Short Stuff: Sitzpinklers Unite

Well, Bowen, the Olympics are underway. It's useless to talk about it as a thing. that's happening in the future, when it's happening in the present. And what's happening now is our podcast, Two Guys, Five Rings, is a phenomenon. Two Guys, Five Rings, Matt Bowen and the Olympics.

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 Dave. It's very confusing, so let's forget the whole thing and get started, because this is short stuff.

Hey, happy day after birthday, friend.

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.

Okay. Tell me in private.

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.

Hey, of course. People love you, and they said so in the hundreds and thousands.

I know. It was really nice. Thanks a lot. Yeah, you texted me. You're like, you're getting a lot of love over on Instagram right now.

Well, I have to get you to open Instagram.

Yeah, I know. It works like a charm.

It's no good. My good deed goes unseen if you don't watch it.

But thank you for that. Of course. We'll have to go back and edit all this out, because this is short stuff.

No, that was only a minute, 10, 11, 12.

All right. Well, then, we have to talk really fast for the rest of the episode.

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, peepee.

I do, too. I'm a sitzpinkler.

Oh, you started doing that?

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.

Yeah. And if I remember correctly, my onstage joke was that I sit to pee, but I stand up when I poop.

That's right. That was a classic.

Yeah, I've been doing that, though, for I feel like it's semi new, in the past six or seven years, I started sitting down to pee. And the first adult male that I saw doing this was my brother-in-law.

Oh, OK. Oh, your brother-in-law.

Yeah, my brother-in-law, when I live with my sister's husband, Karsten, who is German.

Oh, that makes sense, because this is a very German thing. I didn't know that. I didn't either. I think. actually Yumi found this one because we were talking about...

Yeah, Hasselhoff.

I wonder if he does.

No, you said it right, basically. Sitzpinkler.

Yeah, there you go. That's what I was looking for.

You just got to add a little flair.

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 YouGov poll of eight Western European countries, plus the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Singapore. And the whole point of this poll was to find out where men sit down to pee the most. It was a groundbreaking scientific poll.

And Germany won out. I didn't quite get this, because it says 62% of German men sit every time.

No, a combined 62% sit every time or most times.

Oh, okay. Every time being 40%, 22%, most times. I got you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that means that for the most part, by far, most German men, you'll find them sitting down when they're peeing most of the time.

Yeah. And behind them was Sweden, at 50%, Denmark, 44%. Australia, which kind of surprised me, at 39%. I thought they would be pretty low on the list. Yeah.

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.

Yeah, you don't sit to pee.

That's such a sexist or 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 55-gallon drums of foster and eat it out back every night.

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 know, you just spread a duvet over your toilet and then just pee all over it.

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 spook, S-P-U-K, which is spook. Which is a person recording, a person who has recorded a message that says things like, excuse me, except in German, there's a penalty for peeing while standing in this house.

Yeah, so if you lift the toilet, it triggers that voice.

I kind of like that.

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 I guess we'll come back and talk a little bit about some of the reasons why that might happen right after this.

Indubitably.

Whoa, yeah.

Well, Bowen, the Olympics are underway. It's useless to talk about it as a thing. that's happening in the future, when it's happening in the present. It's happening now. And what's happening now is our podcast, Two Guys, Five Rings is a phenomenon.

I'm rooting for the girls and the boys and everybody under the sand river.

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So, one thing I thought was, you know, since it really increased a lot over the past, like, 20 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 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.

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.

bowl when you pee standing up. Yeah, and I was going to say not to get too gross, but I guess we're kind of there already. People get distracted, especially in the age. I've seen plenty of grown men on their smartphone at a urinal. Urinals, by the way, is a whole different horror show that we wouldn't even get into, because there's no way that pee isn't going places, even if you're properly peeing in a urinal.

the judge of character is whether you correct your course once you realize it. If you just keep peeing off to the side of the urinal, you're a bad, bad person.

Well, Brigham 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 the toilet, even if it's just on the rim of the.

toilet. Yes, yes, because there's a lot of factors contributing to that, that combine to basically say, you pee standing up, pee's going somewhere outside of the toilet. One is that when the urine stream exits the penis toward the toilet bowl, there's a whole period where it's just flying through the air. And for about the first six inches after it exits said penis, it's held together in a stream. Everything's going really well.

Yeah, you nailed it. Porcelain is also a problem, because if you have a porcelain toilet, which, chances are, you probably do, porcelain is hydrophilic, which means it really loves fluid. So it loves to splat it all over itself, basically. It's a very splatty surface that you're peeing on. To be honest, I might be on something with the duvet thing.

Yeah, I think you might. 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 40 plus crowd, even though it really is, but you really want to make sure you get all the pee out of your bladder whenever you pee. Doesn't everyone, though?

Does anyone pee to 80% and be like, that feels good enough? And cuts it off?

You can run into situations where you can't. It's just all you get out.

Yeah, or you're interrupted. Yeah, okay.

Right. But I mean, even if you're not, that could be all that... You can't get 100% out. sometimes when you've... No, I get you.

people to sit down to pee. 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 and no one else is listening, have reached that age where there's some prostate things, where, peeing, all of a sudden, you wake up one day in your 50s and you go to pee and you're like, huh, nothing's happening. Right. It's just going down my leg.

like super serious usually. But no, but that's such a double edged sword. Like. on the one hand, you're like, oh, I'm so relieved, this isn't a terrible medical condition. On the other hand, what they're saying is like, get used to it, buddy, because this is just what your body's.

doing from now on. 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.

they're much more prone to empty their bladder. Ipso facto, everybody should sit down and 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. But really, if that's choice, I feel like in that situation, just go with the not getting 100 percent of your pee.

out right, then. Yeah. And the one last thing I want to say is I get that a lot of men probably don't sit down to pee still. The statistics tell me that at least. But in the middle of the night, if you have to get up and go potty, I just think it's the craziest thing I've ever heard of.

first time it happened to me. I accidentally fell onto the toilet while I was peeing into a sitting position. I was like, oh, this is much nicer. I love it. Well, Chuck says he loves it.

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