The Gargle - Earth's axis | Recycling AI | Pregnant whale

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

James Colley and Neil Delamere join host Alice Fraser for episode 119 of The Gargle - the glossy magazine to The Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world. All of the news, none of the politics! Earth's axis Recycling AI Pregnant whale Mayor marries reptile New D'Ancey! ReviewsHOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLEAdvertise YOUR business on The Gargle with an Alice Fraser ad read. Contact [e-mail]-order the D'Ancey LaGuarde Reader book here! http://l8r.it/DHhGBuy tickets to The Gargle Live at the Edinburgh Fringe FestivalTue 15 and 22 AugustGo to https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/liveCONTENTS0:00 Intro01:17 Front cover02:15 Satirical cartoon04:18 Earth's axis11:02 Your ad section now11:23 D'Ancey LaGuarde14:26 Recycling AI18:44 Reviews24:28 Pregnant whale29:15 Mayor marries reptile35:08 Bye! Anything to plug? 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. present and in good condition, you can assemble your new equipment. Please retain the box and packaging materials in case you need to ship your object in the future. Remember to power off your object and unplug the charge cable before assembling, mounting accessories or cleaning the gargle. This is The Gargle, the sonic glossy magazine to the Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world. I'm your host, Alice Frazier, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Neil de la Mer. Hello.

Hello, and James Colley. Also hello. guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Neil Delamere. Hello. Hello. And James Colley. Also hello. I was hoping one of you would choose something original, but you've really gone with the both ordering the same thing at a restaurant vibe there. Greetings. Welcome aboard the Neil Juke Train. Hello.

Stick with the classics. Well before we stand facing one another in the mirror and engage with the existential crisis that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover. The front cover this week is the first fully electric vehicle that can both fly and travel on roads that has received US government approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. This is a flying car, James Colley, and that's our front cover model.

Are you excited? I am, but look, I was worried last time I was on here that I derailed everything too early. But I can't stop thinking about who came up with hello, because they really nailed it. And there was one day where one peasant ran into another peasant and went, hello. And they went, what did you? Oh, that's good. Mind if I use that?

And that's a really good word to have come up with. They're just poking each other in the eye with sticks before that. And then one guy just branched out a little bit and then loads of wars were avoided. James, you're right. We need to build a statue to that man or woman. Every wave hello is a wax on wax off trying to parry a stick that's coming towards

your eye. That's the origin of waving. The satirical cartoon this week is a series of scientists finally discovering the exact political impact of a viral zinger. Very exciting. Can I ask a question about the electric car? You may.

Well, more, I just got an electric car. And you like to think that you're doing your bit for the environment, but people don't necessarily obey the rules that we've all assumed are needed for a coherent society. I pulled into Sligo train station to get some charge. All of the car parking spaces were rammed and a woman was in the electric car parking space. I would like to know what you think of this.

I went up to her and said, would you mind moving your car? It's an older car. You don't need the charge. And she said, no, i'm not moving my car i collect my son from the train and um i don't care if you need a charge or not i'm not moving the car wow yeah i mean i feel that's less to do with electric cars than it is to do with the degradation of civility in the modern society particularly post-covid where we're all living

these modular and insular lives but sure make, make it about electric cars. That's what her bumper sticker said. That is so bizarre. I mean, it went all the way around the back of her car. This is about the degradation of my slightly post-covered. It was weird. And I said, genuinely, you're completely in the wrong. And she goes, well, I'm not moving the car. My son has baggage.

And I thought, I bet he does with a bitch like you for a ma. But I did not say that. I couldn't believe that. Anyway, that's my first gripe of the podcast. Well, I'm glad that you couldn't believe that anyway that's my first grape of the podcast well i'm glad that you were the better man in that instance yes i've made my own kind of environmental shift that um i now have uh a keep car so i i use the same car every time whereas before i used to dispose of them after every trip and it just became a bit wasteful for me so it smells but i think it's nice to just keep it for a few trips oh single use cars do you

remember those they were great well i mean the thing about a keep car is that people get them thinking that they're going to reuse them and then they don't you always forget them you leave them in the house there's loads of them just like a mini stacked up on a yarra stacked up on an i go now it's time for our top story. Top story this week. Humans have pumped so much groundwater that the Earth's axis has shifted, according to a study. Now, sometimes you can have a moment of romantic engagement where you're like, wow, the world moved.

But actually it was just because somebody was drinking a lot or probably using enormous quantities of water to wash their microchips. James Colley, you've drunk some water before can you unpack this groundwater story yeah i want to i want to start off just clarifying a couple of things they say humans uh i didn't do this so if if you're listening and you're trying to put the blame on me i did very little to none of this so i would say start elsewhere come back to me sure we all share some brain but i drive a keep car so i'm pretty good environmentally um this is uh what is called in scientific parlance a big boo-boo uh so as as we all know we uh all all the infrastructure that

the modern world is built on was created in what was known as the f*** about era of history and we all have the luck to be born in the end find out era of human history. So this is a part of the end find out journey we're on. Now we have to start by defining groundwater or as it's known water. Now people drink it, cows drink it, you can put half a glass of it apparently on this show quite a bit. It helps water crops so people can eat and does all the other things that you can think of that water does now this water has been taken out of the ground really taking away the ground part of ground water and making it just water and uh we changed the balance of the planet doing this which you might think how how much water does

that take turns out a lot uh two thousand one,150 gigatons, which in terms you can understand is more than you drink on a day, more than you should use in the shower, even when it's a really cold morning and you're like focusing on one of those imaginary fights in your head. And isn't it funny how when you have one of those fights in the shower in your head, your opponent always falls into just the trap you wanted them to fall into and then you win the argument you never lose a shower argument or if you do you should really look into that but i also want to put it in so like if if the earth's axis shifts here's what it means if the earth's axis shifts uh the sea levels could rise and we all die but if we don't extract the ground water then there's no crops and we all

die so the good news is we're all going to die anyway on a long enough timeline so this like all other news doesn't really matter but in the interest of controversy i want to try and build it up a bit more um so like if uh if you were to imagine uh the the earth as like a ball flying through the air and rotating, well, if that ball was to experience a sudden change, say, colliding with the stumps of a batsman who has walked out of his crease before the over has been called, well, we can see that that would cause a lot of water to be wasted and water to fall specifically out of the eyes of the English people. So that's kind of what happened in this situation but on a more

global scale i have taken two things from that entire rant uh one all news should be what you said to the broadcaster walking out and going all use it makes no difference because we're all going to die anyway and here's the weather that's the first thing the second thing is i haven't followed the ashes thing but i know two australians look happy and lots of English people are sad. And as an Irish person, that is generally enough for me. Yeah, well, I have to say I was slightly worried when I read this headline that the Earth had shifted on its axis because of the number of half a glass of water jokes that I had made.

But turns out that it's cows after all. It's always the bloody cows isn't it like they say that humans are the problem but it really does come back to cows and look let's not get into who put the cows there there are just cows sometimes that's not our fault but it's really the cow's fault yeah yeah i i believe that we need to put this in terms people understand though it's it's it's 200 2150 gigatons of groundwater we've extracted from underground between 1993 and 2010 because Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water and they took so much now that the globe is tilting to their right.

A gigaton of water is the tears shed from one Adele album in one year. That is the scientific measurement of it. I say this with a great degree of guilt, given that there's two Australians on the call, and Ireland is a country well... I found when any time I go to Australia and you do gigs there, you can mess with Australians, they have a great sense of humour,

except when you mention how much water we waste on this side of the world. Sometimes, lads... Okay, I'm going to watch this. So there's four people on this call. Ped is the producer. Ped, sometimes I turn on going to watch this so there's three people four people on this call Ped is the producer Ped sometimes I turn on my dishwasher in Dublin and there's nothing in it

like I just I just like the noise it just it's quite soothing I just yeah look the two of them have to react I'm sorry about that

no it's fine it's fine it's like it falls out of the sky here lads it's bizarre we don't have to use it to put out bushfires it's unbelievable

we use water but wild abandon in this country. We leave taps on when we're brushing our teeth. I've got a bidet for a dog. I still remember the first time I saw somebody doing that, leaving the tap on while they brush their teeth. Wait, that...

I thought that was a bit. No, it's not a bit. They just let it run. Well, we do. We do, yeah. Irish children are baptised with a power hose. There's no need for it. We just really want to get the Holy Spirit in. We have to wait until the last child is born and then baptize them all in the one pail.

Does this mean, right, if the earth tilts entirely then, that all those animals that use that internal compass to navigate, what's going to happen then? Are we just going to get pigeons getting on buses? I don't think they're navigating via outer space, but we can find out. Well, what is GPS if not a satellite? But don't they use the magnetic force of the Earth or something? Don't they do that?

Yeah, I don't know what they do i'll have to ask a bird am i gonna wake up with a salmon in my paddling pool going apparently this is where i was born so uh you might want to get the kids to look away because these eggs won't fertilize themselves i just want to know maybe the problem is that salmon swim upstream and you've been running the tap all night so it thinks there's a river there this you know i've made a lot of mistakes in my life i didn't think that would be the one to come and get me james but apparently that's it i want to look out my window in dublin and just see the wildebeest turds trying to get across the river liffey just from south africa it's the wrong way brian brian we've gone the wrong way

and now it's time for your ads. Your ad section now, because you can't be what you can't buy. Are you a man suffering under a curse, the hours of which are measured by the falling petals of a rose? Try prolonging your tortured life while waiting for true love's kiss by refreshing the rose with a new, clean half a glass of water. Half a glass of water, the easiest price to pay for more precious time. And a new novel is out by self-published romance maven

and online bestseller, Dancy Lagarde. Third in the 24-book Chaucer's Darling's medieval history fantasy romance series with a supernatural twist, the book is called The Man of Law's Dilemma. Bedrick is a man of law, rigid, upright, unquestioningly loyal, an honourable member of a werewolf clan he was sent as a child hostage to foster with the childless lord Gondelroy, eventually earning his trust and becoming the captain of his guard. Torn for years by the cruel way his old friend and liege treated his young and unwanted bride, he still grieves a man who

was like a father to him. What is he to do when he's tasked with accompanying his dead lord's virgin widow to a nunnery, but fulfil his duty with the utmost probity, even if it means standing by torturously as the woman he's always secretly loved goes to marry yet another other man, and this time the other man is God. Custance is a genteel widow of some independent fortune sold by her father, scorned by her noble lord of a husband, daunted by the prospect of governing his estate, and haunted by the true visions she sees of the future. She wants to retreat from the world of men and commits to her only respectable course, the safety of the nunnery. As they travel together, cast by circumstance into undeniable proximity,

the magnetic attraction grows. The werewolf in him senses his fated mates, and the man in him senses her boobs, and her visions grow increasingly ominous. At last, one thunder-stricken night, Grow up, this is literature. Grow up, this is literature. Can a werewolf and a maiden widow together find a place in the world, prevent a war and achieve mutual climax on horseback while arguing about directions? Find out in The Lawman's Dilemma, out now in all park fountains and local Chinese restaurants. Finally, the Alice Fraser autobiography that we have waited for. There's a book coming out. A dancy lagarde reader is coming out it's available and you can pre-order it on unbound.com if you go to the bugle podcast.com you can find a way to

support the dancy lagarde reader which is going to be happening soon in all illegitimate bookshops i assume please can we do the audiobook please yes yes look if we sell enough copies we will do the audiobook so there's a motivation for you all to pre-order james is the werewolf i'm the horse i can't this is a book about a werewolf's boner and that but it's called the gentleman's dilemma you're really burying the lead i would have called this Dancers with Wolves. That's all that werewolves ever want to do is bury the lead and it's the lawman's dilemma

because the essential conflict is between a man of honour and his passionate lust for a woman that he can absolutely have but feels like he can't. Yeah, it should be like get out of your own head.

It's fine. I mean, that is 90% of romance novels. of your own head. It's fine. I mean, that is 90% of romance novels. 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. Acast helps creators launch, grow,

and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast.com Recycling news now, and this is the news that AI isn't all bad. Apparently, we can train AI to recognize waste for recycling, which is more than I can often do. I'm always like, is this soft or is it hard plastic? I don't know. How clean does it need to be? Neil Delamere, you've thrown things out before. Can you unpack this story for us? I have. AI has been trained to recognize waste for recycling.

So companies are trying to use AI, essentially, I think, to teach it to recognize rubbish by videoing it. So they've put a camera on a conveyor belt of trash. If ever there was a metaphor for the Fast and the Furious film franchise, this is it. If AI learns what rubbish items are which, then it can sort them easier. I think that is the reason.

Or it's robot bin men. It is one of the two. If you hear them in the morning just singing away to themselves, my old man's a dustman, he wears a dustman's hat, but that's just the disguise. The beautiful, these puny humans. Well then, then it's the latter.

If Optimus Prime is just empty and you're recycling, then they're taking over the world. We apparently are throwing out more and more rubbish every year. And this is connected to the water story, actually. I was trying to figure out what is the big change recently, and it's vaping. And I think people need to go back to good old-fashioned cigarettes because no no water

vapor is used there so if you want to save the world i would suggest you smoke more i think that is what you can do if greta thunberg has one message just just smoke real cigarettes more often and that's you've done your bit then i mean you might be doing your bit to solve the overpopulation problem absolutely pensions that springs that sorts out pensions as well i mean fags sorts out a lot of problems now that i think about it lose your sense of smell don't need to wash as much yeah so shorter showers you see you see where i'm going with this also everyone looks cooler uh and we are a society of dorks right now and if there's one message i can put out to the children it's that smoking is cool it makes you

look cool and all of your friends are doing it if it was good enough for james dean look at him still knocking around he's fine he is don't let them tell you anything else everything else is a conspiracy he is absolutely fine he's a rebel without a pulse yes james i thought the amount of garbage here is surprising so 2.24 billion tons of solid waste produced in 2020 which seems like a lot particularly as we weren't doing much of anything in 2020 so producing solid waste seemed to be the main thing we were all focused on and the problem is primarily plastic which is shaping itself up to be one of the worst best ideas we ever had so plastic in its history went out to a wild early lead on the scoreboard,

racking up points in things that hold my lunch and things that hold my shopping so I can make tomorrow's lunch categories. But since then, it's been really devastating loss after devastating loss for Plastic in all categories other than most sea turtles killed, which I personally don't think should be a rewarded category. But who am I to argue with the umpire? It's not my game. So yeah, this device, when we got into it uh it's the device that tracks billions of waste objects per year helps waste managers become more efficient and blah and it blahs and blah blah blah snore snore snore snore snore when did robots become bad do you remember being six and someone

told you that one day robots will take all of our jobs and it was a good thing and that you were going to talk to robots all day and robots might kill us all but if we get like it's only they're only going to kill us all if they get very very very technical and persnickety about these three real rules we give them and if we gave them a fourth rule that was like no funny business asshole then we'd probably be fine but now robots are as miserable as the rest of us and you can't wish for three wishes exactly it seemed like a pretty easy problem ask them off honestly maybe that should have just been the first rule shouldn't this no no funny business assholes that should have been it and now it's time for your reviews section as As you know, each week we ask our guest editors

to bring in something to review out of five stars. Neil, what have you brought in for us this week? I have been reviewing the Netflix version of... Well, OK, so I've been watching Drive to Survive, right, which is this Netflix version of Formula One, and it's absolutely brilliant. So they've just recently done the netflix version of golf and they have tried to make golf as exciting as formula one now formula one is tense it is dramatic at one point i had one on the laptop one of the tv roman grosjean uh hit a wall at 150 miles an hour, got out of his car, what experts

would describe as on fire. His onesie, I don't know if they call that, is aflame. His helmet is melted. I switched to the golf and it was like, oh, this is so tense here as Rory McIlroy's ball has landed in slightly longer grass than he

expected it to land in. Oh, who knows what's going to happen here. Flick back to the other one to see how Joan of Arc was getting on. Still on fire. He's still very much aflame, but now he's covered in gravel because he's clearly rolled himself and he looks like a Ferreira Rocher, but still on fire.

Then he gets the onesie off. Still on fire. Possibly shouldn't have won that much Lynx Africa that morning. Flick back to the golfers like, oh my god. Tiger Woods is on the first he's he's taken out a driver do you know what else takes out a driver fire fire also takes out a driver so in terms i'd like to review two things drive survive five stars but you cannot make golf as exciting as a proper dangerous sport. So, full swing, one star. I mean, that is a great

review. Also, it has given me zero desire to watch Formula One driving. That sounds incredibly stressful. Well, I mean, you watch after the season is over, so you know old Crispy Grosjean is fine. He drove a couple of laps with rashes for hands,

but now he's absolutely fine. He's fine. He is genuinely fine. I wouldn't make these jokes if he wasn't. If he was really dead, I wouldn't do this. But this is why I prefer the Fast and the Furious movie, because they show you a split second before every car crashes to show you that the car is empty.

And so you feel like, I mean, yes, on one hand, it makes it feel like a hollow, stakeless experience, but that's also what's good about it i do have some really bad news about the james dean jokes we were doing earlier on then also in the fast and the furious film if someone dies they do come back to films later be like oh that no no i i slipped out just before that happened it's fine you you you weren't paying attention but if you check there is there is a hologram han tokyo drift 4 i love these films there is a most of the most recent one where at first one person is rotoscoped into a scene from five films before and then in a shock reveal a second person is also rotoscoped into a scene they were not in. I mean, yeah, that's genuinely delightful. I don't think it can get better than The Pinnacle.

For me, The Fate of the Furious, in which Jason Statham is rescuing Vin Diesel's baby on a plane and he puts noise-cancelling headphones on the baby while he punches a series of men to death so that the baby doesn't hear the violence. That is everything I want in a movie. That's just good parenting. What have you brought in for us to review this week, James?

So my review this week, I had a seance with the spirit of cricket, actually, this week, which is a bit of fun for me. I lit some candles and I invited the spirit of cricket in. Now, you have to understand that anyone who knows the afterlife knows this. There's quite a backlog in the afterlife. So the general category of English inventions from the 16th and 17th century have just been put in hell

and will sort it out later. So the spirit of cricket is currently in hell and I had to summon it out of hell. So it was quite thrilled to be around, honestly. I have to also specify, not in hell specifically for the crime of making English people happy, but not not in hell for the crime of making english people happy but not not

in hell for the crime of making english people happy um i i spoke to the spirit of cricket about what has happened to the modding game and i have to say the spirit of cricket was aghast uh mostly about um i would say some mostly racist complaints a few about women being allowed to watch uh like so i would say that not entirely unjustified to go back to hell after the seance i think that's a fine place for us to keep the spirit of cricket for a while but uh he actually had quite a dramatic ending because noticing the spirit was out of its allotted area but not technically dead yet i stumped him and sent him back to the pavilion which caused a huge extra amount of drama so i'd have to say overall good chat four stars i mean what has the

game come to if a if a noble batsman can't take a leisurely stroll mid-game on the understanding that you know bagsies it's still there technically i i watched the game and it seemed like a lot of the bowlers were deliberately aiming at the stumps which i think if we're out there to just have a hit and a good time is a very rude thing to do yeah call that a friendly game i don't know anything about what's going on now but the smugness from the two of you is warming is warming my heart my pale Celtic 800 years of oppression can't get over a heart just two of you just you're so happy it's

beautiful this is our version of leaving the tap running we just love the sound even if we don't care that much about the actual happenstance this is Australian Braveheart that's what this is now it's time for pregnant This is Australian Braveheart. That's what this is. Now it's time for pregnant whale news.

And this is not the news that every woman at some point during a pregnancy, if she's having a pregnancy, feels like a whale. This is the news that Gladys, the viral orca who led a gang of orcas in attacking a series of boats in what may be seen as a metaphor for anti-capitalism, may have been pregnant when she started her anti-boat uprising. James, you've had a baby recently. Can you unpack this story for us? Well, first, I say this is another sign of a social system that does not take care of mothers.

There's nothing more important in the lead-up to birth than the mother getting rest and yet we see this poor orca having to work having to lead an uprising instead of just sitting relaxing being calm having a water birth if that's your choice and i understand for orcas mainly is their choice i find it a bit hippie stuff but you know not my decision that's fine you keep to your birth plan um so this is all about white glad, which is an orca given that name, presumably because there were two Gladyses and no one felt comfortable referring to the other Gladys by their color. So White Gladys is a killer whale believed to be the ringleader of the orcas.

This has been a tricky story for Australians particularly to deal with because we have a terrible history with anyone trying to stop the boats but in this case it's a good thing and we like it. I did like from this story that there is a conflict in the scientific world which is one half of the

scientific community or one portion of the scientific community theorise that she is acting out of revenge from some previous traumatic incident which is amazing because also clearly pulling acting out of revenge from some previous traumatic incident which is amazing because also clearly pulling that out of her ass there was no detail there they're just like oh it's probably revenge because something happened beforehand this is john wick style it's john willie and their bravery is contagious the other orcas joined on and then the other uh orca experts said oh maybe

she's just having a good time maybe it's fun to do this which leads me to believe two things firstly they don't understand how fun revenge is and secondly there's no such thing as an orca expert there are just people who are closer to knowing things about orcas than the rest of us but i don't think there is an orca expert out there. Well, I mean, orca attacks on boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal near the Iberian Peninsula have been happening almost daily. They are becoming increasingly common. So it does seem like it's either extremely fun

or they're getting something out of it. But I heard a very sad story of what happened. Two people met on a boat and then it was attacked by one of these whales, killer whales as they are rudely known and you know what that's called, that's called an

orchid first date Neil? I just love these cocky ocean pandas have a leader, White Lattice, as James said.

I love the idea. There's this kind of idea that they were attacking yachts specifically, like they can recognise yachts, like they're all swimming towards a boat. White Lattice has done

the thing that you used to see from Vietnam films when they're attacking a compound or something and she's done all the arm movements and the mimes and they're swimming directly towards this yacht. And then it's like, abort. It's a skiff. Abort, abort, abort.

It's a skiff. Well, I thought that was okay. No, no, no. I said yachts are okay. Or a schooner. But no skiffs. No skiffs. We said no skiffs.

What about a dinghy? Does it have a sail? Well, it has a small sail. Is it a lilolo I'm not sure just f***ing attack Atlantis make up your mind it's you can't

as my granny used to say never trust a creature that looks like a dolphin f*** a penguin it was one of the weirder things that granny used to say I mean

she had some issues towards the end but I think I think that and you should start smoking again they're the two things I always took from granny's deathbed revel. But I think that, and you should start smoking again, they're the two things I always took from Granny's deathbed revelations.

And I think she was right in this. Well, I mean, it's really interesting because Gladys, during this uprising, has been a mother. Orcas look after their babies for two years, which is, you know, a very nice and nurturing thing. But some of the scientists are speculating that this has to be trauma because she is risking her baby by bringing it into these boat attacks, which are not necessarily a very safe thing to do. I just think it means that we now know that White Gladys,

the orca mother, is a Montessori parent, just bringing her child into the workplace and teaching it real-life skills. I think Montessori parents are traditionally more on the side of the yachts than against them, but I understand. And now it's time for relationships news. And this is the news that a mayor in Mexico has married an alligator-like reptile who he calls Princess Girl. And that's a sentence that

despite many years podcasting, I don't think I ever expected to say. Neil de la Mer, you've married a... A crocodile? Yeah. I was just going to say you've married, but yeah, can you unpack this story for us? Yes, it's a mayor in Mexico has married a crocodile,

a crocodilian, a caiman. And what is the difference between an alligator and a crocodile? Well, that is one of the major questions of our time. Zoologists agree that the former is generally seen later, whereas the latter is mostly commonly seen

in a while. So that's the main reason between the two of them then. It has taken place in this Mexican town for 230 years to commemorate the peace between the Chantal and the Juave indigenous groups. Now, so the mayor just married, so the mayor represents the Chantal king

and he marries the Cayman that represents the princess girl. And apparently it's a symbol of the deity that brings the good harvest. I think this is an absolute sham. I've looked into it. A sham. She is not the caiman that caught the bukele last year. So they are making a mockery of the whole thing.

It was a very emotional occasion. Her family were on one side, his family were on the other. Her family cried tears. Nobody really believed them, which is my favourite joke. It's a good joke, man. It's just a kind of sweet, sweet thing, really. You know, I'm worried about how things are going to work out for them in the future, but I'm prepared to overlook that for the moment. Well, the thing here is that this is not actually an instance of what has happened in this podcast and in the news cycle before, which is somebody conceiving an ill-advised passion for somebody across species or sentience barriers.

This is a tradition that is repeated in a number of times and he's representing his people and it's kind of a ritual that is engaged in by the whole village. But I really think I had a moment of wondering whether, because it is a Cayman, whether he'd just taken some wrong investment advice about where to put his resources. So there's specifically the Cayman Archipelago? No, that's not right. The Cayman Space. No the Cayman the Cayman Cayman Archipelago no that's not right

the Cayman space no Cayman Peninsula no it's there it's there but I just don't know what it is I

and I I don't know if I've ever told you this I fed a crocodile as part of a thing for a charity once and they're absolutely terrifying I got into the cage

and this huge alligator just went like a scouser trying to say the word knickknack and i looked at the guy and he went oh it's okay you're just standing on her nest and i was like well you should have told me that probably shouldn't be wearing this lacoste t-shirt either. Absolutely terrifying. But she, the princess girl in this, is smaller and is taped,

so she can't have any mishaps with the mayor. But I wonder, does he marry one every single year? I mean, we'll have to find out when we go back next year. Well, okay, well, let's do that then. James? I mean, I'm happy for him, don't get me get me wrong i mean it would have been nice to be invited and not see the wedding for the first time on instagram but whatever i'm happy for them princess girl deserves to be happy with whoever it's with like our dalliance doesn't come into it in my opinion i'm just i just want her to be happy and clearly she is happy and it's not

with me but whatever that doesn't matter i i don't know what he has that i don't but that's fine i i don't care it's it's a little it's a little it's a little bit off uh the timeline of all of this uh because they're a bit vague on when they started dating which is odd because we broke up in the summer and i remember that because it was one day after my mother's birthday when i had introduced her to all of my family and it does make me wonder if my family was the problem or if she realized we were getting serious or whether she was just trying to hurt me but I mean if they were already seeing each other then that's news to me and that's news worthy of the gargle but we don't know and they won't say and it doesn't matter because I've moved on and I'm doing fine

so I wish them nothing but the best and look all i'll say is they deserve each other so i hope they're happy i hope you're happy i hope you're happy princess girl and you two deserve each other that's all i have to say on the matter i mean can you be the mayor and represent uh the union of two cultures james the real the real question i i mean i suspect i'm currently doing some of that and it's not the main sign, but... Can we just commend Ped? What a booking of what James has been that he managed to get the one jilted lover from that game. That is such cracking producing.

You think I'm the one jilted lover, but... She's been around, is what you're saying. You do not impugn a crocodilian as long as I'm on this show my friend you can come for the orcas that's fine but if you go for the native smaller caimans in the mexico region you i've a bone to pick with you my friend you and i are getting into a celebrity death roll where i drag you under the water because i have no workable lower jaw and just spin you until one of your limbs falls off.

And then I hold it aloft as a trophy and hand it to your spurned lover. If you think this is the first time one of my close friends has sided with Princess Girl over me, you have no idea of my history and you just sound ignorant to everyone on this show.

So I don't see what the problem is here. Well, if you think that you have any close friends, I have a bigger secret to tell you. And now it's time for the show to end. Alas, I'm flipping through the ads at the back. Neil Delamere, have you got anything to plug? Yeah, I do a podcast called Why Would

You Tell Me That? And this week, so we talk about the weirdest things you could possibly conjure up to get an expert on. And this week, we get a word into a language. week we get a word into a language. We actually got a word into the Irish language that didn't exist yet and

we got the chief terminologist to put it into the lexicon. So we're delighted with that. Why would you tell me that? And James Colley, have you got anything to plug? If you are in Australia check out Gruen at 8.30pm on Wednesdays. If you're not in Australia, fly to Australia.

It's geoblocked, so the easiest way is to just get on a plane and come here. And then a book coming out next year, so we'll talk about that closer to the time. But if you see any book, remind yourself it could be mine one day. It could. Any book could one day be yours. Thank you to our roving reporters, Sea Lips, who sent in the Earth Axis story, the White Gladys story, and Phil Dawson, who sent in the Mayor culturally marrying the alligator story.

So thank you. If you'd like to be a roving reporter, tweet us at HelloGogglers on Twitter while that lasts, while stocks last. And if you're on Blue Sky, I'm there and mastered on, but I don't seem to be using any of them yet. We'll see. We'll see what emerges as the clear victor in this war of new things.

James? Can I say one thing just before we sign off? Princess Girl, I really miss you, and I don't know if you're listening, but if you are, just reach out, okay? I know you've blocked me, so it has to be you, but just reach out. I'm Alice Fraser. You can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser and join me for my weekly writers meetings or my book club or my

salons that's Alice Fraser on Patreon this is a Bugle podcast an 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 programmes from The Bugle, including The Bugle,

Catharsis, Tiny Revolutions, Top Stories, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts. I'm going to kidnap Princess Girl because I reckon there's money to be made out of James.

And I'm going to send them body parts of her, but it'll just be luggage. So it'll be like a small purse, and then a big briefcase. And then if you don't pay up, like a full-on suitcase. Oh, this week would make money.