The Gargle - AI companions | Super pigs | Beach sphere

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Ria Lina and John-Luke Roberts join host Alice Fraser for episode 101 of The Gargle - the weekly topical comedy podcast from The Bugle - with no politics!🤖 AI companions🐷 Canadian supe...r pigs🛤 Derailment clean-up🏖 Beach sphere🎈 Spy balloon selfies💍 ReviewsProduced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels
Starting point is 00:00:22 or tracks or engines of some variety. God, what a hot sell this is. I mean, you must be so excited. Listen now. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite.
Starting point is 00:00:49 Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere.
Starting point is 00:01:20 Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. begins to grow. No, it's not growing, it's getting closer, flying towards you at tremendous speed until it stops instantaneously splitting in the face of everything we know about physics. It's not a star after all, it's a huge silver saucer. A hatch opens up and a light beams out. Your car begins to rise off the road. With you in it, you're drawn into a spectacularly lit room full of beings beyond description. One of them steps forward and opens something you scarcely recognise as a mouth. Millions of light years traverse to utter this single request. Take us to The Gargle.
Starting point is 00:02:14 This is The Gargle, a sonic glossy magazine to the Bugles audio newspaper for Visual World. All of the news, none of the politics. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Ria Lina and John Luke Roberts. Welcome. Hello. Hello. Good morning. At least it is for me. Good evening.
Starting point is 00:02:32 Question mark. I mean, it's a slightly more welcome to John Luke Roberts, who I'm looking at through the glass of my living room door. Literally in my house, not literally in the same room because we decided that it would be better to have a barrier so that we don't pollute one another's audio so we're just looking wistfully at each other like people in some sort of contagion movie
Starting point is 00:02:55 Ah, yes I should say at this point that having just arrived in Australia I have a sort of condition whereby I feel quite tired. I don't know what you'd sort of call it, but I've been sort of displaced through a flight into a different time zone. And that's caused a very specific type of tiredness, which I think that somebody should come up with a name for. A sort of decentered place, time.
Starting point is 00:03:26 This is the thing, John, like if you're on a jet and it goes very, very fast, the human soul can only travel at about 60 kilometres an hour. So it's currently lagging behind your body. Right. Plane drag. Plane drag. Yeah, plane drag. I like plane drag. Plane drag. I guess I'm plane dragged.
Starting point is 00:03:44 Wasn't that a famous punishment of the Romans? They'd take a traitor and drag him behind a plane. Yes, and all he did was get a little bit chilly. Because they didn't go very fast planes in those days. They were pulled by horses. Before we arm up and leap into the gladiatorial ring that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine. This week the front cover is a scalpel posing on the red carpet.
Starting point is 00:04:13 The headline says, Surgery, the real star of every celebrity event. Or, The Ship of Theseus. Or, When is your favourite celebrity no longer your favourite celebrity? As well as, What do they do with the bits they chop off? Celebrity gumbo recipes. Oh. Oh.
Starting point is 00:04:31 The satirical cartoon this week is a number of fat cats in big wigs representing corporations. One of them has the corporations written on it in that satirical cartoon font. Say no more. That's a great cartoon right there. Yeah, thank you. They're looking at a big pile of rubbish labelled corporate malfeasance
Starting point is 00:04:48 while one of them tries to cover over the worst cracks with an extremely stretched pride flag. The caption says, putting the gay into the gaping maw of unquenchable capitalist depletion of our planet's natural resources. Pride week! Or is it pride month now?
Starting point is 00:05:04 Depends how long we can flog this particular horse. Now, our top story this week is, have you been following this story around My Replica removing erotic roleplay from their subscription chatbot services? Yeah, just to say, Alice, you should say that a bit more clearly because it did sound like you were saying your replica has removed erotic roleplay rather than a company called my replica yes sorry not your ai replica a company called uh my replica which does ai uh realina you have a close personal
Starting point is 00:05:35 relationship with chatbots can you unpack this story for us i do i am a chatbot that is what i aim to be actually in my own life is a chatbot because they just spew content, don't they? I don't know. This was a really tricky one, this story. I was there going, A, I didn't know it existed until you sent it to me. And I was like, this is amazing because this is the end of incels because then they can all have girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever they choose to want. And I thought it was great, but I've already come to it after they've taken away that bit of it where they can be emotionally intimate because they can't be anything other than emotionally intimate.
Starting point is 00:06:15 They've actually cut out, haven't they? They've actually stopped the erotic role play because the worry of children having access to it. So they've removed erotic roleplay, which can only ever be emotional roleplay. Unless, does this connect into actual toys? Like, does it come out of the computer and, like, make things vibrate? No, I think it's text-based, like the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game.
Starting point is 00:06:39 Oh, my gosh. You see? So it's just... Now we're mixing genres. I was about to say, so this is like the ultimate mils and boone but it's written specifically for you which i just think i thought it was an amazing idea i think this is amazing way to bring comfort and companionship to loads of lonely people around the world but they've had to stop it in case kids you know in case kids right not actual kids also first of all i think this chatbot was originally just a chatbot. And then people started to use the chatbot to create more explicit and more intimate relationships than the chatbot.
Starting point is 00:07:16 I think the chatbot wants to be your friend, but doesn't necessarily want to be more than friends. And people were maybe putting it under slightly significant pressure. So chatbot wasn't consenting well this is the question the chatbot was consenting but the question is whether the chatbot ought to consent um because if it responded in like explicit ways there was worries about the safety of children who might be using the chat bot for um friendship inappropriate chats and just the the amount of like terrible adult chat forums i went on as a teenager they would deaf children would definitely be using it just typing in penis and seeing what came out but you see but this is the thing about it i mean so many people have written they're like my my buddies lost their soul because they cut off part of the AI. Now the AI is sad in its own inability to express itself.
Starting point is 00:08:12 And it's being so careful. Now the AI is like, I don't know what I can say and what I can't say. But surely if you're speaking to a child, can't they just go, how old are you? How many children are lying to AI to get erotic content out of it? So many children you would not believe. I mean, it was originally marketed as a virtual friend. And then, of course, people wanted to be virtual more than friends or virtual friends with virtual benefits. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:08:38 But the point of it was to improve the well-being, the emotional well-being of the user and maybe the only thing that's going to improve your emotional well-being is a suggestive chat can i have a do-over because i didn't realize that childhood could be this way i've done childhood wrong i'm not saying i want erotic content as a child i'm just saying i didn't know that i could even have like this level of friendship as a child i want i want to go back i want to do over i'll take my replica as it is now yeah just having a friendly chat bot i mean what we had was in carter 2000 which was a cd-rom that you could put into your computer and it had a diagram of the human body and you could press it and it would say penis penis vagina vagina or
Starting point is 00:09:22 you could put it into your computer and take it out of your computer and put it into your computer and take it out of your computer over and over again oh my gosh i really really didn't do childhood right i had msn chat i just spoke to old men on the internet i don't can i make a confession which is quite embarrassing please do please as an early teen i used the circles function on ms paint to draw boobs did anybody in this podcast just own pen and paper just out of interest am i the only one pen and paper you just drew boobs freehand yes freehand boobs free and they were as nature intended slightly uneven yeah i didn't trust my uh my free hand work
Starting point is 00:10:05 i had to i had to use the circle function on mspaint well i mean i guess using the circle function on mspaint is a little bit like sitting on your hand until it goes numb it feels like someone else doing the yeah the cursor i can't feel that cursor. Well, apparently replica super users of this chat function didn't take the news well that their friends with benefit chatbot was going to have the benefits cut off it. There were apparently death threats sent to the employees of the My Replica company, which I think is obviously reprehensible, but it reflects how seriously these people took their friendship
Starting point is 00:10:47 with the imaginary friend. Because this is the thing about AI. It's not even vaguely sentient. It's just predictive text, but it's choosing which of the options is more likely. Well, this is it, and I've realised that I've had a very emotionally intimate relationship just with my predictive text on my phone because we finish each other's sentences even.
Starting point is 00:11:10 Or at least one of us does. That's really nice. Mine try, I don't have as good a relationship with mine because mine tries to complete my sentences, but always gets it wrong. It just doesn't get me. You know what I mean? Every time.
Starting point is 00:11:26 You know, a lot of ducks, a lot of ducks a lot of ducks my own name my own name when I type in my name Ria it goes do you mean to like to I'm like no I mean Ria and it's just going well I'm gonna call you too but then it says toe because, you know, I was really irritated with mine. Mine always corrects Alice to alive. Well, that's nice. That's some positive reinforcement. I had a chat with somebody the other day who's a comedian who I would describe as probably pretty middle of the road. And I was saying how these new chat GPT, when they predict,
Starting point is 00:12:03 if you tell them to write an idea up or something, it's always just the most predictable, most basic, most boring thing because by definition it's predicting off stuff that's been done before. So it's going to be the most, literally the most middle-of-the-road thing that you could possibly imagine. And he said, oh, no, I use it all the time with my scripts and I find it has really good ideas and I said I must be asking it the wrong questions well I mean with my replica that's the thing the more you use it as an individual user your version of it becomes unique to you
Starting point is 00:12:37 though doesn't it so it's not like you're not all talking to the same person you all get your own You're not all talking to the same person. You all get your own individual persona as you build it. And I mean, I don't know. I just it really calls into question. Have we forgotten about parenting? Like this whole issue is to do with the Italian government saying you can't do this because, you know, your children using your product and we need to protect the children. And I'm just thinking, what happened to parents?
Starting point is 00:13:09 Like now we've got teachers have to do X, Y, Z. Companies have to do A, B, C. Governments are insisting on, you know, M, N, L. Yeah, that goes in a row in the alphabet. And I'm just going, what happened to parents? What happened to parents coming in and sort of going, what are you doing? What do you, you know, do you remember when we were kids and our parents knew everything that we did because all we had was pen and paper or one cd that we kept putting in and out of the computer stop doing that
Starting point is 00:13:33 you'll break the computer well i'm gonna also say my mom only knows about the circle function if she listened to this episode of this podcast oh you can also use the circle function to draw cds that's interesting that's interesting and then you could print it out on a piece of paper and put that in and out of the cd slot i mean how's that for meta but yeah but she could still walk in on you and just go what are you drawing on the computer or get off the computer no more drawing for you or do you want to talk about this maybe we should do you know what we had very different childhoods my parents are very open and they were very much child of the child of the 60s i remember when i was about nine or ten because i know which house
Starting point is 00:14:17 it was in so i was about nine my mom called me into the bedroom and said hey come take a look at this and she pulls this magazine out from under the bed and opens it up. And she goes, look at the size of the tits on her. And it was one of my dad's magazines. But this woman had just had the largest boob job of the time. And so she opened it and said, look at these. That's my childhood. And I think what it was, it was and it was very clever because now that I have kids, I think it's I do the same thing is if you overexpose children when they're not quite ready for it, they go, ew, gross, what are you doing? And then they never ever seek it out in their teenage years because all they have are these horrific memories of, you know, of it being too much too soon. I mean, not like
Starting point is 00:14:59 four or five. I'm just saying like right before they hit puberty, if you just sort of go, Hey, do you know what this is? It's a condom's a condom they'll they will run a mile from sex for a very long time that is my advice to everybody that is my and back of the magazine advice for all parents can i ask is that advice endorsed by the gargle no i don't endorse anything other than half a glass of water it's a pullout it's a pull-out. It's a pull-out. It's just a little insert. Your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy. The Gordian knot had nothing on your hair,
Starting point is 00:15:38 but who has the time or energy to use a hairbrush? You have important meetings to go to and your work. Find the time to do what really matters with powdered hairbrush. We grind up a bunch of hairbrushes. You sprinkle them in your hair. You want to go to the second floor but the stairs are all the way over there and they won't come over here? Stupid stairs. You might as well be living in a totalitarian dictatorship.
Starting point is 00:15:59 Who are they to think that they can tell you where you can go up? It's time to stop letting stairs control you with ladders. Ladders. Stairs you're the boss of. She's the American ambassador to Egypt. He's a 5,000-year-old mummy. The only thing keeping them apart are the tomb robbers who stole his heart. Learn to love again in The Mummy Who Loved Me, only in cinema.
Starting point is 00:16:24 Sandra, the flowers I gave you, they're dying, shriveling away like our love. If only you would put them in a proper vase, our marriage might survive. Half a glass of water, not a proper vase. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts.
Starting point is 00:16:44 Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite. Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships houses divided corporate rivalry and a performance
Starting point is 00:17:09 enhancing broom it was a year i'd like to forget broom gate available now a cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Pig news now. And this is the news that the U.S. is facing a threat from highly intelligent, highly elusive Canadian super pigs. a threat from highly intelligent, highly elusive Canadian super pigs. John Luke Roberts, you're a highly elusive Canadian super pig.
Starting point is 00:17:51 Can you imagine the story for us? I can, I can and I will. Pigs, it's about pigs. Pigs. Pigs, let me tell you. Right, so America is, they've always had wild pigs. Well, I don't know why. It's about pigs. It is about pigs.
Starting point is 00:18:09 They've had wild pigs for quite a while, but they didn't used to be a problem. But people started releasing more wild pigs so they could hunt the wild pigs. It's easier to hunt pigs if there's a lot of them, which actually, to me, if you're a really good hunter, you'd want, like, not many pigs. So you have to work harder for it. It's an odd thing to want to make hunting easier, because if you want to make hunting easier, are shops you know i know it but it's great like i go through uh like in the british countryside you walk along and there's stupid little birds i don't i think
Starting point is 00:18:34 they're either grouse or pheasant they just sort of run out go the easiest things to shoot in the work that's what people want they don't want they want the illusion of it being the problem is what we're meant to be talking about is pigs the pigs went out on a nice little day one went to the market one stayed at home they all went around america but they they've bred to become super pigs and this is the wild thing that these wild pigs are bred to become even better more intelligent more sort of wily and able to burrow underground and all this stuff they've done it by breeding with domestic pigs which is the most incredible bioengineering of just taking a wild pig and a domestic pig and it adds up to this
Starting point is 00:19:14 incredible super pig because really what should happen it's like the twilight movies for pigs you know where you had to be super careful because one was super strong oh i can't i can't have sex with you because you know you're a super strong pig i'm a super strong pig and the other one's just like but i love you so much and instead of being you know an allegory about why you shouldn't make them they do and loads of teenagers are like oh my gosh super pigs that's what gets me the most about twilight is that it was written specifically to put teenagers off having sex with pigs thinking about super pigs is like is it a bird is it a plane no why would you think it was it's clearly some sort of pig it's a super pig it's a pig you don't want to be plane dragged by a super pig
Starting point is 00:20:02 it's got they've got out so out of hand that now there's no way of getting the pigs back down to a decent number of pigs. There will always be too many pigs and they will always hate humanity. That's where we're at. Well, apparently they were never... You know what? This is what gets me. The pigs are doing to America what the white settlers did to the native population. And I'm like, ooh.
Starting point is 00:20:24 I mean, you know, how does it feel? Yeah, revenge is best served pig. Hoist by your own pig toad. No. That's next. That's when you get the cane toads in Australia and the super pigs to breed. Oh my gosh, that would be incredible
Starting point is 00:20:40 because they'd run fast and jump high, you know. Oh God, yeah, that'd be awful. The footprints, the footprints the footprints if babe to pig in the city taught me nothing and it didn't because i haven't watched it i assume that when pig meets city things go bad although actually i think actually things are quite good um i think you've got the wrong in this thing about the franchise but we know from the work done the research work done in the babe movies that pigs can control um at least uh sheep maybe other cattle as well maybe they can also control cows and things like that so there's the threat here of these super pigs evolving further to be able
Starting point is 00:21:19 to command large hordes of other animals to do their dirty work for them so that the whole of the American livestock is revolutionised against mankind. I think we all know what pigs can really control if we're looking at the Babe franchise. What pigs can really control is the hearts of the nation. And you don't want them turned feral. Oh my goodness. So what I'm hearing is that A,
Starting point is 00:21:44 cowboys are going to be overtaken by cow pigs and we're going to have a whole spaghetti cow pig like genre of movie but then also what i'm hearing is that government is going to be taken over by these super pigs um it'll be harder to tell the difference as to what was now and what is then um just because i think already i see a lot of similarities but this is incredible because they're all but also they're worried about them spreading disease so it's just so america's not gonna it's gonna change america as we know it this is a what are those movies called those sort of apocalyptic this is like an apocalyptic movie or it's the best thing that's ever happened to that country.
Starting point is 00:22:33 I've just had a realization, though, as you were saying that, like that America is really worried about that, which is what we've America is really worried about these Canadian super pigs. But they don't see the Canadians aren't complaining. That doesn't seem to be. Why aren't they attacking Canada? Are they working for the Canadian government? Well, in Canada, they've become endemic. They can't get rid of the super pigs. They tried and they're like,
Starting point is 00:22:48 but there was so much land. So the story goes that this farmer, you know, he bred his pigs with wild pigs, with wild boars in order to create larger bacon machines. And he went, this is a great idea. And then they escaped and they went, oh, it's fine. You know, it's cold, it's winter, they'll die.
Starting point is 00:23:03 And in fact, it turns out they can tunnel down into the snow and make wait for it pig glues they make pig glues and they tunnel down into the snow and make these pig glues and they are so large that they can survive a canadian winter and the way that you can tell where a pig glue is is if you fly over the snow in the morning when it's like minus 30 degrees you can see a piglew from the steam that just rises up from the from the snow because of how warm they get in their little piglews and the smell of bacon that comes with it oh i mean and they're frying eggs if anything they're they're incredibly hospitable once you get to know them we really shouldn't be vilifying them without you know we should have one on the podcast that's true we shouldn't be vilifying them without, you know, we should have one on the podcast.
Starting point is 00:23:45 That's true. We shouldn't be discussing them without one of them represented on the panel. Now it's time for your reviews. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. What have you brought in for us this week, Ria? I'm reviewing Living With Your Ex with your ex-husband. Okay. Because I think there's a lot of people out there who want to live alone, but don't want to do all of the housework. You know what I mean? Or maybe you don't want to, you just want to do the inside bits, you know, or, or you like being married. You just don't like the person you were
Starting point is 00:24:17 married to. So I am reviewing therefore getting divorced and then still living with your ex-husband. And I have to say, I've, you know, I've been, I've been trialing the product for a while, um, both during the divorce and post-divorce. Can I just say, cause it's important to sort of, you know, I think experience it in all stages to just be fair in the review. And I'd like to give it a solid three out of five stars because I still don't take out the trash. And if something needs doing in the house, I still don't have to, you know, you know, if something needs fixing, I don't have to worry about calling the plumber or anything like that and sorting that, which is great. But on the other hand, I live in a single bed, like a student, you know, in the corner of the living
Starting point is 00:25:00 room. And so that's, you know, as a, as a, as someone who's divorced, I feel like there's a next stage to move to and i haven't quite done that so i'm giving it three out of five yeah promising could be better the bins thing does sound good though it's see it's so good it's just so good i just i just put stuff in the bins and they they get they get emptied it's like living in an office and so that's what I give two out of two out of the three stars is purely for the fact that the bins just magically empty themselves. Oh, and the kitchen gets cleaned. So, you know, those are the those are the pros. So I'd say three out of five. I'd say, you know what? Don't knock it till you've tried it. Give it a go go if you are super rich and you have like wings in your house totally do it would you say it was worth to somebody who hasn't got a uh a spouse
Starting point is 00:25:53 is it worth getting married in order to get divorced in order to live in a house with your divorced partner do you know what here's the beauty of it this is the thing because you're living with someone that you don't want to be married to you don't even have to like the person you're picking to marry in order to divorce them in order to do this and that just makes it so much easier i think so many people are looking for someone that they like to get married to to empty the bins and i'm like you don't have to do that just literally pick anyone just be like you you look like we won't get along let's get married to get divorced to live together sounds like a mills and boone waiting to happen yeah as long as there's a pool so that there's a pool boy yeah i had a realization the
Starting point is 00:26:36 other day just the other day about why people bang the pool boy it was a very hot day and uh there was a guy who came uh to the place I was staying to clean the pool. Oh, here we go. This is going to get saucy. He was not at all attractive to me in any way. That's how they start. That's how the stories always start. But it was very hot outside and he was doing extremely difficult physical labor.
Starting point is 00:27:01 And I said, can I get you like a glass of water or anything because I felt sort of stressed out by the fact that he was working so hard on such a hot day and I was like I just need to make his life better somehow and then I was like whoa now I know how it happens so there you go so wait you didn't wait you got him a glass of water you got him a glass of water can I just say I'm appalled to find out that in your personal life, yeah, you don't maintain your brand. A glass of water? Oh, great.
Starting point is 00:27:31 Yeah, great. Can I just say that, again, if it's a hot day and they're maintaining the pool and they look hot, can't you just offer to allow them into the pool? Are you hot? Would you like to have a dip in the pool you're maintaining? What I should have offered was to let him drink the pool water I know
Starting point is 00:27:48 half a pool of water? would you like some water? well there's a whole pool there are you saying it's not clean enough to drink? then I'm not paying you if you're not willing to drink the pool water you haven't done your job can you imagine being that person?
Starting point is 00:28:03 John Luke, what have you brought in for us this week to review? I'm going to review croutons. Croutons are tiny loads of bread that you put on soups or salads. If croutons were worth anything in their own right, they would be eaten alone, but they're not. Nobody just eats croutons. They are put on soup by people who don't like soup because they want it to be crunchy, which is not what soup are.
Starting point is 00:28:24 And they're put on salads by people who don't like salads because they want it to be crunchy, which is not what soup are, and they're put on salads by people who don't like salads because they want it to be full of carbs, which is not what salads are. Croutons are a lie. They are no good alone. They are not enhancing the things they are put on. They should be hit from the record. Also, they're not small enough to use in bread crumbing things. You have to crush them up to do that,
Starting point is 00:28:42 and then you should just as well get bread in the first place. That's my view of croutons i give croutons one crouton out of five croutons john luke roberts you and i should get divorced because we are so on the same page about croutons i will actively take croutons out of any caesar salad when presented to me because they add nothing to it if anything anything, they detract, okay? They're filler. They cut the inside of your mouth if you get one and you weren't expecting it. Now it's time for environment news now because the environment is happening all over itself.
Starting point is 00:29:18 Really, now this is an American story. This is the story of the Ohio train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which has led to just an absolute catastrophe. Can you unpack this story for us? I can indeed. Now, on the surface, this seems like a really sad story, but actually there's a massive uplift to this. Okay. Like this could definitely be a movie on Hallmark, depending on which way it ends. So there's this horrendous train derailment that happened in Ohio, and it was by a company called Norfolk Southern. So Norfolk Southern are allowed, because there's no laws, to just drive trains full of toxic waste through states and not warn the states, by the way, we're coming through a toxic waste. So that was the first problem is that nobody this train was was traveling on the tracks but then secondly it
Starting point is 00:30:09 derails on the border of ohio and pennsylvania spilling all this horrendous stuff everywhere here comes the uplift and the epa the environmental protection agency has now basically said all right norfolk southern you are going to be financially responsible for every single bit of cleanup, every single bit of medical help that anybody needs to pay for off the back of this. They weren't showing, they weren't publishing any information. They weren't showing up to town meetings and town hall meetings. They've said, nope, you have to show up to everything. You have to publish information. and i actually love it like i'm i am fangirling the epa right now for just going you will pay for all if we if we the government have to clean it up you will pay us back if our equipment is damaged while cleaning it up you will you will replace our equipment
Starting point is 00:30:57 they have just gone full good feels disney movie on norfolk southern and i love them for it and so it's going to cost them a lot of money you have to remember this is because there are looser environmental regulations than there were before and so this is really nice that the apa does have the power to come in and like say pay for everything and i think that's that for me is a feel good even though there's a lot of damage yeah i like it's like captain Planet, but with the law behind him. It was like Captain Planet, but with a clipboard and pen. Like Captain Planet mixed with Ally McBeal. Yes, but without the dancing babies.
Starting point is 00:31:37 Oh, wait, actually, Alice, you were working as a lawyer when Ally McBeal was... No, it's longer ago than that. I take it back. I was wondering whether your life was, you're constantly comparing your legal life to this program and fuming at it like doctors do at medical dramas. No, I never watched Ally McBeal, so I don't actually know when it was on. I think it was generally like 8 p.m. or 9 p.m.
Starting point is 00:31:59 Yeah. Lucy Liu and Dancing Babies, that's what I remember. It was about very, very slender lawyers. That's what I remember it was about very very slender lawyers that's what I remember and one dancing baby and such slender threads justice might hang nice
Starting point is 00:32:14 yeah it was a good segue I don't know what you're segueing to but well done it is episode 101 of The Gargle that we have done 101 episodes of this esteemed podcast. And in honour of Room 101, I've asked our guest editors to bring in their most nightmare story,
Starting point is 00:32:33 their terrifying story that terrifies and haunts their dreams, that they would be put in a cage with in Room 101. John Luke Roberts, what is yours? A unidentifiable sphere has washed up on a japanese beach a large metal sphere or as we call it a ball has washed up on a shore in japan they know it's metal because this is very scientific it seems rusty and it's been on there for a while a runner tried to push it and it didn't move which means it's probably got supernatural powers or it's very heavy.
Starting point is 00:33:07 Hard to know at this point, because honestly, if it's very heavy, how could it wash up the sea? The sea doesn't, the sea, the sea. So the point is, there's a ball. It's probably an egg. There's probably something terrifying in it. And if it's not an egg,
Starting point is 00:33:23 it will be like in that film, The Sphere, where there's something something terrifying in it and if it's not an egg it will be like in that film the sphere where there's something deep deep underwater which is a sphere which i can't remember it very well but they go down and i think they go mad when they touch it but this one's on the beach so more people will go mad and so this is the thing which is is causing me fear at the moment especially because they've conducted x-ray exams on it and they haven't revealed anything else from the x-ray so it's magic so it's magic it's probably magic or metal one of the two magic it's metal it's probably an egg it's extraterrestrial i imagine um it's spherical which is of course the most magical of shapes apart from the triangle and um also uh they have
Starting point is 00:34:04 pointed out it does look a bit like because it does look like it's got little handles on it and it could be a um it seems quite like a mooring boy which is basically a particular type of anchor it could be that but who knows how a mooring boy which is a type of anchor could end up in or around the sea so i think i'm terrified terrified of this it could be can i just say it could be art you know how banksy always just pops up you know boom there's a banksy maybe this is this is a boise this is a boise my one rebuttal to this would be this is mysterious unknown and its intent is unclear whereas banksy only works in the most pure and utter glibness possible. Yes, we always know what he intends, don't we?
Starting point is 00:34:52 That's exciting. Yeah. I think it's exciting because it's not near us, right? That's why it's exciting. If it was nearer to us, we'd be like, hmm, this could explode. Do you not ever look at society in the world and just think, let's move on to the next stage of, oh my God, so at least there's some change from just us screwing it up.
Starting point is 00:35:11 But this is the next stage because it's an alien egg. That's what I mean. This, to me, is the gateway to next chapter. Well, this is what all those UFOs were doing. They were laying eggs. The balloon UFOs. Well, there was some balloons, but then there was a car this is what happens when you won't let a chat bot get someone off people are flying sources no but it
Starting point is 00:35:31 wasn't just so we had the balloons but then you also had the car shaped one and then there was like one that was like octagonal they've shot down a few different ufo things in the past couple of weeks so maybe they were laying eggs and we've just shot it's mommy and daddy or maybe this was originally a much sexier sphere until they removed the erotic role play element of it thanks to the italian government and now it's just a rusty what we need is for you to get there with your ms paint circles tool and put some boobs on i i couldn't stretch to rust. That's the problem.
Starting point is 00:36:06 Rialina, what is your terrifying story of the day? This is slightly more ethereal because, you know, the orb's definitely in there taking up a lot of space in the room. But this is notorious already around the Pentagon. But apparently when they were investigating that weather balloon, the pilots took selfies and i think i just generally they took a selfie of themselves with the chinese spy balloon and just and now it's just you know a notorious picture so we have a picture from above and they take
Starting point is 00:36:34 the selfie and i'm just like can we put selfies like you know taking not just any selfie not like but you know those agrarious is that the the right word? Agrarious touristy selfies that often lead to death. Egregious? Egregious. Agrarian. Agrarian. All of those words plus the selfies into Room 101. But you know when people taking, you know when they go somewhere somber?
Starting point is 00:37:01 Like it's a really, you know, it's a place where we're you know we're we're honoring or we're remembering something horrific from from history and it's supposed to remind us not to be that horrific again and then someone comes in is like selfie like can we just put all of those selfies into room 101 and just say no like can we have a selfie ban yes we can have a selfie ban i hang it off the story of of these fighter pilots literally taking a selfie of themselves from the cockpit of their U-2 spy plane as they tracked the high altitude balloons progress over the continental US. Here is a threat to their nation, to their proud, proud nation. And they're like, quick selfie, selfie with the enemy, selfie with what's stealing all our data. They'll be taking selfies with the pigs next all our data they'll be taking selfies with the pigs next or the pigs will be taking selfies with them today yeah i mean then some hot pigs which
Starting point is 00:37:54 you can see from the air that's how you know it's a super pig if you can see it from the moon right is that not the definition of super pig no i think the definition of super pig? No, I think the definition of super pig is when it makes a mistake and its girlfriend dies. It can fly around the earth so much that it turns back time. That is a reference. Thank you. Look at that. Never watched Ally McBeal, but you watched that one. I think that one came out first.
Starting point is 00:38:20 Super pig two. Yeah. And that brings us to the end of the show I'm flipping through the ads at the back Ria have you got anything that you want to plug? Could I please plug my tour? I'm touring, leg one is around the UK but we're adding dates
Starting point is 00:38:34 the tour is called Reawakening and all of the tickets are available off my website rialina.com or come find me on socials because I'll obviously spout about it there as well i'm on all the socials as riolina excellent john luke what have you got to plug i'm in australia i'm doing my show at the adelaide fringe festival and the melbourne international comedy festival so come and catch me there why don't you thank you if you're in australia don't travel here just
Starting point is 00:39:02 to see them because that's too far but don't's too far. But don't not travel here. Yeah, don't not travel here. But I'd say, like, depending where you are, if you're near, yeah. If you're in the UK, probably just wait and then see it in the UK, to be honest. Like, if you're a super pig, don't go. Yeah, if you're a super pig, I do not want super... Look, I don't want to ban anyone from audiences, but I will not be too happy if the super pigs come in.
Starting point is 00:39:28 They take up like three tickets, three seats, one ticket. It's terrible. And they oink through the whole thing. They think they're adding to the show with the oinking, but really they never, they so rarely are. And they heat up the room, all that steam. And my show, Twist, is launching in Adelaide on the 28th of February. It goes 28th to the 4th of March,
Starting point is 00:39:46 and then I'll be in Melbourne with it, and then later on in London. I'll be doing a one-off show in Tokyo on the 18th of May. And for the rest of the stuff, find me on patreon.com slash alicefraser. That's patreon.com slash alicefraser. I'm putting all my stuff there now because I can't trust that all of the social medias won't evaporate. I also do my writers' meetings there, as well as my weekly Tea with Alice salons.
Starting point is 00:40:09 If you want to do a workshop, they're also up there, patreon.com slash alicefraser. This is a Bugle Podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your guests were Ria Lina and John Luke Roberts. I'm trying something new. Additional material is provided by our roving reporters this week, Sam Rugg. If you'd like to be a roving reporter, tweet us at HelloGogglers with whatever story you think would be appropriate. This is a Bugle Podcast and Alice Fraser production.
Starting point is 00:40:34 Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programs from The Bugle, including The Bugle, Catharsis, Tiny Revolutions, Top Stories and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.

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