Sewers

Episode notes

Alex Schmidt is joined by podcaster/founder Jack O’Brien (The Daily Zeitgeist) and bestselling author Jason Pargin (‘John Dies At The End’ series, ‘Zoey Ashe’ series) for a look at why sewers are secretly incredibly fascinating.

Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week’s bonus episode.

LINKS FOR THE GUESTS:

• The Daily Zeitgeist (iHeartRadio)
• Jack O’Brien on Twitter
• Zoey Punches The Future In The Dick by David Wong
• Jason’s website
• Jason Pargin on Twitter

RESOURCES USED TO INFORM THE EPISODE’S LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

• native-land.ca
• U.S. Department Of Arts And Culture
• Museum of Durham History

RESEARCH SOURCES:

• Our World In Data: Sanitation
• Cloaca Maxima (Atlas Obscura)
• Urine for a Treat With a Tour of These Five Sewer Systems (Smithsonian Magazine)
• Gardyloo: The grim story of unsanitary Edinburgh (The Scotsman)
• Flushing the Toilet Has Never Been Riskier (The Atlantic)
• John Snow — British physician (Encyclopedia Britannica)
• Story of cities #14: London’s Great Stink heralds a wonder of the industrial world (The Guardian)
• Saving Lives, One Toilet at a Time (UNICEF USA)
• Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know (Rolling Stone)
• The Heavy Toll of the Black Belt’s Wastewater Crisis (The New Yorker)
• The American Neighborhoods Without Water, Sewers, or Building Codes (The Atlantic)
• Pooping on the beach in India (YouTube / VPRO Metropolis)
• Hundreds Of Pounds Of Human Waste, Needles Cleaned From Former Homeless Encampment At Echo Park (CBS 2 Los Angeles)
• The elimination of open defecation and its adverse health effects: a moral imperative for governments and development professionals (Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development)
• Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
• World Health Organization fact sheet for sanitation
• Huge Blobs of Fat and Trash Are Filling the World’s Sewers (National Geographic)
• A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London (The New Yorker)
• The Tank Stream Tours (Sydney Living Museums)
• 2013 YouTube video about The Tank Stream from Sydney Water
• Washington Tunnels: Sewer Tunnels (CityLab / The Washington Post)
• The History of the Chicago River (WTTW Channel 11 PBS Chicago)
• the Chicago Sewers Collection of the Chicago Public Library
• The Cloaca Maxima (Encyclopedia Britannica) — “Originally an open channel constructed in the 6th century BC by lining an existing stream bed with stone, it was enclosed, beginning in the 3rd century BC, with a stone barrel (semicircular) vault.”
• Tweet from @WizardingWorld, January 2019: “Hogwarts didn’t always have bathrooms. Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence. #NationalTriviaDay”