Hi, Alex here,
This is SpeakEasy, turning small talk into smart talk
Today:
😴 Sleepless in Tokyo: Japan's new PM runs on 2 hours
🚽 Toilet Talk: World Toilet Day goes deep
📚 Toilet Taxonomy: Restroom to bog – your survival guide
😴 Z.Z.Z. Method: Conversation hacks for tired brains
🎸 Welcome to the Meowtrix: AI cats are purr-fect meow-sicians…
…and more.
Words, wit & culture! 🧠
Ten minutes to read. Better conversations guaranteed.
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NEWS YOU CAN USE
Turn headlines into talking points.
🥱 Power Naps & Power Plays
Japan just got its first female prime minister — Sanae Takaichi — and she's already collecting headlines like Pokémon cards:
✔️ Backing Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize
✔️ Poking China over Taiwan
✔️ Sleeping 2–4 hours a night
Aides say she calls meetings at 3 a.m.
She calls it “leadership”. Most countries call it an “HR violation.”
It's touchy here. Karoshi — death by overwork — is real. Companies shut off office lights at 10 p.m. to force people home (hello, typing in the dark.)
But Takaichi's in famous company: Thatcher (her hero) slept 4 hours. So did Churchill, Edison, Bonaparte... apparently, world domination requires bags under your eyes.
Japanese people are elite sleepers. They can power nap anywhere — trains, cafés, school recitals (saw that this morning.)
I could never get the hang of it. I once got so sleep-deprived baby-training my first daughter that I mistakenly used the office sink as a toilet. (Not why I left that job... probably.)
Science is clear: unless you have a rare genetic mutation, fewer than 6 hours wrecks you — heart disease, diabetes, depression… the list goes on.
Yet everyone's exhausted. Work, kids, doom-scrolling, Temu wheel-spinning.
The sleep industry's booming: pills, trackers, weighted blankets, “sleepcation” packages. Projected to hit $160 billion by 2033.
We spend a third of our lives sleeping.
Not getting enough is the new smoking: you think it looks cool, but it slowly kills.
💤 POLL: How many hours do you actually sleep per night?
TALK TOOLBOX
😴 The Z.Z.Z. Method (For Tired Brains)
Turn exhaustion into better conversations.
When you're sleep-deprived (aka always), your social battery is basically a Nokia from 1999. Use Z.Z.Z. to keep conversations sharp:
Z — Zero assumptions
Tired brains jump to conclusions. Instead of guessing what someone meant, ask:
“Can you clarify what you meant by that bit?”
Z — Zoom in
Focus on one idea at a time. No multi-tasking, no mental tabs open.
“Let’s stick with this point for a second.”
Z — Zone out (strategically)
Use brief pauses to think. “Hmm… give me a second.”
Silence = processing, not panic.
💬 FOLLOW-UP: What’s the one thing you’re running low on this week — sleep, time, or patience?(Parents – all three?)
FAMOUS WORDS
“Fatigue is the best pillow.”
(Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, 1706-1790)
🎬 Can you name the film?
A dream within a dream. And that ending is still up for debate.
Answer at the end of the issue.
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THE CULTURE CODE
Royal Flush
November 19th is World Toilet Day, the UN’s annual reminder that 3.4 billion people still lack safe sanitation (you can add my old office sink to that statistic.)
Half the planet is dealing with something most of us never think about.
Meanwhile, Japan sits at the other end of the spectrum – the Toilet Olympics.
Heated seats, different pressure bidet sprays, air dryers, deodorizers, and — my favourite — speakers that play running water sounds to mask... your running water sounds. Like a luxury spa for your bum.
Some now even analyze your waste for health data. Privacy? Never heard of it.
But go anywhere else in the world, and you’ll miss them instantly.
🚽 Throne Through Time
The first flushing toilet appeared in 1596 for Queen Elizabeth I. But it took Thomas Crapper — yes, really — to take it mainstream 200 years later.
Ancient Romans? Open communal toilets, side by side, sharing a sea sponge on a stick. Suddenly, petrol stations don’t seem so bad.
NASA spent $23.4 million on a toilet for the International Space Station. Zero gravity requires zero mistakes.
And today? 75% of us use our phones on the toilet (hi 👋). Those phones have 20× more bacteria than the toilet handle (say it with me: “Scroll on the throne? Wipe that phone!”)
We spend 3 years of our lives sitting there — 26,000 hours. Enough time to learn a dozen languages… or watch every cat video ever made. Twice
💡 PRO TIP: Toilet talk is surprisingly safe — everyone has a story, and none of them are boring.
💬 FOLLOW-UP: “What's the weirdest bathroom you've ever used?”
⛔ DON'T SAY: “Can we talk about something less gross?” (You're kind of missing the point.)
WORD WISE
🚽 Toilet Taxonomy
Talking about toilets is universal — using the wrong word isn’t.
A quick survival guide:
Formal / Polite
restroom (US) — Safe, neutral, HR-approved.
lavatory — Airlines, upscale hotels, people who say “whilst.”
washroom (Canada) — Neutral, inoffensive, perfectly Canadian.
Casual / Neutral
bathroom (US) — Standard. Works almost everywhere.
toilet (UK/AUS) — Direct, honest, slightly jarring to Americans.
loo (UK) — Friendly and charming. Like a verbal cup of tea.
Slang (Friends Only)
john (US) — “Gonna hit the john.” Strong dad-energy.
bog (UK) — Dark, damp, definitely in the pub.
dunny (AUS) — Aussie classic. Outdoor vibes. Comes with spiders.
crapper — Crude, but historically legit (thanks, Thomas).
💬 FOLLOW-UP: “What do you call it where you're from?” (Endless variations)
BECAUSE THE ROBOTS ARE COMING
🤖 Welcome to the Meowtrix
Remember those 26,000 hours watching cat videos on the loo?
AI just levelled it up.
OpenAI's Sora 2 is going viral for... cats playing instruments on porches.
Humanity invented god-tier video AI and immediately made cat memes with it.
We deserve whatever's coming (although this did make me laugh – wait for the cymbals).
@longliveai AI has officially turned midnight meowing into a full-blown concert. Thanks to OpenAI’s Sora 2, the internet is going crazy over hyper-rea... See more
💬 YOUR TURN: Which one is the funniest? (Hit reply and let me know.)
ANSWER
🎬 Name the Film: Inception (2010)
DiCaprio steals secrets by infiltrating dreams within dreams… until he can’t trust his own reality
🌎 Cultural Impact: A global smash that redefined blockbuster brain-benders and dominated “Best of the 2010s” lists.
🧠 Deep Dive: And that ending — dream or not? The debate still rages on (thanks, internet).
LAST WEEK
🗳️ POLL: Is any CEO worth a $1 trillion payday?
A) 💸 Sure — if they actually deliver — 9%
B) 😬 Maybe — depends what they do with it — 9%
C) 🙄 No — nobody's that essential — 82%
💬 Your Two Cents
B.A: “If Musk spends his trillion to blast off to Mars, that's a win”
S.Y: “Less concerned about Tesla paying him a trillion, more concerned about what the world would look like in 10 years if he achieved targets and what he would do with a trillion.”
Let’s hope he doesn’t win…
THIS IS THE END
That's it for #45.
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