The Gargle - AI chaos from leaks to lies

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

On this week's issue of the glossy newspaper pullout The Gargle, Alice is joined by co-editors James Colley and Tom Neenan, as the three delve into the week's news in science and tech! AI chaos from leaks to lies, as Claude conversation leaked publicly and AI calories trackers off by hundreds. The trio also explore the stories that dream may not be as random as we thought and transforming Mars may be more of a possibility than once thought! All this plus more on this week's Gargle!Alice Fraser: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraser & https://www.instagram.com/alicefraserhuman/James Colley: https://www.instagram.com/jamcolley/?hl=enTom Neenan: https://www.tomneenan.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 SkinnerProduced by Harry Gordon, with Executive production from Chris Skinner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, London. The Gargall is coming to London live on the 26th of June. I will be there. Our co-hosts for The Gargle Live will be Tom Neenan and Alison Spittle. It's going to be a delightful evening with some surprises. Head over to the buglepodcast.com slash live or check out the link in the description below. I will see you there. 26th of June, the Bill Murray. Science. The Science of Science. Technology, which is where you use science to make science do stuff you want it to do. Science, the study of what using things does to the people using them. The study by science of technology, the application of technology to science. The future coming, the past, both recent and long ago.

Now, both happening and already over. This is the gargle. Yes, you're listening to The Gargle, the Science and Technology pull-out section of the Bugles' audio newspaper for a visual world. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and our guests for this episode. Some say by tide, some say by tribunal, some say he's simply walked out of the the sea one day already holding a microphone and a mild grievance. He's looked directly into the void of the news cycle and made it blink first.

It's James Colley. Hello. I was born with a grievance. A lot of grievances, actually. So many. So, I mean, I think all babies are born with quite a sense of grievance. This is a great way to enter, but my son entered the world and his first act was pissing on everyone around him.

And I thought, yeah, that's one of mine. Yeah. And raised by a library that got top. tired of being quiet, the hot bookish nerd that's hot to both nerds and books. Somewhere right now a the thoris is checking its own pulse. Please welcome to the show, the man, the myth, Tom Ninen. Thank you. It's actually very fitting. I started today by going into a library and pissing on everything I could see.

We are in accord. And this week, Sweden might become a rare earth element gold mine. And by gold mine, it means other than gold mine. researchers are cataloguing everything in Swedish middle deposits rather than mining for one target metal, which is just to say they're processing all the dirt and seeing if any of it's good positioning Sweden as a possible source of materials needed for magnets and green tech

because there's nothing greener than feeding an entire country's dirt into a wood chipper to see what happens. And researchers have engineered bacteria into a living plastic that fully breaks itself down once activating, aiming at the mountain of packaging waste so your Amazon boxes could break themselves down, maybe while they're around your new vibrator. And this one quantum super weird quantum trick,

supercharges energy transfer, researchers have discovered a proton-assisted mechanism that dramatically improves how energy moves between quantum dots and nearby molecules with a proton briefly shifting position to help the hand off along. All of this exciting news. But first, let's get into our reviews.

As you know each week, our guest editors bringing something to review out of five stars. Tom Neenam, what have you brought in for us? I am delighted this week to review what I am calling the Jimothy phenomenon. I don't know if you're all familiar with Jimothy. He is a Seattle-based raccoon with a spinal deformity, which means that he has an unusually round body. And in a dark world, in a world where things are going to Helen a handcart,

But Jimothy, I think, has brought light to these dark times just by existing. He's a little fellow who runs around having a wonderful time going through people's bins and being sort of adorably spherical. And I think that sometimes, like collectively, we all yearn for something simple, something innocent, something beautiful and something kind of comes along to fit what we need from that. And this time I think it's Jimothy. He's beautiful. He's a hero for our times.

And for me, I give him five stars. Five stars for Jimothy. I think it is great that everybody's come together on Jimothy. And it feels unproblematic to enjoy a raccoon's deformity because mainly he seems to be fine. He seems to be just getting on with it. And it doesn't feel like we're punching down. Jimothy is doing better than most of us. I feel.

I feel like I often come on the gargle and I am the bad guy, but I would like to cook and eat this creature. I don't, I think that should be okay. Do we not have space for all ideas here? I would like to give him a little bit of a soy garlic honey kind of marinade. I would like to slow cook him. I think just crispy right at the end, like pretty up to 300 degrees, just get that skin really popping. I would like to eat this. not because I think he will taste good.

I think he will taste terrible. I would like to ruin everyone else's nice time. Look, I have been enjoying Jimuthi only on the periphery, partly because I resent being drawn into cool culture and I hate fun, but also because, you know, it's only going to be a week before we discover that Jimothy did blackface or something about immigrants or, you know, voted for someone we don't. agree with. So I feel

I'm going to enjoy people's enjoyment of Jimothy. I feel like we have the full spectrum of Jimothy approaches here. You're a slight Jimothy agnostic. You're like, I'm going to hang on to Jimothy until we've got the full picture of what's going on here. Being neutral about Jimothy is being complicit

in Jimothy. I know. I get accused of centristism all the time. Silence is violence on the Jimothy fund. I'm happy that you're happy about Jimothy. Do I have to go the Jimothy parade is all I'm saying. Just, I reckon though, like, you could kick him so far. He's like kind of perfectly positioned for like just really to get up and get some good lift on that thing.

I think that's what is this, it's so special about Jimothy is that he, but yeah, he is the most vulnerable creature on the planet as he does look a lot like a football. And also he's, he's sort of one of the in terms of kind of valued species, he's near the bottom. He eats garbage. He sort of makes do yet the internet has embraced him. He is like a punch the monkey, but less sappy, you know, less sort of sappy. And I think that's what we need. Well, I think also the great thing is that normally for something to be that adorably disfigured,

we have to have selectively bred it for generations for our pleasure. Yes, exactly. And then put it in a palace in Buckingham. That's it. Maybe I just see in him like the potential to be my monarch. And that is why I can't help but respect, Timothy. Tom Nean,

what have you brought in for us for reviewing? That was Tom's review. I just hijacked him. Oh, sorry. James, what have you brought in for us to review? I have brought in the time. 255 a.m., which I have to say I was mainly unfamiliar with, but my 11-month-old son and I have been

checking it out quite a bit over the past couple of weeks. He seems to really like it. He's got a kind of rooster system in which he screams and I get up. And together we sit and I try and bore him back to sleep by watching chess highlight videos. But unfortunately, that to me is incredibly exciting and he might fall asleep. But I'm too hyped up on what Magnus Carlson has done this week. And so it's very difficult for me to get back to sleep. So I've also been reviewing 305 a.m., 3.15 a.m., 3.30 a.m. and 3.45 a.m. And I'll say diminishing returns.

I'd say stick to 255 a.m. And then get out as soon as you can. Yes, my tactic was reading Jack Reacher novels on my Kindle, because the great thing about a Jack Reacher novel is that at that time of the night, at 3 o'clock in the morning, when you're breastfeeding your infant son, it's a very soft maternal space and you do need to rectify the gender balance in the room, firstly. I do believe you can pass the reading material through the milk. But secondly, you need a book that is of a very specific reading level. Like you need a book that is you're perfectly happy to pick it up. You're not going to pick anything else up by preference, but that also you're perfectly happy to put it down exactly eight and a half minutes later

because you can't afford a book that's too good. You can't afford something that's unput downable. You need to be like, I wonder what Jack reaches up to. Punching and then sleep with another flicker of an eyelid. We had a dear friend of mine was recovering from brain. surgery after a series of tumours. And he was told that, frankly, like, when you're in this situation, you can't have stress of any kind. You can't have things that shock or surprise you. You can't even reply to work emails or things because all of this might trigger an event that

you do not want. And so he spent a lot of his recovery reading every Matthew Riley book, which I'm not sure how far he is translated, but is like kind of Australian Jack Reach a pulp style action an airport dad novel. And he walked into that, comforted to know, there will be no surprises. He will understand exactly what's happening. Nothing will shock or excite or stimulate him in any way. It is the perfect.

Yeah, that's exactly your first thought of what might happen in this situation kind of set up, which is medically proven to be worthwhile for him. He is one of the nine great warriors of history, which include Mahamah Gandhi and the Buddha. He has one robot. Don't don't even begin. He has one robot hand. He lost his hand in a volcano puzzle-solving incident

while saving a small child. He has a falcon called Horace, and he gets around in a Boeing 747 that he stole from Saddam Hussein. Yes. Guys, I'm too stimulated. I think this is the wrong. This sounds incredible, and my brain is on fire right now. It's so good.

We need to do a podcast. James Colley, we need to do. It's so good. The first three chapters are just explaining everyone's code name, and the cars and guns that they have. This is the kind of book that when you turn to like, like in, he's written a hundred of these things, but the kind of book that when you turn to like chapter two,

it has the number two, then it has a picture of like a map of Afghanistan and then a Tomahawk missile. And you're like, great. Sure, whatever. Let's go. That sounds too good. I would need like a biography of a,

very dull politician where I know basically anything that they did during their lifetime. I know every piece of legislation they failed to get through. The books you're describing do sound incredible. So I'm going to have to check these out. You would think that what he's managed to do incredibly is tell these wildly eventful plot lines that contain zero suspense. So for example, there's all these like traps and puzzles and they're in like an ancient Egyptian tomb and there's like a terrible trap.

but it is not solved by like all the audience going along with him on the journey of solving the puzzle or deducing the, it's solved by him remembering a page of a booky red ones. Top news story this week is Musk says that Grok Imagine will make a historically accurate AI adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. Elon Musk, one of the most wealthy men in human history, has taken offense at Christopher Nolan's a very successful adaptation of the Odyssey, an ancient Greek poem, and has decided that it isn't good enough and that he wants to replicate it in better ways with his own special anti-woke AI engine grok. James Colley, you're wearing a unnecessarily cool jacket. Can you unpack this story for us? Well, I am in a fun period of one show I finished having ended and

having a few weeks. So I have been going and watching The Odyssey as often as I can. Just to check, they haven't snuck any extra woke in there after the first week. So Elon Musk has decided that he's going to use his AI, give it a break from just making anime pictures and coming up with new slurs to go and create a better version of the film that's currently tracking to make about $1.3 billion and it has like 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. He will improve that film with his own terrible AI. Now, I have to say, I have watched some of the footage already generated of people trying to make this and it is wonderfully shit. I would like to the level that they redid the scene of the blinding of polymethysts. The cyclops in the cave, the famous like, no one is killing

me scene, which is that little pun is missing from the film. So they've recreated that scene, except, unfortunately, in Grok, the Cyclops has two eyes, which is the kind of the one thing that the Cyclops absolutely cannot have. But it has two eyes, which means even in the blinding of the cyclops, he's like, ah, well, I can still see you. It doesn't really affect me that bad. Now I technically am a Cyclops, at least. I also love in this, the idea that any way, would buy that Elon has read The Odyssey. We know he hasn't. We all know he hasn't. There's simply no chance. But I think the issue is, and we all understand this, it's not so much woke or anything of that sort, it's that the Odyssey is liked and people enjoy seeing it, which are two things that

Elon himself has never experienced. And therefore he has this raging jealousy. He's kind of like a Poseidon metaphor of the sort, all the power, but unable to try to punish the rest of us because he can't have what he wants. I have seen the Odyssey and I feel like it might even be less to do with the politics of general wokeness and more to do with the fact that it's like clearly an attack on men who are ruining the world and a suggestion that they ought to have PTSD about it. I think that's sort of, I mean, without spoiler alert, it's sort of a psychological fable about how Jason Bourne can't get home to his family because he feels bad about the bombing of Troy.

There's a moment in the Odyssey where obviously, I don't think this is a spoiler because it's a very old story, but Odysseus is sort of sent down to Hades and he is confronted by the spirits of everyone who has sort of died in his name. And it's this field that's absolutely full of, you know, these souls which torment him. In the same week that Elon Musk was interviewed about the cuts that he suggested and implemented to USAID and the potential fatalities that that cause, which may go into the like, you know, hundreds of thousands. And I think he's a man who has the cognitive dissonance to sort of watch a single thing.

like that and not see that it directly applies to him. But as much as I don't think Christopher Nolan is a didactic political filmmaker, I think he is someone who definitely is going through something with regard to, you know, what he thinks about America's history. And as much as he ever would, he's basically, you know, reaching his hand out the screen, grabbing Elon Musk by the scruff of the neck and going, this is you, except that you don't have the self-awareness that Odysseus does. and his reaction is to go, yes, okay, I will remake this so that I feel none of the awkwardness I did when confronted by my own flaws.

God, I would love a film, maybe made by Grok, in which Elon Musk goes down to Hades and is confronted by every joke that died in his mouth. I mean, you know, I would love that for him, but then I'd also be terrified a similar fate would before me. Just looking at, oh, God, I thought they'd get that reference to a particular obscure Doctor Who thing. And it wasn't right for like, you know, the Cardiff Glee on a Wednesday. I don't know if London people have heard of Matthew Riley. This is going to take about 20 minutes of time to really get into who he is. I've done bits on Matthew Riley before. Wow.

Never quite got them to work as well. well as I wanted them to. But, you know, I feel like, Matthew Riley. He's very successful. Very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very successful. This brings us to our next news story, which is that apparently your brain is rewriting reality in your sleep. This is a very exciting news coming out of the IMT School for Advanced Studies, a large study of more than 3,0007, 100 dream and waking reports found that what we experienced during sleep is shaped by our personalities and the world around us, but also that there are apparently people who are interested in hearing about your dreams. Get into this study, boring people. Get in. Tom,

Linen, you've slept before. Can you unfold this story for us a piece? Yes. Of course, I think my internet's being a bit weird, so apologies if I go glitchy. But maybe that's a glitch in reality and we can make it a thematic thing. Yeah. So this is the idea that basically your dreams are like you are, are we surprised by this? I thought this is what we sort of thought, which is that basically your dreams aren't random. They are you sort of reforming your understanding of the world. In the way that I think we always knew that like babies, when babies were asleep and they were kicking and stuff, that they were sort of trying to understand because everything for a baby is new and is fresh input. That basically, when they're sleeping, their brain is just frantically trying to organize everything that they've experienced into some kind of logic or something because otherwise the world is an incredibly terrifying place. But that basically we are, yeah, we're trying to process our version of the world through dreams, which is comforting because I always assume that my dreams are just Leonardo DiCaprioz, a group of kind of heisty men trying to get me to like give them my own. inheritance for some like enormous sort of business acquisition I'm about to have. But luckily, no. So the research published in the communication psychology examined more than 3,700 descriptions of dreams from 287 people, which those are the real heroes, guys. The people had to

listen to, it was like my dad's office from when I was growing up, but somehow also like my own, like, classroom from second grade and all that kind of stuff is just exhausting. And yeah, they had to listen to all this and basically see that this is how people are, yeah, how they're choosing to kind of reform reality in their own way. And I'm sort of surprised that it's taken this long to find that out. Am I mad in this?

I think everyone sort of had a suspicion of this, but no one has really done the research about specifically, the result being that dream content is neither completely random nor is it inherently chaotic, nor is it orderly, it's somewhere in between. And dreams reflect a number of personal characteristics that are quite complicated, including how interested you are in dreams. That is infuriating because it really does give carte blanche to someone like, it gets like addiction level of being like, all right, well, you want more of this stuff.

We'll fill your boots with it. Oh boy, it's interesting that that correlates not just to how vivid your dreams are, but also how quickly the life force of your co-workers is being drained from their bodies. Personally, I'm not, this annoys people when I say it, so I continue to say it. I don't particularly dream. I can count on my hand the number of times I do. I have that thing where you can't imagine pictures in your head. There is a word for it, but I can't remember it because I can't picture it in my head.

So like when I do have a handful of dreams, they're like I don't come out with vivid images. I have like a couple of like I remember like wrote tasks performed and they're pretty rote tasks. Like it's so when I hear people in my life say, oh, I had the most vivid delusion last night that you were all cast in. That is fascinating to me. I want to know. You sound crazy.

And I would love to hear the complete depths of your psyche, please. That is fascinating to me. It's much better than any other conversation we're ever going to have. So I actually quite like the dream thing. I will, though, insist that now that I know it is writing, if I am involved as an original character of my own devising, I want royalties. You need to pay me every time I appear in your dreams, including if anyone has dozed off while listening to this podcast,

possibly during the Matthew Riley section right now. are now forced, are now imagining in their dreams. I want you to pull out your dream wallet, and I want you to transfer money to me right now. Apparently, this study also said that one of the biggest effects that people had on dreams was the pandemic, which is sort of the incredibly impressive notion that this once-in-a-generation experience that everybody had at the same time

somehow shaped our brains in some way, which is mind-blowing, if you ask me, that that had any kind of psychological impact. So, yeah, some valuable work being done here. There was an element of that part that I also loved, which is that like, so they were saying that around the stressful time of COVID and lockdown and stuff, people had dreams that specifically reflected being closed in, locked in restrictions of all this sort, which is very funny to me that your brain, when physically you're locked away, says, do you know what, you have one escape where there are no rules and you have infinite.

possibilities, but we're going to dream up a little cage for you to be in anyway. Ah, eat it. It does make me think that my brain is a bit like an Amdram theatre society or like a student theatre society where like they're asked to make a drama about like, you know, COVID and lockdown. And their result is to go, I'm in a cage. I'm in a cage. I can't escape.

And it's like, wow, that is, that is some broad strokes their brain. That is some bad dramaturgy there. That brings us, of course, to the exciting news that OpenAI has opened a Washington office. Apparently, there's about $230,000 being spent every day lobbying for AI. And apparently, AI-related issues engage one quarter of all federal lobbyists in Washington right now. So that's 25% of all lobbyists in Washington are there for the purposes of AI. James Colley, are those meta glasses? Can you unpack this story for us? This is how I feel my bootleg version of the gargle, which will be available only on my private channel.

So this is Open AI has Washington lobby office, the workshop, strategically located near the White House, because Open AI understand that the internet no longer works. So you cannot communicate over distances. You need to be as close to Washington as possible. if you want to get any work done. And they're seeking to influence policies on data center expansion, copyrighted content, thievery, depending on all the different ways that they enjoy destroying the world.

This, though, is a fundamental misstep and mistake from Open AI. There is no point trying to lobby US senators about AI because the fact is, firstly, US senators are about 109 years old on average. They have vaguely heard of the computer. They believe it's a kind of steam-powered genie that brings them hate mail. Even if you can't, you can talk to them, you get their ear. They won't listen because they are very old and hard of hearing. And if they do listen, they will not be able to do anything about it because a significant

portion of them at this moment are actively either dead or in comers or somehow halfway between like Schroding is senator. So I don't understand what you're going to do other than deluge. yourself, which is kind of the open AI model. Give a large amount of effort to a terrible machine that will then delude you into thinking you have gotten what you want. I suppose that they have discovered the US Senate from first principles. So maybe this all is worthwhile. Is it just me you think that like this whole, like we're so being forced, AI is being forced on us so much. And if I could draw a comparison to something we've already

discussed, you know, like in Jack Reacher, when he like, he, like, he, grab someone from behind and sort of tries to chuck them out. And as he's doing so, he just goes, shh, shh, like that. Just kind of like, just accept it. Just accept it. It's all going to be okay. That is exactly how I feel about the way that AI is being pushed on us. It's not subtle. It's not particularly sort of elegant. It is just going, guys, this is happening because we stand to make a lot of money from it. So, so just kind of roll over. This is all going to be okay. It's all going to be okay. And this is just more proof of that, really. It's, it's so malevolent. And as of yet, no one's really been able to ever explain what it's like it's net good it's the same way that i just yeah

sorry do you mind if i jump in there do you know the great film the odyssey uh would you like a much worse version of that i um i tell you what that film needed less of for no particular reason uh lepita nongo and if that it was something that could yeah this is what this is what i worry about it's like it's no material benefit it's like how i absolutely avoided getting done by NFTs because no one could ever give me a good reason for what an NFT was or why it was worth investing in. So I just avoided it. And this is the same thing. It's like, no one can sort of go, oh, here's just an understandable positive. So I remain a skeptic. You get a picture of an ape. I don't understand what you don't understand about that. Do you not want a

JPEG of an ape? Do you not bleed? Are you not human? I missed out. I mean, I could have had. those JPEGs. I feel bad now. 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 NeuroNudge 3000, the productivity chip that turns your brain into a spreadsheet. Do you ever feel like your thoughts are just unformatted?

Neuronog inserts a tiny neural implant then converts every idle daydream, thought spoken word or horny sex dream into a pivot, users report a 40% increase in productivity and a 100% decrease in remembering joy. Sorry. Sorry, Alice. You've just raised a point that I want to come back on. Wait, wait. I've got one more line.

Now compatible with Google Sheets. So you can sync across devices. Carry on. We talked about Dream AI. Dream rewriting, we completely negated the whole idea of sex dreams. Now, before this breakthrough discovery, when someone had a sex dream, did they wake up the next one and be like, oh, that happened? There's something that I'm remembering and recounting from the day before.

I didn't write that myself. I simply slept with every celebrity. Hang on. Oh, I need to, I need to absolutely rethink my entire life up until now. That is disappointing. And this episode of podcast is brought to you by the Nvidia Improved Friendship Force or NAF. You don't believe in AGII, artificial general intelligence, that is to say, the premise that LLMs can acquire a sentience or operate in a way indistinguishable from consciousness. You think language and images are a learning base that basically precludes the emergence of consciousness because even the best and most beautiful poem is at its best a clobly abstraction, gesturing at the reality of consciousness and perhaps revoking an emotional response.

but what if I told you that an exclusive coalition of chips, GPUs and cooling fans has come together to define the future of friendship and notably did not invite you specifically personally on purpose. Do you think they're people now? The Nvidia approved friendship force, NAF, coming for you tomorrow. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by the Ernest Bot 1000, which only communicates in motivational posters, a home. butler, which tells you only storms make trees take deeper roots when you're asking it to open the door or do your washing up. Hang in there, kid. You've got it. Ernusbot doesn't just solve your problems. It frames them tastefully above your desk. Now available in a limited live laugh litigate edition. And that brings us to our next story. Your AI calorie tracking app

is lying to you. Apparently. Meal for AI apps that take photos of food and tell you how much calories is in that food are apparently incredibly inaccurate. They have always been inaccurate. They never will be accurate. But they may be off by about 345 calories per photograph, which if you've ever used a calorie tracking app, you're not got that many calories to play with. That's heaps. That's like stacks. Tom Neenan, you've eaten food before. Tell us about this story. Certainly. You know, you know, like menus. they have calories on them now. You know, like they'll have like, here's a food,

something that you can order, and it'll have calories on it, and it's very helpful. And it's just printed on some paper, the old-fashioned way. That's how a lot of people I know are, you know, sort of working at how many calories are, what they're not relying on is taking a photo of something

where there is always the danger that there is a rogue, you know, hidden beneath a sausage. There is a rogue bit of like raw fat or there is an incredibly calorie dense piece of like gel, or some hule that was like lurking underneath some boiled rice. I sadly think that these AI things are doing their best, and I'm not particularly sympathetic to AI,

but just taking a photo of some food does not necessarily mean that you're getting an accurate representation of what the food is. For instance, I absolutely love getting a massive plate of chips. That is my favorite thing. Some bacon and chips in a cafe is my favorite, you know, I'll absolutely enjoy that. Those plates are way bigger than average plates. And I can't rely on AI to assume that I am having normal portions.

I can't rely on AI to see that this plate is not the size of a satellite dish. And I am going absolutely hog wild on it. Well, I mean, this is why you need reference sizes next to all of the food. Like you cannot trust an AI app unless you're laying your penis next to the food. take it. And that's why... It has to be at least four inches. And I was asked to leave Nandoes.

So that's the problem with all this. They print calories on menus. This is so unnecessary. Once again, AI is proven defunct by just things printed on paper that's sort of worked for thousands of years. It's infuriating. It's a real shock to anyone who has listened to any other story this week that an AI over-promised and under-delivered with no consequences for the people using it.

This is like, it is a big amount that, this is like in every photo, the AI was like, oh, sorry, I missed a McDonald's cheeseburger. Like, I just, I skipped over the cheeseburger that you have with every one of your meals. I think this is very fun to me. Like, this is a very, I know people who go about tracking their food this way. It's upsetting. I think with this kind of results, people might tragically be forced to live their lives and not worry about it so much.

And they might end up shock horror, fat and happy. But if that happens, then we can plug them into another algorithm. And it will promise that if you go in fat and happy, very soon you will rapidly lose your happiness. So we don't have to worry too much about that into the future. This is a funny thing to happen. to people. I'm sorry. This is a funny thing to happen because you have to be a certain level. And I understand everyone has different battles and we're trying to do it. But if you're doing it this way, this is a funny thing to happen. I'm sorry. I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to enjoy it as I have

my lean and delicious chimethy, which I know is a strict 250 calories. Most of it pure protein, baby. You know what this story reminds me of as well is, do you remember super size me? where the guy ate loads of McDonald's, like, this is an accurate representation of what eating McDonald's does to your body. Then tragically, that man died. And after he died, it was sort of revealed that, like, while he was filming Super Size Me,

he was on a lot of drugs. He was doing a lot of things. A massive alcoholic. And then, like, all the results are like, wow, that one quarter pounder destroyed your liver. This is amazing. Like, it just shows like, yeah, these metrics by which we're sort of measuring things,

there's a million different factors that could be skewing them. So, you know, while it's very sad that he passed away, it's hilarious that he basically the thing he's most famous for is going, I am going to show you the effects on your body of one specific thing, completely ignoring the myriad other things he was doing to his body, which were slowly destroying it. So that is, yeah, it just shows that these things can never really be accurate. I think I might by far be the most evil guest of the,

argle rotation because just remembering that may have lived a problem really made me laugh. Speaking of making you laugh, terraforming Mars may be more realistic than scientists once thought, but we're not sure why that is or who is funding the sciences. Apparently new technologies have reopened the debate over whether Mars could someday be terraformed, but there are obviously some risks at hand. If you don't know what terraforming is, it's where you, it's sort of a science fiction concept. It's never been done before effectively, but we all dream that it's possible

that you can reshape a planet or moon to be able to support human and other earth-like life. In theory, that would mean in changing the atmosphere, climate, and the surface. If it's Mars, you'd have to also change the magnetosphere so stuff stayed where it was meant to go, like the atmosphere. But the idea basically is that over a number of centuries,

you could have microorganisms making oxygen, and releasing greenhouse gases, some of the propositions that have been put forward. James Colley, again, you're wearing that jacket. Can you tell us more about this story? This is one of the most useless stories I have ever read in my life. This was a paper made for the Green Mars Workshop by a company, Pioneer Labs, who seem to mostly specialize in wanting to terraform things. I imagine if you are at the Green Mars Workshop and you are looking at the keynote speech on day one,

coming in and saying, actually, I think we are all pissing away our time here would be a real downer. So you might have to start your speech with, oh yeah, it could be possible. One of their aims coming into here was that they would not waste time. Rather than asking whether terraforming violates the laws of physics, researchers believe the more important questions are whether humanity should pursue it and what the path would look like. So don't focus on whether it's possible. Let's just work on it for a bit and then we'll decide. Now, here are some of the things that would need to happen for this to be possible. Raise temperatures by roughly 30 degrees Celsius so you could start melting the ice reserves.

How would you do that? I'll get back to you. Researchers propose engineering extremophiles, which I believe are people who have sex with ex-game players, who would naturally survive in the harsh environment. How do we do that? We'll work on it. Create an oxygen-rich atmosphere, which would take centuries and likely much no longer. So instead, researchers envision

beginning inside enormous domed habitats about 100 metres tall, which is a real great, like about 100 minutes. Do you know what? That's a nice round number. Why not 100 metres tall for this glass dome we are going to put on here? The other problems are like,

But there are some issues, you know, we don't know how to do any of this. We don't know what lies beneath the ice sheets. We don't know what will happen with dust storms. Doesn't have enough of the materials we need to actually do this. We'd have to bring all this stuff from Earth. Do you know what? There's no real way to do. Let's just hit the bar at the conference because I think we might not have much of a story here.

This is like, it would be great to terraform Mars. And maybe it's more possible. It's not, but maybe it's more possible in that to be like a point. 0.001% is better than half of that number. So it is more possible. Where's your vision, James? Do you think the right brothers, you know, thought about the logistics of human flight before they imagined flying? Or do you think they just imagined flying and jumped off a cliff? You have to. You got to work backwards from your hopes and dreams. Look, I think there is room for dreaming and imagining and hoping for a future.

In this case, it would be a very long-term future, the very fastest possible application of all of this technology. If we could invent it and apply it right now, it would take about a thousand years to get even the oxygen element at play. But look, I feel like going to Mars has been ruined by the fans. It's like Rick and Morty. You know, it's a perfectly pleasant conceptual framework. It's been colonized by colonizers.

All I'm saying is, I am not certain we are making the next FIFA World Cup. Can we please just get a couple of plates shaking a little bit less before we start forward planning the Mars home? Guys, I don't want to go galaxy brain on you here. But as far as far as I know, terror forming, terror meaning Earth, is making a planet more like Earth. Now, there are two ways of doing that. You go to Mars and you make Mars a lot more like Earth, or you take the Earth and what we're doing at the minute, which is slowly make it less and less habitable, so you're actually making it more like Mars. Either way, you are slightly terraforming Mars, and I think that's a more achievable goal

than we should look towards achieving that one. Maybe what Elon Musk is doing is exactly that. He's not remaking the Odyssey. He's remaking John Carter by taking all the resources from this planet and making it uninhabitable and filled with horrible monsters. that you wouldn't want to share a planet with. And our final story for today is that a 500,000-year-old elephant bone hammer, that was my nickname in high school, shows ancient humans were master toolmakers, apparently. And these are England, English, English humans. Mm-hmm.

These are humans who were based in England, apparently sharpening tools with an elephant hammer, 500,000 years ago, does that make you feel national pride, Tom Neenan? It really does. So we have just said goodbye to our, I know this isn't a political podcast, but I think it's something like our 37th Prime Minister in four days, or whatever it is, I've sort of lost count. But the most recent, before this one, Andy Burnham, the most recent Prime Minister was Kirstama.

And it became a meme over here. It became like something that people would almost like take a shot whenever it happened. when he would talk about being the son of a toolmaker, he would say, I was the son of a toolmaker a lot, because that feels like a good, it's an honest job. You work with your hands, you're grafting, and, you know, it's something that, it's something that kind of makes you feel like,

you know, he was a human rights lawyer. That's too high for Luton, that's too clever. But his dad was a toolmaker. And all that's told us in the UK and in England now is that actually we are all the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great. grandsons of tool makers. And that's satisfying. What?

Well, exactly. And it makes me say, it does fill me with pride. It feels me with pride that we were out there, you know, working, working the earth, working with our hands. I think that I, this is sort of my most right-wing belief is that no one should leave school without having made something out of wood using a sore, something just to have that kind of in their heads. I made a device out of a powerade bottle, a bit of hose, a little bit of aluminium foil.

Oh, I see. I see. I mean, even that, at least there's at least there's some ingenuity there. I think, you know, no matter what you've ended up doing, you know, I just think create something, even if it's sellotaping tomatoes to your, to a certain plant. to make it look better from afar. I think that, yeah, that people should be able to create things. And this gives me inspiration that they were doing it all the way back then as well. I'm proud of my ancestors.

I get a feeling this has a bit of like the 2001 Space Odyssey to it. I think like in general, most creatures at this time, most of the hominids at this time were using like bones from, let's say, a dog, like deer of some kind. And one prick had the elephant bone. And you know, you know he made a big deal out of the elephant bone every time. Oh,

you're still using the oscelot? Well, I found, and he didn't even kill the elephant. We know he didn't kill the elephant. He just found an elephant bone, obviously. And they're not hard to find their big things. He probably found a zoo. He found a malnourished elephant in a zoo,

took a bone, and then used it to beat up everyone else. I feel like it's time to cancel this particular hominid. I don't care for him. I feel like he is the one who broke Jimithy's back if that is what happened to Jimith. I haven't researched the story. There are things called elephant graveyards. That is a phrase because it exists because there are places in the world where elephants go to die

and then they leave their bones exposed and those are readily available. This person did that. This person just sort of stumbled across the one of the most like, the resources of which there are most abundance at the time, which is elephant bones and was like, right, okay, this is my way to the top. It's like basically you, you know, like the people who make, you know, Yorkshire steel or something. They're like, great. This is, this is what I do now. I make elephant hammers because that's what I have access to. Also, sorry, I'll be damned before I go on the gargle and celebrate an ivory poacher. I do not believe this was the right thing to do, frankly.

yeah yeah let's yeah that's it 500,000 years ago are you going to travel back in time and start Peter that's the name of the guy it's called Peter the full name of the society is fuck Peter well apparently elephant bone tools have been found at old of I gorge in Tanzania with some dating far as far back as 1.5 million years but this is the first time my found it in the UK, and apparently it was most likely an early sort of humanoid hominid kind of creature, or a neanderthal, which is quite fun to think of them hammering away.

They used it to play cricket. Now that's a story. Well, we don't know that they didn't. All they know is that this bone had impacts and chips off it from repeated impacts. So perhaps they were just playing cricket real hard. Well, in that case, you've got to hit it off the middle of the bone. What are you doing? You're nicking this boat all around the place.

This is what Bazball gets you, England. You cannot be swinging wildly at every, let's assume, rock or pigeon thrown at your elephant bow. And that's things us to the end of this week's episode of The Gargle. Tom Neen, where can people find and support your work? Oh, follow me at TP Neenan on Instagram, where I'll be giving details of various things, please visit there. Or tomlina.com where I've got some, if you want to buy some of my arts, that's there. And of course, the main thing, the main headline of it all, you can, there is a link to buy

tickets to my Edinburgh show, which starts this time next week, which I've been having anxiety dreams about, which as we all know is me processing the world where I am terrified of Edinburgh. There's a big surprise. So, yes, please visit me there. and if you want to come along and do a double header of myself and nice at the Edinburgh Fringe, that would be a fun thing to do. Yeah, do it, do it.

James Colley, where can people find and support your work? On Instagram at Jam Colley is a probably good place to start. If you are in Australia or know how to access a VPN, I suppose, you can go on ABCI View and watch the latest season of Gruen. It is a show about advertising, and it has been running for about 18 years, and by all accounts, the latest season is the best one yet. So check it out. That's a pretty good review.

That's a full adult of a show, and we're getting better at it. So that's a good sign. That is an extremely good sign. We're all plugging Instagram. I've got an Instagram. I never plug it. It's Alice Fraser Human over on Instagram. I'm also on the blue sky where you can sign up and follow my work.

Or the best bet for me, where I put everything through is the Patreon. Patreon.com slash Alice Frazier. You can subscribe there for free or for money. I'm not going to stop you doing the money. but it is sort of just my mailing list. It's my one-stop shop where you can find all of my stuff that's going on. I will be in Oslo this Friday night

at the new theatre, Gronelluka, and I will be at 9pm doing a passion for passion for the very last time. Feel free to come buy the big red dress. I don't want to bring it back. So I'll be there. I'll be selling books and signing books. That is this Friday.

The, what date is it? The last day of July, whichever one that is, it. The last day of July, Friday, 9pm, the 31st of July at the new theatre, Grinoloka, and that's it. Then it'll be Edinburgh. Edinburgh at 8.40pm at the Tron. 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 time.