Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Toilet Paper

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why toilet paper is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show.

Toilet paper, known for being rolled, famous for being for wiping. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why toilet paper is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there folks, hey there, syphilopods in 2026. Wow, welcome to a whole new podcast episode. I know. The futuristic number. Future, future, future, future. To me, every year for the rest of my life will sound like a future number. It's baked in. It's cooked. Yeah. We got hover boots on now. We finally got them. Right. And that anyone from this century is just like, yeah, it's the 20, whatever. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But this is a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name's Alec Schmidt, and I'm not alone in the distant future. I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden, Katie.

Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of toilet paper? I like to be clean. The thing is, like, I'm a big toilet paper consumer in terms of, you know, just making sure everything is ship-shape. But I also live in Europe. in northern Italy. Yes. And we have this thing called a bidet.

Sure. The day. And it's a thing where it sprays water and you sit on this bowl and it sprays water at your butt. Now, you do still need toilet paper. It doesn't eliminate your need for toilet paper. It just makes it, it just makes hygiene in general a little bit easier. You still have the toilet paper, though, because you got to dry. Or wipe any, I'm sorry, but wipe any residue.

Like it's, you know, like, there's, I've learned from. We'll talk about wiping all show. It's cool. Yeah. I've learned from reading things online that a lot of people just kind of like leave things to Jesus, like they wipe once and they don't think about it. And they like, like sort of leave, you know, just like, assume everything's like cool because you just sort of like don't think about it.

And I'm baffled. I don't know. I'm just baffled by people who don't really make sure that, you know, things are clean before you put on your underwear again. Same. Yeah. I was going to say my relationship to toilet paper is I think I'm an overconsumer in two ways because I'm really trying to wipe a lot. Sure. And then also, I've always been a stuffy nose kid and two adults.

And so it's the second Kleenex for me. Yep. that, oh, while I'm in the bathroom here, I'll just blow my nose with all of the toilet paper in the world. So I use more than, like, I think, like, 90% of people. It's not great. It's cheaper than Kleenex. And, like, I do the same thing. Yeah, exactly. I probably use, I probably use a lot of it, but some of that is because I use it as kind of Kleenex, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Because especially if I'm seated on the toilet, like, I've got time to blow my nose. Sure. Exactly.

This is a perfect time to do this. I mean, I'm also hyper. efficient in my way. Right, exactly. Why wouldn't you? I don't, you know, I feel like this, there must be dozens of us that do this. Yeah. And yeah, and we'll get into badees in the numbers, too. And even though I'm in the United States, we bought like an attachment bidet for both of

the toilets in our home. Nice. And I tried to get this company to sponsor the podcast. They refuse, so I'll never say who they are. But I like it fine. And then I also learned you do want to use. a little toilet paper too to like dry off you know so it doesn't eliminate it no i mean you can't just like drip soak your butt soaking wet into your underpants yeah that doesn't air dry yeah no no

there are no i have but there are like like those like really fancy smart toilets that do air dry so like they'll blast your butt with a jet of hot air the toilet seat is warmed um yeah it's a We can save that for, like, maybe an episode about toilets, but, yeah, toilet technology. Or an episode about heaven, because that's what those places are, man. It's great. Yeah. It's true. I feel like when you have also just, like, different types of toilet paper do offer a different experience.

Like, I think the elementary school toilet paper that, like, dissolves in your hands as you're trying. Yeah. Yeah. It's like that is such a different experience. experience from like just a good quality thick toilet paper. And then there's like the crazy stuff that's like, oh, we put lotion in this toilet paper. And it's like how and why? And also, I don't know, this feels too fancy. And there's an interesting lotion story later in the show too. Yeah. Oh, sweet. I love this topic, by the way, as an episode topic. And thank you to a bunch of listeners.

Thank you to Alex G. Lynette T. Lara 42, bearded Phil, and many others on the Discord, suggesting and picking this, because what a perfect sift thing. It's truly sift. Great topic. And on every episode, we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called, Do you believe in numbers and stats? I just found some fascinating facts.

I really think they'll make a great podcast. Wow. I you're arranged can I just say your range is getting better every time we do this I really I think I'm really practicing a little you know yeah it's kind of wild yeah this is a journey you're all on with us folks thank you Alex is going to leave the show and just become like a lounge singer. And that name was submitted by Action Populated on the Discord. Thank you, Action Populated. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make a Massillion Wacken as possible.

Submit yours through Discord or to Sifpot at gmail.com. Before Badez, we have a quick few wild numbers about being in the woods. The first number is about 7%. About 7% is how much of one of the canary. islands got consumed by a forest fire after a hiker tried to dispose of their toilet paper by burning it. Oh, no. Oh, that's not what you do.

Except for the forest fire risk, it's an okay way to dispose of it, but that's too important of a risk, so don't do that. Yeah, yeah. This was on an island called La Palma. It's nicknamed the Green Islands, the Canary Islands are Spanish territory in the Atlantic ocean, and a little more than 700 square kilometers. is the size of the island. And then in 2016, a German tourist

took a poop in a forest preserve on La Palma. He had thought ahead and brought toilet paper, but then he thought he was doing a good thing by burning it. The sparks caused a wildfire that forced 2,500 people to evacuate. No. Took one park ranger's life and burned about 7% of the island. This doesn't sound like a bad person. This sounds like someone who was trying to be conscientious

and just didn't made a really bad mistake. And it wasn't like, I'm smoking a cigarette and I'm tossing it out of tree and then pouring some vodka on it or something. You know, like it's not like, you know, it's not your typical sort of like, I don't care. Right. They cared too much. Yeah, but yeah, in the wrong way. Because correct me if I'm wrong, you're just supposed to, like, you have like something like

a dog poopy bag and then you use that and you collect your stuff. and you take it out. And I don't think, I think in general you're not supposed to bury it unless it's some kind of really special biodegradable toilet paper meant to be that have that done to, but with regular toilet paper, I think you're supposed to carry it out. I kind of found both takes on the burial part. Right.

Because, yeah, I got curious too, and one source this week is an essay by B. Derek Taff, who's associate professor of recreation, park, and tourism management at Penn State University. And he says, yeah, the simplest solution is to bag up and carry out everything, your poop and the toilet paper and everything else. The other solution is to dig what's called a cat hole. And you can use tools or even your hands to dig a small hole, but you'd have to be careful to be at least 70 feet away from any streams, ponds, other freshwater. in general toilet paper bio degrades, but some of it faster than others. And so either way, don't burn it.

Carry it out or bury it. And if you're burying it, be careful of freshwater sources. Yeah, that makes sense. I had not totally thought about it, and that's what to do. And don't burn an entire Canary Island, or at least 7% of it. Yeah. Yeah, whoever did this really made a big mistake, but I still feel bad for them because, I mean. Me too.

dumb i will say dumb like when i'm in a forest and i'm thinking about fire i'm like forest fire forest fire forest fire oh forest fire forest fire bad it's a lisa needs braces dental plan back and forth yeah don't yeah don't don't burn it burn it at home if you want though i don't that seems fine i think well like in your fireplace sure not Not like on the ground. Ah, a cozy fire, and that it's weird. And speaking of putting TP in the ground, the next number is about 40%. For zero, about 40%.

That's how many people in the world have a toilet attached to a sewer system. Only about two out of five people globally. Ah, globally. That makes sense. And that figures from popular science and gets us into questions. that actually doesn't have a super one-size-fits-all answer, which is should you use bidets or just a bunch of toilet paper, which is better for the environment? Ah, in terms of the environment, right? And it turns out it's kind of a set of if-then statements, and broadly bidets are good.

Right. And one key source this week is a wonderful book. It is called Pipe Dreams, the Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet. A-plus on the title. Phenomenal title. It's by journalist Chelsea Wald. It's a fun read to recommend it. And she covers a few big ideas about just TP versus bidet. And one idea is that those two methods are about the same for your personal hygiene. Neither is way cleaner than the other in like a fundamental way. Psychologically, we tend to think they're very different. But they're about the same. Probably in terms of like quantum. It depends on your technique too, right? Like I think. Yeah, big time. Quantifiably, probably it doesn't make like a huge difference, but like it depends on the technique.

Because I feel like someone who would go to the trouble to get clean properly by a bidet is someone who would go to the trouble to get clean properly and use proper wiping techniques as well. Exactly. And yeah, and also neither method makes our anus 100% clean completely. Yeah. And also the anus. has evolved over time to have a little bit of your own personal feces in like tiny microscopic

way is just that it's not a problem you just don't want to be leaving skid marks like that's you know yeah yeah you don't have to get every single like micromole of fecal matter off of your butt but like yeah i mean if it's something where like if it's itchy down there or if you're if you're seeing it in your underwear then something needs to change Yeah. Not to be gross. Something that we can all withstand. And then if there's so much, you can see a bunch of but that's different.

Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. That's it. That's, and then also each can have slightly different health complications for you. Complications is too big of a word, but. Effects. We can say health effects.

That's better, yeah. Chelsea Wald interviews Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus at UC Berkeley. And he says that if. If you wipe too hard, you might develop haemorrhoids, anal fissures, or a condition called preritus ani, which is an itchy anus. Yeah. And so bidet's help because they don't wipe so much. Right. On the other hand, a bidet can irritate the anus.

It can alter your vaginal microbiome. And then apparently a few people will just have a plumbing issue where all of their water is too hot. And if that issue happens, you might surprise yourself with the bidet. That's like the first situation you find out that that's happening. That's a tender area to get some hollow out. Yeah, like I think one of the things is like with, as a lady, vaginal hygiene is something where you don't want to overdo it because the vagina is self-cleaning. Yeah.

And things like douching, things like cleaning really aggressively, is something. not necessary. And so also like both systems, you just need to do it, right? Yeah. Biday or solely TP. And then the last thing of Biday versus TP is a lot of people prefer Biday use because it takes a lot less water. And that is true except for several caveats.

Hmm. Because the big reason is popular science estimates that it takes more than a few gallons of water to manufacture just one roll of toilet paper. Mm-hmm. the energy and the actual water needs and everything else. And then one bidet use after using the toilet, it's only a fraction of a gallon of water. So in general, a bidet uses a lot less water, even though it is spraying water at you. Right.

But then there's a bunch of caveats with whether that's better or not. One is if you live in a region that frequently has water shortages, it's probably better to use the toilet paper supply during a water shortage. Where the water is taken from is important, right? Like, whether it's the municipal water supply versus, like, you know, probably the toilet paper, it's from somewhere else where they're using industrial water. Exactly, yeah. Apparently toilet paper versus bidet just has a lot less impact on the water supply total than a bunch of other things you can change with how you use the toilet.

Right. Chelsea Wald says that if you use a toilet that uses less water, that's a much bigger impact rather than washing versus wiping. There's also a Dutch community where they're testing vacuum toilets throughout their community. Those are the kind of toilets most of us encounter in airplane bathrooms with much lower water usage, but then some energy used to vacuum everything out. Also, if you use toilet paper made through recycling, that uses a lot less water. According to New York Times climate reporter Elizabeth Ann Brown,

if toilet paper is made from 100% recycled paper, the production of it uses half the amount of water. 37% less energy, and produces 70% less greenhouse gases. Yeah. Which is amazing. And it's just recycled material toilet paper versus fresh wood toilet paper. Now, as someone who has dark thoughts sometimes, when I think like recycled toilet paper, I'm like, are they taking old, like, poopy toilet paper and then just like rinsing it off

and selling it back to us? How is recycled toilet paper made? Apparently, the sanitary version of that is one way. Like, it's healthy for you. You won't get, like, poop germs from the previous user. Okay. But the other ways to use it are all sorts of, like, office supplies, cardboard, all sorts of just other paper.

New York Times also says, ironically, it's getting harder to make recycled toilet paper because we're going paperless as a society in a lot of ways. I see. Okay. And so there's just less used paper to make it. out of and that's actually getting a little trickier but that's that's still in that good because like yeah yeah like if every office on earth is going paperless then also there's less paper to recycle to make recycled toilet paper right like the toilet paper is the only is the thing taking over some of the

tree usage then and that's yeah you know it's still less tree usage probably in total right exactly yeah And then the last, last thing about how much water bidet is use is apparently a lot of estimates of bidet use don't distinguish between what material the person uses to dry off after. Right. Because most people use toilet paper, but then there are also a lot of cultures where bidet use is so dominant people have tended to use towels and rags and other textiles that then go through the laundry. and that apparently uses less water than wiping or drying off with TP. Yeah. I find that basically no Americans are on that system of using like a towel after a bidet. Here's a cool tip.

If you visit Italy and you're visiting someone's home, if you see a thing that looks like a bidet, which is like an open bowl with a faucet on it, and there's like a little hook near it and a cute little towel hanging there not for your hands don't use it don't touch that thing

yeah that's pretty much yeah I mean usually I would I think like basically generally so people don't feel too grossed out people aren't like in Italy using the towels as basically like toilet paper to the point where it's like they're getting like a poop

on the towels like that's not happening it is like once you're once whatever you're cleaning down there is like completely clean and you just kind of need to like like it's there's water there it's basically like after you shower right you use the towel on your butt a little bit because your butt's also wet so that's what it would be used for um still don't probably use that on your hands because it's still probably directly just touched someone's butt yeah or other areas yeah i'm also i guess i should have said at the top i'm not particularly particularly germophobic. So when I hear those sorts of stories, I'm like, it makes sense, but I'm not like totally revolted. So other listeners may be hang in there.

I track towards the more germophobic. I would say I'm not completely germophobic. I just tend to be a little more like in that range. But I also, it depends. It's like, it's completely depends on the type of germiness, I would say. Isn't that interesting? That's a thing, too. You know?

Yeah, yeah, phobias. I would say like seeing that someone has a bidet and a towel next to it that I know not to touch does not gross me out at all. Airplane toilets gross me out a lot. Oh, okay. Yeah. I just imagine all the people who have been using it who probably don't care as much about, than me, about not, you know, getting surfaces contaminated. And it's the sky. It's basically international waters.

Everybody's a pirate, you know. Yeah. Yeah. With one other environmental thing with toilet paper, the next number is 2022, the year 2022. That is when a British TV star named Peter Purvis lashed out at toilet paper companies for trying to get rid of the cardboard tube in the middle. So I'm sorry, this is going to be very mean of me, but if your name is Peter Purvis, I think you really should be careful about how passionate you are about anything.

think tube-shaped. Here's the thing about him. He first gained fame on Doctor Who. In 1965 and 1966, he played a companion of the first doctor. And then right after that, he started an 11-year run on an iconic children's TV show called Blue Peter, which is famous if you're British. And then in 2022, he said, quote, in all my years on Blue Peter, Lou Role, Lou Role. Lou Role being the toilet paper tube Was always the most essential element

In doing all the makes on the program It appeared in about five out of every ten things we made on the show We use them all the time, end quote And so then he said that he's noticed brands like Cushel in the UK And Scots in the US Had started offering TP roles that are structured Where there doesn't need to be a cardboard tube in the center Purvis called this quote

A Complete Catastrophe and said he was, quote, horrified, because it would prevent kids from crafting with the cardboard tubes. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think there's still going to be enough tubes around, but I get it. Yeah, both those companies doing that, it's relatively recent. And it seems like consumers are just kind of iffy on tubeless toilet paper. It's not something they're totally seeking yet. Right.

I could see it catching on, but especially, the Scots brands, introduced what they called tube free, but then just discontinued it in the middle of February 2020 because people weren't buying it. Because of Peter Pervert. Because of Pever Pervis. I did a lot of checking how his name is pronounced because I didn't want to make it sound like the word pervert unfairly, you know? Yeah. It's, you know, names are funny.

They are? Names can be funny. I mean, I understand where he's coming from. My dog certainly would be on his side. Like, she would riot if she could never get her little mouth on a toilet paper roll again. Like the cardboard. Yeah, our cats really like them. Yeah, yeah, they're great.

And yeah, and they're basically something that may or may not go away entirely based on what consumers decide. Because it turns out companies can now make these roles without the structure of a cardboard tube in the middle. And also, they are both recyclable but easy for recycling systems to miss because they're not that big. Like cardboard, if folks have heard the past, if about cardboard, we talk about it being one of the most successfully recycled materials on Earth along with aluminum. So other than being a little small, super easy for us to keep turning them into new tubes for several uses. Right. Yeah. But also systems miss them because they're small.

journalist for the New York Times Emily Flitter was a huge fan of Scott's Tube Free investigated why it went away in February 2020 and unfortunately she was investigating this in February 2020 so COVID reached the United States then and slightly after

and everyone just got focused on that convenient what interesting timing she was about to crack the case on the toilet paper industry right when COVID hit the U.S. And you know, do you know what industry got a bunch of sales right after the news about COVID hit? Yeah. Freaking toilet paper. This is a, this is a, this is, uh, look, I'm just asking

questions. I'm just asking, I'm just asking questions. It's cardboard tubes all the way down. Yeah, and also, since the pandemic began, toilet paper has basically become shorthand for a famously stockpiled item. Yeah. Because people did in 2020 especially. I saw that poop coming. I, before, like, before it really officially, like, hit the U.S. is, like, I ordered a couple boxes of, of it from Amazon because I was like, that's the first thing that's going to go. So I'm going to get it now.

I thought I had overordered because I thought it was only, like, one box of, like, a toilet paper, but, like, I got two on accident. My husband and I were, like, kind of laughing about it. It's like, great. We have, like, wait, too much toilet paper. but we weren't laughing so much in like a week because it was like oh this is actually really useful and uh you know we would we like felt like rich entrepreneurs because like whenever we would have a friend who's like i am struggling to even find toilet paper like well uh we could give you

stuff you have to come crawling to us we'll sell it to you for a thousand dollars now we we just gave people stuff because, you know, we're not jerks. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. And yeah, for this topic, I got curious about if toilet paper stockpiling works how I thought it did. And it sounds like it does, because I'll link popular mechanics and also ours technica for the psychology of it. Experts agree that Americans and Canadians kind of had a herd mentality. And also wanted to feel in control of something.

Yeah. So they could control purchasing toilet paper. they couldn't control a global pandemic. Yeah. And then there's also an irony of Americans and Canadian stockpiling toilet paper, which is that both countries tend to make toilet paper entirely within their borders. And of all the goods we depend on, it's one of the least impacted by international supply chain issues. Both countries have huge forests and plenty of facilities to turn that into toilet paper.

So it tends to be made within our borders. Also, if tariff hijinks continue, it doesn't really affect toilet paper. paper. There's this like feedback loop because it's like panic buying. Yeah. It's also like, you know, people like me who predict the panic buying. Yeah. And then, I mean, to be fair, like I didn't want to go to the store and like grab a bunch of toilet papers off the shelves because I was like that would also add to the like, you know, I don't want to contribute to the panic. So I went to like sort of like, I will get toilet paper people don't normally want to get, which is like, you know, basically like on Amazon some kind of like here's like office supply toilet paper so it's you know interesting i don't

know i i would feel bad about like running to the grocery store and then like all the toilet paper that actually plugs into the next number too oddly ah sweet the next number is three miles and the wonderful podcast 99% invisible they covered this story there's a a toilet paper manufacturer in the state of new mexico that catered almost exclusively to like corporate business clients. Mm-hmm. And then early in the pandemic, they tried adding a kiosk at their factory. So for the first time, regular consumers could drive up and buy TP.

And there was so much demand after the news covered that this existed, there was a line of cars three miles long. Oh, wow. To get toilet paper there in March 2020. My gosh. This company said, oh, we're like not catering to houses yet, but it seems like people need it. Why don't we put this feeler out there?

And three miles of cars lined up to get it. goodness gracious it's human psychology and it's also like so like because there was no the toilet paper supply was not like in any danger right like the supply chain was not affecting um yeah but it was just purely and then we created shortages by buying it up right right exactly and our last number about that is December 1973 so way back when December 1973 a U.S. congressman made an irresponsible clumsy, failed joke. Uh-oh. He said something stupid out loud.

Oh, I've never, wait, so I'm sorry. I'm trying to understand. This was a, this was a congressman, this was a politician, and they said something stupid out loud. I know it's hard to believe. It's, okay. I just, I thought, I thought that, like, with elected leaders, they usually, like, um, especially the House of Representatives, everyone's so impressive there, you know?

Right, right. I mean, like, I, I'd assume that, like, given that, a little. elected leader wouldn't like say something stupid out of it but all right go on yeah so 1973 the u.s is experiencing gasoline shortages in like a real way it's based on international supply and stuff right right supply actual supply chain issues and then wisconsin congressman harold frolic put out a statement about the gasoline shortages and one line in the statement said quote the next thing we're going to have to worry about is a potential toilet paper shortage oh you can't say that buddy right and like many people he told such a clumsy and failed joke it wasn't clear he

was joking it was a very common phenomenon across society wait i'm sorry hang on again i'm confused you're saying a politician who like is not able to act like a normal human yeah yep uh he's a weird guy and then what happened is he did this statement in december 1973 and then somebody on the staff of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, wrote it into a monologue joke and left out the word potential. And so on the December 19th, 1973 episode of Johnny Carson's show, he did a monologue joke suggesting there was a toilet paper shortage across the United States. Oh, God.

Oh, no. And we don't have numbers for it, but we know about 20 million people were watching Carson that night and proceeded to make a run on toilet paper. Local news covered these like panic purchases all over the country. One person told their local news, quote, I'm used to being able to go when I want to. But suddenly I think I'm going to have to start curbing my habits. Oh, no.

What? And so that, like, a few nights later, Carson had to update his audience on TV and said, quote, for all my life and entertainment, I don't want to be remembered as the man who created a false toilet paper scare apparently there is no shortage right oh my god that's so funny it's like it's like a version of it's a wonderful life where George Bailey took over his father's toilet paper business and there's a run on toilet paper and saying now no look here the toilet paper is in mr. Fibonacci's bar and it's in yeah so like in the gas crisis of the 1970s uh in the COVID pandemic in the 2020s, and if folks have heard the SIF about the Y2K bug,

Clint McElroy talked about buying up TP in the run-up to Y2K. Like, this is a long-running American tradition for at least 50 years. Something is wrong. I'm going to purchase toilet paper. Yeah, Clint and I are on the same wayblank, I think. He's the best. That's a good wave length to be up. He's great, yeah.

And all these numbers that, you know, they're coming from societies where toilet. paper is plentiful, right? Because now it's just everywhere all over the world. But that gets us into the history of this item. Takeaway number one, the mass production of paper allowed humans to stop wiping their anuses with everything else. Yeah. Yeah. We've always been wiping. This is why when anyone's like romantic about the past, it's just for me, it's just like toilet paper. Toilip paper and plumbing. Yeah. Yeah.

Because, yeah, we also panicked by it because it's extraordinarily plentiful and relatively cheap. I know it costs money, but like compared to everything else, you know, it's not bad. Yeah. Key sources here are a 2016 study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, also featured for Atlas Obscira by writer Shoshi Parks and writing by Peabody winning documentary and Ronald Blumer about toilet paper. But we think the first society to use toilet paper. paper in a large-scale way was China for the entire reason that they were the first strong paper-making society in a large-scale way. You just have to make paper to use it to wipe.

I mean, yeah, just very thin paper. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And around the 100s A.D., Chinese scholars began turning old rags into their first paper. Then they figured out how to make it out of bamboo and out of wood and out of other material. By leading the world in paper developments, They, around the 1300s AD, more than a thousand years later, there are written records of them specifically making paper to wipe the butt with as toilet paper, which is sooner than the rest of the world. Good for them. And then it took a few more centuries for anybody outside China's imperial court and the upper classes to afford paper for wiping in like an everyday way. apparently one key innovation or like step in paper making in many societies that allowed toilet paper was developing tech to mass-produced newspapers because once you're producing a lot of news on cheap paper

you either just start wiping with yesterday's newspaper or you have the machinery and infrastructure to also make toilet paper later differently using articles that piss you off is a good way to do that If you're really petty, the obituaries of your enemies, you know, like, there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of creative use you can, like, get satisfaction from using a newspaper as toilet paper. Yeah, yeah. Take that, Mary Worth, and your smug, help you give everyone. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, paper making was also the final step in inventing toilet paper, because we were already wiping our anises with all sorts of things. So then just inventing paper in order to wipe with that

was the last idea to make this invention. Yeah. We tried it all, folks. Sea urchins. Like almost, yeah, apparently, you know, wiping dates back to prehistory. And it's such a simple idea other species do it. Like chimpanzees use leaves.

Basically just removing feces from your anus is part of an overall hygiene approach. Yeah. And everybody does something. I mean, if you got a cat and a dog or a dog, you know, you know what they do. Yeah, yeah. They get right in. They get right in there. Humans can't bend that way.

And so we've wiped with everything from rocks to shells to mosses to leaves. Also as societies develop textiles or developed ceramics, they wiped with discarded extras from those processes. Like pieces of pottery, you can do it. ah ow and also like if you don't have something better and you want to yeah but yeah i think you're careful if you're doing that you know broken serrat don't try that because broken ceramic is extremely sharp um but i want to ritz of urn i love to ritz of burn so do i reference that too much on the show it's a thing on twitter where people write the word return but they do a v instead of a you because that feels roman and it's referring to some kind of idealized western

civilization that never existed. Right. They didn't realize how stinky ancient Rome was, and so they want to retivern. But I like how you did imply that if we were more flexible and we could reach our butts with our mouths, like we would probably have never gone past the, like, yeah, you lick your own butt. If our biology could tolerate it and we wouldn't get ourselves super sick, yeah, probably. Because that's the other thing.

A lot of species can just tolerate the germs of their own feces. Yeah. Think about that next time you criticize your cat or your dog for licking his butt too much. Yeah. And speaking of the Romans, there were some really wild approaches to this stuff in very developed societies. Like even as China develops paper, again, the first paper comes around in the 100s A.D. They aren't specifically making paper for the toilet until the 1300s A.D. In between, they do all sorts of stuff.

and we know that a lot of people use wiping sticks where it's especially a piece of bamboo with then a rag or other discarded thing on the ends and then that's a tool that you use. Right. And so like my question with that is do you use like a new rag every time or you just kind of reuse

the same poopy rag? It seems like it varied. And we learned a lot about this from a find in 20, That's that study that we're citing, because archaeologists found like a wrapped up set of discarded wiping sticks at a former trading post on the Silk Road. Hmm. Those rags, they had the poop on them still, and also the poop had several kinds of intestinal parasites in it. Fun.

So it probably was not a super sanitary situation. Okay. Because they didn't have the germ theory and the understanding that we do. So they were like, I feel like I got the poop out. but the rag had probably been used at least once before and maybe not totally cleaned enough. Oh, okay. I like living in modern society. Me too.

I know AI is taking over and it's terrible, but gosh darn it, I'm glad I don't have to wipe with a stick. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it was horrible for them, but also this find actually expanded our understanding of history of trade. Because apparently one of the intestinal parasites in the poop, on the wiping rags on the sticks. It was a parasite that's a species of river fluke that's pretty exclusive to Southeast Asia and southernmost China.

And so this study was able to indicate that the Silk Road interlocked with more parts of Asia than we previously realized. It's incredible. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's neat. Yeah. It's using poop to solomister. Yeah, yeah. And then another big example of this kind of culture

is the Romans, who he mentioned. They developed very advanced latrines where there's flowing water so that can just carry away your waste. But they paired that with one of the least hygienic wiping approaches in human history. Oh, no.

Our sources have pictures of a replica of this. It's a tool that they called the tersorium. Their tersorium is a sponge on a stick for wiping the anus. I'm not impressed. Not impressed, Romans. And we are 100% sure they were reusing and reusing and reusing the same Tursorium among all of the people in the same latrine.

Not to be gross, but then you're just turning it into a poop paint brush. Like what's, like how is, but how is that even getting anything clean? Their perception is, okay, somebody used the Tursorium. I scrub it out in the flowing water as much as I can. Ah, okay, okay. That's at least something. But you're not like necessarily soaping that and so, and so like, trace germs and stuff are being spread among the different anuses of the people in the

latrine but they don't know about germs like we do so right right okay so but that that is more understandable like because like people in general I would think have not changed too dramatically on not like wanting to smear poop on their butt so yeah if they're but they're finding a way where it's like yeah I've cleaned off the visible poop from this. And then, so now I can use it to clean my poop as well. Yes. Okay, I get it.

And it's understandable. They just didn't know about germs. That's right. And they weren't pooping very privately either. Like these latrines, it would be several stations, and you're all kind of looking at each other, and there's not dividers and stuff. One other thing about the Roman understanding of the hygiene of this is they knew the terseorium shouldn't go in the mouth.

Okay, fair enough There's an essay by the famous Roman writer named Seneca And this could be totally made up or totally true But he describes a gladiator Who has been in captivity so long They don't want to be imprisoned anymore And so they take their own life By walking into the bathroom

And putting the Tursorium into their mouth And then dying of the diseases of the Torsorium That's a terrible I mean like never You know It's never the answer but that's especially not the answer. Yeah.

And so they like knew it's unhealthy for that, but they didn't understand germs or parasites enough to not put it in each other's butts. I see. Okay. Well. So their hygiene understanding was both complex and way too simple. It's very strange.

Yeah, I feel like I'm not so impressed. I'm sorry. I'm not so impressed that they knew not to do that. Because it doesn't, it's like, yeah, I've been using this to, like, scrub the butt. Probably don't want that in my mouth. But I guess the fact that they were able to connect that to disease is, you know, something, at least. Yeah, for 2,000 years ago, it's like better than nothing, yeah.

Sure, yeah. And yeah, and so because people wiped so many ways with so many tools or common objects or discarded things, it's hard to know exactly when a piece of paper was first used as toilet paper. We know when it was a large-scale practice, especially in China first, but there's a leading candidate for the first piece of paper ever used to wipe the butt. And it dates back a little more than 2,000 years. It was in a culturally Greek city in Egypt. So, you know, papyrus availability.

We think a piece of papyrus might have been the first piece of toilet paper. And this city was culturally Greek because the Macedonian King Alexander the Great, He conquers a lot of the world. He creates cities in a lot of his conquests. And when he conquered Egypt, he reestablished and expanded a city called OxyRinkus. And in Chelsea Wald's book, she describes archaeologists digging at OxyRencus and turning up a piece of papyrus smeared with feces in a way that had to be wiping. Oh, okay. Lovely.

Lovely. Did they like, did they solve a bunch of archaeological histories by examining the poop? no but they found a very funny thing which is that this was not plain papyrus this had writing on it and it specifically contained an essayist's commentaries on homers the iliad and clearly this was not valuable to the user as toilet paper right so maybe it was homer he was like here's what i think about your critique yeah like like the earliest toilet paper was was probably the paper we valued the least, and this is a leading candidate, where somebody said that I either have read this too many times or I'm not interested in it or who cares.

And so a lot of, like, written material was probably the first toilet paper. Yeah. Because plain papyrus I could still write on. But this stuff is, it's writing I'm not interested in. Like pulp fiction in modern times, isn't the idea behind the name is that it's like, it's such garbage that you're just, just like, you know, you once you've read it, you re-pulp it in the new paper because nobody's like hanging on to these books. Exactly.

Like they had in newspapers and other stuff. Like all of our loose junk paper led the way in toilet paper culture. They did it. Yeah. And sorry to this literary critic in Greek Egypt. Not very engaging. Not a great review of his work, I guess. That's right.

Yeah. Folks, that's a giant takeaway and so many numbers. We're going to take a quick potty break and then return with a couple more takeaways about TP. We're back and we're back with takeaway number two. Modern-style Twitter. I didn't even think about that. This topic takes away number two.

It's true. But takeaway number two, modern-style toilet paper developed from a prototype made of hemp and a bunch of false medical claims and a gift-wrapping technology idea. Oh, there's a lot of stuff going here. Yeah, this will bring us into the 1800s and 1900s AD. A few different inventors in the United States had the ideas that have added up to the role of toilet paper in most modern situations. Again, that was a prototype made of hemp, and then a bunch of false medical claims,

and then an idea for technology for gift wrapping. Key sources here include Chelsea Wald's previously cited book, it's titled Pipe Dreams. Also a feature for Mental Floss magazine by Linda Rodriguez-McRabby. And also shout to some folks who have pointed out errors on the Mental Floss website before, so I always triple-check Mental Floss in this magazine feature salad. And then digital resources from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History as well. Because it's surprisingly American-driven, the invention of modern toilet paper. And if there's one first inventor, it's a guy named Joseph Gaietti.

In 1857, mid-1800s, 1857, Joseph Gaietti started selling a product he called medicated paper for the water closet. So 1857. Yeah. And interestingly, the packaging, the dispenser, it was like a tissue box. Like you pull sheets out one at a time from the top. And then the papers were pieces of hemp, the hemp paper, and they were also treated with aloe to make them softer. That's actually really nice.

Yeah, the lotion thing goes back to the beginning, basically, of the product. Wow. I didn't realize. And also very Kleenex to me, like aloe box of tissues. It was basically that, and you just set it in the bathroom. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty, like, so modern, like this, like, oh, we're adding lotion and aloe and you can pull it out of a box, but, wow, it's just, they started out running.

And also, in order to sell his product, Joseph Gaietti lied about its health benefits. Joseph Gaietti's main obstacle to selling this product is that Americans were already wiping with all sorts of stuff. The two biggest things were old corncubs, which sounds terrible. terrible. And also extra pages of printed material, which sounds more normal. Right. A few publishers also leaned into supporting that the makers of the Sears catalog encouraged an idea that people came up with on their own where they used old pages

of the previous catalog for wiping because it was a huge book of pages of stuff and then there'd be a new catalog pretty frequently. That takes a lot of humility to be like, please use our catalog and toilet. paper when you're done. Yeah, because also across the history of toilet paper, there is a lot of like obliquely not quite talking about wiping your butt. And so it seems like they just didn't fight it and made sure the catalog was plenty big. And like didn't complain if word got around. Medicated catalog for the water closet. Oh, I wish. And the other big company for this was the makers of the old farmer's almanac. They were pretty open about it.

they started punching a hole through the entire book and putting a loop through that, so then you can hang the loop on a nail in your bathroom or outhouse. You know, I feel like that's good energy for a farmer's almanac, though, because it's like they're all about practicality. Yes, truly. And like, especially some of the pages of it are specific to days of the year. And so as the year goes on, you don't need those pages anymore. And you start wiping as you go.

It's almost like a daily calendar approach to wiping, you know? Whoa, that's a great idea. Like, if you could do, like, modern toilet paper, that's, like, daily calendar toilet paper. Yeah, right. Like, each previous Garfield, you just, you know. Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, so Americans had plenty of reasonable stuff to wipe with.

I can't imagine using a corn cob, but I guess people were into that. Oh, you know, exfoliation, I guess. Yeah. And, like, modern doctors have looked into this and said, toilet paper versus the printed stuff versus corn cobs, it's all about the same in terms of hemorrhoid risk and cleanliness. Like maybe you want different texture and feeling, but medically it was all fine. It was all about the same. And Joseph Gayetti lied.

And he recruited doctors or just fake quotes saying that no corn cobs and catalogs will, like, destroy your butthole. I mean. And you have to use my products medically. Depends on sort of the force at which it's applied. It's true. There is a user element, yeah. If you're, if you're sanding down there, it's rough. Yeah. So, Gayetti, he both makes this product out of hemp and with lotion and also lies about it. He only struggles in business because a competitor lies even more effectively. Nice.

In 1890, two brothers named Clarence Scott and Irvin Scott found a paper company that's still with us today. Scots. You can buy Scots in your grocery store. But their big selling point is toilet paper on a roll, which was relatively new as an idea at the time, and also to promote even more health claims. The Scots people claim that their toilet paper could help stop dysentery, typhoid, and cholera. No. None of which is true, that you're just wiping your butt with paper. Yeah, I mean, in a, like, if you're wiping your butt with your hand and you're getting poop on your hand and then you're putting that hand in your mouth, sure.

Yes. In that sense, toilet paper could stop those things. But as could any barrier or washing your hands. Exactly. Like, they're just making a claim where, okay, 10 steps later, maybe this helped somewhat, I guess. Right, right. And they're bringing up what are, to me, Oregon Trail diseases. So, like, yeah, I guess if you're not dying on the Oregon Trail, that's better.

But these, like, bigger and better lies, plus. the role that made Scots a massive company. By the mid-1900s, they held most of the toilet paper market share in the United States. Wow. And are still a major brand. Both plies, both pies of the share. Oh, well, that's how you graph it. I love it. That's good. Right. And so that's really a lot of what added up to modern toilet paper. The one other idea is perforating the sheets. Yeah. Because otherwise it's just a big roll of paper where you're tearing it without any perforation, which you can do. Yeah, which do still exist. And usually there's like a jack, like, you know, the like school

toilet paper where it's like there's a jagged edge on the dispenser and you just tear it there. Yeah, that works too. And so like the perforation wasn't necessarily an early step. And the key person there is yet another American. It was an inventor named Seth Wheeler. In 1892, Seth Wheeler patented what looks exactly like modern toilet paper. It's on a roll. It's perforated sheet by sheet in little squares. Also, you'll see a lot of bloggy Internet people resurfaced Seth Wheeler's patent diagrams to claim that there is only one way to hang toilet paper.

We haven't talked about the hanging yet. Oh, right. Wheeler's patent, he diagrammed it hanging over the top. rather than underneath the bottom. Right. None of that actually matters. There are also bogus claims that one way is more sanitary than the other. No, it's just preference.

It's just 100% preference. Don't sweat. I'm an over gal myself, but when I see an under, I'm not like, all right, time to have a civil war, you know? Like, I'm cool about it. The South will rise from underneath again. like it's fine it's fine to chill out man yeah also i guess i'm sorry to fanatics of underneath if you like it and are mad that i made at the confederacy but i am an over person like katie so i think that's why uh yeah we're already we're already drawing lines we're doing just what

we set out not to do yeah the mason dixon perforation is separating the sheets uh but yeah so seth wheeler is where the perforation is where the perforation is where the perforation came from. Also, that was his second idea for how to perforate it. In 1892, he patented the squares. Five years earlier in 1887, he patented another idea of each piece being an octagon shape. This is great. I love this so much. I wish we'd done this one. We'll link the diagram. Katie's got it. There is a practical idea there, which is if each one's octagon shapes, like you're giving up some like corners of what could be toilet paper, but then there's a shorter side that the perforation is on, if you can imagine this or go look at it.

Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's just, I just like the idea of doing your cleaning business with some octagon's that feels elevated. It feels like it's elevating the whole experience. It does. With octagons. And I mostly associate octagons with stop signs, of course, but also the UFC martial arts sport.

So I like the idea of bringing my butt into the octagon, you know? Yeah. Let's do it. Let's play it out. And Wheeler, his interest in perforation didn't start with toilet paper. It started with gift wrapping paper. He wanted to patent and sell a method of making gift wrapping paper where there's perforated sheets. And so then a big store or a department store, those employees of the store can just perforate away a sheet of wrapping paper for a gift or for a purchased item.

instead of scissors or a big slicer, but between items being different sizes and the perforation not working all that well, that didn't take off for gift wrapping. And then he pivoted and applied the perforation technology and perforation idea to toilet paper. And that was a huge hit. But yeah, so that's where we got the design we have now. Well, you know, pooping is the mother of invention. Don't let anyone tell you anything else. That actually gets us into the final takeaway of the main show, because takeaway number three, NASA and the Charmin brand of toilet paper collaborated on an advanced form of fake poop for testing their supplies and materials. You know, this is interesting to me. I once watched like a documentary on there's some poop museum and they had this whole thing like a contraption at the end that.

like would make fake poop and then you could as a visitor to the museum that you could take a little fake poop sample home interestingly because they can't really like completely mimic all the biological processes so it comes out sort of this like grayish color but apparently like and then like they would interview like the visitors to the museum it's like well it smells like poop and it's like wow what a what a pleasurable experience like to do voluntarily that's so interesting that they tried to capture the smell. I mean, I think it was just, I don't think like they were, I think they were trying to mimic all of the various processes to make this poop.

But they also kind of like had to make it safe somewhat. So it wasn't like, they didn't put like bacteria in it. But they did end up smelling kind of bad. Okay. Yeah, because that, both NASA and Sherman, it seems like they were trying to test. all of the physical experience of dealing with poop. Right.

Like removing and evacuating it. And so they, in two steps, first NASA then Charmin, they've developed a fake poop that apparently imitates everything except the smell. It has no odor at all. Okay. So it's like, I'm looking at this. First of all, the nails on this person presenting these little jars of fake poop. She's got a beautiful manicure with these like robins.

like robin's eggs blue nails just perfection like this looks like someone advertising some skincare product if you showed this to me I would not have assumed oh this is fake poop I'm like this is something you smear on your face it feels like she got a fresh manicure for the new year yeah it actually looks great and it does elevate the poop a little bit because then it makes me think that this is going to be this is like some kind of fancy thing that's good for your skin yeah But it's like kind of a light green. It's not brown. Yes.

And it's in what to me looks like a baby food jar. I'm sorry. It evokes eating. But also she's using like a tongue depressor to mess with it. And yeah, these pictures are from our key source for this takeaway. It's an amazing feature for popular science by journalist Rachel Feldman, who went to a laboratory in Cincinnati at Procter & Gamble, the parent company of Charmin. Rachel Feldman, are those your nails? because they're great.

I wish she said. Yeah, they really look good. And yeah, this is the weirdest thing I've ever learned about what is to me a wonderfully weird company already. They're not a sponsor. We do use it in our house, I guess. I can divulge that. Now I want money from Charmin.

But, yeah, Charmin, they were not an early maker of TP. They basically became a top brand through decades of innovative marketing. Apparently, in the 1930s, they became one of the first toilet paper. to not primarily advertise it as a medical item. They primarily advertised it as a feminine and soft product. Yeah. And then to this day, they promote squeezability softness was just a hit way. With those gosh darn bears with the little toilet paper stuck to their butt.

The bears are so famous, Charmonds just diverted into weirder and weirder stories for them. And in 2013, the bears all describe what they do while they're on the toilet. And one of the child bears held up a copy of metamorphosis by Franz Kafka as what they read on the toilet. Like the canon lore has really gotten out of hand for the Charmin Bears. There's even a whole separate mascot they named Mr. Whipple, which is a guy who just asks people to not squeeze the Charmin rolls in the store, totally separate from the bears. They really built a lot of lore. Yeah, this is complicated. Yeah, apparently in the 1980s, Mr. Whipple was one of the most famous.

characters or beings in America, like a poll found he was up there with Richard Nixon and Mickey Mouse in terms of fame. He's like a guy. He's an actual man with a little bow tie, an actual man. Yeah. So it's one of the strongest marketers in American history, Charmin toilet paper. Seems like a similar thing to like the Where's the Beef thing. Exactly. Yeah. I think it Where's the Beef and Time to Make the Donuts and people like that from the 80s, yeah. Time to Make the Donuts? Was it Duncan, Donuts guy, yeah. The ad would show him like waking up in the morning with like a charming readiness to make donuts. Yeah. I see. Okay. Yeah, we didn't really have like a ton, like I don't

think the West Coast had as much Dunkin. So I don't think I saw this. Oh, right. You were in a Duncan Desert. Yeah, it was all. No, yeah. Duncan Desert. Independent businesses with pink boxes. Yeah. We had crispy cream. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's good. I mean, I'm not, I'm not actually going to be trying to argue for what's better. I don't like either of them. Yeah, that's for Count Donut on Munch Squad to litigate. Yeah, that's not for us. Yeah, there's an animated short on YouTube of the Charmin Bears where it's like this guy

who does sort of a rotoscope to realistic animation style. And it's like one of the Sharman Bears coming out to his parents that he doesn't want to do the toilet paper ads. Oh, when you said coming out, I thought it was going to be like sharing their sexuality. Whoa, but either way. No, I mean, it's a similar vibe because the dad is very much like, no, our family does this.

We sell toilet paper and we have little bits of toilet paper stuck to our butts and that's what we do. Right, like toilet use is not even a binary of TP and bidet. It is one thing. Yeah. So militant. Yeah, and also Sharman's done stunts in the 2010s to try to make the biggest role of TP in the world. And, like, they created a forever role.

They called it in 2019 that they actually sold the consumers where there's a special dispenser to hold up the giant role. Like, they're really out here doing a lot of advertising. Yeah. And then on top of that, they're doing a lot of R&D. And so, Sharman has a lab at Proctering Gamble HQ in Cincinnati. that started sourcing fake poo from NASA in the 1990s. Whoa, cool. Because you can test toilet paper with people's actual poop,

but you have to, like, feed them and collect it, and it's just kind of gross. And also, our poop has diseases and stuff in it if we get that on ourselves in the wrong way. Yeah, that's not, you don't want to, like, you don't want to, like, you don't want to, it's just, like, unpleasant. Have to play around with it, yeah, exactly. Practer and Gamble, they said, if there's a way to get fake poo, because I'm sure all the previous testing of toilet paper in history, people just use their own butts and poo.

But in the 1990s, NASA created fake poo. Of course they did. They named the substance fee clone, which is a-oh-my-God, so good. A combo of feces and clone. So good. I love NASA. Right. And it's like the one organization that would bother because they want to test their space toilets before launch.

them, right? Yeah. This is just, it's incredible, like the ingenuity. Yeah, so they made fee clone. Pooping is the mother of invention. Yeah, like you said. Like I said, further evidence. And then in 1994, Procter & Gamble starts purchasing massive supplies of fee clone from NASA

and like freezing it and storing it for experiments as needed. And then Procter & Gamble said, what if we make an even better fake poop for testing toilet paper? So they reverse engineered fee clone to figure out what it's made out of. They also prototype new poops. Around 2010, they settled on their current formula for what they call artificial BM. BM is bowel movement, if you're outside of that, knowing that, I guess. And so then here's Rachel Feldman's description, quote, Procter & Gamble's artificial BM has the same surface energy, fluid dynamics, and adhesion to human skin as the real stuff.

the result is made of food-grade ingredients and even comes in a trio of textures from diarrhea to constipation. That's very thorough. And my one question was, did she taste test that she doesn't say? Right. But she says that the one thing it lacks is the smell, because the smell is not relevant to toilet paper testing. So it smells like nothing. I mean, it's relevant in a poop museum, but not in a toilet paper. toilet paper testing.

Like, yeah, they are correct to focus on the texture and the adhesion and the surface energy. Yeah, surface energy, fluid dynamics. And so, like, I just love that this kind of labor has gone into testing toilet paper. I'm not saying Sharman's better than anybody else's product, but just like these labs are saying we can move beyond human poo because NASA has prototyped another way. Right, which I think is... You know, it's human beings continue to impress me and inspire me.

It's such a world. It's great. I feel like it's a thankless thing. Like if you're like, who are you? I invented fake poop so that your toilet paper works good. You know, it like sounds very silly, but think of the improvements to millions of lives. Yes. I say billions of lives.

Yeah, it's truly, there's more like. serious sounding humanitarian work around, like, better toilets and sanitation for the whole world. Yeah. And also toilet paper plays a role in it. It's important. It's great. It plays a role in that. Oh, I didn't even mean to do that.

Oh, look at me. You scamp. He, he, he, he, he, he, he. That's the main episode for this week, this first week of this new year. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the mass production of paper allowed humans to stop wiping their anuses with everything else. Takeaway number two, modern-style toilet paper developed from a prototype made of hemp

and a bunch of false medical claims and an idea for perforating gift wrap. Takeaway number three, NASA and the Charmin brand of toilet paper collaborated to generate an advanced form of fake poop. And then a pretty gigantic number section about everything from British children's TV stars demanding that we keep the cardboard tube in the middle to the stockpiling of toilet paper across eras of American history

to the biggest forest fire ever caused by trying to burn the stuff. Not to mention the entire debate over Biday versus TP. We hopefully solved it in a complex way. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at maximum fun.org.

Members are the reason this podcast exists, So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is actually two quick stories. It's a Cold War spy operation hinging on toilet paper and the three seashells joke in demolition man about replacing toilet paper. Visit sifpod.fod.f fun for that bonus show for a library of 23 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows, including our latest episode of The Inspectors Inspectors. It's special audio.

It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at maximum fun.org. Key sources this week include a wonderful book. It's called Pipe Dreams, the urgent global quest to transform the toilet. That's written by journalist Chelsea Wald.

Also leaned on a lot of journalism from The Guardian, the New York Times, popular science magazine, a well-researched piece for Mental Floss magazine, and then digital resources from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, about the American interest in making the modern form of toilet paper. That page also features resources such as native-land.clawn.c.a. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie Lenape people and the Wappinger people,

as well as the Mohican people, Skategoq people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people in life. There's a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like like a tip on another episode, because each week I'm finding is something randomly incredibly

fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 184. That's about the name Katie, which is of course tied to the longer name Catherine. And fun fact, there, a saint named Catherine is part of a long history of true yet wildly exaggerated stories of Romans persecuting Christians. So I recommend that episode, And speaking of Katie's, I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals and science and more. Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Boodos band. Our show logos by artists Burton Durand.

Special thanks to Chris Sousa for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.

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