What's the deal with poop?

**Perry Wilson** (0:00)
Before we get started today, a quick correction on our tick episode. Hat tip to Parker Hudson, infectious disease doctor, and Hospital University of Pennsylvania alumnus like me, who pointed out that the International Infectious Disease Society only recommends prophylactic antibiotics for prevention of Lyme disease for high-risk tick bites, which means that it's a Ixodes species tick, so like a deer tick, that you live in a highly endemic area, and that it was attached for more than 36 hours. Otherwise, the ID Society says, just watch and wait.

**Emily Oster** (0:37)
Perry, do men take longer to poop than women?

**Perry Wilson** (0:42)
I have no idea. Do they?
Do I?

**Emily Oster** (0:47)
Well, fun fact, because I'm browsing my phone, all mammals pretty much poop in about 12 seconds, so actually, it doesn't take very long to poop.
But the data does suggest that men spend more time in the bathroom. And one time, a men's magazine did a highly, highly scientific survey of what was happening in there, and it was that they were reading on their phone.

**Perry Wilson** (1:15)
Oh, is that what they said?

**Emily Oster** (1:17)
That is what they said, yes.

**Perry Wilson** (1:19)
Fine. Yes, everyone. That's what we're doing.
I have my copy of Wittgenstein right by the toilet, and I like to get a few chapters in peace. Sorry, not sorry.

**Emily Oster** (1:31)
12 seconds. 12 seconds is what you get.

**Perry Wilson** (1:34)
All right. Well, I have Poop and Furrality Complex already as we start our now two episodes in a row. We've done ticks, now poop. Sort of like an Ich themed.

**Emily Oster** (1:45)
I could not be more excited. I do not think people talk enough about their poop, and I can't wait to discuss more about it.

**Perry Wilson** (1:51)
I'm good. I'm glad you're poop-positive. I am poop-skeptical, but I hope that after this episode, we'll all be more comfortable with that most natural of human bodily functions.

**Emily Oster** (2:06)
I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and a data expert.

**Perry Wilson** (2:09)
And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor.

**Emily Oster** (2:11)
It's Thursday, September 3rd, 2026, and this is Wellness, Actually.

**Perry Wilson** (2:16)
Because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays from every source imaginable. And some of it is awesome.

**Emily Oster** (2:25)
And some of it is, well, actually bullsh**. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, how to parse the data, and can tell you what's worth thinking about and what you can safely ignore.

**Perry Wilson** (2:38)
But before we dig in, a note that this podcast is for educational purposes and should not be construed as medical advice. We don't know your unique situation, so talk to your doctor for personal health decisions.

**Emily Oster** (2:50)
This week, we're asking, what's the deal with poop? Perry and I will give the official smash or pass, and then we'll get to your question of the week. But first, let's do the health news roundup after the break.
And now for the health news of the week. The first thing I wanted to talk about was rabies. Rabies is completely terrifying. It's one of the things I am the most afraid of, and it now seems like maybe it's underreported. Say more.

**Perry Wilson** (3:26)
Yeah, yeah. Rabies is super scary because it is a disease without a cure that's uniformly fatal. That's what everyone needs to know. If you need to know anything besides that, you need to know that rabies has a rather long latent period between the bite or even like people have been scratched and contracted rabies and the time it manifests with symptoms. When you hit symptoms, it's basically over. But if you get vaccinated after the bite, but before symptoms develop, you can almost always be protected from rabies. So that's what people need to know. Rabies is very uncommon, though. From 2000 to 2024, there were 60 reported cases in the US. 59 of those were fatal. The one exception is a woman named Giana Geis in 2004, who underwent this special protocol, was in an induced coma for a very long time. But I just checked up, she's living a normal life now, sort of a miracle. She's like the only rabies survivor. Fascinating story.
But a new study just came out in Nature Communications that says that those 60 cases is a fairly dramatic undercount. They estimate, in fact, that there have been 856 cases of rabies over that time period. And the way they are estimating that is what's kind of interesting about this study and actually pertains to my deck of the woods. Because every once in a while, when you transplant an organ into a new person, that organ has a disease that you didn't test for, you didn't know it had. And of course, then you put that organ, like a terrible example would be like HIV. I mean, obviously we test for HIV, but there have been rare cases where tests have been negatives or whatever. And like you transplant that organ into someone, not only do you transplant the infected organ, but you're immunosuppressing the recipient because they're getting a transplant.