Stuff You Should Know - A Dry Look at Toilet Paper

Episode Date: July 28, 2017

Over or under? One ply or two? How about six? TP has not been around that long, but is has been embraced in a big way by the United States. Learn all about the interesting history behind this decidedly dry product. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, we're going on tour in 2017, so listen up. That's right, you can get all the deeds at sysklive.com, Current Cities Who Love Us, Toronto, Vancouver, Atlanta. Chicago, Minneapolis.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry, and we're about to get our hands dirty with the How Toilet Paper Works episode. Dumb. Dude, there were so many puns in this article, I was like, writhing in pain. I will say that this was a draft

of a Future How Stuff Works article. Yeah, I gathered. So it hasn't been through the editing in a process, and I'm hoping and praying the editor will have some good, the good taste to remove some of these euphemisms about poop. Yeah. Cause it's not necessary. No.

You don't have to get hilarious about poop, it's hilarious on its own. Sure. You know? Yeah, I like this one by the way. Yeah, Toilet Paper has a pretty interesting history, actually. Yeah.

And there's, one thing I didn't quite realize, it's pretty American actually, Toilet Paper is. Oh yeah. If you go elsewhere in the world, people have different feelings about Toilet Paper than Americans do, and when you come back and you realize, like, wow, America really, really loves its Toilet Paper. Yeah.

And you start to look at statistics, and it really kind of comes home. Like, for example. Yeah. Here's some editing that needs to happen. This guy's got some numbers wrong. But what I found, yeah. What I found was that Americans spend something like

six billion dollars on Toilet Paper every year. Yeah, it's about 24 rolls per person, is that right? Yep, per year. And we do something like, we go through something like 36 and a half billion rolls of Toilet Paper each year in America. 36 and a half billion rolls of Toilet Paper every year. That is a lot of Toilet Paper.

Yes. And we're not showing many signs of stopping. As a matter of fact, Toilet Paper is getting more expensive by the year. It's rising by about 2% in cost every year. And we're saying, give it to us. There's lots of theories that if Toilet Paper somehow became a luxury item.

Yeah. Americans would just say, well, I have to buy this luxury item. I cannot live without Toilet Paper. Yeah. But it's because we love our Toilet Paper and you don't think about it until you experience something other than Toilet Paper,

which is usually a stream of water up your butt. Yes, and we've talked about this before, but for those of you who haven't heard our various statements on this, I wanna officially go on record again saying that Toilet Paper is gross and disgusting. And the idea of wiping poop from your butt with dry paper is counter-intuitive. It makes no sense.

And if you don't involve water in some way to the process, then you're doing it wrong. You're a communist. I'm a badaist. Yeah. So do you have one at home? Well, no, I need to re-hook it up. I bought one of the Toilet ones.

Cause after I said that a couple of years ago, everyone's like, dude, here you go. Sent me the link to the product, bought one immediately, and hooked it up, but we did some bathroom renovations, and it is now somewhere in a bag in my house, and I just need to find it and get it going again. So you have a bidet floating around your house in a bag somewhere.

Yeah. How's that? What kind is it, like one that's like a Toilet lid slash bidet? It fits under the lid. I gotcha. It squirts a jet of water to your butt. I've got one of those Japanese toilet seats

that has a bidet and a dryer and everything in it. Really? They're fantastic, buddy. Oh man, you're living a life. I mean, it's more expensive than a regular toilet seat, but it's not so outrageously expensive that, you know. Yeah, well, you probably say so on toilet paper. I do.

A little bit. I mean, toilet paper, you still need to pat yourself dry. You definitely do. Although if you have a dryer, do you? Yeah, but you'd have to sit there for 15 minutes to get. So what's the problem? Dry. Yeah.

I remember there was a George Carlin album where he was talking about some game show contestant and one of the game show contestant's hobbies was sitting on the toilet till my legs go numb. So funny, the little things that stand out from your childhood. Yeah. Like that's locked in there,

but you probably don't remember something really important about your family. Like multiplication. Oh yeah, or schooling. Sure. All right, so history of toilet paper. Man, like so many things, if you go back to ancient China,

they were apparently future people because it seems like so many things the ancient Chinese people thought of and then it just sort of went away for a thousand years. Well, they invented paper, right? So if you're making paper and you're pooping, eventually you're gonna put the two together, like, oh, I'll just use this

because at the time or prior to this, all around the world, basically humans used whatever was handy, like leaves. Moss was very popular for many, many thousands of years. Yeah, let's go through these actually. Leaves, not bad. Yeah. Moss, I would say a little messy, but softish.

Oh, bet moss is the bomb, especially if it's fresh. It says on here, coconuts. I don't even know where to start with that. Yeah, I guess if you went with the grain, it'd be okay. But I'm sure it's not like a whole coconut. You're using like a part of a shell or something, like a shard. Yeah, ooh, don't say shard in that area, that's.

But I think a coconut shell, the outer shell would be at least like, it would probably do the job, you know? Right. It's kind of rough. Right. It says shells. Yeah, I mean.

If you live near the coast, you could use shells, and there's definitely some kind of mollusks that would be better than others. Yeah. I saw somebody point out that there's such a thing as razor clams. Yeah, I know what a razor clam is. Not want to use that.

Snow, you're definitely on the right track with that. Corn cobs, huge, huge in America. I think that makes a lot of sense. Sure, it's got like the kind of rough bits, but it's about perfectly shaped. Continually turn it and get, you know, new coverage or whatever. Yeah, the only thing with a corn cob,

using a corn cob is that you have to like, play banjo music in your head while you're using it. It's the only way to do it. Sheep's wool, not bad. No, and if you were a rich type Frenchie from Renaissance on, you would probably use lace. I know. Perfumed lace.

That doesn't make any sense because lace is full of holes. It just seems so French royalty, like I'll only wipe my bottom with handmade lace. Right, and I think also if you were royalty, you weren't actually the one doing your own bottom. Like for example, King Henry VIII, who I know wasn't French,

he had a position called the groom of the stool. That wasn't just him. No, so I think if you were super rich, you had people wipe for you, which is now the only time you do that is if you've broken both of your arms. Well, here's the deal. I looked up groom of the stool

because that immediately piqued my interest. Sure. First of all, they're not talking about a stool as in poop. No, they're talking about like a stool sample. No, it means like this portable commode that look like a stool that they would carry around. I wonder if that's where the term for poop stool came from then.

I don't know. Let's just say yes, okay. I need a win today, Chuck. I also found that, and this was a position that all of royalty held. Like he was not the only one. All the kings had them in Queens and Dukes and Duchesses, but they were their very closest helpers obviously.

But apparently they didn't actually like help them wipe. They would help them undress for sure. They would be in charge of the commode upkeep. And apparently they would just kind of track their meal schedule and dietary goings on, like what goes in and what comes out. But I didn't see anywhere where they actually like wiped their butts for them.

I see you've passed your beans, sir. Good show. It is Tuesday. Most of them were knights. And King George III, Mad King George actually had a groom of the stool, John Stewart with UART who eventually became Prime Minister of England. Wow.

How about that? Man, thank you for bringing us up to date because I was grossly misled by this House of Works article. Well, yeah, it sounds like they would wipe your butt for you. I failed to do the proper outside research. So thank you for saving me and shaming me at the same time. Well, that sounds like, I don't blame you. You probably read groom of the stool and you're like,

yep, don't need to know anything more about that. No, but I should have known better. You know, I've been doing this for years. I'm supposed to be a professional. That's okay. All right, ancient Greeks used clay and stone and the Romans, they were on the right track. They used like a sponge on a stick, which was wet

and that they would then clean with salt water. Yeah, well, actually taking it back a second, the Greeks actually used polished bits of stone. Yeah, that's a clay and stone. Called the pusoi. Oh, okay. And then there was also something called, I think, a stroiki.

Oh, stroiki. And that was where if you would, if the town was voting on like kicking somebody out, they would have, there'd be these like bits of ceramic with the person's name engraved on it and they just throw it into this pot or whatever. Well, to really show your disdain for somebody, you could use one of these stroikis as a stone

for wiping yourself, you're wiping yourself with the person's name, which is about as bad as it gets. But that's where the word ostracized comes from. Oh, it sounds like an Australian like exclamation. A stroiki. A stroiki. People get the point. People are using whatever they can to wipe their butts.

Like it's an issue. Things get messy since the dawn of time, Tuk Tuk was like, you know, it doesn't feel good to walk around after a poop if I haven't cleaned myself. Right. So it was an issue. And let's fast forward in time to 1857.

This is where it's starting to get good. In New York City, there was a man named Joseph Gayety. And he invented something called Gayety's Medicated Paper Sheets. Yep. And they were, it was toilet paper, but it was not yet on a roll. They were more like a tissue that you would pull out of a box.

Like Kleenex. Yeah, they were like, if you want a brand name buzz it, that's fine. For proprietary eponym. About 50 cents for 500 sheets. And he was so proud, he had his name printed on them. Probably didn't think that through. But here's the deal.

He had a hard time selling it because at the time, and this is no joke, Americans used, literally used the Farmer's Almanac and the Sears catalog to wipe their butts. Yeah, as a matter of fact, both of them, I think came with a hole punched in like the top corner to make it easier to just hang from a nail in your outhouse. Amazing.

So that was definitely one reason why Gayety's Medicated Paper didn't take off. But another part of it was that this is like a taboo thing, right? Yeah. The Sears robot catalog in the mail, it served a couple of purposes, one of which was unspoken, right?

Yeah, like the mail delivery guy would just walk up and just like kind of hand it to the person and say, here's your catalog. Yep, thanks. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. This should last you a couple of months. All right, gotcha. I was wondering how long it would last.

I mean, these things were a couple hundred pages, right? Sure. So I wonder how long it would last. But yes, most, especially in rural America, that was toilet paper, that and corncobbs, right? I wonder if there are arguments that broke out in families like, ma, it's winter and we're already to the tool section.

Yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure. There've always been miserly jerks who yelled about using too much toilet paper. Yeah. So that was one reason that Gayety had trouble with his Medicated Paper, right?

Yes. The second part was that the taboo, right? No one wanted to talk about that. And he actually sold his thing as like medicine. It was meant to be for the prevention or treatment of hemorrhoids, right? Yeah, which obviously that would help. And it was very much what we would consider

the first toilet paper, but it didn't take off. It wasn't until about 30 or 40 years later that Clarence and E. Irvin Scott, the Scott Brothers, whose name still appears on toilet paper rolls, got together and actually created the first toilet paper on a roll. Yeah, that changed everything. It really did, but apparently the shame,

the stigma of creating toilet paper was so much that they released their product in 1890. It wasn't until 1902 that they finally acknowledged that it was their product. Yeah. They were just ashamed. Yeah, they didn't have to put their name on it, I mean. No, and apparently they used some of the companies

that their company owned to sell it under. Yeah, they really were like trying to put some distance in between them and the toilet paper they created. Yeah, I get it. They did manage to sell a lot of it though because they were smart enough to market it to like hotels and drugstores and stuff. And so they sold a lot of it, not like direct to customer.

Right. They said, you know, your hotel needs this, trust me. No one wants to talk about it, but just put these in your bathrooms and everyone will say great. And again, like it was, it worked kind of well, but then toilet paper, as we understand it today, really didn't become like a staple,

what you would call an icon of American culture, frankly, until like three things happened from about the beginning of the 20th century until about the 1930s, right? Yeah. One of the first things was that America started getting indoor plumbing, flushing toilets. That was the biggest deal, I think.

It was because you can't use corn cobs in that any longer. Nope. So this is largely in the cities where you would find indoor plumbing still in rural America up to the 30s, people were still using corn cobs and Sears and Robot catalog. That's when the second thing that took place that changed everything happened.

The Sears catalog went to a clay-based glossy paper and no longer was it soft and absorbent any longer. So mean. It was slick and you can't use that to wipe your bottom after pooping. No. That was the second thing that happened. And lastly, the third thing that happened was a company

called the, was it the Hubert, Hubert Paper Company? Hoburg. Hoburg Paper Company released a brand of toilet paper called Charmin. Yeah. And they very, very wisely branded it in such a way that this focused on its femininity, its softness, its gentleness.

And you could talk about how soft and gentle and wonderful this product was without talking about what it was actually used for, which meant that now you could market it to the public. And as a result, Charmin took off. Yeah. I mean, that sort of became the name in toilet paper for many years in no small part,

thanks to a man named Dick Wilson, who from 1964 to 85 and more than 500 TV commercials played the beloved Mr. Whipple. Yeah. George Whipple, the grocery store manager who very famously would urge usually women in the commercials not to squeeze the Charmin because apparently from 64 to 85 women in grocery stores

were compelled to squeeze toilet paper. Yeah. Constantly. You'd be like, oh, it feels so nice and soft. Which apparently did something wrong to the toilet paper. Well, yeah, you didn't want your toilet paper pre-squeezed. That's what you bought the toilet paper for yourself.

So you could squeeze it in the comfort of your own home. So ad exec John Chervokus actually came up with that tagline or phrase and the actor's original name was Ricardo de Guglielmo. From England. Yeah, I did not anticipate that. I thought it was gonna say Rome, Italy. Another little known fact about Dick Wilson

is that he is the father of Stephanie Balkie's love interest in perfect strangers. No way. In real life. Yeah, that's his daughter. And another factoid is he was in Bowich, the TV show. Yeah, he played the drunk that you'd see at the bar. Yeah.

Who just couldn't believe the witchery he'd just seen. Mr. Whipple. So did you say that he was in more than 500 of those Charmin ads? Yeah. There was a point where he was, there was a poll that was taken in 1978 and found that in America,

he was the third most recognized person by Americans after Richard Nixon and Billy Graham. That's so America. That is a home run for an ad agency. That's just so America. The president, a preacher and a toilet paper guy. Mr. Whipple. I love it.

You want to take a break? Yeah, we'll take a break and kind of bring us into the modern age of butt wiping. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

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Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Seriously, I swear.

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on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. So we're at a point now where, uh, Sharman has, uh, well, before that, uh, we were at a point where toilet paper was now being, uh, championed by plumbers, by doctors as being a good thing. Sharman comes along, said, man, this stuff is soft

and don't squeeze it though, but boy, I know you want to. Johnny Carson's joking about it on The Tonight Show. Yeah, that was, that was kind of a significant thing. Yeah, he said that there was, and this was, uh, in 1973 when there were, uh, like gas shortages and energy shortages and, uh, Johnny Carson made a joke about there being a toilet paper shortage and people thought he was serious and apparently went out

and like bought out grocery stores the next day. And yeah, and it was a self-sustaining, um, thing because it made a shortage. Well, yeah, when people, when people ran out and bought it, it created the shortage and then the successive waves of people came and saw for themselves that there was no toilet paper. So they panicked and they bought whatever they could.

And apparently for weeks in some places, there was, you couldn't buy toilet paper because it had been hoarded. Yeah. Because of Johnny Carson's joke. Man. Yeah. And he took it back, but, you know, back in those days, it takes a little while

for people to get that information. Sure, even on the, uh, the tonight show. That's right. So, um, this one article you sent was great. The, the history one. Which one? You sent kind of the longer one. Oh, the, I think it was a mental floss article.

Oh, it absolutely was. You're right. Yeah. So always love to use mental floss articles. Sure. Oh, and by the way, we would be remiss if we didn't mention that, uh, Will and Mangesh who started mental floss are colleagues now.

Yeah, they are. They have a, uh, a podcast called part-time genius that's put out by our venerable umbrella brand company. That's right. And I made a guest appearance. I think you're probably in the queue as well. Uh, yeah. I have not been approached, but I just assume I'm in the queue.

I think so. Well, let's hope so. But anyway, congratulations to Will and Mango for part-time genius and go check it out. You can find it anywhere you find us. Stuff you should know. Yeah. Anyway, uh, they made a pretty good point here

at the end of it, which I never really considered, but toilet paper is actually sort of a marker of where you are as a country, uh, like developing nations. When they start buying more toilet paper, that means they are, uh, getting more sanitary as a nation. Means they have extra money to spend as a nation. Uh, that means that they're basically just sort of, uh, their demographics are changing in a positive direction.

Speaking from a neoliberal standpoint. That is correct. Yeah. But it's interesting. I never thought about it. Like Brazil, they've doubled the amount of toilet paper they've sold since 2004. Yeah.

Which is pretty significant considering, um, American toilet paper as plateaued. Like we buy as much as we possibly can. We're, we're saturated. But I mean, we're still spending $6 billion on it, you know? Yeah. And all over the world there are, I mean, you know, when we went to Guatemala, we certainly saw the bucket, uh,

in the water next to the toilets. There are still many places all over the world where you clean yourself with, uh, whatever water you have. And you, and if you do have something to wipe yourself with, you don't even flush it down the toilet. You, you know, you have a little water hose in a bucket, maybe, and kind of take care of business. Right.

Or with, uh, there are some places, um, where the, the plumbing just can't even handle actual toilet paper. Yeah. You just throw that away as well. Yeah. Still flushing. You want to talk about how toilet paper is made? Yeah.

I mean, we can talk about it for sure, but I, I strongly encourage everyone to go, uh, to YouTube and watch a little six minute discovery channel bit from, I think it was from How It's Made. Canadian How It's Made. Oh, is that what it was? The lady just stopped short of saying A. Oh, yeah, I did kind of notice that. Yeah.

Uh, it's amazing though. And I know I can obsessively watch manufacturing videos like all day and all night, but this one was especially cool looking. Chuck, did you get the same sense where like you were just watching those huge rolls of toilet paper going over the rollers and just think like, that is so delicate. Like all you have to do is lift your hand up and just completely throw production off.

No. It was just, oh, okay. I didn't feel like I wanted to do that, but I kept wondering like, how in the world are these machines just rolling this toilet paper so fast without it breaking? Yeah. It's, it's pretty impressive. So let's start at the beginning.

The whole thing starts with a tree. Yeah. So go out in your backyard, you cut down a tree, you take it to the toilet paper manufacturer and you sell it to them for a few dollars and then you leave. And since you've left, uh, it's not your tree any longer because you took money for it. And what the toilet paper manufacturers are going to do

with what's now their tree, they're going to grind it up into little chips. They're going to soak it in some water. They're going to grind it up even more. And what you have are called pulp. Well, you got to cook it first. You got to cook it in a, what's called a digester. Yeah.

And that turns it into pulp. Yeah. And if you look at this video, it's like, it looks, I mean, it kind of looks like wet toilet paper. Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. But when it's dried, it crumbles really easily too, right? Yeah. So, um, that means you got a few extra steps.

The next step is you got to bleach it because you're removing the color. If you've ever seen like, um, that kind of grayish tan, like, um, like paper towels or something that you see in like an office building or jail or something like that. Like that is what pulp looks like if you don't bleach it. Yeah, which, uh, I think the only reason they do that is because they found that people don't like their toilet paper

to be anything other than white. No. Unless it was the 1970s. Yeah, man. I've got to say, I found this, um, blog post from a site called history's dumpster and they have pictures of Northern brand toilet paper in light green, light blue and pink. Yeah.

And it was just like, I remember that swallow my tongue from nostalgia. Yeah. It was very cute. Yeah. Well, and I guess we should go ahead and say the reason they don't do that anymore is because, um, those ink dies, they found could cause cancer in some cases.

Uh, they, uh, are expensive, more expensive to use dies. And, and yeah, it was basically a health thing. People are like, you don't need these. Plus dies. It also, the dies also kept, um, the toilet paper from breaking down as quickly too. Yeah. And they probably also looked and said, you know what?

My poop doesn't look any better on baby blue than it does on white. No, but the whole reason that they had those was because everybody loved to, um, color coordinate every room of their house in the seventies, including the bathroom. Like everything in the bathroom is pink. So people would, uh, people would buy mauve toilet paper to go with their mauve bathroom or whatever.

So great. Um, it is great. It was, that's so super seventies too. And that's just yet another reason that the seventies were hands down the greatest decade in the history of humanity. It's pretty great. All right. So, uh, one other thing, Chuck, there's a company called

Renova. They actually sell colored toilet paper again. Oh, really? Yeah. It's like seven, seven euros and 15 cents, which isn't that much less than it would be in dollars these days. Yeah. For six rolls.

Okay. So we're in the factory. Where'd you leave us? Uh, so, uh, we've made the pulp and we've bleached it. Now it's white. Right. Then you take the pulp and you, uh, mix it with water and you've created a paper stock.

That's right. And then you press it onto a screen. This one was, this blew me away. Yeah. They, they press it onto a screen. I guess you, you're draining a lot of the water, uh, is one reason and well, I guess that's the main reason because what you're left with is that dry white product.

Yeah. That, that lady, the Canadian lady on how it's made said that they, you hit them with a dryer when they're on that screen and it instantly dries it out. Yeah. That's just amazing. Cause you think of this stuff as so delicate that, but they, if you watch the process, they're, they're pretty

rough with it. Yeah. Uh, so then, uh, well concurrently what's going on too, we should say is they're also making the, uh, the cardboard rolls, which is kind of a tubes, you know, which is kind of neat to watch that happen on its own. They just make this one long continuous tube that they cut into like 60 inch.

It probably depends on, you know, which company, but the one they feature, I think we're 60 inch tubes, which would then roll toilet paper around. So you would have basically a, a, a 60 inch roll giant roll of TP. Right. Which looks really neat. And then they glue it, that is definitely glue that they

use to keep it, uh, you know, not tucked, but, uh, affixed. Affixed. Thank you. So it doesn't unravel. Yeah. Like when you, when you rip that toilet paper off at the very beginning, that, that's glue that's holding it together.

Right. And then they have these circular saws that come through and just cut that, that big long roll into several small rolls. That was the coolest part. It was. And then, um, they can be individually wrapped or put in packs of like four or six or a million.

Um, and then you sell them. It's, it is a very cool short video. Yeah, I could watch that stuff forever. So that's, if you're making it, um, from scratch, there's also recycled toilet paper, which isn't quite as popular here in the United States because it's a little coarser. The fibers are a little longer with, with toilet paper, the shorter the fiber, the softer the toilet paper is going to be.

Um, and then they also add some proprietary chemical combinations. Um, that include like extruders that kind of pull the fibers out of like a, a horizontal position and just kind of tough them a little bit. Yeah. Uh, and then they'll put in like emboss and stuff like that too, which kind of gives it a quilted feel. So all of that is to make it softer and to make it, um, more

grabby, grabs the poop right out of your bottom. Yeah. And those fibers is sort of a, a balance there, a delicate balance they're walking because they want it to be soft, but they also want it to be strong enough, uh, because if it's too flimsy, like the junk, you get it, uh, you know, public restrooms and your office probably, uh, you know, that everyone probably has a nightmare story about their

fingers busting through that stuff, which is worst case scenario, uh, when it's clean up time. So they're trying to basically walk that balance of soft and strong. Right. And one way they've done that is to add more, um, layers. Yeah, plies. So apparently it's up to six plies.

I didn't know that. I didn't either. I can't imagine. You could, you couldn't even fold that. Yeah. What does that feel like? I wonder. No, I'm probably a cloud.

You're just wiping your bottom with a cloud. And that in 1942, that started, uh, St. Andrew, uh, St. Andrew's paper mill in England. Right. Invented the two ply. Uh, and I didn't know this. This is another nice little tidbit. Um, until the 1930s, they would market toilet paper as

splinter free. Right. Like they would, they were forced to. Right. Because apparently that was the thing. So, um, that's kind of, that's where I was going with recycled toilet paper. It's kind of the new splinter, splintery toilet paper,

which I mean, compared to the toilet papers of your recycled toilet papers, just completely luxurious. Yeah. But compared to actual like six ply super soft stuff that you can get, it is a little rough. And again, the reason why is the fibers are a little longer. And it follows the same process, but there's a step at the beginning where you take all these different papers and you

put them in and mash them together in some water and you inject some air and it creates foam and the ink in the paper sticks to the foam and the foam floats. So then they just skim the foam off the top and you just remove the ink and then you start the rest of the process making a pulp again. What a world. It is pretty amazing.

All right. Let's take another break and we are going to come back and wrap it up with some more amazing facts about TP. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the

cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of

the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Uh, another thing we forgot to mention before we broke was the, you said that the embossed ones. Right. Like with the, whatever, the scallop shell or whatever you find. Um, they say that another reason they do that is just so they know that that's their toilet paper, just to differentiate themselves from other brands.

Oh, yeah. Never really thought about that. Yeah. But Scott's like, no, that's all right. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that.

Yeah. But Scott's like, no, that's ours. You can see the scallop shell right there. Yeah. Although I don't know what theirs is. Uh, there was definitely scalloping in that, um, how it's made video. Scalloping? Yeah. Uh, all right.

So can we talk about the over or under thing? Yes. So everybody's seen that Simpsons where Margin Homer go to the spa for a day and Child Protective Services ends up coming by and they write a report and they call the Simpsons house a squalid hellhole and point out that the toilet paper is hung in an improper overhand fashion. Oh. Um, so apparently, uh, I'm not sure who wrote that episode weighed in on that,

but they're in the minority because apparently only 30% do the underhang. Yes. I'm a definite overhang person. What about you? I'm an overhanger for sure. Um, apparently, and I remember seeing this online a few years ago, I kind of went around. Uh, there was a, uh, 1891, a guy named Seth Wheeler, uh, of Albany perforated wrapping paper company, submitted a patent for the first perforated toilet paper on a roll

and that showed the, the over position and everyone was like, that's it. It's subtle. This was the first one. This is how it's supposed to be. Right. Which really proved nothing. No, I mean, it's still preference, but there are definite pros and cons to the whole thing. Right.

Yeah. But here's the thing for me. It's a lot of the pros they list as, um, like your little kid or your dog won't be tempted to go yank it if it's, um, in the under position. Right. Presumably because it's hidden. No, because it's, so if you're a little kid or a doggy and you come up, if you, if it's in an overhand fashion, if it's overhanging, you can just come up and start slapping downward

on the toilet paper roll and it will just come right off. But you can do that on the underhang too. No, it just, it just flips around and stays together. No, it doesn't. Yes, it does. You have to pull downward on the toilet paper if it's going from an underhang to get it off the roll. If you slap downward on the front top of the toilet paper roll, that, that it's never going

to come loose. The centrifugal force holds it in place. I think I disagree on this notion. I think that's presuming that you're using the old school built into the wall toilet paper dispenser. No. Because I have the one where it sits on a free standing stand. Okay.

And if I put my hand on the back of that thing and just give it a spin, it will come unspooled. I see what you mean. Yeah. If you approached it that way, then, then all of a sudden now you've changed your perspective. Down is up, up is down. I know, it's all crazy. Yeah, I just, I haven't seen the many of the, they're kind of out of fashion now, the ones that are built into the wall.

Oh, are they? Yeah, you don't see those as much anymore. Do you? No, I have, I have mine coming off of the wall. It's not built into it, but it's, it's, you can only, like you can't get to it from behind. Yeah. The classic ceramic holder built onto the wall. Right.

I don't have that, although my bathroom is mauve. Is it really? No, I wish. It's salmon. I would love to have a color, a color coordinated bathroom. I know you would. That would be sweet. Yeah, we just have those stands where the toilet paper is all stacked up a, up a post.

Yeah. And then in the top, it's got a little L shaped thing and the dude hangs on there. Yeah, we just have one that like drills into the wall. Yeah, I get you. So it's not, okay, but it's just the same thing. I can't get to the backside of it. Yeah, see, I can get to the back of mine. So, okay, but if you are using a kind that's a fix to the wall, then that would make sense.

If you have it underhanged, you can't just slap it free easily, right? Well, that seems like a, it's kind of a minor thing to really champion as a reason. Yeah, especially if you don't have kids or mischievous dogs, right? Yeah, my dog's never done that. And I have the worst dogs. Right. Okay. No, you don't.

Well, one of them is. So, you've got, you've got that and that's, that's for the underhang. For the overhang. Oh, one of the other things about the underhang is that you can't see the unsightly end of the toilet paper roll, right? That's not unsightly. No, I agree. And in fact, there's a whole book out there.

You, my sister, got it for it. It's pretty awesome. It's called a toilet paper origami. And it teaches you all sorts of different ways to like fold the end of a toilet paper roll. Yeah, like a hotel. Yeah. And you can just wake up one day and there it's all nice and folding. You're like, where am I?

The Ritz? I might do that. Oh, no, I'm at my house still. And just surprise Emily and not even tell her. Yeah, I think for sure. And then when she goes, what, it turns around, you're just holding the book in front of you with a huge smile on your face saying it's a new chapter in our life. Yeah.

And she says, I'm pooping. Why are you in the bathroom? Right. Get out. Yes. Yes, Emily. Yes. Speaking of get out, I just saw it last night finally.

What'd you think? It was great. Yeah. Then I got Emily to watch it and she was reticent. She loved it. Yeah. And that's really not her jam either. I just don't see how you could not ultimately leave that movie feeling like pretty great.

Yeah. Pretty happy that you saw it. But there are some pretty scary aspects to it too. Oh, yeah. It was like a good straight up horror movie. Yeah, I called all the twists though. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And she was like, oh, wow. Kind of nailed that one. Did you call the bad guy from Billy Madison being the bad guy? Billy, was he in Billy Madison? Yeah. Eric. I don't know if I saw Billy Madison. Yeah, that's all right.

That's another one of those, like what was I doing not seeing Tommy Boyan, Billy Madison? Yeah. I think that was in my like, ooh, I'm watching art films only days. I got you. I got you. Anyway, sorry. Get out. Highly recommended.

Yeah, agreed. Finally by me. So back to the overhand, underhand thing, which if you can believe it, we're still talking about. There is one thing in overhang, aside from the delightful toilet paper origami you can do. Oh, what? I think definitely says yes, overhang. In an underhang, if you have a toilet roll holder up against the wall, you are inevitably going to brush your knuckles up against the wall of your bathroom to grab the toilet paper. That's something you don't want to do because if you leave the lid of your toilet open when you flush, an aerosolized cyclone of pee and poop goes all over your bathroom, including your bathroom walls.

So if you cannot touch your bathroom walls when you're getting toilet paper, so much the better. Well, that's not a problem for me, but you know that people around here behind your back call you big knuckles. I know. Big hairy knuckles. It's been your nickname for years. I know, I know. I shed it to you when I hear it. I just pretend like I haven't heard.

All right, so let's talk about the future. Let's wind this up with, like you said, Americans apparently like you can pry this gun for my cold dead hand type of thing, except it's toilet paper. Right. Other countries. Well, it's toilet paper too. Right. In one hand. Yeah.

A lot of other countries, especially Europe and Japan, have roundly sided with a bidet. Yeah, which I researched the bidet a little bit because I'm like, how do you even use bidet? I've seen them before. And a true bidet is you'll have a toilet and then next to that you'll have a toilet, but it doesn't have a lid and there's like some faucet knobs and everything in there. And you'll turn it on and like water comes up out of the bottom. So a bidet is actually French for small horse. And the reason they call it that is because you're supposed to straddle the bidet like you would be riding a horse basically, right? Yeah.

And then you turn on the water and adjust it just how you want to the temperature you want. And then you adjust yourself so that it's getting the spots that it needs to get, turn it off, dry off, wash your hands and you're done. Right. And the bidet actually, that bidet I just described, the porcelain fixture that goes next to the toilet was actually Americanized. Like the Americans came up with that version of the bidet and still didn't catch on in America. But Europe, where it had already been invented before, this is like the improved version of it, went nuts for this Americanized version. And it just kind of got lost to time that the Americans were the ones who gave Europe the modern bidet and we just never took it on ourselves. Well, it's definitely, if you have that style, that's definitely an extra expense because you have to have that fully plumbed and you have to have the space for it.

You know, like it's not a cheap thing if you want to get the full deal. No, it's not. But like you have and like I have, you can just basically just use as an extra hose that comes out of your already existing water supply and goes into your toilet seat. Yep. And again, the expense is not utterly outrageous to get one of these. You get a quality one. It's probably going to last a while, especially if you get a Japanese one. Right. But one of the reasons why around the world, bidets are so prevalent, like in Japan, 60% of restrooms have bidets. In Venezuela, I didn't know this, 90% have bidets actually.

One of the reasons why people are behind them so much is because, I know I heard that too, they use way less water than toilet paper does. Oh, like the manufacturing of toilet paper? Yeah. So get this, man. This is a Scientific American blog post I found. An average bidet use is going to take about an eighth of a gallon of water to get yourself where you want to be, right? Which is clean. Yeah. To make a roll of toilet paper, one roll, it takes 37 gallons of water.

What? 1.3 kilowatt hours of electricity. Oh my gosh. One and a half pounds of wood. So in America, we use 36.5 billion rolls of toilet paper every year. That requires 15 million trees. It uses 473 billion, 587 million, 500,000 gallons of water. Wow.

And requires 17.3 terawatts of electricity. Now, I don't know how much a terawatt is, but brother, that sounds like a lot of electricity. Man, that's disheartening. I'm going to get my bidet going. It really is. And it really kind of makes you think like, oh, toilet paper is an environmental catastrophe. So maybe a bidet is preferable. Well, and the other thing, if you use the wet wipes, regardless of their flushability on the package, they are not great for the environment. Like it might not clog up your toilet right there, but they don't break down like toilet paper does.

Right. Did you see that Consumer Reports short video on it? No. Oh, it's like 40 seconds long. And they're like, this is what toilet paper looks like when you flush. And they had just kind of like a little whirlpool going in a beaker of glass, a glass beaker of water. And they dropped in some toilet paper and it immediately broke apart into 500 pieces.

Right. They did that to a wipe, a flushable wipe, no less. And it did nothing. And they're like, well, let's try something harder. They put it into a KitchenAid mixer with water and let it sit for 10 minutes. It didn't break up at all. So they don't really break up or no one really knows how long it takes to degrade, but they certainly don't break up like totally.

They actually grew in size and swelled up and turned it into Nicholas Cage. That's right. So the fact that this stuff isn't good for your sewer system and certainly if you have a septic system is probably reason enough not to always use wipes. Some people, apparently, they say if you have an issue or maybe you have a hemorrhoid or something, then you might want to use a wipe for a little while. Follow your heart. Like there's chemicals in a lot of that stuff.

Yeah. There's this, we found a self article about women using wipes or regular toilet paper because we're creeps and we read articles like that. And I think a gynecologist was saying, I think it was a dermatologist. He said that whenever a patient comes in and says, I got irritation down there, I think it's probably from these wipes I'm using. Most of the time it is because they have aloe in them that someone might be allergic to. They might have antibacterial stuff that somebody could be allergic to.

And he just prescribed using basic cheap toilet paper instead. Yeah. And with kids and babies, when you're doing all that work, you obviously are going to use wipes. But I will buzz market this brand. We use water wipes and it's just water. What? It's just water. That's the only ingredient in the wipe.

It's not like we're anti-fragments in my house anyway, but it doesn't have fragrances or chemicals or anything like that. And then I'll buzz market them all day because it's a good product. Water wipes. Oh, one other thing we'd be remiss in saying that if you are a Muslim, you use something called a lota. And I would strongly encourage everybody to go read a great vice article called a Muslim's Guide to Anal Hygiene that explains lotus, which is basically like carrying your own pot of water

to clean yourself off with or having one next to your toilet. Yeah. Oh, one more thing too. You sent this to me. It is not your imagination. Toilet paper is getting smaller. It's decreased by about a half an inch narrower. Square.

Yeah. Four and a half inches and now it's a half an inch narrower. And shorter. You were saying the same thing. Yeah. And not only that, but they're making... See, this is how they get you. They make it a little bit smaller.

They increase the size of the tube. And so you're actually getting less paper, but they're still charging the same or more per year. Right. And it's actually, yeah, remember we said it's going up by about 2% a year. Yeah. But you're getting less paper. And so here's how they get you.

They are increasing the size of the cardboard tube. They're making it narrower. So you're actually getting less toilet paper now, actual paper for either the same price or more money, because I think you said prices were going up by about a half an inch. About 2% each year. So these companies that make toilet paper are selling, usually paper towels as well and napkins, paper napkins. And apparently those are on the decline.

So they're kind of ripping you off by juicing you with the toilet paper rolls now. Even though they call it like a double roll, it's pretty much what used to be a single roll. So that's my toilet paper soapbox. You want to start a bloody revolution in the streets? Let that word get out. Right? Yeah.

I got nothing else. I got nothing else either, man. Toilet paper has been done. If you want to know more about toilet paper, you can type those words eventually into the search bar at House of Works.com. You can also check it out at Mental Floss. Just go onto the internet. Go watch some Charmin commercials.

Go look at pictures of colored toilet paper from the 70s. You'll love it. Yeah. And since I said the 70s, it's time for Listener Mail. We call this proper pronouns. Hey, guys. In your last episode on standardized patients, you read a Listener Mail at the end,

you weren't sure what pronouns to use for someone. They, them is always a good way to go when you don't know. Maybe it's because I'm 22, or maybe it's because I grew up in Montessori, but I've always known they, them to be plural or singular. I know that's not familiar for some. Josh also suggested the word cisgender or a neutral gender. And I just wanted to give a friendly correction.

Now, the word cisgender refers to someone who is not transgender and identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth. Cis being derived from the Latin prefix cis, meaning on the side of, as opposed to trans, meaning across from. So a neutral term to use now is agender, the prefix A being without.

Though that's just one of many terms being used these days. Thanks for everything you bring to my days. I love how much I learned from you guys. Hope I can return the favor here. Your friendly neighborhood queer person, Chase. Hey, Chase. Thank you for that. That was awesome. Yeah, we certainly try to always use the right terminology.

It's, we drop the ball sometimes. It's hard to keep up sometimes, but we always will take those corrections and try and do it right in the future. Yes. We will never, ever refer to LGBTQIA as alphabet soup. Does people say that? Yeah, man.

It's the worst. What, just like, is it your comment? Just to dismiss it. Yeah. Oh, I hate that, man. It drives me crazy. If you hear somebody saying that, set them straight.

Yeah, tell them Josh's saying it. Josh and Chuck. Josh and Chuck. Oh yeah, I'll get on board. And Jerry for that matter. And Jerry. Got that right, buddy. Jerry was over here waving like,

hey, hey, hey. Don't forget me. She was stomping madly. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Chase did, you can tweet to us at joshumclark or syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant

or slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.