of course you know we I certainly His partner Bob Dump I certainly remember hearing as a kid and in school, you know, the toilet invented by Thomas Crapper.

And it's one of those things, it's just like, no, it's too good to be true. It's a mix of both. It is a mix of both. There actually was a Thomas Crapper. And he was active in England in the 1800s, and he did not invent the toilet. He really did do a lot to improve it and popularize the modern flush toilet. But what did he invent on the toilet, which is also giggle-worthy? it was the ballcock

yes yes which is the name of sort of the little floating bulb if you've ever looked in the back of the toilet tank whenever you're trying to fix it you're like

it's always that thing it's always that little floaty thing it's always that floating thing caught on the chain Thomas Crapper so he did so there's two there are two common misconceptions about him one is that he invented the toilet

he did not two is that his name is the derivation of the word crap and it is not in fact it is purely purely amazingly coincidental that Thomas Crapper was connected with developing the modern toilet. Yes. So the OED actually has an entry for crap in 1846 and Thomas Crapper would have been 10 years old at the time. So it is indisputable that his name is not the source of the word crap. And in fact, most linguists believe that it's a middle English word.

But it does mean what we all take it to mean. But it's just pure coincidence that Mr. Thomas Crapper was made his foretimore. on the on toilets well maybe that's why he made his fortune that's true you believe in uh in destiny that's right embrace it but yeah he was very successful the thomas crapper and company and he really promoted and popularized his style of flush toilets and he does have a lot of patents to his name the other name that you talk about about the modern flush toilet less known is sir john harrington is this why toilets are called johns well there are a dozen there are a a dozen theories about why it's called the John. This is certainly one of them.

You can't prove or disprove any of them, but this is one of them. Sir John Harrington, he was a courtier in Queen Elizabeth, the first court. What does that mean? So he was sort of an attendant. He hung around the court. Like you always see, you know, these nobles just sort of milling around, dispensing advice and doing their business. In 1596, he wrote a new discourse upon a stale subject,

the metamorphosis of Ajax, which is a fantastically impressive name. but this writing is credited with the first description of what we know is the modern flush toilet. So he sort of designed this himself, and had one installed in his manner, and he references this in this treatise that he wrote. So it's essentially a political allegory where he's talking about toilets. So Ajax, like the god, was a pun on a Jax, which would be a name for a toilet at the time. And so it's Ajax, a Jax. It's a very highbrow courier pun.

But he is commonly credited with really describing, and he even has a diagram, and his book of the modern flush toilet as we know it. There are stories he actually installed one in the Queen's Court. I'm imagining in the middle of the court. Right, right. That's why they call it the throne. I just made that up. So in a very high-brow way, we have the first description of the modern toilet.

There really is no one inventor of what we think of the toilet. It's just it was an evolution of a design that goes back. Of a very necessary design. Yes, and many cultures saw the need for that kind of device. There was a pressing urgent need. all the time to innovate in the toilet area. Yes. In the toilet industry, because if you didn't, people would die.

So there was a lot of pressures, the invisible hand. Yes. We see what we're doing there. It's invisible, yes. What you have to know about me before I go into this anecdote is that I lived in Japan for two years. And one of the first things that you find out when you were a foreigner, you know, just starting to live in Japan, one of the first things that you realize is that going

into a public restroom in Japan is either going to be the worst most harrowing experience of your life or the most fun you have ever had pooping.

There is no middle ground. It's extremes. It's only extremes. It is either horrible or magical. In a lot of parts even still in Japan, they use the traditional Japanese toilet

which is a hole in the ground based on the humble hole in the ground or in the case of like ancient Japan a hole like cut into a tatami mat with like hinged wooden things that go over it the first time if you don't know what to expect if you walk into a bathroom like do you can use the bathroom or in my case oh my god really have to use the bathroom right now

and you're confronted with a you know an enameled oblong oval shaped enameled bowl set into the floor and it's like what do I do with this and at first I didn't understand what to do this

and only later did I learn that you actually so there's the typical like flushing handle and the pipeworks leading away from the bowl but you actually squat over it facing the flushing handle

and you have to have balance because you're just squatting that's why they have a tight core I was just gonna say I mean growing up public places like in back in Taiwan in movie theater even. I remember having these types of toilets and I was used to it. That's why all of us have

really strong thighs. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, twice a day, you know. Try not to touch the toilet with your butt. Yeah, you don't want to touch anything. You know, I absolutely fall. Because if you fall over a little bit, you just fall right into the whole toilet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then the craziest thing happened is that when Japan decided to modernize, and there's still a lot of squat toilets in Japan, but, you know, they've been modernizing more. But when Japan decided to modernize through toilets, man. They went all out. They went, I mean, this is the, the, on the, you know, on the Simpsons where

Homer, you know, goes to Japan and they show them the toilet, and the toilet does, like, the light show. Right, right. The musical light color fountain show in the middle of the bowl. It is not that far off from Japanese toilets. I mean, the average, like, you know, they call it a Western-style toilet.

Typically, when you encounter one in Japan now, first of all, it has probably a heated seat. Like, it's all electrified, and it would probably has a lid that opens and closes automatically. It has bidet, and it has two bidets, one, you know, for parts of the body that everybody

has, and then parts of the body that only one particular gender has, to hit both of those and wash them. Then it has heated air that will dry it for you. And like a control panel with, like, LED buttons and stuff. Yes, and a control panel sitting next to the toilet with LED readout screens and buttons showing

you how strong that water out of the bidet is going to be, how warm the seat is. There are, I mean, there are toilets in Japan with massage, seats. Whoa. Yeah. I am uncomfortable. There are toilets in Japan that will, they don't do the colored light show yet, but they

do, in fact, play music to, you know, just relax you. Sometimes you need a little mood music. There are toilets that will automatically deodorize. The company, I think it's Toto actually, manufactures a toilet. I think they are still making this. They came up with a toilet in Japan that analyzes your urine. So if you're, like, diabetic or whatever, I have, like, you know. Wow.

Congratulations, you're pregnant. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It keeps stabbing me with insulin. It's not with insulin. This is what I'm talking about. Like, it's either going to be a wonderful, like you're on vacation, or it's going to be, congratulations. Now you have to try to balance yourself.

I do remember taking a trip to Japan with my family in junior high school, and it was. It was that dichotomy. It was, and as you said, there was that kind of place, sort of between like a luxury hotel or an old-style market where it could be either. You could open the door and it would be 50-50. The thing that still, and again, you know, eventually, you know, keep going back to Japan. I'm all comfortable with this, you know, I understand, like, the difference, and I'm never really shocked. But there was one thing that really surprised me is that I went into the bathroom of a Kentucky fried chicken, which Kentucky Fried Chicken in Japan, again, topic for another show. But I went to the bathroom, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and they sat down, I'm like, do my business, and I kind of look, and there's a metal box.

mounted to the wall of this thing it has a speaker and a button and I'm like what is this? Gotta press it press the button and out of the speaker of this box that's mounted on the wall next to the toilet comes the sound of rushing water

the sound of flowing water the sound of a flushing toilet and I'm like oh my god it's for people who are bladder shy and it turns out that is precisely what it is. It is for Facilitate. It is, yeah, and actually, it turns out that the reason why is because women in public bathrooms are, I guess in Japan, some women are so mortified by the idea that someone might be able to hear them peeing, that they will just flush the toilet constantly to just save water.

Exactly. These things are in there to save water so they can make the sound of a flushing toilet and cover. and cover up any bathroom noises. It is called the Otohime or Sound Princess. Sound Princess. I love that. I thought you were going to say it was so I could order KFC. Yes.

And they said, can I take your order? And they delivered the chicken to the bathroom. It's like a dumb waiter. It's like an elevator just drops down. Bucket of chicken. Thanks. Actually, one thing they have in Japanese toilets that I've never seen here,

Maybe it's just, you've seen this in Taiwan as well, is that they actually, they build the sink into the toilet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So basically, the top of the toilet tank is a sink. And so when they refill the toilet tank, it's just a sink faucet comes up from the top of the toilet faucet. And the water pours down from the faucet into a hole in the top of the toilet tank. So you can wash your hands in that water. And then the water you just wash your hands in becomes the toilet water for this person.

Yeah, again, conserving water. Yeah. I wanted to say something about bidet. You know what the word bidet means? in French to wash your butt it means pony

and you're supposed to ride a bidet like a pony did you know that that's so funny okay did I know that riding my pony

riding my bidet jump on it and they have the first time I went to a hotel in France like the bade in French hotels

is a separate right right it's a standalone right really quickly I want to ask you guys

some questions about toilet paper to see what before we get off the toilet Before we leave the toilet area, let's wipe it up or clean it up. Let's clean up this topic with some toilet paper. Sorry, you guys.

Oh, poo jokes. Anyway, so do you know how many sheets are on a standard roll of toilet paper? Like toilet paper squares? Yeah, how many? Wait, no. No, no, no, but I thought there's like different sizes. Yeah, we have mega roll or whatever the standard roll. Do you what it is?

All right. What's a clever number? So does a double roll of toilet paper? Must it be exactly twice the standard? I'm going to guess a thousand. Oh, okay, all right. Thousand. I'm just going to guess a nice round thousand.

One dollar. I said 300, but I'm probably wrong. A single ply roll of toilet paper is a thousand. Oh. Two ply is 500. And the plies are layers of toilet paper. So double ply is the two sheets on top of each other and single is just one. So that's the same amount.

of paper, but because it's double-ply, you might have fewer uses. Did you see, I believe, that scientists have recently invented the triple ply. They have managed to break-through. Yeah, the quantum leap. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it would be. Yeah, I remember a really good, this is a good bar-bet trivia question. What's the largest single sheet of paper most people see in a day?

And most people will be like, oh, a piece of the newspaper. The answer is a toilet paper roll. because it is a single sheet of paper. It's just perforated. That's a terrible, tricky question. Wipe it up, Colin. All right, well, thanks for rolling us up there with that one. Oh, it's a competition now.

Yeah, please, let's not ask you. I wrapped it up, thank you. I have no way to come back from that one. So I think we have covered a good amount of toilet-based knowledge here. So I'm going to shift gears entirely and take it out of the bathroom and perhaps into the living room where the speakers are, because I have a quiz about music. Whoa!

So the theme of this quiz is band name origins. Of course, you know, great band names. Always have a little bit of an esoteric appeal to their names. So I'm going to give you some clues about the band and the origin of the name, and you guys buzz in and tell me what the band is. Okay. We'll start off with an easy one here, which I think is an easy one. One of the most successful musical acts ever,

this band takes its name from a Cold War and, Mara spy plane. One of the most... Chris. U-2. Correct. U-2. U-2.

That's right. The U-2 spy plane famous American spy plane. I thought that was a submarine. Not the B-502s, which is a bomber. Yes, which is a bomber,

right, right, right. This San Francisco-based band famously took its name from a folktale motif featuring a man who helps pay the debts of a restless ghost. Dana. Is it the Grateful Day?

It is a greatful. It is the Grateful Dead. And in fact, any of you folklor students will know that the Grateful Dead is a fairly common tale type, which comes in a lot of different forms, but it's either a corpse whose family couldn't pay his burial debts or a ghost that has some sort of outstanding moral obligation. And this is the man, sometimes a knight, sometimes just a regular villager, pays the debts of the ghost. That's right. That's right.

And the story goes that one day, the band, which had been called the Warlocks prior to that were on drugs. and the name essentially popped out to them. They were flipping through a folktale book trying to find a new name. This band, perhaps more famous for their covers than their original hits, takes its name from a government-unemployment assistance form. Karen.

Never mind. Chris. U.B. 40. It is U.B. 40. It is U.B. 40. In fact, I don't know if I could name a non-cover U.B-40 song. But, yes, in the U.K., it's the unemployment benefits form. I was thinking American.

Ah, so I was being tricky. U.B. 40. This Los Angeles-based band with an iconic lead singer took its name from the title of a book by Aldous Huxley. They were active in the 60s, 70s. I only know. Great New World. I'm the only one I'm...

Iconic lead singer. It was The Doors. Took their name from The Doors of Perception. Huxley is probably second most famous, look, right. This high-energy British band took its name

from a Gaelic phrase meaning kiss my ass. Chris. The Pokes. It is the Pots. Yes, comes from Pog Mahon. That's right.

The phrase is Pog Mahon, which is they performed under that name when they started out, which is kiss my ass, essentially. This 80s band, known for their groundbreaking videos in the

early years of MTV, takes its name from the villain in the cult classic Barbarella. Which, of course, starred a young Jane Fonda. This is all before my time. Karen.

Bugles. No, not the buggle. Dana. Devo? No, not Devo. Dyer Straits? No, not Dyer Strait. It is Duran Duran.

Huh. Oh, really? Yes, so the lead villain in Barbarrella is Dr. Durand, Duran. Last one. This is a little tricky here. This band takes its name from the title of a song in the Beatles movie, Magical Mystery Tour. it's the only song in the movie

that was not performed by the Beatles this one may be a you know it or you don't question but I love the story behind it this quiz is very telling of your musical taste and how different it is for mine so many band names when you get into them are either meaningless or are really obvious or really explicit

or really explicit that's true right right it is death cab for cutie oh really yes the song on the magical mystery soundtrack Along with other songs that you guys know, like Fool on the Hill and I Am the Walriss, a song called Death Cat for Cutie, performed by the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band. Who was in that band? I don't have the list of the band members in front of me, but they are essentially, we're friends of the Beatles and were asked to perform on there.

And that's band name Origins. Wow. Perhaps tougher than I expected. Very tough. All right. We've gone from the bathroom to, I guess, the living room. and that is our show. So thank you guys for joining me

and thank you guys, listeners, for listening to in. Hopefully you learn stuff about Central America and Krapper and how many squares are in your standard rule of toilet paper. Very important stuff. And what to expect when you go to the bathroom in Japan. Yes. Oh, yes. Very, very good warning there. You can find us on Zoom Marketplace, on iTunes, on Stitcher,

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