Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and

Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book,

all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. There are only three guarantees in life, death, taxes, and farting.

Okay, so that's not the original quote, but maybe it should be.

Farting is a universal experience after all.

No matter how strong-willed or tight-cheeked we may be,

everyone eventually faces the embarrassment of passing

wind at an inopportune moment.

And then there's the discomfort of resisting the urge to fart, not to mention the unpleasantness

of being subjected to someone else's.

When you stop to consider all of the problems created by humanity's flatulence, it's almost

staggering, and it makes you think, someone should do something about this.

That was the argument made in an essay written to the Royal Academy of Brussels in 1781.

The author was an American amateur scientist and part-time inventor.

While living abroad, he had become frustrated with the state of European academia,

which he saw as overly concerned with impractical ideas and pretentious thought experiments.

He thought that their time would be better spent focused on discoveries that could actually

benefit humanity, like conducting research into the causes of flatulence. He wasn't sure exactly where such research would lead but he reasoned that there was obvious benefits to understanding such a widespread issue and by applying the scientific method, he hoped that millions of lives could be made

more comfortable, pleasant, and significantly less stinky.

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