Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Mariko Aoki Phenomenon

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

Ten percent of people – in Japan at least – get the urge to poop when they visit bookstores. But it wasn’t until a courageous woman stepped up and became the voice of the phenomenon now named after her that they realized they were part of a movement.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Dave, My Abuelita First on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck and Ben's here too, sitting in for Dave. And this is Short Stuff, the new reality. That's right. I'm glad that you found this because I have experienced

this in a slightly different way and I never knew that it was a thing and now I do. Yeah, I had no idea it was a thing either. I don't remember where I heard of this. I'm guessing Yumi, it just seems like the kind of thing she would have sent me, but we have to shout out McGill University, IFL Science and Science Times for helping round this idea out or this story

out. But we're talking about something called the Moriko Aoki phenomenon, which is a very specific phenomenon. It's where some people go into a bookstore and are overwhelmed with the urge, sometimes an urgent urge, to poop in that bookstore. Not like in the aisles of the bookstore, but to go to the bathroom in the bookstore to poop. Yeah. So here's my story.

Oh, you do? In high school, still one of my very best friends, Jim Issa, you know Jim, Jim and I had an afternoon radio show, which was over the intercom of the school. And it was basically instead of the principal reading the daily announcements we asked if we could take it over and round it out with jokes and top 10 list and what-have-you so we had WRHS was our dumb little show.

So wait this was officially sanctioned it wasn't pirate school radio? No no no it was it was us in the principal's office like on the microphone. That's cute. Every day I mean that was looking back it was the start of stuff you should know, which is funny. Oh, wow. But we did, when we would meet to write the show every day, we would meet in the empty

auditorium where they did school plays. And every time we were in there, both of us had to poop. And we used to laugh about it and talk about it. And now that I see sort of the some of the similarities between that empty quiet auditorium and a sort of a large maybe cavernous quiet bookstore, I now know this is a thing. I was not expecting a personal anecdote from you for this one. Yep. I mean, this goes back to the 80s, Jim and I, he'll laugh when I tell him this is an actual thing. Well, that's appropriate because the Mariko Aoki this goes back to the 80s, Jim and I, he'll laugh when I tell him this is an actual thing. Well that's appropriate because the Moriko Aoki phenomenon goes back to the 80s too. Alright, yeah, so we should probably talk about where it came from, right?

Yeah, it came from a Japanese woman named Moriko Aoki. That's right, and she sent a letter to a magazine in, what, 1985, in the issue of Han Nozashi. Is that right? Close enough. How would you say it? Han Nozashi. Isn't that what I said? Yeah. Okay. And she wrote a letter to the, you know, like a letter to the editor kind of thing

where she said, I'm not sure why, but since about two or three years ago, whenever I go to a bookstore, I'm struck by an urge to move my bowels. They printed it, just the letter to the editor, and they got so many responses from people saying, me too, that the next issue at a 14-page feature article on the headline was, the phenomenon currently shaking the bookstore industry. Yeah. And it became like such a thing that it took her name, Mariko Aoki, even though there has been, people have turned up mentions of this kind of thing as far back as the 50s.

I could not find any original source material of that, but I think I'm willing to take IFL Science on their word, if they were the one where I got it from. But in Japan, it kicked off like a trend, right? So there were kind of like game show informal studies of what exactly was going on. And they did turn up some data, not exactly like, you know, peer review worthy data, but they found that about 10% of the respondents in Japan feel the urge to poop when they go into the bookstore. So the Marioki-Aoki phenomenon

covers about 10% of the population. I'm squarely in the 90%. You're apparently in the 10%. Well, I mean, I haven't tested it with a bookstore, but there are similarities between, for us it always felt like, like Jim's theory was that it was a bookstore, but there are similarities between, for us it always felt like, like Jim's theory was that it was a big, being alone in a very big large empty quiet space.

Like a colon. I guess so. But you know, a bookstore isn't empty, but it's not like going to a concert. It is generally pretty quiet. So and there's like some, there's a privacy aspect I think to a bookstore. I mean I'm thinking larger bookstores not like you know the tiny mom and pops which I love. Yeah. So I don't know that was his theory at least so I guess I'm in that 10%. I'll go to a bookstore

and I'll let you know. We'll report back for sure. As a matter of fact we should live stream it on stuff you should know like one of our social media. It's true. Oh my God. You think I'll be right back. Should we take a break? Yeah.

All right. We'll come back and talk about some of the theories right after this. If you are down to explore the magic of real life, join me on my podcast, Angie Martinez IRL, where I candidly speak to icons like Alicia Keys, Killer Mike, Janelle Monae, Kelly Clarkson and Kim Kardashian about the lessons in their real lives. Check out my interview with Super Bowl halftime show performer, songwriter, dancer and the newly married Usher about relationships. Having a partner who will be honest with you,

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Stuff you should know. Chuck, I think I speak on behalf of at least half of the people listening. Would you and Jim go poop at the same time or would you like take turns? I don't remember that part. I don't even know if we went and pooped or if it was just like, oh, I got to poop. I see. I see. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, anyway, we're back. Yeah, we're back. There is no like serious science probably about this, but there are a lot of

pretty interesting theories. And one of them is something that we've talked about. In fact, we did a whole show sort of, didn't we, about the gut-brain axis? We did. We did something about like when you approach the front door of your house. That's the brain-bladder connection. Oh, okay. I think this is kind of similar though, right? No, totally. I think the second theory, the smell of books,

which we'll get to is more brain bladder connection, but the gut brain access would have come up in, I guess like, I can't remember what it was, but we talked about, like a whole episode about how there's neurons in your gut and like your brain and your gut, your central nervous system and your enteric nervous system communicate to one another.

And so that's probably the likeliest explanation for why somebody would feel the urge to poop in a bookstore. Yeah. There are some other, you know, to me, I think it's all of these things added together. There is that. There is also the sort of connection of like people, like reading on the toilet has long been something that people do. People are on their phones now, but in the old days you had that magazine rack, I still got a magazine rack next to my toilet. And we'll read a good magazine so that connection, maybe that subconscious thing of when you're among those books, your sphincter just unlocks just a little bit maybe? Yeah, for sure. So, whatever it was, whatever, if it's like the smell of books that's kind of usually put forth,

whatever it is that you associate with the bookstore and then you poop in the bookstore, that's where your gut brain access would take over and you develop this association. So when you walk into the bookstore, your brain goes, hey, gut, we're in a bookstore, you better get busy pooping. Yeah, makes sense. Another one, of course, is a bookstore. Oftentimes, there's a lot of squatting. Yeah.

If you want to book down on that bottom shelf, or you want to peruse for a little while on the bottom, you're going to be squatting down. And humankind didn't evolve to poop like we poop now. You're supposed to squat. And if you've ever been in that dead squat position with your butt just barely above the ground and all your weight, like everything lines up in such a way

to where your body goes, oh, it's go time. It's time. Yeah. And it goes, boop,'s go time. It's time. Yeah. And it goes, brrr. So you're in there already. It's quiet. You got the smell of the books. You're squatting.

Yeah, how could anybody not poop? You may have a coffee. That's a big one. A lot of people say, yeah, people drink coffee in bookstores and coffee makes you poop. Yeah, so I think it's like all this stuff sort of adds up to, oh my god, I'm in a bookstore, I've got to go. There's another theory that isn't specifically identified as from Japan,

but if it's not from Japan, I will eat my hat. And I don't even have a hat. I'll go buy a hat to eat it, if this isn't a Japanese theory. Because life is stressful, when you walk into a bookstore, the bookstore is very calm, and so you feel relieved, and so you want to relieve yourself. I don't think I've ever seen you wear a hat. I've got a, like a mudhens hat that, man, my hair has to be pretty messed up for me to wear it,

but that's my hat. I don't think I've ever seen you in a hat in 16 years. Well, that's by design. I've seen you in shorts maybe twice. That was by design as well. What did you think? You got some nice legs. Thanks. And then of course you have to think about, or at least consider, the frequency illusion aspect of this.

It's a type of confirmation bias. Whereas once you know this is a thing, you start to just, it's in your head all of a sudden and you're making that connection where it previously didn't exist. So you know, you have to kind of consider that for sure. Yeah, that's what skeptics say. They say there's no such thing as the Marioke-Aoki phenomenon that actually it's, people just have heard of it and maybe she had some sort of Pavlovian training where like the smell of books made her wanna poop,

but just talking about it, it getting published, it becoming a thing in Japan then traveling around the world, people started saying like, oh yeah, I've pooped in bookstores too. So then anytime they poop in a bookstore from that point on, they notice it, it confirms their theory that they're susceptible to the Marioke-Aoki phenomenon, and it just becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but at the same time, they're also

ignoring all the times they go to the bookstore and don't poop, or they go to Petco and have to poop, which you don't want to do? Although you could just poop in the aisle and blame it on a dog. But still, that's part of the frequency illusion. Yeah, for sure. So I'm curious to hear from people, two types of people, people that have experienced this, whether in a bookstore or like my situation,

like a large empty room, or bookstore employees who are like, dude, you don't know know the nightmare that we live. Yeah. I can imagine. You know. Yeah. I hadn't thought about that. Man, it's better thought for the bookstore employees, huh? Wasn't there a Seinfeld where

George had to go to the bathroom in a bookstore? Yeah. He found the pastoral scenes very conducive too, and then Elaine cuts him off. He had to buy a book because he took it in the bathroom. That's funny, there you have it. A book of impressionist paintings. If you, well no, this is not a regular Stuff You Should Know episode, even though in this episode

we found out the origin of Stuff You Should Know. Even I didn't know the origin story, and since I'm so hyped, I think that can only mean that short stuff is out Stuff you should know is a production of I heart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows