March 20, 2024 • 11 mins
Ten percent of people – in Japan at least – get the urge to poop when they visit bookstores. But it wasn’t until a courageous woman stepped up and became the voice of the phenomenon now named after her that they realized they were part of a movement.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, I'm welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's
Chuck and Ben's here too, sitting in for Dave.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Ben.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is short stuff, the New Reality.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's right. I'm glad that you found this because I
have experienced this in a slightly different way, and I
never knew that it was a thing, and now I do.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Yeah, I had no idea it was a thing either.
I don't remember where I heard of this. I'm guessing
you me, it just seems like the kind of thing
she would have sent me. But we have to shout
out McGill University, IFL Science and Science Times for helping
round this idea hour this story out. But we're talking
about something called the Marico Aoki phenomenon, which is a
(00:41):
very specific phenomenon. It's where some people go into a
bookstore and are overwhelmed with the urge, sometimes an urgent
urge to poop in that bookstore, not like in the
aisles of the bookstore, but to go to the bathroom
in the bookstore to poop.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, so here's my story. In high school, still one
of my very best friends, Jim, I say, you know, Jim,
Jim and I had an afternoon radio show, which was
over the intercom of the school, and it was basically
instead of the principal reading the daily announcements, we asked
(01:18):
if we could take it over and round it out
with jokes and top ten lists and what have you.
So we had WRHS was our dumb little show.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
So wait, this was officially sanctioned. It wasn't pirate School Radio.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
No, no, no. It was us in the principal's office
like on the microphone every day. I mean that was
looking back, it was the start of stuff you should know,
which is funny. Oh wow, But we did. When we
would meet to write the show. Every day, we would
meet in the empty auditorium where they did school plays,
(01:48):
and every time we were in there, both of us
had to poop and we used to laugh about it
and talk about it. And now that I see sort
of some of the similarities between that empty, quiet auditorium
and a sort of a large, maybe cavernous, quiet bookstore,
I now know this is a thing.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I was not expecting a personal anecdote from you for
this one.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, I mean, this goes back to the eighties, Jim
and I. He'll laugh when I tell him this is
an actual thing.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Well, that's appropriate because the Marico Aoki phenomenon goes back
to the eighties too, all.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Right, Yeah, so we should probably talk about where it
came from, right.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, it came from a Japanese woman named Mariko Aoki.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
That's right. And she sent a letter to a magazine
in what nineteen eighty five and the issue of han
no Zashi? Is that right?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Close enough?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
How would you say it?
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Han no Zashi?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Didn't that what I said?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Okay? And she wrote a letter to the you know,
like a letter to the editor kind of thing, where
she said, I'm not sure why, but since about two
or three years ago, whenever I go to a bookstore,
I'm struck by an urge to move my bowels. They
printed it, just the letter to the editor, and then
got so many responses from people saying me too, that
the next issue had a fourteen page feature article on
(03:07):
the headline was the phenomenon currently shaking the bookstore industry.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, and it became like such a thing that it
took her name, Marico Aoki. Even though there has been
people have turned up mentions of this kind of thing
as far back as the fifties, I could not find
any original source material of that, but I think I'm
willing to take IFL Science on their word if they
(03:33):
were the one where I got it from. But in
Japan it kicked off like a trend, right, So there
were kind of like game show informal studies of what
exactly was going on, and they did turn up some data,
not exactly like you know, peer review shorthy data, but
they found that about ten percent of the respondence in
(03:54):
Japan feel the urge to poop when they go into
the bookstore. So the Marryoki Aoki phenomenon is it covers
about ten percent of the population. I'm squarely in the
ninety percent. You're apparently in the ten percent.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Well, I mean, I haven't tested it with a bookstore,
but there are similarities between. For us, it always felt
like like Jim's theory was that it was a big
being alone in a very big, large, empty quiet.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Space like a colon.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
I guess so, but you know, a bookstore isn't empty,
but it's not like going to a concert. It is
generally pretty quiet, so and there's like some there's a
privacy aspect I think to a bookstore. I mean I'm
thinking larger bookstores, not like you know, the tiny mom
and pops, which I love. So I don't know that
was his theory. Lease, so I guess I'm in that
(04:45):
ten percent. I'll go to a bookstore and I'll let
you know.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
We'll report back for sure. As a matter of fact,
we should live stream on stuff. You should know, like
one of our social it's true.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oh my god, you might He'll be right back. Should
we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll come back
and talk about some of the theories right after this.
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
(05:18):
listen to Chuck selfus.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Chuck, I think I speak on behalf of at least
half of the people listening. Would you and Jim go
poop at the same time, or would you like take turns?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I don't remember that part. I don't even know if
we went and pooped or if it was just like,
oh I got a poop, I see, I see.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Okay, Yeah, so yeah, anyway, we're back.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, we're back. There is no like serious science probably
about this, but there are a lot of pretty interesting theories,
and one of them is something that we've talked about.
In fact, we did a whole show sort of, didn't
we about the gut brain axis we did.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
It's something about like when you approach the front door
of your.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
House, that's the brain bladder connection.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Oh okay, I think this is kind of similar though, right, No, totally.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I think the second theory, the smell of books, which
we'll get to, is more brain bladder connection. But the
gut brain axis would have come up in I guess,
like I can't remember what it was, but we talked
about like a whole episode about how there's neurons in
your gut and like your brain and your gut, your
central nervous system and your enteric nervous system communicate to
one another. And so that's probably the likeliest explanation for
(06:37):
why somebody would feel the urge to poop in a bookstore.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah, there are some other you know. To me, I
think it's all of these things added together. There is
that there is also this sort of connection of like
people like reading on the toilet has long been something
that people do, right. People are on their phones now,
but in the old days, you had that magazine. Rack
still got a magazine right next to my toilet, and
(07:02):
we'll read a good magazine. So that connection. Maybe that
subconscious thing of when you're among those books, your sphincter
just a moocks, just a little bit, maybe.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, for sure. So whatever it was, whatever, if it's
like the smell of books, that's kind of usually put forth.
Whatever it is that you associate with a bookstore, and
then you poop in the bookstore. That's where your gut
brain access would take over and you develop this association.
So when you walk into the bookstore, your brain goes, hey, gut,
(07:34):
we're in a bookstore. You better get busy pooping.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, makes sense. Another one, of course, is a bookstore
oftentimes there's a lot of squatting. Yeah, if you want
to book down on that bottom shelf, or you want
to peruse for a little while on the bottom, you're
going to be squatting down. And humankind didn't evolve to
poop like we poop. Now you're supposed to squat. And
(07:59):
if you've ever in in that dead squat position with
your butt just barely above the ground and all your weight,
like everything lines up in such a way to where
your body goes, oh, it's go.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Time, it's time, yeah, and he goes.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
So you're in there already, it's quiet. You got the
smell of the books you're squatting.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, how could anybody not poop?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
You may have a coffee, that's a big one.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
A lot of people say, yeah, people drink coffee and
bookstores and coffee makes you poop.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah. So I think it's like all this stuff sort
of adds up to, oh my god, I'm in a bookstore.
I've got to go.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
There's another theory that isn't specifically identified as from Japan.
But if it's not from Japan, I will eat my
hat and I don't even have a hat. I'll go
buy a hat to eat it. If this isn't a
Japanese theory, that because life is stressful, when you walk
into a bookstore, a bookstore is very calm, and so
you feel relieved and so you want to leave yourself.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I don't think I've ever seen you wear a hat.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
I've got a like a mud hens hat that man,
my hair has to be pretty messed up for me
to wear it, but that's my hat.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
I don't think i've ever seen you in a hat
in sixteen years.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Well, that's by design.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I've seen you in shorts maybe twice.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
That was by design as well. What do you think.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
You get some nice legs thanks, And then of course
you have to think about or at least consider the
frequency illusion aspect of this. It's a type of confirmation bias,
whereas once you know this is a thing, you start
to just it's in your head all of a sudden,
and you're making that connection where it previously didn't exist,
(09:42):
So you know, you have to kind of consider that
for sure.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah, that's what skeptics say. They say there's no such
thing as the Mark Aoki phenomenon, that actually it's it's
people just have heard of it, and maybe she had
some sort of Pavlovian training where like the smell of the
books made her want to poop, but just talk about it.
It getting published and becoming a thing in Japan, then
traveling around the world, people started saying like, oh, yeah,
(10:06):
I've pooped in bookstores too, So then anytime they poop
in a bookstore from that point on they notice it.
It confirms their theory that they're susceptible to the Ma
Aoki phenomenon, and it just becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy.
But at the same time they're also ignoring all the
times they go to the bookstore and don't poop, or
they go to pet Co and have to poop. You
(10:28):
don't want to do although you could just poop in
the aisle and blame it on the dog. But still
that's part of the frequency illusion.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, for sure. So I'm curious to hear from people
two types of people, people that have experienced this, whether
in a bookstore or like my situation, like a large
empty room, or bookstore employees who are like, dude, you
don't know that the nightmare that we live.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, I can imagine, you know, Yeah, I hadn't thought
about that. Man's better thought for the bookstore employees.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Huh, wasn't there Seinfeld where George had to go to
the bathroom in a bookstore?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, he found the pastoral scenes very conducive to and
then Elaine cuts him off. He had to buy a
book because he took it in the bathroom.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
There you have it, a book of Impressionist paintings. If
you well, no, this is not a regular stuff you
should know episode. Even though in this episode we found
out the origin of stuff you should know, even I
didn't know the origin story. And since I'm so hyped,
I think that can only mean that short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, I'm welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's
Chuck and Ben's here too, sitting in for Dave.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Ben.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is short stuff, the New Reality.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's right. I'm glad that you found this because I
have experienced this in a slightly different way, and I
never knew that it was a thing, and now I do.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Yeah, I had no idea it was a thing either.
I don't remember where I heard of this. I'm guessing
you me, it just seems like the kind of thing
she would have sent me. But we have to shout
out McGill University, IFL Science and Science Times for helping
round this idea hour this story out. But we're talking
about something called the Marico Aoki phenomenon, which is a
(00:41):
very specific phenomenon. It's where some people go into a
bookstore and are overwhelmed with the urge, sometimes an urgent
urge to poop in that bookstore, not like in the
aisles of the bookstore, but to go to the bathroom
in the bookstore to poop.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, so here's my story. In high school, still one
of my very best friends, Jim, I say, you know, Jim,
Jim and I had an afternoon radio show, which was
over the intercom of the school, and it was basically
instead of the principal reading the daily announcements, we asked
(01:18):
if we could take it over and round it out
with jokes and top ten lists and what have you.
So we had WRHS was our dumb little show.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
So wait, this was officially sanctioned. It wasn't pirate School Radio.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
No, no, no. It was us in the principal's office
like on the microphone every day. I mean that was
looking back, it was the start of stuff you should know,
which is funny. Oh wow, But we did. When we
would meet to write the show. Every day, we would
meet in the empty auditorium where they did school plays,
(01:48):
and every time we were in there, both of us
had to poop and we used to laugh about it
and talk about it. And now that I see sort
of some of the similarities between that empty, quiet auditorium
and a sort of a large, maybe cavernous, quiet bookstore,
I now know this is a thing.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I was not expecting a personal anecdote from you for
this one.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, I mean, this goes back to the eighties, Jim
and I. He'll laugh when I tell him this is
an actual thing.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Well, that's appropriate because the Marico Aoki phenomenon goes back
to the eighties too, all.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Right, Yeah, so we should probably talk about where it
came from, right.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, it came from a Japanese woman named Mariko Aoki.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
That's right. And she sent a letter to a magazine
in what nineteen eighty five and the issue of han
no Zashi? Is that right?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Close enough?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
How would you say it?
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Han no Zashi?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Didn't that what I said?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Okay? And she wrote a letter to the you know,
like a letter to the editor kind of thing, where
she said, I'm not sure why, but since about two
or three years ago, whenever I go to a bookstore,
I'm struck by an urge to move my bowels. They
printed it, just the letter to the editor, and then
got so many responses from people saying me too, that
the next issue had a fourteen page feature article on
(03:07):
the headline was the phenomenon currently shaking the bookstore industry.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, and it became like such a thing that it
took her name, Marico Aoki. Even though there has been
people have turned up mentions of this kind of thing
as far back as the fifties, I could not find
any original source material of that, but I think I'm
willing to take IFL Science on their word if they
(03:33):
were the one where I got it from. But in
Japan it kicked off like a trend, right, So there
were kind of like game show informal studies of what
exactly was going on, and they did turn up some data,
not exactly like you know, peer review shorthy data, but
they found that about ten percent of the respondence in
(03:54):
Japan feel the urge to poop when they go into
the bookstore. So the Marryoki Aoki phenomenon is it covers
about ten percent of the population. I'm squarely in the
ninety percent. You're apparently in the ten percent.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Well, I mean, I haven't tested it with a bookstore,
but there are similarities between. For us, it always felt
like like Jim's theory was that it was a big
being alone in a very big, large, empty quiet.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Space like a colon.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
I guess so, but you know, a bookstore isn't empty,
but it's not like going to a concert. It is
generally pretty quiet, so and there's like some there's a
privacy aspect I think to a bookstore. I mean I'm
thinking larger bookstores, not like you know, the tiny mom
and pops, which I love. So I don't know that
was his theory. Lease, so I guess I'm in that
(04:45):
ten percent. I'll go to a bookstore and I'll let
you know.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
We'll report back for sure. As a matter of fact,
we should live stream on stuff. You should know, like
one of our social it's true.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oh my god, you might He'll be right back. Should
we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll come back
and talk about some of the theories right after this.
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
(05:18):
listen to Chuck selfus.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Chuck, I think I speak on behalf of at least
half of the people listening. Would you and Jim go
poop at the same time, or would you like take turns?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I don't remember that part. I don't even know if
we went and pooped or if it was just like,
oh I got a poop, I see, I see.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Okay, Yeah, so yeah, anyway, we're back.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, we're back. There is no like serious science probably
about this, but there are a lot of pretty interesting theories,
and one of them is something that we've talked about.
In fact, we did a whole show sort of, didn't
we about the gut brain axis we did.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
It's something about like when you approach the front door
of your.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
House, that's the brain bladder connection.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Oh okay, I think this is kind of similar though, right, No, totally.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I think the second theory, the smell of books, which
we'll get to, is more brain bladder connection. But the
gut brain axis would have come up in I guess,
like I can't remember what it was, but we talked
about like a whole episode about how there's neurons in
your gut and like your brain and your gut, your
central nervous system and your enteric nervous system communicate to
one another. And so that's probably the likeliest explanation for
(06:37):
why somebody would feel the urge to poop in a bookstore.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah, there are some other you know. To me, I
think it's all of these things added together. There is
that there is also this sort of connection of like
people like reading on the toilet has long been something
that people do, right. People are on their phones now,
but in the old days, you had that magazine. Rack
still got a magazine right next to my toilet, and
(07:02):
we'll read a good magazine. So that connection. Maybe that
subconscious thing of when you're among those books, your sphincter
just a moocks, just a little bit, maybe.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, for sure. So whatever it was, whatever, if it's
like the smell of books, that's kind of usually put forth.
Whatever it is that you associate with a bookstore, and
then you poop in the bookstore. That's where your gut
brain access would take over and you develop this association.
So when you walk into the bookstore, your brain goes, hey, gut,
(07:34):
we're in a bookstore. You better get busy pooping.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, makes sense. Another one, of course, is a bookstore
oftentimes there's a lot of squatting. Yeah, if you want
to book down on that bottom shelf, or you want
to peruse for a little while on the bottom, you're
going to be squatting down. And humankind didn't evolve to
poop like we poop. Now you're supposed to squat. And
(07:59):
if you've ever in in that dead squat position with
your butt just barely above the ground and all your weight,
like everything lines up in such a way to where
your body goes, oh, it's go.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Time, it's time, yeah, and he goes.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
So you're in there already, it's quiet. You got the
smell of the books you're squatting.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, how could anybody not poop?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
You may have a coffee, that's a big one.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
A lot of people say, yeah, people drink coffee and
bookstores and coffee makes you poop.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah. So I think it's like all this stuff sort
of adds up to, oh my god, I'm in a bookstore.
I've got to go.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
There's another theory that isn't specifically identified as from Japan.
But if it's not from Japan, I will eat my
hat and I don't even have a hat. I'll go
buy a hat to eat it. If this isn't a
Japanese theory, that because life is stressful, when you walk
into a bookstore, a bookstore is very calm, and so
you feel relieved and so you want to leave yourself.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I don't think I've ever seen you wear a hat.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
I've got a like a mud hens hat that man,
my hair has to be pretty messed up for me
to wear it, but that's my hat.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
I don't think i've ever seen you in a hat
in sixteen years.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Well, that's by design.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I've seen you in shorts maybe twice.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
That was by design as well. What do you think.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
You get some nice legs thanks, And then of course
you have to think about or at least consider the
frequency illusion aspect of this. It's a type of confirmation bias,
whereas once you know this is a thing, you start
to just it's in your head all of a sudden,
and you're making that connection where it previously didn't exist,
(09:42):
So you know, you have to kind of consider that
for sure.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah, that's what skeptics say. They say there's no such
thing as the Mark Aoki phenomenon, that actually it's it's
people just have heard of it, and maybe she had
some sort of Pavlovian training where like the smell of the
books made her want to poop, but just talk about it.
It getting published and becoming a thing in Japan, then
traveling around the world, people started saying like, oh, yeah,
(10:06):
I've pooped in bookstores too, So then anytime they poop
in a bookstore from that point on they notice it.
It confirms their theory that they're susceptible to the Ma
Aoki phenomenon, and it just becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy.
But at the same time they're also ignoring all the
times they go to the bookstore and don't poop, or
they go to pet Co and have to poop. You
(10:28):
don't want to do although you could just poop in
the aisle and blame it on the dog. But still
that's part of the frequency illusion.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, for sure. So I'm curious to hear from people
two types of people, people that have experienced this, whether
in a bookstore or like my situation, like a large
empty room, or bookstore employees who are like, dude, you
don't know that the nightmare that we live.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, I can imagine, you know, Yeah, I hadn't thought
about that. Man's better thought for the bookstore employees.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Huh, wasn't there Seinfeld where George had to go to
the bathroom in a bookstore?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, he found the pastoral scenes very conducive to and
then Elaine cuts him off. He had to buy a
book because he took it in the bathroom.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
There you have it, a book of Impressionist paintings. If
you well, no, this is not a regular stuff you
should know episode. Even though in this episode we found
out the origin of stuff you should know, even I
didn't know the origin story. And since I'm so hyped,
I think that can only mean that short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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