Sewage and the Seine: From Mesopotamia messes and the 1858 Great Stink to today's flush toilets and fatbergs

Tiny Matters

The opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics is two short days away. As over 10,000 athletes gather in Paris, France, anticipation builds. But that anticipation is not just for the next 19 days of fierce competition, it’s also for the Seine. The Seine River is set to host events including the 10 kilometer marathon swim and the triathlon, but as the Games approached, much of the testing showed that the Seine was still teeming with dangerous levels of E. coli and other bacteria. And a lot of people are asking, "why is this river so dirty?" In today’s episode, we’re going to get into the interesting history of how people have dealt with sewage, from Mesopotamia times to today, and how the Seine, as well as a river Sam knows well — the Potomac — are trying to clean up their acts. We'll dive into questions like, 'Will it ever be legal to swim in the Potomac?' 'Did Thomas Crapper actually invent the cra... um, toilet?' 'How do you clean up dilapidated old mines that are poisoning a river?' and more.
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1. Sewage and the Seine: From Mesopotamia messes and the 1858 Great Stink to today's flush toilets and fatbergs (00:00:00)

2. Will the Seine be clean enough for Paris 2024? (00:00:01)

3. Why swimming in the Potomac has been banned for over 50 years (00:01:59)

4. The beginnings of how humans dealt with their waste (00:08:55)

5. Ancient Rome's toilets probably were not connected to the sewer (00:11:25)

6. A sewer octopus? (00:12:34)

7. The early flush toilet (enjoyed by Queen Elizabeth I) (00:13:18)

8. Thomas Crapper (yes, we know) (00:14:16)

9. The 1858 Great Stink of London (00:15:46)

10. Fatty McFatberg (00:17:28)

11. A history of Paris's sewers and the Seine (00:19:19)

12. How people are working to clean up the Seine and Potomac (00:21:21)

13. Tiny Show and Tell: An open water swimmer op-ed and publishing bias in research (00:24:53)