Ep. 21: The Brown Note
The Brown Note: Myth, Mystery, and Musical Mayhem (That Might Make You Poop)
You’ve heard the rumors. A mysterious musical tone so powerful, so low, that it bypasses all logic and hits you right in the bowels. A frequency so fearsome it turns humans into soft-serve machines against their will.
Yes, folks—we’re talking about the Brown Note.
Welcome back to Privy, where bathroom science meets sound wave shenanigans. Today, we ask: Can a noise really make you poop your pants? And more importantly, why do we want to believe it so badly?
Brown Note 101: The Sound That Frowns
So, what is the Brown Note? It’s an alleged infrasonic frequency (usually around 5–9 Hz) that supposedly causes people to lose control of their bowels.
It’s the forbidden fruit of sound design. The holy grail of prankster mythology. The audio version of slipping laxatives in the punch.
Here at Privy, we played the Brown Note. We didn’t poop. But oh, the myth lives on...
From Speaking Trumpets to Butt Trumpets
To understand the Brown Note, we must first go back. Waaaay back. Ancient Greeks used cone-shaped masks to project their voices. Sailors later invented speaking trumpets to shout across harbors before radios existed. Everything was very shouty and surprisingly poop-free.
Then comes 1841. A former sailor named Colander builds a monster version of the speaking trumpet called the Colophon, and eventually the Colossophone—a 110-foot-tall horn reportedly so loud it could be heard in France. (Unverified, but very dramatic.)
Then came the Great Exhibition of 1851, a World’s Fair in London that featured early pay toilets, a pink diamond, and apparently one of the greatest audio disasters in bathroom-adjacent history...
The Prince’s Breath: Royal Performance, Public Pantsing
Prince Albert (yes, that Prince Albert) was set to sing the national anthem into the Colossophone. What followed, according to rumor, was pure chaos. People reportedly:
Clutched their stomachs
Looked ill
Peed and pooped themselves
Fled screaming
Even the prince himself ran from the stage, horrified that his voice had triggered an international pants apocalypse.
Queen Victoria, not a fan of poop press, allegedly squashed the story. “Stop printing jokes about Albert’s weaponized vocals,” she probably said. And the tale of the Prince’s Breath was buried—until New Science resurrected it over a century later.
Planes, Sonic Booms & Sound as a Weapon
In the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force tested jets with infrasonic engines. Results? Test pilots reportedly felt nauseous near the idle engine.
Conclusion: sound can mess with your insides. It might not make you poop, but it’ll definitely make you question your career path.
Enter Pop Culture: Brown Note Mania
After resurfacing in the science world, the Brown Note blew up in pop culture:
MythBusters tested it (no poop).
South Park weaponized it in a global recorder concert.
Video games, comic books, and manga embraced it.
And suddenly, everyone wanted to know: What if I played it... right now?
Butt… Does It Work?
Short answer: probably not.
Long answer:
Sound is complicated—room acoustics, distance, speaker quality, your body’s personal poop threshold… it’s a lot.
Sound can affect the human body (think: bass rattle at a concert), but making someone involuntarily brown their britches? Unlikely.
But the real power of the Brown Note is psychological. It’s the Schrödinger’s Cat of poop science: You won’t know unless you try, and if it works… well, you’ve got bigger problems.
Other Ways Sound Helps You Go
Sound does have legit bathroom uses:
Running water can encourage urination, especially in kids.
Soothing music helps people relax and release.
YouTube is full of “poop playlists” (yes, really) with relaxing toilet tunes.
So maybe ditch the Brown Note and turn on some lo-fi bathroom beats instead.
BONUS: The Time Hunter Pooped His Pants
Because no Privy episode is complete without a personal anecdote: Hunter once pooped his pants at age 10 on a snowy hill near a beef jerky plant in Montana. Too many layers. No bathroom access. High country jerky. You do the math.
Why the Myth Endures
Sound is weird.
It’s kind of based in science.
Everyone loves a good poop story.
The Brown Note is the perfect bathroom myth: funny, plausible, and just mysterious enough to make you press play—just in case.
