You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Hello and welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Adam Bristol. Indre is off this week.

This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it matters.

I'm willing to bet that most of you, like me, don't give a lot of thought to your toilets, unless something goes wrong.

But if you think about it, efficient sanitation systems at scale have been instrumental in improving human health and developing working and growing communities around the world. As we confront an

uncertain future in the face of global warming, we'll certainly need to innovate and adopt

new sanitation technologies to prevent widespread water scarcity. To explore these issues, I spoke with

Jay Baguan from the Water Research Commission in Pretoria, South Africa.

Jay has decades of experience working on sustainable water systems, so he understands the benefit and limitations of our current infrastructure.

Jay has also been involved in developing novel, low flush toilets, developing strategies to treat

human waste at the source, and in designing more circular systems that have been deployed

in pilot areas in Asia and South Africa.

Jay, welcome to inquiring minds.

It's a pleasure to be here, Adam.

Thank you for the privilege.

So let's start first with a little of your background.

How I first came to you was some of the work you've been doing on low flush toilets,

which I want to speak about in just a few minutes.

But let's take a step back for a minute.

Could you help me understand

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