The Gargle - Cockatoo bin raids | Crab batteries | Tesla key

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Josh Gondelman and Ria Lina join host Alice Fraser for episode 79 of The Gargle, the weekly topical comedy podcast - with no politics!🐦 Cockatoo bin raids🦀 Crab shell batteries🖐 Tesla key hand implant🎣 Floating plastic litter✈️ ReviewsProduced 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. I did but see her passing by and yet I'll love her till I die. As a famous Australian Prime Minister once said about the gargle. Hello, this is The Gargle, the sonic glossy magazine to The Bugle's audio newspaper for Visual World. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and in this, the grimace of weeks in the UK, our guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Josh Gondelman. Hello, thank you for having me. I'm sorry, that's too cheerful for the national mood.

I came in too happy. I apologize. And Rialina, welcome. Hello. I'll add the somber that Josh didn't. I don't know how we're going to get through some comedy this week, but we're going to try our level best. Before we plunge into the stories of the week, I'm going to get through some comedy this week, but we're going to try our level best. Before we plunge into the stories of the week, I'm going to have a look at the front cover. Well, the front cover this week, as with all glossy magazines,

is a touching tribute to Queen Elizabeth II's life of service and decorum and service. And what do people mean by service? Mainly they mean a lifetime of smiling benevolently as some half-baked children's choir squawks their way through O Fortuna in front of a hand-drawn mural about peer pressure

while being pressingly aware that if you've been born only five or six queens ago you could have insisted on nude acrobats doing a sexy dance before an afternoon of hunting men for sport. The satirical cartoon this week is the fact that the BBC made an announcement that all comedy would be off for 10 days

as a period of mourning after the death of the Queen and then I got an email saying we're going ahead with the news quiz for this week, which I think is rude. Let's have a look at our top story for this week because it's not all about our problems. This is the problem

for the human species, the death of the queen. But I think the problem for all species is the war between cockatoos and humans over wheelie bins. Cockatoos being extremely keen on getting into bins and humans being fairly keen on keeping them out. Ria, can you unpack this story for us? Well, I find this fascinating. First of all, we don't have birds of such an incredible nature over here. We don't have these big birds that just come along and bully us over our bins. We have little ones like tits. And so the fact that there's this arms race between

humans and a species that fundamentally has no arms fascinates me. I have questions. I have many questions. First of all, what is the issue with them going in the bins? Are they making a mess? Is that what it is? Are they judgy? Are they really judgy?

Do they open the bin and just go, oh, my goodness, somebody had store-bought pizza again. Like, what is it? What's the issue? Yeah, they open the bins and they go, this should have been recycled. No, they just eat everything and throw it everywhere. They eat everything and throw it everywhere. I mean, this is, well, this is, I have no sympathy. This is what happens when you change bin collections from every week to every two weeks. If we had them every week, as any other civilized nation does,

then all the bins would be gathered in one place. The cockatoos would go there. They'd have a whole lot of fun in the rubbish piles, recycling and throwing stuff around to their heart's content. I mean, this is in Australia where we have it every week. Ooh, okay. Well, then I don't understand. It's chaos.

The original thing was that you'd put a brick on the lid of your bin so the cockatoos would not be able to open your bin because they can lever themselves around and they kind of do a little swing with their feet and the bin opens. It's very impressive to watch. And then the bit the brick on top of the bin and that defeats the cockatoos until the cockatoos become more intelligent and they start kicking the bricks off the bin in slow motion like the worst uh karate demonstration in the 90s that you ever saw they push the they push the bricks off the bin so people try putting shoes in the hinges of the bin

the problem of course is that you have to you have to do something that is too high uh a level of difficulty for a cockatoo but not quite high enough a level that will defeat the garbage man who also needs to be able to open the bin is that a scale of intelligence that you have between between cockatoos and garbage bin men and then beyond that garbage owner i mean that mean... That's how every, I imagine, every Australian child gets an aptitude test and they're like, what are you going to be when you grow up? Is it cockatoo, garbage man, opera house?

I'm nervous about this because I think once the cockatoos figured out the bricks, right, they put the bricks on the cockatoos, got through the bricks, that's, now they're smarter than big bad wolves, right? They're doing things big bad wolves have not accomplished. And that worries me. Researchers monitoring this war have counted 52 different combinations of ways people have tried to keep the birds out of the garbage. And I think some economists, right, they say that within capitalism, competition breeds innovation.

But I do think we're learning it's actually birds. Birds are what make people innovate. If you want to improve technology, unleash some birds on it and you'll get results. So I do think that is the one, you know, war breeds this kind of innovation. I will also say, though, this is what really gets me once they started putting the shoes in the hinges I think just let the birds have the trash it's theirs now right

let them take it I agree with you Rhea like what's the problem let the birds be in charge of the trash clearly if the birds are better at waste management than we are, I say don't just let them have the trash. Let them have the planet. We don't deserve it anymore. Mandatory vasectomies for every human man. It's the birds' time now to be in charge of the earth. It's time for the birds. I mean, I think it's sort of an incredible thing. This study, I think, is quite beautifully done

because they've noticed two things. First of all, that the birds teach other birds how to open bin lids. And secondly, that people, if you come up with a good innovation for keeping your bin lid shut, all of your neighbors will start doing it. So it's learned behavior in two species as part of this arms race. So if you have a good way of keeping cockatoos out of your bins, write us at HelloGogglers on Twitter. I have to say in this story, the people I really felt sorry for or the ones I felt sorry for were the researchers who conducted the census of 3,283 bins in the first place. The ones that had to go around and just go, oh, look, method number 47. Let me write that down.

Gosh, I could have been a real scientist. Oh, did a cockatoo break into this one? Nope, pigeon. Forget it. The research is tainted. We're not interested. Not interested. I mean, there were some interesting ideas. I think it could become, if I'm honest, this could become an event at the local county fair. I can see this. I can see just, you know, you all come, you think really hard, and then once you're, you all bring your bin, and you bring your method of keeping your bin lid shut, and then they release the cockatoos,

and if they open your bin, you lose. You can get ribbons for most ingenious. Like the World Expo. Yeah, exactly. I think it's great. I mean, the snake one, I just thought, who thought that up? I used to live around the corner from a convention center once they had the Sexpo there,

and a friend of mine worked there but then got locked in late at night What's that noise? Everything's buzzing That sounds like a porn parody of that Ben Stiller Night at the Museum movie I would love it. Could they do like a dancing scene with some animated

dildos or something? Almost certainly Yes, it would be Magician's Apprentice. 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 pre-shelled pistachios. Pre-shelled pistachios, for when you want life handed to you on a plate, you lazy f***. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by hosting a dinner party, the perfect way to bring together a bunch of people you'd love to talk to

and then not talk to any of them. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by a terrifying future where robots take your jobs. Wait a minute. Why is the prospect of the robots taking all the jobs the scary future? Please take my job. I would love to just have hobbies and raise my children. Can you imagine a gargle where we don't barely break even on ad revenue?

Yes, Chris and Ped keep telling me we'd make more money if half the ads weren't an ad section that I explicitly designed to create questions about the very concept of ads. But has anyone tried half a glass of water? My liege, the emissaries from the desert kingdom have arrived. Excellent, Rosemont. Put them in the jade room. Shall I take them some sweets and refreshments? And the golden goblet with the traditional peace offering, my lord?

Ah, yes, Rosemont. It has been centuries, but my family remembers the long ways. Ten minutes later. His Majesty, Lord of the Rainbow Isles, Emperor of the Western Realm, Seneschal of the Dragon Archipelago, greets the emissary, his royal cousin, Jonathan of the Rainbow Isles, Emperor of the Western Realm, Seneschal of the Dragon Archipelago, greets the emissary, his royal cousin, Jonathan of the Desert.

Majesty, you do us honor with the traditional ways. Will you drink with me from the golden goblet? It would be my honor to share half a goblet of water with you. To peace. To peace. Diplomacy, the wettest sport. Incredible water drinking sound effect. I feel a strong urge to roll a 20-sided die right now.

That is the harshest burn I've ever received. Yeah. 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. now. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com. And now it's time for your Crab Shell future renewable energyable Energy News Now. This is the news that they can make batteries out of crab shells. And these crab shell batteries might be the future of renewable energy. Ria, can you unpack this story for us? This is amazing. I love this story.

So essentially, we currently use lithium batteries in everything. And the beauty of a lithium battery is you can recharge it. The problem is that they don't degrade. They've got a lot of chemicals in them that aren't good for the environment. They're hard to recycle. And we want to use zinc. Who doesn't love zinc, right? Zinc, it's good for the body somehow. I don't know.

I go to Holland and Barrett. They say have zinc, right? And we'd love to use zinc batteries, but we can't because zinc likes to kind of clump. It clumps. You can't have a clumpy battery. So apparently there's something in crab shells, a protein called chitin, that when you put it together with the zinc stops the clumping, which means that we can have biodegradable batteries. So soon we will have crabs at the bottom of the sea with batteries on the back of them, just like you used to have ears on the back of mice, right? Or maybe we can evolve them to just make the entire mobile phone

and then we'll have crabs with mobile phones on their backs, mice with ears, and then they can just, you know, use the phone. I don't know. I think this is great news that this could be the future of renewable energy because as you know, vibrators are not recyclable. So vibrators are not recyclable

because the rechargeable vibrators with a lithium battery are not recyclable. So terrible for the environment. Can I just question, because I'm not very experienced, I'll be honest, not very experienced in the ownership of said machines. Who's getting rid of so many of them that we have a vibrator recycling issue? You would be surprised. Really? Because there's a whole school of thought that says you shouldn't maintain your equipment between partners,

that there's a kind of a spiritual residue that remains. That's my theory, that dildos are the most likely of all household objects to be haunted. I thought they were for when you didn't have a partner. Doesn't normally the partner come with bits that does what that does? Oh! You just opened a can of worms, a can of sexy worms, which you can buy for $59.99.

This is a very special issue of a gargle, because I was at one point. Educating Ria, I think, is what we're doing. Educating Ria. I was like, who's using single-use vibrators? That does seem wasteful. That was the joke, wasn't it, in the 80s and 90s, was where are the batteries in the remote. They're in mom's vibrator.

So now apparently they didn't even think of that. So of course they put rechargeable, that makes sense to put a rechargeable battery in it. I mean, I'd hate to think that there's sea creatures choking on these things. What a way to go. Sea urchin died doing what it loved, or the turtle. I feel like that's much more dignified than a six-pack ring, right? Checking on a vibrate, you're like, damn, that turtle f***s. It's a different image, isn't it?

I don't think it would be as effective on the underground. Yeah, probably not going to show it in schools to teach kids why to recycle. Yeah. Josh, are you going to plug a crab into your phone? Hell yeah, I'm going to plug a crab into my phone. So I've been reading about this story and there's chemical in the shells, as you were saying, that can be used as an electrolyte. And I've seen enough commercials to know that we could just be filling batteries with Gatorade if that's what we need, right? It's full of electrolytes. I've seen all the commercials.

I do think this is huge in terms of what motivates the public, right? Because a lot of people, this is about environmental sustainability, and a lot of people push veganism and plant-based lifestyles as a measure of sustainability. But I think this is nice that we're flipping it because I think it's much more, at least in America, to work. It's much more likely to be effective if it's like destroy more animals' lives for the environment. And so that's like a huge new development. I do think it is tough that sustainability rests on the flesh of an animal that costs like $20 an ounce. That is expensive. It doesn't seem that sustainable.

It's like finding out that someone's developed a car that can run for a thousand straight miles on a single teaspoon of fuel made from Bigfoot cum. Well, the good news is a little goes a long way. The bad news is there's not that much to go around. That said, I mean, there's five different branches that have ended up in crab. So if we wait long enough, everything will become crab. All roads lead to crab, evolutionarily speaking. Isn't that incredible that there is, I did not realize that crabs were convergent evolution,

which is one of my, I'm such a nerd. I love convergent evolution, like squid eyes, boom, I could talk about it all day. But the fact that five different, five different animals became crabs, and that there's a word for it, carcinization, to say, to be turned into a crab. I mean, here we are, like idiots. We've been walking forward for thousands of years. We could be going sideways. The future is sideways.

The future is sideways. Crabs, the bishops of the sea. Yeah, right. I've been considering a lot of lateral career moves, which does mean, and this news means, that I'm getting closer and closer to my eventual dream of becoming a crab. So this could be huge for me. Don't you wonder how they found this out, though?

How many other animals did they grind up into powder before they figured out that crab was the one? You know, like test 1,329, the Labradoodle paste didn't work. I mean, they tried a lot with cockatoos. They did. I bet they did. Just to keep them out of the bins. Your review section now.

As you know, each week our guest editors bring in something to review out of five stars. Josh, what have you brought in for us this week? I'm going to review jackhammers. I've never used a jackhammer, so you might think I'm not qualified to review it. I have a pretty weak upper body, and I've never really had anything to jackham. That's never really come into my life. But I do have to imagine that they're incredibly effective because if they weren't, they would exclusively function as psychic torture for entire neighborhoods all at once.

So if they weren't physically capable of taking down the walls of Jericho with ruthless efficiency, why would we need a tool that sounds like it's auditorily trying to break down the walls of Jericho in a biblical sense? I simply have to believe there is no better option than a jackhammer, or else why would the street in front of my house be plagued with these woodpeckers from Satan's botanic gardens? So in conclusion, I will say my very sanity rests on the idea that jackhammers deserve five stars. And that is what I'll give them. Very good, Josh.

I will try to maybe sabotage the jackhammers in your neighborhood. Give you a good morning sleep. Ria, what have you brought in for us? I'd like to do a quick review on Bird Strike, especially on planes that were late to begin with. I was supposed to catch a flight Friday evening, which would get me into Glasgow in time for the start of the show that I was closing. That flight was then delayed because it was easy jet. And I'm sticking to that reason. They can sue me if they want, but they were late. It was easy jet.

And I'm sticking to that reason. They can sue me if they want, but they were late. And then when the plane finally arrived at the airport, it was then further delayed because apparently it suffered bird strike as it came into the airport. And I'm like, well, what do you expect? You were late. Like the bird was doing what the bird always does at the same time across the same path. And you're the one that shouldn't have been there. So then the bird strike comes in and then they have to check if the plane can still fly because of the bird strike.

And I'm like, really? Is anyone checking on the bird? No, that was done. So then it meant that the plane got there in time for me to literally race on stage. At which point the promoter went, not sure it's worth this much stress. So I would like to say that

I'd like to give a one-star review to Bird Strike on delayed easy jet planes because it sucks for everyone that wanted to take that flight and land on time, and it sucks for the bird. It does suck, I think, arguably, for the bird most of all. Yeah. Now it is time for our post-human news section. This is the news that a man has implanted his car key into his hand

in order that he not lose his car keys, except I assume if he accidentally loses his hand as well, in which case he has other problems. Josh Connellman, can you unpack this story for us? Sure. So a tech enthusiast in Detroit posted a video of his Tesla key implant. And of course, it's a Tesla key. That's the kind of car if you're going to implant a key in your hand, you're not doing it. You're not like, oh, my finger is now going to unlock my 2004 Toyota Tercel. That's not quite the vibe. Sal. That seems not quite the vibe. And he had it implanted so he doesn't lose his key. Because at first when I saw the story without the rationale, I was like, what is he trying to do here? He's like, I want to change

my body in a permanent way, like with a tattoo, but not cool. I just want it to be deeply uncool. He doesn't want to lose his keys. But if you're misplacing your keys so badly that this is the solution, I think you're too drunk to be driving anyway. Yes. You should not be driving a car if you need a hand key. He actually got the procedure done at a local piercing shop for pretty cheap. That's who will do it.

That's real. That's where you want to go when you need to be turned into a cyborg. The same place a parent takes their bald infant daughter for studs so that strangers know it's a girl. That's who turns us into part human, part machine. He has a sensor in another, on his other hand, that opens the door to his home. And I say at that point, go all the way. Get a septum ring that doubles as an electric can opener. Get those gauges for your ears that are wide enough to install tiny wind turbines inside.

Get a tongue ring that's a metal detector. So you always know if you're about to lick something valuable. I think just fully optimize. I think this guy is on the path to success. Oh, yeah. Get a crab battery installed in your dick. So finally, an improvement. His dick will be an improvement on a vibrator.

Well, I tell you what. If I see a picture of a turtle choking on his dick, I'm calling somebody. Yeah. You don't. You do that. Don't do that. That's, yeah. You don't, you do that. Don't do that. That's mean to turtles. They didn't ask for that. That's mean to everybody.

Nobody wants to see that. Nobody's recycling more if they saw that. That's all the time we have. For chip installation news, because now it's time for industrialized fishing nation's culpability news.

As you know, we're hard hitting here at the gargle. And this is a paper, hardly even a news story, but a paper from nature.com talking about who is culpable for the most garbage. Ria, can you unpack this story? Yes. So you're right. This is a scientific paper that you made me read in full. I'll be honest.

I wavered slightly through the method where I was just like, whoa, this was it was a tough paper. So these scientists were are looking at what's known as the North Pacific garbage patch, which is a huge patch of floating garbage. Guess where? In the North Pacific. Yeah, it was because they were running out of space to grow cabbage patch dolls. So they decided that they needed a new... Well, this is it. And there'll be cabbage patch mermaids, which is going to be all the rage once they're ready. So they took a bunch of rubbish from it. They took about 6,000 pieces of rubbish from it, which are larger than five centimeters because the smaller stuff that actually chokes and kills animals, whatever.

So we took a bunch of debris and then examined using Lagrangian physics where it came from to determine that there are five main nations that have contributed to the garbage patch as it is. I'm absolutely amazed by this. As a scientist, I was sitting here going, it's ironic that you're using Lagrangian science because as we all know, I mean, we all know this, right? Lagrangian is the math of least action, right? So they were studying the math of least action.

And yet this paper took more action to read and digest than anything that I've done in the last month. I'm going to be honest. And they did a lot. And we found out it's mainly fishing debris. It's mainly fishing debris that's either been lost or discarded from five countries, which and this is where I feel a little bit weird because, you know, I'm half Asian and I'm very sensitive to these things. But four of the five nations are Asian and the garbage patch is in the north pacific so i'm questioning the entire study altogether going did we really need to do this in order to figure that out because the fifth country is the u.s and that's on the other side of the pacific so it makes an awful lot of sense uh that you know if this was in the north atlantic and they went but half of it comes from Japan, I'd be like, Japan, we need to talk. But when it's in the North Pacific, I go, OK, we just we still just need to sort ourselves out and stop throwing stuff in the sea.

That's what we've learned from this paper. I'm not going to name the five countries. I don't want to put them on blast publicly. I'm sorry. No, no, no. That's OK. I will say they are countries with very delicious chowders and soups. That's just a hint.

So, you know. I mean, it's Japan, China, Korea, the USA, Taiwan, and Russia. I'm going to be here and I'm going to explode this. I mean, people could just read the study themselves. No, they couldn't. Only Ria can read the study. One interesting thing in the study to me is that the research kind of defies the hypothesis that a lot of plastic in the ocean comes from the land. Like they're saying like it's ocean to ocean

garbage. Like even they said plastic drinking bottles seem to have been thrown off of passing ships. And I don't think you should litter from a boat, but I do bet it feels amazing to just be on a yacht, finish drinking some kind of plastic-based beverage or plastic-enclosed beverage, and then just throw your garbage into the sea. That's the most carefree lifestyle I can imagine. I bet it feels like doing heroin. It seems so fun. What if you put a letter in it first? Then it's okay. Remember, that's okay. There's always that get out. If you put a letter in, you can throw it in the water. Then it's not garbage. Then it's communication. Right. Yeah. Even if the communication is just like, sick, this is the greatest

Coca-Cola I've ever enjoyed in my life. This is so messed up, though, right? That it's from like fishing debris. Because I feel like the goal of fishing should be to take more out of the ocean than you put into it. That just seems intuitive to me because now what we have isn't so much a fishing industry.

It's like a global littering industry that occasionally catches a salmon or two. I mean, look, you don't know this, but fishing boats operate on a one-in-one-out system. So any fish they catch, they have to return an equally sized plastic bottle to the ocean. What was interesting to me, and I was a bit relieved, was that they thought that the Philippines would be a greater contributor, and it wasn't. And the Japanese, which they, again, thought would be a minimal contributor, was greater. But they put that down to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami,

which released large amounts of debris into the ocean at once, which is still floating around. So it's interesting to see that even you know land events do contribute uh in in in ways like that uh but as you said most of it's coming from it's like fishing nets and and fishing crates and and that's most of it so i'm overall i think in conclusion all of us who don't fish are like oh thank goodness it's not me. Well, that's all the time we have for this episode of The Gargle. I'm flipping through the ads at the back. I want to thank our roving gargle contributors, Dr. Selina Disco Shakes and Sofa King Me,

who sent in the cockatoo wheelie bin raids, and Miss Otis, who sent in the Tesla hand story. I would also like to thank my two guest editors for this week. Ria, have you got anything to plug? I'm doing Mock the Week next week and I think I'm doing Have I Got News for You the week after. I will totally understand if neither of those things can happen in the case of another

national emergency. Tune in to the television and see Ria on almost any channel. I'm so pleased. It's really nice because I've known you for many years and it's nice that you're kind of now having all this excellent success and well deserved Josh have you got

anything to plug? I do I have a one hour comedy special it's called People Pleaser it's streaming now I think Vimeo is the best place

to see it internationally unsure if my comedy has been cancelled this week so maybe you can't watch it this week but I think you probably still can

and then I'm going on a bunch of tour dates around the US, mostly. All over the place. Boston, Louisville, Chicago, Maine, Portland, Oregon, Seattle. And so all the tour dates are at

joshgondelman.com, my website. I'm Alice Fraser. You can 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 alicefraser is a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts and blogs,

as well as my weekly tea with Alice Salons. My show Kronos, which I filmed on Sunday, will be released first on Patreon and then in other places, dot, dot, dot, TBC. This is an Alice Fraser and Bugle podcast 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, The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts. The Gargle is brought to you this week by the Peru Fair, an old-fashioned country fair situated in the Green Mountains of southern Vermont. Celebrating 39 years, please join us in Peru, Vermont on Saturday, September 24th from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. A whimsical parade heralds the start of the fair, where you will find artists, craft makers, folk musicians, and a variety of delicious foods, including a fire-roasted pork lunch offered by the local volunteer fire company. It's a grand time at the Peru Fair. Don't miss it, September 24th.

Proceeds of the fair are donated to the Peru Scholarship Fund, which distributes educational scholarships to the children of Peru through higher education. Peru Fair, where it's okay to use children for marketing purposes. See more at perufair.org and on Instagram at perufair. Peru Fair. We're big on the pig.