We all have our idiosyncrasies, those automatic things we do each day that form the way we are in the world. Whether we scrunch or fold, or leave the toilet seat up or down, these are things we do (or don’t do) automatically. Much like the urgent need to crap your dacks in a Japanese bookstore.
That’s right, there is a significant portion of Japanese people who feel overcome by a heaving sensation in the rectal passage whilst browsing books.
Now some habits are behavioural. Your parents taught you to brush your teeth before bed so now you just (hopefully) do it for the rest of your life without thinking. Other habits are more biological, like the impulse to yawn when someone else is yawning (unless you’re a psychopath. Apparently they don’t).
Then there’s something called Pavlovian conditioning, which is where you take an instinctive biological response, like drooling when there's food around (mmm doughnuts) and pair it with something like a bell. You take away the food, ring the bell and the drooling now becomes associated with the bell... A psychosomatic response to stimulus.
In 1985, 29-year-old Japanese woman, Mariko Aoki, contributed an article in the Hon no Zasshi or “Book Magazine” about her strong urge to defecate whenever she visited a bookstore. Surprisingly, a significant number of readers wrote to the editorial department to share their similar experiences. Who would have thought so many people had been fending back faeces in the fiction section?! Turns out a lot.
Hon no Zasshi published a 14-page feature discussing the issue, which they described as “book bowel tendency”. That name never stuck and it became known as the "Aoki Mariko phenomenon". What an honour. The Japanese people got very serious about the spread of this “nervous energy on the anal area”, as one source described it. A survey run by the Japan Publishing Infrastructure Center in 2012 revealed that up to five, perhaps even 10 per cent of all Japanese people had experienced it. Literally millions of people nearly pooping their pants amongst the poetry.
What was going on? Were they all making it up? A sociological phenomenon?
According to a very small-scale study, women were more likely to say they'd experienced it than men and it was even more uncommon in “sporty males”. Tight glutes perhaps?
People with really severe or regular symptoms said that it affected their overall quality of life. Some people couldn’t even think about a bookstore without experiencing borborygmus, the rumbling sound made by the movement of gas in the intestine (also undoubtedly the best name for a symptom in all of medicine).
So why would so many people feel the need to drop a log in the library? In 1985, Hon no Zasshi interviewed a psychiatrist who proposed it was caused by a hyperresponsive reaction to stress - too much information all at once perhaps.
Then in 2021, Men’s Health Magazine ran a column called “Ask the Poop Doctor” by Dr. Sameer Islam. He confirmed that although Mariko Aoki phenomenon hasn't been medically or scientifically proven, a lot of patients came to see him about it and it was a lot more common than people realise. Some anecdotal evidence shows that others experience this urgent need to shit in other places like parks and museums as well.
The Wholesome verdict? Well, given no evidence has been found to link Mariko Aoki phenomenon to anything in the physical environment, it certainly seems psychological. And the fact that the phenomenon was contained in Japan indicates a strong sociological aspect too.
So, next time you’re visiting a bookstore or library, maybe take a quick trip to the loo first. And just to be safe, steer clear of white pants.
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[00:00:00] Rod: Most of us have developed habits to responses to specific places, situations, et cetera and they become automatic, right? They're idiosyncratic and automatic.
[00:00:11] Will: Okay.
[00:00:12] Rod: Look how worried you already look.
[00:00:13] Will: No, you're testing my habits here. Is this like, do you brush your teeth when you go to the bathroom? Is it you wash your hands?
[00:00:19] Rod: Yeah, whenever I wee, I have to brush my teeth. No, I mean, look, I've got things like the moment I walk in the door from work, My body goes, you need a beer in you immediately. I very rarely agree with it, but I can feel it.
[00:00:28] Will: Okay. Okay. Fair enough.
[00:00:30] Rod: Well, you know, when you're sitting at a cafe or a bar, whatever with someone and they walk away for like eight seconds and you immediately pick up your phone, no matter what you just go straight for your phone. A lot of people do.
[00:00:37] Will: That's not a habit. That is sensible dealing with being alone.
[00:00:43] Rod: It's a habit My other one is of course, and you would probably have noticed this occasionally in me, trolling people at work who are clearly on the edge or feeling a bit stressed. So I'm like, well, let's see how far this can go.
[00:00:52] Will: You do. You do. You could do less of that.
[00:00:54] Rod: It's fair to say I do it in my home life too.
[00:00:56] Will: You could do less of that.
[00:00:57] Rod: I can't though. I'm a victim.
[00:00:59] Will: No, you're not.
[00:01:00] Rod: I'm a victim. I'm stuck in the habit.
[00:01:02] Will: Okay. So, so we get habits.
[00:01:03] Rod: We get these learned behaviors. Right. And as I say, many are quite idiosyncratic. Then there are also ones that are clearly biological, like, someone yawns, people tend to yawn as well. There's that.
[00:01:11] Will: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the psychopath test.
[00:01:14] Rod: It is. Because psychopaths are really sleepy.
[00:01:17] Will: No, it's weird. It's weird. Like, it's cross species. And so dogs will yawn at us. Psychopaths don't yawn. Like if you yawn and someone else yawns, probably not a psychopath if they don't.
[00:01:28] Rod: Do they look at you like, have you finished yet? You're like, you're going to murder me. Aren't you?
[00:01:31] Will: So just listener, you know, if you're ever out there in the street, just do a little bit of yawn at everyone.
[00:01:36] Rod: It'll be fine. We'll go aggressive yawning.
[00:01:39] Will: Aggressive yawning at people. Who's yawning right now?
[00:01:41] Rod: You didn't yawn just then. Fucking psycho.
[00:01:43] Will: There could be other reasons.
[00:01:44] Rod: There's also things like drooling when you, you know, you walk into a delicious bakery and you're like, the saliva glands start up, you're like, that's just, you're not necessarily even hungry, but you get
[00:01:51] Will: Start wagging your tail and licking your lips.
[00:01:54] Rod: Or sympathetic spearing, that's just normal. You smell it, or gagging at least. You smell the puke and you're like, Okay. that kind of thing. But some of them seem to be combos. Like, so the whole Pavlovian conditioning thing is a classic combination where you take an instinctive biological response, drooling when there's food around, pair it with something like a bell. Then you take away the food, ring the bell and the drooling now becomes associated with the food. So there's kind of a weird hybrid. But on the Easter weekend, which time of recording was very recently, I heard of something new, a version I'd never heard of before and it intertwines, or interweaves, if you will, three things that have had a role in shaping my world. Japan. Books. And bowels. So today I'm going to walk you through the wonder that is Hon no Sho, or Book Bowel Tendency, aKA. The Aoki Mariko phenomenon.
[00:02:53] Will: Welcome to the wholesome show
[00:02:55] Rod: the podcast in which two academics knock off work early
[00:03:00] Will: grab a beer
[00:03:00] Rod: maybe two and dive deep and hard down the rabbit hole.
[00:03:04] Will: That's what we do.
[00:03:05] Rod: We do.
[00:03:06] Will: I'm Will Grant.
[00:03:07] Rod: I'm Rod Lamberts. And. Book bow
[00:03:10] Will: Bow? Okay, give it to me. The Japanese word again.
[00:03:13] Rod: Well, no, first I have to thank my sister in law, Beck, who, much more sophisticated human than me, which is hard to believe, brought this to my attention over the Easter weekend as we were stuffing our gizzards with wines and chocolates. And she said, have you ever heard of this? And I said, I have not. And I'll be recording that next week.
[00:03:30] Will: So your authoritative source here is a relative. Does that count as peer reviewed literature?
[00:03:35] Rod: Not blood relative. So it's okay. No bias.
[00:03:37] Will: Yeah, right. Right.
[00:03:39] Rod: I said, have you heard of this? I said, send me a link. And she sent me. Look, I have to confess up front, a lot of this came from the Wikipedia article. I looked at other things, but the Wikipedia article is extensive.
[00:03:48] Will: All right. All right. Point one, I will concede here. there is a Wikipedia article. When you raised the concept of book bowel, I was like, this sounds to me like one person just telling you something.
[00:03:59] And also, listener to you may be listening to this at different times during the year. We were closely around April the 1st at the moment when this came up, I can imagine someone going, what would get this guy? What is going to get him some book bowel.
[00:04:12] Rod: Absolutely. So 1985, volume 40 of the Hon no Zasshi or book magazine. So it was published in Japan. There was a contribution by Mariko Aoki, who was quote an otherwise little known 29 year old Japanese woman from Tsukinami city in Tokyo. So in her contribution, which Google translate took from the Japanese and made into the title "I'm in trouble with having a defecation when I go to the bookstore.
[00:04:41] The woman wrote. I'm not sure why, but since about two or three years ago, whenever I go to the bookstore, I'm struck by an urge to move my bowels . If I had a dollar.
[00:04:50] Will: Okay. Two years. She wrote an article. Good on her.
[00:04:52] Well, she
[00:04:53] Rod: wrote a submission to the Hon no Zashi, a book magazine, and the chief editor apparently published it because he thought it was amusing.
[00:04:59] Will: Well, who is not going to publish that? I accept. You're like, this is going to be good. People in 30, 40 years will be podcasting about this silly topic. I'm going to put this up. But did he have a little grain of skepticism? Because he would have checked the Wikipedia page, and first he would have said there's no Wikipedia.
[00:05:15] Rod: Yep. And second, he would have gone, there's no internet.
[00:05:17] Will: Again but I'm not finding anything on this book bowel
[00:05:19] Rod: would have dived into the archives, which would have been like a bookstore. Boom. Shat himself. None of that happened.
[00:05:24] Will: All right. What do we got?
[00:05:25] Rod: So very soon after the piece appeared, So this is a volume 40, a whole bunch of people sending contributions themselves to the editorial department saying I've had similar experiences.
[00:05:35] Will: Now I'm maintaining skepticism hat here for a second. Whole bunch of people wrote in. Yes. Yes. But we know from previous episodes that we've talked about just because one person writes in, it doesn't mean the other people writing in also have it. They're like, Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to make up my own things.
[00:05:49] Rod: Hysterical bookstore pooing.
[00:05:51] Will: Well, no. Like weird musical based injuries and you get a bunch of, you get a bunch of medicos riding in and go, I've got violin nose. I've got guitar underpants.
[00:06:02] Rod: No. It was cellist's nipples.
[00:06:03] Will: Some of them legit. Some of them are not, but all I'm saying is, you could imagine a little moment here where someone says I have book bowel and everyone else as well, you know what I've got? I've got orgasm butcher.
[00:06:15] Rod: Who doesn't? I mean, a nice fresh cut.
[00:06:17] Will: I was just trying to combine a shop and a bodily fluid.
[00:06:20] Rod: Don't you do that? I walk into a butcher shop and it's all I can do not to climax. So there are so many responses and they were so various that in the very next issue or volume 41 same year
[00:06:32] Will: we're devoting a special. This is the book bowel special.
[00:06:34] Rod: Well, they had a feature article called the phenomenon currently shaking the bookstore industry, exclamation mark. Mariko Aoki herself added some details to her experience.
[00:06:47] Will: Just to clarify here, this is a Japanese magazine. So I'm assuming all of the responses were from Japan.
[00:06:52] Rod: From the Nihon people.
[00:06:54] Will: Yeah. Okay. Just to put a bound on this cultural phenomenon. I mean, maybe it will cross the door. Maybe listener after this, you may develop book bowel syndrome. If so
[00:07:02] Rod: you may already have it and we support you.
[00:07:04] Will: Well, it's not our fault.
[00:07:06] Rod: No, but we support you. So this feature, as I say, Mariko Aoki herself had added some details by this point. She said when walking around in circles through the bookshelves in a bookstore, she will suddenly want to go to the bathroom. The phenomenon occurs when she has been in a bookstore for an hour or more, takes time to really get the juices flowing.
[00:07:25] Will: I mean, maybe she's a 24 times a day person.
[00:07:29] Rod: Like normal you mean
[00:07:31] Will: normal. Like an hour is all she needs between movements
[00:07:33] Rod: no That's all she can tolerate between. She said it occurred no matter what type of book the store had and it never happened to her in a library or a second Hand bookstore.
[00:07:41] Will: Well it's a new book thing okay. Clues.
[00:07:45] Rod: It's a solution for constipation.
[00:07:47] Will: Did she always go to a bookstore at a certain time of day? Because, I don't want to disclose too much listener, but you know, a lot of people are on a rhythm and it might be, you get your coffee and then
[00:07:57] Rod: and then you poo.
[00:07:58] Will: Well, she might get a coffee, go into a bookstore and then she's like, Oh,
[00:08:02] Rod: this damn bookstore. No, nothing like that.
[00:08:05] Will: Okay. So any time of bookstore
[00:08:07] Rod: Yeah. So the 14 page feature, which I just think damn, they presented these various perspectives and experiences of people and they described it as book bowel tendency, but that name never really stuck. And it quickly became known as the Aoki Mariko Phenomenon.
[00:08:22] Will: I think if I were her, I'd be like
[00:08:25] Rod: She apparently doesn't mind. Like she's like, yeah, cool. Call it that. Like Will grant poos.
[00:08:30] Will: Well, yeah, sure. It's not the worst.
[00:08:32] Rod: It's not the greatest. I've had a phenomenon named after me. What is it? Needing to dump. I don't need to know the details.
[00:08:41] Will: Sure. I think, listener, you know, give us a list of phenomena you would like or not like to have named after.
[00:08:46] Rod: Particularly not because you know, we're going to make sure it's named after you. But anyway, from this point forward, the awareness of, and the debate about the phenomenon really took off. But this might not have actually been the first time it came up in print.
[00:08:58] Will: Are you serious?
[00:08:59] Rod: Yeah. So it's not exactly clear when it turned up first, but there are at least three earlier citations that refer to something like it, like, you know, kooky crapping in a bookstore. So in this Wikipedia piece again, because again I'm, look, I'm unashamedly referring to, because also there are like 85 sources and 67 of those are in Japanese as well.
[00:09:21] Will: Well, okay, fair enough. But no, just to let you off the hook here, this is the kind of material that Wikipedia would be the best at.
[00:09:27] Rod: And people are weighing in.
[00:09:29] Will: You know, this is where, what it was born for. Where were these other sources?
[00:09:32] Rod: So one was the 1957, I think it was a book called Amidst the Hustle and Bustle. I mean, you've probably read it.
[00:09:38] Will: That was that the original English title or was it from another country?
[00:09:41] Rod: That's how you say it in Japanese. No, that's quite unusual.
[00:09:44] Will: Was it from Japanese?
[00:09:45] Rod: Japanese. The other, of course, 1972, The Emperor and the Lieutenant, A Saucy Tale.
[00:09:50] Will: Oh, so these are like fiction books or something?
[00:09:52] Rod: I believe they were. I believe they were. And of course, there's the classic from 1981. This is one I'm definitely you've heard of. Words, too, can sweat - literally. So it also weirdly, it appeared in volume 39 of the book magazine. So the year before Mariko's confession, there was a letter or something by a guy from Nara who described a similar experience, but no one seemed to give a shit. Pun intended. It just disappeared.
[00:10:17] Will: So again all Japan, and there seems to have been a few more things before our main girl wrote in.
[00:10:23] Rod: There appears to be, there was also at least one broadcast media example. So. Young Paradise, I'm sure you've heard it, that's a radio show that was on the Nippon broadcasting system. Late eighties, early nineties. They had a segment for sharing bowel movement related episodes.
[00:10:38] Will: Oh my God.
[00:10:38] Rod: Good radio. See, if I'd known that was a thing in the eighties, I would have gone into radio. And apparently it came up there.
[00:10:45] Will: Seriously. He's, sometimes he's Australia's leading 15 year old boy, but sometimes he's Australia's leading toddler. Like seriously, like, like when humor peaks at poo joke.
[00:10:55] Rod: Peaks in the pants. All humor is butt related. So in this thing, they apparently called it Yoshiko Yamada syndrome, but for some reason that didn't capture people's attention. I don't know why, but whenever you look up and I did Yoshiko Yamada syndrome, you get pointed to a Mariko Aoki phenomenon. So it seems to have had an earlier name, but no one cares.
[00:11:17] Will: That's a bit unfair.
[00:11:19] Rod: Isn't that, poor Yoshiko Yamada. She could have had a phenomenon.
[00:11:21] Will: I think it should go back to the original the traditional owners of the name.
[00:11:25] Rod: Well, who are they?
[00:11:26] Will: Well, so far it doesn't seem to be her. I mean, you can't rename it after someone else found it first.
[00:11:32] Rod: Yes, you can. Have you not heard of colonialism?
[00:11:34] Will: Well, no, I'm saying we're trying to reverse colonialism here.
[00:11:37] I don't know though if you want to colonize the ownership of a syndrome that makes you shit in a book store.
[00:11:43] No, sure, but colonialism doesn't stop. Like it's like we'll take everything. It should. But what I'm saying is it'll take anything.
[00:11:49] Rod: Anyway, regardless of where it first appeared somewhere, it definitely appeared somewhere, but the Japanese people and maybe people beyond got very serious about the spread of the Mariko Aoki phenomenon.
[00:12:01] Will: Oh, they're worried about it. Like, is this a public health issue?
[00:12:04] Rod: No, there was no declaration by the health department.
[00:12:06] Will: This isn't a pandemic.
[00:12:07] Rod: Close down the bookstores. You must order online. No, it didn't get there. So, so like in 2012, the Tokyo Shimbun, so a newspaper, they did a survey, which was, well, they published it. It was run by the Japan Publishing Infrastructure Center, publishing industry mob. So this survey was as it was run as part of exploring measures to revitalize bookstores. They're like 2012, let's get them cooking.
[00:12:32] Will: That's the doom zone.
[00:12:33] Rod: It is the doom zone for books.
[00:12:34] Will: And you know, the thing is, you probably can't get book bow el while browsing the internet for a book. amazon. com doesn't give you book bowel. Or are you going to tell me it does?
[00:12:43] Rod: I've looked through books on iBooks and almost never pooped my pants. Almost never. Statistically insignificant number anyway. So the survey is on the web. You could volunteer. They've got about a thousand people. And the question that they brought up in this newspaper article was what services you want to use at a bookstore in the future? 38 percent of respondents, which I think it came in fourth. Toilet use. What do you want to see in a bookstore?
[00:13:08] Will: No, but surely, like, realistically where you go through, everyone wants books and then they're like, why are you still asking me questions? And they're like, okay, you have to list.
[00:13:16] Rod: I want to get my date bleached.
[00:13:18] Will: List three, list five, all I want was books and you're making me ask for other things. I don't believe it.
[00:13:24] Rod: No, but see, that means you're nothing like the centre's executive director, who said, I didn't think there were so many voices that wanted to use the toilet. For some reason, the symptoms of the bookstore encouraging the use of toilets may have been confirmed for the first time in terms of numbers. Bullshit. But anyway, that's what he thought. And he is an executive director. Whereas you're more like a non executive director.
[00:13:45] Will: I am a non executive director. No, I think I'm an executive director or some stuff.
[00:13:49] Rod: First, second and third were basically book related. I didn't record them because
[00:13:53] Will: big books, little books. Cold books, hot books
[00:13:56] Rod: green books, red books fish related.
[00:13:57] Will: Yeah. Red fish, blue fish.
[00:13:59] Rod: So they weren't that interesting. I had written them down, but then I didn't leave them.
[00:14:03] Will: His commitment to podcasting listener is unparalleled. No one. No one will research Some of the bit more than him
[00:14:10] Rod: as hard as I occasionally do. That's true. Well, I actually look this started off as a 48 page script and I thought I can't do that to you. I'll bring it down to six Okay, so Wikipedia, let's go back to that for more Other stories about trying to verify this thing. Some have approximate, let's put it that way, at least a few million people in Japan have experienced this phenomenon
[00:14:31] Will: at least a few million
[00:14:32] Rod: at least a few million.
[00:14:33] Will: I love when you go at least a few, and then you go, okay, at least a few people, at least a few dozen when you throw in the million, like you don't need to say the, at least and the few,
[00:14:40] Rod: another one says, look, maybe it's as many as five to perhaps 10 percent of all Japanese people have experienced it. We could call these speculative. This is referred to as a very small scale study, which I tried to look up, but my Japanese is really not that good.
[00:14:55] Will: Very small study. We asked everyone in japan and 5%.
[00:14:58] Rod: Yeah. And we've got eight people. Book bowel tendency has no regional differences so it appears to be Japan wide.
[00:15:04] Will: It's not like only out of the borders. Do we get a flavor of it in Australia? Does Korea next door have some?
[00:15:09] Rod: not that I could find. Culture bound syndrome. That's what I did my medical anthropology honors on.
[00:15:13] Will: Oh my God. Have you mentioned your undergraduate studies before?
[00:15:16] Rod: Not to you, but I did mention it to Kurt Cobain
[00:15:18] Will: jesus. This guy, I can't take him anywhere.
[00:15:22] Rod: And you haven't. I'm at your house. This is him taking me somewhere. I'll lock you in a room. I'll let you talk for a bit.
[00:15:28] Will: You know, I just want to segue my favorite culture bound syndrome or disease. When I was a kid, you know, the number one fear I had, and this is probably the number one fear of every single kid, spontaneous human combustion. Who wants to die of spontaneous human combustion? It's Irish. Like it's an overwhelmingly Irish phenomenon. Sorry, Irish people. You are the ones most likely to spontaneously human combust.
[00:15:49] Rod: It's such a cold climate.
[00:15:50] Will: Well, I don't know.
[00:15:52] Rod: I thought it would have been a tropical phenomenon
[00:15:53] Will: you would think. you would think, but no
[00:15:56] Rod: all the peoples of the Antarctic, they burst into flames, but that makes sense. That's evolutionary sensible. The Irish, however. Okay. That's odd.
[00:16:07] Very small scale study. So as I say, there's no regional differences as far as they could say. There's possibly a female bias with women, maybe as much as maybe twice as likely to say they've experienced it than men.
[00:16:20] Will: Clues again.
[00:16:20] Rod: I know, right? Like, are you a lady? You've shit yourself in a bookstore, haven't you? To be fair, Japanese lady, I apologize.
[00:16:27] Will: I don't think the causality runs in that direction.
[00:16:30] Rod: You don't know. You haven't heard the whole story yet.
[00:16:32] Will: I think that would be problematic to suggest the causality runs in that direction.
[00:16:35] Rod: Wait till you hear my conclusions. None of them are related to that. My favorite was, it has also been posited that the tendency is uncommon in so called quote sporty males. So there's no apparent clear peak age of onset, however, instances of adult onset appear to be common. So it's not a kid thing. And particularly in the 20 to thirties.
[00:16:54] Will: no kids. You can't point to this. Like, you get, you protect a toddler in and it's like, oh my god, toddler needs to go to the bathroom.
[00:17:00] Rod: Toddler, I'm made outta shit syndrome.
[00:17:01] Will: Yeah, so there ain't no syndrome here.
[00:17:03] Rod: They are the poo phenomenon. But it may be because there was another survey which looked at Japanese working women between 22 and 33. So, we've hit the lady, we've hit the age group, 40 of 150 of them answered yes to the question. Have you ever felt a defecation urge when in a bookstore?
[00:17:20] Will: So I love the moment. I love reading other people's surveys and you know, the moment when you write that down as a question, you go, what am I doing with my life? What am I?
[00:17:29] Rod: Why do you think I stopped doing surveys? Have you ever felt really itchy? I really have.
[00:17:33] Will: Like, you're like fucking cure for cancer or, you know, solve the big problems of politics.
[00:17:39] Rod: Or have you been looking at the children's sort of the young adult fiction section and thought, I need to take a poop?
[00:17:45] Will: But you know, curiosity driven research is very important and we support, you know, research into all corners of the universe.
[00:17:51] Rod: He doesn't cause some of the things I've suggested, he doesn't want me to research
[00:17:54] Will: until we run out of research.
[00:17:56] Rod: So a little aside here, like I've got a personal story, which isn't quite the same, but it's similar.
[00:18:00] Will: Do you got it?
[00:18:01] Rod: Yeah. We really tired from cruising around Kyoto and we walked into Starbucks upstairs. Very quiet. Everyone really quiet headphones, reading books, et cetera. And I was like, I've got to go to the bathroom.
[00:18:10] Will: So did you come off the street? You're in the street and you're like I'm a tourist. Got to do what a tourist got to do.
[00:18:14] Rod: I just want to sit down. We just wanted to relax. And then I thought I need to have a wee. So I went to the bathroom and I love Japanese toilets because they, you know, spectacular and technological. But anyway, I peed for a very long time. It was impressive. Like I wasn't, I was high fiving myself cause it was a very long pee. And because I was kind of bored, it was going straight into the water.
[00:18:33] And I was like, it was quite loud. I'm like, this is spectacular. Like, Ooh, this is fun. And I walked out and I sat down and everyone's being really quiet. And my wife looks at me and says, that was really loud. Like everyone in the book store could hear that. Like I could hear it from one end of Starbucks to the other.
[00:18:51] Will: You are a barbarian. Do you ever temper your barbarian instincts? My, my God, I mean, obviously, Jesus Christ, everyone there is sitting there just going that fucking barbarian\
[00:19:01] Rod: ginger viking idiot just walked in and he obviously peed with no dignity
[00:19:05] Will: none, no dignity at all.
[00:19:07] Rod: I thought it was funny. I'm like, ooh, you can make big splashing noise and blah, blah, blah, blah. But apparently yes, you could hear it.
[00:19:11] Will: And just on this there, there are certainly cultures where the splashing noise is regarded as something that you absolutely know that you want to cover up and not show to other people.
[00:19:20] Rod: But this is a culture where you're supposed to slurp your noodles. So, I mean, I'm the victim. I was confused.
[00:19:25] Will: Are you slurping your noodles?
[00:19:26] Rod: I slurpped my noodles too.
[00:19:27] Will: Is that what you call it? I'm just going to go slurp my noodles. That sounds like more of a euphemism. Like if you said to your wife, you're like, I'm getting a coffee. I've got to go slurp my noodles.
[00:19:38] Rod: She'd be like, sweetheart, that's not the time. That's not how it happened. Anyway, it also became well known via a 2012, well, not so much well known. It became clear how well known it was. There was a quiz show in Japan, 2012. Contestants were asked, what is the name generally given to the phenomenon named after the woman who submitted a letter to a magazine in 1985 about the phenomenon of experiencing a defecation urge when one is in a bookstore for a long period of time?
[00:20:04] But 10 out of 20 got it right. They named her, they named the phenomenon.
[00:20:07] Will: So they got that Aoki Mariko.
[00:20:10] Rod: See, you know it too.
[00:20:11] Will: I wrote it down.
[00:20:14] Rod: You with your knowledge of written texts. So it's in the Zeitgeist. There are memes about it. Even Seinfeld mentioned it in some book he wrote.
[00:20:22] Will: No, there wasn't a Seinfeld episode. Costanza took a book into the toilet
[00:20:26] Rod: and they weren't happy.
[00:20:27] Will: You shouldn't.
[00:20:29] Rod: Do you ever have a poo without reading a book or a magazine though?
[00:20:31] Will: I got my phone. I got my phone. No, but you're not allowed to take someone else's book.
[00:20:35] Rod: You should have told me that earlier.
[00:20:37] Will: You can't just go and go, oh, here's a brand new book off the shelf. I'm just gonna go and read this in the toilet.
[00:20:43] Rod: This may be our most awkward moment. You shouldn't have a bookshelf near the toilet.
[00:20:46] Will: You know what I might do? I come into your office one day and I'd just go, can I borrow a book? I need some reading material. No
[00:20:50] Rod: I would let you, I would hand you the book myself. I wouldn't take it back from you, but I would hand it to you. So right now you're wondering like, why does this happen? Yep. I'm going to get to it because first we've got to dive into the symptoms. So the book magazine itself, their reporting team got into it, pulled apart reports, et cetera.
[00:21:08] Will: Yeah. Let's get a team of crap reporters. Yeah, this is going to get this Pulitzer.
[00:21:11] Rod: Features of this defecation urge. These features included urgency in the lower abdominal area.
[00:21:19] Will: We know what it feels like.
[00:21:20] Rod: Does it feel like this? Shivers across the entire body?
[00:21:23] Will: Well, if it's a good one.
[00:21:25] Rod: Pre? You're like, this is going to be a goodie. I'll be back. I've got to go and slurp my noodles. A pallor to the face. Do you get pale before?
[00:21:34] Will: No not often. I mean, I don't think I do. Jeez. I don't want to be detectable like that.
[00:21:39] Rod: Can you imagine, you're in a meeting? I'm just going to go and get a drink. No, you don't a cold and greasy sweat. Greasy sweat. Greasy. A bow legged gait. It's like, why are you walking like that? I don't want to tell you. That's a turtle poking its head out.
[00:21:54] Will: That's interesting. I, no, yeah, the turtle poking its head out. Where have you heard that before?
[00:22:00] Rod: Austin Powers.
[00:22:01] Will: Is that what it's from? Is that what it's from? Because my friends and I would, yeah, there you go.
[00:22:06] Rod: It's like a turtle poking its head out. Yeah. Horrifying. There's another symptom called Borborygmus. The A rumbling sound made by the movement of gas in the intestine. Apparently it has a formal name.
[00:22:17] Alex: Borborygmus.
[00:22:21] Will: Oh, thank you alex
[00:22:22] Alex: the undoubtedly the best name for a symptom in all of medicine.
[00:22:26] Rod: I think you might be right.
[00:22:28] Will: Editor jumps in
[00:22:29] Rod: and he should because Borborygmus sounds much saucier when you say it that way.
[00:22:33] Will: It's a good name for a metal band like we're Borborygmus
[00:22:38] Rod: People also characterized by people walking around looking for a bathroom who have been described as having a wearing a vacant stare So it's post apocalyptic. There's no way to poo syndrome. There are more poetic descriptions. For example,
[00:22:53] Will: give me an haiku, please Haiku, please. Please.
[00:22:55] Rod: That's a lot of pressure on me right now. We'll edit this bit in later
[00:22:59] Will: first a nice bookstore
[00:23:03] Rod: a Borborygmus
[00:23:04] Will: Borborygmus of movement. I am complete. Kinda.
[00:23:11] Rod: It's Australian haiku. So, more poetic descriptions. A filling up sensation in the lower abdominal area. The poetry does not end.
[00:23:17] Will: Why you gotta do this to me?
[00:23:18] Rod: I didn't do it. I'm just reporting on the facts, man. I mean, other people have covered this phenomenon, but they've done it in like six minutes. You know why? They don't deep dive like we do.
[00:23:26] Will: We get into that rabbit hole and we ferret around in the rabbit hole and then realize why are we in this fucking rabbit hole.
[00:23:31] Rod: Get the ferrets out of here. Another one. A kind of heaving sensation in the rectal passage. Poetry. Also a or another person put it, a focusing of all nervous energy on the anal area.
[00:23:44] Will: Do you know, I think this is people that are just finally, I can write a letter to the editor. I can fill in a survey where I can describe how this feels to me. We get it. It's an interesting feeling, but we've all had it.
[00:23:56] Rod: Have you? Well, you had the greasy sweat, Borborygmus. You focused all your nervous energy in your anal area. You heard it here first. Will, are you feeling nervous? Well part of me is!
[00:24:09] Will: No, it's not nervous. It's, you know, there's some things that don't need a full description. They are visceral.
[00:24:14] Rod: Oh, then you won't like this bit. The intensity of the sensation has variously been described with expressions such as, enough to make one scared about going to a bookstore ever again, hellish, And my fave, Armageddon class.
[00:24:28] Will: I've had one of those.
[00:24:29] Rod: Was it in India?
[00:24:30] Will: No, I remember I was at a protest once. It was a pretty big protest. And then suddenly I turned around. Not enough toilets. And I'm like Oh, where are we? And what's going on?
[00:24:38] Rod: What if I need to? That sensation is going to come up so to speak. How serious can it get? So there are reports. If you have really severe or regular symptoms, some actually say it affects their overall quality of life overall. So again, back to the very extensive Wikipedia accounts, I can't take time looking for books because I ended up wanting to go to the bathroom.
[00:25:03] Another says, I get other people to buy the books I need. So they can't even go there another, as soon as I bought the book, I need, I get out of the bookstore, a better one, even just dreaming of entering a bookstore always makes me want to go to the bathroom. So you're dreaming. And as we all do like, ah, the world is my oyster now. Yeah. I'm going to go to the bookstore, not ride a dragon, become magical, whatever it is,
[00:25:29] Will: unless it's the other way around and suddenly you had the need in the night and then you wraps the dream around, I'm in a bookstore.
[00:25:35] Rod: still not great. I need to poo, I must be in a book store.
[00:25:38] I'm just
[00:25:38] Will: saying it could be the other way around in the dream.
[00:25:40] Rod: That's true. There's a pearl from the person is referred to as the thinker Uchida. In the worst case scenario, entailing a traumatic scene from which it would be difficult to restore one's honor as an adult member of society. Which links to my favorite. This is the last one I'll give you. Someone who's clearly seriously afflicted. I can't go to a bookstore wearing white pants.
[00:26:00] Will: Oh Jesus Christ. All right. All right. All right. All right.
[00:26:04] Rod: There was more to that, but I don't think you need it. I'm interested in a book by game over. Okay. But so why does it happen? Let's get back to why. Book magazine, they interviewed a psychiatrist in 1985. He said, look, maybe it's about hyper responsive reactions to stress.
[00:26:23] Will: Not the most stressful environment. I know I haven't been stressed out by bookstores, but
[00:26:27] Rod: because you're a normal person. But he goes on to say, look, it normally leads to constipation, these hyper responses distress.
[00:26:32] Will: I'm of the idea that bookstores normally lead to constipation.
[00:26:35] Rod: I'm going to buy a book, but I'm not going to shit for a week. This is a nightmare.
[00:26:40] Will: In 95 percent of people, it's a constipation response.
[00:26:43] Rod: Yeah, exactly. But he's saying in general, these hyper responsive reactions to stress usually mean you'll lock up.
[00:26:47] Will: Yeah, sure. Like, let's go full on evolutionary psychology here. You know, you're a lion and shit, a lion is coming at you in the olden times it's not a useful response.
[00:26:57] Rod: You lock it down or do you bog it out?
[00:26:59] Will: You lock it down.
[00:27:00] Rod: But like an octopus, maybe it'd be better to flood the zone. Freak the lion out. Because they're a proud creature and they don't want poo on them.
[00:27:06] Will: I just don't, I don't want to be busy doing stuff. I want to be throwing my spears.
[00:27:10] Rod: You don't have to be busy. You can just come out. You don't have to do a lot of work.
[00:27:12] Will: Okay. If it's one of those situations. I guess I'm loincloth.
[00:27:15] Rod: Well, you are now. Why wouldn't you have been then? People watching the video, he's wearing a jacket on top, but downstairs like a newsreader. A Sick newsreader, a dirty wrong newsreader. The guy goes on. Yes, it normally leads to constipation, but he said it is considered possible in special circumstances. This is what made it magical for me. For example, when shown a glass of cold milk, it's possible for the gut to experience a loosening by way of a type of condition response mechanism. So when you see a glass of milk, do you suddenly go, I feel my bowels loosen. Cold milk.
[00:27:46] Will: No, I love cold milk.
[00:27:48] Rod: It's delicious. This is a psychiatric phenomenon of which I was previously unaware from 1980s Japan.
[00:27:53] Will: Well, you know, listener, let us know.
[00:27:57] Rod: Do us a favor, look at a glass of cold milk calmly in your own space, or in a bookstore, and let us know which way it goes.
[00:28:04] Will: Or, if you are a bit constipated, You know, if you need to stay out of bookstores, sit down and work it out with a pencil. Try the glass of milk. I want to know.
[00:28:13] Rod: But if you want to, if you want to let us know, you should, Put a comment in the YouTube, which is the below, or send us an email at cheers@wholesomeshow.com. So, Ayoke Mariko, she said herself that the symptoms, for her at least, can be set off by being in a bookstore for a long period of time or smelling the scent of new books for a long period of time.
[00:28:31] Will: I like the smell of new books
[00:28:31] Rod: I like the smell of books.
[00:28:33] Will: I don't like the smell of old ones.
[00:28:34] Rod: Really? I used to go to the medical library when I was doing my medical anthropology degree. Not with kurt Cobain.
[00:28:38] Will: Oh my God. Oh my God.
[00:28:40] Rod: And I used to walk into that library and go. Mmm, the musty smell of wisdom. Loved it. So yes, she said she had these facility, or these, sorry, these experiences, but she also, interestingly, she worked in a printery for a while. No symptoms in the printery.
[00:28:53] Will: Oh. I thought that would be a clue.
[00:28:56] Rod: There are so many maybe clues and none of them.
[00:28:58] Will: I thought it would be like chemistry and there's like a formaldehyde in the book.
[00:29:01] Rod: This has been proposed. Super glue. She also says, look, it doesn't matter what kind of book she's reading or browsing. It could equally happen when looking at a fiction and nonfiction.
[00:29:10] No, but also highbrow literary or like a manga comic. It doesn't matter in case you were wondering, cause we always would like, well, what kind of book? What genre? When you browse the self help versus the biographies.
[00:29:22] Will: Maybe it's your body saying, get out of this section, like go get a better section
[00:29:26] Rod: or stay here because you're being constipated for the afternoon. She also knows the phenomenon may be more likely when she's a bit constipated or on the morning after having a nightcap, I assume she means pussed and or hung over.
[00:29:39] Will: I don't know what to do with these.
[00:29:41] Rod: No, neither do I. I'm like, I'm just putting them out there. I'm working it through with you. Makes me feel better. So more Wikipedia stuff. Symptoms are particularly strong when in a large bookstore. Apparently. Apparently. It readily occurs at English language booksellers. Apparently. It can occur not just in bookstores that sell new books, but also in secondhand bookstores or libraries.
[00:30:02] Will: No, we had that before.
[00:30:03] Rod: She didn't get it in there, but others apparently can. For some, or at least one, it occurs only in libraries.
[00:30:10] Will: Oh, so, so there are quirks here.
[00:30:12] Rod: There are quirks, idiosyncrasies, if you will.
[00:30:14] Will: Yeah. I get it in, I get it in the library. You get it in the bookstore. Fair enough.
[00:30:17] Rod: This is how we get it. I'm a dictionary kind of guy. A member of the magazine editorial team, the book magazine, said they really get it in the company's archives room. For some, the moment they leave the bookstore, the symptoms subside.
[00:30:33] I really need to bog. Oh, now I don't. Others have seen it in CD stores. This was at the time, video rental stores, video game stores. Maybe you just needed to poo.
[00:30:41] Will: It's the rental of culture. That's what it is. You can get a bit of culture, lumps of culture stored on shelves. You got to get one out to get one in.
[00:30:49] Rod: I never thought as crap as removing culture. I'm going to go and remove some culture. That's better than slurping noodles. I'm going to go and culture dump.
[00:30:55] Will: Slurping noodles was a euphemism for something else.
[00:30:57] Rod: One person said they were instantly cured after they started a part time job in a bookstore. Instant cure. So basically, it's not clear that we know why, nor that it's only one thing. But why stop speculating? The smell of paper, some have said. Yep. It could be some kind of irritable bowel syndrome due to pressure surrounded by a huge amount of print.
[00:31:16] Obviously. This one I can understand the habit of reading in the toilet at home, but then you generalize you're like, well, I read it. Sure. Some of us don't only read in the toilet. Some of us read during podcasts. You're allowed to do that? Some book lovers, they hypothesize that being surrounded by thousands of beautiful books relaxes them so thoroughly relaxed that the bowels as well become thoroughly relaxed.
[00:31:42] Will: I'll be like that in a map store. I gotta be like, holy shit.
[00:31:45] Rod: Here's 10 atlases and they're all beautiful.
[00:31:48] Will: Stop it. Get out of my way. Look at all this knowledge of geography.
[00:31:52] Rod: Look at these representations of a landscape. Maybe it's posture.
[00:31:57] Will: Oh, we're doing a little leaning down on the shelves.
[00:32:00] Rod: Yeah. Or squatting to read.
[00:32:02] Will: Or you gotta get up on your tippy toes.
[00:32:03] Rod: There is a lot that speculates posture, including some quite fruity diagrams.
[00:32:08] Will: No, okay. So in fairness in, in a squat toilet culture. You might be going, Oh, let's have a look at the bottom shelf. Let's see what happens when we squat down to the Oopsie poopsie.
[00:32:19] Rod: I appear to have made the poo poos. I have number two'd. I have soiled my loincloth. So yes, they're talking about, there's a whole bunch of speculation. It gets more or less complex, but the bottom line is maybe doing that. Blah. But there's one that just says, look, maybe it's just anticipatory anxiety. You kind of accidentally flagged this. So you go into a bookstore and start peeking that you might need to go to the toilet. Or go to a protest, but there might be no Dunny. Yeah. Sorry for American listeners, poo place. So you start to focus on don't need to poo, don't need to poo, don't need to poo, which of course makes you go, got to poo.
[00:32:50] The moment you think one thing I really can't do right now is have a poo, you're immediately, and by you, I mean me, and I mean everyone. You're like, well, if I can't,
[00:32:59] Will: how often do you drive a car? How many toilets do you have in your car?
[00:33:02] Rod: One. It's a ute and you can hose it out.
[00:33:05] Will: Fine. Fine. I'm just saying we are often in situations where you can't. I think the odds of finding a toilet in a bookstore are a hell of a lot higher than in your car.
[00:33:13] Rod: That's true. But the odds of finding books are a hell of a lot higher in the bookstore.
[00:33:16] Will: Try to get into a Gatorade bottle might be hard.
[00:33:18] Rod: Have you tried?
[00:33:19] Will: Well, I'm just saying it might be
[00:33:20] Rod: those of you listening at home. If you can get into a Gatorade bottle, I'll give you will's phone number. Text him the pictures.
[00:33:25] Will: Don't.
[00:33:27] Rod: So is it for real? Is this a real. That's what you're wondering, right?
[00:33:30] Will: I was, but there's a Wikipedia article on it. So I'll take that.
[00:33:34] Rod: So it's definitely popular. Some claim it's an urban legend, but it's been a serious discussion topic in many pieces, at least in Japan since 85 and in the media. So 1995, so well and truly after the pieces. An episode of the TV show, Lifestyle Refresh Morning, shock, we all know the one apparently the topic was favorably introduced.
[00:33:54] That's all they told me. 1998, the TV show called The Real Side of Unan, they did extensive tests and had some experts in.
[00:34:02] Will: What were the tests?
[00:34:03] Rod: So the only one I could find was they basically got people to smell ink, et cetera, et cetera. And see if it would make them make the poo poos. Apparently there was a big response to this broadcast.
[00:34:12] So there are special segments on multiple occasions after that. Over at least more than a year. From a men's health magazine, 2021. So men's health they had a new segment called ask the poop doctor. The doctor was Dr. Sameer Islam from he's a Texas based gastroenterologist and an assistant professor of medicine at Texas tech university.
[00:34:35] Will: I think that we need a librarian gastroenterologist.
[00:34:38] Rod: Yeah. Who's also an MD. I agree.
[00:34:40] Will: We need the full combination here.
[00:34:42] Rod: So he says, look, the phenomenon, the Mariko Aoki phenomenon hasn't been medically or scientifically proven. Some say there's anecdotal evidence, blah, blah, blah. He says, but yes, I've definitely heard about it.
[00:34:51] I've had patients who've come to see me about it. It's more common than people realize, but I think they're just embarrassed to talk about it. He says, emphatically, it's purely a psychological problem. Who's not going to trust a guy who talks about that.
[00:35:04] Will: Yep. I'll come back to that, but I don't think that's right.
[00:35:06] Rod: Well, we're going to get to the verdict straight after this. So, The urgency that people feel with bowel movements can also be found in other areas, like parks and museums.
[00:35:15] Will: So there's a whole other phenomenon out there?
[00:35:16] Rod: A whole other whole phenomenon. In a library or bookstore specifically, what's likely happening is the effect that arises from feelings of nervous tension in the face of all the information represented in bookshelves. What are you talking about? I don't agree.
[00:35:29] Will: No, I get that.
[00:35:30] Rod: Do you walk into a bookstore and go, I'm overwhelmed. There's so much here.
[00:35:32] Will: No I have certainly had that anxiety. Like I look at a bookstore like big bookstores and I was like, oh, there is so much here. I would prefer to just buy individually online
[00:35:40] Rod: because I would die before I can read all of these.
[00:35:42] Will: Yeah. Basically. Some versions of that. Yeah. Like, no, literally, like, I find it much more comfortable to, to go I read a great review of whatever book and I'm like, cool, that sounds great. I can buy it online. I don't have to have the anxiety of a whole book store. If I'm looking for a particular book, bookstores fine, I'm like, cool, I'm hunting for that. But wandering into a bookstore and going, what will I read? I'm like, no, there's too much.
[00:36:03] Rod: So I guess it doesn't make you want to shit yourself?
[00:36:05] Will: No.
[00:36:07] Rod: Have you ever worn white pants into a bookstore?
[00:36:08] Will: Yes. Maybe. No. Not really. Yes?
[00:36:11] Rod: I want to see records. So yeah, he basically says, there's more scientific support for that idea and you've just added to it. You've become a N of one. But then he closes with, really, we have no idea.
[00:36:23] Will: Oh my God. What's your verdict? What do you reckon?
[00:36:25] Rod: My verdict is, God, it's hilarious. Does it exist? Sure, but I think the conditions around it are so probably idiosyncratic and or confounded by so many other variables. I mean, there was a whole bunch of other stuff I didn't include, which is like many bookstores, at least in the past, well, A existed and B would have a coffee shop in them. And coffee, I don't know if you knew this, can lead to the poo stools.
[00:36:49] Will: I will add to that, like what you're saying there, it's clearly culture bound, like the fact that it is so precise to Japan suggests there's a culture here. So psychological, yes, but sociological as well. Like clearly either, we've talked about it enough that people go, okay, this is a thing and that might be triggering it.
[00:37:06] Rod: So maybe, and look, I tried to find out where Aoki is now. Apparently, like I mentioned earlier, she's very happy to be known as, you know, the for the phenomenon to be known after her name couldn't find her.
[00:37:17] I even went to AI. I went to both chat GPT said like, help me out here. Is there anything on her?
[00:37:24] Will: Why would they know?
[00:37:25] Rod: Cause they, they browse faster than I do.
[00:37:27] Will: They're terrible.
[00:37:28] Rod: No. Perplexity was great. It made me smarter, but anyway, I could find nothing like, like, so she just, she came from nowhere, said I'm the person who shits in bookstores and then disappeared again.
[00:37:39] Will: Well, let's see if we can as a culture bound phenomenon, let's see if we can spread this to other countries.
[00:37:44] Rod: Good idea. We're going on a road trip. It's a good way to announce it.
[00:37:49] Will: All right. What else have you been thinking about?
[00:37:51] Rod: Well, here's what I really want to get into. I don't think we've done this. Carrot propaganda from World War II.
[00:37:56] Will: No, what? No, what? No, we haven't covered carrot propaganda. What is carrot propaganda?
[00:38:00] Rod: Bottom line is it would appear that this whole idea that carrots give you better eyesight may have stemmed from the allies fucking with the Germans.
[00:38:10] Will: In what way?
[00:38:11] Rod: I'm not telling you.
[00:38:12] Will: Make them eat too many carrots? Make them not eat enough carrots?
[00:38:15] Rod: It's more like a bait and switch exercise. Why have they suddenly gotten way better at bombing us at night? Oh, it's because we eat a lot of carrots as opposed to the tech we just developed. Fantastic. It's such a great little story.
[00:38:27] Will: Oh my God. All right. All right. Okay. I got this one comes from, listen to suggestion from friend of the pod Adam Rope. So this was a suggestion that came from Twitter. So Adam Rope sent on Adam Sharpe's twitter thread.
[00:38:38] Rod: Two Adams. Coincidence?
[00:38:39] Will: Oh, how could it possibly be? But no, Adam Sharpe's Twitter thread was a bunch of transliterations where a word from whatever language and what the literal translation was. So in Hungarian, the word for shark, and I won't use the word here. Cause I'll explain in a second translates literally to sea bastard which I like, or in the, in, in Zulu you see Zulu, the word for tears is drama water.
[00:39:07] In Greek, the word for protest is anger parade which I thought, okay, that's really cool. That's really cool. I really liked that. Unfortunately, it all turned out to be an April Fool's joke. I was looking these up and and I was like, how do you pronounce whatever the Greek word there is?
[00:39:21] And it came up as gullible. And I'm like, hang on. And then they all were, there were all different versions of that. So, so Adam Sharp was having a great little April Fool's joke. It worked quite nicely. It was really quite good. But there is a nice thing to be done in transliterations, how we might, there might be versions potentially where ultrasound is baby radar or something like that.
[00:39:44] Rod: Also the fake versions where people make languages like Dothraki and stuff. And they've, I was reading something about this recently where they actually like quirky culturally specific ways to make references to, you know, like this guy's, you know, Reaching beyond his grasp or whatever it may be. So there's actually artificial ways to do this, which is freaking fascinating.
[00:40:02] Will: Yeah, that's cool. Anything else you've been thinking about?
[00:40:04] Rod: Sincericide. Sincericide.
[00:40:07] Will: What is that?
[00:40:07] Rod: It's a word, apparently, look, when I heard it, I thought, yeah, people who are too sincere make me feel like I'm going to kill myself too. But that's not what it is.
[00:40:15] Will: Do we all die from sincerity?
[00:40:17] Rod: Yes. If you're too sincere, everyone dies. It's basically a psychology term that seems to have started to move around. It's basically, Where people under the guise of, I'm just going to tell the truth, man, they, what they call it, the kamikaze of truth.
[00:40:28] Like they kill themselves by oversharing or being overly honest, et cetera, particularly in workplaces. I've heard many stories. I haven't seen it in actually our workplace, but many stories of people close to me where I'm like, you're not just telling the truth. You're being a loud, noisy dick.
[00:40:44] Will: Yeah. There's a difference between truth and being an asshole.
[00:40:48] Rod: Oh no, it's just true, man. I'm just telling the truth. I'm brave. No, you're a fuckwit.
[00:40:52] Will: All right. All right. I got one that I've been thinking about. I've been reading a whole bunch of post apocalyptic or no dystopian fiction, like different versions. So, so I just finished reading the silo books, great books. They're absolutely worth reading. Or I've also been reading the I'm just picking up now. There's a feminist interpretation of 1984. So in, in 1984, the original Orwell book, Winston Smith falls in love with Julia.
[00:41:18] Anyway, no, this is the story told from Julia's perspective. So only a little bit of the way in, but it's nice to get back into a dystopia world. But the one I've been thinking about is this thing that came in, I don't know when it was in, in the UK.
[00:41:29] 17th century or something like that. Sumptuary laws. So they're laws about clothing. Like who can wear what? And the original version is who gets to wear bling. Like it's, you gotta be, you gotta be a no you gotta be a lord to wear bling. You can't be some jumped up merchant. And there's and there's something really interesting about laws, about haircuts, laws about - so I'm just fascinated by that.
[00:41:50] Rod: I want to know more. All right. Well, look, if you have suggestions or if you know, have comments, if you've got stories you think you'd like us to look into ping us. The comment stream below in YouTube or
[00:42:02] cheers@wholesomeshow.com. Just a thanks here for a couple of people, Tony Slaughter and Daniel McAfee, both of you, of course, this is the legit joke that you know, if you're thinking about someone escaping an airplane as our friend DB Cooper was if you want to know how easy it is to open the airplane doors, just ask Boeing.
