Step forward, young Caleb.
Joy, I have brought you the plunger of mercy and the toilet brush of truth, as you requested.
Indeed you have, young Caleb.
Then I believe you are finally ready.
You mean it?
I double dog mean it.
No take backsies.
Now, bend thy knee and lower thine head.
Do you, Sir Caleb, solemnly swear to always lower the seat when you're done, double-check to make sure everything flushes and wash your hands for at least 20 seconds.
I do.
Place thine hand on this book and repeat after me.
Um, Joy, that's a roll of toilet paper.
Precisely.
Now, repeat after me.
Whether number one or number two.
Whether number one or number two.
I will go with pride when I enter the loo.
I will go with pride when I enter the loo.
It is done.
Welcome, Sir Caleb.
You are now a member of the bathroom brigade.
May all your bathroom bricks be bountiful.
Such an honor.
So now do I get access to the very special forever go bathroom?
Oh, you get access to an entire wing of bathrooms.
Get ready, Caleb.
You are in for a potty party.
Follow me to the loo.
This is Forever Ago from APM Studios.
I'm Joy Dolo, and this is Caleb from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Hi, Caleb.
Hi.
Today, we're doing a whole episode about toilets.
So naturally, we're headed to the bathroom.
Yeah.
Joy is going to show me her collection of historical commodes.
Now, I'm a big fan of the toilet.
It's a marvelous invention.
It whisks away wastewater, freshens with a flush, shoes poo and makes pee flee.
It's no wonder our forever-ago friend Kobe was interested in them, too.
Hi, my name is Kobe.
I would like to know about the history of toilets.
I think it's interesting.
Because it's sucking that we use every day but don't know a lot about.
Caleb, how do you feel about bathrooms?
What's yours like at home?
Um, I don't know.
It's just a toilet and a sink.
Nothing special about the toilet and the sink, huh?
No, they're just normal.
Wow.
Well, Caleb, I'm going to tell you about my bathroom at home because I really like my bathroom.
It's like my favorite color is dark green.
And so like I've got dark green walls and then I have like a silver ceiling.
And then my shower curtain is made from it's like like birch wood, like a birch wood shower curtain.
So when you walk in, it looks like you're in a forest.
Yeah.
Wow.
It's a pretty cool bathroom, which is why I'm so interested in your bathroom.
Yeah, yours sounds way more cool than mine.
So what is the worst bathroom that you've ever seen?
Yeah, there's this one at this place near us, and it's toilet.
They're supposed to be... two nails that are keeping it on the ground, but there's only one.
So it almost like tips over.
But it doesn't quite, but it's really wriggly.
How hard would it be to go to a bathroom with like when it's only nailed down once?
It's like you have no stability.
Yeah.
You have to stay very still.
I have another question for you.
If you could design your dream toilet, any features you could have on a toilet.
What are some main features that you would like?
Um, I just like the toilet as it is.
I think it's just how it needs to be.
I don't think anything needs to be changed.
Oh, that's nice.
If I could do it, I would like have like it can make pop tarts.
So like, while you're sitting there, you could have a pop tart and you can like it would like make its own flavors.
So you don't have to like get only like strawberry pop tarts.
It's like strawberry and then sometimes cinnamon and then sometimes the s'mores one that have like the chocolate and the marshmallow in it.
That sounds kind of disgusting.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to be eating while I'm using the restroom.
Okay, how about this?
This is another idea.
I have a lot of ideas.
What if your toilet also, like, played music?
That sounds more reasonable.
Oh, good.
Okay, so while we're on a good track, here's one more idea.
So what if like, you open the toilet backing area and there's like a system where you get a warm towel?
So instead of using toilet paper, you have, like, a little warm towel that you can use.
Ew, that's maybe the worst one yet.
Go back to the pop-tart idea.
Well cool, okay.
So would you rather use a super luxurious private bathroom with a beautiful view of the beach or use the bathroom on the international space station?
Oh, definitely the one with a view of the beach, because i've heard bad things about the one on the international space station.
What have you heard?
Is it Pop-Tarts?
No, but it's just not great quality and there's no water and you have to be careful like your poop and pee doesn't float away.
Oh, I don't want to go there either, to be honest.
Yeah.
Okay, now I think it's time to get down to business.
Let's get to the business of doing our business.
Caleb, which century do you want to see first?
Which century?
What do you mean?
Which century toilet do you want to see?
I have them all.
Welcome to... Joy's Hall of Stalls.
Every door in this hall leads to a different model of toilet from throughout history.
You want to potty like it's 1999?
Right this way.
Or maybe doo-doo like they did-did in the dark ages?
I've got you covered.
Or how about a little 1960s-style pit stop complete with a lava lamp next to the john?
I've got your peace, love, and porcelain right here, dude.
Whoa, there's like 50 doors.
53, but who's counting?
Me, I'm counting.
Because I collect historical toilets.
After all, I'm a member of the bathroom brigade and the president.
I started the whole club.
You weren't kidding when you said a whole ring of bathrooms.
This is amazing.
Well, think about it.
Bathrooms are kind of the bedrock of civilization.
For a long time, humans lived in small groups that traveled a lot.
They'd make waste and then make haste and leave it behind.
Right.
But as humans started learning to farm and build towns, they stayed in the same place.
So figuring out what to do with the waste became a problem.
Just imagine it if they didn't have a plan.
The piles of poo could grow and grow.
A big town without some kind of toilet and sewer system would become a stinktropolis real quick.
If the waste ended up in drinking water, like a nearby lake or river, people could get super sick super quick.
So solving the potty problem was a big deal.
Some of the earliest known toilets with a sewer system were made by the Indus Valley civilization.
They lived over 4,000 years ago in an area now known as Pakistan.
Right, and they built large cities with tens of thousands of people.
To deal with all that waste, they made toilets that drained to central gutters.
And those gutters carried the icky stuff away from the city centers.
Out of sight, out of smell, out of mind.
Exactly.
Whoa, check out this bathroom door.
It has fancy columns on it.
Oh, we have to check this one out.
It's based on toilets from about 2,000 years ago in the days of the Roman Empire.
Caleb, welcome to my Pompeii party.
Whoa, is this a replica of the whole city of Pompeii?
Yep, I go for authenticity with my bathrooms.
It's so real!
This was the era when Romans were ruling over parts of Europe, North Africa, and West Asia.
They also built some amazing things that are still around today, like the Roman Colosseum.
They even had aqueducts, which are these fancy giant stone water slides made by skilled builders that helped bring water from one place to another.
And people wore togas.
I feel like that's an important detail.
But wait, if this is the city of Pompeii, this must be before the volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted.
Pompeii was buried under volcanic ash during the eruption.
It was a massive tragedy.
But it also preserved much of the city, just as it was.
Exactly.
So when archaeologists dug it up later, they could get a good sense of life back then.
That's how I know this Pompeii potty is so accurate.
Take a gander!
Um, is this the bathroom?
It's just a long bench full of holes.
Doesn't seem very private.
Indeed.
It's so several people can relieve themselves at the same time.
My friend Crispus is correct.
It's a very public restroom.
Well said, dear Cleesus.
Um, what are these guys doing here?
Uh, they came with the bathroom.
I told you, it's very authentic.
These toilets may look like simple holes in a bench, but they connected to large pipes underground.
It was a very early form of sewers.
I've read about Roman sewers.
They were really advanced for the time.
The waste fell in, and then it was carried away to a nearby river or waterway.
Exactly.
It's not too far off from our toilets and sewers today.
Private homes sometimes had loos, too, but those usually just dumped into deep holes in the ground.
And get this, these private privies were often in the kitchen.
Hmm.
No.
Just no.
Yes, yes.
People probably also use the toilet to throw away food scraps and such, so I guess it seemed like a good idea back then.
Yeah, where else would you put it?
In some remote part of the home?
That's just weird.
Now, if you'll excuse us, my good friend Crispus and I were just about to lounge at the loo and discuss philosophy and whatnot.
You're welcome to join us.
Uh, no thanks.
We're just visiting.
Oh, are you afraid because of the octopus?
Octopus?
Oh, what he means is that sometimes things crawl up from the sewers.
You know, bugs, rats, octopuses.
Okay, that's just one story.
You see, a man once claimed that an octopus would climb into his home through his toilet every night to eat his fish.
But that's not a real problem, if you ask me.
No, no.
It's far more likely that a rat will climb up and bite your nethers.
But don't fret.
It only hurts for several hours.
Um, that sounds unpleasant.
Uh, yeah, I forgot about the butt-biting rats.
So modern toilets are built so things can only go one way, down.
Anyway, let's check out another historical bathroom.
Oh, the rats aren't the real danger.
It's the flames.
Sometimes the gases from the waste can create a fireball that shoots right up from the potty hole.
It adds a real sense of adventure.
Oh, okay.
Sounds cool.
Maybe next time.
That was really interesting, but I think I'd like to see something a little less public.
I've got just the John for you, but it's kind of far down Joyce Hall of Stalls.
So while we walk, how about we play a game of?
That's the game where we put things in the order they came in history.
Today's things are all toilet adjacent.
We got toilet paper, plungers, and bidets.
Now, bidets are devices used to wash yourself with water after you do your business.
So, Caleb, which do you think came first in history?
Which came second?
And which is the newest?
Toilet paper, plungers, and bidets.
Hmm.
Well, I know that people... used to use magazines and stuff before they used toilet paper.
And that was like, I think, back in the early 1900s.
So I think toilet paper came first because it's like, well, maybe plungers came first.
Okay.
No, I think I'm going to go with toilet paper.
And then plungers and then the bed.
Bidet?
Bidet, yeah.
Okay.
Because...
I feel like toilet paper was probably invented back when they still mainly used outhouses.
Oh, right.
And so you wouldn't need a plunger.
And then the plunger.
And then, like, I don't know when people started really getting sinks.
So, like, I feel like it'd be like a similar time except later.
So I think that's how I'll put it.
That's a great order.
Okay, so toilet paper, plungers, bidets.
We'll hear the answers at the end of the episode right after the credits.
We'll be right back.
We're working on an episode all about the kernel that feeds the burn gnome.
And we want to hear from you.
What do you think will be the snack of the future?
Freeze-dried salad?
Moon taffy?
Saucy croutons?
Let us know.
Caleb, what do you think will be the snack of the future?
Okay, so you know like puffed Cheetos?
Yeah.
Except imagine it didn't have any of the powder on it and it wasn't flavored at all.
And then you come in a box and then you could also get, maybe separately, the powders and you could like choose the flavor.
That is such a cool idea.
What would your flavor be?
I don't know.
I'd probably just put on cheese flavor, since it's kind of weird to imagine Cheetos without the cheese.
But they could also be like sweet if you wanted them to.
Yeah, like cinnamon sugar or, like you know, like a powdered donut, like whatever that powdered sugar is.
Yeah.
Listeners, record yourself describing your snack of the future and send it to us at foreveragoorg slash contact.
And while you're there, you can send us episode ideas, drawings, and questions.
So keep listening.
Brains on Universe is a family of podcasts for kids and their adults.
And since you're a fan of Forever Ago, we know you'll love the other shows in our universe.
Come on, let's explore.
Entering Brains on Universe.
So many podcasts.
Brains on.
Smash Boom Best.
Forever Ago.
Picking up signal.
Smash boom best.
A debate show.
What are they arguing about this time?
Tomatoes versus potatoes.
I was just remembering, in 1949 the Mr Potato Head went into production, a pivotal toy in a lot of people's childhood.
And I was Googling right now, Mr. Tomato Head.
And the first thing that comes up is, did you mean Mr. Potato Head?
Oh.
Hilarious.
Zorp.
Signal down.
Need smash boom vest?
No.
What?
Search for Smash Boom Best wherever you get your podcasts.
You're listening to Forever Ago.
I'm Joy.
I'm Caleb.
And today we're exploring the history of toilets.
Getting rid of waste is a problem all civilizations need to deal with.
For thousands of years humans have come up with different ways to move that stuff away from where they live.
Like in the ancient Indus Valley civilization, they used public gutters and water to carry away waste.
In ancient Rome, they had bigger underground sewers and very public restrooms.
Aha!
We're here.
This is one of my favorite historical toilets.
Oh, wow.
This toilet looks expensive.
Draped in purple velvet and jewels?
Fancy.
It should be.
It's literally fit for a queen.
Caleb, I present to you Queen Elizabeth I. She ruled England in the late 1500s.
Whoa!
A queen!
You may bow to the queen.
Oh, sorry, your majesty.
JK, I don't care.
What's up, Joy, my sis?
It's been so long.
How are you, my girl?
Did you get your nails done?
Love.
Hey, queenie.
I did get them done.
Thanks for noticing.
So what's up?
Here to gossip?
Do our hair?
Oh, should I get takeout?
The Queen of England gets takeout?
This was England in the 1500s.
They didn't have fast food, let alone takeout.
This was before electricity and cars.
It was all horses and candles and dresses with huge frilly neck pieces.
What Queenie means by takeout is to have her servants take out all the food in the pantry so she can look at it and decide what she wants to eat.
Oh, gotcha.
So, girl, dish, how's that podcastle thing you do?
Do they still make you do it?
Ugh, sounds terrible.
Why not loaf?
Girls gotta loaf, am I right?
Uh, it's a podcast, and I love doing it.
I'm doing it right now.
We're actually here to peep your potty.
What?
This old thing?
JK, it's new.
Don't you just love it?
Wait, is that a wooden box with a hole on top?
What?
No.
Ew.
It's a velvet-covered close stool.
A close stool is just a fancy name for a wooden box with a hole in the top.
When it's time to go, I just sit here and my boom boom goes into the box.
It lands in a chamber pot.
Then later, my servants come and take the chamber pot out of the box and dump it.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Am I right?
Chamber pots were popular at this time.
They're basically pots you go to the bathroom in, then you take it out of your house and throw the waste away, sometimes in a nearby brook or a river.
Not the cleanest of solutions.
Very nasty basement situation.
Tell me about it.
Or don't.
I hear about it all the time from the groom of the stool.
It's all, my sister's home smells of feces, your highness.
There was pee-pee coming from the basement again, your majesty.
Blah, blah, blah.
What is the groom of the stool?
At this time, it was common for kings and queens to have someone keep them company when they used the restroom.
You know, because they didn't have phones to scroll or magazines to read.
Yeah, it's fun to chit-chat with someone, you know?
Spill the goss.
My bathroom bestie is named Catherine Ashley.
Her title is Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber.
OMG, she is so fun.
She also helps me with my grooming and clothes and stuff.
Oh, and we talk about the latest TikToks.
TikToks?
Wait, I thought you didn't have phones.
TikToks are what she calls clocks.
Clocks were a big deal at this time.
Yeah, I even got one TikTok that's small enough to fit on my wrist.
Can you even?
On my wrist.
I'm pretty sure we've reached the peak of technology.
Am I right, sis?
Well, back then, they may have had wrist clocks, but they didn't have a real sewer system.
In fact, in London England, things got real bad because people were dumping their waste in the River Thames.
That's also the river people in London get their drinking water from.
Yikes!
Yep, lots of people got sick.
As the city grew, the waste situation got worse and worse.
Finally, in the mid-1800s, city officials built a proper sewer system.
New York City got serious about building sewers around the same time too.
And pretty soon it became normal for big cities to have a whole plan for collecting waste and cleaning the water.
Fascinating, I'm sure.
Anyway...
You want to go ride horses or pick flowers?
Oh, I know.
Want to go to a revel?
I love reveling.
I host one called Coachella.
That's so fun.
Coachella?
She calls it Coachella because everyone gets there in horse-drawn coaches.
Makes sense.
Actually, Joy, all of this talk of toilets got me thinking.
I could really stand to make a pit stop myself.
Well, you can't use my royal throne.
Get your own, or have your servants get you one.
I don't care what you do, just stay away from my wooden box.
I mean my clothes stool.
The queen is very possessive of her peapod.
But don't worry, I have the perfect bathroom for you.
Come on!
You know, it kind of blows my mind how different civilizations across the globe from different times all found similar ways of getting rid of waste.
Yeah, I love thinking about toilets because it reminds us that things don't just get better and better.
Sometimes societies figure out something really cool, but over time that idea is lost.
Then another society figures out a similar idea much later on.
And places we often think of as really modern, like England and the US, were actually really late to develop the kinds of sewers we saw in the Middle East and Rome thousands of years ago.
See, there's amazing history in everything, even toilets.
And speaking of, here, Caleb, is the perfect toilet for you.
It's the toilet of your dreams.
A private, super luxurious bathroom with a beach view.
Wow, this is amazing.
It's exactly like I pictured it.
Now, if you'll excuse me.
By all means.
I did it.
I found Caleb the perfect bathroom experience.
That's what collecting historical toilets is all about.
Ooh, I should tell the president of the Bathroom Brigade Club about this.
Wait, I'm the president, and I'm very proud of myself.
Good job, me.
Throughout history, people have had to figure out different ways to deal with their doo-doo.
Some of the earliest toilets with sewer systems were made by the Indus Valley civilization.
Ancient Romans had very public and social restrooms where you shared toilets with lots of people all at once.
And in 16th century England, kings and queens used velvet-covered boxes, called clothes sewers.
Cities like London and New York didn't start using sewers and treating wastewater until the late 1800s.
Progress isn't always a straight line, and that goes for toilets, too.
This episode was written by Sandin Totten.
It was produced by Nico Gonzalez-Whistler and Ruby Guthrie.
Our editors are Shayla Farzan and Molly Bloom.
Fact-checking by Nico Gonzalez-Whistler.
Engineering help from Josh Savageau and Rick Bierling with sound design by Rachel Breeze.
Original theme music by Mark Sanchez.
We had additional production help from the rest of the BrainZong Universe team.
Beth Perlman is our executive producer, and the executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavadi and Joanne Griffith.
Special thanks to Molly House Spence and the rest of Caleb's family.
And if you want access to ad-free episodes and special bonus content, subscribe to our Smarty Pass.
Okay, Caleb, it's time.
Are you ready to hear the answers for First Things First?
I think so.
I'm excited.
Okay, so just as a reminder, we're putting these three toilet-related items in order of when they were invented.
And so you said number one was toilet paper, number two was plungers, and number three was bidet.
Were you right, Caleb?
You're holding me in suspense.
I know.
It's my fault.
But you were so close, Caleb.
You were so close.
So number one was toilet paper.
You were absolutely right about that.
And that came around in the 6th century.
The earliest known toilet paper comes from ancient China.
The Chinese famously invented paper around the year 200 B.C.
And so a few hundred years later, there are stories of people in China using paper at toilet time.
But this didn't catch on in the Western world for quite some time.
Toilet paper wasn't patented in the U.S. until the 1800s.
Oh, I wasn't thinking of people using it, like, before toilets.
I was thinking of like the actual rolls, but I guess they could have just used it like by itself.
Yeah, yeah.
Paper, you know, any kind of paper, not just for toilets, but that's cool.
So toilet paper was first.
And then second was bidet.
And that was created around the late 1600s or early 1700s.
Wow, these are way earlier than I was thinking.
Yeah, I know, right?
Humans have used water to wash themselves after a bathroom break for a long time.
And maybe while in a river or in a lake, which that makes sense.
But the modern bidet goes back to France in the 1700s.
And today, bidets can spray different temperature water for a post-potty clean feeling.
So last but certainly not least is plungers.
And plungers were invented in 1875, so still pretty long ago.
That was when I was expecting toilet paper to be invented, like some time around like that.
Yeah, yeah, but we're going like way before that, huh?
So the plunger was dreamed up by a guy named John Hawley and patented in 1875.
It uses suction to pull on clogs and pipes and hopefully get things moving again.
The first plunger designs looked pretty much the same as it does today.
And, you know, you just can't mess with perfection.
What can you do?
Plungers have been the same for years and years and years.
So what was the most surprising fact in there for you?
It was really surprising how early everything came.
I don't think there was anything after the 20th century.
Yeah, so now it's kind of up to us to invent the newest one, huh?
Yeah, I wonder what it'll be.
I just hope it isn't your Paw Patrol.
Oh!
Shoot!
I'm not sure if anybody would buy that.
Well, that sounds like a challenge, Caleb.
Join us next week for a new episode all about the history of bagels.
Thanks for listening.
