The turd became a story, and the story became a podcast.
In 2018, two Brits named Karen Whitehouse and Helen McLaughlin were holding their wedding reception on a boat in Amsterdam when the unthinkable happened: A sizable turd was discovered on the floor of the women’s bathroom, its origins mysterious. While the couple’s memory of the day remains largely rosy, the errant excretion was such a bizarre occurrence that it would linger over their recollection of the event like a spectral figure. This is understandable; such a thing is hard not to obsess over. And so, a few years later, when waylaid by the pandemic, it was only natural that the turd came wafting back to mind. That’s when the women decided to ask their friend, a wry New Zealander named Lauren Kilby, to assume the role of amateur detective to figure out the fecal felon — and make a podcast out of the effort. Because why not?
First released in late 2020, the resulting very-much-nonfiction series, descriptively titled Who Shat the Floor at My Wedding?, was an extravagant true-crime spoof that turned on a game of rapid escalation. Forensic experts were consulted. Wedding guests were interrogated. A lie-detector test was deployed judiciously. The lines of questioning occasionally flirted with invasiveness, in addition to being just plain embarrassing. “We don’t really know where the line is to be drawn on whatever we’re doing,†recalled Whitehouse when she, together with Kilby, jumped on a Zoom call earlier this week. “There’s a level of pushing things to a point where it’s a little inappropriate, but we’re well-meaning enough to get away with it.†But it was all exceedingly entertaining, a genuine odyssey of the absurd that you can’t help but be charmed by.
Much of Who Shat’s comedy lies in the application of extreme vigor to the banal, the podcast equivalent of dropping a nuke on a fly. Kilby, in particular, is a breakout presence with her commitment to the bit as the resident private eye (even going so far as to enroll in an online private-investigator course), which produces an excessively straight-faced on-mic persona somewhere in the vicinity of Cunk on Earth. In one episode, the hosts go to a zoo; even animals do not escape suspicion. I won’t spoil where things end up.
Who Shat was warmly received when it first rolled out, but it wasn’t until last year that the series caught on fire. Seemingly out of nowhere, the show rocketed to the higher echelons of the U.K. Apple Podcast Charts, in large part thanks to a wave of word-of-mouth mentions on social media. The team still isn’t entirely sure where the social-media whirlwind came from. “I don’t think it had any rhyme, reason, or logic,†said Kilby. Whitehouse concurred. “We never expected it to become as big as it did,†she said. But big it became: To date, the 13-episode season has racked up more than 6.2 million downloads.
And now a sequel is upon us. The second season, The Case of the Tiny Suit Case, sees the trio take off for Sweden to tackle a different mystery. This case comes from Kilby’s mother-in-law, who recalls a strange phenomenon that happened a while back. In late 2009, she returned to her home in the Swedish backwoods to discover a tiny suitcase hanging on her veranda, one containing an equally tiny three-piece corduroy suit. Her inquiries to neighbors at the time yielded no answer, and so she let the matter rest — only for another tiny suitcase to show up on her veranda 18 months later, this one containing an assortment of objects including a tiny pillow, a toiletry bag, and a Hawaiian shirt. Unlike the turd of the first season, this particular mystery carries a more overtly unsettling edge. For the true crime-pilled, it’s not hard to ask the obvious follow-up questions: Was it a stalker? A cult? But the truth is almost certain to be banal, even as the Who Shat team reprise their game of weirdo escalation; based on the press release, this season will offer more lie detector tests, more interrogations, and even, apparently, an undercover operation at a Swedish midsummer festival.
The sophomore effort arrives as the hosts continue to navigate the long tail of the first season. As one would expect of a successful narrative podcast, Who Shat has received interest for potential TV adaptations. Details are still scant, since nothing is set in stone just yet, but the team, in particular Whitehouse and Kilby, are curious to explore the possibility of ramping up into a larger career in the entertainment business. “We’re doing a screenwriting course and are starting to write our first TV series,†said Whitehouse. “We’ve got some doors open to us now, and it would be such a missed opportunity if we didn’t give it our best shot.†But the biz, as you and I know, is a fickle beast, and so they’re not giving up their day jobs as advertising producers just yet. (While McLaughlin was not on the call, I got the impression she’s less interested in making the jump to entertainment; I’m told she works in cybersecurity, which, smart.)
However things shake out on that end, though, the podcast will still be here. When asked about the future, Kilby and Whitehouse expressed that they have every intention of keeping Who Shat rolling along in whatever direction that excites them. “We’re definitely going to do another season,†said Whitehouse. “We were talking about an idea yesterday that could be the one. We like to take on very different cases.â€
“Or we might go back to fecal matter every other season,†said Kilby. “That’s possible too.â€