The Gargle - Bitcoin jizz | Sniffer dogs | Teslas

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

Tiff Stevenson and Helen Zaltzman join host Alice Fraser for episode 25 for The Gargle - the weekly topical comedy podcast from The Bugle. 💦 Is jizz the new Bitcoin?🎨 'Fake' ancient artefacts 🐕 Rare species sniffer dogs🐍 Sea snakes in New Zealand🚘 Autopilot Teslas crashingThis is a show from The Bugle. Follow us on Twitter.This episode was produced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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.

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.

Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. to the Bugles audio newspaper for Visual World. This is The Gargle. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors today are Helen Zaltzman and Tiff Stevenson. Welcome back to the show. Hello. Hi.

Thanks for letting us back. Well, before we plunge into this week's magazine, we can have a look at the front cover. The front cover of the magazine this week is a wellness influencer you don't recognise who got famous for expressing strong opinions about epidemiology while also having a butt. The headline reads, Butt out! Your favourite TikTok dancer just self-published a book.

Other headlines on the front cover read, A tissue Lionel Messi allegedly used at his farewell Barcelona news conference has been listed for sale with a $1 million price tag, raising the question of what he did to that tissue. And vaccines. What's the cutest vax selfie angle the experts weigh in? As well as may every minor injury you get look at least as painful as it is. The satirical cartoon is a young person who's just learned something new yelling at a stranger for not knowing that same thing. is a young person who's just learned something new yelling at a stranger for not knowing that same thing.

Fired up young people teaching others about stuff they're just learning about is the mood of the 2020s. Our top story this week is economic news. This is the story where COVID anti-vaxxers are claiming that jizz will be the new Bitcoin. Helen, you're on top of tech. Can you explain this story to us? Yes, I think the important thing is that Jizz producers

are feeling very important right now, you know, back on top of the world. Yeah, I mean, what true currency is there? What can you rely on more than Jizz? I wouldn't like to speculate. Their premise is that the vaccine will render you infertile and therefore that the jizz of unvaccinated men will become immensely valuable. And then I think they've just used Bitcoin as a reference because it's a lot of it. It makes them jizz.

It's a lot of it. It makes them jizz. It isn't actually worth anything, but you could probably inflate a market on it on the strength of your boner yeah the the uh evidence they have for the vaccine making you infertile is a scientific study saying it doesn't make you infertile and research showing that covid can make you infertile so it's going great these are the kind of economists we need to be listening to i mean it's just it's just amazing can you imagine being the person who like it's like i poured all my money into the jizz bubble before it burst i don't want to go into the jizz bubble speculate to jizzulate capital jizzm i love the fact that this uh this new cryptocurrency like a new version of cryptocurrency is just the sounds of delighted teenage boys everywhere leave

me alone i'm wanking my way to millions well i mean it is the dream right isn't it the dream that your jizz is suddenly worth millions it's not my dream i do have some terrifying dreams but i've never had this one i'm sorry i'm too used to reading books in which the protagonist is a young man and i just project myself into their shoes at all times uh tiff well here's the thing um so as helen mentioned they were saying that COVID-19 could result in erectile dysfunction and male infertility. So samples have been found in testicle and penile tissues and the virus can show up in semen. So it's good to know that ladies have an official excuse not to swallow. If you dare to go into the Reddit threads on this, it's quite terrifying. There was someone who claimed they were going to retire as a cum cow.

quite terrifying. There was someone who claimed they were going to retire as a cum cow. And someone else who said, mark my words, unvaccinated sperm and blood will be in high commodity in a few months to a year. Like I like the idea that on the stock market, there's frozen orange juice and frozen conspiracy theorist. So you can have either or. But apparently there's been people hyping it up. There was one tweet that said unvaccinated sperm counts could rise faster than bitcoin and this is a it looks like a sock puppet account but it's got a picture of a woman on it and then another account which said men who refuse the vaccine are the hottest men on the planet and i'm like yeah they will be the hottest because of the fever and that um they're definitely technically temperatures will be raised. Well, I just enjoy the use of the phrase mark my words.

I feel like that's an underutilised phrase. Do you think this is all a cunning ruse planted by pro-vaxxers to keep people who haven't been vaccinated at home wanking constantly, wanking their way to wealth? You know what, I don't think they need the incentive, Helen. It just seems like a great outcome, really. Your ad section now, because you can't be what you can't buy. Is your lawn drab, predictable, just growing without intense effort on your part?

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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. 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 broom gate available now a cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Art section now. And this is the story of a Qatari sheikh who lost a legal battle recently over $5.2 million worth of fake ancient artifacts. Tiff Stevenson you talk about fake stuff all the time what's happening here? Well the Swiss dealer has disputed this claim that a 2,000 year old bust of Alexander the Great

was worthless. I'm not sure what they're saying is fake here like how are they fake? Is it the age that's faked or is it not alexander the great you know what you've done there mate you've gone and purchased an alexander the mediocre so you've stuffed yourself right up so apparently this shake has lost 5.2 million over over these various pieces i think there was also one that they paid 2.2 million for a statuette of the greek goddess of victory, Nike or Nike, depending on whether you're in America or England. What about if you're in ancient Greece?

Just do it. But they haven't commented on any of the other Greek statues. Amaze, which is the Greek god of leaving your parcel in a bin two doors down. Chlamydia, the Greek goddess of one night stands. And Athena, the Greek goddess of topless men cradling babies. So yeah, so this man's angry. It sounds like a bunch of people with too much money arguing with a bunch of people with too much money

and then paying some lawyers to argue about it for too much money. Well, if you've got as much money as he has, then what else are you going to do with it? I don't feeling sorry for the rich so i shan't be but i also saw that he was suing a gallery for selling him 300 000 pounds worth of fake not ancient mosaics so there's a pattern here is he not learning yeah i mean this is like blaming all of your exes at some point you've got to realize that the thing you all have in common is you and maybe you just don't have the eye for art that you think you have but just go for modern art since you're buying it

anyway look if a qatari billionaire walked into my gas station and picked up a bottle of milk and said i'll pay 2..5 billion for this priceless artifact, I would smile and nod and write a certificate of provenance. So I can't really blame these people for scamming him. That's all the time we have for our art section now. Moving on to our sub art section, our reviews section. Every week, our guest editors bring in something to review out of five stars. Helen, what have you brought in this week? Alice, I have brought the concept of online shopping

for glow-in-the-dark googly eyes, self-adhesive ones, because even if you don't buy them, it means suddenly all of the online ads you're getting are for self-adhesive glow-in-the-dark googly eyes, which is a result. I mean, and not to not to like ruin the mystery but could you expand on the backstory of this glow-in-the-dark googly eyes mission of yours well is it confidential you know sometimes you just move to glory one day you're like i can

achieve this i was uh searching for glow-in-the-dark sequins for some stage wear i need to make and um the site also sold glow-in-the-dark googly for some stage wear I need to make and the site also sold glow-in-the-dark googly eyes and I thought well let's uh let's have a look at those even though I don't need them so I can't count them as a legit business expense although maybe now I could because I've been on your podcast talking about them so I could buy some and glow-in-the-dark googly eyes are now all over the internet for me which is an incredible result for online advertising I think if we must live with it then why not for this I suppose you could go that step further and buy some and then stick them on everything and that would also be great like internet but all around your house I like the idea of the dress that you wanted to make out

of glow-in-the-dark sequins now just being glow-in-the-dark googly eyes maybe I should do that just pretend to be a lot of night creatures hiding in small divots in the ground how many out of five five five googly eyes out of five excellent and tiff what have you brought in to us to review i'm doing a review of adam levine's tattoos yeah why how where when and Yeah. Why, how, where, when, and again, why? So I'd like to state firstly, I like people and really appreciate people who do full body art. Art being the operative word here, because I've got a few friends who have amazing tattoos, but I dislike Adam Levine and the adult colouring book for mindfulness he has tattooed across his torso. His tats, much like his personality, have no colour whatsoever. So first up, he has an eagle across his abs,

signifying that if you're a woman, he will hunt you down and shit on you from a great height. On his left forearm, the eye of the tiger, if the tiger had conjunctivitis. Across his stomach is the word California, so we know where to return him if he gets lost. Around his neck is a belcher style necklace which you know I suppose his jewelry he doesn't have to take off in the pool that could be quite a smart one elsewhere a female centaur stares down a lion presumably a metaphor for that time he totally showed Colin Kaepernick who was bossed by

performing at the halftime show at the Super Bowl after various black artists turned it down that year. Next up, a paint by numbers butterfly, age range two to five years. That's on the on the left hand side of his torso. Also on his torso, Noah Levine, his middle and last name is becoming worryingly memento at this point. He also has the word tapas in sanskrit on his chest uh presumably the yogic definition rather than what he likes to eat when he's out on the lash and finally on his back there is a mermaid cradling a skull and this is probably a nod to the time jennifer love hewitt made a throwaway comment on ellen that uh that she was single and she heard Adam Levine was single and he was

cute and for that he called her aggressive the audacity doesn't doesn't she know he only dates Victoria's Secret models uh by the way do you want to know their secret they wear blindfolds in bed with him not for kink but so they don't have to look at those f***ing tattoos how many stars Tiff one one star have you seen Ed Sheeran's tattoos oh if you're looking for tattoos with colour those f***ing tattoos. How many stars, Tiff? One. One star. Have you seen Ed Sheeran's tattoos? If you're looking for tattoos with colour, he's got a very colouring book-looking lion all across his front. It's a fine lion, isn't it?

It is a fine lion. A fine lion. I've seen amazing tattoos and then I've seen just some truly horrific stuff. So it really isn't the skill of the tattoo artist and the taste of the person like and I think when Adam Levine's been interviewed he's got like no stories behind any of them he was like I was in Japan and I was bored so there you go that's all the time we have for our reviews section because now it's time for our animal section animal section now and this is paws for conservation uh spelled p-a-w-s because

conservationists love a pun uh have have an ecological dog squad which is trained to sniff out rare species and uh not eat them presumably look I think this is a beautiful story. Do you believe in dogs saving the world, Helen? Do I believe in them? I mean, what could be better to believe in? I don't know if they want to save it, but I find them such optimistic creatures that maybe they can see a way to do it that humans can't.

The problem that they're solving is that before planning permission can be given for building work or wind farms to ruin the environment, surveys need to be carried out to check for endangered species. And the quickest way to fill out a survey, apparently, is with the help of a dog. Tiff Stevenson, would you fill out the census with the help of a trained dog?

Well, there are pigs who can sniff out truffles, dogs who can apparently sniff out newts, and I can sniff out men with commitment issues. So together we could be a great crime fighting team. Not personally for me, just for friends. I'm really good at spotting bad guys. But apparently it's usually ecologists who determine the presence of endangered species. And this is a company called, what are they called? Pets? Paws for Conservation. Ah, lovely. Beautiful. Love love the pun so they were saying

that now they're using dogs and it's just it's another case of animals coming over here taking our jobs first it was pigeons with the male now it's this and it's apparently max an eight-year-old english springer spaniel is one of four dogs used used by the uh charity i think they're a charity so there we have it eight in dog years is 40 48 this is a 48 year old white male getting shoehorned into a job all the press and accolades and you say meritocracy maybe he's the best dog for the job i say he has hay fever and has to wear goggles according to this story he's not the best dog for the job he's got to wear goggles because he has hay fever this stinks guys i just i we should reckon, like his owner runs the company.

I think we should recognise nepotism where we see it. And I think we should call it out. Although to be fair, you say he's taking our jobs, but I would not know how to sniff out pangolin scales or ivory. Or pine martin scat, which is apparently another thing that he can do. I sort of worry about his sort of mental well-being because it must be a very frustrating job to smell out delicious rare species and then not be allowed to eat them well the website mentions that they have located well over 100 bat and bird carcasses

in varying stages of decomposition so maybe they're not super appetizing anymore fair enough we don't know the tastes of this dog. A little ripe. Can I mention though, I do like it when animals have what we perceive to be sort of human conditions, like a dog with hay fever is just quite funny. I wonder if there's a toad out there who's gluten intolerant or a water vole with premenstrual dysphoria. I'm just going through my checklist of things because I have all of those. What is the crisis of the water vole with premenstrual dysphoria. I'm just going through my checklist of things because I have all of those. What is the crisis of the water vole with premenstrual dysphoria? What does a water vole say to itself

in those tricky three days before? I don't want to get in my swimming cosy three days before experience. I just feel too fat to go in the water. That's how mine, you know, I feel very bleak. I'm just going to sit in some reeds and everyone can leave me alone. I feel very bleak. I'm just going to sit in some reeds and everyone can leave me alone. In other animal news now, there are mystery sea snakes washing up on the shore of New Zealand. Helen Zaltzman, what is happening here? Well, it seems like a bit of a surprise to New Zealand, not the snakiest country. And now these very incredible looking yellow and black

sea snakes have been turning up on the beaches and they're apparently pretty poisonous but the poisonous teeth are right at the back so they really have to get like a good chew on you to cause a problem but maybe it's

a warming water climate change bit of sn sneaky biz. It could be. The beginning of the story reads a little bit like an Enid Blyton novel in that an 11-year-old local boy found a black and yellow sea snake on the beach and he put it in a bag, took it to the shop, asked for a box, put it in a bucket and took it home, whereupon it died presumably from being in too many different containers.

The quote that I enjoyed particularly was this boy told the New Zealand Herald, I didn't know what to do with it. I chopped its head off, put it in a bag and threw it out. That's a very dark turn. That's so funny, Alice, because I literally have written down here, it sounds like an Enid Blyton kid's book.

Because it really does it says it calls him a steely local boy like it does sound like the beginning of a children's book the dark turn there is like why it was already dead so why did he lob its head off and does he need to go on a watch list i don't know it could be like taking the batteries out of your appliances before you throw them out i don't know what's the protocol for disposing of sea snakes maybe he thought that's the fangy part but then he could have just put like a little cork on the fangs keep everyone safe yeah what's creating some consternation in the department of conservation because they're the new zealanders are so unfamiliar with snakes all of their animals

are variations on birds uh so that people don't recognize that these things are snakes that are washing up on the shores or they don't think they're poisonous and there's no anti-venom for this particular snake in the whole of new zealand so how could you not recognize these as snakes they look exactly like snakes well they're saying that people misidentify them as native eels and i just thought it's a good job they're not here then otherwise we chop them up and shove them in lube to serve at cockney parties and poison would make it just more of a challenge for members of my family like a hot curry like it then becomes like we're going to make this competitive you will get

yourself some of that yellow belly jelly deal mate if you bet you can handle it me old mucker we'd just be eating it we'd be trying to eat it so you know we're predators to the eels the cockneys it would be a local delicacy i think the most new zealand story other than the kid who found one wrapped it around his neck and took it to school is the story again i say what is up with the children of new zealand well i feel like all children in new zealand do live in an enid blighton novel but this other person commenting said that she caught a snake while fishing and recognized that it was a snake and did the and this is a quote the old

that and cut our line hook and see ya which I feel is storytelling at its finest well that seems like a reasonable way to respond which is leave it the hell alone. Let it carry on with its life rather than sticking it in a bucket and lopping its head off or wearing it around your neck as like a bad Adam Levine tattoo. Apparently it's an offence to kill one. So don't do that.

It is an offence to kill one. That 11-year-old boy is going away for a long time. He's going to have some adventures in jail. They were kind of saying it's very, very rare that they would attack yes anyone like Helen says you know so um but I do like yellow-bellied sea snake as a kiwi insult I think that really works they're highly venomous but they're non-aggressive like me that's how I like to consider myself till you put Alice in a bucket and then watch out just don't transfer me from a bucket to a box because then i'm done for can i wear you around my neck to school though that's all the time we have for

our animal section because now it's time for our automotive section as you know we're car crazy over here at the gargle and this is the news of 765 000000 Tesla vehicles that have autopilot problems, specifically the autopilot problem of crashing into parked emergency vehicles, which I think is probably the one thing that you don't want a car to do. Helen Zaltzman, I know you love cars. Oh, love the broom brooms. The Fast and the Furious 9 is your favourite movie. So can you tell us more about this story?

Yeah, well, it turns out that when people have a self-driving car, they don't want to have to pay attention all the time so that it doesn't crash into things. And apparently it crashes into things. So instead of just sitting there or sleeping there or being drunk there, you have to stop it crashing into stuff, which is not what you're paying all that Tesla money for. Yes, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is doing a probe into these vehicles. Until now, they've held back because they wanted to encourage innovation in the industry, which is America's favourite thing to do is to not stop people getting killed because they hope that technology will get better I think that's that's

the trade-off that they tend to make Tiff would you buy one of these self-driving cars well my new car has a an auto park and it it actually freaks me out like I did it yesterday when I was with my dad and he just couldn't fathom he's octogenarian now he could not fathom he was like what is happening your hands aren't on the wheel and the wheels it was just sort of turning and parking itself it does feel weird to let the car take control of itself it's sort of like my cat walking into the kitchen on his hind legs and helping himself to biscuits yeah they're sentient now though cars and uh this is just the start of it they can park themselves and then soon they'll overthrow you yeah mine does like when it's running out of petrol it'll say limited range which i take as an insult on my acting abilities.

And it says, don't let the system distract you, which does sound like a great Rage Against the Machine song. But here's my thing. Of course, Elon Musk developed a car with automated control so he could feel like he had a friend. Like, you know, this is how the Knight Rider kit

was invented, you know, like I've got no friends, I need to chat to my car and and I've had this theory for a long time that geeks should remain friendless and dateless so they can keep coming up with cool stuff we don't want them being happy honestly every time a programmer is happy we lose a really cool iphone app so if we just keep them isolated and unhappy, we'll get all these great innovations. But we should be resisting every, you know, and I've I've lent into this myself. I'm engaged to a geek. I shouldn't have done it because who knows what I've robbed the world of making him happy and complacent in his daily life. He could have been inventing something magnificent. This is a tantric model of technology and diff. Tesla have disbanded their media relations office so presumably they're

going to automate that as well i mean that's pretty amazing look i think i think a self-driving car is a great idea but that's mainly because i've driven in some cars with some very bad drivers and i don't see how a robot could be worse than that. What about an automated backseat driver? Like a version of my mum who will go, you should have gone the back way there. You should have, I would have gone down the A3, but you've gone this way now. That's my mum's favourite thing to do is,

as I'm en route, say that I should have gone the other way, and it would have been quicker, which neither of us have any evidence or proof that it would have, and it's the most annoying thing to listen to is it more like sitting in the top front seat of a bus and pretending you're driving that is my favorite hobby it's the best my grandmother was such a bad driver my jewish my jewish holocaust surviving grandmother she didn't learn to drive until quite late in life and she would break hard when she had a thought so i actually have no fear of death in cars i've had my survival instinct beaten out

of me by one time she wanted to go in a direction but there was traffic works and she didn't want to stop so she just drove through the yellow cones into a hole i like gung-ho granny gung-ho granny's great i think that's all the time we have for today that's the end of our show we're flipping through the ads at the end uh there's an ad for pencils pencils like a pen but you can rub it out helen have you got anything to plug well i do have a thousand pencils that i need to sell which are much for my podcast the illusionist so come for the pencils stay for the podcast at the illusionist.org Excellent and Tiff have you got anything to plug? I do have some

shows to plug, The Return of Old Rope September the 6th so check out the Twitter account Old Rope Comedy and also Leeds and Reading Festival if you're at either of those I'm going to be at that which I think is like the 27th and the

29th of August. Excellent. And thank you to our roving reporter, Pablo Estevez, for sending in the sea snake story. If you have a story that you'd like to send in, send it to us on Twitter

at HelloGarglers. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Ped Hunter. The executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'm Alice Fraser. Find me online at at alliterative on Twitter and Instagram.

That's A-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E or patreon.com slash Alice Fraser to support my work or join my weekly Tea with Alice salons or get a lot of free stuff. See you next week. Bye. You can listen to other programs

from The Bugle, including The Bugle, The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.