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July 17, 2024 15 mins

Sitzpinklers - men who sit down to pee - is a big thing in Germany, and a handful of other places. And if Josh and Chuck have any say it’ll catch on like wildfire around the world. 

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and Ben's here too, sitting in for Jerry,
who usually sits in for day. It's very confusing, so
let's forget the whole thing and get started because this
is short stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hey, happy day after birthday friend.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that, friend. What'd
you do? Oh geez, I can't really get into it here,
but it was a good birthday.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Okay, tell me in private.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
We had a good time. But no, I appreciate you
getting those posts on social media up. That was very
nice of you. It made me feel very loved.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hey, of course people love you, and they said so
in the in the hundreds and thousands.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
I know, it's really nice. Thanks a lot. Yeah, you
text me, You're like, you're getting a lot of love
over on Instagram right now.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well, so I have to get you to open Instagram.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah, I know, it works like a charm.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
It's no good my good deed goes unseen if you
don't watch it.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
So but thank you for that. Of course we'll have
to go back and edit all this out because this
is short stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Uh no, that was only a minute. Ten eleven twelve.
We're doing great, all.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Right, Well, then we have to talk really fast for
the rest of the episode.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, we're talking about something near and dear to my
heart that I've talked about on stage in front of
thousands of people, and that is the fact that I
not always, but I mostly try to sit down when
I go peepy.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
H I do too, I'm a sitzpinkler.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Oh do you just started doing that?

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah? I think I confessed along with you on stage
in Seattle too, if I remember correctly, But yeah, yeah, no,
I totally now I own it. At the time, I
was a little wary. Now I'm like, yeah, I sit
down to pee. It works really well. The only time
I don't is in public because I would rather cut
off the lower half of my body than ever sit

(01:55):
on a public toilet seat.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah. And if I remember correctly, my on stage joke
was that I sit to p but I stand up
when I poop.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
That's right, that was a classic. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
I've been doing that though for I feel like it's
semi knew, like in the past, like six or seven years.
I started seeing down to pe and the first uh,
you know, adult male that I saw doing this was
was my brother in law when your brother in law. Yeah,
my brother in law when I lived with them, my

(02:26):
sister's husband, Carston, who is German.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Oh that makes sense because this is a very German thing.
Like there's even know that I didn't either. I think.
Actually you me found this one because we were talking
about I don't remember what we were talking about. We
looked it up and it turned out that this is
a big thing in Germany and they have a word
for it, sits pinkler. Can you say it was a
German accent? Yeah, Hasselhoff, he does.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Uh No, you said it right, basically since sitzpink.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, yeah, there you go. That's what I was looking for.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
You just got to add a little flare.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
It makes sense too that the Germans would have a
word for it, because the Germans have a word for everything.
But the reason why a little bell went off in
my head when you said your brother in law is
German is because it's a big deal in Germany. As
a matter of fact, there was a yu Goov Pole
of eight Western European countries plus the US, Canada, Mexico,
Australia and Singapore, and the whole point of this pole

(03:28):
was to find out where where men sit down to
pee the most. It was groundbreaking scientific pole.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
And Germany went out. I didn't quite get this because
it says sixty two percent of German Men sit every time.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Nope, a combined sixty two every time or most times.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Oh, okay, every time being for most times. I got you.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So I mean for the that
means that for the most part, by far, most German
Men are you'll find them sitting down when they're peeing
most of the time.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah. And behind them was Sweden at fifty percent, Denmark
forty four, Australia, which kind of surprised me at thirty nine.
I thought they would be pretty low on the list. Yeah,
but the US, Mexico, Britain, and Singapore rounded out between
twenty and twenty four percent.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, which all of that's a little surprising. I thought
Singapore would be up there with you. I thought Australia
would be down there because they're so rough and tumble.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, that's such a sexister misogynistic. I don't know what
it is exactly, but it's just a really kind of
wrong thing to assume, like, oh, yeah, Australians are rough
and tumble, they ride kangaroos around and drink like fifty
five gallon drums of fosters, right and eat it out
back every night. But if so, of course they don't

(04:48):
sit down to peak. And that's kind of like this
idea behind the six pinkler thing, like it's used in Germany,
or it used to be used as an insult. Yeah,
like you're a sixth pinkler, you're kind of you're a feminine,
you're kind of a woos You're just not a manly man.
And somehow, some way, German society said, nine, we're taking

(05:09):
that and we're going to own it, and we're going
to turn it on its head, and we're going to
start a campaign starting around two thousand and four to
basically train German Men to sit down to pee.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, I love it. They even have this, This is incredible,
a device sort of like a what do you call
the things a duvet, A duvet, a bidet, You want
to make.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Those up, Spread a duvet over your toilet and then
just p all of.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Nothing would splash, sort of like a bidet. You know,
some bidets talk to you, I know in Japan and
Germany has kind of gotten on that with their WC
geist or toilet ghost or schbook sp uk, which is
spook which is a person recording a person who has
recorded a message that says things like excuse me, except

(06:00):
in German there's a penalty for peeing while standing in
this house. You better not risk any problems and sit down.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, so if you lift the toilet, it triggers that voice.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
I kind of like that.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, sometimes they'll be recorded in the voice of a
famous German chancellor. Sometimes it's just like a lion's roar.
But I mean, that's how invested in getting men to
sit down to pee they are in Germany, Like they
really take it seriously. And there's another country that takes
it at least as seriously, and that's Japan. Yeah, And
what I found very interesting is that Japan. I said

(06:34):
that Germany like really started this drive to get men
to sit down to pee, to turn men into sit
spinklers in like two thousand and four. The same thing
happened in Japan back in around two thousand. In fact,
there was a survey in nineteen ninety nine only fifteen
percent of Japanese men sat down to pe, but by
twenty twenty it was up to sixty percent. So something

(06:54):
really radical happened here on planet Earth in the early
two thousands that just turned everything on its head, yeah,
or put everything on its bottom, right.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
And I guess we'll come back and talk a little
bit about some of the reasons why that might happened.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Right for this indubitably.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
So one thing I thought was, you know, since it
really increased a lot over the past like twenty years
or so, I thought there may have been something I missed, like,
you know, Captain America sat to pee in a Marvel
movie or something like that, But I couldn't find anything.
I think it's just literally people men realizing that it's

(08:02):
a lot more hygienic to sit down and you risk
a lot less almost down to zero basically if you're
doing it right, that there's going to be pee elsewhere
that's not in the toilet.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah. I think men finally started listening to women when
they're like, this is so gross. Why do you do this?
Get out of the house forever? Yeah, because it is
so there's a I mean, when you sit down to pee,
your chance of getting pee anywhere but in the toilet
is almost zero. You're doing something really wrong if you're
sitting down to pee and pea spraying everywhere. But there

(08:36):
might be a duvet stuffed in the toilet right as
a matter of fact, you might want to check that. God,
but if you stand up to pee, the chances are
essentially one hundred percent that you're going to get pee
splattered somewhere some way. Sometimes this is a terrible thing
to say, but it's true. Some men just miss entirely
and they'll pee like basically behind the toilet. They'll get

(08:58):
it in front of the toilet on the sides. There's
a whole thing that every man listening knows about where
there's a lot of opportunity to get pete outside of
the toilet bowl when you pee standing up.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah, and you know, I was going to say not
to get too gross, but I guess we're kind of
there already. Yeah, you know, people get distracted, especially in
the age. You know, I've seen plenty of grown men
on their smartphone like at a urinal urinals by the way,
or it's a whole different horror show that we want
to even get into, because there's no way that p
isn't going places even if you're properly peeing in a urinal.

(09:33):
But I've seen guys on their phone, like you get
distracted and all of a sudden, like you look down,
you're like, that's not going where I thought it was going. Yeah,
not for thirty seconds, but like you know, all it
takes is as a second of a peepee stream and
you've got a real mess on your hands.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, And I think the thing that really is the
judge of character is whether you correct your course once
you realize if you just keep peeing off to the
side of the urinal, no, you're a bad person.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Well, bring Young University. They study fluid dynamics there in
their physics department, and they actually did studies on urine
back spray when you're standing up. And like I said,
even if you're doing it perfectly right, there's probably going
to be some kind of spray that's going somewhere outside

(10:21):
the toilet, even if it's just on the rim of
the toilet.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yes, yes, because there's a lot of factors contributing to
that that combined to basically say you peace standing up
piece going somewhere outside of the toilet. One is that
when the urine stream exits the penis towards the toilet powl.
There's a whole period where it's not it's just flying

(10:44):
through the air. Yeah, And for about the first six
inches after exits said penis, it's held together in a stream.
Everything's going really well. And then after about six inches
past the exit, it enters what's called the plateau Rayleigh
in stability. It's a fluid dynamic phenomenon where a stream

(11:05):
of fluid eventually breaks up as gravity starts to pull
it apart, and it breaks up into droplets, and each
one of those droplets can hit that toilet bowl and
spray everywhere.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, you nailed it. Porcelain is also a problem because
if you have a porcelain toilet, which you know chances
are you probably do, porcelain is hydrophilic, which means it
really loves fluid, so it loves to splait it all
over itself. Basically, it's a very splatty surface that you're
peeing on. To be honest, I might be on something

(11:38):
with the duvet thing.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, I think you find. One of the other things
that people who are like, yes, be a sitzpinkler are
all about is emptying the bladder. It's a big deal
to empty your bladder. It's not just for the forty
plus crowd, even though it really is. But you really
want to make sure you get all the p out
of your bladder whenever you peet.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Reason why everyone, though, does anyone key to eighty percent
and be like that feels good enough?

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Well, no, there's just off you can you can run
into situations where you're like, you can't like all you get.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Out, yeah, or you're interrupted Yeah okay.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Right, but I mean even if you're not like that
could be all that Like you can't get one hundred
percent out. So sometimes when you're like.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
No, that's I get you.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
I think it has to do with prostate. But so
people like sit down to pee. But this is a
very fraught debate because medical researchers tend to say if
you're a man standing up to p or sitting down
to pe, depending on your condition, depending on how healthy
you are and how healthy your prostate is, it's not
going to make any difference whatsoever. One way might help

(12:47):
one guy, the other way might help another guy. So
that's really not a very good argument for getting people
to sit down to pee.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, So I get all that now because I, in
fact myself since we're being honest, since this is just
you and me talking to no one else's listening. Sure
have have reached that age where there's like some prostate
things where peeing, you know, all of a sudden, you
wake up one day in your fifties and you go
to p and you're like, huh, nothing's happening, right, So
it's just going leg. Yeah, So you call your doctor

(13:16):
and they're like, oh, well, that's just what happens. You
start to have some like little prostate issues and nothing
like super serious usually but no.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
But that's such a double edged sword. Like on the
one hand, you're like, oh, I'm so relieved this is
in a terrible medical condition. On the other hand, what
they're saying is like, get used to it, buddy, Yeah,
this is just what your body's doing from now on.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, exactly. Women, on the other hand, it's a different story.
They don't have the bladder, you know, when you stand
up to pee, which you know, supposedly I don't think
supposedly standing up to pe does help a man empty
their bladder more fully, but the prostate is supporting us,
is supporting that bladder. Women don't have the prostate. So

(13:58):
if a woman is forced a piece on the side
of the road behind the concert venue, at the campground,
in the shower. They're all manner of reasons why a
woman may have to go peepee standing up. They don't
have that prostate supporting them, so it's much more difficult
for them to empty their full contents.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah. Yeah. The thing is is so if they sit
down to pee, they're much more prone to empty their bladder.
Ipso facto, everybody should sit down to pee. The problem
is when you again, when you get into public and
you hover above the toilet seat to pee, that actually
has a similar problem as when you're standing up to pee.

(14:41):
But really, if that's your choice, I feel like in
that situation, just go with the not getting one hundred
percent of your pee out right then.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah, And the one last thing I want to say
is I get that a lot of men probably don't
sit down to pea still, the statistics tell me that
at least, but in the middle of the night, if
you have to get up and go, I just think
it's the craziest thing I've ever heard of to try
and stand there and still try and stay asleep and

(15:08):
pee in that toilet. That's how that was The gateway
for me was in the middle of the night because
it just makes sense.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Well, I remember the first time that happened to me.
I accidentally fell onto the toilet while I was peeing
into a sitting position, and I was like, oh, this
is much nicer.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Well, Chuck says he loves it. I want to end
on a high note that means everybody a short Stuff
is out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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