Trouser Barks

To be perfectly honest, I've long thought about doing a WWRD about flatulence but have shied away from it for some time because, let's admit it, talking about passing gas is a bit sophomoric.

I can only draw stick figures

Rob Sachs, NPR

I even intentionally avoided the subject a few weeks back on a WWRD podcast about witnessing something gross (i.e. you catch someone picking their nose in the car next to you). But then a couple of people who had heard the podcast asked why I hadn't talked about the elephant in the room: bad gas. It occurred to me that if anything qualifies as a trying dilemma it's probably flatulence. So I looked into the subject a little more and I found out that the average person breaks wind 14 times a day. That's a lot of noxious fumes.

So my latest podcast deals with this very delicate dilemma. I found a really great article published in Salon a while back where they interviewed a world-renowned gastroenterologist. I could have found someone like that to talk to, but I wanted to go a different route. Then I stumbled upon this invention -- the Gas-B-Gon filtration seat cushion. It sounded perfect! So I called up the co-founder Sharron Huza and we had a very illuminating conversation. Topics we covered ranged from prevention, to suppression, to elimination of odor detection. In the podcast, I discuss my findings with NPR's man of science David Kestenbaum.

Have a listen and let me know what you think about it. Of course, if you have a better idea of how to handle flatulence, let's hear it.

3:00 PM ET | 08-25-2008 | permalink

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