PHOTO: PARI DUKOVIC
THIS INTERVIEW WAS EDITED FOR LENGTH AND CLARITY.| FROM THE EDITOR | SANITATION
Susan Goldberg: So let’s have a con-
versation about poop.
Matt Damon: Great. With the group’s
name being Water.org, if we ever solve
the access-to-clean-water side of water
and sanitation, I wonder if the name
would become [deleted].org ...SG: I can’t print that! That’s pretty funny
though.
Seriously: In trying to report and
photo graph the story on sanitation that
is in this issue [see page 94], it became
clear that this is a hard thing to talk
about for a lot of people.
MD: Yes. If you talk about something
like cancer or AIDS, even if you’re talking
about the developing world, people in
the developed world totally relate. We all
have people who’ve battled one of those
diseases, and it’s instantly relatable. But
something like this just isn’t.
Maybe we’ll have stories of grand-
parents or great-grandparents who were
going to the outhouse, but this is a prob-
lem that largely has been solved in the
developed world. We can’t really relate to
something like open defecation, which
is a huge issue in the developing world.SG: That’s even hard for some people to
say aloud. One of the things we really try
to do in our story is to show the impact
of the lack of sanitation; maybe then you
can get people to rally around.
MD: It’s hard to get people to compre-
hend the enormity of the problem—that
2.4 billion people lack adequate access
to sanitation. More people have a cell
phone than a toilet. You lose a kid under
the age of five every 90 seconds because
of lack of access to clean water and sani-
tation. Those two really go hand in hand.SG: So what do you do?
MD: The first hurdle to clear is to get
people to understand that it’s an issue,
and then the second is to try to make it
easier to talk about. We can use humor.
We had an idea of shooting a PSA [public
service announcement] at some fabu-
lous Hollywood celebrity’s house and I’dTALKING TOILETS
WITH MATT DAMON
Heís a famous, award-winning actor, producer, and
screenwriter. But Matt Damon, 46, also is co-founder
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