The Gargle - Flamingos | Sexy voice notes | Rich dicks

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Athena Kugblenu and James Nokise join host Alice Fraser for episode 127 of The Gargle - the glossy magazine to The Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world.All of the news, none of the politics! Flamingo invasion Sexy voice notes  Party drone spies Rich people city Burning Man  ReviewsHOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLESupport The Gargle and all Bugle podcasts by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!Pre-order the D'Ancey LaGuarde Reader book here! http://l8r.it/DHhGAdvertise YOUR business on The Gargle with an Alice Fraser ad read. Contact [e-mail]00:00 Start02:19 Front cover02:31 Satirical cartoon02:52 Story 1: Flamingo invasion09:01 Ads09:57 Story 2: Sexy voice notes17:08 Reviews21:02 Story 3: Party drone spies26:15 Story 4: Rich people city33:15 Story 5: Burning Man38:28 Bye / Anything to plug? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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We are paid by and through the Bugle family and it has kept me alive through some hard times, so I really appreciate your support. This is a podcast from the Bugle. The ship's timbers creak as the waves move the boat through the dark night. Navigating by the stars, the captain and the first mate mutter over the ancient charts. In the filthy hammocks of the sleeping quarters,

those lucky enough to be asleep groan, feeling perhaps the clouds on the horizon that loom ominously. The cabin boy in the crow's nest, too young for this job, points out to starboard as something heaves up in the depths of the ocean. All hands on deck! All hands on deck! gargle hello everybody welcome to the gargle this is the sonic glossy magazine to the bugles audio newspaper for a visual world i'm your host alice fraser and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine uh athena kubleno welcome No, I said welcome to myself. I mean, hello.

And happy birthday to you too. And James Nokise. Hello. How are we? We're all very well. Before we line up and fill the cannon with the shot of this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover. The front cover this week is bees. Sexy, sexy bees. Posing provocatively with some other bees. Keeping us all alive by doing something that isn't, but isn't not, jizzing in flowers.

And the satirical cartoon this week is the revenant corpse of Abraham Lincoln being put up for a Senate spot in the US. He's looking around going, wow, everyone here is pretty ancient to be running a country. Yeah, that's what you get here. Cutting edge satire in very, very small chunks and the rest of it, no politics at all. Let's have a look at the top story. Top story this week is Flamingo News.

And this story was submitted to us an upsetting number of times by people who i presume want me to have less pleasure in life than i'm having uh this is the news that hurricane idalia is delivering flamingos all over the eastern united states by blowing them off course james nookie say you love these horrible pink birds. Can you unpack this story for us? I'm not sure I understand why this story is so important to people, Alice, but here we go. A hurricane has made a whole bunch of flamingos and other birds not as interesting find themselves in parts of the United States where they do not normally reside. Alabama, South and North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee,

and Virginia, which has got birdwatchers, and I must make this very clear, bird watchers and not racists, very interested and out and about with their binoculars, pointing and saying, there they are, they're not meant to be here. It's unprecedented to get this many flamingos in this many places, said Gary Neese. All nice. Look, we just don't know. A webmaster for the American Birding Association, which is, again, a real thing. And he's an administrator of its rare Bird Alert Facebook group,

which is definitely, definitely not a front for some sort of nationalistic Donald Trump supporting lunatics. I'm going to be honest, Alice, this story does not get more interesting than birds in places that they shouldn't be. The key fact is, it's flamingos. I mean, the key fact is that it's flamingos, which unlike any other bird that might have been flown, of course, people notice presumably because they have too much of their skeleton too close to the outside to be the shade of aggressive hyper-colour pink that they are. Athena, you're wearing pink.

Can you unpack this story for us a bit? I can unpack this and I think we're not taking this seriously enough. Some people think the Earth is flat. Some people think man didn't land on the moon. But other people who are more intelligent okay they know flamingos are behind it all all of it okay and this isn't 70 flamingos turning up in america let's use the proper word invasion this is an invasion and if you want to invade a country what do you you do? Start a hurricane, cause chaos. OK, get everyone buying water and doing what you do in the hurricane, hiding under the table.

And what's the infrastructure? Yeah, thank you. Infrastructure. OK, that's what they did in Superman. They had the earthquake. Right. Same thing. Same thing. For the earthquake, Superman, one or two or three. There's loads of them. OK. San Andreas Fault's fault one okay everything was destroyed whilst everything was getting destroyed who want my turns back time by running around the planet anyway flamingos they're behind it as soon as they showed up i was like i knew it i knew it okay and that's why i'm wearing pink because when they come for me i'll be like yo i got you know i am i'm on your side i'm on your side do you know what i mean so you know when you're sat here going,

no, there's nothing more interesting, first it's 70, then it's 71, then it's 72, then it's 73. I'm not going to go into a million. That will be here forever. Then it will be a million. And then we'll be talking about whether the story's interesting or not.

James. Athena, look, I, of course, being a slightly left of centre liberal, I'm trying to not be offensive in the way I address the story. But these are clearly climate refugees and not invaders. And I am very uncomfortable with the way in which we are portraying these flamingos as invaders. Sure, they're coming into Florida, as they have done for decades. But I don't think that's any reason for us to be, you know, it's very, the Superman image you seem to be obsessed with, this idea of us being the Superman and these immigrants

from outside being this invasive force we have to combat. I just think in 2023, can't we just embrace and help these flamingos who are not meant to be here, but who have arrived on our shores, if we were American, to be more at home? Attitudes like that is how you sleepwalk into domination. Okay, you sleepwalking. One minute, you're hanging out with like pigeons, which are just normal working class, the working bird, do you know what I mean? Goes around looking for food, we give it a bit of bread, but you know, working bird, just the pigeon, the humble pigeon. And the next thing you know,

Fleming goes everywhere. Now, just think about think about a place called like Trafalgar Square in London. If you don't know what Trafalgar Square is, international podcast, Google it. Beautiful place with pigeons that mind their own business. If you put 100 pigeons in Trafalgar Square, no problem. Put 100 flamingos there, James. Oh, but they're refugees. They're refugees. If they're refugees refugees how come they waited for the hurricane how come they waited for the hurricane james answer me that exactly you can't answer okay where's the paperwork where's the paperwork that's they like the papers if you want to get rid if you want to escape the climate emergency why would you go to florida one of the hottest places on the planet surely you'd go to iceland yeah thank you or yeah whatever

yeah just buy buy pink whether it's fast fashion whether you go vintage just buy pink it doesn't matter anymore dress yourself up okay i i for one respect my new flamingo overlords and they will absolutely not respect you in return 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 that thing where authors and famous artists do interviews where they relatably share about their social anxieties and depression and and and imposter syndrome and you think wow i'm just like them i have social anxieties too but you failed to factor in the fact that while dealing charmingly with their relatable mental health issues they've also written nine novels that thing bringing you the podcast

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Acast.com Sexy voice message news now. This is the news that there is a side hustle that I'd never thought of that is now being exploited by a London man making five pounds per minute through WhatsApp sending sexually suggestive voice recordings to women. Athena you've been the recipient of many a sexually suggestive message in the past can you unpack this story for us? Yeah I can it's extraordinary we'll get into why it's extraordinary after I explain what it is. A London man is making and let me say this twice five pounds

a minute okay I know the value of the pounds has gone down hasn't gone down that much okay he's making five pounds a minute sending erotic voice notes to other people via a whatsapp service and it's a stranger's um and he did it as a laugh and someone said you should do it for a job um and now he does it for a job i'm not sure where he gets his clients from but planet desperate is a real planet i think i think if we get up can we set our telescopes to one million and find planet desperate and that's where he's getting his clients from what's lots of interesting things first of all no one listens to voice notes when was the last time you heard a voice note okay so you might be if go through your voice notes now you might have one from this man that you haven't realized and now you owe him money

okay so please go through your voice notes this is the equivalent of the guy when you stop at the red light starts cleaning your windshield and you're like yeah right you didn't ask for that i went no word of a lie i did that once and a guy spat on the window and he he said he said do you want your window washed i went no and then he went all right then he spat on the window got his sleeve and started cleaning my window i said first of all i didn't want this second of all what are you doing but that's kind of there's an equivalency there between that and this voice note, ma'am. Okay, so first of all, five pounds, very expensive. Second of all, voice notes. Who listens to voice notes?

Third of all, London man. Have you met men from London? Have you, and have you then listened to them? All right, love, can I put my face in your knockers? If I had to choose a man from a city to pay five pounds to speak to me erotically I would choose Rome bloody hell I might even go for Perth mate do you know what I mean but London like oh boy get him out for the lads mate it's not happening so the whole thing is blowing my mind it's blowing my mind I don't know what to say like I mean I understand that

he's playing against this kind of repressed British sexuality thing. But my experience of English men trying to hit on you is basically that they're really mean to you. And then they're incredibly drunk and try and lick you. There's no kind of flirty middle ground. Oh, yeah. It's like, yeah. It's really like, oi, you ugly woman. Can I have your number?

Or it's like, I'm going to stalk you until you submit it's it's it's it's extremes and we deal in extremes and i've learned to live with that um i just i just uh i just found out he does advertise he advertises on instagram and tiktok uh which is just um i don't know what to say if i was on instagram and a guy who said i'm a london man, I'm going to send you a voice note for five pounds, then it's going to be mildly erotic. By the way, it's mildly erotic. So he doesn't use the C word. He doesn't say, which is like, what am I paying for then?

Why are you charging me money if you don't say, at least get gritty with it. Do you know what I mean? And if you're a London man, you don't say, are you really from London? Like, are you? The backstory here is peculiar, which is was he's had a lot of experience on dating websites um which i don't think is a selling point necessarily um but that he's had

a lot of experience on dating website he started using voice notes as a way to hit on women on dating websites and then he got very positive responses except for the women who ignored him and then he decided i can monetize this, which I just feel like is an extraordinary backstory. James? Look, I'm not going to lie. This story made me question what I've been doing with my life, albeit for any comedian to criticize someone for doing something

for a laugh and then turning it into a career. But I then picked up on something now this this bro if we may call him such uh alex douglas i believe his name is or douglay i'm not sure how it's pronounced um he's look he's a 37 year old guy and there's just something in what i said because he's a personal trainer and and well as that, and you're like, oh, come on, bro. But then he went, he can send a message if you just give him three words. And I was like, nah, you're an improviser. Oh, no.

That's all right, man. Oh, no, not improv. Yeah, you know, it's just like give me three words, pettis, romance, spatula. Like, you know, it's not as intimidating once you know he does improv. He prides himself on his professionalism as well. He says he sometimes receives naked or sexual photos from his clients, but he says that he's very good at being disciplined with himself and does not want to become a, quote, unquote, seedy man.

Mate, mate, mate, when you started the business. It's your job. Your job is seedy man. Your job is. Of selling women how you're going to lick them. I think that's probably. Imagine stopping yourself from wanking and saying, oh, I'm so disciplined. Do you know, it's like, that's a pretty low bar for discipline.

Like, I've got to take a picture. I didn't toss myself off. Like, all right, mate. What do you want, a CVE? Well, he also says he replies to the messages very kindly and often follows up messages which are sexual in nature from his clients by asking if they'd like another voice note. And if there is anything seedier than responding to a come on with an advertisement, I have never met it. I mean, that's full stop, really. Like the guy is getting paid for it.

I mean, what is I think the Fleming goes to take us over now. Like this is the end of the world, isn't it? This is the end of days, surely. I mean, it's I think the Fleming goes to take us over now. Like this is the end of the world, isn't it? This is the end of days, surely. I mean, it's speaking to the market. He's making money here from presumably women who have in the past received horrible pieces of sexual harassment and in the absence of them have missed it. I think he's monetized Stockholm syndrome. You know what? Succession is finished and a lot of people

just want to be entertained and now tv costs about 9.99 a month so maybe if you stop your subscription for now tv and you get two messages a month from this prick that's the same equivalent that's the same amount of entertainment surely just this is a guy desperately trying to make three random words erotic that's about as entertaining as one of the greatest TV shows of all time. Surely. It might be the only way to make improv watchable for me is to make it sexy improv. Weird, horrible sex show improv. I feel that this is just proof that the ecstasy market is alive and well in London.

Because if you're sitting in the dark and you just get a message from someone going, hello, Zara, I'm going to lick you. You'd be like, aye, that's my jam. You know, just put a little beat under it. Just like play it on repeat in a room in the dark. Maybe with your Xbox visualizer on, just as an example, a random example. Now it's time for your reviews. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in

something to review out of five stars. James, what have you brought in for us this week? Well, Alice, I am currently staying in a converted military bunker. So I would like to, normally you just review this on the app once you leave but i thought i'd review it uh it's it's it's dark uh it's got uh signs of mold spores um it's it's on a hill with uh views of scotland's bridges um and uh it's terrible to access. And there's a door at the back of this little B&B, which you open. And then it's just sort of pitch black into a tunnel. Occasionally, the light comes on. And neither myself or my spouse are brave enough to go in and turn it off.

Because we don't. I've watched horror films you don't open the door that's especially if you're the person of color in the film and so um sometimes a slug comes and visits uh and so i reckon four stars because um you never feel alone here four stars and for ed bro accommodation all of that sounds lovely. And very cheap compared to the festival. Don't have to get a mortgage. At least you don't have a clown sleeping under your bed. That's just a spouse.

Athena, what have you brought in for us to review? I brought in, I should have it one in my hands away, but you have to just imagine it's here. It's called a dream cloth. And the reason it's called a dream cloth,'s a dish cloth right that you used to clean up your kitchen right it holds a sheet you know 14 times its weight in water okay do you there was there's nothing that i can't there's no spill i can't sort out. And then guess what? It's washable, okay? Now, in a couple of years time-

So you feel smug while using it. Climate change. Listen, when the ice caps stop melting, replay this episode of The Gargle, right? We play it and we will pinpoint a moment in time, I stopped buying dishcloths and I just reused the one. And it came in a pack of three. So you can have

two out and one in the wash okay um there's a backstory to this because my partner's not very kitchen minded and every time he picks up a dishcloth with a little stain on it he'll throw it away and I'm like it's a kitchen like dishcloths get stained but because he's not a kitchen guy he's like oh this cloth is dirty and after three years I was like I can't deal with this this guilt of this dishcloth waste you know what I mean so I can't deal with this this guilt of this this cloth waste you know I mean so I went online and I paid eight pounds for three dishcloths which might seem like a lot of money but guess what guys it pays for itself because instead of buying new ones you just wash the old ones but I'm genuinely impressed by them I'm not I mean I've found facetious but

I'm not being facetious they're great dishcloths they're cool I mean you should buy this sounds amazing i mean how many how many out of five stars well five come on i love them five can i give them six they're really good um and because i i kept the packet so i said to my partner look you have to wash them again all right so don't throw my dishcloths away stop it stop so not only um do i have disc cloths that keep going and going and going um a relationship will now probably last the mortgage term um and it was on the rocks because of this situation because i just go in the kitchen look for my disc cloths i'm like where are they i threw it away it was a bit brown like yes it's a bit brown it's a disc cloth i used it to wipe up coffee so now you can't throw it away because i told him how much they cost as well so he's a bit tight

like me so i was like it was eight pound mate so i dare't throw it away because I told him how much they cost as well. So he's a bit tight like me. So I was like, they cost £8, mate. So I dare you to throw them away. And that's showing up. I mean, this is the climate change solution. If they're absorbing this much water, maybe we just need to line the beaches with them and we can stop the oceans rising. Drone spy news now. And this is the news that in New York City, there was a Labor Day kerfuffle with residents who were absolutely outraged

that police were using or announced plans to use drones in the skies to monitor backyard parties. James Nukise, you've had a party in a backyard. Can you unpack this story for us? I was. I'd been stopped and searched by the New York police, which apparently was illegal at the time. Hooray. But it's now legal because of 9-11. Yes, the lesson there is if you are picking up a whole bunch of New Zealand biscuits to hand out to your audience at your Manhattan gig, don't be late for your own gig. So you end

up sprinting through Manhattan with a backpack full of cylinder like objects anyway uh on to the new york city police department has announced plans to put drones in the sky this holiday weekend to monitor backyard parties that could get out of hand and i'll now pause for anyone wondering whose parties we know who uh so this is actually become a big deal this year because city data reveals that drones were used for like public safety or emergencies only four times in 2022 but this year they've been used 124 times and it's only september so that figure's going to go up but i think to be fair to the New York police, which is not a statement I thought I'd make, it is 2023. And we are kind of in the future that the dystopian sci-fi writers were writing about. Like all the famous ones, they were like, oh yeah, 2023, authoritarian police state, robot drones monitoring our parties. parties so we i mean it's it's it's not a good example but i mean it's not unexpected is it like this is exactly what you expect from american i mean it's even the right country if you stop and

think about it like anyone who's been watching film since the 90s i mean this is basically what was going on in masters of the universe uh the 1980s dolphph Lundgren masterpiece when they came through. There's just drones monitoring everyone. There's police state. So it's not looking good in New York, but it never is. And if you are looking to save money on recording all of the antics at your barbecue this weekend because we all know the costs involved with content creation, just hit up the police.

This could be a negative thing that turns into a positive, right? Because there's nothing worse than being at a barbecue or like some kind of house party and you run out of stuff, right? And then all of a sudden you see a drone hovering above you. You could just wave at the police and look, you can see nothing nothing's happening here but we're out of lagers all right so just come back go away go to the shops is is 20 quid buy some lagers attach the lagers to the drone and come back okay so i am happy to accept a bit of surveillance if it comes with somebody who's going to top up the booze when it runs out and that's what i'm saying because i remember when we were supposed to get amazon deliveries and deliver

and food deliveries via drone and that didn't happen so let's combine the two things like i would like back in the day we started getting royalty points on our shopping and that was an exchange for supermarkets knowing every little last thing about they now know they know when we're on our periods they know when when we when we pretend to like oat milk they they know all this kind of stuff okay so now i'm prepared to give up a little bit of civil liberty if someone's going to go out and get because i don't know about you i don't know about you but whenever whenever i have a party yeah i always forget salad and then people come around and they go athena where's the greens and i'm like oh oh, my gosh. So if I knew the police were coming round to have a look,

I'd be like, I don't know where they are, but the Metropolitan Police are going to be here in a second. Have a word with them and they're going to get some rocket, because people like rocket. When people come round, you've got to get the nice stuff. You can't just get the iceberg layers. Yeah, rocket is the virtue signalling of salad. 90% of bagged salad goes in the bin.

90% of bagged salad that is bought, people don't eat it in time. So what you could do is you could have a drone just come by and drop it directly into your rubbish bin. Safe steps. Yeah, exactly. So it saves time and it's the mind of base too. So you get it when you want it, even though you don't want it because no one ever wants it, man.

The other thing that's important is we have to get used to the fact that flamingos are coming and we're going to have to be on our game when it comes to our defences. And drone surveillance is going to be part of that. Imagine flamingos now, gate crash your party. You put your party on Facebook, the flamingos get a wind of it, then a thousand of them show up and there's no drones. You want drones then, won't you?

You want drones then. Because I'll tell you right now, on hold on a second you cannot use these climate refugee flamingos as justification for increasing police power all right this is the kind of authoritarianism that people have been have been writing about i'm actually oh hold on sorry i'm just there's just a drone outside my window it's just a joke it's a flamingo coming to eat your head. It's either a drone or a flamingo in very good cosplay. I don't know what the collective noun for flamingos is. I think it is invaders, actually.

It's a flamboyance, actually, because of course it is. A flamboyance? Oh my gosh. If you saw what they do when they're of course it is oh my gosh i don't know if you saw what they do when they're when they're on it do you know what i mean when they're really necking the vodka tequila when they come to a house party there's no house left okay and there's so much neck have you seen um independence day all of that all of that's a documentary if you if you take away the aliens and you put in flamingos and that's drunk flamingos by the way it's very important and so house parties uh with flamingos

are very dangerous a dangerous myth it's a dangerous cocktail uh so send in the drones um before uh it's feathers for all of us but it actually reminds me of that very famous show tune. Isn't it rich? Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground. You in mid-air. Send in the drones. Where are the drones? They're already and now it's time for rich dicks news uh this is the news that silicon valley elites are planning

a possible elite city known as uh as far as you can tell it has has no name yet, but it's been built by California Forever. And they've bought more than 50,000 acres in eastern Solano country since 2018 and are planning to build a city for rich people. Which, I mean, arguably all cities are now for rich people. But Athena Kugleno, you've lived in paradise before. Can you unpack this story? Yeah, absolutely. So rich people are always thinking, they've run out of things to build.

So they're just starting from scratch again. So basically, so now they're just building a city and it's going to host 450,000 people. And I'm like, yeah, good luck trying to find 450,000 rich people in this economy. Do you know what I mean? You're about to get 10. Well, there's the guy who's sending voice notes. So he be there he's loaded at the moment um uh but i don't

know who they're going to find uh but it's in um solano county northern california california last time i checked is on fire so i think that's a problem uh rich people in flame resistant i don't i don't know how it works when you get money. I don't know what happens. But yeah, it's going to be North California, which is on fire. Good luck to them. And it's going to be a hit walkable utopia, which sounds like a nightmare.

Nothing in the history of everything that has ever been described as hip is actually hip other than our hips. That's about it. At any you if at any age if someone says to you that's hip a three-year-old would go what a 20-year-old would go what a 50-year-old will go what even a 90-year-old in a nursing home like if you're calling it hip i'm out of it mate i'm not interested okay it's just the worst way it's the kind of word an alien would use to pretend to be human right which makes me

believe all of these rich people are aliens or flamingos i haven't decided yet i'm still but yeah so that's it's going to be hip it's going to be walkable which is like what does that mean it's going to be on the ground like all cities like could you imagine building a city you say what's the usp it's walkable like what happens out when you i've been into a lot of houses and every time i've left my house i've been able to walk out of the house i've never been like oh this city is not walkable like do you live in a lava city do you live in a river city oh i know this isn't to be fair for context this is an america where every house is surrounded by cars made out of guns and nothing is walkable because it's either flooded or on fire

or full of people who disagree with you politically and are willing to headbutt you about it. Well, it gets worse. Apparently it's going to be so great, kids ride their bikes in the streets and adults are like, if you've eaten, just have a good swallow so you don't vomit. In this city, adults will kayak in the afternoons

if you're attracted to this city it's a trick to get the c*** from the rest of the world it's basically a c*** vacuum so if you're a prick you'll be attracted to this city and the rest of the world will be free of pricks and in that case I'm for this city I've never woken up in the morning i think i can't wait to kayak this afternoon

and that affects the kayakers but would you want to do it every day in the afternoon look certainly the upside of this place is that once it collapses into a dystopia they can use the abandoned city to film every utopia come dystopia futuristic sci-fi film uh that's ever planned forever. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, and I can't wait to watch it. James? Look, we have got to stop equating money with smarts because we're told these are the tech giants behind this. These are the brilliant people.

And they've come up with the same plan as the rapper Akon, which is to build a city on some land you've bought. They've got the naming abilities of Katy Perry or California Forever. Oh, that's featuring Snoop Dogg. Amazing. And it's got a real Stepford Housewives vibe because it's all just rich men

who seem to be coming forward to embrace this. But the weirdest thing, as Athena pointed out, like essentially these guys have just built a place which, as an Australian, as a Kiwi guy, oh, yeah. Like, Athena, I mean, don't come to Wellington if you ever see it because you'll see some people paddle boarding to work. And that's just a whole different, like, yeah, with a craft beer in one hand. How do they do it?

One hand, just pure upper body strength. But like their plan, these rich people's plan is to buy up land and then just immigrate in and build. Why is it that every rich person, when they say they've got this bold new plan for society it's just a remix of colonization like every single time oh we're going to go to mars to what colonize it oh we're going to go to moon what colonize it oh we've bought land in america to what come in and colonize it and the real the sinister part is they keep consulting the local people there and asking them hey uh do you guys

want to be involved in this and they're like uh sorry billionaires we can't afford to buy a house in your billionaire empire state and they've gone back and said oh but would you be keen if we gave you the first option to buy the house which is just what happens when rich people talk to normal people they're like oh we haven't got the money it's like oh yeah but you probably have the money soon they're like no i earn thousands billionaire i don't i don't even think you understand what that is and in other rich people news uh burning man is in trouble it is not they're not able to burn the man the man is too wet before the festival officially started this year on the 27th of august it was hit by the remnants of hurricane hillary and now what we have is a lot of people in the desert either idealistic artists or over wealthy silicon valley dickheads who are trying to

experience empathy for the first time by taking mushrooms uh knee deep in mud worried about how they're going to uh eat drink and shit, the three most important things in life. James Nukise, you've been knee-deep in mud before. Can you unpack this story for us? Yes, as a veteran of the outdoor festivals and being on fire, Burning Man has been experiencing flash floods, or close to, from forecasted storms. But being that the participants are people who go to Burning Man, no one checked the weather. So thousands of people

have been caught off guard and are now having to traverse through mud. It's quite interesting because the Burning Man motto, I believe, is radical self-reliance and it's really proof that it doesn't matter what your motto is Anyone can come to Burning Man because no one seems to be self-reliant there's actually a whole bunch of Separate groups within Burning Man that you have to interview They're quite popular camps of different different ideologies and you've got to interview to get into them And some of them have got resources like spare toilets, drinkable water and stuff. And there's nothing that screams radical self-reliance than interviewing for an exclusive

club. It's been very interesting to see what the organizers have said. They've said no driving is permitted until the player surface dries up, to which a whole bunch of f*** boys at Burning Man said, the player surface never dries up. Am I right, bruh? That's my impersonation of a f*** boy

for those wondering what the accent change there was. The event usually features giant... I've already sold it for five pounds to a lonely lady. Yeah, me doing a boy would probably get about a good five hello mrs let me make you wet oh jesus he sounds like russell crowe anyway the event usually features giant interactive art installations and a huge wooden man that is set on fire. And that comes from the tradition from 1986 when Larry Harvey and Jerry Goddell burned a man on Baker Beach in San Francisco and everyone assumed that it was on purpose.

It's now being held in Nevada's Black Rock Desert since 1990 because Burning Man became even too pretentious for San Francisco. Athena, have you camped in a mud pot before? No, but I have camped and I have never been more unhappy. I'm just miserable. I'm not going to tell my camping stories. But what I love about the fact I've been camping is that when I slag it off, no one can say nothing to me because I've done it.'ve done it three times now and I've just it's just misery I don't know why anyone would volunteer to to camp or or like if there's if there's an alternative

to camping take the alternative why do it for fun doesn't make any sense to me it's awful you know what you have to go outside to brush your teeth and it's just like it's like what normally when you need a toilet middle night you just go and use it but when you're camping it's a dilemma it's like how badly do i need the toilet like how badly do i not like that's so what kind of lifestyle is this i'm really grateful that this happened for two things i didn't really know anything about burning man and i had no interest in finding out more but now i found out loads about it and i'm like oh my god it's so nice to be right about something that I just hadn't a justified view of because I always thought it's full of dickheads but I never knew why I just had a sense but I never did it there's this there's a

service of of confirming it was from the dickheads I just assumed it and now I'm like I was right because sometimes you're wrong and it's annoying being wrong and I was right because you know nothing happens at Burning Man I thought Kanye West would be there or some or schoolboy q nothing no one's there it's just people in the desert so secondly like i question god daily right i turn on the news and every news story tells me there was no god there was no god there was no god there was a god look at that finally a god story we're overdue on god thank god because literally every iceberg gone famine climate change the conservatives in the uk burning man everyone got trapped hey thank you god get a few more of those stories please we'll get people get people back in the church in it um so i was i was grateful for those two things, really. A very odd tradition that rich people are following.

But lovely to restore some faith in the higher power, you know, because I was running on empty. I was running on empty. And now I've got a bit of energy back in my God-fearing battery. So very grateful. And that brings us to the end of the show. Flipping through the ads at the back. Athena, have you got anything to plug?

Oh, what am I doing? I just wrapped a season of DMs Are Open, which is a sketch show that the public writes. So you can say it's funnier than what we do. So I just plugged that. And what else am I doing? I'm doing something. and i'll be at london podcast festival doing jumping on some podcasts so just google london podcast festival

google my name and i wish i could help you out more but i can't that's all i have but that should be enough surely it's enough what do you want i don't want anything more i think just finding athena's work is the is the go james have you got anything to plug uh look this is going to be a bit weird i'm going to plug the rugby world cup now anyone who's listened to me will know i have a podcast called um fair game pacific rugby against the world and that was just a small niche podcast until about two weeks ago when england got their ass kicked by fiji and samuel almost bet the world number one team so uh in the spirit of that podcast go watch the rugby world cup and only support the pacific island teams and the real i mean like the well i can't say real that's a dystopia question i don't want to run into but tonga sam or fiji are

all going to be really fun and if you're watching tv coverage there's a dystopia question I don't want to run into. But Tonga, Samoa, Fiji are all going to be really fun. And if you're watching TV coverage, there's a small chance that you might actually see me pop up on some of those sports panels that they have, which would be very funny because I was a soccer player at high school and dropped out of the first 15 because I didn't want to get concussions. And look at you now. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production.

I'm Alice Fraser. You can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. It's a one-stop shop full of my stand-up specials, podcasts and blogs, as well as my weekly Tea with Alice salons and writers' meetings if you would like to write with us. I will be doing the live Bugle on the 16th of September. It's me, Chris Addison, and of course, Andy Zaltzman there. I'll also be doing a few other things here and there, but mostly not live gigs.

So my podcast, Tea with Alice, my Patreon, patreon.com slash alicefraser and unbound.com. Write in Alice Fraser and you'll find the Dancy Lagarde reader available for pre-order now. I've got the rest of the month to finish writing it and it's going to be in your post boxes sometime after that. Thank you to our roving reporters, VB who sent in the sexy voice notes story, Sealips who sent in the Silicon Valley City and party drones story, and Bella Hahn who sent in the Burning Man story story if you'd like to be a roving reporter tweet us at hello garglers on the app currently known as x otherwise i will 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. Hello, Zara. I'm going to lick you.