The Gargle - Gambling on real-life events, a Pyro-Arachnid murderer and a James Patterson and Mr Beast book collab!

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

On this week's Gargle, the glossy magazine pull out to The Bugle’s audio newspaper, we open it with Alice Fraser, Jackie Kashian, and James Nokise as they breakdown the week's news in science and tech, from gambling on real-life events, a man burning down his own home to deal with a spider infestation and a James Patterson and Mr Beast novel collaboration!Alice Fraser: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraserJackie Kashian: Catch Jackie's NEW SHOW here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=sRyvoLV0qfivlGiA&v=v5kJlI41V2g&feature=youtu.be & https://jackiekashian.com/James Nokise: https://www.jamesnokise.com/ & https://www.abc.net.au/pacific/programs/pacific-specials/monkeys-in-palau/105811648Subscribe to Realms Unknown - a fantasy, sci-fi and speculative fiction podcast from Alice Fraser and The Bugle!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/news/realms-unknownYou fund what we do!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateProduced by Harry Gordon, with Executive production from Chris Skinner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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To become a true hero, or just to join the voluntary subscription scheme, go to the buglepodcast.com and click the donate button. Hello and welcome to the gargle, the glossy technology and science pull-out section of the bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world. I'm your host. Alice Fraser, we do all of the science and technology news. Your agenic AI has been advising you to ask for,

and like every human on earth, we await with bated breath for time when you can get a robot to sort your dickpicks and put them on a ranking chart from Lodentic. lowest rank, looks like a human face making an expression at you, the highest to S-tier. S standing for should be the platonic model of the throbbing member described in a romance novel. Thanks, agentic learning models. On to the news, but before that, I'd like to welcome our guests. Our guest for this week, a gonzo scientist equipped with a microscope and anthropology textbook and a fist full of Hunter S. Thompson's vintage quailudes. It's James Nokisei.

Good, good, I was going to say, good evening, good morning, but it's the quailutes. It's affecting my sense of time. And wearing a pissed helmet while hacking her way through the jungles of New Wave Americo Technocracy, navigating between dysentery and dissident poetry, its human condition explorer, Jackie Cation. Hello, here I lie. In whatever time zone this is, yes. I'm delighted to have you both. The front cover of this week's magazine is a picture of an autonomous drone, deciding it needs to go on strike from being used in strikes

and retreating to a commune with a copy of Eat, Pray, Love. I hope it gets laid. Don't we all hope that it gets late. Before we get into the news, let's have a look at what you've been thinking about recently. James, what's been coming across your desk? I've been thinking about. summer because I haven't really had one for some reason I'm I'm in New Zealand and normally we have a summer from December through to March and for some reason we had a bipolar kind of situation here where we got a

couple of days of sun with no heat and then the storms of the century and I don't really it's probably some kind of scientific answer for why that that might be happening but um no one can seem to concentrate at the moment on what that scientific answer could could possibly be uh so that's that's one thing about i'm like i really wanted i rely on summer alice as you know to make me look like a pacific islander so that i can get funding for my continued projects uh and i haven't had it so now i'm i'm i'm pasty uh my vitamin d is low i feel i feel slightly depressed and i I don't know why I even came back from the UK to try and have a summer. That's what I'm thinking about.

Heartbreaking, heartbreaking. Jackie, what about you? I'm mostly trying to, I'm pretty psyched that the Paralympics started up because I wasn't feeling like I wasn't achieving enough. And what I like to do is watch some woman who has like one leg snowboard. This is, I'm like, I want a snowboard. and this woman has taken it upon herself to, you know, and then you find out that not only does she snowboard,

she also skis or she's going to be on the hockey tee. I mean, yes, I, I, it's, I love, I love the Olympics. They're the only sport I watch, actually. I like to watch. I enjoy air. Like when people go up in the air and then they spin and stuff, it's my favorite. So I'm a simple,

simple woman of the people. And so that's what I'm doing. Well, that sounds like a great thing to do. I do like a bit of, I have not been, I watched neither the Winter Olympics nor the Paralympics this year because I'm more or less on the road with my children. And I don't, I don't know how to get, I don't know how to watch anything anymore. Everything's all on a service and you have to pay a subscription and it's not, it's not half of, you know, the first half of the race is on one subscription platform that you have to download and pay $80 a minute for. And then there's something else on another subscription platform if you want to watch the

second half of the race. And then there's an ad in the middle that's trying to upsell you on if you want to watch the version of the race where you actually get to see who wins versus the like base level subscription where you just get to watch the losers like eking in and getting a sad embrace from their spouses. I paid for the one that said no ads. And I didn't notice an asterisk as you never do. And then there's a long thing that says, except for there's ads on the stuff you really want to watch.

Yes. So you give them $160 for the, to watch it without ads, except for the stuff that you really want to watch. Then there'll be three ads. And you're like, I don't like you. What is happening? And if you pay the extra, extra money for the extra no ads, then there's an ad for how few ads they have. where an ad would be. I was going to say what I really didn't appreciate about the Winter Olympics was all the athletes

talking about world events and coming across quite educated and knowing what that. It's supposed to be like quicker, like stronger, higher, not smarter. Like you pick your lane, all right? Like you can fly, winter Olympics. You're on a board. You're flying through the air. you know, looking graceful as you cascade mountaintops. Be dumb after that.

Like, you know, like, look amazing and don't believe in vaccines. Don't start telling me about the military capabilities of Iran afterwards. Like, it's not, you know, I like to feel like the sum balance. Yeah. Like, we get it. You're genetically superior. But you don't have to remind us. by being really eloquent in your responses.

And that brings us to the news. Our top story this week, I bet you can bet what it's going to be. It's prediction markets, the rise and rise of the new market for saying what is going to happen anonymously and then bet money on it. And I cannot see any possible way in which this can go terribly wrong. Jackie Cation, what a crystal ball. Can you tell us about this story? I like that they call it prediction markets instead of just casino.

It's just like we're going to bet which ant is going to make it to the finish line. I control the ants and I'm going to step on one right before it hits to the is that, does that wrong? So yes, prediction markets, they want it to be the news except for it's people. You're gambling on decisions made by people. And what are the odds when I do this? And how much do I get paid? Right? I mean, it's just a cut. So, like, the only one,

and some of them are so creepy, the only one I want to see, of course, is the Deadpool. And I'd be willing to throw a couple of bucks towards that. The mysterious Deadpool that I'm incredibly very, very in favor of

betting on. Yes, anyway. At what point does a Calci prediction market Deadpool that you put odds on end up just being a black, well, I was going to say a black market assassination market, although I think sort of by definition, all assassination markets are not exactly above the table. But just extraordinary, the idea that people are not already putting their fingers on the scale, already benefiting from laying these bets,

and then that people are using their knowledge that they will be insider trading to kind of, right, Like, is this a world where you find out you're at war because the odds shift? Yes. You have to follow something coming through Las Vegas. And wasn't that the big thing that somebody won a bunch of money because the U.S. and Israel combined at bomb Iran? Wasn't that the nightmare? I mean, and then everybody won a pile of cash? What are the, what are the odds that good?

on that outcome? Like, will you, like, how do you win money betting against? Like, no,

I think it's the hour. Oh, the hour. Why, why isn't it just concord sociopathf.com? Because that's, I mean, that's,

there are days we just go, why are we living in the, the first couple of years of the dystopia that Alice is going to write a novel about? So, no, okay, let me try and make an argument.

for how this is a good thing. Don't do it, Alice. You've got such a burgeoning career. Don't do it. We're recording. Just ask chat chief, they'll do it. I mean, look at it this way. The aristocracy forever has had access to this exact bet.

This is exactly, you know, the politics of the global politics and whether we go to war and, you know, who benefits and who profits and who is selling the weapons and who is, you know, they are all placing these bets. at all times and have been for, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years and, you know, putting their thumb on the scale, in fact, often if you were a, if you were a lord of a castle and you're like, I bet you $5 that I'm going to invade tomorrow and then they would do it. But we are now democratizing access to high-level international corruption and war profiteering. And is that a bad thing?

Yes. Is it more egalitarian? No, but superficially, yeah. You're reaching. You're like the democratization of this horrible thing. You guys, anybody can. And then, oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, I think if we learned anything of the last decade is that we can't be trusted with democracy. Isn't gambling really the most democratic thing of all? It's a choice everybody can make for sure. But I want to, can I do predictions? Could I, I don't know. Please, yes.

All right. So I was thinking about who is a rising star in the world of dirtbag stand-up comedy. Who's going to do this? Who's going to headline the second Riyadh Comedy Festival? Like, who could it be? Who's coming up that I wouldn't be alone in a room with? And the R-Re-Re-add comedy festival. If they hired any decent comedians, that's what they'd call it.

Yeah, they would. And just someone with a pun, an access to some sort of wordplay. There's great British bake-off winners, is that we could say, I would like to say that someone who's never one-star baker or a technical, but has gotten three handshakes. That's the next winner. I'm willing to invest in that. All right.

Yeah, I reckon that's good. James, have you got any predictions to throw into the ring? Put some odds on? Look, I predict an uptake in beta block sales. I think by the end of the year, I think the beta blocker market is ripe in just in the current state of events. Of course, I talk about the impending stress of the football World Cup in the United States.

I think that's probably the major international event causing stress for people right now. That would be my prediction. Yeah, that is. Oh, my gosh, that's so sad that it's here. We're so sorry. And when I say we, I mean everyone that isn't in power. For some reason, the people in power seem to be having the time of their lives. but those of us who are just on the streets going,

how do I fix this? Yeah, I feel like someone has been running at me with a knife for 10 years, honestly. And for some reason, I can't seem to get it out of their hands and no one else can. So it's weird. Look, my suggestion is that we launch a prediction market, but only for completely stake-free, benevolent, is happening in your neighborhood exactly.

So at what time, old man Wilson will walk his fat dog around the block and where it will poo and how many times. And I feel like this will be the soulful antidote to Kalshi and these other hideous prediction markets. You're a global treasure because that is the best idea I've ever heard in my life. Though I would like to know, are they going to phase out mass market size novels? across the board. Like they've already taken it out of mysteries and romance and

what's the other one? They haven't done it to horror yet. Horror is still available in mass market. They have not yet, there's been no Bridgeton of horror for some reason. And so horror books are still in mass market. They are not trade, but mystery sci-fi and romance novels have all gone to $15 books instead of $8 books. It's very sad.

Yes. Yeah, the argument is now everybody has e-readers and they don't want these little crappy books. But the number of times a crappy book has saved my afternoon where it was just like, yeah, that's a cost of a coffee and I can have a really nice time. Yeah. Very sad. I'll have to get you on realms unknown to talk about this. I love the idea of the micro-prediction market of is that, are you?

Are they going to yell at each other inside the house or outside the house in my neighborhood with our neighbors who yell at each other? And they're not having a fight. They just communicate loudly. So sometimes it's being done from the car into the house. Sometimes it's within the house. We call them the yelling family. We just don't know at what time during the day it's going to happen. They're not mad.

Yeah, you can lay odds on. I think there's very clear. like I ran this experiment on my two children, which is a thing that I do the other day of opening them to a prediction market about their own behavior. And it turns out that the moment you add in a kind of a profit motive, they start to put their thumb on the scales of the future. And if my two-year-old can figure that out, I reckon probably we're in for a bad ride. And in time-traveling generational, intergenerational news now, apparently Gen Z lives in a culturally unanchored time period. James Newke say you are wearing a hat and therefore are our youth correspondent.

Can you unpack this story for us? Thank you, Alice. I've always wanted to be cool. We've always suspected that different generations move in different sets of times, whether it's, you know, your grandparents taking forever to tell a story or children sort of telling a story about a simply

small moment in a day that changes generations and always seems to involve a cartoon dog. But it turns out that Gen Z in particular may be experiencing their own version of time by being completely sort of untethered from sort of pop culture and events and people and are experiencing time

particularly different to other generations. I think that's really just the most dog shit excuse that we've come up with yet for while we've screwed up the planets. That's definitely an excuse that I've used back in high school to not get my homework done. It's really, it's giving a lot of haven't done the research and having completed the assignments. You know, I'm really sorry, climate change, you know, world hunger,

the United Nations failing. We're just moving in a different stream of time right now. You know, I mean, I don't know. We're all of a certain age, and it can feel sometimes like we're moving in a different sense of time relative to other generations. But I had a quote actually from an article that I was going to read. But unfortunately, I couldn't find that quote in the right time. Jackie Cation, if you could draw from any cultural moment in history

to make yourself an outfit for going out, when would it be? Oh, my gosh. Well, I would want to mix it up. I would, of course, want, I would want it to be from movies, from history, from music, and from sport. So I would clearly want, I would look completely ridiculous, but I would be the coolest because I would have an Amelia Air Hat. And then I would have skateboard pants.

And then I would have really cool, but very comfortable for some reason, Doc Martins that could be used for skateboarding. And then I would have a bow and arrow. I love it. I mean, I feel like this is the goggles first call out for fan art. I'm going to go with football shoulder pads, probably Amelia Earhart pants. What a style icon she was. Or like, yeah, I think maybe Catherine Hepburn pants, depending or possibly we're going medieval pantaloons.

It's a nice trouser. I actually, I kind of like those, the big hair. pants from the, from the Turkish, uh, old-timey days like the Ottoman Empire. They're very comfortable and yet silky, kind of a beautiful, and I would like them to be in a pattern, please. But please do not forget my Amelia Air Hat and possibly a Fonzie jacket. Now that we're, what about yourself, James? What do you think? It's interesting. Haram Pants was actually my nickname in high school. Um, that's a different story. I would probably go for a cloak.

I feel like cloaks are coming back. Probably, and then leather pants. And then a plastic orange sheath for a sword, but no sword. And then a Spider-Man mask, which I may actually. be describing what I was wearing when I was three. But my sense of time isn't quite what it used to be. I have a picture of myself when I was three wearing goggles and gumboots. And nothing else.

The three-year-old style choices are infinitely excellent. Yeah, I approve of these choices. Fan artists, Scaggle listeners, please go forth and email us at at Cargleads of Google Podcast.com. Now it's time for your ad section. Your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy. Do you play video games? Do you ever get to the final boss

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half a glass of water. Please respond responsibly. Do not operate heavy machinery. Do not operate light machinery. Do not operate. Now it's time for our next story. Exciting times in the story world. This is the story of a man who's done what we all have been tempted to do,

which is he set a fire to kill some spiders in his home that ignited a blaze that led to several neighboring units. This is an extremely, this is happening in Pocono Mountain Regional Area in, of course, America. He was trying to kill some spiders. He set a fire in the floor of his living room and he put a love seat on top of it in order to, I assume, fumigate the love seat without very much of a sense of how, I guess, fires or spider. work. Jackie, you've said hearts ablaze. Can you unpack this story for all? Well, let me just say that first of all, I don't, I cannot guarantee that the spiders were real.

There's one of the things the spiders were not real. Second of all, of course, that is not how spiders are dealt with. And you have to make a pact with spiders. Spiders belong outdoors. you pick them up, you place them outdoors. That is how you deal with spiders. Or if you get someone to help you, unless they're black widows, and then all bets are off in my spider. I'm sorry, you're actually a very dangerous spider.

You cannot live indoors or outdoors near my home because you're going to bite my tiny chihuahua mix, and I don't approve. But here's my favorite part of that story was that he then ran. He got in a U-Haul, which is of course a moving van and then

drove into the woods like drove away and they're still looking for him Harvey have we not all at a point in time wanted to set everything on fire and run away in a little

I mean yes he really is he is the man after our own hearts you know how does those American folk heroes that you hear about you know Is it Paul Bunyan or something?

You know, these guys that only Americans really know about who are folk heroes there. I think this is the next guy because what an icon for the current times than a man who tries to kill spiders by setting multiple fires in his own house and then flees his house to avoid being arrested? I think in many ways he is the spirit of America, cousin San, if you will. And this brings us to our final story of this week's episode of The Gargle. It is a long-running story announced in 2025

that has just reached its new pinnacle with an article out in Bloomberg. James Patterson, famous aeroplane book produced, a generator of extraordinary amounts of, let's call it content, because I'm not sure if you call it anything else. Banger novels, ripping yarns, things that you can read at 30,000 feet in the air. He is doing a number of collabs. So he's historically done a fair few sort of ghost writers and had a team of people helping him work on his novels in a way that is not usually compatible with our idea of

what an author is. It's more like a traditional Leonardo da Vinci kind of master in an artist's studio walking around saying, oh yeah, paint that one green vibe. But James Patterson, bringing back the old systems of art creation, has decided to do a collab not just with Mr. Beast of Mr. Beast fame, but also is dabbling in Romanticie with a romance fantasy book that involves mermaids. Jackie Cashin, you can read. Can you unpack this story for us? My eyes hurt when I think about James Patterson.

I can't. I can't. He is a famous collaborator, though, and I am looking forward to, I've made a small list, just a small list, possibly too small, of, I want him to

collaborate with a novel with the Chicago Pope, knocking that Da Vinci Code out of the way, and then I would like him to collaborate with my father because my father's a huge fan of just making shit up and then I would like him to collaborate with either the guy who wrote Hamlet 2 or just Steve Coogan as the character from Hamlet 2. And James Patterson, I know you're out there,

I know you're listening to the gargle. And I just want you to possibly buy land and retire. You don't need to collaborate with anyone else. I think we can be done. We can be done. The Beast. Did you look at the Beast? I mean, this is the thing.

Jimmy and Mr. Beast Donaldson, he's famous on the internet. He is the leader of all viral trends on YouTube. He is the instigator of a hilarious. game show based on the hideously post-apocalyptic dystopian squid games series. And he's going to be writing a book with James Patterson that is reminiscent of the squid games and possibly reminiscent of viral algorithm jacking.

I'm not 100% sure. I will probably have to read it for Realms Unknown, the sister podcast to this podcast that comes out every second week. I'm not looking forward to it, James. The thing is, if you were a contestant, in the Mr. Beast show. And let's just take a small moment to appreciate that somehow both James Patterson

and Mr. Beast sound like porn star names. You were the suspect in the Mr. Beast show and you found out that he was working with James Patterson to write a thriller because that's the thing. The book is a thriller. Wouldn't you be slightly worried about where Mr. Beast's reality show is heading?

Because it's not like they're writing a rom-com or like writing a comedy or a satire. They've gone, oh, no, going to go thrill it. Like James Pattison isn't renowned for not murdering characters in his books. And Mr. Beast is not renowned for good health and safety workplace. To be fair, though, the trick is in the name. If you go to work for Mr. Beast and things go slightly sideways on your health and safety, you were working for Mr. Beast. Also, if you're Catholic and working for Mr. Beast, read the other book for pity's sake. So it's, yeah, I think Patterson's the perfect author.

to work with Mr. Beast. I think he is the Mr. Beast of crime writing. I think he embraces that as well. He is the author par excellence of algorithm writing. So it kind of makes sense that the two of them have teamed up. Do you think that he would write a prediction market book with Mr. Beast? I think that they could predict, they could predict how this book would go.

I mean, there could be a prediction market. It's a callback. I'll be over here. Okay. I mean, Lex, no, I mean, I'm 100% up for opening a pool on what happens in every chapter. I think we can predict what will happen. I think if Mr. Beast wrote a book of predictions called maybe some sort of like it was revealing things, like it was a book of revelations.

by Mr. Beast, and that becomes a bestseller, Mr. Beast's Book of Revelations. I think at that point, one, damn it, the Christians were right, and two, we're really missing the obvious signs. And that brings us to the end of this week's episode of the gargle. Jackie Cashin, have you got anything to plug? Of course I do. I do stand of comedy if you go to Jackie Casha.com or Family Pet Ancestry.com, which points to Jackie Cashia.com.

Why did I buy that? Because it's funny. I like the idea of someone going, did my cat come over on the Mayflower? Family Pet Ancestry.com. And then you see my face. But I have a new album and a new special out. It's called Altercation, because my last name is Cation,

and I want to punch everyone in the nose right now. Anyway, but altercation. I saw an early version of this show in London about a year ago, and it was already excellent then, so I cannot wait to see the filmed version. And I will spread that around. as much as I can. James, have you got anything to plug? Tickets have just gone on sale for the New Zealand Comedy Festival,

and I do these one-night political rants in the show. But I'm actually hosting a showcase of political comedians, which we're trying out. And if you go to New Zealand Comedy Fest for the listeners, who can. Otherwise, if you search my name and the letters ABC, you will go to the Australian Broadcasting Network and be able to find a whole bunch of weird podcasts stories from the Pacific that I do, including one on an island full of monkeys in Palau, which is

about as much fun as it sounds. It does sound an enormous amount of fun. You can follow me at patreon.com slash alice Fraser. You can subscribe there for free. I just use it as my central point now because I don't trust the algorithms anymore. I have weekly writers meetings there as well as weekly salons where we all get in a Zoom room and talk about ideas. I have a few slots left for my Swiss writers retreat.

which are running in October this year. If you head over to patreon.com slash Alice Fraser and if you want to spend a week in the Swiss Mountains writing with me, I highly recommend it. I enjoy it. There are still one or two slots. We're doing two weeks available. So please, two separate weeks, five days each.

I think that's all. Follow me on all of the things. Oh, I have a, what do you recall it? I have a progress. tracker on my website now for my book. It counts the number of, yeah, I've got a book. It's not coming out for ages yet. But I'm writing it and I'm currently, I've got a progress wheel like Brandon Sanderson

does a wheel of progress and I'm finding it very motivating. So if you enjoy watching numbers go up day by day, you can head over to alicephraiser.com. This is a bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Harry Gordon. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again in two weeks from now. But if you want to hear me next week, Realm's Unknown is our science fiction and fantasy podcast

that comes out week on, week off with The Gargle.