The Windbreaker: Why Farts Make the World Go Round
LULU MILLER: 3, 2, 1. Imagine.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: You are a part of the air.
LULU: You're weightless. Invisible.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Ephemeral.
LULU: Floating alone through space when suddenly you're sucked up, squeezed into a dark tunnel with …
JUAN: … millions of bacteria.
LULU: Intense pressure surrounds you
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: It builds up, and it builds up. There's a huge force that propels you out.
LULU: You have become...
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: A fart.
LULU: No. No. Ana, Alan—did you prepare this episode? We are not doing a toot episode.
ANA GONZÁLEZ: Lulu, you went out on maternity leave.
ALAN GOFFINSKI: You left us in charge!
ANA: You said, “Go follow your heart.”
LULU: And following your heart actually led you to toots?
ANA: Uh-huh.
ALAN: Yeah!
LULU: Wait, but why? They’re, like, gross and impolite to talk about and think about.
[fart sound]
LULU: Ew! My point exactly! Like Toots are—they smell so bad and who wants to, like, spend time in a toot cloud? Like I don’t …
ANA: You can’t even say “fart.” You have to say, “toot.”
LULU: I don't like the word. “Toot” is our preferred family word.
[orchestral fart sound]
LULU: Is that—are you playing an actual toot on the air? I can’t—I WON’T. This is inappropriate subject matter for our podcast!
ANA: Okay, so your objection is that farts are inappropriate, impolite, unsophisticated?
LULU: Precisely.
ALAN: Well, we traveled to arguably the most sophisticated place.
LULU: Where’s that?
ALAN: A concert hall for an orchestra—fancy black-and-white suits, shining instruments, and guess what we found?
LULU: What?
ALAN: Farts.
ANA: Resounding through the air.
[orchestral fart sounds]
LULU: Wait, what—what am I listening to? Did you—did you put little microphones behind all the musicians’ bum-bums?
ANA: No, we went to Rhode Island to visit the Brown University Orchestra—over 100 classical student musicians.
LULU: No!
ANA: And we asked them to imitate flatulence on their instruments.
LULU: No you did not!
ANA: We did.
LULU: Wait—like, the whole orchestra assembled and you show up with your microphones? Like, “Can you please play some toots?”
ANA: Oh yeah. Listen to this.
[oboe fart sound]
LULU: What instrument’s that?
ANA: The oboe. These are the trombones.
[trombone fart sound]
LULU: Ha! Nice brassy toot.
ALAN: The french horn I remember being really good.
[French horn fart sound]
LULU: Wait, this is amazing. So you’re just going through all the sections? Did you get any strings?
ANA: We got some violins.
[violin fart sound]
LULU: Ah!
ALAN: Shockingly farty.
LULU: Any percussion? Any drums?
ALAN: Yes.
[timpani fart sound]
ALAN: The big, bad timpani!
LULU: I cannot believe you got classically trained musicians to debase themselves like this by making toot noises.
ANA: Well, it’s not just us. So, in 1791, composer Joseph Franz Haydn wrote a fart joke smack in the middle of his 93rd Symphony.
LULU: What?
ANA: And the orchestra was kind enough to perform it for us.
[Haydn Symphony No. 93]
LULU: Ooh, they're good!
[bassoon fart sound]
LULU: Ha! What instrument was that?
ANA: The bassoon.
LULU: Wow.
ANA: The director of the orchestra, Eric Nathan, says that a lot of instruments are just naturally good at fart jokes.
ERIC NATHAN: So how a brass player makes the sound is that they actually vibrate their lips, kind of as if you were trying to make a fart sound. And they can do different pitches. Trumpets are much higher. I'm a trumpet player. So …
LULU: Wait, so they’re doing that as they play, as they put that little brass mouth piece—so every horn basically?
ANA: They are making a fart sound with their lips.
LULU: So behind, like, the smoothest jazz …
ANA: Farts.
LULU: Like, the funkiest funk?
ANA: Farts!
LULU: And, like, behind that trumpety fanfare that introduces kings and the pope?
ANA: Faaaaarts!
ALAN: Faaaaarts!
ANA: So, crossing off your argument that farts are not polite, they’re basically art! The clarion call of the trumpet of an orchestra, in churches, in jazz bands, big bands, dance halls, waking up soldiers all over the world. There are farts.
LULU: Okay, okay, alright!
ALAN: Plus, when you look at how real farts work in the animal world, you will see that farts—well, they make the world go round
LULU: What do you mean?
ALAN: From underwater navigation, to interspecies communication, to explosion deactivation …
LULU: What?!!
ALAN: … without farts, life as we know it would go kaput!
ANA: Plus, they funny. And what is more beautiful than the sound of laughter??
ALAN: Exactly.
LULU: All right, you loons. I am sold. I am reluctantly sold. But I’m going to hand over the mic, and we’ll see, I guess—first time ever on Terrestrials, let’s welcome toots into the room.
ALAN: All right, here we go! Hold onto your butts.
ANA: Now is the time where we get you to sing the theme song with us.
LULU: [singing] Terrestrials, Terrestrials, we are not the worst, we are the …
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: I’m at a loss. I don’t know what word …
ANA: What's the opposite of worst?
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Best!
LULU: [singing] … bestrials.
ANA: Dr. Juan, you got it!
ANA: Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness right here on earth, I am producer-bud Ana, and I’m here with song bud …
ALAN: Yoohoo!
ANA: … Alan.
ALAN: [singing] Gas in the wind! All we are is gas in the wind.
ANA: And we're here to tell a story that Lulu does not want us to tell. The life-saving, tummy-rumbling, heroic story of farts.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Correct.
ALAN: And here to blow some wind into the sails of this tale is someone who has seen where farts live up close and personal.
ANA: Have you ever operated on intestines?
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Yes. Over fifty.
ANA: This is my friend, Dr. Juan Pablo Zhenlio, who is a surgeon. Meaning he spends his days cutting into human bodies to make them healthier.
ANA: Have you ever seen a fart inside of somebody's body when you’re performing surgery?
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: I’ve seen a fart bubble move through the body.
ANA: And growing up, he thought about farts the way many of us do…
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: I certainly grew up in a household where it wasn't frowned upon to fart. But we also were taught that this was something that you shouldn't do around strangers.You had to have politeness.
ANA: But Juan would fart a lot. Like, an average person farts around 15 to 20 times a day.
ALAN: Okay …
ANA: But Juan was farting, like, 20 times an hour …
ALAN: Whoah, Dr. Juan.
ANA: … because Juan is lactose intolerant. Meaning eating cheese or ice cream was hard for him to digest.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: I would expect a lot of farting afterwards.
ANA: So Juan got really good at holding in his farts.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: I’ve got a sphincter of steel. And it might be one of my strongest muscles in my body.
ANA: Now the sphincter is one of the muscles that controls when we poop and when we fart. And to Juan, it’s one of the most sophisticated parts of the human body, a true feat of anatomical engineering, because …
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Imagine you're holding a bunch of marbles.
ANA: This little group of muscles can kind of direct traffic, if you will, so that …
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: None of the marbles comes out, but only gas and air.
ANA: That’s kind of amazing!
ALAN: And our body's ability to expel air in this way is actually saving our lives every single day.
ANA: Because, when you eat a slice of pizza …
ALAN: Yum.
ANA: … it gets swallowed down to your stomach, where you start to digest it, turning the fats and proteins and sugars you ate into things that your body needs.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: To build cells, to repair things.
ANA: And you're not doing this alone. You have a whole TEAM!!
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Millions of bacteria.
ANA: Trillions, even. A whole ecosystem of microscopic organisms that live in your stomach and intestines and help you digest and absorb nutrients. And this work that they do is called fermentation and that process creates a little bit of gas. And your body needs to get rid of all that gas, so it sends these gasses down through your intestinal tubes and they come out as farts. And if ever we couldn’t fart, we could die.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Pressure can build up.
ANA: Juan has to help people sometimes who have obstructions or blockages in their digestive systems.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Parts of your intestine can get really inflated and blown up like a balloon and sometimes it can burst and pop.
ALAN: Wait, wait, wait. So without farts, we could literally blow up like a balloon and pop??
ANA: Certain organs could! And allow me to introduce you to a shiny little fish called the Bolson pupfish.
ALAN: Never heard of it.
ANA: So the Bolson pupfish eats algae and in hot summer weather the algae starts releasing these gas bubbles. And when the fish eats these bubbles they get really, really bloated. And it's actually been recorded that if they can't fart it out in time, they explode.
ALAN: Oh, poor buddy.
ANA: This is a PSA from Terrestrials: [singing] fart when you have to.
ALAN and ANA: [singing] The more you fart …
LULU: But this is PSA interruption from Lulu. [singing] Please don't do it in elevators or other enclosed spaces where it could be disrespectful for others.
ALAN: Fair. Wow, so if farts are so great for us, why do they smell so gross?
ANA: Well, because the stinkiest farts contain a tiny bit of a little chemical called sulfur. It’s one of the gases the bacteria make when they digest our food. And our noses have gotten really, really good at detecting sulfur because it’s often in things that are bad for us, like rotten food, or poisonous vapours that we shouldn’t breathe in. So even the tiny amount of sulfur in some farts makes our brains think we’re in danger.
ALAN: Right, when in reality, farts are not dangerous for us to smell.
ANA: Right, the only health reason to not get too close to a toot is that unFARTunately some do have some do have a little bit of poop particles released with them …
ALAN: Ew.
ANA: … which can contain harmful bacteria.
ALAN: Ew.
ANA: In any case, the way a fart smells is different for each person, because your signature flatulent scent comes from the interaction between what you eat every day and the specific bacteria that live in your gut. The result is a planet with billions of different farts. Much like snowflakes, no two are alike.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Everyone's fart is a unique fingerprint.
ANA: Ha!
ANA: And as for Juan's unique farts, well these days there are less of them because he discovered the wonder of LACTAID® pills, which let him digest the lactose in dairy instead of having to expel it as a blizzard of gas.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Oh yeah.
ALAN: [singing] Dr. Juan farts normally now.
ALAN: When we come back we are headed straight into the cloud of animal farts to discover the secrets they contain, that scientists are only starting to decode.
NICK CARUSO: It was almost like that information was just, like, bottled up and needed to be released in some sort of expulsion.
ANA: Find out the fan-gas-tic way other creatures fart, and what would happen if farting just disappeared. After the break.
ALAN: Giddy up fartner.
ANA: Terrestrials is back. And before the break we were talking about how farts are made in the human body. But what about the farts in nonhuman bodies? The ones flying in the sky, slithering on the ground, hanging from trees?
ALAN: I’m glad you asked, Ana. Because I’ve invited two flatologists.
ANA: Is that really what they’re called?
ALAN: Yeah! from the Latin word flatus, meaning the blowing of air—WHOOOOOSH. And these very serious flatologists have agreed to come help us learn about the sounds and smells of the animal world.
DANI RABAIOTTI: My name's Dani Rabaiotti.
NICK CARUSO: My name is Nick Caruso.
ALAN: Nick and Danny co-wrote a book called
DANI RABAIOTTI: Does it Fart? The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence.
ANA: Ha!
ALAN: And to further convince our listeners that farts are nothing to be ashamed of but are actually superpowers in the animal kingdom, I have invited Nick and Danny to co-host a game I call—WHEEL OF FARTUNE!
ANA: Wait, what?
ALAN: That’s right Ana, step right up to spin the Wheel of Fartune to see how animal toots make the world go round. Ready to play?
ANA: Let’s do this!
ALAN: All right. Spin that wheel!
[spinning game show wheel]
ALAN: Ooh, snakes!!! How do snakes fart?
ANA: Don’t they swallow their food, like, whole? I bet that makes them gassy.
NICK CARUSO: Oh yeah. Reptiles have a cloaca.
ALAN: An opening that’s a two-for-one! Meaning both poo and pee come out of it.
NICK CARUSO: Which comes from the Latin word for sewer.
ALAN: And certain snakes...
DANI RABAIOTTI: If they feel threatened by a predator, they will do this thing called cloacal popping, which is essentially farting.
ALAN: And this is what it sounds like.
[cloacal popping sound]
ALAN: They are actually inhaling air directly into their cloaca butts and then expelling it back out as loud pops to deter predators.
[cloacal popping sound]
DANI RABAIOTTI: Just a little bit of a wriggle and a fart.
ANA: Whoah. So snake farts are, like, a secret weapon that shoos away hungry beasts?
NICK CARUSO: Yes!
ANA: Talk about a battle of the butts!
ALAN: All right, spin the wheel again!
[spinning wheel]
ALAN: Ooh, a manatee.
ANA: Alan, I’d like to buy a vowel. I mean a bowel. A bowel fact.
ALAN: Well You know how being full of air makes things float?
ANA: Yeah! Like an inflatable raft?
ALAN: Well, manatees have a special muscle that compresses the air in their digestive tract into a special storage compartment that keeps them floating around in the water better. And then when it's time to dive down for some food, they can actually release their stored pocket of gas on demand …
ANA: Really?
ALAN: … using their toots to navigate up and down like a submarine!
ANA: Holy smokes! Like their own built in motorboat booty?
NICK CARUSO: They've actually found some in aquariums where the manatee was constipated. And it just kind of floats with its tail sticking up and its head down, because it's got all the stored gas in its rear end and it can't bring that below the surface of the water.
ANA: Wait, whoah. So it can't dive down without being able to fart?
ALAN: Yeah, it's like their gas pedal is broken
ANA: Guess they need bubbles to get out of their troubles!
ALAN: Give that wheel another spin!
[wheel spinning]
ALAN: Whoah! Cows! Mooooo!
ANA: Wait, I thought cow farts were bad for the planet. Aren't they, like, causing climate change?!?
DANI RABAIOTTI: Everyone always says, “Oh cows, you know, their farts, they're heating up the planet.” But really it's actually the burps. It—most of it comes out the front end. It's the burps that are producing the methane, it's not, it's not the farts, uh, so...
ANA: Cows’ butts are getting a bad rap.
DANI RABAIOTTI: It's their mouths you've got to look out for.
ANA: Huh. Who knew?
ALAN: NOW spin that wheel!
[wheel spinning]
[chimpanzee sounds]
ANA: Ooh, chimpanzees! What good FARTUNE are they bringing to the land?
DANI RABAIOTTI: We’ve had some chimp researchers say that sometimes if they can't find the chimps in the forest they'll listen for the sound of them farting and then they'll find them by that sound.
NICK CARUSO: If the troop is large, it can just be just a lot of farts, unashamed, just letting loose in the jungle.
ANA: Ha! So we got Batman with the bat signal, and chimpanzees have butt signals?
ALAN: They sure do! All right, time again to spin that wheel.
[wheel spinning]
ANA: Birds—ooh. I’ve never heard a bird fart.
NICK CARUSO: They could if they wanted to.
ANA: What do you mean they could if they wanted to?
DANI RABAIOTTI: There's nothing anatomically that should really prevent them from farting, but just everyone we spoke to, like even people that spent all their time with birds, was like, “Yeah I've never, never heard it.” Never—never seen it, never seen any evidence of a bird farting. Except for people that own parrots, but then it—it’s because they're just mimicking all the people farting with their mouths.
ALAN: Polly want a PHHHHFFFFFT!
ALAN: Okay. It’s time for one final spin! This one is for all the marbles.
ANA: Alright, here goes nothing!
[wheel spinning]
ANA: Sloths. I bet they fart a lot, but it's like really slow like pffffffffft.
DANI RABAIOTTI: Sloths—they only actually poo every three weeks.
ANA: Oooh buddy.
DANI RABAIOTTI: And sloths don't fart, because if they get gas trapped in their intestines, because their digestive systems, like, take so long, they will get really sick.
ANA: But then what do they do with all the gas that gets produced in their bodies during digestion?
DANI RABAIOTTI: They reabsorb it into their bloodstream from their digestive system and then they breathe it out.
ANA: Ewww, stinky sloth breath!
ALAN: Well that about concludes the game show.
ANA: Did I win??
ALAN: Nope! Our grand prize winner is—SLOTHS!
ANA: Yay!!!
ALAN: Tell them what they’ve won, Ana.
ANA: A whole can of beans! Take it easy with those magical fruits, buddies.
ALAN: And Nick and Dani thank you for playing WHEEL OF FART-CHUNE!!
NICK CARUSO: Of course.
DANI RABAIOTTI: No worries.
ANA: Now, with all this functional farting in the world, it really makes you think: What would happen if we did what Lulu wanted us to do and stopped farting? No more passing gas. No more tooting from our booties.
ALAN: Manatees wood balloon out of the waters, cows would burp us into oblivion, pupfish would explode. And the ecosystems around us would collapse.
ANA: And people? What would happen to us and our world that we've built?
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: The world would stop if people just couldn't control their bowels.
ALAN: We'd have to make a toilet in every room.
ANA: Or why even have indoor plumbing at all? We would just live out in open fields like cows and horses, pooping whenever we had to.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: We would not have been able to develop agriculture, develop industry.
ALAN: And beyond that our entire idea of art and literature would crumble before our eyes. Because authors and composers, playwrights and poets have made references to flatulence since the Dawn of time.
ANA: For example, in 1,001 Nights, which is a collection of stories from the ancient Arab world, a character flees his homeland out of embarrassment after farting at his own wedding.
ALAN: The Italian poet, Dante, wrote of a demon who farted like a trombone or a trumpet.
ANA: Both Shakespeare and Mark Twain wrote FARTASTIC literary moments. And the singer Madonna even performed a poem about farts.
ALAN: And don’t forget the fart jokes that classical composers like Haydn wrote into their symphonies!
[bassoon fart]
ALAN: Maybe Haydn wrote that fart joke because when we all experience an unexpected moment together, an unexpected fart bassooning in the silence, it's funny!
ERIC NATHAN: It's a sound that I think there's a commonality that everybody has experienced embarrassment about. But it's also something that we can kind of share in that embarrassment. And so our lives have humor in them.
ALAN: So farts build community! There! I said it!
ANA: Amen, bro. Farting is this experience that’s universal on the planet.
ALAN: Well, except for maybe sloths.
ANA: Right. Except for sloths, most creatures on this planet fart in some way. And human beings, they love to laugh at it. And that brings us all together.
ALAN: Yeah, it makes us more connected to our farting animal relatives.
LULU: Okay, that is shockingly sweet.
ANA: Lulu! you're back.
LULU: I am. I’ve been listening, and I cannot believe I’m going to say this, but you have convinced me, for a brief moment, to appreciate toots.
ANA: Enough to call them farts?
LULU: Absolutely not.
ALAN: What about bottom burps?
LULU: No.
ANA: A booty belch?
LULU: No.
ALAN: Or a trouser trumpet?
LULU: Ew.
ANA: What about a mattress mumbler?
LULU: I hate that one.
ALAN: An air biscuit?
LULU: No.
ANA: Insane in the methane?
LULU: Maybe.
ALAN: A sulfur squeak?
LULU: Ew.
ANA: Fecal fumes?
LULU: No way. Absolutely not.
ALAN: Great brown cloud?
LULU: No.
ANA: Out-of-tune bassoon?
ALAN: Putt-putt?
ANA: Quacker?
ALAN: Raspberry?
LULU: Guys, I’m fading you down.
ALAN: Steamer.
ANA: Stinker.
LULU: I’m resuming, I’m coming back to the controls and I am turning you down—turning your microphones down. Ahhh, much better. Thank you Ana and Alan for that musical journey! And that is it. There is nothing else cool about to happen. What’s that?
BADGER: Excuse me, I have a question.
BADGER: Me too.
BADGER: Me three.
BADGER: Me four.
LULU: The badgers. Listeners, with badgering questions, for the expert.
LULU: Are you ready?
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Yeah!
SEQUOIA: Hi, my name is Sequoia. I’m 12 years old and my question is, what’s the difference between burping and farting?
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Burps usually are coming from the very beginning part of your intestine vs gas that comes from the end part of your digestive tract that we call a fart. But that’s why they smell different too. Burps because the food is less digested will smell more like what you just ate.
LULU: Yuck.
JJ: Hi my name is JJ, and I’m six years old. And why do farts happen during your sleep?
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Farts happen twenty-four hours, seven days a week. And when you're sleeping you have less conscious control of your muscles to hold in the fart.
LULU: So that sphincter of steel doesn't work as well when catching some zzzzs.
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Unless you're me and you’ve had a lot of reps in.
LULU: Strength training comes in all forms.
STEPHEN: Hi, I’m Stephen, and I’m 42 years old. When my stomach grumbles, is that farts?
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: When your stomach grumbles that is gas and fluid and basically everything that you’ve eaten being churned up and digested and passing through your intestine. And so yes, there could be farts moving through.
LISTENER: Did dinosaurs fart?
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Isn't that what led to them all dying out? Someone had a really big fart?
LULU: That my friends is what we call sarcasm. The dinosaurs were way more likely killed by a giant asteroid—POOF! And as to whether they tooted, Juan says …
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: Probably.
LULU: Huh.
LISTENER: What do you call farts in your house?
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: We just stick with “farts.” A lot of my patients are Asian American. In Cantonese, farts is “pei.”
ANA: In my house my dad would say, “Tirarse un pe’o.”
LULU: Oh really, Ana?
ANA: Uh-huh. Si. Which is very similar to “pei.”
JUAN PABLO ZHENLIO: It’s a universal language.
LULU: Well, gracias, Juan, gracias Ana, thank you Alan. I think that’s going to do it. That’s all the toot knowledge I can take for one day. Tell us what you call toots in your family. You write us an email at …
ALAN: [singing] t-e-r-r-e-s-t …
ANA: [singing] … r-i-a-l-s …
ALAN: [singing] … (at) wnyc …
ALAN and ANA: [singing] … (dot) org.
LULU: Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller, with WNYC Studios. This episode was reported and produced by the dynamic duo: Ana Gonzales and Alan Goffinski. Our executive producer is Sarah Sanbach. Our team includes Ana, Alan, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Tanya Chawla, Sarah Sandbach, Joe Plourde, and me. Fact-checking by Natalie “Tootleton”. Just kidding, Natalie Middleton. These toot puns are contagious. Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Kalliopeia Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation. Thank you!
Special thanks to Dr. Juan Pablo Zhenlio, Nick Caruso, and Dani Rabaiotti. Their book, again, is called Does It Fart: The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence. And thank you, for listening! If you do like our strange little show about the earth and the creatures and gasses on it with the occasional singing and bad puns, please rate and review us and share with your friends! It really does make a huge difference.
Also, you want support the show, send a few bucks our way and get some fun gifts as a thank you, have your grownup head over to terrestrialspodcast.org/join. And finally, if you want to see pictures and videos and music videos and all kinds of stuff from the episodes and season, follow us on instagram and tiktok @terrestrialspodcast.
Okay, that’ll do it for today. See you in a couple of spins of this dirty old planet of ours, on an episode in which I promise there will be no toots. Fresh air ahead. Bye!