The Gargle - Bro economy | Air vent baby | Mafia nun

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

Jay Foreman and John-Luke Roberts join host Alice Fraser for episode 186 of The Gargle - all of the news, and none of the politics.🤑 Bro economy💦 Air vent baby🔠 Spanish Scrabble 💊 Contraception fear✝️ Mafia nun🎶 ReviewsWatch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BuglePodcastSupport Bugle podcasts here https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateWritten by Alice Fraser, Jay Foreman and John-Luke RobertsProduced by Ped Hunter, with executive production from Chris SkinnerHOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLE- Keep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a podcast from The Bugle. at the fading echoes of their glory. The people, hungry for spectacle, chant for blood. They crave the games, not for honor, but for the illusion of strength. A name that echoes through the halls of the Coliseum, whispered in awe and fear, Maximus. It's not the legend who walks these halls. The gates of fate have opened for another. Born into obscurity, but forged in the fires of rebellion, Tertius Lucius Decasimus of Meridius,

great-great-grand-nep nephew of Maximus, steps forward from the shadows of his family's past to continue the franchise. Dragged into the arena as a pawn in the machinations of a corrupt emperor, Lucius is forced to fight not for glory, not for survival, but for the gargle. Welcome to The Gargle, the Sonic glossy magazine to the Bugles audio newspaper for a visual world all of the news, none of the politics. I am your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Jay Foreman welcome hello thank you for having me

back it's a delight and John Luke Roberts hello hello it's lovely to be here have you seen did you go to the cinema this week I did John's Alice I have not watched anything for three years but but... OK, but you've seen some... You're aware of Gladiator 2, then, I guess, that you just... I'm conscious that it exists. Is that what you do in these intros? Are they always just based on films that you would see if you could actually get to the cinema?

No, sometimes they're based on books that I imagine reading. Sometimes they're based on dreams I've had. Sometimes they're based on dreams I wish I could have. You know. You gotta find creativity where you can. But before we bring out our short swords and get into the shield wall that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine.

The front cover this week is Killian Murphy, posing with the script for the third 28 Days Later movie currently in development. Titled 28 Days, isn't that about the same time as a menstrual period? Give or take? Hmm, makes you think. I feel like Killian Murphy inhabits that perfect middle ground between being objectively good looking and objectively upsetting looking. He's like on the razor's edge, I think. perfect middle ground between being objectively good looking and objectively upsetting looking.

You know, he's like on a razor's edge, I think. The satirical cartoon this week is the principle of innocent until proven guilty under law being bent over a bench and seduced by the principle of a sufficiently communally empathizable crime being allegedly done by a sufficiently hot guy no jury would convict. Important principle. I mean, what are they going to do? What are they going to select for juries that are ultra rich and blind? Come on. I don't know about you guys. And that brings us to this week's top story, which is the news of the boom in the bro economy.

Young men right now are entering what's called the bro economy in unprecedented numbers, which is meme stocks, cryptocurrency, and betting. John Luke, Roberts, you like long odds. Can you unpack this story for us? I like long odds. Sorry. Well, I mean, you've been odd for a long time. I don't know. And long for a bit. Well, yes. So young men, young men, young men, I think, are generally taking risks with their investments by investing in things which don't exist. But if everyone comes together and pretends exists, then, you know, why not? I'm worried about young men.

I did have a panic the other week after the election results in America. I had a sudden thought of, oh no, I haven't done enough to connect with the young men of America. And then I realized that was disproportionate and it really doesn't fall on me. It's really not up to me to sort that out. And if I did speak to them, I'm not sure they'd be interested in listening. I can't. There's a big cultural divide there and basically a linguistic one. So yes, young men like everyone else are feeling uncertain about money and have decided that the way to make sure that they have a lot of money is to be very risky because then there might be big rewards.

Well, it's sort of a fascinating thing because if you haven't got stakes in a society, you can be very much about bringing down the system. But it feels like this kind of man who's really invested in these three types of investment, they believe that they can go around the system, they feel like they can cheat the system, which I think bespeaks a real hopelessness about their possibilities of sort of thriving within the system without incurring any kind of like rebellious spirit. The basic gist of the story seems to be that investing is now cool. And that is completely alien to me.

Cause I remember back at school, we had a thing called the shares club, which is not as lovey dovey as it sounds. It's like an afterschool club where you could scan the back of the financial times and look at the really tiny, boring numbers, write down which companies you want to pretend to invest in, get your calculators out and then come back next week and see how much phantom money you've made. And it was for massive dorks.

That's changed now. Because if you go back, if you ever spend time on what's now called X, if you ever go there anymore, it's empty apart from adverts for investing. And they're all adverts for investing in things that I don't know what they are. It's a bit like, you know, going to a party, waking up at 4am and all your friends have gone and then you wake up and you find that the only people left are the massive dorks from the share club. Well, I mean, Australia investing was always cool. We had the Dolomites. That at least is a cool name. Small animated creature that came to school and tried to talk you into putting your money in a bank and relying on compound interest.

Like Dolomites. Like Dollar-mites. So it was a pun. That's quite fun. Yeah, it was very funny. Yeah, thank you. Mites is a fantastic word for something about investing. Your dollars might bring in some money. Well, then you don't need to put the small print at the end if it's in the tie. Dollar Mites, that's fine. I don't know what to thank you, like I'm the advertising arm of the bank that tried to get the children to put their money in it. This is a story that as an Australian you might be aware of. Did you know that VeggieMite was originally going to be called ParWil? And do you know why?

They were competing with but this is completely true and completely bonkers they were competing with Marmite that was the big brand at the time and they're saying well Marmite but Par Will awful and also grainer and much saltier. That is essentially what the voting public in America decided. Ring the bell, Ped. Investment wise we had a series of banks here. You'll back me up on this, Jay, where you could get like, you know, like NatWest, I think there was a series of pigs, different kinds of pigs that you get ceramic piggy banks for.

And then, of course, you had premium bonds by the government, which was all about security, not risk. But there was and there still is, Ernie the robot, the electronic random number indicator equipment, who would pick the numbers at random and then give you a little reward and you got little piggy banks of Ernie. They exist and Ernie is the benevolent robot I would like to take over. And then, you know, he could rule just by pulling out random numbers. It would be wonderful. They used to have a room full of earnies in the Science Museum but they don't anymore and they did it despite me I

think. Well I feel like the problem with cryptocurrency investment is that there are some people who are really like smart and interested in the technology of the blockchain and the potentials for like organizing social structures in ways that are not so corrupt because they're sort of distributed through these mechanisms and then that's about or I'd say like 0.5 of a percent and then the rest is just con men grifters and men who heard about it on a podcast and put their money in it might as well have been boner pills but it worked out well and now they think that's hard. I think that's probably true Alice but I think that's also true of pretty much every field.

I think of everything there's maybe 0.5 people are really interested in this, have really great ideas about the system and then everyone else just yeah idiots coming along and trying to make sense of it. Are we in fact part of the problem because you said people often hear about these investment opportunities through podcasts so should we not for the sake of humanity sort of mention just how terribly risky it is and how awful it makes you look if you tell people at parties how much you've invested. Look, just like the young men of America, I don't think I have a responsibility one way or another for the crypto markets.

With any news story, you can give it a score based on what I like to call grandma's what's that. I'm massively misremembering somebody else's system but basically this story about young people, tech bros, investing in crypto currency the way to get the grandma what's that score is to imagine you read the headline to your grandma and count how many times does she have to say what's that. So for example there are men investing in crypto what's that it's a false currency using the blockchain what's that it's a complicated thing on the on the... and so on and so on. And I reckon this story has to have the highest score I've ever come across. I counted 12 before I got something that even

I could understand without Googling. 13 if you add young men. One if you add young men. I feel like your grandmother would sort of understand. Oh, sorry. I had a flashback to Harry and Field's sketch show with the dirty old lady. I miss them. Anyway, carry on. 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 a dying mall. Three empty shop fronts followed by a sale you can't trust. Dying malls. It's like a haunted house, but so much worse. Dying malls. What

happens when you trust the bread making to the circus? And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by the humble will to read the same book again because your child has asked you to. What a hero. Maybe this will make up for the other ways in which you are not the parent you hoped you'd be. That's not my cat. Its eyes are too dead. And this summer, the world will never be the same because that's how time works. Nothing's ever the same as it was before, but that's Buddhism. And this is a summer blockbuster from the studio that brought you last year's smash

hit and the visionary director behind a critically acclaimed franchise. Strap on your dicks and then hold on to those dicks to prepare yourself for the most explosive adventure of the year. In a world teetering on the brink of chaos, five unlikely friends discover whatever you think the movie's about and also the meaning of friendship. Starring an A-list action star,

an Academy Award winning actor, and a breakout new talent, this isn't just a movie, it's a movement, a movement to go see this movie in theaters everywhere this summer, because summer isn't summer without a summer blockbuster. I realize that's not seasonally appropriate for you guys, but I'm in Australia and I'm sweating balls.

Oh gosh, it's summer, isn't it? I feel like the writing you've done this week, Alice, really reveals a latent desire to go to the cinema. That's what I've heard. I really want to go to the movies. You don't understand, I haven't gone to the movies in years. There's a cinema in my small town on the South Coast and it's like a 90s cinema. You can get a ticket and a choc top

and a popcorn for $9. What do the listeners of The Gargle have to do to make this happen for you? They can sign up to my end of year creative reboot course at my Patreon. Thereby give me the money to go to the cinema. I've discovered since becoming a dad that the cinema has some of the comfiest seats

and the coziest dim lighting for about an hour and a half of a lovely little snooze that you could get. I've seen the first 15 minutes of lots of films. Eaten the first two inches of lots of popcorns. Have you put them all together, made some sort of horrifying beginning film, all the beginnings tacked together and no resolution? No, but I will now.

This is romance news, which is the news that a Florida inmate has had a miracle baby by using the air vent to get pregnant. Jay Foreman, you're interested in engineering. Can you unpack this story for us? So this lady gave birth to a baby girl in June and the child's father, who is another inmate called Joan Dipas, Juan Dipas, and he impregnated her, he says, without ever meeting her in person. Now stories like this, I'm always very suspicious of of and this one, the way they've explained it, is

that he somehow managed to pack up his semen and pass it to her through the air vent. Now even if these two people were absolutely hugely in love and they were so desperate to have a baby together, they were willing to try this over and over again, because I assume that it didn't work the first time. Even that would be quite difficult to believe but it turns out these people have never met and so you have to wonder A. are they telling the truth? B. if not why would they lie? C. what could possibly have happened instead? and D. did nobody try to stop them? and where's the baby now?

No, this is too much cynicism and skepticism. This is the Romeo and Juliet, Pyramus and Thysbe kissing through the wall, except it's jizzing through the wall by the means of a Ziploc bag full of sperm. It's so horrifying. Wait, that's over-engineered. It's not a Ziploc bag. It was Saram Wrap.

Oh no. Oh no. He used cling film. And he also, he did it five times a day. He passed a little cling film bobble of semen through a system of blankets pulled through the air vent five times a day, which I think does point to how it's possible because they obviously have lots of time on their hands. Because like the fifth time there, that's taken a while. That's really, that's going to be a struggle to get that out. They've got a lot of something on their hands. Yeah, that's for sure. If you're in a correctional facility, there's really not much else to do with your day.

It could be that he was passing it through the air vent, not knowing who he was going to impregnate. I mean, it's possible he was passing through the air vent not knowing who he was going to impregnate. I mean it's possible he was passing through multiple air vents. That would have been funny if actually it had gone round the wrong corner and someone else had ended up with it and oh no it's not this woman I've been talking to through this air vent. I feel like there's something inherently horrifying about any body of fluid once it's more than half a foot from your body.

I think that sort of makes sense but does that count if it's still in motion? I think it has to land before it becomes horrifying, right? Maybe it's just any bodily fluid, not at body temperature. Once it gets towards, no, I don't know. There's a logistical thing here. There's a very clear, bright line in my head that I would know when it touched my hand. There's something icky about bodily fluid, certainly when involved with anything related to the kitchen.

And I think that's where this, you're getting cling film involved. I think cling film is less, you could rank it. Zip lock bag would seem more proper than cling film. A little tube, a proper line, a medical one, that would seem absolutely fine. Tupperware, okay. Cling film is definitely bottom here.

A sponge, if you just did it in a sponge and then passed that sponge through, that's probably worse. Yeah, paper bag, not good. Paper bag, not good. You get those little grease stains like you do when you have a croissant in it. I was thinking about the physics of how it works

because normally an air vent is like a very, very small little tube with tight bends. And unless it's a vent sort of directly connecting two walls on the side of a thin wall in order to get the little tube of semen where he wanted it to go he'd have had to have really good aim and have to thrown it really hard maybe it was like do you remember that joke in The Simpsons where they put a little piece of paper in a tube that then travels up and down through the system and ends up in landfill maybe it was one of those are those things real by the way the way? I've only ever seen it in The Simpsons.

No, they have them in shopping centres to put the cash upstairs. I also quite like the fact that they're both in jail, going on trial for murder. I like the idea of murder as having a baby because it feels like it's a sort of one in one out policy, addressing the global balance. He did describe her as like, I just, we haven't, he called, what's her name? Something Link, Daisy Link, which is so nearly a pun, you know, but it's, it's a little,

that frustrates my, my righty brain. But he said, oh, we did this all without ever touching. And then he went on to say, she's like the Virgin Mary. And I don't think that's how God did it. God was not sort of passing down little cling film water bombs full of his seed. It was much more magical than that. Well, we don't know, I suppose.

There may be, there's one of the gospels, like gospel 32 or something where that did come up, but it didn't make the cut and was left in the apocrypha. It's on the deluxe Blu-ray of the Bible with the deleted scene. It's just Lilith. Lilith and Saramrap-filled bags of semen. This is the olden days.

It would have been like a papyrus envelope. Which would be much harder to use, actually. Or a goat skin, something like that. Or one of those little folded paper puzzles that you do to like guess who your boyfriend's gonna be in primary school, a little, you know. I think that's the grimist thing to have semen in. You're right, that's the grimest thing.

We found the worst thing. And that brings us to our reviews section. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. Jay Foreman, what have you brought in for us this week? Hello, I would like to review my year in music. It's that time of year in December where Spotify makes you feel awful and reveals the music that you've been listening to the most number of times throughout the year. And this year has been very different. Almost every other

year up until now, it's been Beatles, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles but this year something terrible happened in around about July my two-year-old learnt to say the word Alexa and that has influenced our dinner time listening habits somewhat so now I only have myself to blame because ultimately he's learnt his requests from me but Spotify has thrown into sharp relief what have I done. So it turns out the answer is in at number five Baby Shark do do do do do do. Number four Ghostbusters by Ray Parker jr. Still his most popular song to date will he be able to top it. Number three Baby Shark 1.5

a slightly sped up version of Baby Shark. Number two we don't talk about Bruno we don't talk about him we sing about him over and over and over again. And at number one, by very popular request by a long, long way, it's Yellow Submarine by the Beatles, who I now hate. So I rate my euron music three stars. It's my own fault. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Three stars is still on the positive end of the spectrum, though. I find actually that you can improve life a lot by if you change your rating system to have everything be out of three, you'll find that most experiences in life score the maximum three out of three, where one is make that stop it hurts, two is bad and three is

fine. The maximum three out of three for pretty much everything. Oh, so wait, you're not, it's not proportional. You're changing the whole, you're just taking good and very good out of it. It depends how you draw it. If it's a, what's the word, where it's like the scale gradually grows, there's a maths word for that. But I promise you, it'll make you very happy. You'll find everything scores three out of three. John Luke Roberts, what have you brought in for us this week out of five? Well, you can't tell me what system I'm going to use. You can't demand it.

I might use out of three and pretend it's out of five. I'm going to review Marmite jars. Now Marmite itself, obviously you're meant to have strong opinions on. You're meant to either have you know love it or hate it and I think one we should change that we should come up with a world where it's okay to not mind Marmite. That'd be acceptable. But Marmite jars, I do like Marmite. I'm coming out in favour. But the traditional Marmite jar is beginning to really annoy me. And I think it's a good example of tradition outweighing functionality.

We could be improving our lives if we changed it. For people who don't know the Marmite jar, it's sort of, how would I describe it, rounded. It's like a circle with a lid on top, which is fine to begin with. You can get that Marmite out easily, although scooping the Marmite out, it always ends up very sticky on the outside. It's almost impossible because the rim of the jar is sort of towards the middle. To get that Marmite to your toast without some of that Marmite falling from the knife in little strips onto the jar.

That's a problem. But the biggest problem is there are these sort of corners of the Marmite jar in the top which are impossible for God nor man to get the Marmite out of those bits. So whatever happens, you are wasting Marmite once you've finished a jar, you know after the two or three years that you've been using that jar of Marmite. Have you tried putting the jar to your mouth and going... I haven't, but wouldn't I? I'd need some airflow into the bottom of the jar

for that to really work, I think. Otherwise I'm just sort of... Oh, that's true. You'd need to drill a hole. Yeah, I'd need to drill a hole. I'm not willing to do that. I am not willing to do that. I don't care about getting that much.

I thought you were gonna suggest using my tongue and I was gonna say, my tongue's not a thing that long. No, that's disgusting. Obviously, I've often thought about this. It's the same for peanut butter and anything that comes in a jar. I often think you know if you added up all of the wasted marmite from around the world from these inaccessible jars and somehow add it all together to try to feed more people, it would be full of broken glass. So I'm going to give my rating, which is I think two. Well, it is two, yeah, because I like the look of it.

I'm not going to lie, but it's not useful. You need to get a finger in there. And I'm going to propose that I think All My Might should be delivered in little tubes of cling film passed through air vents to whoever wants it. And that brings us to Scrabble News now, which is the news that Nigel Richards, the Scrabble star, has won the Spanish Scrabble World title despite not speaking Spanish. John Luke Roberts, you count your words. Can you unpack this story for us? Yes. So this is this man who apparently makes other Scrabble players tremble when he arrives. When he arrives at Scrabble tournaments,

everyone goes, oh no, the best we can do is come second. He has a photographic memory. He's won Scrabble in English many times, and he's also won the French Scrabble tournaments twice, despite not speaking French, just by learning the words in the dictionary and playing the numbers, and he's just done it in Spanish. And he doesn't speak Spanish either, apparently.

He couldn't have a conversation in Spanish. And I just think it's absolutely wonderful that somebody is willing to put so much work into something so entirely useless. It gives me a bit of hope. It's so absurd and so dumb, and it's just a game. And it's wonderful. It's an extraordinary thing to learn all of the words in a language

while refusing to learn the language. You'd think it would be like, well, I might as well, right? You think, oh, okay, I might as well just like learn this little system to put these words together so that I can speak it. But no. What it demonstrates quite clearly is that understanding what the words mean when you play Scrabble must be an awful distraction and That you'll play a better game if you just have the vocabulary on its own But also what a great way to learn a language whenever I play Scrabble

I'm always excited by a good word like a fun word, but that has nothing to do There's no fun. Like you're not you don't get points for fun. Although I did win a game up against my friend Who I normally beat Smith Scrabble and I won and I knew I'd won and then I realized that the last three letters I had to put down on the board with the letters Wi and N so I won playing the word win and I was the least gracious I danced around the table. We were in a board game cafe. It was, it was, it did not look good for me, but my God, I don't regret it at all. I mean, look, I, I am the same. I'm very bad at Scrabble because I'm always looking for

the words to connect in some way or for there to be like an elegant, you know, association of all of the, yeah, it's terrible. A terrible thing to be, I think we can all agree. Jay, have you ever learned anything entirely useless? Oh, all the time, almost everything I know is completely no value. And the same in Scrabble, by the way, like if I find a word that looks really satisfying on the board and makes it more symmetrical or connects up to more than one word at once, that is far more exciting than just putting a little letter X on the board and getting a higher score for the word axe ax that apparently means something but you know refuse to accept is a real word.

Guys, guys, guys, I think we may have just invented a new scoring system for Scrabble. Have you ever tried playing a game of Scrabble where you attempt to get the lower score possible and you have to resist all urge to put down words that will get you a high score? It's surprisingly difficult. I never have played that game, but I'm now fully committed to the artistic gymnastics approach to Scrabble

where you get points out of 10 from judges who are watching for elegance. Yeah, you would need a jury. That's it, you need a panel of judges, but I'm for it. Four people there saying, I'm judging on how pleasing the word is. Or yeah, absolutely, let's do it. Let's revolutionize this shit.

And you could play it with bananagram tiles because bananagram tiles don't have points on them so they wouldn't distract. Oh yes. See, I'm thinking more like the gymnastics where you have like difficulty and technical and different things on which you're being judged. But if you're at home with your family this Christmas, feel free to try our way of playing

Scrabble and then tell us how many fights you've had with your family about it. But wait, do you take, do you also take the original scoring system? Is that one of the criterion on which it's judged? I think, I think you've got to, you've got to count with your heart on that one. I think you have to decide. Okay. Have you ever tried playing a game of Scrabble? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Have you ever tried playing a game of Scrabble? judged. I think you've got to count with your heart on that one. I think you have to decide. Have you ever tried playing a game of Scrabble where every title has the letter Q? It's technically playable, but just really not a lot of fun. And also, I often wonder in languages where they have alphabets that go on for days, like Chinese, Japanese and Korean, what does Scrabble look like? What do word searches look like in Chinese? Like,

there's one, circle it, there's one, circle it. Just like looks like bubble wrap by the end of it. Bubble wrap through the event. That's probably between Tupperware and paper bag. No, bubble wrap's not gonna work because you get that through, there's no way that the first thing she does isn't pop the bubble wrap for fun, by which time it's all spread all over her fingers.

There's no, you know, that's not, that's not, it's just not efficient. The least efficient way of course would be sperm by sperm. The bubble wrap thing could work. It depends how she wants to pop it. Each sperm in a bubble of the bubble wrap. That brings us to misinformation news, which is the news that there is a rise in fear of contraception among young women due to the internet being the internet.

Jay Foreman, you are the internet. Can you unpack this story for us? I am the internet. What have you been doing to young women, Jay? So the misinformation online could be part of the reason fewer women are taking long-term contraception. But what's happening is people are now getting their medical advice.

Instead of looking through the yellow pages and phoning up the nearest doctor, they're now taking to social media and in these days increasingly TikTok to get expert advice. Instead of looking through the yellow pages and phoning up the nearest doctor, they're now taking to social media and in these days increasingly TikTok to get expert advice and a lot of the so-called experts out there are putting people off and I think the major reason for this problem is everything on TikTok nowadays looks so authoritative. I remember in the early days of the internet that if someone didn't know what they were talking about you'd be able to tell because it was written in comic sans and it was

flashing all sorts of horrible colors. And nowadays, everything looks slick with lovely chunky readable subtitles. And everyone has a phone in their pocket with a really high quality camera that makes it look like a slickly produced BBC four medical documentary. And so people will believe anything.

Well, and also I think that there's a sort of a slight mismatch in that there's plenty of long term contraceptions that have really unpleasant side effects that doctors will say, ah, suck it up with the vacuum of your vagina and you know, you're just being a lady about it. Oh wait, the vacuum of the vagina? Oh, well then hang on, wait, we've sorted out, you just put that against the air vent, suck it through, no need for any Saramrap or any container at all.

You can seal that. I do remember reading somewhere that they had tried some years ago to develop male contraception because people have been calling for it for ages. It seems only fair. But apparently it got only so far in the trials and they said, well, we're gonna abort this one

because it turns out it's having some slightly unpleasant side effects. The men are getting in bad moods. So, you know, we better abandon that. Like the idea that it's not good enough for men for that reason. Yeah, I mean, that that was a pretty sad time for us all. But basically, I think we've got a two pronged, a two pronged problem. One is that there's plenty of disinformation and misinformation online, and people exaggerate their stories, and people are sharing their most

horrible horror stories. And those are the things that go viral. So you're only seeing the worst possible outcomes of this medication. And also at the same time, traditional medicine and doctors are not willing to address the problems that are there and adapt women's medication sufficiently quickly that people can fend off these horror stories. And so what that's ending up with is a lot of women who are, you know, swearing by the moon. Well, you can't prove it doesn't work. On a weight, yeah, you can. Misinformation is almost the wrong word. Cause a lot of the problem, as you pointed out,

is just information, but not in sufficient quantities. You know, you are being told things that have really happened, just not enough of the other things to like, okay, well, how do I work out the actual risk to reward thing here? It's a failure of graphs. I think that's the problem. Bad infographics.

Yeah, bad infographics. People have learned to put white coats on as well. That helps. I trust anyone in a white coat. As soon as they do, I'm like, well, they must be a doctor. You can't get them. Yeah. How do they keep it clean?

Yeah. I mean, I will only trust medical information if it comes halfway through an advert and they say, here comes the science bit, concentrate. You know, I miss that doctor's hater thing that always used to pop up. You know, the idea that there was one little trick and this woman's worked it out and doctors hate her because they're not getting money now that she's worked out this little trick for, you know, your foot not falling off or whatever the medical problem is. Yeah but the picture was always something like ghastly like a toenail exploding or something so that you'd be sucked

into looking at the picture. Or often a cross section of a person yeah. Yeah you think oh no whatever happened to them I don't want to be a cross section you'd think. Better click on that like my two halves together. It's become a selling point in general for your career just to say that doctors hate you. You know it could be for any reason. Just a very rude patient. A very apple-cheeked person. Mafia Nun News now and that's a sentence that is at the beginning of this story. There is a mafia nun who's been arrested in Italy. John McRoberts, you've eaten pasta before. Can you unpack this story for us? I have eaten pasta before. I often get the spaghetti, I get a pretty looking dog.

We both go at it, but so far no kisses. How did you get the dolmio out of the jar? I couldn't get it in the corner. both go at it, but so far, no kisses. How did you get the dolmio out of the jar? I couldn't get it in the cornea. No, look, I'm not gonna joke about that because no, the dolmio jar was perfectly reasonable and I'm not gonna hear against it. Like it's a more fluid thing.

You can get that out of there. There's not the same, the marmite's basically half solid. Anyway. You can't just add a little splash of water and shake the marmite jar. No, you can't. That's what you meant to do then like dehydrate, then try and put a hairdryer over the bread to get it less wet? No. But there's a nun

who has been arrested in Italy for, she's one of 24 people who's been arrested and she's been arrested for acting as a go-between between the mafia members outside of jail and the mafia members in jail. And she's been able to do it because she's a nun and people have thought well that's fine she's a nun she's not part of the mafia when all that that means is she wears a fun costume um it's great it's good it's fun i miss it i miss the film's nuns on the run i miss the film sister act i want more nun-based crime fun. And this is what we've got. And this maybe is my, I feel like she should be, she should be let off because it's fun.

That's my new view of crime. If it's fun, that's fine. Yeah, yeah. As a kid, I used to think that nuns actually were all part of a crime syndicate because my only exposure to nuns was the Film Sister Act. Why else would they need a wimple if not to hide things, to smuggle things? Well, I would say it's less fun,

but in many parts of Ireland and indeed the UK, nuns have basically been part of big organized crime gangs. Yeah, well, I mean, it's sort of a fantastic story because it feels like simultaneously forbidden romance involved in a nun being, I mean, it's sort of a fantastic story because it feels like simultaneously forbidden romance involved in a nun being, you know, and then of course she was smuggling in those cling film baggies. That's how they should do it from one cell to the other.

You put it in the saran wrap and then you hide it in the wimple and then you pass the nun between the places. Nobody suspects her. Great. Apparently it makes a decent invisible ink, doesn't it? Or is that some other bodily fluid? I'm a hundred percent sure once that I read in an encyclopedia that you could use sperm as invisible ink.

All right. I'll get back to you. Isn't that Zeus, how Zeus got someone pregnant by sending them sperm-y notes? I don't know, but sperm-y notes is a great band name. And that brings us to the end of this week's episode of The Gargle. I'm flipping through the ad section at the back. Jay Forman, what have you got to plug? Well, I sort of, technically I'm still on Twitter, but there's nobody there anymore.

So you can find me on Blue Sky, sky which is Jforman.blue.sky slash social underscore I don't know how it works but I'm there. Excellent I am also on blue sky it's a it's the place to be where the cool kids are at because you can make these little feeds and I have one that's just moss it's just a feed of pictures of moss and it is delightful. John Luke Roberts have you got anything to plug? I am on Blue Sky, J Luke Roberts. Also Friday the 13th of December I'm performing my Geoffrey Chaucer's Christmas Festivite show with many wonderful guests in the heart of London's Museum of Comedy. It will be a

riot, it will be a lot of fun and you should come to that and you can find out the details about it on my Instagram. And then also I have a podcast called Soundteap out which is a lot of fun and you should listen to it please. Oh I've remembered something else to plug, I forgot. You can find me on YouTube. My YouTube channel is Jay Forman. And as of recently, also on TikTok where you can find the same videos except they've got big chunky subtitles and they've been squished all vertically. So that's for stuff like Map Men, Unfinished London and so on. Also check this out, check this out. They gave me an award this week.

I officially TikTok video of the year for a four year old Map Men video that got uploaded and squeezed to TikTok. That's delightful. I don't think they knew it was four years old when they gave us the trophy. Well, I'm delighted that you got a trophy. Do check out J.Foorman's stuff online.

Do check out John Luke Roberts's Jeffrey Chaucer. It's one of the funniest characters that I know anyway. Look, I'm running this thing between the 27th of December and the 7th of January, which is my birthday. For me, it's always the good of the year. I never drift through it, not feeling particularly creatively inspired and I am running a creative reboot,

some structure, group of nice people. There'll be like a class and a challenge and a workshop and you can sort of engage in it. If you've got all day and you're just staring into the void or if you've got like an hour to squeeze away from family time, it should work for both. It's less than 20 pounds a day because I'm terrible at business but also I need to pay my babysitter. You can sign up at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser

and spend those 10 otherwise sort of generally quite unpleasantly useless days in a way of like revving up into the new year that isn't a useless New Year's resolution because it's kind of already starting the year with momentum. So that's patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. 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.