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14 Fart Facts for my Flatulent Friends

2015-01-09 · list · Hank · 3:58 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature (also: History & curiosities) · mode: Curiosity & trivia · tags: self correction

Hank presents fourteen facts about farts, from the ancient word 'fart' and the chemistry of fart gas to fart jokes in literature and film and a flatulist performer.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Qualifying last video's alphabet claim: 'fart' is one of the oldest, hyper-conserved words; intro to 14 fart facts

  • ★★ Hank qualifies his last video's claim that the alphabet's order is older than any English word: no word sounds the same, but some predate writing and agriculture. — 00:00:01
  • ★★ Hank says 'fart' is a hyper-conserved word found in Norse, Slavic, Sanskrit and Greek, and one of the oldest words in English. — 00:00:25

00:00:41 — Franklin's 'Fart Proudly'; fart gas composition, methane, odorants, sulfur compounds, smell-reducing medicines, cow burps

  • ★★ Hank says Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to the Royal Society, 'Fart Proudly', calling for a prize for a scientist who could make farts smell good. — 00:00:43
    • check: Royal Society — doubtful
  • ★★ Hank says more than 99% of fart gas is odorless; farts are mainly carbon dioxide, hydrogen, sometimes nitrogen and oxygen, and methane. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank says about half of people have no methane in their farts, depending on the organisms living in their intestines. — 00:01:11
  • ★★ Hank says methane (natural gas) is odorless, so an odorant, most commonly the sulfur compound tert-butylthiol, is added so leaks can be smelled. — 00:01:20
  • ★★ Hank says sulfur compounds such as hydrogen sulfide, in that remaining one percent, make farts stinky; hydrogen sulfide smells terrible because it is very toxic. — 00:01:42
  • ★ Hank says medicines now exist that bind to sulfur compounds so farts smell less bad. — 00:01:53
  • ★★ Hank says cows contribute a massive amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere, but mostly through burps rather than farts. — 00:02:01

00:02:17 — Farts in culture: Blazing Saddles, literary fart jokes, the oldest recorded joke, Le Pétomane and Augustine's flatulist

  • ★★ Hank says the first audible fart in a movie was in 1974's Blazing Saddles. — 00:02:19
  • ★★ Hank says James Joyce, Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer and the Arabian Nights all contain fart jokes. — 00:02:36
  • ★★ Hank says the earliest recorded joke, written about 4,000 years ago, is a fart joke, which he loosely translates: a young lady never farted in her new husband's lap. — 00:02:42
  • ★★ Hank says some people can take air into the rectum at will, the trick behind Le Pétomane, a 19th-century performer who played popular melodies with his butt for royalty and Freud. — 00:03:02
  • ★★ Hank says Le Pétomane was not the first flatulist: Augustine recorded being entertained by one in the 5th century. — 00:03:14

00:03:23 — Blowing a raspberry and British rhyming slang

  • ★ Hank says 'blowing a raspberry' comes from British rhyming slang, in which farts were 'raspberry tarts'. — 00:03:27

00:03:33 — Daily fart volume and the Hindenburg calculation; sign-off

  • ★★ Hank says the average person farts over ten times a day, about a liter of gas, around 25% hydrogen; by his own math two million people's farts over a year would fill the Hindenburg. — 00:03:35

In the description and comments

  • ★ In the description Hank says he cut about five fart facts and might make a video with more fart facts in the future. (hedged) — video description

Humor (significant)

  • Hank asks why he is telling 14 facts about farts today. — 00:00:37

    “Because I'm the master of my own destiny, and I get to do what I want.”

  • After translating the 4,000-year-old joke that a young lady never farted in her new husband's lap, Hank weighs whether it still holds. — 00:02:56

    “my guess is that's happened.”

  • Hank excuses himself to prepare, then blows a loud raspberry into his arm. — 00:03:25

    “Call that blowin' a raspberry.”

  • Hank computes how many people's farts it would take to fill the Hindenburg with hydrogen. — 00:03:39

    “I DID THE MATH MYSELF.”

Mentioned

Central: flatulence

Also: People: Augustine of Hippo · Benjamin Franklin · Dante Alighieri · Geoffrey Chaucer · James Joyce · Le Pétomane · Sigmund Freud · William Shakespeare

Works: Blazing Saddles · Fart Proudly · One Thousand and One Nights

Organizations: Royal Society

Concepts: alphabetical order · carbon dioxide · English language · Greek language · greenhouse gas · hydrogen · hydrogen sulfide · methane · natural gas · nitrogen · Old Norse · oxygen · rhyming slang · Sanskrit · Slavic languages · tert-butylthiol

Products: LZ 129 Hindenburg

Also centred on flatulence: Plane Butts, Fish Farts, LeakyCon, and Marriage Equality

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