The Gargle - 194-year-old tortoise scam, AI learning to swear, and more on Meta!

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

On this week's Gargle, Alice is joined by Ria Lina and Allison Spittle as they get into the week's news in science and tech. From a 194-year-old tortoise scam to AI learning from us to swear! Plus the latest on Meta being held accountable. All this and more on this week's episode of The Gargle! Alice Fraser: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraserRia Lina: https://rialina.com/ Allison Spittle: http://alisonspittle.com/ Subscribe to Realms Unknown - a fantasy, sci-fi and speculative fiction podcast from Alice Fraser and The Bugle!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/news/realms-unknownYou fund what we do!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateProduced by Harry Gordon, with Executive production from Chris Skinner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ladies, jaded, retired assassins living on a farm in the countryside seeking a time of peace, sexy cowboys and the other four types of people that exist. Welcome to The Gargle podcast, a news satire podcast about science and technology hosted by me, Alice Fraser, published author, writing teacher and comedian coming at you from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival where I've been having an absolute bastard of a time. I'd like to welcome our co-hosts for this episode of The Gargle, prepped for doing a fair bit of the heavy lifting on what is frankly a deeply under. slept script for my end. First, she's the lieutenant standing on the deck of a galleon looking at the horizon and calling the land. Ah-ho, it's Rialina. Welcome. Good morning, evening, good hello. Good earth to you. Good earth to you. And she's been experimenting in her garage with radioactive lizards fueled by cryptocurrency for ones escaped and bitten her. It's dollar sign Alison Spittle. Peepoo, pew, pew, pew, pew. Very, very happy to be here.

I'm coming to you from a hotel in Ireland. Very, very exciting. I am delighted to have you both here. We will jump into the science and technology news, but first let's have a look at the front cover of this week's magazine. Here on the front cover, we have a NASA astronaut floating in the Orion capsule, smiling, holding a thumbs up towards a small window through which Earth is visible as a distant, vulnerable marble.

You look closer and see that the other hand of the astronaut is holding a phone in a selfie pose and the smile is the rickness terror of a phone addict realizing there's no e-sim for space roaming and he's just about to lose his duolingo streak. Our headline for the day is Apple turning 50. It has released a more or less optimized version of the same product in a slightly different color, shade range. Tim Cook, when asked about the new quote-unquote change,

said courage and describing the decision to move the charging port again slightly. Top story this week has just taken the lead out of left field. The world's oldest tortoise has been caught in a viral crypto death scam. Alison Spittle, other than being a contender for best headline of the year, can you unpack this story for us? What I love is this is about a Seychelles tortoise called Jonathan, and he is on the island of St. Helena. And he's supposed to be, is there 190?

93 years old. Is that the age of them? That's what they're kind of suspecting. And this is from, they judged this because there was a picture of him back in the day from the Boer War. And what's crazy about this is basically someone impersonated his veterinarian

and went on to Twitter or X and said, sorry guys, Jonathan is dead. Can you pay me in crypto, like, to help with the... I don't know, what was he trying to insinuate? It was going to help with the morning of Jonathan? Like, what were they actually raising money for? Because, like, what do you do to pay for a dead tortoise?

I can understand an alive tortoise. You have to pay for, like, the fruit salads and stuff that you feed them once a week. But, yeah, they've turned the death of Jonathan into a crypto scan. then it turns out someone just checked the garden Jonathan is still very much alive and yeah they had to the way that they proved this was they and I think this shows the kind of

our modern times is instead of holding a newspaper beside Jonathan today's newspaper to prove that he's dead they they put an iPad beside him with the BBC's homepage on it to prove that he's alive on that day which I think is very 20, 26. But yeah, it's a, it is a, it's a crazy story. And people were trying to find out like, why, why, why was Jonathan on St. Helena?

Like Napoleon, you know, he's like, how did they actually end up there? And apparently what they did back in the day was they used to bring tortoises onto ships as a food source. Because they kept for a long time because they were in a. shell, which I think it's like a, isn't that the most horrible version of tinned food you've ever heard in your life? That is the way. Right. Isn't it?

Surely all creatures keep as long as they're alive. It's not even about the shell. Like if I bring a pig on board, it's going to be as fresh as it's going to be until I eat it, right? You can't serve a pig in the shell of a pig, though, can you? It's not like a bread bowl situation. Also, Tortoises, I love them, but they are a less, they're a less cute, sentient being.

You haven't seen, there's no film like Babe about a tortoise, do you know? I mean, I'm going to argue with this. I think tortoises are very cute, but also that I think this is a fascinating experiment in sort of market demographic, targeting gullible people with the idea that Jonathan has died in order to then ask for cryptocurrency donations. I think that's a genius move because you're taking people. who are already just believing whatever they're reading on the internet. And there you're like prime candidates for a crypto scam.

Yeah, that's true. But normally, like, the people who get scammed are like, they'll be like lemon juice weight loss or whatever. Like it's kind of going for the same. Yeah, you're right. But this demographic of people, they're, do you think you're right? Sorry, but the Venn diagram here between people who care about Jonathan the Tortoise and people who have access to cryptocurrency,

It must be a very, very small wedge of the pie there. Such a small wedge that even the person who created the coin got conned by it. Because it wasn't, the guy who did the conning wasn't like the owner of the coin. He just said, pay me in this particular coin. And the owner of the coin went, oh, that's really sad. Here, have some crypto. And then found out later that it was a scam and went, oh, that's not on, mate. That's not on.

I can give you some of my own coin. And then they discovered that Jonathan all along was a shell. company. High fives. High fives. High fives. High fives. Oh.

Oh. Incredible. Incredible. Beautiful. I feel like you have an advantage because you're ahead of us, though. Alice is a beautiful way. She does these best types of jokes ever. Like, you're ahead of us in time and in bad jokes.

Yes. Do you know why he's called Jonathan? Is it called Jonathan? And this is, this goes to show the old. school jokes that were back in the day. He's called Jonathan because they named him after Jonathan Swift, the satirist. And it's because he's a tortoise. And he's yeah, it's because he's a tortoise and he's slow. And I think that's

very cute. And I love that. I love that. Like that's that joke is able to last nearly 200 years as nearly as long as the tortoise himself. I thought you're going to say they named him after Jonathan Swift because the tortoise kept threatening to eat babies. He, because do you know Jonathan Swift, he was a dean in a church near me? Sorry, I'm riddled of ADHD. But apparently he used to drone on so long. People used to fall asleep.

And they built, they built like a sermon table with wheels. So he could be wheeled around the church. And then he'd shout in the faces of the people that were asleep. And I'm like, Jonathan, improve your oratory. Why are you getting wheels on this thing? He invented cabaret. I mean, that's cabaret. You go around the audience and, you know,

yell and lick people's faces. I mean, then they put all the pews, little circle, this little round little table, eating. Eating the body of Christ, whining crackers. Two body of Christ minimum.

Entry. I misheard you and I thought you said, whiny crackers. And I was like, as an ex-Catholic, that is a great way to describe communion. They are whiny,

those crackers. Those little... I've always wondered, because I'm not allowed to have communion. I've always wondered if it's sort of... Does it melt in the mouth?

Are they a little bit stale those crackers? Does the wine help? Do you want me to talk to you about the mouth feel of Catholicism? It feels amazing. I'm very laughed.

Tell me about your experience. because I'm quite sure that some choir boys have a very different mouth feel experience. So like it melts on the tongue and as a kid, sometimes my tongue would get stuck to the roof of my mouth between the community would create a glue. And then my tongue would get stuck to the roof of my mouth. And then this is the Catholic guilt that I felt. I was like, you're enjoying eating Jesus too much and this is punishment. And then I would try and like stop myself from enjoying the taste of communion and just

it's quite sweet. It is genuinely, you can have it as an hors d'oeuvre. If you had it with hummus or a bit of cream cheese, it would be good stuff. It really is great. But I've never done that before because I'm not that lapsed. I'm still, even though I'm ex-athlet, there's still a weird fear in me. It's the same with fairies. Like in Ireland, people believe in fairies. And I kind of, I don't, but I will never do anything that will anger fairies. I just don't want to take that chance. Why walk under a ladder when you can walk around it? It's just extra steps on your old, you know, pedometer. That's all. I do feel that people made up those superstitions just to cover for health and safety. Like I think too many people were walking under ladder. There was like workplace accidents and they're like, no one was listening when they were like, that's unsafe.

But when you go, that's unlucky. People are like, hey, we got to hear them out here, you know. Yeah, don't break a mirror. You'll get seven years of bad luck. I think it's just based on that scene in Apocalypse now where he punches the mirror and then things don't go so well for him afterwards. And that brings us to our next story, which is the news that the void has been staring back, as it were, apparently Anthropics Claude Code program is keeping track of markers of frustration in its use of swear words or I'm sick of this or

that's bullshit. Ria Lena, you have stared into the void and the voice. Boyd has stared back. Can you unpack this story for us? It has. We stared at each other and then we just, we basically swore at each other all day and it was great. I just did it for funsies, but apparently Claude was keeping track. But essentially, the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, who are the makers of Claude or the owners of Claude code or the keepers of Claude code? At what point do you no longer actually have ownership over your own creation in this world? But they accidentally leaked half a million lines of code. And it was discovered in those lines of code that cloud code actually keeps track of its user and how often the user gets frustrated. And it tracks swearing. So it's not just things like, you know, it's proper swearing, but also if you say something like, oh, so frustrating or this sucks, which really surprises me because I, okay, I do

use, I do use AI, but I don't tend to swear at it because I. I'm too scared that it'll remember and come back at me when it's sky. So I've always been quite like, I refrain from doing please and thank you's because I do know that every word is killing the environment. So I try and keep it as brief as possible. But still, just to know that it's tracking your, it's basically, it's like, I'm single. If I wanted a guy to track my cycle and ask me every three weeks, are you, is it your, are you on your period? I'd get back into a relationship.

But now that I know that AI is doing it, I'm like, if you're going to do it, at least be useful. You know, tell me what I'm ovulating. Like give me, you know, tell me some stuff. But the crazy thing is, and maybe it's just because I'm a techie, the crazy thing is that it's the only bit of Claude Code that doesn't use AI. It literally uses a really old, like it basically used control, F, control F, which is find the word shite. Can I say that? Yeah, please swear away.

Swear away. Find the word fuck. Find the word f*** and it does and it just goes, oh, they said and then it writes it down. Oh, they said fuck again and it writes it down. So it doesn't even use AI to tell you that you're angry. It doesn't need to. It encourages me that we have an old school, almost analog fuckometer going on. That makes me happy. Control F, bomb, you know? That's where you find all these swears. Well, the big question is what are they going to do with it, though? What are they

going to do? I mean, at the moment, it just, we think, feeds back to the parent company, so the parent company can go, oh, people don't like this particular version of Claude Code. We should upgrade or, oh, that's not working very well. We're getting a lot of control F-bombs.

We should work on that. And that sounds like it's a meter for good. But you know at some point, it's going to become a meter for bad. There's going to be the f-the-f-friks and the f*** knots. And which party do you want to be in? Yeah, yeah, it's very difficult to imagine an entirely innocent fuck tracker built stealthily into a system.

It can't bode well, Alison. It's scary. So I'm not trying to shame anyone about AI. I stopped using AI. I tried AI. What I don't like about AI is I find that AI lies to me about what its capabilities are. And so I got quite frustrated with it. And I find that AI can be quite sycophantic as well.

Like AI will be like, oh, well done, Alison. That's a great insight, Alison. Well done. Isn't it? Yes. Would you like to hear? Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I'm like, if I want to hear it like, like lying compliments off myself and I think I should just like burn a tree that says the word like you are enough on it and that'll give me the validation that I need. What I find strange is that you were right about using the control F and not being able to use AI to solve this problem. It feels very like when Musk, didn't Musk hire a person to pretend to be a robot or something like that? I feel like it's very musky and I don't want to maybe blame him for this.

but like that we're using humans to to to kind of figure out this problem. And AI can't, AI can't even time you. Like did you see that thing that went viral this week of a guy asking AI to time his run? And then he ran for a second. And then AI told him he ran for 10 minutes. And then kept reassuring him that it had done that time. And it's such a, yeah, I don't know.

I'll find it very, I find it very strange. I'm sorry, I've just, I just got totally distracted there by how much I dislike AI. Well, I've got my children trained because I don't like them telling me, asking if the thing I'm doing, you know, like do the thing that I'm already doing. I don't enjoy being told to do the thing that I'm already doing. So like that are we nearly there yet? So I have now, I've come down quite hard on it, which means that now whenever I'm doing something, but they're getting impatient, they both quite aggressively come up and say,

you're doing great, mummy. Oh my God. You know, Alice, you're going to be first against the wall when the AI. Ria will be dead last. They'll let Ria watch, right? I totally get you on the whole. I couldn't stand it when it kept telling me how great everything was. Because it's also like a really rough, you know, it goes, oh my God, that's such a great idea.

And I go, do not patronize me. And I basically said, listen, I'm autistic, you're autistic. Speak to me like we're both autistic. and it stopped. And it's genuine. It's just like, oh, I see. Yeah. Well, yeah, essentially I did.

I said I'm autistic. I'm also a computer programmer. I do not need any of that. Like, just give me facts. Do not give me, do not suppose, do not extrapolate, do not guess, do not, just give me facts that you can verify. And some of them can do that. And some of them can't.

Gemini cannot, for the life of it, only give you facts that it can verify. It can't verify shit. It's just they're going, yeah, but. But it's a fact. And I went, prove it. Give me the link. Gemini, weirdly, Gemini is Google's AI that is connected to the internet. So in the really swift evolution that we had in the last three years, chat CPT came out as the frontrunner. And everyone went, oh, my God, chat GPT is amazing. But it was two to three months behind the internet. So you couldn't do anything, any topical research on it or anything like that because it would be like, I'm still working on a version of the internet from last year. Who's president? And you'll be like, oh, Chad GPT, just stay where you are. You don't want to know. And then Gemini came along and said, I have access to the entire internet. And everyone went, oh, Gemini, that's amazing. Tell me what's happening now, right now, anywhere, right now. But Gemini actually has access to too much information and it gets confused.

And it just goes, I don't know, here you go. And you go, where did you get that? And it goes, I don't know. I don't know where I got that. And you know, and you just know we're going to open a cupboard somewhere in the universe one day and all of Gemini's lies and, you know, dead bodies are going to be behind this door. And you'd be like, oh, Gemini, what have you done? As a Gemini myself, I can understand that.

Like, you know. You double personality. Promising too much. Yeah, double personality, promising too much, not delivering, having a breakdown. That's what Gemini's do. So, yeah. And that brings us to your ad section, your ad section now, because you can't be what you can't buy. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Six-Pact, an international

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I've accidentally cursed my editor. And now he has a penis where his penis is, but on sideways like a crossbar. Oh, my God. Oh, that's a visual. And if you're enjoying this show, why not try listening to a different show. Our sister podcast, Realms Unknown, where we talk about science fiction and fantasy and it's lots of fun. Don't leave now, wait till the end of this episode and listen to that. Also available, the Bugle Podcast, where I will be appearing as a co-host this week with Andy Zaltzman and NATO Green.

Also, my book, A Passion for Passion is still around if you want to buy it, and my new book, it won't be around for years. But if you want to sign up for updates on it, head over to alicephraiser.com and sign up on the books page for book-related information. News for accountability. lawyers, plaintiff lawyers in the US are about to start cracking their knuckles because at last a precedent has been set that is holding accountable platforms for the things that are on the platforms. Meta has been, look, it's been charged a nominal amount, but it has been held accountable for damaging teen mental health. Reelina, you know how to go on the internet. Can you unpack this story for us?

Yes. So I'm amazed they let it happen, but they let it happen. A teenager was allowed to, well, she actually tried to take four companies to court and the two that wouldn't settle out of court were meta, i.e. Facebook and YouTube. And she said, you've designed an addictive product and I'm now addicted and you've ruined my life. And they're like, no, none of it's our fault. No, it's not our fault. But then there was a memo leaked. from META that literally said, we got to get them before they're even teenagers or they won't be properly addicted. And that was it. Jury was like, you bad, you did it. This has been described as social media's big tobacco moment when it's kind of like the moment that the world realizes,

oh, you, you're bad. You're not good for us. And it's very exciting. Now, it's very exciting. Now, they are going to appeal. Of course, they're going to appeal. So this isn't over. But at the same time, it kind of is.

because you know what the media's like. If there is an appeal and they win, it'll be like two column inches at the back of a metaphorical newspaper that nobody actually reads in paper anymore. But the big front page is, you're bad, you did it, you're guilty. Yes. I mean, to a certain extent, it might not be worth there while appealing, except that there's going to be a cascade of such claims.

The payout in this instance was only $6 million because obviously you're looking at things like past earnings and future earnings in all. order to figure out what damages ought to be attributed for what's going on with this young lady. And obviously she's saying she was addicted as a preteen and she's now only 20. So it's quite difficult to say what damage has been done and sort of prospective future earnings and so on and so forth. The calculus is difficult.

But the more of these cases come down and the more they are decided, the more possible it will be. I just think it's a really wonderful thing. I'm going to kind of step outside the comedy thing here, which is, you know, there's a lot of a feeling of inevitability about the dominance over our attention and our minds that has been taken by these large companies, their capacity to control how we think and what we think about. And, you know, when you wake up in the morning, you can pick up your phone or you can not. And it's a zero-sum game. Either you get to decide what you think first or their algorithms get to decide what the first thought in your head is. And that they're sort of pretending,

more or less that they're helpless in the face of the demands of the market. They're just presenting what the market is demanding and then we feel helpless in the face of their dominance. And so it is really fucking nice to just see it get nailed down and say, no, there's someone who's held accountable. And when there's someone who's held accountable and having to pay even $6 million, then all of a sudden you're like, okay, so you're doing something to people. You're doing it on purpose. And you can be held accountable. I think there's a like genuinely big moment. I'm so sorry, Alex, could you say all of that again? I got distracted by a video of a kitten in some welly boots.

No, I 100% agree with everything. I think the irony of it is is they interviewed her afterwards and she said, I'm so glad I've won, but I am addicted to social media. I cannot do without it. I cannot imagine my life without it. So I think also the companies are there going, yeah, okay, here, have the $6 million because it's just going to come straight back to us in your attention anyway. You know, I don't think.

But you're right. There are so many people waiting across the country to basically pile in and start suing all of the social media platforms. And this is, you know, we've been trying for years to figure out how to get them. And they're like, well, we're a platform. It's not our content. You can't for what's on there. And they finally managed to get them for how they designed it, which is great. Yeah.

So they specifically designed it knowingly to be addictive and specifically addictive to underage children is the, like, I think that was the real hung out to drive. moment. Alison, I think I'm going to send them all my half-finished manuscripts and say, pay me, pay me for all this work I haven't done. I'm going to blame social media and not my lack of talent or whatever. I'll be like, Mark Zuckerberg has done this to me. Not my deciding to do a show about, I was going to, sorry, I was going to make a joke there, deciding to do a show about fruits, having affairs on each other. but that's actual content that's quite popular at the moment, is AI fruit having affairs.

Oh, it is. Do you know what? I was going to sue them because I'm upset that they only made it addictive to preteens because that is not my audience. So I'm like, I'm sorry, why aren't you making this addictive to women aged 35 to 54 who have enough money to buy my tickets? So I'm the next court case. And this episode of the podcast,

is brought to you by about a room full of very fine mist, a half a glass of water. Half a glass of water. A. And that brings us to the final story of this week's episode of the gargle, salmon sperm, bird droppings. What should you be slapping on your face? Alison Spittle, you've put your face in some unusual places.

Can you unpack this story for us? Yes, this is a beautiful story, just about these. different treatments that are that are available to us now. Yeah, salmon sperm facials is where they inject, is it, is they inject salmon sperm into your face? Well, they take the polynucleotides out of it and they inject those, but they get it from salmon sperm. But my question to you, is how did they get the salmon sperm itself? Like, what kind of machinery? Well, have you, you know how a man like kind of fling it wherever salmon or similar can fling it wherever yeah you know what i mean like they go down with a net to the rivers and they kind of scoop it no i'm i'm sure they probably

farm it but but it's not like it's not like caviar where they have to like extract it from the fish i think that they can well i'm i'm kind of imagining like little little fleshlights for these salmon's little fish lights if you will of uh of getting this out and it's It's apparently to help you look younger. And it's just a strange. It's one of these things. I'd love to, it's like the same with milk. I'm like, how did they discover that this work?

Like, who decided to milk a cow? And what were they doing before they milk a cow? And who was like, I need a facial from salmon. And then not only do I need to do that, but I need to tell everyone about the incredible, incredible youth-making situation that's got there. No, it's just a strange, strange story altogether. It is a bit weird.

We use salmon sperm because the DNA of it, it's quite similar to human DNA. So they're like, oh, there's less risk of rejection. And I went, well, you know what's even more similar to human DNA? Like human DNA. And there's a lot of that sperm going about. And I was just thinking, you know, now that people, a lot of men are less likely to donate to sperm banks

because there's so many laws in so many countries saying, but when the kid's 18, they get to come and find you. That I was like, well, they need somewhere to go. They need something to donate to. Women are always going to want to look younger. I feel like we're missing a trick. The poor salmon who are there swimming upstream, just trying to procreate to come across some scientists going,

hey, hey, you want to sell it to me for a dollar? And we've just, we've got other options, you know. And think about how many people would want to put David Beckham's in their face. You know what I mean? Like, I bet you people would pay good bank for that. At last, elaborate luxury facial serving salons and truck stop glory holes have found their perfect match. We're going to rename glory holes to farm to table artisanal. Artisanal farm. It's going to be beautiful. I mean, this is the thing. I used to have a joke about the sort of prevalence of pornographic shots of this stuff, like the facial thing. And I said there's no woman who's

finishing herself off at home by spraying yourself in the eye with a shaken up emulsion of bleach and mayonnaise. Turns out I was wrong. People are paying to have it injected into their eyeballs. There's all sorts of things that women do with very little scientific backup. Like, are either of you on the Chinese social media? The talk of the tick. No. Oh, TikTok. Oh, they sell you a lot of skincare and there's this calcium stick that everyone's, like rubbing on their face and they're going, this is amazing. And it's like since what I've never heard of calcium ever being the thing for your face. And now everyone's rubbing it on their face.

And I'm going, how do you even know? But people are buying it. They're just like, I'll give it a go. Yeah, I'll rub that on my face. Yeah, why not? So why not salmon sperm? And that brings us to the end of this week's episode of the gargle. I am flipping through the ad section at the back.

Alison Spittle, have you got anything to plug? I'm going to be in Melbourne Comedy Festival. So the only day that's available is the Wednesday, come see me there. I'm in Sydney, I'm in Perth, I'm in Leicester Square Theatre in June, and going to be in Edinburgh in June as well. Go listen to my podcast, ignore that feeling with Fernbridey. Thank you, bye. And Ria.

I just finished my tour, but I filmed it, so it's going to be up on YouTube in the next couple months. So please go to my YouTube channel and just subscribe for now, hopefully get up the numbers so that it can be seen. So go to my YouTube or go to my website and sign up on my WhatsApp channel or my mailing list if you still prefer email.

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