Latest / Privycast / Ep. 172 Hittin' the Head: Maritime Privies in the Age of Exploration

Transcript

Ep. 172 Hittin' the Head: Maritime Privies in the Age of Exploration · Privycast

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Bro my, bro my wig.
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My wig.
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This isn't, this isn't how we promote freedom.
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Welcome back to Privy.
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Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded in my home bathroom.
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I'm your host, Hunter Hoover, and I love bathrooms.
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Welcome back, everyone.
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At the point of this episode's release here in these United States, we just celebrated our Independence Day.
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Happy birthday, America.
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Next one's a big one.
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This year, every year,
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Whenever we dive into American Independence Day, it really feels like a breath of fresh air, at least for me.
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And it's one of those things where it's like, yes, there's all sorts of political whatever, but here's the thing.
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Everybody, most everybody loves the country that they are a part of.
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So much so that there is an argument that if you don't like it, this world is a big place.
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And so I am not shying away from the fact that I'm psyched to celebrate America.
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I want to delve into, we're fully into privy summer.
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We've heard a lot, we've done a lot.
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Let me just share the story of our camping trip.
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Here in the Pacific Northwest, we're in the Willamette Valley, Pacific Northwest in the state of Oregon, the semi-free state of Oregon.
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We scheduled a camping trip way back in March, back when it was already starting to not be the not so rainy season.
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It's a bummer because here in Oregon, the camp sites, the reservations go quick.
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And so you have to reserve your spot pretty far out.
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And we reserved our camping spot back in March thinking surely the first week of summer will be just the most beautiful camping weekend that you can find.
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Well, little did we know that that weekend, it turns out, was like the record setting monsoon rainstorm
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for the month of June, like got more rain in that two days this June than we probably have had in like, I would venture March, April, May and June and March, April and May combined,
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if not since the beginning of the year.
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It was truly bedlam.
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I mean, it never stopped for over 36 hours.
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Just a constant onslaught.
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That said, we chickened out and stayed home.
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And by chickened out, I mean,
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Nobody wants to sleep in a puddle.
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And for those who are like die hard, that's fine.
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I'm very proud of you.
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I did not want to when I did not have to.
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And so we camped out with the kids and it's a missed opportunity for some bathrooming in the woods.
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But it's one of those things where it's a bummer and it's wet, like speaking of wet, you gotta get it.
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The keen eye will recognize it is not polar.
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But as we approach and run into some truly summer weather, it was hotter than Frick on the day of recording.
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It was 90 degrees.
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My son played like four to five hours of baseball in the heat.
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Dude's a champ.
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It's so hot.
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You just think of the outdoors and you break a sweat is truly the hot.
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days of summer and the fun in July that comes with summer.
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First of all, hopefully you all stayed safe this 4th of July.
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Here on privy in I guess the after celebration of the fourth, the fourth was yesterday at the day of this episode's release, to get hyped about America.
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uh There's plenty to be hyped about.
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Next episode or maybe even at the end of the month,
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We'll have to do some coverage of the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, but rumor has it, our boy Joey's Chestnuts is back.
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He's done suppin' down plant wieners, and he's here to sup down animal wieners now.
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And so that's good.
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It's a return to form to sup down Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs.
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If you're one of our international listeners, and you're listening to this, and you saw
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me hop on with the keep pooping in the free world magnet, magnetize to the metal sign, the maybe metal privy sign back there.
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And you're like, I don't know, like maybe I just skip this episode.
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Don't skip it.
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I hope you can hear this episode and get a feel for why so many Americans have the feelings that they have about the country that they love.
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I want to also note, in the past, we have talked about a number of facets of American bathroom history, from the brown sidewalk that runs through Disney commemorating in
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colonial America when they just dumped their poo in the streets and rinsed it down the middle of the street, to the patriotic privy pits in which they have found cool parts of
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American history that were buried alongside American settlers' poo.
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We've learned a lot about America in these observances and we still have more we can take in.
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And so this year on Privy in celebration for our 4th of July and this week in our episode, we're going to take a deep dive specifically into naval vessels, sea travel and what
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sailors did to poo when they were at sea as
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We look at a part of American history that I think sometimes gets forgotten.
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First, to not draw a straight line.
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There have been ships as far back as ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, Roman cultures, and Chinese.
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These were generally small, somewhat rudimentary.
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mean, they weren't rudimentary for their time, but considering where ships are headed in the technology, they were pretty rudimentary.
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They weren't always the most efficient in their navigation, primarily
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relying on oars and in time rudders and in later time sails as the means for propulsion and navigation.
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Even the Vikings often traveled by what were in many ways considered quote smaller vessels.
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You can see this in the historically accurate How to Train Your Dragon.
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This was the standard ship of the time.
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A short vessel, smaller vessel with a handful of oarsmen
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and maybe a sail that would allow you to swiftly navigate small channels and canals.
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However, that was until the age of exploration in the 15th through 17th centuries.
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The spark of exploration was lit by two primary causes, trade and
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a desire to spread European and other cultural values throughout the world.
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Nothing says it's mine by racing to a plot of land to lay claim to it.
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And that's much of what a lot of this colonialism was.
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It was making colonies.
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I'm exposed.
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Throughout the world.
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As competition to explore and make discoveries increased, there was a boom in the production of new seafaring technology.
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Before we dive into this booming and expanding technology, it should be noted that in the Renaissance era, the ship that bridged the gap between the rudder-driven and ore-driven
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boats with poor sails into the age of exploration
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were somewhat larger in order to carry more cargo and other war-related materials a greater distance.
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But after this bridge and gap in the Renaissance boat era, it was the age of exploration, the age of expedition.
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These ship developments were designed to allow ships to go farther, carry more freight and cargo.
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and survive a greater spectrum of the Earth's oceans and natural phenomenon.
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Some of these types of ships include the caravel, which is the smaller of them and was used for exploration and could more easily navigate waterways in turn.
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Just like my bowels.
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No, I don't want you to hear that that caravel and think they were small.
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They weren't small.
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were, it's a by all accounts, it's a big boat.
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But the smaller of these caravels would have a crew of 20 to 30 people.
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That's just to make the thing operate.
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Smaller vessels.
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Naturally, had smaller crews.
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As we begin to look at, as I said at the beginning, America, and begin to look at what does all this talk about boats have anything to do with America, it's time that we look a
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little bit into our topic.
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That is two prominent boats in American history were of the caravel build, the Nina and the Pinta.
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of Christopher Columbus's expedition.
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Both of these would have been smaller ships with crews of around 20 each.
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That begs the question.
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There were three boats, the Nina, the Pinta, but what about that last one?
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The Santa Maria.
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Santa Maria was another larger type of vessel called a Carrick, and it was more suited for transporting cargo and other military goods, or in the case of Christopher Columbus in
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many ways,
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survivalist supply.
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The Santa Maria was by all accounts a smaller rendition of a classical Carrick.
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Carricks would often have crews over 30 and even up to 80 in larger vessels.
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So when you put all these people on a boat,
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Especially on these expeditions that would last some time.
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I'm talking like months long expeditions.
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There is an awkward piece that begins to spring forth when we talk about putting people on a confined space.
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Where in the world are they going to the bathroom out there on the high seas?
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They totally left this part out of the Pirates of the Caribbean.
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This is missed bathroom opportunity, but it shies away from the universal truth that everybody poops.
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And when you are sailing the high seas, turns out you had a number of really good options to go to the bathroom.
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I should know.
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When I say you had a number of really good options, what I really mean is you had options.
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Most of which were less than desired, but they were options.
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One of the most tangible options of pooing on the high seas is just to let fly over the side of the ship.
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Now, I want to note most of what we're going to be discussing is producing number two backside brown.
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Frontside, frontside Willie spray, not a big problem.
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I mean you can kind of just let fly wherever you need be.
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this over the side of the boat, while it might seem like a good idea just hang beef over the side of the boat and plop plop plop right into the ocean, just pulling over the edge
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you had to be careful because ships are not steady.
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They're going all over the place.
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They're rocking back and forth and there's nothing more in
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embarrassing, I imagine, as a crewmate on a ship if you are tossed overboard, falling into the ocean with your dungarees at your ankles because you tried to sling beef over the
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side.
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So you don't want to do that.
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Like it's highly not recommended that you just expose ham and let fly over the side of the boat.
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But it turns out another option would be to just
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go to the bathroom right up in the exposed open air on the deck of the ship.
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This would then be rinsed away by crewmen when they would have to clean the ship.
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Now, as bad as what I just said makes you want to believe that that is the term or the place where we get the term scrubbing the poop deck, I'm
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I'm sad to say it is not.
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Now I want that to be true.
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I want it to be true that the term scrubbing the poop deck comes from when the crew used to poop off the deck of the ship.
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It all fits.
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However, here on Privy, we're spitting facts.
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And that's not the history of that term.
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The poop deck was actually closer to the stern of the ship and would often be where the captain would be.
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Scrubbing it is where you clean the captain's quarters.
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cleaning the captain's quarters.
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Is that what kids are calling these?
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Yeah, no, mom.
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uh Lil Dougie and I are gonna go clean the captain's quarters at the school parking lot.
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we're gonna go clean the captain's quarters in the Walmart parking lot.
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You know what saying?
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But often on these type of ships...
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The poo when it is rinsed through, the poo and other junk on the deck of a ship but we washed off the side.
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But some of that water and poo slurry and other stuff would drip down through the cracks in the wood to below deck.
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Often on these type ships, these caracks and caravels, this is where cargo was carried.
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And so your Amazon packages are soaked in poo slurry.
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In some cases, if a bucket or other vessel could be spared, they'd use that as kind of a pirate's life for me privy pot.
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Do the business into it and then toss it overboard.
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It might not need to be said, but the high seas was not a place for cleanliness.
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And we haven't even addressed those on the boats who would get seasick.
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This was a common thing.
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And some of these expedition vessels had numerous accounts of seasickness.
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And on the ones that had larger crews or that would be intended for transporting passengers, they would have a section of the ship that is dedicated to bathrooming.
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In the worst cases, this was a wood-like grate that opened up to the high seas from the opening and you would do your business straight through the openings.
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These, quote, toilets were very public.
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Ladies, if you're listening, thank you.
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You are a minority here for reasons that I don't understand.
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uh But I want to let you know that sometimes in men's bathrooms, there are these urinals that provide no privacy and are essentially a trough that you all can walk up and pee
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into.
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And when you do this, you are essentially exposing yourself to every guy who is also there
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using the Petroff at the same time.
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I don't know who invented this idea, but truly you just like Wiener expose at the Petroff.
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Not the best path forward.
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But that's what this type of on-ship bathroom ingrate is essentially putting into play.
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You are, if you're going to use it, you're going to be kind of like staring at Mrs.
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Doubtfire and Nether's 4.7 over across and being like, yo, you too, that that porridge is rough out here not to be desired.
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Other better bathroom situations on a boat take place in part of a ship called the head.
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It's called the head because it's at the head of the ship, the front, if you will.
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Often this would be a wood board with a hole cut in it or in the most fancy of high seas situation would even have a seat in the head of the ship that opens up to exposed open sea
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water below.
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Those who were hitting the head dropped anchor into the ocean if you will but it gave you little more comfort than the exposed crap gate or grate we noted earlier.
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Often the captain would have his own bathroom in a place called the poop house.
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He scrubbed the poop deck.
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He has a poop house.
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With all these things in mind and these various bathroom situations in the back of our brain, there's a couple of awkward things we need to talk about.
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And we talk about the sailors who came to America.
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The first is toilet paper hadn't really been invented or at least
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what toilet paper was being used was rudimentary and not very effective.
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It definitely wouldn't be found on the high seas on Captain Yak's Scareo's big old black pirate ship.
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Why'd it have to be so big?
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uh And they were less prone to tossing things in the sea if they were using anything.
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So to wipe, when they...
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were using, they were using bits of cloth or torn clothes or sometimes
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some cloth or something soaked in vinegar for disinfecting.
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This would often be shared, uh replacing and re-rinsing it in the vinegar between uses.
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I can't imagine a vinegar soaked anything is particularly enjoyable on your whole.
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The people on the internet, so I...
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Recently I made a comment about in the summer sweat to take a deodorant stick and yoink it through the butt crack.
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I do not do this.
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I'm saying it's an option if you got such nasty swamp stank that you can't simply tolerate it.
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And apparently there is a slice of the internet that their butt crack is so tender that like
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Regular grade deodorant is too tender for their brown starfish.
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They ain't seen nothing.
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Compared to 15 and 1600s pirates and explorers, these dudes had chapped bees for sure.
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Oh, I saw a bloke walking down the street today full sully.
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Like he was just walking and had very clearly just fresh diarrhea-dukeyed
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his underpants and his pants and was just walking in the 90 degree heat letting it chap.
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No thanks.
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Big time diaper rash on that dude.
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But those who poop up top would sometimes pull a rope draped into the ocean over the side for wiping.
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uh Ancient Romans had the communal wiping wand in here.
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1500s, 1600s, and early 1700s expedition settlers and pirates had the communal wiping rope.
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I don't know when the last time you played tug of war is, but those ropes are not
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Smooth and plush.
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They're like burlap.
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There had to be butt bleeding from this communal wiping rope
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So with point number one of this awkward mess out of the way, all of this assumes that you have smooth sailing in sunny skies, which doesn't happen all the time.
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When people were unable to be on the deck of the ship and move about freely due to their safety during the storms and poor conditions on the seas, they would be put in steerage or
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below deck and unable to go up top for safety reasons.
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This could go on for some times as the chop and the throw of the high seas renders the boat in peril.
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locked below deck, locked in storage, stowed away.
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You've got to establish a turd corner.
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Pray for calm water so you can get out of there.
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Nothing like being a locked below deck of a ship, no lights, no windows for a few days.
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Sometimes while people are pooing wherever they can.
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It's a grim look, not to mention the vomit.
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And so with that said, I want you to take all the data about these ships that we are going to now turn and apply some of those things that we've learned about to boats which came to
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America.
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First should be noted, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, which brought the first Europeans to the Americas were expedition ships designed for housing large crews.
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But about 130 years after Christopher Columbus's fleet hit American soil, another ship would set sail with similar conditions, a different build, resulting in a much more grim
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journey.
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boat is the Mayfly.
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The story of the Mayflower is one in which we can learn a lot about the gaze of history, and are reminded that so many details which are mundane in the moment are later desired by
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Dweebish bathroom podcast history enthusiasts.
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We don't know a lot about the construction of the Mayflower.
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Some say it was built in Harwich, England and purchased shortly after.
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by Christopher Jones in 1608.
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However, when the ship was commissioned and they planned to set sail from Southampton, England in August 1820, the Mayflower was going to have a companion vessel, the Speedwell,
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that would journey with it on their transatlantic voyage.
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This was customary at the time to sail multiple expedition and ships to cut down from attacks on pirates.
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as a backup and ran safety measures needed to be employed.
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The Speedwell had some performance issues, and was forced back to port twice before they eventually called it.
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The Mayflower was set out to the New World alone, this time from Plymouth, England on September 16, 1620.
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The Mayflower was a merchant ship, usually tasked with hauling cargo.
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The thing about a ship that is designed to haul cargo and not people is ships planning to haul people have other amenities than those that don't.
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Where cargo doesn't care much about privacy and having space,
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102 settlers to the New World as well as 37 crew for the ship over the course of 66 days at sea eventually will desire their personal space.
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Many of these settlers as the cargo when they could not be above board were cramped down below in the gundec or the cargo area of Sea sickness was bad.
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The bathroom situation was much worse.
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Where merchant ships were less likely to be equipped with a head or a dedicated space for pooping, as the wonderful communal stare at the other dude's butthole grate, the chamber
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pot or privy was likely one of the few means of going.
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Except maybe doing your business where you stand.
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When I have people come on the show, and they're guests, if you want to be a guest on privy, hit me up privycast at gmail.com.
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But when I have people on the show, I often ask them if they like to have a snack when they are in the bathroom.
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Most actually fess up, and it turns out that many people do.
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I'm a big fan of the shower drink myself.
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For the Mayflower Pilgrims, they didn't have much of a choice, often having to eat their meals in the same spaces where they later would void themselves of their meals and were
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likely sitting feet away from where someone else had previously voided themselves of a previous meal.
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Many of these settlers had the clothes on their backs or maybe a handful of garments to change into, which is a tough look.
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when you have 66 days to wear these clothes.
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Some historians estimate that below deck these 102 passengers had an area that was 58 by 24 feet to occupy.
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This averaged out to about 13 square feet per person or less than a four foot square per person in this area.
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The crew would let them above board, but on the whole the high seas were too worrisome and this crew spent much of the 66 day journey
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locked below deck, confined to the space below.
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Their stool, luckily, wasn't much to talk about, as these early settlers subsisted on meager rations of dried meats, bread, and beer.
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The crew, who would be eating more than the passengers below, are said to have consumed only around 400 calories a day.
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The high seas did a number on the boat.
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William Bradford wrote that one storm bowed and cracked the beams and they weren't even sure that they were going to make the voyage.
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Though the conditions were less than hygienic and in many ways only one person died on the voyage of illness despite another being thrown overboard but swimming and climbing back
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up.
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As I mentioned before, the bathroom situation on these ships and particularly the Maryflower would have been bad.
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But it turns out it gets worse.
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Merchant ships were notorious for peeing and sometimes pooping right on the deck of the ship.
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This would be rinsed down via rain and ocean water into the cargo space below deck.
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Something else that boxes and barrels of cargo cares less about
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than living cargo, such as 102 living settlers to the new land, is having boat crew pee and poo slurry showered down on them through the cracks in the boards.
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Then, when they finally landed in Cape Cod in November, they lived on the boat for weeks as dwellings were built offshore.
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Of the 102 settlers who left to land in the New World, only about half survived the winter, the bulk dying of cold, starvation, and elements, after having landed there.
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And now I must admit, those are not great odds.
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Why?
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Why would these 102 settlers board a ship, set sail for an over two month journey without the companion boat, endure the ocean, the awful living conditions, which included sitting,
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sleeping, eating and living in filth, feces, vomit, piss and squalor for 66 days and then
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risk the chance of survival due to hypothermia, starvation, and the elements after arriving there?
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Why would they do this?
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The short answer
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Many of these settlers sought religious and economic freedoms that they as Puritans could not attain in England.
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And so, for freedom, they went through hell to grasp a
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Our country would not really be a country here, America, for another 150 years in this new world from the time when the Pilgrims landed.
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And while maybe this episode is better suited for Thanksgiving, since that is closer to when the Pilgrims landed in the new world, I want to put it here for American Independence
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Day as we look at the trip these freedom fighters took.
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It was bad.
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Freedom's worth it.
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and all the pictures and stories and drawings of the Mayflower, you always see these bright, hopeful settlers excited to embrace the New World.
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But I think the reality is they were crap-stained, encrusted, vomit-stained survivors who, for the sake of religious and economic freedom, endured 66 days cramped in the dark for a
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shot at the New World.
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Many back in Europe didn't even expect them to make it as so many had failed before, but many of them did.
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The Mayflower in time would make its way back to Europe and something new started here in these United States.
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They weren't United and they weren't states yet.
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Before it set sail and before the settlers went ashore, they laid something out in the document and signed it when they arrived, an agreement of sorts on how they were going to
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live in this new
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That document read, uh
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Do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering
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and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid.
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And by virtue hereof, do enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitution, and officers from time to time as shall be thought most
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meet and convenient for the general good of the colony unto which we all promise all do submission and obedience.
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Now, and then there's a lot of signatures.
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It says in witness whereof we have to subscribe our names.
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And there's a big long list, John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, lots of these people.
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And I want to note the tone of this Mayflower contract is very much different from the American Declaration of Independence.
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Here they are still swearing and promising loyalty to King, that is King James, that is the same King James that we learned about back when we were talking about Sir John
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Harrington just a few episodes ago.
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Go check it out.
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They're not declaring independence as of yet.
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They would in time, but for now they made it.
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They sought freedom and they made it to a new world for a chance at it, poop soaked, but a little more free.
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It's a story that I think we can really get behind as we remember and celebrate American independence.
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That'll bring us to the end of another episode of Privy.
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Thank you so much for being here.
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Thank you for listening.
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As always, leave us a rating or review.
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The five star options are preferred.
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It's the easiest place to do it.
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And for every rating and review you leave, we will donate a dollar to Wounded Warriors and Living Water International as a reminder to keep pooping in the free world.
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This free world was not always free and to pursue cleaner water for all.
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Not everyone has cleaner water.
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It is something that we can work towards and fight for.
35:46
Follow us on social media.
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We're at privycast.
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Leave us an email privycast at gmld.com.
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Check us out online privy-cast.com.
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35:55
Join the privy's Facebook group where privy and bathroom memes are running rampant.
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Go check those things out, the privies.
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36:05
You can follow Randy Bowles at randybowles.
36:07
Thank you so much for being here.
36:08
Thank you to Kevin and Pottington for the use of your music.
36:12
You can check their music out down in the doodly bopper below.
36:15
All of the links to our sources can be found in the description.
36:19
Thank you so much for being here.
36:21
Keep pooping in the free world.
36:22
Own your stank.
36:24
And now, as always, don't forget to flush.