>> Hunter Hoover: In the use in the area of ritual purification, it's just not. It's just not as practical. And you don't have to expose your digit to get ritually pure. You can get ritually pure at home and then go do your worship and then go back. Welcome back to privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded from my home bathroom. I'm your host, Hunter Hoover, and I love bathrooms. Welcome. Uh, back, everyone.
Um, if you didn't notice, and, uh, I should just let you know, there's this thing that's happening in podcasts, and that is, for some reason, they took this thing that is primarily a video medium or an audio medium, and they decided that it would be really cool and it would be super rad if we started to add video to it. And what that means is, for folks like me, whose ugly mug is trying to kind of stay off the Internet more often than not, um, now
you have. Now you. If you want, you can stare at me in my scraggy situation, um, as I sit here in my home bathroom. Here's. Here's the toilet paper. Like, here we are. We're here. Um, and this is it. This is where I record. I've recorded probably 90% of my episodes right here. That. There she is. Old blue right back there. So this is venture into video. Uh, and I don't know, this is probably a bad idea. Uh, and if it's a bad idea,
we won't keep doing it. But, um, pretty much if you're hearing this and you're in an audio format, if you are interested in video, what I need you to do is go over to YouTube and subscribe. That'll let me know that you are even at all interested in having video in this. And if you're not, that's totally fine. The audio will always be there. This episode will be in your podcatcher, just like every episode has been.
But if you want to see me rant in the ravings of a madman into this microphone, and if you want to watch that, that's fine. Um, go over to YouTube, subscribe. Leave us a comment on this video saying, I like the video. Say something. Um, you can say, hey, your beard is. It needs trimmed. Yes. It's not happening. 2024 is the year of no trim. What? Little weather update for you. It's wet. Uh, or at least it was. It was wet, and it was wet much into the month of April. April showers bring allergy
flowers. Um, and the allergies are flying. Uh, you hear it in my voice. I've got the seasonal rasp going on that's partially, um, from. Oh, you guys get to see all the nasty creaks and. Yep. Um, all the burps and all the weird things that I edit out. If you're listening to audio, it's right here on the. On the video, and I do not have editing time to do that. So here, video folks. Welcome. You're getting total uncut. Maybe I'll cut stuff if it's really randy. But, yeah, allergies are
flying. Um, at the. At the point of this episode's release, spring break was a whole month ago. I know that's hard to believe. I'm two fire pits deep for the year, so that's cool. Uh, and at the point of this record, which when, again, like, almost three weeks to a month ago, um, I have been eating some leftover pulled pork Mac that my wife and sister in law made when my sister in law was visiting us during spring break. And I'm here to tell you it's delicious.
But there is almost a venn diagram, complete circle. Over days, I eat x number of days slash weeks old pulled pork and Mac and cheese, and days that my bathrooming situation gets wild and crazy. So, um, it's very good. It is now all gone at the point of this episode's recording and release. Um, but there is. Yeah, I was snoshing on that, and my coworkers at the high school, they have to bear with me because
the way it was frozen was just in ziploc bags. And so I'll pull out this Ziploc bag, and it will truly be, like, me emptying, like, just squeezing this Ziploc bag into my little bowl to put into the microwave. And just in the middle of the classroom, just squeezing out a big, just brown and yellow pulled pork and Mac log from this frozen ziploc bag. It's truly delightful. And, um, I regret nothing. And I ate it all. It has been eaten in its entirety.
Now I'm on to our very, very dated out, uh, frozen, uh, pizza, and then I will move on to tackle our olive garden buildups. Uh, I'm a creature of the frozen leftovers. That's. There's the allergy nose. That's what you need to know. I also heard this theory the other day, and I want to, you know, you shout out at me if think there's anything to this, but the theory posits that the warmer the fart, the more stinky the fart is gonna be. Now, it's a thought. Um, but it really made me wonder, like,
why? Why would a warmer fart be a stinkier fart? And from what I can tell, the hotter the fart, the less gas you have. It is as if, like, when you have a lot of volume of gas, you're pushing out a lot of air really quickly. Um, and so more gas means faster, but where if you have less gas, it's not moving as quick, and so it's actually warmer. They also say that if you're wearing tight pants, it's going to get trapped. So, like, if you get the short pants will give you the hot farts.
That's. That's what you need to know. Um, but we're not here to talk about allergy noses. And we're not here to talk about three week old pulled pork and Mac. And we're not here to talk about hot pants and your short farts. Either way, um, we're here to talk about an environment where stanky farts are gonna be a huge party foul. I should tell you, this episode has lived in my, uh, notes as the prompt titled Eastern Bathing
rituals for some time. And when you look that up, there is primarily one type and one thing that consistently pops up when you google eastern bathing rituals. And we're going to discuss that one thing this week on privy. We're talking about hamams. Whose mom. No. Uh-huh. Hamams are also known as turkish baths, and they are a type of steam bath associated with the islamic world. Oh, yeah, really cranking that one on the attuned audio listener. For those who are joining us
via video. Hi, um, I normally edit the slurping out. You don't get that audio, I'll get rid of it for you. But hammams are normally, uh, associated with the islamic world. And while these turkish baths have been adapted from the islamic faith for use outside that culture, their origin was tied specifically to islamic purification rituals. These rituals, mandated and called for in their faith, are commonly done to prepare oneself for prayer.
In some traditions of Islam, it is done to prepare for the reading, or at the strictest, the holding of a Quran. So you'll have to do this in order to get ready to, like, hold or read the Quran in their faith. For those who don't know, um, I'm a youth pastor, and when you hear the idea that you have to ritually prepare yourself to read, let alone hold your scripture, it gives
me pause. Not because I don't have regard for the Bible, um, but I already spend enough time encouraging people, and including young people, just to read the Bible. The fact that they'd have to shower first is somewhat challenging. They should be showering anyway. Um, christians shower yourselves. Uh, but. Oh, well, we're not here we are. But the ritual cleansing spas have their ties originally to none other than the roman empire. Guys, we made it. There's your roman empire.
Brain wipe for the day. We've talked before about, uh, ancient roman public baths and bathrooms, uh, but they also had public baths. These were often called thermaze, named for the warm water and the steaming effect that they would produce. These baths were filled by nearby water supplies such as rivers or through the newly targeted technology of aqueducts. I'm going to be honest, for the life of me,
I cannot figure out how aqueducts work. I've read it, I've looked at the pictures, I've watched a video. I cannot figure it out. I don't understand it. Um, this water is then heated with fire and channeled into the bathing room called the caldarium. The term thermae is originally used for hot springs, but then begins to be used to refer to these man made baths. These were often used and reused for the coming 500 years, but it was in the 500 600s where things took a turn.
In ad 570, Muhammad was born m to human parents in Mecca one day. It is believed that Muhammad received at the age of 40 a message from the angel Gabriel and three years later went out as Allah's prophet, preaching, God is one and they ought to submit to Islam. And one aspect of his time as prophet was the conquest of much of the arab Middle east and parts of Europe and Asia. These were carried out by Muhammad's successors. These conquests were also carried out by Muhammad's successors.
As they expanded in this way, often through outright bloodshed in the name of Allah, they destroyed and updated many aspects of the cultures they overthrew. One of these areas was that of the roman and byzantine locations where they had these roman bathhouses. And as families and as muslim communities begin to get set up in these areas, they begin to update and repurpose existing infrastructure to meet their ritualistic bathing needs.
As was noted, the muslim people must perform ablutions, that is, their ritual bathing and cleansing before prayer. This often requires a full bath. These bathhouses then are, uh, repurposed to fit the methods, using more water and steam to allow for ritual purification. Now there is some disagreement about whether they really use this for the purpose of cleansing. Some argue that the public nature of the bathhouse would not allow someone to get as ritually pure as, as I like to say it
up in there. To really get oneself ritually clean. Now, I don't know how, I don't know how. Lost in the sauce. You gotta get to be considered rich, clean enough to worship. We, um, differ fundamentally on our belief on that to go in peace. Um, but it cannot be denied that as Islam spread outside of these territories, they began to build their own public bathhouses.
New construction of these structures in the newly conquered muslim world first began in the regions of Syria and Jordan in the late six and seven hundredths. These were usually part of like, desert castles built for princes and other ruling, uh, parties. And once the trend caught on, they begin to build more and more of these islamic bathhouses, or hammams, all across the muslim conquered world. The biggest change that, that they made to. So they took the existing roman bathhouse, the
public one, where everybody goes in and they got. They fiddly bit flinging around because it's like both public and you're bathing. I don't know. I don't get the draw to baths as it is. I've spoken at length about how I think baths are ridiculous. Um, I don't get the draw, but also to have my digit flapping around where people. I just. That seems. I don't get it. Like, sort yourself out. Uh, but anyway, whatever,
I digress. Um, but the trend caught on and they begin to build these, but as they do, they start to repurpose and they begin to make adjustments to the. The already existing roman bathhouses. Um, one of the key things that happens, and this is colonization, by the way. We don't like to use that word because, oh, ah, only white people. But like, whatever, just, it's,
that's what this is. They take the old and are repurposing and rethrowing away the stuff that they don't want and keeping the things they do and retconning it to fit the culture. It's what every culture does when they are in control in an area. It happens. Is it always good? No. Does it happen? And is it sometimes necessary? Yeah, it, like, anytime you have the mixing of cultures, something is going to have to give. Here we are. But the biggest changes
underwent was the doing away with the cold. Room for the roman baths. The roman bathhouses had a room with cold water. Think like a big swimming pool. That's like, that's the closest thing I can think of. It's like a swimming pool. Swimming, uh, pools are cold. They're really not that cold. What people don't get is that swimming pools are not cold. They're just not warm. And the air is hot when you
use them. So, like, swimming pools, they're, they're usually like, I want to say, like 70 something degrees, maybe. And that's not terribly, uh, warm. It's probably warmer than that, but it feels very cool because of how warm it is outside. And when we are in water, it's easy to get cold anyway. But they did away with these cold baths. Uh, and I don't know if you know about, like, the ice bath bros. There's these guys, and I guess there's women, too, but I think it's one of those, like, I gotta
prove something type things. And I'm sure there's health benefits, but, like, whatever. Maybe one day we'll do an episode on Ice baths and I'll locate myself. Right around the corner, right over there, is our bath. And maybe I'll, maybe I'll ice bath myself and we'll get video and it'll just, it'll be bad. And we won't just hate the fact that we did it. You don't want that. Um, it'll be a lot of me going like that as I freeze myself. But there's these, like, ice bath bros. It's like
hammer bros, but like, ice bath bros. Do you know what I'm saying? Um, but essentially they're these, like, gluttons for punishment who get, like, a feeding trough, and then they fill it with ice. They go down to, like, the 711 and they're like, hey, I need, like, 40 bags of ice. Dang, you must be having a party. No, I just need to fill an ice trough because I'm trying to see how much I can just shrank everything, really frozone my business.
But they get a feeding trough and they fill it with ice, and then they fill it with water, and then they sit in it and they're like, you know, they're freezing and they do this for health benefits. Now, I'm sure there are health benefits to doing this, m but here's the deal. Hot showers are really good. Like, really good. I don't know. Hot showers are just really good. And, um, the Muslims killed the cold baths in these bathhouses, but they added and maintained the hot rims.
Second, they used running water in some type for better purification. While the baths existed, the, they served less for the purpose of purity and more for health benefits. So pretty much what this did is, like, if you sit in your own filth, you have to get clean before you do. So otherwise you're not ritually pure, and so they had to get clean, but then they could sit in the bath for the health benefits of the bath.
It should also be noted that for three centuries, women were not usually visiting these, but eventually many of them have updated to have separate hours for men and women. And that was pretty commonplace by, like, the 10th century. You find that pretty established by the 10th century. As such, in the muslim world, they have often been criticized for their treatment and view of women seemingly as lesser. And I'm not muslim, but it is a perception, um, by many.
These bathhouses and the times women could spend there away from their husbands, ah, probably away from children, um, were some of the only social time they had with other women in their community. If you've ever been to, like, a western spa, kind of. Even when spas and saunas are depicted in pop culture, it is depicted as if the gossip is running amok. And you can see where this
idea derives from. In the islamic use of hammams, there was often a small fee or a tax to be paid to use these facilities, paying to be ritually pure. That's interesting to
me. But its money was then used for the upkeep of other islamic structures after the year 1000, further conquering and mixing of groups, and had a huge impact on the cultures of both the muslim people, but as well as the people they were interacting with and conquering and intermixing with, some which emerged were eastern, roman, islamic, Persian, and the Turks. And they all had a further influence
on each other. The Ottomans, the Ottoman Turks, also became patrons of and users of the hammams that began to be popping up in the region. The Ottoman Turks, however, often focused more on the social aspect of hammams, but they began to be built all across the Ottoman Empire. And these are where we begin to be called the turkish baths. As time went on, turkish baths, or hammams, began to be more intricate and
larger. Hammams continued to be used as a key part in muslim culture, a center part of social life, and in many instances, the islamic ritual purification and healing described in the islamic faith. However, there was a marked decline in the use of and the building of these structures in the beginning of the 19 hundreds when we introduced indoor money. As the use of hamams declined, their use has shifted to being repurposed for other buildings, turned into pools, used for museum.
It's kind of ironic, like, I make this joke, and I think I've made this joke on the show before, but spirit, Halloween, it always, like, it truly is a spirit. And what I mean by that is, if you have a nondescript building in your town and you don't really know what that building houses, it's very likely that one day that building will house a spirit Halloween. Spirit Halloween sets up shop in the husk of nowhere is safe. And that's kind of like what is happening with these hamams.
Like, they. They took and they built these things, and they modeled them after these bathhouses in many ways, but now they have become pools and other community spots. It's ironic. Many of these serve as tourist spots, especially those that are still in operation. Some of them are still used as hamams, and they're like, to draw people in to use the facilities. Some of these are used in the Middle east for ritualistic cleansing. As is noted with the advent of modern indoor plumbing, there are
more private ways to clean yourself. It's fallen off in the use in the area of ritual purification. It's just not. It's just not as practical. And you don't have to expose your digit to get ritually pure. You can get ritually pure at home and then go do your worship and then go back. It has also been argued by some adherents to Islam that women who use the hammams are engaging in promiscuous behavior, even though
they attend the hammam with other women. The fact of uncovering more than their face and eyes at times and in public, because, remember, these are public bathhouses, is viewed as taboo amongst some islamic groups. As such, public bathing in a public bathing house for women is viewed with much scrutiny by some. In other situations, it has been insinuated that women who visit the hammam too often or more frequently do so as they are in need of ritual cleansing after sexual activity. Yo. In
other words, the more trip to the. The public bathhouse and bathing sauna, the more action you might be getting. It's a theory. How embarrassing. Uh, or not. I don't know. It maybe. I think I have something broken with me. Um, I wouldn't want people to know that I was. I guess it's like you don't kiss and tell. Like, you don't. You don't play hide the bacon and talk about it. Like, you just, like, sort yourself out, you know? I'm saying, like, just chill
it. Chill out. Maybe it should have taken a lap in the cold bath before you got in there. Oh, wait. They removed it. Good one. I'm, um. The more. Today, there are many hamams in the west and throughout the world that use similar practices manner much akin to attending a spa. In fact, most will take similar approaches, but are modeled more after the turkish bathhouses which spread in the victorian era and were similar.
These spread due to their view as being, um, somewhat more sophisticated in nature. The biggest addition, though, is the addition of steam in vapor rooms. Turkish baths were believed to have healing benefits that spread widely as a public place to relax and heal. These led into the modern day spas of the west. I might have you asking, what really is the difference in between a hamam and a spa? Other than name like, what really is the difference? I'm glad you asked.
The first main difference between a hamam m and a spa is it is going. A hamam is going to be relatively dry or, sorry. A spa is going to be relatively dry in comparison to a hamam. What's going. That's going to sound weird to hear. If you've ever been to a spa, it's going to be weird to hear because it's still very damp. Like, it's moist is hick. And here's what we got going on. Hamam's humidity in the room is usually around a hundred. Um, it's Florida on
a rainy day. Everything's just wet. You know what I'm saying? Everybody's just wet. Everybody's just soaking wet. It's an absolute swamp in this guy. 100% humidity. I would have some. I would have swamp cracks so hard you can, it would be like Shrek's backyard in my backside. But this high humidity allows them to keep the rooms a bit cooler. They're at about 45 degrees celsius now. I must admit, I, uh, I don't understand the world. So I have to look up
what 45 degrees celsius is in fahrenheit. It's 113. Um, that's still freaking hot as heck. No, thanks. Uh, that's hot. Likewise, the amount of water and the high humidity help focus on the cleansing aspects in the hamam process that are important to its past. Saunas are usually sitting more at the 70 to 90 degrees celsius. That's almost twice the temperature. Yo, that's like 200 degree room. Forget about it. About ten to 20% humidity. It's intended to make you sweat out your pores.
So while saunas might not be dry on a basic definition of the word of being dry, they are dry. It's comparably dry. When you start looking at humidity in comparison to hamams, the second biggest difference is the length of stay. Saunas operate more on a schedule where you make an appointment, you come in for your session, and you really can only handle, you know, 1520 minutes of the 215 degree flip and heat room. Bad news. I have no desire to be a part of
that. Um, but hamams, at least in how they're designed, are made for you to come in, take your time, spend as long as you want, talk, hang out, socialize, relax, feel rejuvenated, as long as you do it within business hours. Um, and the final key, think of the hamam, um, like a gym. Like a 24 hours gym that you pay access to. Ten minutes or 5 hours you're paying to get in there and access that. It's more about the process. The final key difference is the aesthetic.
Spas usually differ in appearance, but are, uh, often found to have that comfy, kind of outdoorsy, cabin like, shiplap thing going on. White women love ship lap. I didn't even know what Shiplap was until I was told that it was neat. Just, I feel like there was a moment where everything was in shiplap. Like, when you went into hobby lobby, everything was like, fake shiplap and, like, cutesy flowers. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. Hamams, however, have a more palace y vibe. It's like a palace.
And I have to admit, I thought about going to a hammam in preparation for this episode. But the problem is, the closest one is in our beloved Portland, Oregon. The sheer annoyance of having to go to Portland offsets any perceived relaxation of the process of going to a hamam. Also, I don't like being nude or half nude. And this is the other thing about a hamam, is sometimes somebody helps, quote, scrub you down. I don't want anyone exfoliating me. Uh, go exfoliate yourself. I don't exfoliate.
Um, no, just let the man. If two men are in a room and one is naked or both are naked, there's no exfoliating. That should be happening. 0% should be happening. No, thanks. But you can consider this a brief stop off at. At, uh, the history of hamams and the history of eastern bathing rituals. And that brings us to the end of another episode of privy. Thank you all for joining us. Um, as always, we'd love for you to follow us on social media. We're
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reminding you to keep pooping in the free world. Because that free world has not always been free, and it may not always be free. Um, and as a reminder that there are some who still do not have clean water, and pursuing clean water for all. As always, we want to thank Kevin McCloud and Poddington bear for the use of their music this week. You can check their stuff out in the thing below. Uh, send us an email privycastmail.com. We'd love to hear
from you. If you have episodes, suggestions, ideas, tell me what you think about the video. I don't know if this is going to last. I went for it. This might be one of those weird things where the video pops up on YouTube and it's one and then it never exists again. I don't know. We'll see. Um, but I know that podcasts are heading this way. This brings us to the end of another episode of privy. Thank you guys so much for joining us. Uh, own your stank.
Keep hooping in the free world. Breathe more, push less. And now, as always, you guys get to see how I do this. Don't forget to flush.