Latest / Privycast / Ep. 64 Mojenjo-Daro and Another Look at Public Pools

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Ep. 64 Mojenjo-Daro and Another Look at Public Pools · Privycast

0:00
>> Speaker A: It just seems a little suspect, or sus, as the
0:03
kids say. You know, I felt like an old fuddy duddy
0:06
man saying, sus,
0:10
if I could take it back. I haven't even edited yet, and I
0:13
won't edit it out. But if I could take it back, I wouldn't
0:15
do it. That's what you got to know.
0:23
Welcome back to privy. Privy is a
0:26
podcast about bathrooms
0:28
recorded in my home bathroom.
0:31
I'm your host, hunter hoover, and I love
0:34
bathrooms. Hey, I got a
0:37
level with you. There's times
0:39
where I see things in a bathroom where I'm like,
0:43
what in the goddamn heck are you doing? So,
0:46
first, I'm going to share. I had a close call squeaker this
0:48
week. Um, I had a toot,
0:51
and sometimes you toot,
0:54
and it feels like maybe there's a little bit more
0:57
there. Um, so I promptly
1:00
rushed to the bathroom at my job. Like, I work with
1:03
teenagers. If you shaz your pants with teenagers in
1:06
the vicinity, you're done. So you're
1:08
made. Uh, it's all over.
1:11
And it was just a close call. But
1:14
what I did discover, which, uh, is
1:17
my gripe and my grief here. Um,
1:20
so there are these wonderful, wonderful
1:23
people in the world who, um,
1:26
really, I don't believe could ever be paid
1:29
enough. I say that as a person who used to do
1:32
this work. Um, but our janitors
1:35
shout out to every janitor in the world,
1:39
thank you for doing what you do. You're essential.
1:42
Dang it. But I went to the bathroom
1:46
at my place of work and
1:48
staff bathroom. This is not shared by young people.
1:51
This is all adults in the zone.
1:54
Autozone. Not autozone. I don't know if I'm
1:57
allowed to say autozone. I don't know how stuff works. But
2:00
underneath the rim of the bowl, um, so you
2:03
have the seat, which is the thing that is the mechanical
2:06
piece that goes up and down. I'm explaining
2:09
the anatomy of a toilet to you now. Here we are. Welcome
2:12
to privy. Um, but underneath
2:14
the edge of the bowl, which is actually, like,
2:17
the physical thing that
2:20
holds all the goodies, there was the
2:22
most shotgun disastered poop spray I
2:25
have ever seen underneath the edge of this bowl. And
2:28
I'm sitting here going, this is not the
2:31
janitor's job to deal with this.
2:34
If you have this explosive
2:37
wet situation going on,
2:39
friggin wipe it up. Like, just do
2:42
a quick once over with your eye holes and just
2:45
say, does it look like I left an awful
2:48
disaster for everybody to look at? Oh, I
2:50
did. Well, I had better wipe it up. So
2:53
these are things that may be a normal human brain and
2:56
then also same zone. Since I'm here guffing
2:59
my heart out to you, there's this gentleman
3:02
who, he takes the longest
3:05
dumparoo at exact
3:08
same time every day. Like, if you
3:10
are looking to drop a stack
3:13
between 1015 and 1045,
3:16
do not go in the main staff bathroom of the building that I
3:19
work in because this dude is
3:22
always posted up hard in the
3:25
paint. Big stink.
3:27
And how people have
3:30
signature, rank, rank of the week. His
3:33
rank is the same every time. That's how you know it's him.
3:36
But I won't be working at the school
3:39
for a few months, which
3:42
means it's officially
3:45
privy, summer. And you know what that
3:48
means? Pretty soon,
3:50
old Joey Chestnuts is going to
3:53
be gobbling glizzies, and we're going to
3:56
take a look at that. Uh, stay tuned for more
3:59
coverage of the Nathan's famous hot dog
4:02
eating contest. It's great to be
4:05
in American, where that's something that
4:08
you get to interact with. Do you
4:11
know what? Just a. It's just a pleasure.
4:14
Uh, that, that's something.
4:16
But we discussed at length
4:19
last summer, pools. And we learned about
4:22
everyone's favorite pool parasite,
4:24
cryptosporidia. Now,
4:27
cryptosporidia, or as I call, and
4:30
it should be called just plain crypto.
4:33
You see, it should be called crypto because it
4:35
confuses all these tech gurus
4:38
who are trying to crypto hack their
4:41
way into a million dollars. Like, chill out, get a
4:44
job. Um, but if you get crypto in
4:47
your mouth, you're going to get the crappies in your
4:49
drawers. That's what I always say. Crypto
4:52
in your mouth means crappies in your drawers.
4:55
But this week on privy.
4:58
Happy privy. Summer. We need to revisit
5:01
pools in, of course, the most
5:03
roundabout way possible by talking
5:06
about ancient Pakistan. Now,
5:10
the premise is this.
5:12
What is a pool? What is a pool if it
5:15
is not just a really big bath?
5:18
Now, they definitely were not the
5:20
chlorine and salinated treatment
5:23
pools we have today. Back then,
5:26
the first modern indoor swimming pool
5:29
was a public indoor pool in
5:32
England. At St. George's
5:34
baths, the pool was
5:37
saltwater. And, uh, they also had a number of
5:40
outdoor pools in the Liverpool pool area. Get
5:43
it? Because, like, of the pools. And while I know
5:46
there were other places that had outdoor pools at this
5:48
time, I want to note the name here
5:51
because I believe this was a
5:54
transition piece that is
5:56
crucial to understanding the nature
5:59
of pools. These pools
6:02
at St. George's. What was that last word
6:05
there? Oh, yeah,
6:07
baths. They're called
6:09
baths. And after this
6:12
period, there was a shift
6:15
from going to the bathhouses
6:18
to going to the pools.
6:21
Also, this change, the first indoor
6:24
public pool opening in
6:25
1828, was really kind
6:28
of like the most major shift in
6:31
poolery in 1700
6:34
plus years. Like, they
6:37
figured out there was bacteria and they needed to kill it. But besides
6:40
that, it was pretty much, like, pretty
6:42
stagnant. Another water
6:45
joke. For, like, 1700 years
6:48
before this, these pools, or
6:51
as I noted, baths, uh,
6:54
were pretty common. Uh, the
6:57
Romans. Here we go. Welcome back to the
6:59
Romans, had bathing houses and ritual
7:02
pools. You know, that there were
7:05
perverts that went to the bathing house for
7:07
non bathing reasons. That's all I'm going to
7:10
say about it. But these bathing houses
7:14
and ritual pools were where the
7:17
people would have to go to
7:19
bathe before they approached
7:22
some sort of deity or offered sacrifice at the
7:24
temple. So the idea is this, you go
7:27
down to the water, you get yourself
7:30
soaked, you wash off a little bit to prepare
7:33
yourself to go before your God or
7:36
God or goddess, or,
7:38
honestly, your cousin, I don't even know.
7:41
And these were spread, these ritual
7:44
bathing pools were spread to all
7:47
the areas that Rome conquered. So, like, when Rome
7:50
moved in and began to take land,
7:52
they set up their systems
7:55
of worship. And part of that were
7:58
ritual bathing pools that they would dig and put
8:01
in in these parts of the world.
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One of these parts of the world that Rome
8:07
conquered was Britain, likely, where
8:10
later the folks at St. George got such a good
8:12
idea, like, hey, we got these
8:15
big, essentially, like,
8:18
troughs that we can fill with water
8:20
and dunk our chunky in. It's kind of
8:23
fun, too. We should just turn this into a thing. What do we call this? You know
8:26
what I'm saying? But, yeah, the
8:29
Romans had these really dope jumbo baths, often
8:32
built into the ground. And you tell me what that
8:35
is. It's a
8:37
pool, but it's a bath.
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Some of them were even heated, for goodness sakes. Like, they had figured
8:44
out how to heat these by underground, like heating
8:47
and steam and stuff like that. So,
8:49
yeah, they had these ritual bathing
8:52
pools. Bath pools get the combo deal there
8:55
all over. And some at the time were even used
8:58
for recreational swimming.
9:00
However, one of Rome's
9:03
baths stands out amongst the rest.
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Aque sulus, I believe, is how it's said.
9:10
I'm not a Latinist. Was an
9:12
expansive religious spa where
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folks would go to worship,
9:17
bathe, swim, and
9:20
seek healing. What a
9:23
cell. Could you imagine, like a day spa
9:25
today being like, hey,
9:28
you, come on over here. You know
9:31
what you need? You need to relax. Yeah, I
9:34
do. You need to just bathe. Oh, that
9:37
sounds good. Take a nice swim.
9:39
Oh, yeah. Oh, man. There's going to be some
9:42
healing that happens here. Hm. Less
9:45
sure about that, but I'm still listening. I've got a cut on my
9:48
boo boo. Uh oh. Yeah. And
9:51
worship at the spa.
9:55
What are we talking about? You know what I'm saying? It just seems a
9:58
little suspect, or sus, as the kids
10:01
say. I felt like an old fuddy duddy
10:03
man saying sus,
10:07
if I could take it back. I haven't even edited it yet and I
10:10
won't edit it out, but if I could take it back, I wouldn't
10:13
do it. That's what you got to know.
10:16
But they had this super spa
10:19
and it was heated by thermal pools underground. And
10:22
now the idea of swimming and worship
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being comboed like that to me is kind of weird.
10:27
But nowadays swimming is viewed as like a
10:30
recreational activity that you do for fun with
10:33
the kids in the summertime so everybody can cool
10:36
off. And bathing is
10:39
pretty much primarily viewed for hygiene.
10:42
But back then, both
10:45
were a part of their religious lives,
10:48
swimming and bathing.
10:50
So they had this super spa
10:53
where they went to worship in Rome.
10:56
However, these were all just
10:58
improvements on the recreational
11:01
swimming pools the Greeks had invented
11:04
about a thousand years earlier. We're
11:07
really going back, like, we're
11:10
3000 plus years back now from where we
11:13
are today. One of the things that
11:16
happened as Greece experienced a lot of
11:18
their prosperity was there was time
11:21
for stuff like philosophy and thinking about
11:24
stuff. Uh, yeah, like swimming. We can do
11:27
that too. These pools in Greece
11:30
became somewhat of like an athletic club.
11:32
Like, you go there and hang out. And if you've ever
11:35
interacted with the young men's Christian
11:38
association, also known as the
11:40
YMCA, that is the reason
11:43
most YMCAs, or
11:45
like centers that are like
11:48
YMCA centers that are like big,
11:50
have a pool as well as a
11:53
gym. They are built on this greek view of
11:56
a fitness community.
11:59
The pool was a place of
12:02
leisure and exercise.
12:05
And while they were not primarily used for
12:08
bathing, if it's a recreational
12:11
swimming pool, could you imagine some bloke rolls
12:13
up to the local swimming pool with just like
12:16
a big bottle of shampoo and
12:19
body wash and just like, yoink. Just
12:22
plops right into the water and starts sudsing up, like,
12:25
could you imagine that? That would be so wild. I would actually
12:28
love to have that experience. That'd be so funny to
12:31
watch. But the pool was a place of leisure
12:34
and exercise, not primarily used for bathing,
12:37
but the Romans took the idea and the concept and they
12:40
ran with it. But here's the thing.
12:43
The Greeks themselves can't even be
12:46
credited with this stuff. Turns
12:49
out there were folks who were swimming, probably in
12:52
natural bodies of water during the egyptian
12:55
times, but not necessarily. It
12:57
didn't have to have been natural bodies of water,
13:00
because what we need to talk about today
13:04
is the key to unraveling if a
13:06
pool is a pool or a
13:08
bath. And as I said, we are going
13:11
to Pakistan. In the
13:13
1920s, there was an archaeological
13:16
excavation being done of
13:19
Mohenjo daro. I hope I didn't goof that.
13:22
Too bad. Mohenjodaro,
13:24
Pakistan. Mahenjodaro means
13:27
mound of the dead men. And if we've learned anything
13:30
from the Indiana Jones and Jurassic parks of the
13:33
world, we need to dig where dead things are at.
13:39
This area is believed to have been the
13:41
location of one of the largest
13:44
Indus river valley civilizations.
13:47
This Mahenjodaro. It's a weird
13:50
name, like mound of the dead
13:52
men. Why are they in a mound?
13:56
Who mounded them up
13:59
from this dig? They found
14:02
that the area,
14:05
this Mahenjo daro area,
14:08
actually had street grids laid out. Like
14:11
the city was laid out with streets on a grid,
14:14
kind of like modern cities.
14:17
They had covered sewers. Now, it wasn't
14:19
flowing water, but they weren't dumping
14:22
their skeet in the street like we talked about last time
14:25
and previously on the show. And all
14:28
of this is because of what we're going to talk
14:31
about. This place was something
14:33
else five to
14:36
600 years later, like, after it was
14:39
built, they guessed that Mahenjo Daro
14:42
was abandoned and the area was just
14:45
buried with time. And
14:48
then it's not until
14:49
1920
14:52
when an archaeologist from India
14:54
discovered what he believed to be
14:57
a 1500 year old
15:00
buddhist artifact, but it actually
15:03
turned out to be a nearly 5000
15:06
year old flint scraper.
15:08
Flint scraper. This led
15:11
to the large scale excavation at
15:14
Mahenjo daro. And what they
15:16
discovered was a city. And in
15:19
that city was a structure
15:22
that they called the Great
15:24
Bath. The great bath is a
15:27
large brick and bittermin pitch pool
15:30
measuring about 40ft by
15:32
20ft. At, uh, the deepest part, it
15:35
was 8ft. It's a big, big
15:38
pool. Like if you
15:41
walked out into somebody's backyard and they
15:44
had a pit that was
15:46
40ft by 20ft and 8ft deep at
15:49
one point and it was filled with water.
15:52
My friend, that's not a bath, that's
15:55
a pool. Like, if you looked at that, you would
15:58
say, are
16:01
we going to use the pool? You wouldn't say,
16:04
are we going to take a bath? Unless you're one
16:06
of those funny dad joke guys.
16:09
To which case, uh, I approve. It's
16:12
a big pool, and it's called the Great Bath. So it's a little
16:15
confusing. But the water for the bath was
16:18
supplied from a well in an adjacent
16:21
room. So this well would pull water up, and it would
16:23
actually fill the pool. The
16:26
pool seems to also have been drained at times. There
16:29
was a drain on one end, like, they
16:32
built rudimentary plumbing into this
16:35
bath pool. And while
16:38
they're, um, unsure of the intended
16:40
use of the structure of the great
16:43
bath, there is a guess, and
16:46
I would argue it's a very educated guess, that
16:49
it was for ritual bathing, which we have discussed
16:52
earlier. Now, one of the reasons
16:55
that is primarily argued against
16:57
this is people asking, well, why
17:00
in the goddang do they have an eight foot deep
17:03
section for a bathing pool? You can't touch the
17:06
bottom in an eight foot deep section in a bathing
17:09
pool. There's a couple options here. Either they got
17:12
some tall fellas in Mahenja Daro,
17:14
Pakistan, or you
17:17
only go to the deep end for not bathing or
17:20
just to tread water while you bathe, which seems like an altogether
17:22
awful experience. Also
17:26
supporting the idea of religious use is
17:28
that across
17:32
from the bath space, there was what was
17:34
called the College of priests. Now,
17:37
this was like a building, and it seemed
17:40
to have some housing and some things
17:43
from a learned class in it.
17:46
These were probably those who learned and
17:48
facilitated the religious function of
17:51
Mahenjadaro. And as we have said
17:54
in the past on privy, when it
17:57
comes to ancient times and worship,
18:00
cleanliness was equated with
18:03
godliness. The belief that
18:06
we must make ourselves clean
18:08
before we can worship, can be seen across most
18:12
cultures. And the large
18:14
ritual bathing pools, however you want to think of
18:17
them. But keep these things in
18:20
mind this summer, as you dunk your chunk into the local
18:23
swimming pool. One time, years and years
18:26
ago, people went swimming as a means
18:29
to bathe themselves, to prepare themselves
18:32
for a worship experience or to offer
18:35
sacrifice. And now we just
18:37
kind of do it to cool off. And as I've
18:40
said, public pools give me
18:42
anxiety, and they give me the heebity
18:45
jeebbities. To quote King Julian,
18:48
yeah, pools kind of freak me
18:50
out. But this great bath
18:53
would have been wild to have been there when they discovered
18:56
this. You think you're just going to find a little bit, and then all of a
18:59
sudden, you've uncovered a full city, one
19:02
of which is like a giant swimming pool
19:04
looking structure made out of brick in
19:07
it. It would be kind of crazy, um,
19:10
to have that happen, but I
19:12
digress. I want to end the show
19:15
with, um, what I like to call a
19:18
particularly special
19:21
poo in the news.
19:28
This poo in the news is
19:31
brought to us by, uh,
19:33
insidethemagic. Net. From what I can tell, inside
19:36
the magic is kind of like one of these
19:38
variety pages where
19:41
they write about all sorts of crazy stuff. And I'm
19:44
also going to tell you here, if you all
19:46
find good news articles
19:49
about bathrooms and bathroom related things,
19:52
send them to me. Because when you search
19:55
for bathroom news, I'm going to tell you right now,
19:58
bathrooms are the places where people go to do
20:00
bad crimes and heinous things.
20:04
Uh, and every other article
20:06
is like, well, some guy's been arrested because he's
20:09
a clowning around and sticking cameras in a bathroom like a
20:12
freak. But then every now and then, you get a
20:15
gem. And this is
20:18
a gem. Uh, so this
20:21
is brought to us by insidethemagic. Net
20:23
author Jess Kalope. Don't know who that is. It
20:26
says, desperate Disney guest,
20:29
been there, devours food
20:32
on bathroom floor. The
20:35
article starts out by reminding us that Disney's a busy
20:38
place and that it can be difficult to find a place to
20:41
sit down and enjoy a meal. And, uh, while it's
20:44
technically, like, I never really had that problem, if
20:47
you just snipe one out, uh, you can get one. But they said
20:50
it's a common hack in the Disney
20:52
Parks fan community, which I don't
20:55
know if this is a hack to use Disney
20:58
trash cans as dining tables because
21:01
apparently they're kept extremely clean by the cast
21:04
members, which is consistent with the Disney experience.
21:07
It is generally pretty clean. Now, it might be
21:10
od to eat off the top of a trash can. Not the weirdest thing I
21:13
would have done. I'm going to tell you that right now. Inside the magic. Not
21:16
the weirdest thing I've done, but one
21:18
hungry Disneyland resort guest
21:22
took it a step further. This was
21:24
posted, uh, on a TikTok video
21:27
where this girl witnesses
21:30
that she goes in the bathroom at Disneyland park
21:33
and saw someone crouched on the floor like
21:35
Gollum going to town on a piece of
21:38
corn on the cob. Now, here's what I
21:41
want to say. This is to TikTok
21:44
maker, uh, what's her name?
21:46
Lauren. Um, here's what you got to know.
21:49
When you say a person is in the bathroom,
21:52
quote, going to town on a corn
21:54
cob, I need you to
21:57
paint a better picture because I
22:00
believe they're eating the corn cob. And
22:03
I trust that that is what they're doing based on the
22:06
title of this article. But our show has
22:09
detailed one other act a person can do
22:11
that would be categorized as going to
22:14
town on the corn cob. And I
22:17
also think that there's other things that maybe we haven't talked
22:20
about on this show that it wouldn't be too far of a
22:23
stretch to say, yeah, that person was,
22:26
quote, going to town on a corn cob. But
22:29
I digress. Lauren, the
22:31
TikTok user who needs to be more descriptive,
22:34
was disgusted due to the smell and general
22:37
cleanliness of the bathroom, but didn't say anything to
22:40
the guests, which. Why would you.
22:43
Oh, uh, wait. She did say something.
22:46
Oh, no, this is just her. After she gets out of the
22:49
bathroom, she says, why are you eating in the bathrooms at
22:51
Disney? What's happening in this world? Well, here's
22:54
an idea. Maybe say it to them while they're
22:57
in there, because if you go out and then just rant
23:00
to the Internet about the guy you saw eating in the bathroom,
23:03
you're not helping anybody. And
23:06
so the rest of this is essentially just
23:08
like, oh, where's the weirdest place you've had to sit
23:11
in? Disney lady Da. But here's the thing. Here's the
23:14
real question. Would
23:16
y'all, like, um. I don't think I'd
23:20
sit on the ground in the bathroom, I'll give
23:23
her that. But would you all not
23:25
just stand outside?
23:28
Just stand up? Just sit on the ground
23:31
outside? Why would you go into
23:34
the bathroom and sit on the floor to eat? I don't understand
23:37
the draw to this, and I understand
23:40
why she didn't film it, because she's in the bathroom. But
23:43
this kind of seems like the type of thing somebody makes up
23:46
to try to get TikTok famous. But according
23:49
to her, she saw somebody eating a thing on the
23:52
bathroom floor and inside the magic, felt it
23:54
worthwhile to talk about it. And so here we are
23:57
on a podcast about bathrooms, where I got sick of finding a bunch
24:00
of articles about people doing heinous, awful things in a
24:03
bathroom, and I broke down and read it. So there.
24:06
You pooped. I didn't
24:09
poop, but I put my butt on every toilet seat in the magic
24:12
kingdom in Disney world. So
24:14
I guess I should have eaten a corn cob off the floor
24:17
while I was there. I guess I'll have to go
24:20
back. This is another segment
24:23
of poo in the news,
24:28
and that brings us to another close of
24:31
another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for
24:34
joining us. We, uh, love that you've been here. We've loved having
24:37
you, as always. Um,
24:40
please leave, uh, the show a rating and review. It
24:43
helps folks find the show. Five star options are preferred, and we'll
24:45
try to read some of those Apple
24:48
podcast ratings and reviews on the
24:51
show. So, uh, yeah, type us out a review, leave
24:54
it there, and we'll read it on the show. Follow us on social
24:57
media. We're at privycast and you
24:59
can email us at privycast@gmail.com. We'd
25:02
love to hear from you. Episode suggestions,
25:05
comments? Leave, uh, your review there
25:08
and we'll read it or something. But
25:11
seriously, go throw it over on Apple Podcasts. It helps
25:14
people find the show. As always, we'd
25:17
love to thank Kevin McLeod for the use
25:20
of bar room ballet as our intro and outro
25:23
music. You can find Kevin's music at,
25:25
uh, incompetent.com, and his
25:28
music is licensed under Creative Commons license
25:31
Attribution 40. Thanks,
25:33
Kevin. We'd also like to thank
25:36
Pottington Bear for the use of camp as the
25:39
poo in the news intro and outro music. You
25:42
can find Pottington Bear's
25:44
Music@pottingtonbear.com.
25:46
Thanks, Pottington. This has been another
25:49
episode of privy. Thank you so much for joining, uh, us.
25:52
And, um, now, as always,
25:55
don't forget to flush.