Feel off, tired, moody? You might be missing minerals because 99 % of us are. Concentrate's daily mineral powder helps support energy, mood, and immunity. From the inside out, go to TraceMinerals.com and feel the difference minerals make. Something fun happened just before I set up to record this week. If I haven't ever shared, know, when I record, it's really not just like, well, I'm gonna go plop down in the recording studio because the recording studio is where I regularly plop it.
ah And so this week, I had the astute pleasure of having to take a liquified shaz minutes before getting to do this. And the descriptor... that I used to describe it to my lovely wife who definitely wanted me to give the description was popcorn chicken but poop. Welcome back to Privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded here in my home bathroom. I am your host Hunter Hoover and I love bathrooms uh and I'm very thankful for them.
Quick bathroom check in, went to go to the bathroom at Target, actually on the evening of this recording and wouldn't you know it, I, you know, I... I come strolling into the neighborhood target. First thing I do, right hand, bam, turn the head. Is there any Pokemon cards on the wall? Nope. None there. And so got into the store, got sacked deep up in the store, and then had to go to the bathroom. I could tell it was gonna be a danger wild man going on here.
ah But trotted up to the front while my wife checked out with the stuff that we had procured. One of which is gingerbread Oreos. You gotta get up on these. They're real good and they should take them off of just being seasonal and make them a year round thing because they're phenomenal. I trotted into the Target bathroom and hit up stall number one, kaboom. uh There's just like, somebody had mud-butted the seat. And I'm not, I'm just not in that, I'm not in the space to deal with it.
So I go out and I go to the handicap stall, which I tried to not, but. go the handicapped stall, this joker is plum clogged. And so I just, I didn't go, I just held it. But I let the guy know at the door, was like, hey, um you know, the bathroom needs attention. Not in a mean way, but just like, it doesn't do anybody any services not to let somebody know. If there had been a plunger near the toilet, I'd have plunged it myself. That's all I'm saying.
So I held it all the way until just before recording this. Hence the popcorn chicken. And it's this build up to Halloween. We bought way more Halloween candy this year than normal. Trying to get a good stockpile for events coming up. But I gotta say, yeah, we've done most of the Halloween things. I think I'm ready for it to happen now. Get out of the way. I'm gonna do my best not to too much about Halloween this week. We'll get into more of that.
But you know, sometimes, like, you just get writer's block. Not so much on like what to talk about. I've got a notes page just full of stuff that I can talk about. But like this week was more how to talk about what I wanted to talk about. And it's one of those weeks like because I've had this topic on my list of things that we need to discuss probably since the beginning. of this podcast, I'd say, maybe, I don't know, probably longer than most, if not any other topic.
Because once I found out this little nugget of information, and it is a hard nugget, uh it's been one of those things that has just wedged itself in the back of my brain, so much so that I regularly just, yeah. We've talked in the past about the things that people do while on the toilet. They play on their phones, they read, you know, who knows like what's going on here? People listen to music. There's all sorts of stuff. People spend so much time on the toilet that some have passed away.
We talked about that. People read, use their phones, the greatest hits, do puzzles. And here's the deal. Being on the toilet is generally speaking a private thing. You don't have to have all the other things of life going on with you in those moments. It's just you and your bathroom. The peace and quiet save for the subtle rumblings of your derriere. It's the perfect time to read or play a game or in this week's case, do some writing.
For the sake of this week's discussion, going to call the bathroom the inspiratorium. And we're going to find out what Paul McCartney and countless other rock and pop musicians have to do with the Protestant Reformation. There countless musicians who report that they do some of their best writing when they are seated on or in the quote, good acoustics end quote of the bathroom.
Now, as a person who regularly, like I would say about three times a month, has to interface with my bathroom in an audio medium, Here's the deal, the phrase good acoustics is not like top of what I would say it is. Now it's not terrible. There's worse rooms that you could try to record a podcast in, but good is yeah, there's a lot of empty hard wall space and it provides a fun echo and an editing challenge week to week. Now yeah. Good acoustics not the best way to describe it.
I would say echoey and hopefully sanitary. But for writing, like I said, I was having some trouble figuring out how to approach this episode. I knew what I wanted to talk about. I just didn't know how I wanted to get there. So I plopped down on my phone with the Google Doc opened and just kind of started. typing. uh And before you remind me that I essentially told people to stop using their phones in the bathroom, but okay, I did that. Here's the deal. Just wipe your phone down.
I've changed, okay? I use my phone. It's kinda hard to log my logs if I'm not using my phone. So, I've changed. So, I'm doing research, I'm sitting there. I have probably already voided myself. And I'm doing some typing and it hits me now how to approach this thing. John McCartney of The Beatles, ever heard of him? They're British, which means that they're both apparently sophisticated and smart in some way.
Mr. McCartney is on record as saying that he often finds inspiration for his songs while using his bathroom in Liverpool, England. Now, some of their tracks come from abroad. One, Another Girl, that's the name of the song, was composed by McCartney while using, likely more like finishing up using, or spending time in a bathroom in Tunisia. The song is purported to be about he and that is McCartney and his girlfriend and it was viewed as a filler song on their help album. Now, here's the deal.
People can scream into the void of their car or wherever you listen to this, but I'm not gonna tell you where to scream into the void at. What I can say is I did not label another girl a filler song. The internet and even kind of the Beatles' own words did that. So if that's your favorite song, I'm not trying to pick a fight. I'm just giving you data. I heard this song for the first time when I found out McCartney composed it while being in the johns. So you aren't getting upset with me.
You're getting upset with someone else. Paul isn't the only person though. So they... came up with the lyrics of Another Girl which... there's a theme of writing love song lyrics while taking a deuce and if that's not its own form of poetic irony I don't know what it is. But Paul isn't the only person getting artsy while they're getting fartsy. Katy Perry is reported to have found inspiration while on the bathroom floor. Now, here's the deal.
I'm not gonna tell artists how to be artists, because I'm not the person to be doing that. There's folks who have more artistic ability in their elbow than I have in my whole situation. But, like why are you on the bathroom floor, dang it? Like, there's literally a seat in your bathroom. There uh is a fixture in your bathroom that is designed for you to put your butt on it and sit on it so you don't have to be on the floor.
And I feel like the bathroom floor is maybe one of the floors in a person's house. You would do well to spend, let's say, as few minutes interfacing with as possible. I'm sorry, Miss Perry. Get off the floor. Also, your Pokemon song is okay, and that's all I'm saying. Taylor Swift, it's just okay. Taylor Swift, who I'll admit there is like one song, to my knowledge of hers that I enjoy at all or any, reports that she often takes her notes for her songs.
while sitting in airport and mall bathrooms. Okay, now, to my knowledge, I am not a pop culture aficionado by any stretch of the imagination, nor could I even begin to try to keep up with all the gossip of who's doing what with celebrities. Couldn't care, won't care, refuse to try to care. But I don't think old T. Swizzles has any kids. And so I'm sure she travels a lot.
But like, if you're gonna post up in a bathroom for extended periods of time, writing songs about your ex-boyfriends and how you used to be country, but still want all the attention from the country music industry, do it at home. Like, it's not even an etiquette thing, it's just cleanliness. Do it at home. You don't need to be in a mall bathroom. I get the airport a little bit, but like... Do it at home.
Ed Sheeran, who in my brain for some time and for until recently was synonymous with the guy who played Ron Weasley in Harry Potter. uh Ed Sheeran, which I also every time I read his name think his name is Ed Sheeran. That's okay. Ed Sheeran is reported to write many of his lyrics from hotel bathrooms. And that makes sense. I can buy that one. You're in a hotel, you you just want a different space to work in. I recorded a hotel bath in a hotel bathroom once. It wasn't awful. Acoustics were beef.
But yeah. Mariah Carey says she took down the lyrics for Hero while going to the bathroom, like in the act. And maybe you're hearing these things and thinking, can I roll back to like 13 to 14 minutes ago? to a world where I didn't think Ed Sheeran and Mariah Carey had to take a deuce? Like, can we roll that back? But no, everybody poops, and pooping, it would seem, creates a lot of downtime.
There's a report that Steve Jobs, Mr. Jobs, would sit on the back of his toilet and sit with his quote feet hanging into the water to do his thinking. Now this seems like it almost has to be negative propaganda from a competitor to me. Like the odds of Mr. Jobs doing this seem little to none. If he is like you've got some debased methods of being inspired, dangling into Dengling your toes into your toilet lake? Mr. Jobs, come on now.
Like, my fat guff would be afraid of breaking the back of the toilet sitting on it. Shigeru Miyamoto, Miyamo, run again. Shigeru, shoot. Shigeru Miyamoto, got it first try. The man who in many ways made Nintendo what it is today is said to have a bathtub in his office for private use, which like if the bathtub is inside your private office, it's for private use. He shared that it was during one of his quote soaking sessions. Don't tell us that.
That he came up with the idea that became Donkey Kong, which as we know is really just the thing that became Mario. Rich Berry took down Louie Louie on a strip of toilet paper, Kenny Rogers wrote Lady in the bathroom of a recording studio, and here's the deal. I didn't look very long or hard. Yeah. For these things. It was like page one of some pretty passive Google searching while I was going to the bath. And this is not the topic this week.
I just want to set the stage to tell you there's precedence for these things. And this writing is probably not as popular today, but I know it is more influential. So to set the stage, the year is 1501. A young man is enrolled in the University of Erfurt to study law and philosophy. Four years later, on his way home from visiting his parents, a thunderstorm strikes and a lightning hits nearby. Terrified, the young man calls out to St. Anne to save him.
And if she did, he says he would commit himself to becoming a monk. He was saved, and that's just what he did. He dropped out of school, joined the monastery of St. Augustine's Monastery, in Effort, Erfurt in 1505. Now, as Dr. Anderson would remind us so often, Augustine is a city in Florida and Augustine is the saint. Just shy of two years later, this young man was ordained as a priest and a year after that, he was sent to study in Wittenberg, Germany at Wittenberg University.
He came and went from the monastery and eventually ended up leaving to be a teacher at Wittenberg. He became vicar and gave a number of sermons which he is known for and most, most, what would stand out the most in this is he began to speak out against the Catholic Church's theology and practices. Later, this man would later he would he would be called to the Deity of Verms where he was asked to come and give an account of his teachings.
There he was pronounced a heretic in 1521, only 16 years after he has committed himself to the church in some way. What happened? Scholars argue on the timing, but most will agree the thing that was kind of this big gesture that resulted in all this took place on October 31st, 1517. Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Church of Wittenberg. And in these theses, he outlined the Catholic Church to the Catholic Church their abuse of power and inappropriate practices.
Primarily the concern was being their use of and sale of indulgences. That is, these indulgences were pardoning of sins for good deeds, services, and tithes rendered to the Catholic Church at the time. In his 95 Theses, Martin Luther highlights these in 95 statements, and he nailed those statements to the door of the church at Wittenberg, the town wherein he was a teacher. Now, Halloween has in many ways overshadowed this event. But October 31st is Reformation Day.
This year marks the 504th anniversary of the Reformation. And with Reformation Day right around the corner, and because I Halloween is stupid, I want to talk about this. Here's the other just excellent nugget of information. It's reported that while Martin Luther nailed his theses... Oh, you might be hearing all this, forgive me. You might be hearing all this and going, okay, this isn't church history time, Hunter. This is privy.
We came to talk about bathrooms and the sometimes debased, all the time disgusting things people do in them. So what gives? It's reported that while Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door at Wittenberg, he penned his theses in the bathroom at Effort. Just like McCartney and Bill Gates, the man who sparked the Reformation appears like he did some of his best thinking and, likely, some of his most influential writing while in the bathroom.
In his case, the bathroom of the St. Augustine monastery. This room was likely one of probably a maximum of two rooms that was heated at the time, the other being a common reading and sitting area.
Because here's the deal, if you are writing a 95 theses long document to nail to the church, highlighting all your concerns and challenges to the church, it's probably uncomfortable at best, and hostile at worst, to do that writing seated in a room full of people who, as you have, have kind of committed their whole life to the church. That could be awkward. And so, I believe Martin Luther took to the bathroom to get many of these ideas organized and put down and out of his head.
Now, this might not entirely be the case. I don't know. I'm speculating. But the prior of the monastery, Johannes Lange was a close friend of Luther and it was he who later actually helped distribute and promote many of these teachings and ideas. Many of the friars at the monastery withdrew their association with the Catholic Church and were early adopters of the Reformation. And don't forget, monks poop too. Like, that's important to remember. Monks have bathrooms.
The monastery began to be repurposed as the new Lutheran Protestant Church. It was used as this Lutheran Protestant Church until the mid-1500s when the last of those friars passed away. Then, the city of Erfurt repurposed the church into a school with dormitories and it served as such for nearly 250 years until the early 1800s. In the early to mid-1800s, renovations began to be done on the now 300 to 350 year old Augustan monastery. It was in disrepair and it needed fixed.
It had been used as a city hall and later repurposed as a church in 1854. has been renovated and damaged and renovated and damaged over and over. It has been through both world wars. In fact, the basement served as a public air raid shelter wherein people still lost their lives having taken shelter there, one of which included the pastor of the church at the time. A seminary took residence in the building in the 1960s and would remain for about 30 years.
Women of the Evangelical Lutheran movement used the space until 2011 and it wasn't commissioned to be added to the Luther sites of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites until 2016. Just one year before the 500th anniversary of Luther, nailing his theses to the door of Wittenberg. The theses he wrote while taking feces. Cause it rhymes. I wanted to shave my head for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.
I wanted to shave my head into a monk's halo, but for lack of a better way to talk about it, I was quote, not permitted to do so. Just like everybody else, Mariah Carey, Shigeru Miyamoto, Bill Gates, T. Swizzles, Ed Sheeran, Martin Luther Poop. And I like to think maybe it was after a session of uh rigorous voiding he penned his very influential document.
If you have interacted with Christianity at any point in your life, you likely, if not definitely, have been influenced by this situation and specifically by this document in some way. A document at least concocted. in the bathroom of an Augustan monastery. Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses, where most folks drop feces. And that is a rhyme that I have had on my mind for some time. He was reforming religions.
And when I was in college, all the guys that were doing there from the toilet were just playing video games. We had these guys who would set up their laptops on their laps. as they played Call of Duty or whatever the heck they were playing from the bathroom. And this guy's over here changing the face of Christianity. It's all in how you spend your time. Remember one guy who would play this Clash of Clans weird alien game in the bathroom? It's not a lot I guess, but it is something.
This has been another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for joining us. uh Happy Reformation Day and Happy Halloween. It's right around the corner. Be safe. Celebrate how you want to and need to. And I hope you have uh a very good season. m As always, follow us on social media. We're at privycast trying to post some highlights and some more images over there. so, yeah, connect with us there. Share those social media posts. And tell your friends.
Use that as a way to share the show with people that uh don't know about it. It's good way to get the thing out there. Email us privycast at gmail.com. Give us a rating or review. uh iTunes allows you to rate and review. The five star option is our preferred. And we'll try to read some of those reviews and emails on the podcast as we continue to get those in. And it just helps folks find the show.
As always, we'd like to thank Kevin McLeod for the use of Barroom Ballet as our intro and outro music this week. You can find Kevin's music at in Competech.com. Thanks Kevin. This has been another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for joining us. And now, as always, don't forget to flush. You're doing all the right things like eating clean and staying active, but nearly all of us are still missing a key piece, minerals.
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