Mar 6, 2026 · 55 min · 19 segments
Sonia Grego speaks with us about a topic no one likes to talk about, but could be used to monitor personal dietary health and widespread disease outbreaks. Toilets! Sonia leads Duke University's Smart…
And there's a lot of research to show that our gut biome is super important, poorly understood, affects our serotonin, so our brains and happy chemicals, affects our immune system, but that's all biology.
The engineering is in the fact that poop is where the information is, and poop is an extremely difficult material to work with.
[laughs] I was gonna save that one for the end, but I just couldn't because a- as you say, there, there's, there's not only are there all of the social stigmatisms, the, the disgust reactions, the horror, the, the actual...
There's also mechanical properties to it that make it difficult to, to have a system.
It was all robotic, and we had to move things here and there and then flush out our lines, and it was very cool and very robotic, and I can't imagine having to do that with something that has such a different viscosity, turbidity.
And there's a lot of research to show that our gut biome is super important, poorly understood, affects our serotonin, so our brains and happy chemicals, affects our immune system, but that's all biology.
The engineering is in the fact that poop is where the information is, and poop is an extremely difficult material to work with.
[laughs] I was gonna save that one for the end, but I just couldn't because a- as you say, there, there's, there's not only are there all of the social stigmatisms, the, the disgust reactions, the horror, the, the actual...
There's also mechanical properties to it that make it difficult to, to have a system.
It was all robotic, and we had to move things here and there and then flush out our lines, and it was very cool and very robotic, and I can't imagine having to do that with something that has such a different viscosity, turbidity.
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