wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Comments

• [1] Jonas September 14, 2009 - 02:26PM

  What was the music that played at the end of this segment?

  
  
• [2] Zach September 15, 2009 - 01:53PM

  What was that awesome music that connects this segment with the one that follows???

  
  
• [3] Tom from Phoenix September 17, 2009 - 05:07PM

  Same question. I came here looking for a music citation to discover the slide guitar artist. PLEASE tell us.

  
  
• [4] Amanda September 23, 2009 - 03:04PM

  Hi there,

  This was a fantastic episode, but I'm troubled by a claim made in the outhouse segment. Despommier seems to strongly imply if not directly state that outhouses were invented in the early 20th century in response to these discoveries about hookworms. That just isn't true--outhouses have been around for centuries, and there are even two-story outhouses (!) that predate Rockefeller's interest. He may have found a scientific reason for digging them a certain depth, and he might be responsible for popularizing them in a specific region, but humanity figured out how to poop in a hole before the 1900s.

  
  
• [5] Susan Bissonnette from New York September 25, 2009 - 04:14PM

  Fascinating story, thank you for your research and interesting stories that support them.

  
  
• [6] Ace Frahm October 05, 2009 - 12:34AM

  Amanda is incorrect. The story does not imply the invention of outhouses in response to the hookworm discovery. It merely says the infected southerners didn't have outhouses.

  
  
• [7] Tsim from Berkeley, California October 08, 2009 - 12:39AM

  Hi! Thanks for using my photo for your piece, but be sure to contact me if you plan to do so again.

  -"Grumpies"

  
  
• [8] Ted Welch from Wilmette, IL January 06, 2010 - 01:34PM

  Being something of an autodidact in the social history of sanitary engineering, I would suggest that neither Ace or Amanda are quite on the mark. The use of outhouses goes back centuries in places where humans created permanent housing for themselves. Originally the motivation was likely more to avoid "fouling the nest" than any association of human waste with disease. The association of infected southerners in Rockefeller's studies with homes lacking privies wasn't so strong a predictor of hookworm infection as was the educational attainment and general prosperity of a community. Wearing shoes of any kind, especially for children, was a luxury in many rural parts of the pre 20th Century south. More significant for the rural southerner's probability of being infected with hookworm was not whether a person had an outhouse behind his/her cabin, but whether he or she regularly wore foot covering AND the prevalence of outhouse use in the larger community.

  Historically, the other alternative to human waste disposal was to defecate in moving water (either a tidal zone or a river). We still use water today with the modern toilet to carry away our waste. With the increasing demands on a limited supply of potable water around most of the world, it is debatable how long we will be able to enjoy the luxury of flushing 1.6 gallons of potable water every time we defecate or urinate.

  Well maintained, properly constructed outhouses and/or composting toilets may well have a comeback in many non-urban areas.

  
  
• [9] Deb from W CHicago January 07, 2010 - 10:24AM

  Amazing and intriguing information on hookworms... Good stuff! Youve gained another listener for sure. Good show and I agree in my amazement of closed minded people even in the light of stopping their suffering...rediculous..that the human race thinks of themselves as above being so... human. duh!

  
  
• [10] Amanda January 29, 2010 - 01:48PM

  Ace,

  Despommier is talking about how Rockefeller's scientists studied the lifecycle of the hookworm and discovered that hookworms crawl away from the place they were deposited. He then says:

  "So how in the world could you deal with this problem when these worms can crawl four feet...Unless you do something radical, that's never been done before. They devised a scheme for burying the stool sample into the ground six feet deep.... We call that the outhouse. So the outhouse was invented by exploring the life cycle of hookworm."

  So yes, it most certainly does imply that outhouses were invented in the early 20th century in response to the hookworm problem.

  Amanda