How Porta-Potties Work

night before or getting drunk for that evening. Yeah, however it crosses over, I think it'll be proof positive that uh we endorse afternoon drinking, you know, yeah, you know, a couple of drinks, maybe i'd be bloody Mary. What were we talking about. Oh, yeah, we're promoting our show. Oh, that's right, So we're doing that show on January. Uh. You can go to the s F Sketch Fest website to get tickets and it's awesome. It's a great, great comedy festival. Lots of awesome shows that weekend and for

the following weeks. So I encourage you, like to buy lots of tickets just by arts first. Yeah, and hurry, hurry, because they're selling out fast, no joke. That's not a ploy. It's not as a marketing ploy. No, they're really selling fast. We get emails every time. Guys, you told me to hurry, I didn't hurry. I'm shut out. And since this promos petered out, it ends right now. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and

welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, Jerry Master, Ace Roland. Uh, and this is stuff you should Know. Yeah. Poopy addition, this one's gonna get disgusting. Yeah, I mean, I don't think you need trigger warnings when the title of the episode is got porta potty in it. But um, we'll just throw it out there. We're gonna be talking about poop and pea and so if you're having lunch, maybe just put that chili dog down gag easily, Yeah, you know, sure, Yeah, Okay,

we'll check. I don't think we can put it off any longer, you know that kind of beat it out. Um. I kind of like how this article actually starts though, by Dave Ruse. He talks about the taste of Chicago. Was this a rug jam? Yes? It is good. So he talks about how if you go to the Taste of Chicago. Right every every July they hold it at the Grant Park alongside the Lake. When was our show there, by the way, was that July? No, it was chillier

than that. I think it was October. Okay, they had something had happened in Grant Park because I remember seeing hundreds and hundreds of porta potties on the drive in. Oh really, yeah, so something they just always have them there, don't think so. Okay, Well, for the Taste of Chicago, they definitely have Porter potties, in fact for two thousand and fourteen, and we should say there's like a million people that come through this thing over the course of

the weeks. It really is. Have you ever been to Atlanta's Taste of Anything? Uh? No, I haven't either. I don't think it's I don't think a million people show up for it. It makes me want to go try Chicago's um But so you've got a million people. UM and Service Sanitation, Inc. Which is the company that landed the Porter potty contract crunch the numbers. Looked at the food that was gonna be there, uh said, you're gonna

have some beer? Yeah? Okay? They carried the one and they came up with three hundred and eighty regular porta potties, twenty eight wheelchair accessible porta potties, and eighty hand washing stations. They have soap and fresh running water. Not bad, right, So here's the thing, Like, that's great, they delivered all those things. But had they just walked away and said, see at the end of taste of Chicago, it would

have been a living nightmare for everyone involved. That would be it would be more than the taste of Chicago, be the sickening smell of Chicago. Yeah, that would have been bad. Because well, we'll get into it. But porta potty sometimes you can leave them, come back a week later and just take them away if it's a temporary work side or something. But sometimes when you're selling beer and chili, you need to come at the end of every day and clean those suckers out. Yes, and that's

what they did. They came at night when everyone was sleeping from well, I guess if you went to bed at nine pm, that's when I'm sleeping. But they would come every night from nine and i pm to three am, and they would work. And here's the thing, Like, porta potties. It turns out I was overthinking them. I thought there was maybe a little more going on. No, they are, they are self, I don't. I really don't know what

I thought. It escaped me as as the reality of porter potties sunk in my my delusions about my illusions about them kind of um escaped me to trickle away. And now I can't remember what they were, right, sure I have, but I was like holding my breath and like like just barely had my eyes open because I didn't want any germs to get on my eyeballs. Um, So I wasn't paying that much attention. It's an in

and out kind of thing. Um. It turns out that, like when you serve as support potty, what you're doing is you're showing up with a trunk or a truck as a tank with a vacuum on at a pressurized tank, um, and you are sucking the contents out of that porter potty, and then you put it in the truck, you drive off, you dump it off at the waste treatment plant of your local city or town. It's like a gigantic wet back. Yes, it is for poo poo and pep, Yes, and a

very dangerous one. I saw at least one story um in a porta potty trade magazine that of somebody who I've read a bunch of those, in what was a magazine called It's called Portable Restroom Operator. It's a it's a good mag man. They I actually found, um uh this one issue online going all the way back to two thousand nine that I was looking for. So they

they're legit. Yeah, but they could have been a little more fun with the name and bro well, I think they're they're saying like, hey man, the fun you want, but we're saving your behind. Hey see. Though that sounds like a slogan, I'm sure it is. Well. They do point out a couple of the slogans because porta Potty Companies or Porta John's, Jiffy John's, port Deloo if you're in England, Toy Toy if you're in Malaysia. Yeah. Uh, they're very famous for having pretty fun peny um slogans

like we're number one in the number two business. Not bad, No, it's not bad. There's no one takes care of our business like Mr John. Sure I saw that too. Yeah. Um. There's also one called got to Go but it's spelled really impressively. Um, it's g It's all of one word, and it's lower case, so it's super mod g O T you with an oom l out g O. I love it. M. Do you like that one? Yeah? I just I thought you were going in a different direction.

I thought it was going to be a little more like G E A U X. No, that's like if they were in Louisiana. Maybe, Yeah, that's what I thought. Sure, No, this is this is an um out. That's what got me. And that's why you love Motley Crue so much. Sure it is alright, So um, should we talk a little

bit about the history? I think so? Al right, Well we need to go back to World War Two in this case, and um, because World War Two was going on, there was there was there was a need for more poopers essentially because they had like manufacturing plants popping up, they had temporary manufacturing plants going up, They had places where they didn't want to build full service permanent bathrooms all over the place. All of a sudden, these people

needed to go potty. Um what I saw I saw a few different origin stories, but the one I saw the most frequently was that the um shipbuilding docks at Long Beach during World War Two. They're building warships for the US. The guys working the docks would have to working building the ships would have to get on a rowboat and go back to the dock to use the bathroom. And this is no good. And they were like, this is a terrible waste of time. Can we just get

something down the ship? So they started building temporary what amounted to the first porta potties there on the ships for them to use. Yeah, and these first ones, Um, you can look up a picture of the Andy Gump. Is that what it's called? I didn't see. I gotta look that up. I think it's the Andy Gump, like one of the just type in like nineteen forties porta potty and there will be a picture and it's basically this big, heavy metal square. Sometimes they were would, but

they were super heavy and they weren't easily transported. Um they you know this is pre uh using like chemicals which we'll get into to help break these the poop poo down and stuff. So it was just a disgusting affair having trouble. Right now, I see the Andy Gump? You see it? Wow? It looks like, um, it looks safe to be in you know what it looks like. It looks like what they used on mash Yeah, like the latrine. Yeah, same idea. Basically, Yeah, it's just a latrine.

You could take places. But I came across this really cool little thing on a website about World War two fighter pilots, and um, with World War Two came along planes that could stay in. These bombers, I could stay in the air for a lot longer, and they started to think like, Hey, these these dudes are up there for like, you know, ten to fourteen hours, we have to come up with ways for them to go to the bathroom, right, Yeah, I mean like you don't think

about that. Like when we put the frost bite episode. I certainly didn't think that they were up there getting frostbite because it was so you know cold. I also didn't think that they were up there so long that they couldn't use the bathroom. They had to hold it, right, So yeah, And the earliest ones were, well, here's the funnel and it's attached to two tube and it leads out of the plane, so go ahead and p Yeah, and that's basically just for like the pilot and co

pilot this relief tube. Um. After that, they're like, well, what do we have to poop? Yeah, they said, can you get your hands on a produced crate? And the crew would say like, well, yeah, sure, we have produced creative course, what are we commies and the people in charge to say, we'll poop in that? Take that up in the plane and just pooping that, buddy, and maybe wash it out when you get down here and put it back in for later use. Yeah, or maybe just

get a new crate. I guess if you're not thrifty. Eventually they came up with something called the Elson E E L S A N. It's a chemical toilet and it was really kind of one of the first little porta potties. But if you look up Elson and on the images on Google, you will find that it's it looks like nothing more than a metal oil in that you sit on. It's basically what it was pretty much. Um, and you're all they're exposed. I mean, there's no room

that this is in. You're just doing this in front of you know, your all your buddies on the plane, right like prison. Sure, and that I mean that that Elson toilet was still, I mean, as primitive as it was. It was an advancement, but it had certain problems, right like if you were flying through turbulence, that elson would spill its contents out into the plane. Yeah, there's a few quotes here. I'd like to read a couple of these from some of these fighter pilots. Um, here's one,

and this is from a British pilot. While we were flying in rough air, this Devil's convenience often shared its contents with the floor of the aircraft, the walls and ceiling, and sometimes a bit remained in the container itself. It doesn't take much imagination to picture what it was like trying to combat fear and airsickness while struggling to remove enough gear and cramp quarters, and at the same time

trying to use the bloody elson. If it wasn't an invention of the devil, it certainly might have been one foisted on us by the enemy. When seated in frigid cold, amid the cacophony of roaring engines and whistling air, away from what should have been one of life's peaceful moments, the occupant had a chance to fully ponder the miserable condition of his life. This lowsome creation, invariably overflowed on long trips and in turbulence, was always prone to bathe

the nether regions of the user. It was one of the true reminders to me that war as hell, you don't think about this stuff. You hear about all the glory of being like a bomber pilot. You don't think about sitting on a can and having your your friends poop and pe slash up on your fannie. Sorry to those in the UK, doesn't even make sense in that context.

That means something different here in the US. But right, so, uh yeah, that's the the first I guess chemical toilet, which is a designation of a porta potty, right, like a porta potty is a chemical toilet, but not all chemical toilets are porta parties. But a chemical toilet is any kind of toilet where you have um something in there that's intended to break down waste. And actually I don't know that an elson toilet, I guess it was

a chemical toilet. I see now, but that's gross because in addition to getting the rest of the cruise poop and pe slopped up against your rear end, Um, so too, were you getting very very hazardous chemicals as well? Yeah, so that's a good man. That guy may have had his buttocks removed after the war. Uh. One of the uses of the toilet they said that this is supposedly very true, is that some members of the Royal Air Force um actually jettisoned the Elson toilets with their bomb

payload onto German targets. So they would drop these toilets will apoo on the Germans. Mm hmm. And uh that was an American too, had a great quote about peeing through the little hose. He said, as the urine ran through the tube, it turned to ice and dropped like topaz colored hail to the ground. I like to imagine every time I urinated over Germany, my my acidulous projectile would plank on some Nazi Burger's aryan nose poetry. Yeah, there's some more good stories in here. You should, uh man.

I don't remember which website it was. Yeah, I'll have to. I have to post that later on Facebook and I'll tweet it. All right. So that's the the war effort that eventually ultimately led to the creation of the porta potty, right, and and again like there were already latrines, there had

already been out houses. And the difference between an out house and a porta potty is that and out houses basically some sort of rigid structure that's intended to be permanent or semipermanent, permanent that's dug over a hole in the ground. That's it. A porta potty is a self contained unit that has a place where the waste goes and is held inside that unit rather than like put into the ground, which is extremely dangerous that we learned

a very long time ago. Pooping in holes in the ground is not a good way to go as far as public health is concerned. And that's one of the legitimate um marks in the favor of porta potts is gross as as most people who have ever used one thinks they are. They're actually, um, quite beneficial to public health. Yeah, and they're green too. Saves a lot of water. Yeah. I saw, um a hundred and seventy billion leaders a year, about a hundred and twenty five million gallons a day

in the US alone. Yeah. So, um, you want to take a break for a second, Yeah, we'll break in. We'll talk a little bit more about the evolution of the porta John. Right after this should know y s a Dr Josh Clark. Alright, Chuckers, So we're talking about the evolution of the porta John. You've got the Andy Gump, You've got the Elson toilet, and then finally and actually the sixties, you have what is the what we think

of as a porta potty. Um a patent was developed by a guy named George Harding Um and he called it for a portable toilet cabana and that was made from plastic and um. Although he had the patent for it, the guy who actually gets credit for actually creating the first real modern porta john reporta potty was a guy named Um Harvey Heather and he created what's called the Strong Box. It's a great name. Did you see Have

you seen the Strong Box? Oh? You did? That's what I went and found the December two thousand nine UM issue of Pro magazine. Um to find because I saw a reference that they had published a picture of it, and I couldn't find it anywhere else. Those things are ugly, Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't a great looking Uh, it's not like the fantastic port to John. Say, have today. Yeah, so gorgeous to look at right now. This thing was ugly. Yeah, it had no alibi. Uh. Yeah. And these were made

of fiberglass, which, um, it was good. It was lightweight but um, and it was sturdy. It was as sturdy as metal or wood, and it was a lot easier to clean. But the problem with the strong box and the fiberglasses it was a big kind of one piece mold um. It was dark inside, which was not good. Uh. They weren't stackable as far as transporting them, and so that just made it really expensive to get them where

they needed to go and back again. It did. And the fact that like it was completely opaque um and there was no light that could get in. That's that's an issue. Plus I also get the impression that the floors could get pretty slick and you could fall and die of physitional asphyxiation and important. Yeah. And they were also fiberglasses pretty fragile, so they would break a lot. Uh.

Fiberglass absorbs odors, which was not good. Uh. And so shortly after the fiberglass came along, someone said, you know what, how about poly ethylene um. This is what we will use, and George Harding who you meant and co founded the Polly John Corporation, and he started building the polyethylene portable toilets that were much better because they lasted longer. They would last like a decade, although I would not want

to use a nine year old port of John. Well, so the that picture of the strong box that was published in Pro magazine apparently had been out in service. It was still in service and it had been built like thirty years before. Well, yeah, you would know that your company could not have cared less about you if you show up to your job site and there's a

strong box there. Yeah, and that's what you're expected to use with all of the with all of the possible choices that your company, uh could choose from, and they went with the strong box. They don't care about you or your happiness. The polyethylene and the other good thing about them where they were assembled into different parts and pieces. So it made him a lot easier to transport, a lot cheaper. Uh. And if apart broke, you might be able to replace it. Oh yeah, that that's kind of good.

Makes sense. So hooray for poly ethylene toilets. But one of the things that George Harding um created in this patent that I noticed was a ventilation system. This is a big improvement, right, because when you're just piling human waste upon human waste into a hole, um that it's going to create gases, noxious gases, because bacteria is going to start decomposing that waste, and as a byproduct of that decomposition, they're going to produce what we see what

we experience as rotting fecal material. Right, It's not just that it's stinky, it's dangerous. It is dangerous and as that gas tries to find a way to escape upward, if the only hole available to it is the toilet that you're pooping or peeing into, those gases are going to come out of it and you're going to vomit while you pooper p as well. So what George Harding had I told you this one is going to be cruts.

But George Harding figured out was that if you could just basically create a pipe venting off that gas upward and out of the porter potty, people would be willing to use porter potties a lot more. And that was a huge improvement. Yeah, he also said, how about we make this rooftop translucent white, so we can let in

some natural light. At least, why don't we improve the flooring so that it's not as slippy and um, Maybe even further down the line, we'll have porter potties that have a little urnal that's separate, so you don't even have to sit your butt down on that most horrid of places. Right, Yeah, what about the rollaround toilet? Did you see these? Yeah? Those? I mean that it makes sense.

So basically, if you are on like a job site, right um, where there are like different multiple stories being built and you're up on one of the higher stories, it's the same thing as when you're working in the shipyards building a ship. You don't want to have to come all the way down to use the bathroom. So they created porta potties that were a lot more mobile, that could be um hoisted by cranes. Um. Just two

different different levels. Yeah, if you look up roll around toilet, it basically looks like one of those um coolers that has the two wheels and the handle and you can pull the cooler around, except it's larger and um sitting above the wheels is a is a urinal, Right, I don't see how you go poopy in those, So maybe maybe that's when you go downstairs. Uh yeah, I don't know either because it's not enclosed or anything, and it's

just wide open, just like prison. And there's actually a great, um, a great scene from I think the First Police Academy starring our friend and Twitter followers Steve Guttenberg and um, I think it's Mauser who uses a porta potty and Steve Guttenberg goes over and gets some some crane operator to lend him the crane. And now it's Mouser's um, his right hand man. I don't remember that guy's name, but they lift the porta potty up while he's inside

using it. It's hilarious, wacky wacky stuff and sues. Uh. And then if you really are living the good life, or you have a maybe a really nice upscale wedding that's out in a remote area, you don't want to bring in just even the nicest polly ethylene porta John won't do. You will bring in what we call in in the movie business, a honey wagon. Um it is a restroom trailer. And these are actually nice. They are have running water, they have stalls, they have porcelain, uh, toilets,

it's all partition. They have sinks and running water and mirrors, hand towels. It's like a rolling trailer full of toilets. Yeah. Like you can breathe through your nose in these things. You could lay down on the floor if you want to. Yeah. And apparently these first started in nineteen four h Polly John in Columbus, Ohio. Go buck, guys. Yeah, And the original trailer was eight stalls or as we said in the movie business, an eight banger at three journals, and

it was thirty two ft long. And now there are nineteen companies manufacturing luxury restroom trailers around the world today. Yeah. I saw one um like that they market for like outdoor weddings and stuff like that. They said, all you need are like I think six outlets, maybe six and twenty bowl outlets. Yeah, and like standard garden hose connection. And you got yourself a luxury porter potty trailer. Yeah for your next remote black tie event. Right, what's I mean?

Even people in black tie got a pee? Yeah, sure, so you might as well take it easy on them with a nice looks trailer. That's right. So, speaking of Chuck, you want to you want to take a break. Yeah, I'm gonna go to a real bathroom and hug it. And I'm going to get a crane operator to pull a prank on you. All right, we'll be right back. That's why you should know, Clark. Okay, chuck, Yep. We can't put it off any longer. We gotta go inside. We're gonna go inside, deep dive into the bowels of

the porta pot Oh my gosh. Okay, okay, you're ready, Yeah, catch your snorkel. Okay. So when you look into a porter potty, you may notice that the stuff that's inside the bowl or inside the holding tank is blue. Yeah, and brown, but it's more blue than brown. And that's no accident, that's right. Any porta potty is going to use a deep blue dye. In the entire purpose, from beginning to end of the blue dye is to visually mask the presence of human feces. Yeah, they don't. They

don't want you looking down there and seeing. Uh if it was just like clear, like it's already disgusting. You're you're getting the full experience from the smell alone. You don't need the visual and and you don't pooping these things to you? Oh no, okay, no, I I think I would just put my pants and walk around instead. I don't. I don't think I would. I certainly don't remember ever pooping in it. It's possible I blacked out that memory, but I don't think I ever have it, right,

I the only time I pooped in these. I'm sure there's been like some extreme emergency, But the only time I can really recall is when Emily and I were getting our master bath built at our house. Um, we had our own we had another little bathroom kind of you know, a little small guest bathroom, and we shared that, and then we had a construction toilet on site because they were doing construction. And so I would get up

in the mornings exse. I didn't want to. I want to be a good husband, you know, and not ruin Emily's day in morning, um by getting in there first. So I would. I would get my newspaper and I would walk outside in my slippers and and use the port to john in my driveway every morning. But I mean, I guess it was pretty clean. It was yours, right, it was great. It was me and like you know,

two or three dudes. That's that is doable. Festival no Taste of Chicago, Like, yes, there's there are like of course, like surely if you're sharing a porta potty with a couple of other people that you have to look at I hear there, you're gonna take care of it. But if it's random drunk strangers or people on drugs or something like that, you, uh, it's gonna get messy awfully fast. And and again it's more and more people use it,

that blue dye becomes more and more important. Right, there's also gonna be a fragrance that they're gonna add to hopefully mass the odor. And apparently, well I was reading in some uh some trade magazines, and I haven't experienced it myself, but I did get the impression that they have come a long way as far as fragrance goes. Yeah, like I saw, um, you can get bubblegum fragrance. This doesn't sound good vanilla um that comes from just standard

use of the Taste of Chicago. Yeah, I mean, you know, me with fragrance is period with it. It's even worse to um everything bagel. No. But like I came across the site and there's like a Jaguar brand porta potty fragrance additive, and they have like any fragrance you can imagine, wow uh. And then the finally final thing you're gonna see down there, or that it's going to be down there are biosides to kill the bacteria microbes and UM.

Used to be that they would use formaldehyde uh to take care of that, but more and more wastewater treatment plants UM started saying, hey, we can't properly dispose of that stuff now carcinogen, and we don't feel good about it. So they've been phasing that out over the years, going a little greener and now UM they actually use enzymes like beneficial enzymes and microbes that feed on this stuff. Right, they feed they helped break down the poop, and they

also feed on the bacteria that causes the smells. Right, So they're making the poop, and but they're also naturally cutting down and smells, which I just find fascinating. UM. They also, since it's capable of breaking down UM bacteria, it's also capable of breaking down UM any organic material, so that if you use the right kind of toilet paper, they'll break down the toilet paper as well. Yeah, it's just basically magic in a in a porter potty. Yeah.

And they the other benefit there is they don't need to be emptied as often. Um, if it's doing the job like it should. Yeah. Um, weather has an effect obviously. If you're in Georgia in the hot summer, things are gonna get even worse. I imagine Chicago and July is probably no picnic either, and the taste of Chicago. No one's gonna go to the taste of Chicago anywhere you're like attended stop by this year. You don't know what's

going on. But when temperatures go up, bacteria go to work even harder, and things are just gonna smell even worse. So they might actually use more chemicals and the summer um or more chemicals, especially if it's a summer festival. And then conversely, I saw this, I guess it was a blog post by a m porta potti worker, that was published on Cracked, and um, they basically just went over most of the stuff you can imagine, but just

crazy stuff that they found. Um. But one of the things that they made reference to is that the worst thing that they can encounter is um for a frozen waste, because they said, once that happens, you have to break it up by hand. Ah, So to protect to defend their people from having to do this, they well, typically in colder, colder areas during the winter, they'll they'll create a briny mixture that will have a lower freezing temperature,

like the Minnesota ice Fishing festival. Right, But eventually you're going to reach a point where it's cold enough that it's it's freezing no matter how much salt you add to it. Yeah, and I did see one of their little tricks of the trade is they put a a cake of this rock salt in the urinal, so you go peepy on it, and as you peep on it, it just adds a little more salt slowly throughout the day. Right. The only issue with those is that you have to

keep the deer away because they love salt. Licks you like that one. Yeah, I'm ashamed of basically every joke I've made this whole episode. I don't feel good about myself right now. All right, So uh, let's finish up by talking about the really the worst part of this. If you're one of like eight people still listening, Uh, if you're still listening, then we'll finish up with the worst part, which is servicing these things. And we talked about it. It's like a wet back. You suck it out,

drive it to a waste water plant. But uh, you have to add new water. You have to add new blue junk, uh and some more or dry solution. And I saw I saw like a ratio of one to one about fresh water to solution. We don't want to mess that up. Uh. And you think like, all right,

so that's pretty gross and everything. But um, especially at like a music festival or something, there's stuff everywhere, Like you've been in these there's there's urine everywhere, there's poop and places where you think, like what in the world was someone doing in there? And they have to be

cleaned out by somebody. It's an awful job. Yeah, there's um stuff that people drop down there, Like if you use the sock to wipe your bottom with and you just deposit the sock into the porta potty, that's gonna as you jump up the tank or the pump. Um. So they have to get that kind of stuff out first. What about your cell phone cell phone? Yeah, apparently they find all sorts of stuff, especially things like phones, wallets

full of cash, jewelry, drugs, gun yeah, guns. I that correct guy said that, Um he had a friend who showed up at a porta potty where they just found a body. Oh my god. Yeah, and the thing now in the porta potty, not in the actual hole. That's just cruel. Yeah, but um, yeah, they find all sorts of stuff because almost everybody would say, well, that's gone. I'll just have to get a new identity because I

dropped my whole wallet into porta potty. Actually, I saw a stat where five percent of people that go into porta potties don't come out at all. So right, the dead body scenario makes sense. They end up in that other dimension from phantasm. Uh. And then our article says, the worst case scenario if you're a porta potty service person is uh that the porta potty, Well, there's two

worst case, one worse and one way worse. One is if it just gets knocked over, either by a car hitting it, or the wind, or some jerk you think it's funny, that's not cool, knocks it not cool at all, knocks it over on purpose. But the ultimate ultimate worst is if it tips over on its door. That's its achilles heel, any porta potties achilles heel, because what happens, all of the stuff that's in the holding tank gets

dumped out. When it's facing on its front on the door, all of the stuff is liable to come out, and it does, especially when they pick it back up. It just slashes around everywhere, and the poor porta potty service operator has to wash this thing out. And those are the worst. Like it, Like somebody can put poop like on the ceiling or on the walls or something that's

pretty bad. But when it falls on its front on the door and everything slashes out, it gets everywhere, so you have to like get inside to clean the whole thing. And at the very least, it takes them a lot more time and screws up their entire day's schedule. At the worst, they're in there cleaning a filthy porta potties

nook and crannies from the inside. Yeah, I would just say it fell off the truck, boss, right, Sorry, it's in that phantasm to mention, Boss, didn't Jack asked do one of these, like put one of them in there and tip it over or something. Yeah, I'm sure I think they did that when they were like four. Yeah, I think they did, like I had a crane lift it and turn it over something. I don't know. No,

you're thinking police academy and also police academy geeks. You don't have to write in it was Police Academy three. So I was about to say I didn't remember that. You didn't see what na I think I petered out after two even three might have been the best of all of them, which is that what was the full name of it? Uh? Citizens on Patrol? Okay, it's the one where Bob Goldthwaite like goes over from his life of crime to being a junior police academy guy. Yeah,

I love Bob Goldthwaite. But good, he's great. Can we stop, sure, man, Okay, we have to say you got anything else? No? Okay, Chuck, Well, actually I do know. If you see these porta potty service people in your neighborhood, if there's construction going on, you see them, bring in the truck, just flash a nice smile, give him a tip of the cap. It's a really gnarly job, and like they say, somebody's got to do it. They're making a living like they've got a job. They went out and got that job to

make money and provide for their family. And don't forget, they're defending public health and they're saving a significant amount of water. So there you go, nice chuck, all right, good way to finish. If you want to know more about porta potties, you can type those that hyphenated word on the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And since they said hyphen it's time for listening. Now I'm gonna call this quick. John please uh direction or

John please exactly. Congratulations on an absolutely marvelous episode concerning Monty Python guys. It's great to hear so much of the history of the group. Well done. One bit of information. I happen to see John Klees present a one man show a few years ago in Carmel, California. He just stood on stage and talked for about seventy five minutes. Um boy, that's a good gig. He discussed his life

in general, Python in particular, and lots of things. Other things he noticed noted that his name is pronounced to rhyme with cheese rather than fleece. In fact, his surname was originally Cheese, but his father changed it to CLEAs. Uh. This was a good thing for the Sun being named John because he did not want to go by Jack Cheese. Yeah, I guess not, so it's John Clees. Never knew that that's from David Hewett. Yeah. And um, I also want to say, Chuck, somebody called us out for not mentioning

Carol Cleveland. She was, for all intents and purposes, he seventh member of Monty Python. Yeah. We felt terrible because she was in our notes and we mentioned her and lavish praise on her and our runthrough that we did in the studio and it was just one of those live show things that get got biased. Yep. So sorry, Carol Cleveland, We uh, hats off to you. We appreciate your work and we're sorry we left you out. Agreed. Uh. If you want to get in touch with me, your Chuck,

you can tweet to us. I'm at joshuam Clark and there's also s Y s K podcast. Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook and at Stuff you Should Know on Facebook. You can send the both of us and Jerry an email to Stuff Podcasts at how Stuff works dot Com and has always hang out with us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot Com