If I Were You - 307: Doodie Calls (w/Doug Mand and Jack Dolgen!)

Episode Date: December 25, 2017

Friends and fellow Poo-dcasters Doug and Jack join us to discuss clogging toilets, single ply tissue paper, and stinky sisters. PLUS You can hear our episode of their podcast "Doodie Calls" on HeadGum now!See omny.fm/listener for privacy information.

This is a headgum podcast. That was it. What? Yeah. It's like a 90s sitcom kind of... No music. Or sorry, no lyrics. Just the music.

Wow. Yeah, it's the first time we've ever done that, but I figured... It's kind of cool. A lot of times, just the music communicates so much that you don't need words. Yeah, Jack, you're a musician. Yeah. You get it. I totally understand.

There was the double bass attack on that was insane. It just felt like a Pantera drum beat. Yeah. This is not what I think about when I think of your podcast, but that's amazing that someone's like, this is what... We are rock and roll. This is where I go. You guys are rock and roll.

Yeah, well now I'm wondering if that guy even wrote it for us. I'd hate to be deceived, he just wrote an awesome question. It was actually Pantera. Yeah. Oh, was it? It was, yeah. Jack and Doug. Why don't you introduce yourself while I pull up the information about that song.

Okay. Yeah. Names, locations, sex, gender. How do I know you? I'm Doug Mann. I'm a male. I live in Los Feliz. That's good.

And I'm the host of a podcast called Duty Calls with Doug Mann, along with my good friend, Jack Dolgen, right here. And that's me. I'm Jack Dolgen. I am also male. Yeah. I'm sex positive. Oh, wow.

I don't even, I don't even know what that means. That means you like to have sex? Pro-sex, I'm just very sex positive. I've never identified myself as that either, but I also am. Sex positive is a movement. Yeah. Food positive. I'm food positive.

Yeah. Body positive. And I'm negative about myself. Yes. You're positive about everything, not you. Yeah. That's actually a pretty good description of you. The band that made that was a, it's a Montreal progressive metal band called Bird Problems.

They're metal positive. Yeah. They're metal, very positive. They're metal positive. Doug and Jack, we've tried to have you. The band is called Bird Problems? Yeah, Bird Problems. That's great.

It's a pretty good name. Yeah. We tried to have you on our show for the last like three, four, five months maybe. Right. Yeah. But y'all are busy individuals. We're not scheduling positive. No, yeah.

You're busy positive. No, but well, yes. But this is, we're really happy that it worked out. Yeah. Well, it's a lovely office you guys have here. Thanks for coming by. Yeah. What's your, what's your day job?

Just so people can put the context of who you guys are in the larger world. I'm a writer and songwriter on the show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Okay. Yeah. That's a big deal. And Doug, what are you a songwriter for? Um, I write mostly songs like... Sing a ditty.

About birds and the problems they have. But... Holy shit. You're in Bird Problems? That was you. Guys, that was me. That's why I waited to be on the show until you finally picked my song. I came all the way in from Canada.

You could have told me I would have used the song earlier. I wanted it to be on the merits of the music. I am also a writer and actor and I'm a write on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as well as written for How I Met Your Mother and the comedians and some other things that you might have seen or not seen. Oh, Jake almost, Jake and I almost wrote for the comedians. Did you? We could have been...

You could have been us. Yeah, instead they hired you. Yeah. They could have gotten us for the same price. Yeah. But they said, no, one Doug is better than Jake and Amir. Yeah, one Doug. No, no, no.

Just so you know, I have a writing partner. So... Okay. Thank God. So in either situation, we both would have been splitting the check, one check. Okay, that's good. Yeah. But I get to read the rewards of working with Billy Crystal and Josh Gad.

Yeah, wow. How's that? It was as bizarre as it sounds. All right, good. It was cool. Yeah. And strange. Yeah.

And fun. And it came and went. It came and went. Was it like a weird part of your life? It was just, you know, it was a gig. It was a weird gig to like, we were in the writer's room with Billy Crystal. So it's kind of surreal. Is that like, yeah, that must be, are you scared to pitch stuff?

I actually, I'm a, I have a lot of anxieties, but I usually kind of step it up when I'm around like people like that. And I kind of, and I just went for it with, with Billy and, and he responded well to it. So no, I wasn't, I wasn't scared, but I was impressed. He, he's impressive. He's still super sharp and like, he doesn't forget anything and his timing is impeccable. But he's just, he's just from like a different time. Yeah.

So, and then Larry Charles was also in the room, which was actually, if I was going to be scared about anyone, it was Larry Charles, like no disrespect. But he's Seinfeld director, a curb director, Borat, you know, so like he basically made my favorite comedy throughout my whole, the reason I do this is the projects that Larry Charles has worked on. I imagine he's a very serious guy. He's like, he's a director of many, many comedies, but he's just like very stone faced. He's all vibe, right?

He's the most viby guy you've ever met. He's got long hair and a long beard. He carries a backpack with him everywhere he goes. What is he for lunch? What's he for lunch? Yeah, that's right. He'll eat a regular, he'll just, he'll, I mean, he'll eat the regular. He'll eat the brighter room lunch.

Yeah, he'll order what we're ordering from. He was quitting smoking at the time, so he was like playing with beads a lot. And he was like, are he and Rick Rubin different people? I don't know, but they definitely had to pray to the same Buddha. They hold the same beads. They hold the same beads. Yeah, he was, he was cool. He wasn't too serious.

He, he also just has amazing stories and, but he's as neurotic as anyone. He's like, has the same fears about writing. He's like, I don't know, maybe this is my last job. And I'm like, you're fucking Larry Charles. Like, I was like, does it ever end? And he's like, no, it never ends. Maybe this is my last job. He was like, he's just always, he's like, he's nervous about like, I don't know

where I'm going to work next. I'm like, I can guess where you're going to work next. There's five things you're going to do after this that you're fine. I'm on your IMDB. Yeah, you got a lot of stuff in pre-production. Yeah. And I can tell you're scheduled for the next two years, Larry Charles. Yeah.

You're, you're totally booked up. I just think he's like, oh, who can trade? He's got that, that kind of Jewish virus. Like you can't trust anything until it's happening. And even, and even then, is it really happening? Are you just having, taking bad medication? Well, this is happening. I'll tell you that right now.

This is real. And you guys are here because you have a new podcast on the Head Gum Network. Yes. It's a shitty podcast, but not a bad podcast. It's a shit based podcast. Yeah. Yes. And we're very excited to, to get going with you guys.

Yeah. You already have like a hundred episodes of it. We do. We have a hundred episodes and, and so, and that'll all be available. It's called duty calls with Dougmand. And we just have people come on and tell personal shit stories. It has to be a personal story. Yeah.

And you, we're sort of resurrecting it. So you had like a first or second season or whatever you want to call it, like a hundred episodes worth. Yeah. And you guys want to bring it back. The shit is coming back. We're already in shit. We're up to our Mindy.

Yeah. We're a hundred episodes and we're already in shit vacation. Nice. That's right. Nice. Very good. Yeah. Very good.

Yeah. You have a whole notebook full of those. It's, it's amazing how I've never said that before. And I haven't. That's a new one. Yeah. But yeah, where we brought the show back, we kept, you know, we kept getting emails from, from people who liked the show and other people who wanted to tell stories.

And John Gabers is a good friend of ours and he said, he is a human shit story. I didn't think anybody had better shit stories than John Gabers until I met you guys. But he's a legend for sure in the, in the, in the space. Shit community. Yeah. Yeah. R slash shit doers. It's a diaspora.

Nice. Yeah. Nice. When you, when you look at great shitters in shit story. No. Okay. Okay. Now we're having fun.

Have you guys invested in shit coin? Sorry. It's a digital pooped cryptocurrency that completely decentralized. Apparently when everything else goes to shit, that that's the only thing that's going to have value. Yeah. So we're bringing the show back. We've, we, we have some episodes coming and a bunch more exciting guests on the way

that you'd be amazed how many people are really do want to tell their stories. Yeah. Jake and I were on it in a perfect world. This episode is out and then your guys podcast is back. Right. And it's the Jake and I episode. So hopefully right now, after this episode, you guys can go listen to our episode of duty calls.

That would be great. I think we could talk about that. Everybody's, everybody's got a shit story. You know, everyone has, you guys have a thousand, but everybody, everybody has at least one. When we started the podcast, it was the thing I was most nervous about is, are we going to be able to book guests? Are we going to get enough people that has not been a problem?

Yeah. Because everybody's like, I can tell you about the worst shit experience I ever had. Everyone has a friend. Everyone who comes in then has five friends. It's like, oh, you know who you got to talk to. And then we always say, we don't want to hear it. Like, Jake and I like to not, we don't want to hear the stories beforehand because we want it to feel like it feels when you're sitting around with a group of friends and

you're telling a shameful story that you're kind of embarrassed about and we want to kind of create that, have that energy going on. So we like to come and clean and then get just shat on and then just wipe it up. Well this is an advice podcast. This show is if I were you, but we were able to find some duty related questions. All right. So hopefully make it a more of a crossover episode. So if you guys are willing to indulge us, why don't we start with the first duty related

question which is written by a guy. So Doug, do you have a fake guy's name just so we can preserve this guy's anonymity while we answer his question? Do I have a fake guy's name? Yeah. Just any guy's name that you can come up with. That's good. Wait, Charlana?

Charlana. Charlana. And it sounds like a woman's name, but it's actually a fake guy's name. And Charlana has been dealing with that his whole entire life. And it's an anagram for Larry Charles? Oh God, I said too much. All right. Charlana writes, my sister-in-law has been staying with me and my wife for the past

week. I noticed that we've been going through quite a bit of toilet paper since she's been here. We usually don't need to replace the role that often, probably less than once a week. But since she's been here, I've replaced it twice. That by itself would be okay, but yesterday I went to the bathroom after her and discovered that she had plugged the toilet. She must have had, she must have just flushed, assuming it would go all down fine because there was no way she could have just been nonchalant as she was if she had realized

what she'd done. I didn't feel like I really had a choice, so I plunged the toilet and did my business, which was pretty obvious from the plunging that the floater she left wasn't the issue. It was way, way, way too much toilet paper. Since that point, I can't look at her in the eye without thinking about it. She's just living her life like she didn't plug our, plug up our toilet. But she did. I'm not saying I've never plugged a toilet, but every time it's happened, I feel such

great shame that I can't imagine leaving the bathroom without having 100% certainty that it all flushes and it has been successful. So my question is, would it be weird to ask her to use less toilet paper? Is there a way to bring it up without bringing up the fact that I had to plunge the toilet after her? Do most people keep such a close eye on how much toilet paper is being used? Thanks guys. Keep up the great work and love the show.

Love. Sharlana? That's a terrible name. Let's call him Charlie. Yeah, Charlie for short. So this is, what do you guys think of toilet paper versus poop clogging the toilet? Is it mostly toilet paper? Is it a poop thing?

It's an interesting predicament that he's in for. I want to just like, you guys are such experts. Yeah, I just put on a different pair of glasses for this same question, even though he's not reading it. They're half glasses. Yeah. They're like little reading. And the very tip of his nose.

Just push these up. Yeah. Where did that cup of tea come from? First I want to just say that I think for two people to only change the toilet roll once a week is I would say a little less than average. I think that's a low toilet paper usage. Definitely for us it is. For us it's, I'm at, the roll's going to go every two to three days.

So kudos to this couple for being conservative with their toilet paper use. Thank you. Like even with a bidet are you using that much TP? No. The bidet has changed everything. Got it. It's a new bidet. Yeah.

It's a beautiful bidet. That laugh was identical. You guys both moved your head the exact same angle. Well, because we didn't want it to like fuck with the mic. You guys are great. Professionals. What do you think about the cloggage? My gut is that he's probably right.

Have you guys ever heard people saying plug the toilet? That was new to me. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, maybe he's British or something. That was the first weird thing I noticed. That was the first thing where I was like, is this guy a narc? Is he an alien who's like, I know what people, I've never heard plugged the toilet. Yeah, he's just learned.

He's an alien that just learned the language. Yeah. Everyone is plugging the toilet. Hippity hop, hippity hop. But there's kind of like a sister. There's kind of like a prideful joy or like a half shame, half joy, be like, oh, I clogged the toilet. Well, I guess I like have a crazy bowel movement, but it's really just like an inefficient use

of toilet paper. It does it. It's almost never in my experience a huge shit that does it. It must be so big. And if it is, that is something to be proud of. I think people have the pride of, oh, I guess I gotta like take huge shits. But it sounds like toilet paper. This sounds like toilet paper.

It does. It does. And that's not uncommon. And I would urge Charlie to begin with just exercising a lot of empathy in this situation. That's exactly right, Jack. Because there's so many unknown factors here. One possibility that comes to mind, honestly, is that she had a wipe that just wouldn't stop. And that does happen.

But then you gotta do the multiple flushes. You gotta do the multiple flushes. That's true. What I'm hearing in this from Charlie is, I think he's trying to couch his, can I tell her to use less toilet paper? It's not about that. Charlie is mad that he had to unclog the toilet or unplug it. He wants an excuse to say that.

That's what I say. He said we usually are one week, and now since she's been here, we went to two. Partly because there's just a third person in general. And it's also like, what, a buck to... I think looking at someone else's floater and having to unclog it is a gross experience. And it probably is making Charlie just angry because it feels rude to him. You can hear it in the tone. So he's like, can I say something?

And it's like, well, why... My question would be, take a step back and look like what you want to say. If it's just to be like, I'm pissed and I want you to know I'm pissed, I think you should preserve your relationship with your sister-in-law. Oh, it's sister-in-law? Is that what it is? Is that what it is? It's your sister-in-law.

Oh, wow. It's definitely your sister-in-law. You don't say anything. Your sister-in-law. If you're truly concerned and it's becoming a problem on your pipes, then I think you should have the sister say something and be like, okay, can you just... That's correct. I agree that Charlie is mad, but I actually have a different take on why.

I think Charlie is mad because so much toilet paper is being used and I think he's cheap. And I don't think he wants... And that's what Jake would seem to be picking up on, too. Yeah. I think he's... Because the first part of it is all about quantity. You can see Charlie looking at his spreadsheets and he's like, no, our toilet paper intake is up 300% this month.

That's an aggressive sign. Three squares max. Because you want to know what... I don't think her asshole is dirty. I think what she likes is... And sometimes I do this, too. You get a big clump and it's nice and soft. If I'm at my house, I tend to use a little less because I don't want to use my toilet

paper. I don't want to use my toilet paper. I don't want to use the money for you, too. But if I'm at the airport where they have those toilets that just suck the... Those are very thin. You got to use a clump. Well, and that's what I'm thinking is that this might fall on Charlie's shoulders, too, is what kind of toilet paper is he stocking because if he's got this terrible single ply,

she's going to need to do a nice, big cushion. A lot of nice nests to get what she wants. Maybe she's accustomed to a finer product. Single ply is sometimes just as bad as like, here are four strands of spaghetti. It seems like two single plies does not equal a double plie. No, not at all. You're completely right. It's such a thin...

I'd rather use the conversion rate on plies. And is there an agreed-upon global... There's no international standard. There is none. And so it's really the wild west out there. It's really... Single ply is really... It feels like 0.5 plies.

I would rather use a pad-cu noodle, it's wide and at least it's softer, a nice rice noodle. Which is what we're using probably up until very recently. Totally. Did I tell you about the time that I had to unclog a toilet without a plunger? Have you guys ever had to do this? Oh yeah. Where were we living together? It was when we were living not together, but in the same apartment building.

Yeah, one Santa Fe. And I'm preparing myself for the most masculine story of all time. Well, first I took a huge shit, I swear to God, I think I clogged the toilet with pure shit. Everybody does. It was like my last night in the apartment. So I had got... So it was part of the time in the fouls apartment.

I spent the last month cultivating myself. Just for the joy of leaving it. One last night, baby. The plunger had been packed, it was already at the new place. And I went down to the front desk, I asked if they had a plunger, they didn't. I went to the gym bathroom, the pool, I scoured the entire apartment looking for a plunger, nothing. So I looked online, if you could unclog a toilet with no plunger.

So what I did was, I squirted a whole bunch of dish soap into the toilet bowl, and then I boiled a gallon of water and just dumped it into the toilet. And what's a gallon of boiling water supposed to be? I guess what you're trying to do is, because toilet paper is made to break up in the pipes, but you're trying to... A plunger, you plunge it, it comes back up, it tears it up, it swirls around. So what the dish soap did is sort of breaking it apart, and then what the boiling water did is...

Because the dish soap was made to cut grease and stuff like that. And would you say it was a greasy shit? It was so foul. I had to do it. You did it greasy? I had to do it three different times. I had to do it three times for it to finally go down, and my fiancé was on her way to my house, and I was like, don't come home yet.

I'm making you a surprise, boiling cooking water. I just wanted it to be gone by the time she got there, because it was so foul. It was like a brown stew up in the... But when it finally went down, she came back, and I was so proud that I told her the entire story. And she still decided to marry you, so that's great. Where was that night I proposed to her? You had to.

But if your toilet was clogged, isn't it the water hasn't risen at that point? So you're pouring more water. That would scare the hell out of me. I think the water had... It was a situation where the water had gone all the way down, so there was no water in the bowl. One of the ways... That's the way better way to do it.

Way better. It's called a dry clog. It's a dry clog. It's a dry clog. But even water seats... Oh yeah, you got a dry clog going on. All right, I'll say one of my guys over, but I wouldn't worry. I don't even know if you could plunge a dry clog, because there's no water to act against

the plunger. You need to loop it up. That's a great point. But usually a dry clog is kind of a good sign, because it's like, okay, maybe two more flushes and this thing's gone. It was one of those clogs where you think, oh, I think I can flush this again, and it'll be fine. But that was just not happening.

You guys ever do a wet clog, and it's almost at the top, and you're like, should I fucking risk it? Should I pull the trigger and do one last flush, knowing that if it doesn't work... And then it's starting to go up, and you sort of have to sip it like a beer before you take it off the counter. Just the head. I mean, you never play Russian roulette. One of my defining life moments early on in my life was this exact thing.

Oh, really? I clogged my friend Matt Henley's toilet, and I clogged my friend Matt Henley's toilet, and they had family friends over at their house, and it was early in my shitting for career. Was that a shit clog? I think I was 12. Was that a toilet paper clog? It was a combination.

Yeah, a combo. And I just, being young and new to the game, I just kept pressing flush, and it overflowed on all over to the floor, everywhere. So at this point, I had to go tell my friend Matt, and when you're like 12, you just don't do anything on your own. He told his father, who had absolutely the worst reaction you could have. He was so mad and yelled. He was like, what the hell did you do in front of their family friends, came up to the room

and was pissed about the shit all over the floor? I didn't want to do it. As if you meant to. As if I want to. And so then I spent the next hour with one of those squeegee mops. He made you clean it, too? Oh, yeah. And just the saddest, just Anne Hathaway character up in an attic.

The ship. Down on Skid Row. Yep. And just squee, like, mopping, squeezing out, mopping, squeezing out, and then just like staying up in the room until everyone left. So yes, I did that. You had a cold sitting on your face for so many years. Oh, yeah.

Somehow I got the black alone. Doug, that's incredible trauma. Oh, no, it's super traumatic. It's fully traumatic. I was, yeah, I mean, there's a reason we do this podcast. It comes from a real sad place and wanting to normalize. I think that's a nice thing about your podcast. You guys have been talking shit about, you guys have been talking about shit your whole

life, talking shit to each other. And you just heard that story for the first time? I don't remember hearing it. I don't know if you heard it. Because you have so many of these stories. I remember when we did your show, you had a story about how you shit in the woods on like a nature walk with your girlfriend on an early date. Yeah, that became my wife, yeah.

It's really cool. Yeah, this is. This is, yeah. Oh, it's cool. Yeah. In there, Amir. And it's terrible. And so from that moment on, I don't touch it.

I don't. Yeah. If it's up there, like the last thing I do is flush. You just have to plunge? Yeah. Cool. A lot of times, if it's really, if it's filling up, if you wait it out like a while, it'll start to come out.

It'll start to see. Yeah, slowly. Slowly. The problem is, if it's someone else's house. Yeah. You don't have a lot of time. You don't. One of the risks is like sometimes it gets so high to the brim that even plunching it

is too much water displacement. That's true. You have to go very gently or you have to wait and that's just a matter of time. Yeah. And not everyone has that kind of time. I don't. That story was very bowel moving. It really.

Yes. Have you guys ever just left a clock toilet and been like, well, I clogged that. I have to go. In public? Maybe. Yeah. In a public restroom. But if I've done it, I've blacked it out due to shame and I just can't recall the memory.

But I don't think, I don't think I have because I think, you know, look, part of what we do on the podcast is, is we take the stigma out of having shit problems and things happen. I mean, things happen. Everyone clogs a toilet. Everyone's done it. Everyone's done it at someone else's house or at a public place. Like you just deal with it and trust that, like, if you need to ask someone for help, if you need to go up to the guy at the counter and go, hey, do you have a plunger, he's

clogged that fucking toilet too. You know, you got to trust the community. You guys are shit therapists. I mean, really. In a way we are. We've had more people come on the show who tell the story and they'll be like, that's the first time I ever admitted that. But you do it in a way that's not like, oh, you're disgusting.

That's the nastiest shit story ever. That gets 10 out of 10 farts from me. I appreciate you saying that because we are. I mean, look, do we have fart sound effects that we want to use sometimes? Yeah, of course. Do we hold back? We hold it in. We hold it in.

But yeah, I appreciate you saying that. I think that's something we're going for. We want it to be kind of a catharsis for people and to be like, yeah, it's just a normal thing. It is eating, shitting, fucking, like we do these things and then we pretend that we're not doing them. So let's just come out with it. The best shit stories are often ones that are not only sort of funny because they're gross or whatever, but they also have another like deeper psychological or personal or personality

layer to them that we can work with and uncover and dig into a little bit and leaving the person who told the shit story to sort of like have grown a little bit or we've all learned something or like there's something about ourselves that we've gained access to now that we've told that story. Yeah, 100%. I'm a better man for doing the show. I am a better man. I'm a better husband.

I'm a better lover. I couldn't get any worse. I think I'm about the same level of lover. Yeah, it's not going to help everything. All right, let's take a break. Did we even answer this person's question? Yeah, tell the, if you don't say anything, you must tell the sister to tell her. But also, I'm with Doug, like take a step back and like, do you really need to say anything?

Yeah, because chances are she didn't know it came back up. One of two things, she didn't know. She didn't do it on purpose. She's not fancy around your husband. That guy punched my shit. She does not feel good about it. So you're not going to get anything from that. Let this one go.

Yeah, let this one go. Flush it down. Pull it forward. Nice. All right, let's take a break. We'll come back with more questions. Duty questions with Jack and Doug. Doug and Jack, what do you guys prefer?

They both are great. They both work and they both are great. Doug and Jack and Doug. Jack and Doug, I think. All right. Thank you to Aura Frames for sponsoring this Head Gum podcast. Aura Frames is sponsoring not just this episode, but the entire Head Gum network, Jake. Wow.

That's correct. I mean, this might be the Goat Father's Day gift. I think it actually is. Yeah. Yeah, not just Father's Day, but if for any not so tech savvy family member that you need a gift for soon, these digital photo frames might be the best of all time. Yeah. For me personally, these things are perfect.

I'll tell you why. You know, I am expecting my first child. We got one for Jill's parents. Oh, wow. We got one for Jill's grandma. Holy smokes. We got one for my parents. So there are three of these bad boys in our family right now, but they're great.

Really easy way to like stay in touch with your family. You can upload as many photos as you want directly into my parents kitchen. It's really nice. Oh, that's cool. So if anything, perhaps a baby and then it goes to their digital photo. Yeah. Frame. This is actually how we how we told Jill's grandma she was pregnant.

We got her the aura frame. We plugged it in. Jill's grandma was pregnant. Really nice asshole. This was actually a really sweet moment for me and my wife. And you're trying to make a joke of it. I was just being goofy a little bit like this is how I told my grandma she was pregnant. Yeah.

Yeah. And you could just put it or something like that. Or the way you said it was kind of like could go either way. By the way, Jill's grandma is pregnant. Oh my God. Jill's grandma is 90 and pregnant. It's pretty cool. And you told me with a digital photo frame.

Holy smokes. And we let her know with an aura. Yeah. Thank you. The aura announcement. So you can instantly frame photos from any device anywhere and invite the whole family in on the fun through the aura app. Add me to your aura app. I'd love to upload just a picture of me like at a pool or something.

That could be funny. Yeah. Like your banana or your dog alongside pictures of my daughter. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You deserve that. You can even preload photos and add a personal video message that will display as soon as your dad or anybody connects to the frame.

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And use the code head gum for $30 off plus free shipping. Right on. Thank you. This is the head gum podcast you were listening to. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Thank you, BetterHelp. If you're finding yourself in a difficult, anxious, stressful situation talking to a professional licensed therapist is the best way to navigate yourself out of that difficult place. And it's not necessarily easy to find a therapist, especially one in your area.

But BetterHelp makes that all easy because it's online therapy designed to be convenient, flexible and suitable to your schedule. You just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. It's incredibly helpful. Therapy has helped millions of people over thousands of years. So give therapy a try. It can give you the tools to find a more balanced life. I've tried therapy. It's been very helpful.

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Thanks, BetterHelp. And we're back. Okay. Y'all want to answer some more duty queues? Yeah. Cutie dews. This one's interesting. It's about...

Okay. I mean, this is just a perfect... This is perfect poop podcast fodder. Jack, do you want to give us a fake guy's name? Bob. Love it. You want Charlotte? Bob writes, in the past few months, I've noticed that I have to poop more or less every day between 8.45 and 9 in the morning.

Now, right now, it's the summer, so I can excuse myself from work to go to the bathroom. However, classes are starting up again in the fall. And on four days of the week, I have lectures from 8.30 to 10.30. I'm beginning to worry about my poops... I'm beginning to worry about my poop schedule and how it'll affect my ability to pay attention. No matter how hard I push or how long I sit there, I can't seem to get it to go if I try around 8 a.m. So I can't go before. And I don't want to miss 10 minutes of every class because I can't control my bowel movements.

Any advice or tips you have on poop rescheduling would be greatly appreciated. Wow. Thanks. Love, Bob. So, are you guys regular? No. No, you're all over the place. I'm even less regular than you.

I think you poop in the morning, you just poop an insane amount. I poop a lot in the morning, but then not always right away, different times, and then who knows what's going to happen throughout the day. Yeah. I'm like a Radiohead album. You never know. He'll drop in the middle of the night. It's always going to be brilliant. But it could be in completely different genres.

Yeah. And it could be a title exclusive. Yeah. Which is so weird. Which is so weird. There could be no warning before it comes out or there could be lots of anticipation. And you're guaranteed to get a lot of press on it. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. But I feel for this guy. The schedule. Big time. This made me really nervous. Like for me, living in New York was a constant anxiety attack because getting on a subway, I was always scared that I'd be stuck under there. I actually had to help my doses of Prozac too. That's the true story to counteract my anxiety about being trapped in a tunnel where I couldn't shit.

So this is really scary. To correct a schedule is the fact that he has a schedule is a good sign. I agree with that. I think that's the glimmer of hope here. That his body does. Is that the goal to be regular? You know, I don't think it makes life easier. It's nice, but I hate to put that kind of pressure on people.

Yeah. Just adapt mentally to what your body is doing. Just poo you. Yeah. You poo you. Yeah, you poo you. I think it's great that this guy goes at a regular time in the sense that that means that there's a chance that he can change that time. Because his body likes to go regularly.

He's got a reprogram. Right. So, but what he didn't add in there, which I would want to know if I was really, if I was going to just wear my little doctor outfit, which is pretty cute. Yeah. Adorable right now. You are wearing a nurse's outfit. Yeah. He thinks he doesn't know that.

Let me get this sethoscope here. Is what is he eating and drinking in the morning? And is that poop coming just from sleeping all night and that's when the poop is ready? Yeah. Because. Or is it a coffee triggered shit? That's because you could have your coffee 30 minutes earlier. But I would think that Bob is, is, is, has thought about this enough to know that that if he's drinking coffee at a certain time, like that's a part.

So what he, Bob might have to do if he's this scared is he has to wake up an hour early and start to change. Yeah. Just to change his body because it does sound like his body is, is respecting a schedule. I would do that. I would start that a solid month ahead of time. Yep. To just give yourself a little room, see if it works. And also you can't.

If you put the pressure on, it's not going to happen. So you have to have some freedom. You have to have a little time to be like 100%. I'm going to try it. We'll see what happens. If I go earlier, it's fine. If I don't, it's fine. Yeah.

It's like a skittish little cat. You don't want to scare the cat. Right. Yeah. You don't. It's a skittish little cat. Nice. Jake, are you regular?

Not really, no. You can shit in the afternoon, morning, night, late night, in the middle of the night. Never middle. I mean, it tends to be morning-ish. I mean, I'd like to shit before I leave my house every day. And most of the time, I do. You do shit in the AM or the BM? Yeah.

It goes down. It goes down. In the BM. It goes down in the BM. I'll just say this also to Bob. If coffee isn't a factor currently, he could use that to expedite the situation before he leaves for his lectures. That's great.

It's not a myth. That coffee thing is an actual thing. What's the chemical? What's the thing there? I think it's caffeine that does it. Oh, really? Yeah, because I do tea and it does it for me, too. Yeah.

I do matcha. I wonder what the chemistry is there, like how drinking something causes you to be ready. I don't know. I mean, that's above our pay grade. Yeah, Doug only has a nurse's outfit. Maybe if you put on a full doctor's outfit, we could ask you. I don't know if the stethoscope will help you an answer, but... Yeah, it seems like your body doesn't know the time of day.

All it does is know the schedule of your own internal clock. So if you wake up an hour early, your body thinks, okay, it's time to poop an hour after I wake up. Like, if you're regular, I don't think daylight savings affects that. It's not like your stomach knows what time of day it is. I'm from Arizona and we don't change our clocks. So I can't speak to it. Wow.

But is that true? Yeah. Never change your clock in Arizona. Ever. That's what makes on the license plate. So much sense. That's our claim to fame. It's the only reason people live there.

Arizona and Hawaii doesn't change their clock either. Yeah. You can't change time. Yeah. Why would you? Who do you think you are? This is crazy. So like even in the winter, the days are just like, they're shorter, but they're not obscenely

short. It just is what it is. You know? It's just, that's the motto of Arizona. It is what it is. So right now, is it the same time as LA or is it an hour ahead? I don't know. I don't know.

Because even that as a question, it's so confusing to me. Yeah. As adults, we can't fully grasp. I can't. No one knows for sure. I think no one knows. Yeah. Well, sure they do, right?

No, no, no one knows. No, it's unknowable. You know, are we... It's unknowable is a really smart sounding thing. It's unknowable. No one has a computer or a little phone. They could type in the question. There's no way of knowing.

We've talked for a long time about having a gastroenterologist on the show to really get into the sort of nitty gritty of some of these more scientific questions. Do you guys ever answer listeners submitted a shit question? Yeah, people, the shitheads, tweet in, they email stories. We get a lot of stories. We don't get a lot of questions, actually. And we have a shit hotline where people also call in their stories. Yeah.

It seems like it's almost like a hotline for, you know, like, hey, I'm mortified. I'm really scared. I just overflowed a toilet and you can tell your story and be like, I did that to you. You should give the hotline number out. Yeah. The hotline is 1-7-8-6. Hold it n. That's the letter n.

Really? Yeah. Hold it n as in no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Because I mean, it's what, and it's really meant for people like Bob. If Bob were to have to leave a lecture because he had to shit, it'd be the call to hear a reassuring voice saying that it's okay. Like, that's what I would say to Bob, too, is like, on to piggyback on Jack's thing is

take some of the pressure off. If the worst case scenario is you have to leave a lecture, first of all, who the fuck is lecturing that you can't miss a couple minutes? Yeah. What do they know? Yeah. I mean, who the hell are they? Nothing's knowable.

Yeah. Yeah. There's so many things that are unknowable. And I'm a nurse. I'm a certified nurse. So, like, if that's the worst case, Bob, like, you're gonna get through this and then maybe you think about not getting, signing up for lectures at 8.30 if there's no other. Yeah.

Even if he has a tough first week, I bet you the body adjusts. Yeah. I think he's gonna be all right. Yeah. Just a quick hit. Have you guys ever had hemorrhoids? I think so. But I'm not sure.

I have not. Wow. For so many shitting problems, it's interesting. I do get something. You're talking about your hemorrhoid on their show, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do get something called mysterious butthole pain. Oh, MVP?

Yeah. Is that like when the sphincter contracts? Oh! What's that? It feels like a... A Charlie horse but for your sphincter? Yes. Yeah.

It's like a Charlie horse in the anus. Oh! We might have talked about... I don't know if we talked about this in our episode too, but it's an amazing story. I would hate... Yeah, no, I won't tell you the story. There's a story on the podcast. But yeah, mysterious butthole pain.

I want to with Jake and Amir, I know. Do you want to know? Yeah. Well, I started having this thing called mysterious butthole pain, which is the term I gave it, because no one can know. It's an unknowable thing what it actually is. It's another unknowable. But basically, it's extreme pain in the butthole.

And I... Inside the sphincter? Like inside? Or like on the... It feels like it's in the ring, like it's inside, but just barely inside in the pacific room. And I had lunch with my family down in San Diego, and I was driving down there to go hang out with my family, and I had the mysterious butthole pain. I'm sitting there at lunch, I'm with my family, it's getting worse and worse and worse.

And I just think to myself, maybe if I just go shit, it'll go away, because I don't know what to do. But it's really bad. And it's starting to kind of like consume me a little bit. I get up. I'm at a place called the Hotel Del Coronado. It's in Coronado. It's very fancy, old, beautiful hotel.

I'm walking down an outdoor corridor, and all of a sudden my vision blurs, and I drop to the floor and completely pass out. Smack. Next thing I know, I'm like coming to, people are surrounding me. Are you okay? What's going on? I'm like, I'm fine. I'm fine.

I kind of half get up and fall again. The mysterious butthole pain. Because of the pain is so intense. He passed out from butthole pain. I cannot stress, I cannot stress you enough. My ass! I cannot stress you enough. How amazing.

I mean, it's scary. It's my ass. Is that even a doctor? His brother-in-law is a doctor. My brother-in-law is a doctor. He runs over. Who has Crohn's, right? He has a celiac.

Who has celiac. I was like, my family is at the restaurant. I can barely see. He comes over, he runs over. Oh my God, what's wrong? And I kind of whisper into his ear, my butthole hurts. Your ribs down your pants. Now, as hosts of shit podcast, this is the kind of gold you pray for.

But as a friend, I was worried. Of course. So look out for mysterious butthole pain. All right. We have time for one last question. Are you guys okay with that? Yeah. Of course.

All right. Let's get the tag team first and last name. Yeah. Tag team. Doug first name. Jamison. That's good. Doug.

Oh, sorry. Jack last name. Horowitz. Wow. Really close to me. Yeah. Jake's cousin. This is my cousin.

Jamison Horowitz. I don't want to call this guy out, but his email does come from an Ivy League email address. So I was right about the Horowitz. That's correct. So I already feel inferior to him and I hate him. With that in mind. Because I want to be him. But clearly we come with no preconceived notions.

But like, is it one of the good ones or is it Cornell? No. No, you got to laugh. It feels good, right? Any idiot can get into Cornell. That's what we're saying. No. Ironically enough, it's brown.

Whoa. It's not really. It's not really. It's not really brown. All right, ready? A girl I have a huge crush on was assigned a room on my floor. While on the surface, this seems like it would be amazing. It presents a problem.

There's six people on the floor and we share a co-ed bathroom. So far this year, I've avoided pooping in it because I'm sure that hearing me, quote, drop some brown babies off at the pool and quote, would be a huge turnoff. The next nearest bathroom is not closed. So it's a major hassle every time. What would you do? Should I just give up on my neighbor and start pinching loaves? Or is it okay that I can just do my business currently clenching, hoping for some advice?

Currently clenching. Yeah. Love Jameson Horowitz. Well, I have very strong thoughts about this. Doug, why don't you start? I don't want to be a little any of your fans here, but I do find it funny. First of all, I have such inferiority complex about aviolies. It's like how juvenile.

I don't think you can say dropping brown babies off at the pool anymore. Oh, that's not woke anymore? Yeah, that sounds right. I think it's not okay. Let's just not say that and we won't say that anymore. It's okay. It's okay. That's where we're at.

That's okay. It's just something we're not going to say. He wrote the email five years ago. Okay, great. It was a different time. There was a different time. This guy's already graduated from Yale. All right.

So he's already making $1.3 million a year. So it's already over. But anyway. Okay. So given that you can't say that for days anymore. Given that you can't say that, what do you do if you're living on the same floor or sharing a bathroom with someone you have a crush on is a great question. Jack, you have some initial thoughts?

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You're saying everyone. I think if I've learned anything from my own life experiences and talking to so many people, men and women, by the way, don't forget women's shit too. So she's got a shit in that bathroom also. Of course.

Everyone shits. Everybody poops. Everybody poops. And I will tell you, I have never heard a story and I've never had an experience where I didn't hook up or have a relationship with someone because they knew I shat, they heard me shit, I had to shit at a time that was unfortunate. It just doesn't matter. You should go confidently into that toilet and let it fly and walk out of there.

Not even flushing, brother. And just be confident knowing that your game is so strong that no shit is going to affect it. Wow. And I would take it even once that further to say, by doing that, you will puff your own chest up and you will come across as someone who is, I think that can bleed into other aspects of your life, that confidence of being like, yeah, I took a shit. It's definitely more embarrassing if she found out that you cross campus to shit than if

she found out you shit in your bathroom. But then you're insecure and that's not attractive. And let me tell you something. If this person, if anyone that you're into is going to not want to date you because they know you shit or because you shat, you don't want to date that person. That's not someone you want to be with. I think the risk to having a normal shit in that toilet is, it's true, yeah, it doesn't matter.

I think what he's maybe scared because what I would be afraid of is one day when I don't know what's going to be really bad shit and I go in and it's like, it's nasty. You know, like where you leave kind of red faced and sweaty, your anus had started to bleed by the end. Wow, you're really painting a picture. And then you walk out and there she is and she's been waiting for God knows how long for the bathroom. It'd be a bummer.

That sucks. That's the worst case scenario. I'll even say this about that scenario and I would be freaked out too and it's only human nature to be worried about it. You can't, but what we have to remind ourselves is that's happened to her before. She's had disastrous, awful, disgusting shits. She grew up living with people who shared a bathroom. She maybe had a brother who used to take horrible, awful, disgusting shits and come out of there

and be like, sorry. And she has the same exact fear about that very bathroom. Exactly. So if you come out of there and you take the worst possible shit and she's staying there and you just go like, one of those days, how you doing? Like go for it, you know? Or it's a great icebreaker to be like, hey, remember when I took a horrible shit then pretended it didn't happen?

I'm sorry about that. What are you doing tonight? You guys sing the praises of and you actually brought something to the office, this poop peri. Well, I think if you're in a dorm or an office situation and you got to use poop peri, poop peri is an incredible product. I don't get paid to talk, neither of us get paid to talk about it yet. But you guys should do that.

You guys should have all these poop products on them. And to be honest with you, like we know the difference between the good products and the bad products. We've tested them. And we brought some poop peri, Doug brought some poop peri here to the head gum office because... And a squatty potty thing. And a squatty potty.

If you put a poop peri, I know at my work, we have poop peri in the office, you spray it on the water before you go and then that's it, that's all you have to do and it just makes the bathroom not smell like shit. And so it creates like a force field. Buy it for the dorm and I guarantee you people will use it. You know what the dorm should have too? I would just go ahead and just say this. A white noise machine.

I agree. That's a really nice idea. A brown noise machine. Thank you. So it's just, it's so much people shitting all the time that it masks the actual shit. Yeah. It masks the shit, then we don't have to worry about the loud farting that I think people are worried about.

Yeah. I mean... That's definitely another thing too. You don't want to hear somebody... I mean, you're at your backup school Cornell, the least they could do is fork over some poopery for them. Because at Harvard and Princeton, they have the white noise machine. Of course.

Yes, of course. They have everything. If you had gotten in there, you know... Yeah, let's... Like your father had wanted. And I've been such a failure. You might as well have gone to Ithaca down the street. Jesus Christ.

Don't even joke. I'm not even joking. All right. Doug, Jack, thank you for coming by. Thank you. What a whirlwind. What a roller coaster it's been. This was fun.

Your podcast is called... Duty Calls with Dougmand. And if we played our cards right, there's an episode with Rachel Bloom from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on the Head Gum Network and then also Jake in Mind episode. Yeah. So you can listen to those and then you can listen to about 100 previous ones that you recorded, a backlog. You can binge listen.

A backlog. Nice. Nice. Another coming in by accident. Again, the opening theme song was written by Bird Problems. You guys remember that metal riff? Yeah. We're still together.

Max Barrett. Shout out to his new EP, Jam Protocol, available on Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes, and all major platforms. So thanks, Max Barrett. Thanks, Bird Problems. Thanks to you guys for listening. The email address for all those questions is ifirishow at gmail.com. We should have you guys back on soon.

We'd love it. There's more duty questions out there. We'll call it episode number two. Oh. Oh. Later, everybody. Things got real. This is if I were you.

I'm Amir. I'm Jake. Yes, dude. It just does girls and guys chatting and gabbling. Things got real. Well, I tell you, I've been on If I Were You a lot and it's never sound like this. Things got real. Oh my God.

I'm crying. Things got real. You host a show where it's advice about personal problems that are deep and affected and you'll never have a heart to hurt. Things got real. Yes, dude. Yes, dude. Yes, dude.

Yes, dude. Yes, dude. Nasty. That was a hate gum podcast.