>> Hunter Hoover: I would argue if your plumber shows up to stop leaks and they explode the entire bathroom in your face. Not the best plumbers. 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. Um, welcome back, everybody. And if you're listening to this on the day it's released, yesterday, you celebrated American
Independence day. America. Freedom. Dig it, man. Every year when I was growing up, independence day, 4 July, as it is colloquially called, because it happens on July 4. It was kind of like a holiday that, like. It was fun. It was fun, mostly because we got to light chinese explosives off into the sky. But as I get older, um, and as I live in this country, um, and more importantly, as I get to watch my kids grow up in this country, the value of American Independence day becomes more and more
evident as time goes on. I want to say at the top of this episode, uh, usually I say this at the end, but, uh, we normally. For ratings and reviews left for the show, we give a dollar to wounded warriors in living water. Um, we're going to bump that up to a couple for the month of July. Um, we're going to be given, uh, we'll say we'll do $3 for ratings left. Um, we'll go five for written reviews. Um, and that's just as a thank you to leaving that
kindness on the show. And we want to pay that back to the men and women, uh, who served in this country to give us these freedoms that we celebrated yesterday at the release of this episode, um, as well as realizing that there's parts of this world that are not as free as ours, um, in many of those parts of the world, they do not have access to clean water. And, um, so we're going to give a little back to work towards that as well. But american independence is a pretty
neat thing. Uh, freedom. And I think there is this trend in the zeitgeist of the culture today where people are supposed to almost feel ashamed of their american ness. And if you feel that way, I'm sorry. Uh, you shouldn't. No country is perfect. No country's history is perfect. But I think if we are, if we are being honest, the things that we have stood for as a country, whether or not they've been right, the things freedom, liberty, truth, justice,
they're value. The principles that undergird our country are good. Just got to find them again. We're going to recap some of the highlights in the past on privy on the 4 July. We've shared some stories about, uh, uh, american independence and bathrooms. Some of those include the patriotic privy pits, wherein, as they search through the bathroom pits, where they dump their skeet. More on those in a little
bit. Um, they found all sorts of interesting things related to american history that gave us information about historical, uh, events and historical figures in our country. Last year, we talked about Wendy, Ben, uh, and how Ben Franklin, he's a big fan of farting. Um, and he was a big fan of sleeping in the buff. He's a big fan of right when he wakes up, just hanging little Ben right out in the window to let that guy aerate. And so there's a lot of fun, interesting bathroom things going on in
american. It's an election year here in the states. Um, and we're already seeing the political pissing match begin. It's awful. Well, welcome to our hell. Uh, but it is what it is. We have to fight a little bit before we can vote. And what's interesting is this building, the White House. It has housed members of both parties. It is this commonplace, no matter which side you're on, that whoever wins, you get the spot.
But that historical building, this really icon of american landscape, has gone through a lot of change. Now, the keen eye will note that I am still supping on last episode, Seltzer didn't finish it quite in time. Don't worry. I will have my mid episode grip and rip for you. Nonetheless. It wouldn't be. It wouldn't be an American celebrating 4 July patriotic episode without it. But we need to get into some White House history. Where did this building come from? Our first
president. Say it with me, kids. George Washington commissioned and selected the plot of land for the president's residence. It rhymes. Um, the original. It wasn't called this, but the original White House. And he commissioned that land in 1791. We'd been a country for 25 years. Might as well give the president a place to live. James Hobanous was selected as the architect. And this original White House was built before the turn
of the. Of the 18 hundreds. The first president to live in the White House was John Adams, though when he moved in, it was unfinished. It should also be noted this White House was not at all like the one we know today. It was black. No, I'm just kidding. Um, but it was dark. It was poorly lit. It was kind of damp and stuffy, kind of like it is metaphorically today, you know, because of politics. Oh, um. Shoot. In the war of
1812, still salty. That they absolutely got their butt handed to them in the revolution. Uh, the Brits set fire to the White House. Bold move, cotton. Let's see if it pays off. Turns out if you build it once, you can build it again. So they called James Hoban back up to rebuild the White House. Now, I'm starting to wonder, like, if it was damp, dusky, musty and moldy, why did we call the same architect, but they call him up to
repair the damage? James Monroe moved into this new white house, and over the course of the next ten to 15 years, the north and south porticoes would be added to the building. But this is a show about bathrooms, and really, we're here to talk about White House bathrooms and the history of White House bathrooms. Bathrooms in this period of our history were very rudimentary, and in the White House, those bathrooms were non existent. People were dumping their night soil, which is
academic. Nice speech for liquid Shaz in the streets, or, as was often the case at common repository dumping spaces. They had these designated spaces around town wherein, if you didn't enter it, the. The gong, uh, farmer. We're gonna get to gong farmers one day on the show. But the gong farmer would come in and take the skeet to the pita. Washington, DC, had a few key spaces for this and the one nearest the White House being on the north side of the city.
Now, while the president lived in the White House during this time period, if they had to skeet a patriotic pile, they had to use the brown shack out back. The White House outhouse was common use in the White House for the first 60 years. The house might be big, it might be white, but you still make brown out back. Often this combined a chamber pot being dumped in the outhouse via servants or, you know, slaves who were in charge
of running these bowls. It's a grim thing, the leader of the free world squatting in an outhouse like the rest of us at this time, to get water to and from m the White House servants, which is, this side of history's term, likely for slaves. Again, it's. It's bad. Not all of american history is good. Carried the water to and from the White House. And before the White House was burned down, James Madison suggested that they put running water in.
Now, the White House was brought running water in 1833 to supply the white house with running water to help fill the fire safety protocol reservoirs. Now, you might be wondering, why are they so worried about the fire safety protocol reservoirs? It's not like attacking. British forces have recently burned the, uh, shoot, the Brits had just burned the thing down and they're wanting to avoid that happening again, and so they.
They spent a lot of time and research and money figuring out how to have these water repositories and build ups, so that way, if they need to call on large deposits of water, they can put out another british fire. But to get that water into the White House, it would need to be plumbed in to find the water source. The search had begun much before the fire in 1814. Seven years prior, it was proposed to pipe the water in from a spring six blocks away.
They didn't do this. Rather, after the rebuilding, they purchased a spring of water in Franklin Square in 1831, just two blocks closer than than the original proposed spring. Robert Lecky was commissioned to do the work, and the project was completed two years later with fresh iron pipes moving water to the White House. Andrew Jackson was the first to use this new running water in America's Capitol building. Clean water
was brought to the White House. And when you consider the polluted Potomac in the cratfield, DC Canal, which we will discuss in the future, it seems to be a huge step forward. William Henry Harrison became the 9th president of the United States in 1841. Up until that time, he was the oldest president to fill office. Consequently, William Henry Harrison is known primarily for just one dying. He was the first president to die in office, serving as president for just 32 days.
The official White House website says that Harrison caught a cold and died of pneumonia. Thankfully, he had the opportunity to enjoy the new running water of the White House before he snuffed it, a likely story since he gave his inaugural address in the cold, wet night. But what if I told you there was more afoot than pneumonia? An initial diagnosis from his doctor suggested more is going on. Thomas Miller, William Henry Harrison's doctor, declared the
cause of death is pneumonia. But he did note the fevers and distress he exhibited on his deathbed were more akin to intestinal distress related to parasitic bacteria. He had enjoyed the running water of the White House. Three weeks after his inauguration, he complained of anxiety, fever, constipation, and nausea, upset stomach, diarrhea. So he may very. He should have got some pepto Bismol. That's all I'm saying.
Pepto Bismol would not have solved his problem, so he may very well have died also from complications of his gastrointestinal problems. Based on a study published by Oxford. Study at university. It's a sad affair. Uh, there's something in the water. Maybe William Henry Harrison was an outlier.
Oh, wait. Eight years later, James K. Polka lay ill in a Tennessee bed three months off his term as president, where he had supped that White House water for so long, he had suffered from cholera, diarrhea, vomiting, and was dehydrated. During his time as president, he had gallstones, kidney stones, and much gastrointestinal distress. Polk died
of cholera at the age of 53. If you haven't picked up on it, it suggested that polk, too, received many of these struggles, or many of these struggles were made worse by White House plumbing. Months after Polk passed, President Zachary Taylor Thomas also fell ill in his time as president. The commonly told story is Taylor fell ill after eating too much iced milk and cherries as part of an 1850 Independence Day celebration. I think
iced milk is ice cream. And who amongst us, in celebration of our country's history and freedom, hasn't eaten too much cherries and ice cream? Again, at the point of this record, I was just nards deep in a cherry tree, plucking cherries. Um, here we go. But that's the story, that the dude ate too much ice cream and cherries, and he got sick, and he got sick and fell ill with cramps and vomiting and diarrhea, you know, other cholera and typhoid, similar
symptoms. And Taylor, it seemed, may have actually diarrhea, hid his self to death. It is also guessed, based on this theory, that this water may have also claimed the life of Willy Lincoln. A tough look. Something totally avoidable, if we remember one important concept. Crap slides downhill. Because if you remember those two night soil dumping spots that they chose for the White House, the closer one, the one that was two blocks closer, is uphill from. From
where they. The spring that they drew water from and pumped it in, crap slides downhill. Kids could have saved three presidents and a president's son. While three presidents likely died due to the plumbing shortfalls of piping infrastructure in the White House, or, at bare minimum, the springs for the water being pumped in being poorly located. During this period, an important change came to the White House. They got the first flush toilets.
Millard Fillmore is credited with installing the first flush toilet, and Franklin Pierce expanded this toilet closet into a full bathroom. It was in Pierce's presidency that improvements were made to the plumbing and other facilities of the home, likely resulting in less gastrointestinal related distress and death. Second story bathroom were installed in the White House. Up until this time, if you wanted to take a hot bath upstairs, you had to haul the water up.
If you wanted a bath on the second floor, it was cold, but now hot running water to the upstairs at the turn of the century, Theodore Roosevelt began to do updates to the White House. And in doing so, Theodore Roosevelt gave the White House its name. One of those updates, it seems, needed to be a larger bathtub because William Howard Taft succeeded Roosevelt. And my dude, Mister M. President Taft was thick. My
dude was wide. The report goes that Taft had to have a special bathtub, just a girth, some tub installed to fit his large duff. For some time there was a rumor that he had gotten stuck in his fat tub. But the rumor is very unlikely. Taft's bathtub was a 2000 pound, seven foot long tub. Taft loved his baths. So much so that he brought his bath with him to the White House when he was elected. But now that the, but now that the plumbing is installed, the water's running, the baths are in place.
It seems even the bathrooms of the White House could not avoid being a piece of political conversation. Herbert Hoover was a president of these United States. He's remembered, either accurately or otherwise, as not contributing much to America. For our purposes, this is not the conversation. For our purposes, politics slipped into the bathroom when Herbert Hoover left office. In a relay. When you're running a relay, one of the most critical moments of the relay is the
handoff of the baton. And if you can get the handoff just right, it can make or break your race. And if you fumble the baton, it can completely cost your team the race. And in the case of Herbert Hoover, handing off the baton to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, he didn't fumble the baton. He just skeeted the baton, just threw it laterally into the next field of the opposite track, flipped FDR the bird and walked off. They weren't in a race. They were passing leadership of our
country. And while Harrison is remembered primarily for dying, FDR is remembered as being the only president to date who was physically disabled. So what's the baton throw? How did, how did her, how did Hoover do FDR so dirty? When Herbert Hoover left office, he took the oval Office bathroom toilet and he left a urinal in place. Now, you can do a lot of things while in a wheelchair, but usually one of those is not traditionally using a urinal with a lot of comfort.
Now, while many people didn't know the extent of FDR's paralysis at the beginning of his time in office, Hoover seemed to be pretty keen on it in his dealings with this urinal jab as he left. It's a bold move. Like, it's, it's pretty gutsy. It's kind of a butthole move. It is a butthole move. While the old plumbing in the White House bathroom may have led to the deaths, um, of three former presidents, further potty politics in the White House rise in the Nixon
administration. When the plumbers of the White House have him all fouled up. During the M Nixon administration, there was classified leaks being sent out to the media, leaking government secrets and data. A special task force called or referred to as the White House plumbers get it? They fixed the leaks, was sent to plug up those leaks. In the famous Ellsberg break in, the plumbers nearly got caught. Much of their work was
dissolved. However, they were called in to help the committee to reelect the president and helped with the Watergate scandal. These plumbers became known as Nixon's fixers and played a huge role in the events resulting in and leading up to Watergate. I would argue if your plumber shows up to stop leaks and they explode the entire bathroom in your face. Not the best plumbers. Less than 55 years after Roosevelt renovated, the Truman administration did so again under architect Lorenzo
Winslow. Under the rehaul, everything but the outer wall was redone. And really, at this point, it is the White House that is in place today. Today, the White House boasts 35 bathrooms. It still doesn't keep our current president from pooping his pants in booze. I want to know. In years past, our 4 July episode has brought coverage of Nathan's famous hot dog eating contest. And while usually it's quite a spectacle, um, we'll see if there is something.
But this year, leading up to Nathan's famous hot dog eating contest, there was scandal in the ranks of glizzy guzzlers. And this brings us to an installment of who in the news in the past, like I said, we've covered Nathan's famous hot dog eating contest. And if you're listening to this, that competition has already happened. I hope you enjoy it. And you probably noticed there was a lot of chatter about a, uh, one Joseph
Chestnuts. There was a bit of an upset this year, unless something has changed between the time of recording and the release of this episode. But at the time of recording, there was a lot of scuttle about Joseph Chestnuts. This article comes to us from NPR, and it is titled Hot Dog eating champ Joey Chestnut won't compete this July 4. What's the beef now? I'm not going to read this whole article to you. If you want to go check it out, link in the thing below.
Um, but pretty much what happened is Joey Chestnut, this guy who can just, like, suck down wieners so fast it's almost unhuman, decided that he is going to take a deal with impossible sausages. Now, while there's no rule against, uh, a, uh, competitor having a brand deal or whatever, striking up a brand deal with impossible wieners, where in most of their marketing is like, hey, guys, we all know how regular hot dogs suck big time, right? Get yourself one of these fake wieners instead.
The organizers of Nathan's famous hot dog said, you know, that messaging seems kind of intuitive to our whole thing, and maybe it's better if you just don't show up. So because he has chosen to represent a, quote, rival brand Joey Chestnuts was told that he may not participate in this year's Nathan's hot dog eating contest. I also want to note in the article, they interviewed Joey Chestnuts, and he really seems to be playing the victim a little bit.
He's. He's very much like, you know, you're depriving the fans of a champion. You're not giving the people what they want. I can't believe that Nathan's famous would do this to me. But here's the deal, Joey. If you're listening, you're not. But if you were, why the flip are you signing on with fake wieners? Dude, like, you're known primarily for one thing, sucking back
hot dogs. So, like, you had to have a little bit of a clue that if you started, like, slurping down fake sausages, things were probably not just gonna magically just be Oakley dokly. Bud. According to. As of this recording, June 22, Joey chestnuts will not be participating in the Nathan's famous hot dog eating contest. Why in the flip are you partnering with a flake glizzy lizzy? Dude, like, I don't get it. I don't blame Nathan's famous for doing this. In fact, Joey, figure it the heck out.
Like, you're faking it. The plant based sauce, they're not better. You can pretend that they are. Oh, the flavor is the same. Yeah, but the texture is not. Okay. So admit you're wrong. Swallow your pride. You already got this brand deal. Just ride the wave. But quit complaining. You made your bed. Sleep in it, bud. I don't blame Nathan's at all. In fact, I'll be watching this year. And at the point of this, listening. I already have. This has been poo in the news.
This brings us to the end of another episode of privy. Thank you, guys, for being here. I hope that if you're here in the States, that you. You had a chance to celebrate our american freedom. Um, I hope that you were safe. Uh, I hope that you still are safe. And I hope that it was a good time had by all. Um, as always, leave us a rating and review. I told you at the beginning of the episode, five star options are preferred. We're going to bump that up for the month of July to three and
$5 respectively. Um, thanks to Kevin and Poddington for the use of their music. As always, you can send us an email privycastmail.com. you can follow us on social media at privycast. You can follow me. I'm out at seven. Don't forget about randybowles. Andybowles. We'd love to engage with you online. Lots, uh, of stuff going on out there. Check us out. Uh, share the show with a friend. Send it to them. Say, hey, I listen to this podcast about bathrooms. I know it's weird, but give it a
shot. Um, and encourage them to leave a rating and review. That's how people find the show. This brings us to the end of another episode of privy. Keep pooping in the free world. Own your stank. And now, as always, don't forget to flush.