TechStuff Gets Flushed

That was nice. I gave Josh, of course, the opportunity to pick a topic for, you know, something that we could cover here on tech Stuff, and we were just kind of bandying about ideas and you actually keep up with one of the most basic pieces of technology that we're all familiar with, we've all used, but I have somehow never covered it in the near seven hundred episodes of Tech Stuff. I'll bet you've covered them before. Oh yeah,

just not on the show. Uh six episodes. This is episode I feel very honored to be on this one. So yeah, congratulations, thank you, thank you. Yeah. So we are talking a mount toilets today. Yeah, it's gonna be uh, this episode is going to be flush with puns. Man, I can't take this alright, and I know it's bad already, right, so before I really get into that, you know, there will obviously be some levity in this, but this is actually a very serious topic. And to kind of illustrate that,

I wanted to mention something else. Now this is this is half a year away from us, but November nineteen is World Toilet Day, which at first sounds kind of comedic, right, I think it's hilarious. It sounds funny. It's it's an event hosted by the World Toilet Organization. Still sounds at first when you think about it, because I mean, toilet humor has become like a real it's a real industry

into itself. But this is not about humor. It's actually the purpose of the day, and the purpose of the organization is to help provide support for getting proper sanitation to the world's population. According to that organization, of the world's population still practices open defecation. That's a billion people. I mean, I knew a lot of people, did I didn't realize it was that high a percentage. Now I saw a figure back in I think two thousand nine

that was two point five billion people. So clearly we've made some great strides in in raising sanitation levels, but there's still so much work to be done. And I mean this is obviously something that we have to be concerned with because it can lead to you know, pandemics or at least a really bad outbreak of disease, not to mention just unpleasant living condition. Well, you know what's

funny is um. I think part of it also is not just that people practice open defecation, but that the a lot of them don't have access to sanitary drinking

water as a result of their of their waste disposal. UM. But I have there are places, especially in um parts of rural India, where open defecation is practiced where the people are like you can put toilets in here all day long, we're not going to use them because we find open defecation as part of like wholesome country living is the way that I've seen it put like it's just part and parcel with being outside and you know, watching a squirrel run past you while you're pooping, that

kind of thing, and like really taken in the whole scene. It's a cultural thing at that point. Yeah, where it goes beyond, it goes beyond, like it's it's not necessarily just the lack of facilities. This has become a way of life. I could understand that. I mean, I know there was even some reluctance in Japan to go from the UH the more trough like toilets that they used to. Yeah, there's there's much smaller percentage of the toilets in Japan

are those, but they still do exist. But there was a large UH hesitate to use the word, movement trend to going toward more Western style toilets over the last couple of years. I know, I'm sorry, it's gonna happen. Chris Palette is only here in spirit, but he is here. You're channeling him pretty hard. Yeah, so let's go with a little history lesson before we get into how toilets

actually work. Now, if you're looking for the earliest evidence of organized waste management systems, you look at Mesopotamia, which makes sense because that's where the original civilizations were. Yeah, it's also a great Bifo song, But this would be back at the c E around approximately around that era, when you would see these organized systems for waste management. One thing I thought was really interesting was I watched a documentary about a Neolithic village that was on the

Orkney Islands, uh in Scotland. Um, we call it scare Bray. That's the name we've given it. Because any actual records of this village haven't existed for more than a couple of thousand years. This village was forgotten. No one knew it was even there until there was a major storm that washed away some of the land that had grown up built up around on top of the village. Is amazing.

Right when it was discovered, you immediately had a and uh, there was an expedition, let's say, to uncover the village, but it was not led by anyone who's ever been actually identified. In other words, it was treasure hunters. I didn't probably didn't find anything really of value there. There was certainly no you know, hordes of gold and diamonds and jewels there. Uh. And it wouldn't be until the nineteen thirties that a more or an eye archaeological dig

would take place. And after that there was another storm and they had to actually shore up the area to protect it as an archaeological site. And what they found was that this tiny village, which dates to around three thousand BC, in Scotland had these homes that were very sophisticated. You would walk in there'd be a large bed on the right hand side, a smaller bed on the left, which mirrors regular practices of the time where the husband and wife. The husband would have the larger of two beds.

They had a fire pit hearth, but they also had a essentially a toilet. They had a stone cabinet with a hole cut so that you could sit down on it, with channels that lead out to the ocean, and ocean water with the tides would actually flush this. So these were flushing toilets. They weren't manual flush title flush, so you had to wait, hey it's still flushed. Yeah, that's the important point in this took the waste away, right Yeah. Yeah,

so all the way back to three thousand BC. Uh, the actual the whole area of scare breaks fascinating, So definitely look into that a get a chance. I mean, I've seen him before. I've seen just the settlement pictures of the settlement. It is pretty advanced. You don't think of the Orkney Islands and three thousand b C. Is you know, the seed of civilization technology. But yeah, they

had something going on. It's pretty surprising, yeah, because I mean, you know, when I think of of society civilization in the British Islands, I'm thinking closer to the Roman times. But it's pretty amazing how sophisticated was even back then. Uh. Ancient Greeks also they used sewage systems to channel waste away from living quarters. The Romans went even further. They would have these, especially if you were a very wealthy or powerful Roman, you might have a pretty styling you know, bathroom,

heated seats, heated marble seats, um. And it maybe private from what I understood, but for the most part, public bathrooms really took the public thing to the nth degree, where it was just like basically a long bench with different cutouts, you know, space not very far apart frankly, um,

and you'd have maybe eight or ten, maybe fifteen. I saw there was a public restroom in Syria UM that I think was contemporaneous to to Greece UM that sat like eighty and there's no partitions, there's no nothing, And it seemed to be um kind of a social endeavor where like you just sit there and chat with somebody

while you're pooping. Yeah, it's kind of funny to think about how it was this communal social activity, or at least it wasn't separated from any of the communal and social activities, whereas today we have all these unspoken rules of of you know, no talking in the bathroom, you keep your dirty behavior to yourself. Yeah, I don't know if you've ever seen it. There's actually if I'm a

Shinama cartoon using them. I think it's the sims where it's to illustrate the rules in the men's restroom, and rule number one is if there's a line of urinals, you take one on either end. It doesn't matter which end, just it has to be on the end the next person and has to take the one on the furthest end. And then as long as there's at least one empty one separating you and the next person, you can take one.

But if there isn't, you gotta leave. Like like there's it was this crazy series of but it was a series of rules where and then the comedy came from the fact that you're like, this is kind of how guys behave in the bathroom. For me, it's the cardinal rule is if there's two two stalls, um and the doors shut on one then both are occupied by by default. That must make it difficult here in this office because the bathrooms go uh floor to ceiling with the doors

and they're shut all the time. So that's that's different like that these bathrooms are prime real estate in my opinion. But if you remember in the last place where House the First was headquartered, it was you know, just a partition and you can see feet and everything. And it's that's just to me, like we we really have advanced to the point where you know, it is a private act and um, it's not to be shared. It's not public.

We're not in ancient Greece any longer. Um. And so if somebody's in install, you don't sit down next to him. I just I really feel strongly about that. I can understand. And it's interesting because when we get into advanced toilets like the Japanese toilets, they take that to the next level to create another another uh level of privacy for that. Yeah, it's pretty neat. Like you swipe your hand in front of a sensor and it takes you to the seventh dimension,

completely out of reach of anybody. Here, it's you and Buckeru Banza and that's it. Yeah, I think he is, or the tenth. It's one of those. Yeah. So one of the other things we can talk about before we move into the earliest flush toilet is that when you're looking at say Europe in the Middle Ages, all the way up into the Renaissance. Uh, you're talking about especially like, you know, think about castles frequently. I do, I really

do frequently think about castles. Um. Their facilities were pretty primitive. It was essentially a hole cut into the you know, like a like a stone seat sometimes with a wooden panel on top of it. Uh. That then had a channel that that slanted away from the wall, and you're waste would drop down either into a cesspit, a moat, moat, sometimes just the ground. On the invading armies, that is also a possibility. And these were called garter robes. And

they were also closets. They weren't just bathrooms, they were closets. He would hang your clothing. Why because the ammonia from your urine would kill fleas. Oh wow, that is very surprisingly clever. It's not scar a break clever, but it's up there. So if you're wondering when the first flush toilet comes along. It's actually a lot earlier than I had anticipated. It's weird. I don't know how I never came across this fact before. And it's one that, by the way, a lot of people in our office. No,

it comes from fift nineties six John Harrington. Yes, he was a cousin. I think of um Elizabeth the first Yeah, he was her godson. Okay, that's what it was. And he designed this flushing toilet or prototype of a flushing toilet for her. Yeah, and she probably didn't use it very much. She didn't admit to it. She was a queen and technically, when you're queen you can pretty much poop wherever you like. Someone's going to take care of it. But he called it the ajax. No, here's the thing.

John Harrington was a rake. Yeah, he was like, you know, kind of like he was known for passing around lewd poetry to the ladies of the court. He loved too. He was very clever and he loved being clever and so lewd poetry. Flushing toilets, well, he called it the ajax as a pun. It's a pun on the term Jake's which is a euphemism for toilet. It's like the John. It's Jake's, So a Jax is a pun on Jake's.

And it had a pan into which one would do one's business and assist turn that you could pump water up into, and then a handle and when you pulled the handle, it opened up a valve that allowed the water from the cistern to come down and wash away what was in the pan down through a channel that would go out to assess pool onto an invading army or onto an invading army, as the case may be. As far as I know, he only built two. I think he built one for the queen and one for himself.

Uh So it was an interesting idea, did not catch on at the time. Uh it really just showed his inventiveness to to look at the next approach to the flushing toilet. You have to go ahead by almost two years Alexander Cummings exactly, and he he invented something that ended up being very important for the flushing toilet, the s trap. Yeah, so much so that it's still basically

the design of toilets today. Yeah. Now, this is the pipes that you see that lead out from your toilet, and it's called an S trap because it's in that S shape, right, yeah, or some people consider it an upside down you or something like that. It all depends on one how much of it you can see and to exactly what implementation it is. But yeah, the U trap is another way of looking at an upside on you.

Uh So the important thing about this was that it would allow uh it would well trap water once it had gone down the pipe from coming back up, and it would also thus trap the smell, yes, which is very important with sewers, because if you're taking a piece of technology and connecting it to an open sewer, yeah, the smell is gonna be something. Yeah, it's gonna be

how to take care of that? And he did with the S trap, Yeah, And it was really a brilliant ideas, so much so strickling that like three two years later, two fifty years later, Um, we're still using this guy's designing. It is not been improved upon in two d and

fifty years right there. There are a couple of other variations on it, but it has the basic design is still what we rely upon because it works, has no moving parts for just that that pipe, so it can't break down in that sense I could still get clogged. Maybe we'll talk a bit about clogs later. Yeah, well, you know you gotta talk about it. I didn't. I did not know we were going to talk about clogs. Well, I apologize. If you want, you can check out for that part of the ill go to my happy place.

That's good. Yeah, we'll just watch you kind of stare space um. But it also he also invented a sliding valve between the bowl and the trap, which allowed some water to stay in the bowl after you flushed, so that it could hold on to the waist for the next time. And so you didn't just have just an empty bowl of waste and then put water into it. It was you know, it actually improved the warm It's

quite a bit. And you had a lot of other inventors who followed, like Samuel Prosser, Joseph Brama, Thomas Twyford. They all made improvements to the basic design of the toilet, but not a Mr. Crapper. You know, I was gonna save that. But yeah, let's talk about Thomas Crapper here for a second. But before we get into that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, so you may have heard the somewhat apocryphal tale that the toilet was invented by a man named Thomas Crapper. Enough, yeah,

one of those ha ha, Isn't it ironic? Don't you think Alanis morrisse at moments? You know it might be. It's like it's like rain on your wedding day. It's like Thomas Crapper making a toilet, and I'm pretty sure that's the way it goes. Um. Thomas Crapper, as far as we can tell, was actually a person. There are records of a Thomas Crapper Whold who held patents in the nineteenth century and their plumbing patents, and some of them fact involved improvements to the water closet or toilet.

But he didn't invent it um, and he may not have had that big of an impact overall on the toilet evolution. It's just one of those facts that kind of got passed around, as you know, or one of those those tidbits agains passed around. The total truth. Plus he pronounced his name, it's crepe Um. Yeah, it was. It's one of those things where I actually looked into it too, because I was like, well, I've always heard that as well. And I'm curious where that came out. Well,

yeah it is. It's got it has traction because it's just so delightful. Yeah yeah. Uh. Going back to mid eighty eight in the UK, that's when they passed the Public Health Act, which stated that all new houses in the UK had to be built with a toilet. Very smart. Yeah, it's a great way of preserving your your various towns and ease from becoming overrun with filth. Right. But and

this is still um in play today. There's a certain psychology around defecation, urination, expelling waste, right, and it can swing wildly from era to era. But at that time, in the mid nineteenth century, forcing the public to install indoor plumbing wasn't like the public was saying, yes, thank you government, we've been waiting to have to do this. It was more like, um, wait, you want us to put a toilet where next to the kitchen? What is

wrong with you? No, that's disgusting. We want to put this over in the back garden where you know, chimberpot. It's mobile that we can put wherever and get rid of immediately, Like this is gross, Like you want us to hook it up to the sewer. What's wrong with you? So there was like a certain um amount of resistance to adopting this, whereas now, um, you know, it's yeah, you want that, you want indoor plumbing, and it's based on the cultural attitudes towards expelling waste that that vary

from time to time. Yeah, it's it's it's hard. I mean, it's very easy for us to start looking at everything from our current perspective, right, It's very difficult to take ourselves out of that. But you do have to do that when you start talking about subjects like this, because it was a different world. I mean, people thought differently and for for reasons that you can kind of understand

when you think about it. And you know, if you think, well, now I've got a thing that dumps waste into a sewer, but I don't want any of that smell or nastiness or anything to get into my home. When before I had a portable thing, I could actually take it outside and dump it in a cess pool or whatever. It wasn't there wasn't a big change. Plus plus, it's like that's my poop. Yeah it's poop, but it's I know where that poop came from. Whereas with the sewer, everybody

else's poop has the opportunity come into your house. Yeah, which you don't know, you didn't want. Another interesting point is I've been talking exclusively about people inventors and engineers in the UK. Now, when settlers came over to America, they did not come over with plans for toilets, and so the toilet actually had a parallel evolution in the UK and in the United States in isolation basically a

little bit, yes, with with a little bit. I mean, they obviously had some common history there, but it was largely engineers in the US who created very similar style toilets. In some cases, they were toilets that were lagging behind the technology by about twenty years compared to the UK. But you had folks like James T. Henry and William Campbell who were awarded a U S patent for a

water closet toilet um. And that's where we really see it moving forward from that point on and to the point where the essentially merged like the the You know that we saw the United States adopt things like the s trap, making the toilets more useful. Do you know when toilet paper was invented. Toilet paper was invented in ninety eight. I predate ninety and I distinctly remember toilet paper. You were off by almost a hundred years when toilet paper was invented, didn't They used to use a series

robot catalog corn Cob. There's actually some poetry that I've read where there's a discussion a giant. I forget what poem it is, but there's a giant talking about all the different things he has used to clean himself after after evacuation, including I think he determined that the most comfortable was the neck of a goose. Yeah, I can tell you not not for the goose, but yeah, uh so. Yeah. The toilet paper was in but not marketed heavily until

nineteen two, so for more than a decade. Yeah, it just kind of I was like, well, I mean, why we got the series robot catalog Cobs? How do you look around your house and say, oh, yeah, corn Cobs, that's that's a good idea idea. Yeah, sure it's got traction, but pay a price for that track. Yeah, I I hesitate to hazard a guess. To be honest, I go idea,

I'll try to have some geese at home. All right, okay, well, i'd like to apologize on behalf of Josh's I'd like to send to you my apologies for giving him the idea. Let's talk about how a toilet actually works. Okay, alright, So you got your basic parts of the toilet. You've got the tank, You've got the bowl in which you do your business, and then you have the lifen the s trap area that where the waist goes once you flush,

which is technically part of the bowl. Yeah. Yeah, it's just it's easier to talk about it as separate parts. But yes, you aren't correct. So inside the tank you have the flush valve. This is the valve that allows water to flow out of the tank and into the bowl. Yes. So when you press down the handle, yeah, there's that handle is connected by chain to that flush valve. That's the thing that lifts up and lets the water from

the tank into the bowl. Yeah. And once the water is flowing down, like for most toilets, you no longer have to hold the handle down because just the water itself. Once the valve is an open position, it will remain open until the water level is low enough for it to close. Again. Yeah, they make it so it's light enough to float. Yeah, right, because it's overcome suction things to the handle um and it's floating there, and then as the water drains out, its ability to float stop,

so it falls back into place ideally ideally. Yeah. There are times obviously, if you have issues where maybe there's a hinge that's a little too tight, or there's something off with the seila of on the the valve, that you may have to have that replaced, because otherwise water just continuously flows into the bowl and it never accumulates

in the tank. I found that most of the time it's because there's a little bit of extra chain that's keeping the flush valve from sitting in suction from from uh. You you also have a second valve inside the tank, the filler valve. The filler valve is what allows water to go into the tank as well as into the bowl after a flush, so uh, it needs to it refills the tank after you flushed it. So you flushed the tank, the water from the filler valve will start

to pour into the tank to refill it. Once that that flush valve has shut uh, some of that water also will go into the bowl. To bring the level back up to the proper height, and then you've got a filler float. This is a pretty us. Yeah, this is a brilliant idea. The idea is that the filler float will rise to a certain level within the tank, and once it's at the proper level, it will activate a switch then turns off the filler valve. So so that way you no longer have water running in your tank.

If you ever hear water continuously running in your tank, it means that float is not activating the switch properly, and you may need to take the lid off and see what's going on with that float. Maybe it's stuck on something, or it's you know, it's it's the switch might be burnt out, in which case you would need to have that switch replaced. But that's what's causing that or this Again, the flush valve could be not seated

popular in waters just rushing out. So that's true. Filler valve balloon isn't getting to that level where it's supposed to where it can trip the filler valve from turning off again, right exactly. Yeah, that could be another another

cause for it. But you don't have to fear because even if the water is running, You're toilet will very likely not overflow because it's been designed so that as the tank fills, even if it keeps filling and filling and filling, it's going to the overflow um tube, I guess, is going to direct that into the bowl. Right, So any water that comes above the height of the overflow tube will just flow down the tube. The tube leads to the bowl, and water will flow into the bowl.

And then you think, wait, wait, wait that cause it the flush. Yes, surely somewhere this thing's got to flood. What's the deal? Why doesn't it all right? That's when we get into the siphon where my head pops. Yeah, this is the siphon gets a little for those who those of us who are many years away from basic physics,

the scipen gets confusing. So the siphon is designed so this is that that sort of upside down you or the s shaped pipe the top of that upside down you the peak there that's at the same level as what the toilet bowl, the level watering your toilet bowl will be. Now, if you were to pour more water into the toilet bowl, because there's there's just this open

area between the siphon and the bowl. You know, putting more water in makes the water level rise on both sides, right, But if you're only putting in a little bit of water, that water will just rise up above the level of the bend and flow down the other side of the bend. Yeah. And and I should I want to point out that, um, this is your explanation is spot on, but would be exponentially easier if somebody were looking at a cross section

of a toilet flushing s valve right exactly. Yeah, yeah, it would really drive at home, Yeah, because it's it's this is me trying to paint a picture of a toilet flush in words, yea, with physics. Yeah, so you've got you've got this this level here, and as long as the water is just flowing gently so for in other words, like a steady stream from the overflow too, then it's just going to gradually rise up til it hits above that you bend, and then flow down the

other side. And that's all that happens, because it's not it's not creating the siphon effect yet. Yes, So the water is in that in that s trap and in your toilet bowl and on the other side of the siphon in the tube that leads down to the sewer, that that air is imbalanced with the air that's in the toilet bowl. Right, So you basically have air pressure balancing your water and keeping it in place. Yep, yep.

And it's only if you were to fill that siphon that s trap with water completely that that then things get out of balance. And here's where the siphon affect comes into play. So how does a siphon work? Alright? First of all, siphons a bent tube used to move a liquid from a high evolution elevation rather over an obstruction and to a lower elevation. Done and done right. You could do this very easily by taking two cups, filling one cup with water, putting a couple of books

down on a table. So you put the cupful of water on top of one of the set of books. Get a tube, like a flexible tube of some sort, submerge it in the water so that the tube fills with water. Put your thumb over one end of it, move it over to the other cup, which is on the surface of the table. Yeah, make sure that the make sure that the end of the tube that you're holding ends up being lower than the level of water

in the cup. Let go. Water will start to flow from the cup that's above to the cup that's blow even though the tube will arc so the water is

technically flowing uphill. Yeah, which is pretty neat. Yeah. As long as the lower end of the tube going into the lower elevation glass um, as long as that is exposed to air, and as long as the end of the tube that's in the higher glass is under water, the air pressure in the tube is overcome and the suction effect takes place right well kind of except the other the tube in the lower elevation does not have to be above water can be. It can actually be

completely submerged as well. As long what will happen is if the two water levels reach the same height, uh and I mean same height relative to the table, then pressure is equalized and everything will everything is an equilibrium and water will stop to float. It's but as long as the elevated cup has a higher water level, water will continue to flow through that siphon. And the reason there are two reasons really. One is that water inside

a chamber like that acts like a chain. It pulls itself along The other reason is that you have I think of the tube as an arc. Well, the tube that leads down to the lower elevation is longer. That side is longer than the side that's in the higher elevation, So the water that's in that part is heavier, and that weight is what's pulling water are along inside the

tube and it's until until you hit equilibrium. So for a toilet to get it back to to the toilet example, and why it's important when you flush that water from the tank rushes into the bowl and it does so fast enough to completely fill the pipe that s trap. This activates the siphon effect, and the water pulls the waist and also all the rest of the water along with it through that s trap until it gets to a point where it has exhausted the amount of water

that the tank has put into the bowl. And then air is introduced. And once air is introduced, the siphon effect stops right. So with a siphon, not only is the water flowing out of the bowl because there's so much water, what about two or so gallons introduced to your toilet bowl in about three seconds that that siphon effect is produced in the s trap. Right, Not only is that water flowing, it produces a type of suction, so the water in the bowl is sucked out and

down the siphon. And then, yes, like you said, once the air is introduced, because the water and everything sucked out of the toilet bowl, the suction effect is cut off and everything goes back to the way it was before you flush the top. Right, That's when the filler valve can start to refill the bowl because now that there's no longer any more suction going on, the bowl water level can return back to what it was as well.

And keep in mind that part of the s trap that you know you can't see because it's a solid pipe, but that also ends up filling to that same height as the water that's in the bowl. And then you're ready to go again once the tank its bowl anyway, once you eat some kimchi. We talked about that before the podcast started. Um, but yeah, one other thing to keep in mind. You might say, well, why do we

need a tank at all? Why not just have a water pipe going directly into the toilet and then when you flush, it just opens up a valve for a certain amount of time and it closes. And the reason is because unless you have insane water pressure in your house, you're not putting enough water in fast enough to fill that s trap completely to to activate the siphon effect. It's just going to trickle out like if your tank

was overflowing exactly. So there's some buildings that I mean a lot of buildings that don't have UH tanks on their on their toilets. But that's because again, they are directly connected to a very powerful water system, and thus you don't need a tank because the water pressure that's coming in is great enough to start that effect all by itself. Yeah, or sometimes it's even more terrifying noise than that. So that's your basic toilet, how your basic

toilet works. But so glad we're past the siphon effect. Yeah, that's I feel like we just made it through the woods together. Now now we're going to go into the bright, gorgeous future of weird toilets. This is great. So let's talk Japanese toilets for a second. And I'm not talking about the ones, the tra off ones, which we established. There are still some in Japan, and trough is one way to put it. More like UH olyptical hole in the ground is another way you could describe it as well.

On the floor. Yeah yeah, so yeah, you straddle and then squat and then evacuate and then and then evacuate, evacuate the area. Like I would just be like, I don't know if I did it right, and run went down the street. Um, like I can't read your language and I'm so sorry. Just just yeah, that's kind of how I normally react. I mean, I am I'm being honest here, but no, the Japanese toilets, the the more

western style ones, have features. Many of them have features on them that put our western toilets to shame, like just phenomenal. So let's talk about some of the features. That's fine toilets. Sorry, do you want? Do you have a favorite out of all of them? The air dry air dry, that's pretty amazing. I I'm big on the sound masking. Yeah, they they they offer. Most Japanese toilets that have all the bells and whistles offer a sound

masking feature. That's a flushing toilet. Yeah. Some of them now have also classical music, but which makes some white noise. I actually did a brain Stuff episode about what white noises and how it works. So you should check for superiods. But yeah, it's the that those are so two of the very simple ones. But it also tends to have a couple of different options for washing your nether regions

once you are finished. Yes, and depending on your gender, Um, you should, I should say, depending on your sex, you should be very careful what option you choose when you're in Japan. Yeah, but they would be aimed for you know, ladies, for the men folks. And then you have ear washing, which is for you know, everyone, depending upon what activities you got up to on that bathroom. Um, and uh, yeah, so there's usually there's a picture of like a icon that looks kind of like a butt with some sort

of stream of something directed at it. That would be for washing your rear. The day usually has a icon of a lady somewhere on it involved, yeah, something like that to indicate what that was for. And uh, if you're wondering, like, well, wait a minute, I'm this sounds like this could be really unhygienic. The Japanese are very concerned with cleanling, and so these are nozzles that are usually hidden away from the inside of the toilet bowlts

only when you press the button that they get. There's like essentially a door that opens in the novel can come out, and they have nozzle sterilization technology to clean them between uses. And so uh yeah, they usually have buttons where you also have to like a stop button, so if you press one of these, it essentially goes

until you tell it to stop. Yeah. And the person who wrote this um this how to use a Japanese toilet post points out that before you choose either of these options, you want to press the stream power down as as low as it will go to start, and then you can adjust it upwards. Um. Here she says that at the normal setting is equivalent to about a water pick, which on your on your on your junk. That's not good, that's really, that's terrible. It might come as a big surprise for that to to hit certain

sins of variation. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's setting it low and does some of them also have controls for the temperature of the water, not to mention the temperature of the seat. Uh. Some also, like you mentioned, have the air drying so that after you have had your rear washed, air dry it, which I mean like yes, that's cool. There's like the days and rear washing all that stuff, but you're not gonna stand up right afterwards and just be wet. You have to have the air dryer.

That's why. I mean, that's the best part. I agree, I agree. I mean, if if you're going to have these other features, you really knew do need the air dryer or else you're just like, well, I guess I'll be sitting here for a couple more minutes before I dare move. Another interesting thing to me about the Japanese culture. Um, and it makes perfect sense, I totally understand it. But you know, in Japan, shoes are really considered to be quite dirty. That's one of the dirtiest pieces of clothing

that people have. So it's customary, of course to take your shoes off and slip into house slippers before moving going into a house. Absolutely, bathrooms have their own sets of slippers, and it is quite a faux pod to mix the two together. Oh yeah, if you were to step out of the bathroom wearing bathroom slippers, you would shock people, especially if you did like a little dance

like I'm American. Oh yeah, I don't do that. Come on, and you can You can usually tell the bathroom slip first um from they they have almost like a bit of a waterproof look to them. Usually they're a little shinier they're made of they're not like um cloth. Usually there you could tell just using your your noodle. Compared to house slippers, you'd be like, these are probably the

bathroom slipper toilet slippers. Or they might be brightly colored and you think no one would ever wear these anywhere else. Or maybe they have a poop emosey on them. It could be those are popular. Another feature you might find on the toilets as a deodo riser button. Yeah, also kind of interesting. So I found a toilet if I may give a plug, even though I should say I have no financial interest whatsoever in the Cohler company, but I have become a fan of their new me Uh toilet.

I can't even begin to describe it. It's just so neat as far as the design goes. UM. Just go to just look for the new me toilet and U M I UM. But one of the things they have is a deodorizer. It's like, um, basically a little vent where the the the odor is sucked in and run through the charcoal filter nice. Yeah, yeah, I mean I when I read about the Japanese toilets, obviously there's some some humor that comes in that just from the cultural

differences things like that, which can seem very funny. But at the same time, I am incredibly envious. I would love to have a lot of these features built into American toilets. Uh. There there are some moves to improve toilet technology in various ways. Some of it is a conservation trying to find low flush toilets that'll still activate the siphoning uh technique, but not use as much water, and a go very important. Did you see the no

mixed toilet I did. Yeah, the the one that has meant it has kind of like a ledge and and filter for urine and then behind that would be where Yeah, it's it's meant so that when you when you just have to urinate, you don't have to flush the toilet. Yeah, it doesn't flush at all, and as a matter of fact, it collects the urine um. And one of the reasons why the company that originally started making no mixed toilet stop making them is because well, number one, they didn't

catch on very well. There's a lot of hesitancy UM. But the another reason is they they didn't quite have the infrastructure to collect the urine separately and send it off. Although environmentally speaking, it makes a lot of sense to separate urine from feces, especially UH and not flush urine, because when you flush urine, you're introducing a lot of

other stuff besides just the urine. Like if you are on UM pharmaceuticals, those a lot of that stuff is expelled and metabolized and expelled in your urine and it gets introduced into wetland areas and things like that, and all of a sudden you have frogs they're like have roid rage or something you know, or that like a rubbing themselves against walls because you took too much ecstasy

the night before. That's fair, yeah, I mean, well, yeah, anything you're taking into yours, anything you're gonna excrete spen filtered through your kidneys, you're going to have some some other elements in there too consumed. But so the the no mixed toilet collects this urine and sends it off for separate recycling. And then if you're really hardcore, you know granola or your city is, then maybe it gets recycled into water, and you drink that and pee it

out again and again. It becomes a closed loop. Yeah, and we've talked about that on Forward Thinking. We talked about that with systems aboard UM the International Space Station ways of water reclamation. So that I mean, obviously, if you are in an area where you get very little water or it's very difficult to ship water to you, you have to make the best use of all the resources you have. Uh, there's some other things we can

talk about as far as toilet advances, smart toilets. So sensor technology has gotten to the point now where it's it's very inexpensive, it's it's versatile, waterproof. It's entirely possible to design sensors that could uh measure your waste and and come up with actual information that could be relevant to your health. So I saw some interesting examples like the idea of a sensor that could be an early

pregnancy detection by detecting changing hormone levels. UM, it might analyze your waste detective bacterial infection, so it might tell you. It might even send you an indication saying you know, you need to take it easy for a little while, or maybe even you need to go see a doctor. With the right kind of software, you and this is

not hard to do at all. You could even have one that could send a notification to your doctor, or even go further, have one that's linked to your doctor's calendar and your calendar and even create an appointment for you. So your toilet does all that for you. It's it's possible. It's not something that we're necessarily seeing everywhere, but it's possible.

I could see some problems with this though. Well yeah, I mean, like, first of all, there's a real hesitancy by people too, especially put their medical records out there, their health data. UM. I feel like those as as the advantages or the benefits of allowing the Internet of things or that that level of tech into our lives, especially with health um, become obvious to more people. The

more just relaxed everybody's going to become. I mean think about it, five ten years ago, say five, putting your credit card into a website to order something was still like really sketch you to a lot of people, and out enough people have done it that it's just it's just whatever, that's the norm. Yeah, right, And I think health, our health information is going to go that same way.

I can see that. The only thing I see as uh possible, well not the only thing, but one of the things I see is an impediment to this is how do you identify the person who is using the toilet at any given situations. So, for example, Josh, let's say I have you over and you need to use my restroom, and unbeknownst to me, you are carrying around a really awful bacterial infection that's poised to wreak havoc

in your system. And so as you use my restroom and you flushed the toilet, it analyzes it and suddenly thinks that Jonathan has gotten really sick. Next thing I know, my doctor is calling me. Now I know about your health condition. Yeah, that's that's a very good point. Um. I would guess then, if if toilets are analyzing us our health personally, then a toilet itself will become a much more personal thing. So maybe I have a dumb toilet as my guest toilet, and then my smart toilet

is the only one that's in my master bathroom. Or here's another thing, Stop me if I sound crazy, stop You've got a biometric authentication system for your toilet where you have to scan like a thumb print or a retinal scan to identify you before using it. Thus you can't possibly confuse too people and you cannot flush until you have identified yourself. That's a good one, then, know

that's a I mean, it makes sense. My my wife and I have um an aria uh scale Oh yeah right, it's like fitbit um and it can easily tell us apart. But because I mean it just determines like wait and all that stuff. Um, so it can it can easily tell us are But you know, maybe the seat does detect by weight or there is some other detail about you that just by sitting on the toilet, uh, it says this is Jonathan or this is not This is someone who's broken into Jonathan's house to use this toilet.

Were using your bathroom? Should I lock the door? Yes? And turn on bathroom webcam? Right? Yeah, there you go. And also the you know deoduriz, let's just go ahead and be safe. So there are other potential dangers, and

one of those is hacking. So there's already a story about a smart toilet hacking uh situation, which happened back in two thousand thirteen, Ours Technica reported that, according to security firm trust Wave, the Enacts Status automatic toilet had a Bluetooth security vulnerability, and it was a doozy so to speak. So the you know, when you pair to bluetooth capable technologies together, you generally have some sort of code that you have to put in in order to

pair them. Not always, but a lot of them do. And the problem was they had hardwired the same master code in all of these toilets, and it was just zero zero zero zero. So any app for this toilet

compare with any toilet just from being in the same area. Right, So if you are within bluetooth distance, which is pretty decent, I mean, you don't it's not that far, but it's not you know, it's it's not like you could do it from two fifty feet away necessarily, But if you're close enough, like within the building or on the on the side of it or whatever, you can totally pair your phone with a toilet inside and essentially hijack someone's toilet,

which you know, you might think, well, why could you do? Well, this thing had the ability to open and close via a command on your phone, so that way you didn't have to touch the toilet seat. It also allows you to control things like the bidet or the rear washing uh nozzles, so you could you could turn it on, like you could turn on one of those nozzles when no one's on the toilet and start flooding their bathroom.

Or you could do it when you realize someone's just got into the bathroom and they haven't even really started yet. You could do it then and just laugh at the hilarious or close the toilet seat while they're mid you know activity. You know, you know it's ironic about using an app on your phone to open and close the toilet seat. Would it be that the phone surfaces the dirtiest surface to come in contact with toilet? Yeah, I

thought that might be where you were going with that. Yeah, guys, if you didn't know, if you have smartphones, got touchscreen, hits filthy, it's about the dirtiest thing you probably come into contact within any day, including a toilet. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing that might be uh you know, a good competitor with that would be a keyboard. If you use a keyboard on a daily basis, that's probably pretty

gross too. Uh Yeah. So what's in the future for toilet's Probably we will see some more of these, uh, these things that are common now in Japanese toilets kind of filter their way through to other ones. I imagine we'll stay see more moves to conserve water. It may even mean that we end up moving away from the siphon model and find a different model to deal with waste so that it does it's not reliant upon creating enough water to create this section. We'll have to wait

and see. Um, but we have to thank the brilliant men and women who came before us forging the path to make incredibly useful piece of technology, and also hope that we can continue to strive to get it to more people so that we can improve the quality of life for folks who who otherwise are in pretty rough you know, circumstances when the obviously when cultures are going to adopt it. So, Josh, thank you so much for joining me on the man, Thank you for having me.

This was a joy. It was fun. It was fun. I'm glad we were able to talk about this in a mature way, with only a few terrible jokes on my end, relatively mature. We did pretty juvenile at times, but mostly maure uh. Of course listeners. You can find Josh at the Stuff You Should Know podcast, which is the granddaddy of all the stuff podcasts. Fantastic. I mean it's it's the oldest podcast that's still running from How

Stuff Works and is uh fantastic. It's great. And you can also find Josh and lots and lots of video series. One of my favorites that Don't Be Dumb series remains way up there. I mean, it's like consistently informative and incredibly entertaining to me that it takes a lot of work to look that uncomfortable on camera. Well, it said it is. It doesn't take much of it. I'm just myself. I think that's just that's when I just stopped trying.

Everything else is difficult. They're nice. Well, and guys, if you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it is a type of technology, a personality, a company, Maybe you have a suggestion for someone you want to hear interviewed or be a guest host, let me know. Send me a message that email edgrest is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Twitter. Or Facebook or Tumbler. The handle it

all three of those is tech stuff. Hs w M. I'll talk to you against release for more on this and batons of other topics. Because it has to works. Dot com