The Gargle - Leafy greens | Death nuggets | Waterfall pipe

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Pierre Novellie and Tom Neenan join host Alice Fraser for episode 161 of The Gargle. All of the news, with none of the politics.🛞 Leafy greens🥜 Death nuggets💦 Waterfall pipe🪹 Mean magpies����🏻‍♂️ ReviewsWatch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BuglePodcastStory 1: https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/tire-wear-additives-found-in-leafy-green-vegetables-387567Story 2: https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/may/31/men-and-other-mammals-live-longer-if-they-are-castrated-says-researcherStory 3: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp99l9gpzwgoStory 4: https://phys.org/news/2024-06-magpies-tend-intelligent.htmlWritten by Alice Fraser, Pierre Novellie and Tom NeenanProduced by Ped Hunter, with executive production from Chris SkinnerHOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLE- Keep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 cell this is. I mean, you must be so excited. Listen now. This is a podcast from The Bugle.

The system is simple, binary, foolproof. Famously flightless, the British can come only by land or sea. And due to an unfortunate stain on their only Bible, the congregants of the Old North Church believe it's a sin to own more than two lanterns. All you had to do was wait, watch, and relay the signal to Paul Revere, and yet here you are, staring blankly into his impatience. Well, he says again, by land or by sea? You don't want to answer, but you must. I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? Is it one light or two? A pause before you reply.

Neither. He furrows his brow. Three? You shake your head. They've sent another signal. Not lantern light, but the gargle. Welcome to the gargle. This is the gargle.

The Sonic Glossy Magazine to the Bugles Audio Newspaper for a visual world. All of the news, none of the politics. I am your host Alice Fraser and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Pierre Noveli. Welcome. Hello. I always pronounce your name just very slightly differently in game. If I cover the spread I'll get it right. I'm determined to never say, like like the word like the name of God

I will never say it just to preserve that ambiguity just to create a slight unease every single time you See my name written down. That's what I want Yeah, well, it just feels it's not so much the pronunciation your name is tricky because of the emphasis I feel like it's not clear where the emphasis should fall but the pronunciation seems pretty straightforward But you're not sure where the emphasis should fall. The pronunciation seems pretty straightforward, but you're not sure where the beat should land. That's true. It's phonetically spelled, but there's no clues as to where to really lean in and just how Italian to go. That's the question. And our second guest editor for this week's edition of the magazine is Tom Ninan. Yes! Tom!

It's got, I like to pronounce it with eight O's to keep people on their toes. Before we start passing the parcel of this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine this week. The front cover of this week's magazine is King Charles wearing a party hat and blowing out the candles on his birthday soup. And the headlines reads, what to get the person who already owns all the swans? And the satirical cartoon this week is a resentful bowl of birthday soup complaining to the bartender, I should have been the iconic birthday party food, but it's all political. That brings us to this week's top story. Top story this week is leafy greens are f***ed again.

For all of those who thought leafy greens were a healthy thing to eat and have managed to ignore all of the scandals whereby rat lung worms are found in human brains after eating leafy greens or human feces in leafy greens or your childhood monsters hiding behind your lettuce jumping out to eat you. A new thing to be afraid of. Pierre, you've eaten a lettuce before. Can you unpack this story for us? Yeah. It's good news for people who performatively avoid salad. But unfortunately, what is it though? It's a mixed picture for those guys because- It's a mixed bag. It's a mixed washed and ready to eat bag

because those guys have been given a legitimate reason perhaps to avoid leafy greens, but it does involve being health conscious, which as we all know is gay. So, you know, bad news for people who performatively avoid salad in that case, a mixed picture for them. How many calories are in this dick? Pet is just looking at me like,

I'm so glad you didn't say how many calories are in this fat cock. Sorry, carry on. So it turns out something I did not know. Car tires, I mean I knew car tires or presumed that car tires contained chemicals, but I didn't know the chemicals could go on holiday. And as you drive around all the chemicals go on holiday, they pop out of the tire and they drift around and it turns out they land on salad.

Which is sort of makes more sense now that I think about it now that I think about how many car adverts I've seen where the car speeds past large empty fields of various vegetables. So I guess that that have to have consequences. But yeah, scientists have found a mixture of chemicals that are from car tires for the first time in leafy greens. There's like anti-aging chemicals and like vulcanizing. Vulcanizing I knew about because of rubber, but anti-aging. I suppose you don't want old tires, but I didn't think it explains all the Nivea branding

we've been seeing on Formula One cars. But yes, plants have been absorbing dirt from tires, it turns out. And what worried me most about this wasn't that it happened in principle, but was that it happened in Italy. And if there's one place where I expect the leafy greens harvested from the field by hunchbacked peasants to be in some way abstractly pure. It's Italy. I don't want to know that this is happening in Italy.

If you said to me that lettuce from Basingstoke's got a bunch of shit, I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It's an English lettuce. I'm imagining it's quite bad for whatever reason. But Italy, what is the point in having Stanley Tucci going around, putting little bits of things in his mouth and going, oh wow, if it turns out he's been eating f***ing tires the whole time? I did know about vulcanizing and I didn't even think it was about the live long and

prosper kind of Vulcans because I read a very inaccurate adventure book as a child that nonetheless had quite a detailed description of vulcanizing rubber. Really? Yes, and unlike its description of the pygmies, it was fairly accurate. I think this is just a branding thing. I think that like, you know how like shower gels for ladies, they're all about like nourishing and everything else. And for men, they're called stuff like Clean Max. And it's all about just getting yourself as clean as possible for the hard day ahead. I think just call this road veg and make it for men who want to eat vegetables. It's trucker kale and it's going to make you you know, I think that it's just put it in a slightly different, put it in a bag with like chrome on it

and bros will eat it and think it's good for them. Fast and the furious foliage. Yeah. Yes, yes, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get Dementus on a packet of spinach. That's perfect. Yeah, they sent Ludacris into space

on like a four wheel drive or some shit. Now, now, now the car's in your letters too. Yeah, they sent Ludacris into space on like a four wheel drive or some shit down now. Now the car's in your letters too. Yeah, exactly. Wait a minute, is this one of those like April Fool style ad campaigns for Clarkson's farm? It's his two passions, together at last. You can't stop him putting cars and stuff, he's put it in his bloody vegetables. If they can drive a car into the Burj Khalifa, they can drive it into some f***ing...

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Tom Neenan, you've been juggling recently, can you unpack this story for us? Yes, all this time men have been stowing little judices in their undercarriage, all this time just plotting their demise, et tu, Tester Clay? Because Because Kat Bohannon, I think that's how you pronounce her name, it's not a hard name to pronounce, I've just mangled it, was talking at the Hay Festival and she said, basically she's written a book and in it, it posits the idea that basically men who have testicles live less time than men who have had

their testicles artificially removed. I don't know what the natural version of that is. Yes, indeed, ball havers. This is based on the fact that the average lifespan of 81 eunuchs born between 1556 and 1861 was 70 years old. Fancy that! Which is a lot better than a lot of their counterparts who did have balls. I mean is it causation or is it correlation? Is it just that once someone's chopped your balls off you're like I'd better be careful because I know how bad things can get. Yeah, it's to the case of fool me once. Also, wouldn't the eunuchs like part of a like a court or something? Whereas wouldn't the men who have balls be out fighting wars?

Isn't that how it works? So like, aren't you sort of slightly protected in that sense? Yeah, you generally I think we're either in a harem or singing the opera. Those are your options. Those are like your prime eunuch jobs. Imagine if you were a eunuch who just turned out to not have a very good voice. You're just a eunuch who just ran a shop. People keep saying, is the eunuch thing to do with the shop? Were you coming in the food? He's like, no, no. I couldn't do the other

eunuch jobs. There were too many of us this year. They've got it all sewn up in more ways than one. So I couldn't get... I have to admit, I went full autism on this and actually read the paper that this is based on. Wow. Because I thought exactly the same thing about the... because if you're a eunuch, your job is to wear silk and skein. And to just sort of generally go, yes, perhaps you're right. You know, it's various from Game of Thrones, isn't it? And it can't all just be cunning. Some of it has to be about the fact that you're just out of the way.

Yeah. Top options for eunuch is Vizier or Eminence Gris. You have no sort of like heirs to bump you off. But they did try and compare it with other people within the palace. Although I think it's unfair to compare it to the actual monarchs, which they did as well, because they're just killing each other all the time. Yeah. The average lifespan of a monarch in medieval Europe was lower than the average lifespan of a person, if you take into account battle and murder. Because imagine being the only guy who gets a bath, you'd kill for that. Yeah, so basically, if you absent yourself from the, you know, from the sort of cut and thrust of the court in that sense, you're sort of not, you know, not getting romantically

entangled, you're not involved in love triangles where you might get, you know, murdered in your bed by, you know, someone who you've been doing the dirty on, then yeah, you're more likely to live longer. I don't know what this research is meant to do. I think that Kat Bon, Bo Hanon, can't get her name right, is really overestimating how much I want to live. Like the the importance of me living between like 76 and 80 is like, you know. Do you want even more of the most terrible f***ing time of your life? Cut off your knackers and you'll get to it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, this is one of the problems with all life extension

technology basically if they could add five years in your 20s and you just went 20 25 25 25 25 25 25 25. Sweet! Yeah but that is not what they're proposing they're proposing. That's not what they do. Up 25 you lose your testicles and then you punch the air at 103 going ha ha it was worth it. Jabbing God in the chest tricked you. I got you man. That's how death finds you by locating your balls. Like in a Prison Escape movie where they think the guy's in bed but it's just loads of pillows

underneath the dude. It just pulls the balls away. I saw his balls hanging out from under the dude. He's already fled. And that brings us to our reviews section. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to review something out of five stars. Pierre, what have you brought in for us this week? I'm going to give one star to the experience of having to eat a ball of ham in a loo.

I had to eat. No. I... That too is carrying a lot of weight here. Yeah. It's the trouble with moments of crisis where it's so hard to explain to people who weren't there why you did what you did.

But I ate a ball of ham in a loo shortly before going on stage. I've put the full story on my Instagram, but suffice to say it was an emergency of a kind. My hands were covered in chili sauce. A bottle of chili sauce had burst in my bag. It's a difficult, there were a lot of factors at play, but what had to happen was I had to ball ham up into a sort of apple of ham and eat it so quickly that it hurt my larynx and then go on stage in front of a group of, I would say

begrudging PhD students. I would give that one star, that experience. Ball of ham and a loo. I'm glad that you explained that there were external factors because that sounds like exactly the kind of unforced error my two year old would commit. She's gotten to the habit of demanding a fistful of bread before she goes to sleep and she doesn't eat it, she just holds it. Of bread? Yeah, of like flat bread.

She just wants to know that if she wants a snack. That's good. And then it can absorb any sort of nightmares. Tom, what have you brought in for us today? My review might be culturally insensitive. So I guess trigger warning on this one. Um, I've had back problems. Eating a bowl of ham in a toilet is neither quotient or sanitary. So I think we got that out of the way.

Um, I have like back got that out of the way. I have back problems like everyone who exists. If you don't think you have back problems, you're just on the back problem spectrum and you're at the end of the spectrum that doesn't have back problems. So I've been trying to deal with this. So I bought a Shakti mat. Has anyone ever seen a Shakti mat? So it's one of these things.

This is the headpiece. This is is the head piece. Look at that. And this is for the YouTube viewers. Look at that. Look at the spiky, spiky spikes. So what I do is I lie on it and basically wonder what information am I trying to extract from myself? And why am I putting myself through this? My back doesn't feel better.

It just hurts. And in order to show that this is a fully immersive experience, this whole recording, I have been sat on the actual Shaxi mat. This thing, it's horrible. I'm not enjoying it at all. It says things on the side, like you can see here, like on the side of the head cushion, like humility, compassion, energy, creativity. It is not showing me any of these things.

It should just be in block capitals. Ouch. And that is so, it's not helping my back. One star for Shakti Mat. But because I'm an idiot and because I spent money on it, I'm gonna continue to use it, hoping that it will do some good at some point in the future. I mean, is it, is essentially the premise

that you feel better when you've stopped doing it? Yes, exactly. Yeah. So in that sense, yeah. I like humility on there. Humility? Am I meant to feel humility? Yeah.

Walking around the house, honey, have you seen my spiked humility roll? I'm feeling prideful and I need to bring myself down a peg with my torture mat. Yeah, it really does. To be fair, it's nailing that side of things.

I think it is based on the bed of nails premise in some ways. I don't remember anyone saying of the bed of nails, it's either relaxing or has health benefits. Yeah, I don't think people gathered around that guy in a sort of bustling marketplace as if he's like, God, he looks great, doesn't he? The most relaxed man in the whole market. So two by one stars in our review section this week. Big moves, big moves from our reviewers. That brings us to our fake waterfall news now. And this is the news that the tallest

waterfall in China has been proven to have had some sort of plastic surgery, essentially. A hiker posted a video showing a pipe hidden in the waterfall, which had been used to boost its outflow. Tom, Ninan, you've looked at a waterfall before. Can you unpack this story? I have. I want to tell you the story of the Yuntai Mountain Waterfall, billed as China's tallest uninterrupted waterfall. I don't know what counts as an interrupted waterfall, but this is an uninterrupted one. It continues its flow unimpeded by anyone coming in and going, sort of interjecting with something pointless. And someone basically found, they went on a walk and they found that yes, this waterfall occasionally is being fed

by a pipe. Now, if only there was some kind of song, some kind of song by some R&B artists in the 90s that advised us against doing such a thing that might discover that maybe this waterfall wasn't as much as it cracked up to be. Sadly we'll never know, we'll never know if that was the case. If TLC ever want to weigh in on the subject, I'd be welcome to hear it. But what we do know is that the people who sort of own, I guess, the waterfall, wrote a letter in the character of the waterfall to say, I didn't expect to meet everyone this way. As a seasonal scenery, I can't guarantee that I will be in my most beautiful form

every time you come to see me. Adding, I made a small enhancement during the dry season, only so I would look my best to meet my friends. Someone had to sit down and write a letter in the voice, the voice of a waterfall. And I want to know how many people, how many letters were like, no, no, that's a bit casual for the waterfall. The waterfall maybe is a bit, you know, a bit more formal, it has a bit more like stature, and I wonder how many notes they went through to really nail, really nail the voice of this waterfall. But nevertheless, I'm glad it exists, I'm glad that this waterfall now has a voice, and I wanted to see it do other stuff. I'd love to hear this waterfall's opinions. I want this waterfall to, I don't know, to, yeah, just sort of start maybe keeping a diary.

I wasn't interrupted today. I wasn't interrupted yesterday. That kind of thing. I cannot imagine the f***ing terror of the Communist Party official in charge of whatever national park this is in. When he knew that, you know, whatever commissar or whatever waterfalls was coming to visit and the thing had dried up and he's just going, do I put a pipe in? Do I just tell them that it's summer so there isn't a waterfall? But the commissar is expecting a waterfall. He spoke to me of how excited he was to see the f*** and just the years of stress, like the f***ing telltale waterfall every summer when it dried up and people still going wow it looks great just sitting there going

yeah great from down here great from down at the base so you can really look up and see the waterfall no need to look at the the river That's the funniest thing about waterfalls, it's just a river till you get to down here so we should probably stay down here And not hike anywhere near the the inlet I would say the inlet is the dullest part But I felt so sorry because obviously like, there's no win, is there? Because you're going to get so much shit from people for it being dried up. So you have to chuck in this bath pipe and turn it into like Disneyland. But now he's in trouble for faking it. So he's got to write a poem faked pretending to be a waterfall.

The apology has this sort of like simultaneously slightly aggrieved and self-righteous tone as well. Like I just did it so I would look good for you. It's like a Kardashian lip filler. I actually did have lip fillers after all. What do you expect of me? I'm not going to not look my best. Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry. Do you want your reality stars to have empty lips? Big empty lips. Exactly. And that brings us to our final story of this week's episode of The Gargle. This is the news that if you're mean, you may well be dumb. There are mean, dumb magpies flying around, swooping at your head trying to steal your eyeballs. Pierre, you see things in black and white, can you unpack this story for us? Yes, I can. And every now and then, a lovely flash of blue. That's how I see things. Yes,

magpies are stupider if they are angrier. It's good news for people whose mum told them things like that growing up. It's true that the bullies are just stupid, even in the bird world. Even in the world of birds, that's true. So it's the University of Western Australia has discovered that magpies that are aggressive towards other members of their group tend to not be particularly smart. So the two things that made you smarter if you're a magpie were being part of a large social group, are aggressive towards other members of their group tend to not be particularly smart. So the two things that made you smarter if you're a magpie were being part of a large social group and being bullied. So we're seeing more and more evidence throughout the animal kingdom of the nerd jock dynamic. They gave these birds a sort of test where if you peck to sort of bits of colored wood,

if you pecked the right bit of wood, you got some food. And the jocks didn't, the jocks weren't very good at it. They weren't very good at it because they knew they could just wait for the nerd birds to get the food and steal it. Their powers of aggression. And magpies are very smart animals. So I suppose, you know, I trust this. I think this is probably right.

Am I also right in saying that magpies in Australia are much more like all Australian fauna. They're like bigger and angrier and crazier. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, they do. There's a season whereby, where in magpies will swoop at you and people tend to go around with,

it's a completely normal thing to see someone walking around with an ice cream bucket on their head or zip zip ties at the top of their bicycle helmet. Oh, God, has has anyone ever attempted to attempted to do a sort of, you know, Tarzan King of the Apes with the magpies? If they're so smart, could you train them to swoop upon vine enemies? I mean, this is the problem with magpies. Magpies are everybody's enemies. The worst pies, I think. The worst of the pies. Yes. You say that's interesting because in the UK they're just, they're like sort of

diamond thieves. They're the sort of cat burglar. They're the sort of diamond thieves. They're the sort of cat burglar. They're the sort of cat burglar of the animal world. They're famous for stealing- How badly bullied were these magpies that they became diamond thieves? Yeah. Well, they're famous for sort of stealing a single ring and things like that. Whereas, of course, in Australia, there's a mob of sort of 80 of them mad maxing some

guys he's trying to walk. They do full bank heists in Australia. Yeah, it sounds more like a sort of horde. Yeah. Doesn't sound very delicate and sort of like a mission impossible. That sounds much more blunt force trauma. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But yes, yeah, the angrier the magpies were and the less friends they had,

the shitter they were at tests. But can I, there might be a flaw in this research because as you point out, the meaner magpies are the bully magpies. And in my school, the bullies made the nerds do their homework. So was there a bully magpie going, do my poking a color bit of wood homework for me, Poindexter. And then they did it and maybe made the other magpies look smarter? I don't know. I think there might be sort of some outliers in this research. Yes, and there's also undeclared bias because of course this research was carried out by

huge nerds. That is true! As is all research. That's it. Is it a coincidence that yet more nerd output is pro-nerd? Yeah! coincidence that yet more nerd output is pro nerd. We're seeing a lot of pro nerd stuff coming from the nerd club down there at the university. All science is in the pocket of big nerd. It's time we stop this. Big pocket protector, yeah. The pocket of big pocket protector is a very like, it's like a fractal.

pocket protectors are very like, it's like a fractal. And that brings us to the end of this week's episode of The Gargle. I'm flipping through the ads at the back. Tom, have you got anything to plug? Always at TPNeenan on Instagram. If you want to check that out, I also have a podcast, which the wheezing groaning sound the doctor who podcast which I'm assuming people who listen to the gargle might enjoy and further to that I'm in I'm in Doctor Who only an audio adventure, but they are so it's cool. It's a it's a group of Doctor who stories called well, I mean swipe, right and I and it's Starcrossed is the group of stories and it's the ninth Doctor adventure, so download those if you want to hear me being menaced by a killer

dating app for the second time on audio. I've done two audios where I've been menaced by an evil dating app, so check that out. I mean, do check that out and don't underrate yourself. All Doctor Who is audio only if you're watching it with your eyes closed. Exactly. Pierre, have you got anything to plug? Yes, I suppose my Instagram as well, especially if you want to get the context for eating a ball of ham and a loo.

If you're in London or near London, the last chance you will have to see my show, Why Are You Laughing? Is the 22nd of June, that's this month, 22nd of June at the Bloomsbury Theater, just near King's Cross. And the tickets are available, link in my bio, all that. 18th of July, I've got a book coming out about autism. It's called Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things,

A Comedian's Guide to Autism, and then I'll be at the Fringe as per usual. I'm doing a full Fringe run, having had two months to write my show, and then I'm going on tour with a different show which is very smart and good. Yeah, excellent. Wise, wise choices there. Go and witness Pierre making all of those choices when you buy his book and go see all of his shows. You can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. It's the one-stop-shop for all of my stand-up specials,

podcasts and blogs, as well as my twice weekly writers' meetings and our salons where we chat about stuff in a Zoom room. I'm also doing some writers' intensives in London and in Tokyo, which you can find out by going to patreon.com slash Alice Fraser.

I'm not plugging the writers' retreat anymore because it's all full up, but there will be more of that coming because of the first one filled up real quick. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Our editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programs from the Bugle, including the Bugle, to you again next week.