The Gargle - 2032 Olympics in Croc infested waters!

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

On this week's episode of the Gargle, Alice is joined by Michael Odewale and Tom Neenan, as they trio delve into all things science and tech (with a pinch of satire) From news that the 2032 Olympic rowing and canoe events will be hosted in Crocodile infested waters, a scientific breakthrough as part human-part mouse brain developed. Plus, Buried underwear, Flock hackers and a group of African dogs' thousand mile trek for mates. Alice Fraser: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraser & https://www.instagram.com/alicefraserhuman/Michael Odewale: https://michaelodewale.comTom Neenan: https://www.tomneenan.comSubscribe 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.

Welcome to The Gargle, a science and technology pullout section of the Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world. In a world where someone on the internet is always wrong, dare to believe one podcast will take on the dragon of science and technology news that's happening in science and technology. We will equip a mercenary gang in the village inn and go fight that dragon into hard-hitting podcast satire. Watch out science. Watch out technology. It's the gargle. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, traveling bard of night. no holds barred. You'd better strap on your shields and other strappable equipment.

And I'll welcome our guest hosts for this episode. Rising from the waves, clad only in the glory of sea foam. It's Michael Odo Wale. Wow, thank you. I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you for having me. And it's the man at the end of the movie when you find out the whole movie has been told by a man in an armchair. The camera pans around to find him sitting in that armchair, smoking a pipe. Narrative expectations make you assume it's an aged up version of the hero of the story. But I'm here to tell you it's actually always Tom Ninen.

And how do I know this story? Because I was Odysseus. Oh my gosh. There's twists. No one saw it coming. No one saw it coming except everyone saw it coming. We have some incredible stories in science and technology news this week, beginning in my home state, which is going to be hosting the Olympics in

in 2032 Brisbane Games. They've decided to run the rowing in a river that is home to about 500 saltwater crocodiles that has now been approved. Tom Nean, you value your leg. Can you unpack this story for us? Yeah, I mean, that's basically it. So it's the Olympics and Paralympics

rowing and canoeing event that will be happening at the 2032 Brisbane Games. Is that when you're hosting them? Yep. And so they're working out where's the best way to host them. And basically, I think they just ignored what was in the water and just looked at the dynamics of the water and said that the best place that they should do it

is a place that is home to, as you say, 500 salt water crocodiles, which I'd imagine are like freshwater crocodiles, but just like they're saltier. They are more annoyed about the fact that there are people rowing through their home. I sort of wrote down as like a sassy thing. I was like, well, at least they still make the rowers like row faster.

And that is an official stance from, I believe, the Brisbane Games committee is like, well, at least they'll row faster. So that's terrifying. I'm not sure. I'm not an edgy comedian, but it did occur to me that if things go wrong with the Olympic rowing, then the same people may well be around for the Paralympic rowing. there might be limb difference going on between those two, I don't know. I think it all should be okay.

It would just be suspect if instead of medals at the end of the rowing, they decided to give out handbags as prizes. That would be the moment at which my hackles were raised. But yeah, it's a baffling choice, but then I guess trying to find anywhere in Australia where you can hold some games that don't have deadly creatures somewhere is a tall order. So maybe it's the best option they've got. Michael, how would you feel rowing on a crocodile invested river?

Well, my thing is, you know, they held the, you know, like the roided games last year. I thought this is like the perfect use for the next roided game. How much do you really believe in them drugs? Getting in with the crocodiles. I think this should be that. It should be the next obstacle course. Don't give it to the regular ones. I think it's phenomenal.

I think it's an. incredible idea that we should. I think, I mean, just do the whole Australian thing. That's what Australia is known for. That is our stereotype in the world is that we're full of dangerous animals. Just bring it in every aspect of the Olympic Games. Have the runners competing against kangaroos, have, you know, have the wrestlers go up against some mutant giant koalas. I don't know. Just add some spice to the Olympic Games, that's what I think. It's crazy they're making the Olympics harder. It sounds pretty hard already. I mean, it's like 100 meters aim the gun at them. I don't know about what the next thing needs to be. Yeah, that's it. A hundred meters. Yeah,

have the person dancing behind them firing the gun at their feet and saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What is a javelin but just trying, someone trying to spear a massive tarantula? That's, just keep it all in keeping with the Australian way of life, which is just trying to survive against a country that wants to kill you. Yeah, this is the thing. As somebody who has lived mainly in cities and small towns and not in the country, I have had very few interactions with poisonous animals. But I feel like for the Olympic Games, you sort of have to lean into the stereotypes.

Like in the French opening games, they had a whole lot of decapitated aristocrats singing heavy metal. I think, remember that, how fun was that? Do you have a logo for your Brisbane games yet? Do you know what the logo will be, or like the mascot or whatever? I have not Look, I'm going to confess that I have not been following

the Olympic Games news except to wonder whether it means they're going to finally build the train line, the speed train line from Brisbane to Calandra where I live and wondering what that'll do to house prices. That's how boring I am. Fair enough. I look forward to Snappy

the, you know, the rowing eating crocodile being the mascot that you guys roll out. Speaking of mouse human hybrids, there are now mouse human hybrids where they've taken human brain cells and used as a part human, part mouse brain for testing neurodevelopmental diseases that can only occur in humans. Michael, you've had a psychic connection with a mouse before. Can you tell us a bit more about this story? I think, listen, scientists are just bored, in it? They just be just be trying stuff.

I think it's like part human, part mouse brain, and they're doing it, I don't know, to just bring out a new L'O product. It just makes makeup better. I don't really understand some of these stories sometimes or why they be mixing the animal and the human brain sometimes.

Well, so you know how they're always saying, oh, we've cured this cancer in mice and then it's like, okay, but that's ages away from humans. So they've made the solution because there are these neurodevelopmental disorders that humans get, the mice don't get. So now they're going to give the mice human enough brains

that they can have these neurodevelopmental disorders and then study them in the mice brains. Look, it's deeply unsettling. I'm sure it's very good science. And apparently it was published in the journal Nature. It was carried out with independent ethical scrutiny. So like the mice are probably not having an existential crisis. So this is pro mouse?

Or anti-human? Like, who's... We all read flowers for algernon, right? Which is where the mouse becomes more human-like and then less human-like. And it's about the tragedy of becoming intelligent and then turning into a tech bro. But, yeah, so they're making the mouse brains human-like to the extent that they can study diseases in them, but not human-like enough that they can understand what's being done to them. the perfect that balance that tipping point is just exactly what you want to hear isn't it that

is ideal it's a shame they did it with mice because with rats obviously rats already interact with human brains but all they need to do is pull hair as we know under a chef's hat that's they can already have impact on it on a human's brain that way so it feels like a lot of effort to go to but is this I'm just hoping this ends up being a Stuart little prequel that's my that's my dream that you end up with a little mouse in a little roadster driving around. Yes, this is the unfortunate sequel to Ratatooie, Ratatari. This is a huge breakthrough that's happened in the last couple of years in science is that they have these things called organoids,

which are not human brains, but they're little clusters of cells that perform in the way that brain cells perform in the brain. And so you can study the science of them. And they apparently now you can imply, them in the mouse brain, they divide and organize themselves into the animal's existing brain circuitry in the way that, exactly the way that you've seen in every montage where like some turtles turn into the teenage mutant ninja. That's the science. That's the exact function. Does anybody know, like, why is it that they keep using mice? Is it like, that's just the first

animal they found and they stuck of it or there is probably like an actual reason? Well, I mean, we share a fair bit of DNA with mice, but we share a fair bit of DNA with most other animals. It's basically, it's sort of more or less the biggest animal we don't feel upset about. Wow. All right. All right. Experiments on, as far as I can tell from the discussions that I've had with scientists, it's like about as big as you can get before we start feeling squirrely about it. And they tried squirrels and they felt like that.

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Our next top story this week is the incredible news that the flock cameras in America have been hacked. Tom Neenan, you've been surveilled on a near a constant basis in a sort of a Jim Carrey-esque Truman show scenario. Can you tell us a little bit more about the flock hackers? Of course, back in my day, flock hacking was also known as cattle rustling. It's returning on the tech people are being turned on, because what happened was there were these flock cameras,

which to be honest, I'd never heard of before. And I was, so apparently they are going around, they are filming traffic, they are gaining information from traffic, and what happened was, some hackers were very industrious, and they took down the camera. And I don't know if they took the entire camera home, or if you can just take out like the sort of the hardware inside or the software inside or whatever and take that home either way because they may have just docks themselves, that might be a problem.

But they were able to get from this camera sort of information about the information. This is where we are in the world now where people can kind of steal the information that's being stolen from us without our knowledge. Metadata, not someone who looks on Facebook for their next evening out. Exactly. Information about information. Information about information. And they found out that these flock cameras are able, they basically sort of put together so many different images of cars and things like that.

And then they're able to use, I'm guessing, I don't know if it's AI, but sort of certain things to get full kind of images. Are they kind of the data images of every car, basically? There's like so much information that they can glean just from the split second that your car is in front of them. and I guess track you and do other stuff. It's very scary. Do I fully understand it? No, I'm just delighted by the fact that there are people out there

who are sort of taking, seizing the means of data theft. Is it theft? I guess you're out there. I guess you're in public. Well, at least kind of, it's invasive at the very least. So this is the conversation that was happening in the UK in the 90s and early 2000s about CCTV cameras, except that these flock cameras are, you know,

AI enabled and a network. and can basically follow you home and say where you live and tell the police officer who's stalking you how to find your house, which has been the majority of law cases regarding these flock cameras have been about the misuse of them by police to follow and track people outside of the remit of a warrant or something. They're incredibly everywhere, and when you have this kind of networked data,

they are essentially incredibly invasive. They know where you are at all times and can follow you anywhere. Michael, would you hack a flock camera if you had the hacker skills? Of course. It feels like there's so much tech these days that they tell us like, we absolutely need and there's nothing we can do about it. It's like you just made that up. You just made it.

And then you said that there's nothing we can do. It's like just putting AI and everything. It's like, we don't need it in my sandwich. I don't need an AI sandwich, which I'm saying. You're like a Chad pot. I had chatbot to chat about how great this sandwich is. You know what I mean? So I feel like that this is just another edition of just telling us like,

oh, we need these cameras. I'll break them. Break stuff. Yeah, break stuff, man. It's just going to be devastating to the Colombo industry is my main thief with it. Like how are you going to get a hard bitten detective if he can just be like, a lady walked in and her legs were up to here. And I looked her up and I knew everything about her.

I do think you're right. It takes us back because in the UK, we're just constantly being surveilled all the time. And I think we're so used to it. And it's kind of amazing to watch places like the US suddenly sort of catch up and go, hang on. You can't go anywhere without appearing on camera somewhere. And it's like, no, that has always been the case here. Yeah, except that the CCTV cameras in the UK are just like they make you look like a grainy sim. And they can be defeated with a hoodie. Whereas these flock cameras are like laser precise. They'll be able to. able to tell you your nipple size and you'll start getting ads for the right bra size. Like, it's the worst. We're the most surveilled country, but if you get your phone stolen and it didn't happen directly in front of the police officer, he'd be like, shh, there's nothing. I just, I don't know what happened. You know what I mean?

I don't know. It's ridiculous. Yeah, the phone seamlessly just begins to change its targeted advertising towards phone stealers. Yeah. Would you like this fresh balaclava? But no, he's got to a weird situation in the UK where actually the place,

if you don't want to be surveilled, the place you feel most safe of the dodgiest areas because they're the areas most likely to have the broken CCTV cameras. So if you do actually want to be anonymous, then hang around sort of the dodgiest areas, and you'll be fine.

That's why I was in that massage parlour. I just wanted some privacy. I believe you. I believe you. Thousands wouldn't. Speaking of thousands wouldn't. believe you, a thousand people have buried their underwear for science. Michael, you've heard of underwear. Can you tell us a little bit more about this story? So the researchers made people buried their underwear to determine how active the soil was based on how much the underwear had

decomposed. So on average, it says about 58% of the cotton undies were gone after two months. underwear buried in lawns lasted longer. I don't know. This just seems like more scientists doing shit for no reason. I don't really understand. I've been reading the stories. I don't get why the scientists been doing it. Why do they need the underwear to decompose?

I didn't get it. Did you get it? I mean, the healthier the soil is. I just thought of a terrible joke that I'm not going to. I don't know. Do we have a rating on this show, Harry? The healthier the soil is, the more likely it is to chew up your underwear. Like, the healthier your sex life is.

Basically, it's important to know about soil health, just as it is important to know about your likelihood of getting head on any given day. And you can determine that by the underwear, not by like a dead body or something. I mean, I think you buried a thousand dead bodies in different places. You'd have different issues on your hands. I guess that is more of an ethical issue, yeah, for science, yeah. I mean, I just follow on from the whole, you know, scientists have too little to do now. I'm just bored.

This feels like one of those stories that were born of the fact that one scientist ran past another in a corridor. And he said, I just soiled my underwear. And the guy was like, oh, you're doing that experiment with the soil and the underwear. And he was like, oh, yes. Yes, that's what I meant. and this is what's happened as a result of that misunderstanding, which is apparently just that soil likes fabric and cotton and will chew it up, which seems kind of, I don't know, like intuitive that that would happen

because it's like a breathable fabric and so that's kind of healthy, I guess. On the real door, I've been worried about soil for a while. You know what I mean? I haven't seen a worm in ages. I mean, remember how many worms they used to be? I don't see worms no more. Maybe I'm not an early bird, so I don't see them. How much time do you spend grubbing up?

I mean, they just used to appear. I haven't been searching for a worm, but they just used to be about, I haven't seen a worm in a while. Yeah. Well, maybe you've got to bury some underpants. There we go. Underpants, vigilante. And because it's sort of an eco-focused experiment,

they then used the decomposed undies to make a ball gown so that it wasn't fabric waste. and they turned it into art. Who is going to wear that at the Met Gala? That feels like a grimes, a grime situation maybe would wear that. Yeah, maybe Timothy Shalameh. Yeah. It does sound like all scientists are going through a midlife crime.

Underway into dresses and I don't know. To be fair, yeah, under, I think all scientists are going through a crisis of funding, which is the same as a midlife crisis for more expensive. To be fair. Yeah. Speaking of. expensive. Now it's time for your reviews. Each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. Tom Nean, what have you brought in for us this week? Previously on the

show, I brought in a puzzle of my dog that I was putting together and sort of the kind of ethical quandary that that put me in because I was worried I wouldn't finish the puzzle and therefore that would have sort of dire consequences for my dog. Luckily, I finished the puzzle. That's a little update for everyone. So that's all okay. But I wanted to review the process of putting together puzzles because it's a, it starts off, I'd say, finding all the edges, five stars, absolutely then it plummets to one star. As soon as you've got the edges and you actually have to start sort of filling out the middle, it is a one star experience. I absolutely detest it. Edging up to two or three stars when you start filling in elements. Five stars is putting in the final puzzle piece. That's the

absolutely fine sort of thing. And then plummets once again to one star when you realize that you have spent all this time putting together an image that was available on the box. And no one knows what to do with puzzles. I think some people frame them. That's the thing that you can do, which does leave you vulnerable to earthquakes and things. That would be devastating. So you're sort of left with that one star experience of going, I've put all this effort into making this picture I already had. And now I don't know what to do with it. So you sort of take a photo of it, but no one's impressed when you finished a puzzle. So I'd say overall puzzles are three stars, but is it worth the emotional rollercoaster that you go through in order to get it?

I'd say no, but I'm going to do one, probably start another one tomorrow. So that is my puzzle review. Yeah, who are puzzles for? Yeah. That is a fascinating. Well, it needs the person to pick up a puzzle. Yeah. In reciprocal sympathy, can I review the experience of arriving at a new Airbnb that has

kindly stocked for its guests a number of 1,000 piece puzzles. And then while you're unpacking your bag, having your two and a half year old, open up multiple 1,000 piece puzzles and scatter them through the Airbnb. So you as an ethical person now feel obliged to find... Oh my goodness. Tiny puzzle pieces and then figure out which puzzle they go into because you don't want to have on your conscience the experience of someone else deciding to do a thousand piece puzzle while on holiday and ending up with a 99 piece puzzle.

The worst. Wow. So you have to do multiple puzzles in order to sort them into their respective bags and then help some poor future person. We're not even there yet. At the moment, we're just still finding pieces. We've got to do the puzzles. Yeah.

And we've got to figure it, make sure that there are enough puzzle pieces. So, like, first of all, the experience hunting puzzle pieces quite satisfying when you find them terrifying, terrifying if it looks like they might be bent or her. have been put in the toilet. They have not been put in the toilet. We're going to be okay. We're going to solve this problem. I'm still at the stage of hope where this is an achievable thing.

We've got two weeks. I think we get, luckily, they are different size pieces. The two puzzles that have been, they are quite distinguishable. So you're not trying to figure them out on like, on the specifics of actually having to do the thousand piece puzzles. But what I do need to do is find two thousand puzzle pieces and put them in the correct puzzle boxes. which is in some ways easier and in some ways harder than doing a puzzle.

Michael, what have you brought in for us this week? I've been sort of taken by the bug of like antique technology technology. Right? So I bought a phone lockbox. So it's like you want to not use your phone. So you buy a piece of gadget to not use your phone with. So it's, have you ever heard it? It's like a phone jail.

So I put my phone in there, right? And I lock it up. But then it's like I want to use my phone still. So then I have to break open a lot to use it. And then you kind of end up feeling worse about yourself. And then you still bought more technology that you have to use. And then it is better off using your phone less, rather than buying a piece of tech to use your phone less more. I don't know if I explained that well.

at all. But that's where I'm, and then I have to rate that. Yeah, out of five. Five stars. I'll still buy it again. I kind of like, I like, I like gadgets that try and make you use gadgets less still. I saw someone on Instagram who posted one of these lockboxes, had posted a photo of the lockbox and gone just put my phone in there and immediately feeling

karma. And I was like, how have you posted this? How is it? It was a proper like piece of paradoxical posting that I found very confusing. Or, you know, I use mine sometimes when I sleep, which is probably the most useless time to use it. But then I was like, what if somebody breaks into my house and I need to call the police?

Then you have to ask them to break into the lockbox. Yeah, can you break in here first? Or do you mind waiting seven hours? like can you give me like a little bit of a head start? I don't know. But I just love Instagram, TikTok gadgets. I just love them. And that brings us to our final story of this week's episode of The Gargle.

And this is the news that apparently African wild dogs are trekking thousands of kilometers to find dates, to find their mates in life. And like I feel in a world of Tinder and grinder and swiping and convenience and frictionless life. This is an aspirational goal for all of us. May we all, I mean, don't the proclaimers have a song about it? May we all trek thousands of miles to find a mate. Michael, how do you feel about this story? I mean, it's very, very human of these dogs. It's very Gen Z. These dogs, right? Like, they just want friends too. Do you know what I mean? And so they're traveling thousands of miles. I wish there was like an African dog sort of FaceTime.

I wish they had a means that they didn't have to do that. But it kind of makes me feel like bad at the extent that I cancel on my friends. Because sometimes that's the best part of my day when plans get cancelled, even plans that I made. So now I see these dogs go in the extra mile. It makes me think maybe I should too. The extra 2,500 miles. There's a lot of miles. I think there were three brothers that went, I think, across 4,126 kilometres over eight months,

which is the longest recorded dispersal. I feel like that's a very nice – like – you're right, Michael, this does make me think about the loneliness epidemic. That's just a nice thing for some brothers to do, isn't it? But what are they doing when they, like, get together? Well, they're meeting. They're finding lady dogs. Oh, okay. I would have done this.

I would, yeah, if I needed to do that, I would – travel enter the earth. So yeah, no, for sure. What these walls have basically done, or these dogs is done like, they've just acted on the promise that people make when they're really drunk, which is like all three of us, road trip. No, like, we're going to do a proper road trip and we're going to go right across, going to cross the whole continent. It's going to be amazing. And these dogs, God bless them, they actually did it. They actually, they went looking for it. They are, they're looking for ladies. And hopefully they're doing it in a, you know, sort of a respectful way, but yeah, they just, they're on a road trip. I bet that, you know, and I absolutely,

I think this has Pixar written all over it, the three brothers on a road trip looking for ladies. This is, they have the Pixar short up the front and then up the upper back end, they have the adult short, which is just a big gang bang. Apparently wild dogs live in these very strict hierarchical packs where only the dominant couple breeds within the pack and everyone else goes short. So they, go as far away as they can to become dominant in their own pack. Oh.

And then they gain... Otherwise, they just... They just have to watch. Yeah. Yeah, well, they can either... You can either wait until the elderly ones shuffle off the banging coil. I don't think they even have to die.

They just get too old to get to be dominant. Or you can gain what's called inclusive fitness by helping relatives inside the pack so that you're more likely to become dominant later by being helpful to your relatives. Or you dispersever. in search of more immediate reading opportunities. So that's when you go on a motorcycle and you're like,

but daddy, he plays the guitar. That's basically that. But this is what scientists should be doing, watching dogs fucking. This is what I want myself. Why are you burying soil, burying underwear? This is what I want my scientist to be doing. This is the one science story that you're like, yeah, I get it. I see it.

I love those dogs, like, moving to be an alpha. That is a real, like, when I go off to university, I'm going to be so different. Like, I'm going to be, I'm going to move. from home and I'm going to be like so cool and I'm going to reinvent myself and it's like you'll just be the same dog you're not going to be you're not going to change or the same dog underneath yeah yeah there so we all do that we all have these moments in our lives where we realize that we are who we are wherever we go that brings us to the end of this week's episode of the gargle

and flipping through the ad section at the back michael where can people find and support you online you can find me on the instagrams or michael de wali comedy post all my dates on there and things like that yeah very nice tom ninen where can people support your work uh at t p ninen on on instagram and i've oh i've done the thing i've got a substack because i'm that person so at t ninen on substack i've been posting poetry on there because either you embrace the cringe or the cringe embraces you um and i decided to just i decided to go all out and just be awful so um why not follow me on there and and we can all suffer together I genuinely, that sounds like exactly the thing that I want to do and I will subscribe.

Oh, that's you. I also have a substack, but I mainly cross-post from my Patreon when I remember to. So if you want, like my Patreon, but slightly less frequent, you can subscribe at my substack. But patreon.com slash Alistphrasia is where you can find me. You can subscribe there for free or for money. If you subscribe for money, you can get access to my twice weekly writers meetings, Poetry Mondays, various other exciting things that are happening over at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser and there's a lovely community of nice people there which is actually

really like sweet and supportive which makes me feel like really smug that I have made space for people to be nice to each other. I don't know but I'm like that's me being nice. I feel like I feel like I get reflected glow of other people being nice to each other by virtue of how nice the community is to one another. But this is a bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. your editor is Harry Gordon. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner and I'll talk to you again next time.