The Gargle - A £200m Mystery London Zoo Donor!

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

On this week's issue of the glossy newspaper pullout The Gargle, Alice is joined by Joz Norris and Ria Lina as the trio jump into this week's science and tech news from ??, a mystery £20m donation for London Zoo, Dino Drama, Hantavirus and PMOS. Plus we're back with another Reviews Section!Alice Fraser: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraserJoz Norris: https://www.joznorris.co.uk/ & https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/eggboxRia Lina: https://www.patreon.com/cw/rialina🎤 Get tickets for the LIVE episode of The Gargle HEREhttps://www.angelcomedy.co.uk/event-detail/the-gargle-live-fri-26th-jun-the-bill-murray-london-tickets-202606261800/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.

Welcome to the Gargle, a satirical science and technology news show. Neo in the Matrix saying, I know Kung Fu. Me, watching at home irritated, saying, no, you just listen to a podcast about Kung Fu. That's not the same as knowing something, you dumb. The number of Dunning Kruger motherfuckers who really believe you know something just from hearing about it, like when Mark Wahlberg said 9-11 would have gone down differently

if he'd been on the plane. I'd like to welcome our co-hosts first. He's the ghost that lurks in the walls and has a haunting crush on the Phantom of the Opera. It's Jaws Norris. Hello. Thank you for having me. I always get...

Dunning Kruger is where stupid people are really stupid. Is that the one? Or is that the one where, after you notice something, then you notice it all the time? What's that? Look, I can't tell you because the more you know about the Dunning Kruger effect,

the less you know about the Dunning Kruger effect. And I... For one. Keep my head down. Yes. Then you're the expert. And the colourised microscope photograph off of a molecular

chakutery board. It's Rihelina. Good morning. Am I the salami in this? Yes. Yeah, you are the sausage. Is it what I am? The slami?

I am the sausage. I'm all right with being the sausage. Is it like being the man? Is that the new euphemism? It really is. I read the other day an article. When I was looking for articles for The Gargle, I found a substack meditation on the nature of the clitoris.

That all clitorises are between nine and 11 inches and therefore and sort of the prototype, same material as the penis. So all women have bigger penises than men. And I was like, it doesn't really counter science news. Doesn't it though? Come on, that's anatomy. I feel sciencey, yeah. Well, it was less science news than it was somebody trying to make a political point about

the nature of the female orgasm. So I thought, maybe for dinner table conversation or the introductory sequence to the gargle. I love both those things. I'd love to be at that dinner party, if I'm honest. I'd love to be the dinner party where no matter what's in front of us, everybody can talk about the size and shape of the clitoris without losing their appetite. I welcome those days. I enjoy the knowing for a fact that having said that women's clitorises are between 9 and 11,

the arms of the clitoris, they look like that, are between 9 and 11 inches, and that's bigger than men's penises. There will be men who are currently typing to me. there are some men have even bigger penises than that, to which I will be forced to reply, is it you? Because if it's not you, you're not allowed. Before we get into the news of this week, let's have a look at the headlines. First, scientists have finally at last confirmed, negative time is real. Researchers have proven that photons can spend less than zero time interacting with atoms

exiting a gas cloud on average before they've even arrived. this discover is either well overdue or significantly premature, and with the new information provided by this paper, I can confidently say it's both. There's also archaeological evidence suggesting that humans were riding horses as early as 3,500 BC, and that that function of riding horses reshaped the genetic map of Eurasia, I should clarify, by spreading people around to f*** not by f***ing horses.

In these monster romantity times, it is worth clarifying such pedantic little points. And China has unveiled GD-O-1, a pilot-operated transforming robot that stands nine feet tall and is capable of smashing through concrete. It is what's called a manned transforming robot. It's from unitary robotics. The company representatives claim that the $650,000 machine is intended for civil transport, because God knows we need more all-terrain civilian transport vehicles that can smash through concrete. Finally, a car that lets you experience road rage on two legs.

four legs and I've fallen over and can't get up legs. They're going to use it for the military. We all know that. That's what it's for. Did they invent a transformer and then have the nerve to call it a transforming machine? Like, that's a, like, there's already a name. Copyright IP, big brands. You can't kind of meddle in this stuff.

They're China. Do they care? Like who's, you're going to sue China through the trademark systems of the US? Like call it, call it what it is, a transformer. That sounds cool. Do we know if it's like a good one or a bad one? Yeah. Yeah, it's an Autobot or a...

One of the good ones. Decepticon? I want to say Decepticon. Decepticon? Yeah, that's the one. I assume. I hazarded that as though I didn't know, but I know it was a decepticon. I have seen one of the new Michael Bay Transformers movies.

And then I've also, on the anniversary of my mom's death, Dan Illich and Toby Trusslove, two Australian entertainment people, took me, I was in LA and they took me to Universal Studios and we went on the Transformers ride, the Michael Bay Transformers ride. And I at last experienced transformers as it is meant to be experienced, which is like, oh, you're being shaken around, someone that's blowing hot air in your face, someone's spraying you in the eye with water and then, then the, like it all makes sense if you're experiencing it as a ride. And I was like, oh, this is my, he's just ahead of his time or in the wrong medium. Do they put you inside a transformer and then transform it around you?

Because I guess as a ride, that would be like... Isn't that a Dalek, if you're a little thing inside of a machine? Oh, yeah. I mean, it depends if we're in medieval times. It's homunculus. But that brings us to our news stories now. This is the new news of a new system of anatomy that has been discovered. They have discovered an anatomical system. They thought there was the blood system and the lymph system,

and they did not think that there was like various intersections. Rialina, you read this painstaking article in the New York Times. Can you unpack this story a little bit for us? Because I feel like when they discover new systems at this point, the news is less we discovered a new system and more. We missed a system for ages. Well, we missed a system twice for ages. So first of all, it's called the interstitium,

because it's interstitial to other things that we were already familiar with there. We missed it first in that this just came out in the New York Times, but was actually discovered in 2018. So there's some kind of, I don't know, pre-post COVID delay on getting this from the scientists to whoever animated this for the New York Times. It was an animated HTML article where you had to scroll through and read three lines at a time while it changed the graphics in the background, although the graphics were made by a graphic designer and were in no way anatomically relevant. But the other way that we've missed this is the fact that the Chinese have known about this for thousands of years. So when we say they've discovered a new part of the body, the West has acknowledged that there's something in science that they didn't acknowledge before, but haven't gone as far as acknowledging that maybe the Chinese and Eastern medicine does know something about what they're talking about. So it's called the interstitium, and it's a vast interconnected network, a fluid-filled chance. channels running around and between cells, tissues and organs throughout the entire body.

So just think of it like a sheet of chicken wire, which is like collagen bundles that provide structure, embedded in a sponge-like gel, which is the hyaluronic acid, which all of us like to slap on our faces, which absorbs and stores fluid cells, molecules. And they kind of seep through this gel at a rate separate to the lymph system and the circulatory system. And they discovered it by, you know, and again, some of these science experiments done in China where they would inject something at the bottom of your wrist and they'd find that it would make its way all the way up to your heart. And they think that the interstitium is what the acupuncture meridians are based on. They're like, oh, is that how acupuncture works? So now the West is willing to accept that maybe acupuncture does do something. Whereas before it was just Eastern needle mumbo jumbo. Excellent. I will think of it as a sheet of chicken wire. That's my favourite thing to think about. I often imagine my body as a sort of a hollow puppet being managed by a floating brain. So this is very useful to feed into my model of the world. Jaws Norris, how do you feel about a new system in your system? I feel weird about it. I feel weird that because it's gaps, right? It's basically the idea that there are all these gaps in between these other systems, which now we know do this separate. thing. I reckon we can get rid of it. It's the chicken wire. It's the chicken wire in the gaps.

There's the gaps between the wire, right? And that's the like, but there's a gel. There is a gel. Right, right. I don't feel comfortable with it. I think we can get rid of the whole layer. Is it more unsettling to you, Jaws, to imagine a functional gel than it is to imagine just, just a whole? Yeah, I just don't like, I don't like the texture of gel. I don't like the idea that there's this new thing inside me I didn't know about. I was fine with, you know, I've, I've had enough time to understand bones and I've had enough time to understand kind of like fluids and spongy tissue. The idea that there is now like gel with big holes in. Because, you know, that's a phobia. People have that phobia of holes. So if that's inside, I feel like we could probably get rid of

the whole thing. And then that would make us all like about 20% smaller, right? Do you mean the entire thing or the whole thing? The whole layer, like this sort of system of gaps that we now have in between us. You know when you shrink crap something and you just take all the air and. out and it gets smaller. I reckon now we know about this, we can do this. And then people will get a bit smaller, and then that will solve all kinds of problems. I don't know which problems, but like overcrowding on trains and buses.

That was what was going on with the Wicked 2 press tour. Yes, I mean, women would be thrilled if you could just hair dryer your body and just shrink wrap into a slightly tighter shape. No, I find that deeply upsetting. Speaking of deeply upsetting, there is a 20, million dollar animal purving institution that has just been established. Well, there was a mystery gift given to the London Zoo and it has been turned into the mystery gift of 20 million pounds has been turned into a viewing, a viewable veterinary surgery institution. There's an animal hospital

in the London Zoo which you can now go and watch animals get getting checked up on and operated on and just it feels, it feels, I mean, I just, I just, I mean, I just, I just, I just, I don't think they have privacy issues. But I feel it feels like an invasion of the Ard Vax privacy. I feel affronted by it. I feel it's a bit pervy in a way, not a sex way, although maybe, I don't know, mystery $20 million gifts. I don't trust philanthropy in the UK ever since I heard about Jimmy Saville. So I'm, no, Josh Norris, how do you feel about this 20 million pound per person? I feel mostly just really curious about. the nature of this mystery donation.

That was the big thing about this article where I was like, who's done this? Because I think it must be Attenborough, right? I was trying to work out who at this stage of their life would have the resources and the inclination to go, do you know what? I've had a good life and I want to leave something behind. I've got to be at him.

Because it's also 200 years of London Zoo, I think. It's like to mark the occasion. And it's 100 years of David. Yeah, and he does love purving on animals. He loves perving on animals. He's the gold standard. of perving on animals. But I also don't really understand what the 20 mil has been spent on, because presumably there was already a facility at London Zoo where they were doing, you know,

they were looking after animals. So is this a 20 million pound window? And now people can look in. Is that it? Is that what he's done? Yeah, I don't think they actually had, I think that's just building another building where part of it is the viewing gallery. It is really weird, though, that you're going to be able to watch live vet process. procedures. And it says for the first time publicly in the UK. And I went, I don't think it's for the first time. I'm pretty sure Victorians also didn't give them any kind of privacy or respect or dignity. So I'm pretty sure we're reinventing a wheel that we moved away from for probably very good reasons. But also, it's going to include vet care, science research, professional training, public

engagement under one roof, but not a single cafe. And I don't know if you've ever been to the London Zoo. But that, I mean, the cafe is, is good, but it isn't sufficient. Like, I cannot believe that 20 million doesn't cover a cup of tea and a cake after you've watched some penguin health check or an ultrasound on a pregnant ardvark. Yeah, look, I mean, in all seriousness, I think it's really lovely for people that want to go into animal care. It'll be good for the environment and everything. But it is, it is troubling to me that the donation is mysterious, even though that's like probably a good thing that somebody doesn't want to show. off their donation. It feels like it, I feel like transparency in all things.

Otherwise, what do you, what do you buy in with your 20 million other than silence? What if it's from a Thai millionaire who wants to remain nameless? That's the guy that gave five million to Nigel Farage. Oh, yeah. I'm so sorry. So maybe he's trying to make up for it. Maybe he's trying to like balance his karma. Or like Musk or someone like that who has a reputation as like,

like a bad sort of alpha male dude who's secretly is like, no, I'd like to do some good for the world and a sort of siphon some money off into something a bit more altruistic. But he doesn't want us to know. Well, look, even though I've come out as quite anti-this, I'm definitely going to go with my four-year-old daughter and make her watch something. I just hope they get the building right

because they want to do the vet care and so that you can kind of watch animals, you know, doing guerrilla CT scans or whatever. which sounds fascinating, but they also want to investigate how disease spreads from animals to humans in the same building. And if you recall, those kinds of things don't always go well. But apparently ZSL already do research into bovine tuberculosis and bat carried viruses. And I'm like, well, we remember what happened the last time a bat carried virus. Yeah, George Clooney got nipples on his suit.

No, you're talking about something else. Which brings us to our ad section, your ad section now, because you can't be what you can't buy. Did you know someone came into my live show the other day with a homemade, you can't be what you can't buy a t-shirt? Aw. Right. Made me very happy. And it sort of, I mean, made me think I should have been selling merch that said you can't be what you can't buy. But sort of.

How much were they? Was the human for sale? I assume so. But I only had to. pocket change. Add section, what if you could miss something before it's gone, presenting the premature nostalgia goggles, augmented reality lenses that overlay a remember when filter onto your present moment.

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It's like grief but convenient. Premature nostalgia goggles. Why wait to be unhappy? You're busy. You're busy. You don't have time for a full, unpredictable weeks, months or years-long grieving process every time you lose your wallet,

a grandparent or your youth. That's why we developed micro-grief, the first sublingual tablet that compresses complex emotional suffering into a single, efficient four-second full-body sob. How does it work? Nano-encapsulated neurotransmitters trigger a flash funeral in your amygdala. You'll feel a small but incredibly heavy condensed pang of loss, anger and panic, a brief image of your grandmother bag, ex-boyfriend or ex-poodle, and an encompassing bleakness that passes by the time the pill has hit your bloodstream. No crying at your desk, no awkward conversations with HR or loved ones. No regrettable revelations, just pure industrial strength morning delivered on demand. Side effects may include rendering joy meaningless, listening to Hustleboro podcasts, degrading your essential humanity.

Microgrief loss, now inconvenient 10 milligram doses. Now it's time for Old News is New News News. Old News is New New News. PCOS has been renamed Ria Lina. You've met an ovary. Can you unpack this story for us? I think I've met not one ovary. I think I might have met two, but I've never had that confirmed.

But there is a condition, and if you haven't heard of it, where have you been? Because up until last week, it was known as polycystic ovary syndrome. So PCOS, polycysticic ovary syndrome. And they have, after a worldwide campaign, and this took 14 years, to achieve, they have successfully managed to rename it polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome. And the reason that's so important is because when it was named polycystic, it implied that, first of all, that's how you look for it. And in fact, polycystic, multiple cysts on the ovary is not always a sign in this particular condition. Secondly, because it meant that many, many

doctors went, this is a reproductive issue. And it is not, it is an endocrine issue. It is a hormonal issue. Thirdly, it just came with a lot of stigma, came with a lot of stigma surrounding it and this reproductive focus and, you know, this idea that, oh, well, we only need to treat it if you want to have children. Or, well, you have PCOS, therefore you can never have children, which, both of which are not true. So now that it's been renamed, it's now going to be far more better managed, because I don't know if either if you know this, but women don't always have the experience when they go to the doctor. I know, crazy, right? But so often they're not treated correctly or told, it's all in your head, or why do you lose a bit of weight, or I don't know what

you want me to do. I'm a podiatrist. And this means that now they're going to get much better care. So we're not calling it polysistic, because that isn't always a thing. Polyendocrine, meaning that this involves multiple hormone systems, not just one. You know, it's insulin. It's your androgens. It's your gonadotopin releasing hormone. Your lutenizing hormone. So many different things that when they go out of whack, create all of these symptoms that women have been suffering with. And now that it's been understood for years, actually. And it was Professor Helena Teed, who is an endocrinologist and director of Monash University Center for Health Research and Implementation in Australia that led the charge on

this going, this is a me thing. This is an endocrinologist thing. This is not a gynecologist thing. So this is huge, huge. Is it weird to say that I am simultaneously pleased and also slightly upset that it is a female doctor? Because on one hand, it's nice to see a female doctor getting credit for making a discovery. And also, of course it's a fucking female doctor because you can't get male doctors to care. They're just like, well, I guess that's how your vagina is now forever. You know, I hear. Jaws, how do you feel about PMS?

I feel like, I mean, ordinarily on this show, I would sort of try. try to find ways to deliberately misunderstand the science or pick holes or something for, just to try and be funny with it. But I feel like with this one, it's just a really long overdue thing. And I'm glad it's happened, you know. I think it'll make things better for people. I'm reining in my will to be snarky about it. I just think, I mean, 14 years is mad.

14 years are actively campaigning on it. Yeah. From like they knew 14 years ago that this was a problem. Or like they began to suspect or like they knew. for 14 years. And it's just taking that long for people to go, oh, all right. It took 14 years of global collaboration. Wow. Because everybody had to agree to change the name.

That's so bad. We're probably a lot of men going, no, I know more about this than you do, Helena. And we know this name now. It's sort of easy. I'm going to have to learn like four new letters. Like how long's the new one? P-M-O-S. So I've got to change one whole letter in that thing. That's a lot. Yeah, but it's in the middle.

It's a lot of it. It's a lot of it. It's a lot of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a fath. That takes at least a decade to sort through all that kind of admin. This is ovarian cysts gone mad, is what they'll say. That brings us to our reviews section.

As you know, each fortnight we ask our gargle guests to bring in something to review out of five stars. Joyce, what have you brought in for us to review? I am reviewing the sheep detectives, a new Hugh Jackman film, in which Hugh Jackman plays a dead shepherd whose sheep have to solve his murder. Incredible film. Really, really great film. And I feel it's actually quite hard for me to review it because I can't work out whether it's actually a good film

or whether it appeals very specifically to the things I'm currently interested in because I'm currently making a show about Hugh Jackman and I'm also trying to write a murder mystery at the same time. So to me, I had a great time. Haven't worked sheep into it yet, but since watching this, I've decided that might be the secret source. Maybe that's how you do it.

I think it knows what it's doing. I think it's a really stupid film, but I think it does know it. I think because I'm kind of like an unreliable reviewer for it, I'm going to talk about a specific bit of it that is the most fascinating like sequence of events in a film that I've seen in ages and I had to really puzzle out what had happened. There's a bit where Nicholas Braun as a police officer

and Nicholas Galatine as a journalist who's covering the murder, walking down a street. It's all set in a little quaint village. And they walk past what looks like a kind of a barn. And very prominently on the front of a barn is a neon sign that says Nancy's neon. and then next to it it says huge discounts for local residents. And it's very prominent. So I thought, oh, I wonder if that's going to be a clue for the murder mystery.

It's never mentioned again, but like five minutes later, they go to the police station, and the police station is like a little wooden cottage with a huge neon sign that says police station on the front. And then other than that, that's it. You don't. And I was trying to look at why this happens. And I think it must be that they sorted their location, this quaint little village. And then they looked around and went, oh, no building here looks like a police station.

What do we do? And then in some sort of focus meeting, somebody was like, could they have a neon sign on the front that says police station? And someone else must have gone, yeah, but why would there be a neon sign in a small village? And someone else went, I guess there could be a local business that does neon signs and offers local discounts for,

that's the only explanation I can think for why this happened. And it's such a reverse-engineered way of, like, getting somebody to understand what the police station is. And I also think there can only be like 40 people in this village. So how many, like, you're going to work through the local discounts so quick, It doesn't make any sense as a business, but it's one of my favorite background details I've seen in a film ever. So I'm going to give it five stars, loved it, gave me a lot to think about. And it knows it's dumb.

It does know it's dumb. Okay, excellent. I feel like I ought to go watch that. That's now on my list. Ria Lina, what have you brought in to review? I want to review probiotic pills. You know the ones that you go in and they go, it's live culture and it's got 50, 50,000 billion life forms per pill.

Yeah, that's how they sell the Edinburgh fringe. Yes, exactly. Well, I went in the other day to get some because whenever I, sometimes I just get a bit of a dicky tummy. And then what happens when I have a dicky tummy is I eat all the wrong stuff. I just go, do you want more Coca-Cola? No, okay. Do you want more nerds? No, that's not good either.

Okay. So, and then eventually I go, I've messed up my system. And I go and I buy like symbiotic pills because I go, these must fix everything, right? And then I wait to see my brain increase in power because I feel quite smug about knowing that if your gut health is happy, then your brain gets smarter. And so I want to give a review, but to all of them, including I found out when I went in to just buy some generic, you know, gut pills. I went in, I found out that you can buy these sort of bacteria, biotic gut pills for something called, well, let's call it female health. But it's for when you are out of balance in your vaginal area, which as women will know, if you're totally out of balance, it goes one of two ways. You either end up with a yeast infection because that side of the ecosystem is taken over.

or you can end up with something like bacterial vaginosis, which is when the bacteria takes over. But either way, you're out of whack. And what I love about those pills, I found out, I was like, so you take these pills? How do they, if you swallow those pills, how do they get into your vagina to sort that out? And it turns out that you swallow them.

They go all the way through your gut. They wave to the gut bacteria on their way out. They're like, I guess like one of those big, you know, slides, super slides that you have. in a water park, they just are like, wee, and they go all the way down, they come out of your bum, then they crawl across your perineum, and they go up into your vagina, and then they go, right, what's going on here? Who's out of order? Who needs to be taken to the neon signed police station of the vagina? And that's how they sort you out. And so for that action, to go to that

much effort, like five out of five. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's sort of a fascinating thing. I often feel like seizing a stranger in the street and saying, did you know that my vagina is constantly in war with itself? And then moving on, just for the fun of it. I don't think you should move on. I think you should then go into. And my clitoris is nine to 11 inches. It's bigger than your dick.

It's got legs. They all do. Yeah, look, I feel like that is a, that's a market. problem if you need to have the thing go all the way through the wrong way like when you could just have it go up in the one way that feels like we need to have females be more comfortable with touching their bits or not washing your bits because if you wash your bits you're watching they've gone all the way through they're on that final journey across the perineum then you go in there

and wash them away it's a very it's a very it's i know i see why we were given the responsibility of these body parts. To just be able to handle the delicate balance that they are, to understand how to keep ourselves clean without washing away, you know, the pilgrimage. Yeah, well, everything is multitasking because you're doing everything while having vagina and backwards in high heels.

Jaws. I'm amazed to even let us cook in the kitchen. You know what I mean? Presumably it doesn't, when it comes out of your bum, it doesn't come out still as a pill, right? By that point, it's like to be broken down. Because I'm picturing the whole pill come out and then it's kind of walking around. And just make its way across.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I agree with Alice. I can't. I still don't understand why it's a pill and not a pessory. I'm still going, uh, okay. But no, I think it breaks it down into that. I don't know. It gives me the creeps when I think about it because they're alive.

And so I'm like, so you mean they're just sort of crawling across my perineum? They're just, you know, are they dragging themselves at this point? Are they just like? can't be outside for too long. I'm, you know, I. And do they know, like, from, from the point it goes in a way, they know where they go, or they're kind of like improvising the whole way through. And then when they eventually get there, they're like, oh, cool, we did it.

Or does it know where it's going? Well, that's the question, because it's a pretty one-way direction. From the moment you swallow it, there's only one way through. But then you imagine coming out of the rectum. And you have to go anywhere. And you have to go left or right. Yeah, exactly. Like, what if 50% of them are getting it wrong?

So how many stuff? out of five, Mia. Oh, definitely. Five. If that's the most, I can get five out of five for that. And that brings us to old news, old, proper, proper old news now. This is crab facts news. This is the news that the crab's sideways walk may have evolved only once.

George Norris, your pinchy, pinchy, pinchy, pinchy. Can you tell us this story? I am always pinching. So this is the story that they've discovered that all sideways moving crabs are descended from one ancestor. Like most crabs move sideways, a few of them don't, and all the ones that do can be traced back to one point in evolutionary history. All the ones that still move forwards come from multiple different branches of the thing. So they now think that the sideways moving must have been a huge evolutionary advantage for some reason. So it became a trait that fast-tracked all this other kind of explosion of stuff.

I really like this story because it sort of makes me feel as though evolutionary history feels a bit like a kind of a frustrated artist to me now. Because you know the thing about like the earth keeps producing crabs? Like crabs have appeared at multiple different points in evolutionary history completely separately. So the earth just keeps going like crab. Like whenever it's trying to invent a new idea, it's like, shall I do a crab again? Do you want more crab? And you know how like... Like your aunt, you heard you like owls once.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I once like accidentally drank too much of my uncle's Gordon's gin while I was staying with him. And it now means whenever he has to get me a present for anything, he'll get me a bottle of Gordon's gin. And I don't really drink gin all that much. But he's decided like, oh, you like gin because you stole all my gin that time. But I also feel like, you know, kind of like as comedians. What a class of aggressive gift. Yeah.

Like, just really just to like remember the time you drank all my gin. Well, here you go. Never touch my. gin again. Here's your room. I feel terrible about it. It's really baked in. You know now as comedians, you sort of like, you're always trying to like do a new thing, but you always end up making the kind of thing that you make.

Like I keep thinking one of these days I'm going to make a stand-up show where I just stand at the microphone and tell jokes for an hour. And then inevitably by the time I've finished it, I'm like, oh, I took my trousers off and ran around and shouted and had loads of songs again. Like a crap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Much like. But you sort of, you can't help. like keep doing the thing that you do,

but then one day you'll have a breakthrough and you'll be like, oh, I worked at how to actually make it work. And then it sort of steps forward. So I really like this story because it makes evolution feel like a frustrated comedian that's just going crab, crab, crab, crab, crab. And then one day goes sideways moving crab and then goes, oh my God, I worked out how to do it. I solved my crab problem.

So, yeah, this makes me feel like I have some kind of empathy for the universe as a whole. And I quite like that. Yeah, yeah, and then you show everyone the sideways moving crab And like look at this innovation there like it's just another crab Yeah, they go you've done that I've seen this I've seen your shit But yeah well done it moves sideways now And you go no no this is gonna be so different This one's really gonna work

I think it's fascinating that once the crab You know once the earth created the sideways moving crab The crab itself then copyrighted or trademark Sidewise movement and when no other crab is allowed to move this way except for my descendants, which means that they're all really incestuously. Like, you know, we go one single ancestor means they're all related to each other.

Like, no matter, imagine being on crab Tinder, just going, oh, it's my cousin, it's my cousin, it's my cousin. Are you swiping left or right? It doesn't matter. Both are sideways. And that brings us to the news, speaking of crab's inner lives and dating preferences, Apparently dinosaurs lived much more complex lives than we have ever thought.

Jones Norris, you're our old things expert for this segment. What kind of spicy lives were dinosaurs living? Yeah, well, I did notice that all the stories that sort of most leaped out to me this week were about like evolution or old things. So I don't know what I've learned about myself that I still just sort of little boy obsessed with dinosaurs. But I really like this story. Half of it was behind a paywall. So sadly, I don't actually know what the conclusion of this story was.

But the half of it that I was able to read was about, they've reached the conclusion that dinosaurs probably didn't live the way that we think they did. They didn't behave the way we think they did based on Jurassic Park and pop culture. And the specific example they give is that velociraptors probably didn't hunt in packs. And I think they probably go on to draw lots of other conclusions about things that they now suppose that dinosaurs didn't. Oh, yeah. Oh, with the second half. Well, I hope it doesn't ruin it for me

because my favorite sentence in the whole thing is there's a bit where this scientist says, there's not much evidence that Velociraptors did hunt in packs, but because dinosaurs existed all over the planet for hundreds of millions of years, they probably did at some point because in that time, anything that we can imagine dinosaurs doing,

they probably did at some point, which I think is an amazing claim for a scientist to make, because I can imagine dinosaurs doing a lot. I can imagine them like, batch cooking a lasagna, which now means, according to this scientist, they did that. And if they did that, that must mean that another dinosaur at some point invented pasta. Like, as soon as you kind of crack open the doors, I feel like he's really changed the game. So I'm kind of sad to know that one of us could access beyond the paywall because it means

we'll presumably find out what he actually meant. I mean, I find that really heartbreaking, actually, because that means as a dinosaur scientist, he's never seen the popular 90s television show dinosaurs. Is that the one where they all wear shirts? And it's like a family sitcom. Yeah, I love that show. He's never let himself imagine. Ria, tell us what was behind the paywall.

Well, first of all, my favorite bit is also that scientist talking. He said the whole reason that people assumed that they hunted in Pax is because they found, I think, a whole bunch of carnivores, like Tirenosaurus Rexus or something, dead in a group around a herbivore. So they went, oh, they must hunt in packs. because look at all these hunters dead around this herbivore. And he's like, but when does that ever happen? When do lions hunt in a pack, kill an antelope, and then all fall down dead? It doesn't

happen that way. So that's why they probably didn't hunt in packs. But then at the same time, they probably did. We just have no evidence for it. So they also found out that herding in herbivores was also more complicated than they thought. So large groups of herbivore fossils exist, but many may reflect mass death events rather than permanent herd living. Juvenile dinosaurs, there was a surprising pattern. Juveniles make up only about 5% of all dinosaur fossil finds, yet when groups of dinosaurs are found together, roughly half are juveniles, which strongly suggests that juveniles deliberately gathered in groups away from adults, classic teenagers, right, gathering in groups and then falling down dead so that we can find them in groups years later. The average clutch size was 20,

to 50 eggs with multiple clutches possible per year. That's a lot of mothering. Can I just say? That's a lot of mothering. I mean, evolutionarily speaking, what that indicates to me is a lot of bad mothering, if you know what I mean. Oh, well, yeah. If you're having to have like 20 to 50 babies three to four times a year because you keep losing the others, you know, stop letting them gathering groups. Clearly, that's what kills them. There was fossil evidence that shows that predatory dinosaurs frequently target the tails of prey, which is strategically effective because the tail contains the single largest muscle group powering dinosaur locomotion. So they would go after the tail in order to cripple their prey. They found extensive fossil evidence. This was a

very long article. Fossil evidence of introspecies combat. They found probably behind the paywall was everything that the guy said that they probably did. I think that the scientists, they was also not allowed behind the paywall. That's what he said. I think they could do other things. You said something stupid on Twitter in 2014, or yesterday it doesn't matter. Instead of writing a sincere time-consuming apology that involves looking into the causes of the mistake, let the deep fake apology generator handle it.

Just upload your face and voice samples. Type in the vague nature of your offense. And our AI will produce a photorealistic video of you looking genuinely remorseful. We add trembling lifts, a single well-timed tear, and background music that sounds like sad cello from a BBC documentary. You'll never have to learn to grow or even understand what you did wrong. The apology goes viral. Everyone moves on and you are free to offend again next week. Deep fake apology generator. Sincerity is expensive. Come to the live gargle at the Bill Murray on the 26th of June. It is going to be so much fun. It'll have all of the stuff that you

enjoy from the gargle and a signing of my book afterwards. And I'm doing a bunch of other previews and you can check them all out and find them over at the buglepodcast.com or Alicefraiser.com where all of my upcoming dates are, ah, that was the end of that sentence. Good. Also, if you are in Australia, my book, A Passion for Passion is available via my website. So if you want to cut out the middleland, you can come via my website, buy the book for a normal price and I will include a hand-drawn sketch of Fabio. I've been doing that. It's been fun. And And that's your ad section for today. And that brings us to the end of this week's episode of The Gargle.

I'm flipping through the ad section at the back of this glossy magazine. Joss Norris, have you got anything to plug? I do. I'm doing a show called Eggbox on Tuesday, the 26th of May at the Pleasance. We screen short films and do live readings of brand new scripts. So that's coming up. I'm also starting on a new show called Jaws Norris. Hugh Jackman is The Phantom of the Opera.

which is going to Brighton Fringe, Exeter Comedy Festival and Work in Progresses at the Edinburgh Fringe. These are all work in progress things because it's a new show. And I'm finishing off my old show, which is called U-Wait Time Passes. That's wrapping up its tour in Canterbury on the 20th of June. And then we'll be doing a one-off for Shedimba during the Edinburgh Fringe. So three things coming up. They're all on my website.

If people would like details of any of them come along. I'd love to see you there. Excellent. Ria Lina, what have you got to plug? I'd like to plug my Patreon. please. If people could come and join me on my Patreon, we're building a community. There's lots of free stuff there that you can enjoy. Come join me. We also do a live stream every Sunday morning called Paper Jam, which is like group therapy for the news. Also, John's notice you have a

substack, speaking of subscriptions. I do have a substack, which I should also try to work out whether and how I'm going to monetize it one day. At the moment, I'm still too scared of the idea of asking people to regularly spend money on stuff. But one of these days, I probably should. should turn it into a Patreon or something. But yeah, if people would like to sign up to my newsletter, that's Jos Norrisat, substat.com or something like that. Or some combination of those words will surely find it, surely. What was the short film thing you said again? I know. Oh, it's called, it's called Eggbox. And we've been running it for a couple of years as a place where we sort of screen comedy short films people have made and we do live readings of scripts that are kind of work in

progress. Just because so many people are making really good scripted comedy and it's very easy to feel like, it's like within TV in particular I think it's so kind of like doom and gloom it's all a bit negative about like there's no money how do you get anything made so we're trying to create a space where we go well these people are making

cool stuff and I don't know just try and create a little bit more positivity around the idea of making scripted comedy because it does feel quite hard at the moment you can join my writer's meetings which are Sunday every week Sunday night and Monday morning Australia time Sunday Sunday Sunday

UK time and I'm also going to be doing some special masterclasses coming up if you want to patreon.com slash Alisarza you can subscribe over there for free to hear all of the news. This is a bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Harry Gordon. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner.

I'll talk to you again next fortnight. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman, as you may know. The bugle, as well as being the world's only ever, longest running and arguably best audio newspaper for a visual world is one of the very few fully independent media empires remaining in this thus far very silly millennium. voluntary subscribing listeners have made this possible and you, if you are not

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