The Gargle - Pandemic Olympics | Cat narcotics | NFTs

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

Josh Gondelman and Felicity Ward join host Alice Fraser for episode 10 of The Gargle - the weekly topical comedy show from The Bugle.🇯🇵 Tokyo Olympics and Covid🐈 Cat sneaks drugs into prison���� Meghan Markle book outrage🇧🇪 Belgian farmer moves France border🧜‍♀️ NFTs explainer via The Little MermaidCatch Tiff's Stevenson's Tiny Revolutions in your pod feed now.This is a show from The Bugle. Follow us on Twitter.This episode was produced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels

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ACAST.com Satire, The Final Frontier. Acast.com The Goggles. Your guest today, all the way from the Americas, it is Josh Gondelman, exploring the world of words. Hello, Josh. Welcome to the show. Hello. I was going to say good morning, but it's not that for you. It's a totally different time of day. It's so not the morning that it took me a minute to think of the word for show. I'm having the opposite problem because it is so the morning here. Also on the podcast today and first time on the gargle, welcome to the show again.

Welcome to the show, Felicity Ward. Yay! I thought you forgot my name. I'm like, yeah, she's tired and that's okay. No, I knew your name. I just didn't know the name of the show. So let's dig into this magazine. On the front cover this week, Bill Gates and Queen Elizabeth posing in nouveau Billie Eilish-style image revamp corsetry. The headline reads, Single and Cinched Billionaires on the Hunt for Love.

Other lead lines on the front cover include, Cocaine Smuggling Cats. Can you be vegan and use animals to illicitly move drugs in and out of a Panamanian prison? Find out on page 7. And love, what is it really? The satirical cartoon this week is Boris Johnson as a chameleon in front of some extremely busy and expensive wallpaper trying to hide from the consequences of his own actions. his own actions. And let's get into section one. Section one of this episode is the Olympics, the Olympics and COVID. Josh Gondelman, you are a big sports fan. What's happening in Japan right now? Well, it seems like they're getting ready for the Olympics. And the Olympics runs on volunteer labor, and not just from the athletes who don't get paid, also from the people who bring them water and drive them around. But here's the thing this year is that there's still a pandemic, despite what the people on my Instagram feed seem to indicate.

to indicate. And in Japan, the volunteers are not going to be vaccinated unless they otherwise qualify by like age or I guess medical history. So so they're just it's just going to be a lot of hope. It's going to be a hope based system, which seems dangerous, right? Like the Olympic rings are basically five linked COVID variants assembling in Tokyo for competition. But it is a great opportunity for these volunteers. Like how often do you get the chance to catch a life threatening disease from an Olympic athlete? That's incredible. I mean, it is beautiful. And I want to steer clear of reinforcing stereotypes about the Japanese, but I don't understand why they haven't dressed every volunteer in a full hazmat suit inside a cute mascot representing an abstract concept or a very specific municipal service.

Like no COVID is getting inside Sui Sui Kun, the adorable fish with human legs that's the mascot of the Japanese Sewer Association. Look it up. It's true. It's a very cute mascot. Felicity, you, if anything, like sports more than Josh Gondelman have you been following this Olympics news well look I what I can say is Japan are really trying to style this one out aren't they they're like yeah the three months will be fine it's a it's it's got a real frat party vibe about it they're like yeah we'll

look after the house while you're gone. Yeah, no, no parties, no parties, we promise. And it's, I mean, it's full on. Like the volunteers are being offered little more than like a couple of masks, some hand sanitiser and social distancing guidelines. So just imagine like after the first lockdown in London, the next six months, that's what it's like to be in Japan. And they've been told that they have

the responsibility of preventing the spread of coronavirus the volunteers have that's a lot of pressure on like the japanese general public like scientists haven't been able to present it so i think it's just a bit harsh for hiram, who runs a local karaoke bar by day, to then prevent the spread of a World War I pandemic. It's unpaid? No. Well, one of the pieces of advice that they've been given is when they're talking to people not to look at them,

to just not make eye contact or not to face them, which I feel is potentially a deep conflict for a society in which politeness is a very highly ranked skill. Maybe they're misunderstanding the concept of eyeballs and that corona is not, you don't talk out of them and there's no air that comes out of your eyes. I have very speaking eyes, Felicity. I was just going to say that not making eye contact with people when you look at them is great training for working for Steve Harvey. If you've read that memo a few years ago. What happened to Steve Harvey?

Tell me, tell me. There was like a leaked memo that from his office that was like all the rules of working for Steve Harvey. And it was like, do rules of working for Steve Harvey and it was like do not approach Mr. Harvey do not even think about Mr. Harvey because he can sense it um oh my god you're so right it definitely it definitely has this party vibe right like the Olympics is always a bad deal for the host city it's like letting the cool kids in your high school class throw a party at your parents house while they're out of town and they trash the place. They stick you with the bill and IOC chairman Thomas Bach is still going to laugh in your face when you ask him to prom after all the puking he did into your couch.

The whole thing is insane. The whole thing is absolutely insane. So they're not allowed to get a vaccine. They're just going to be given masks they've got to fix prevention what type of contract did these people sign or has the meaning of the word volunteer changed recently like why don't they just go oh nah nah thanks anyway like volunteer have they signed something well they're committed they're committed to the ambitions of the goals of the Olympic project, Felicity. Or is there just blackmail on a mass scale against them? But that's right. The Olympic project.

Why are they so dead set on having the Olympics now? Are the gold medals going to expire? Are a bunch of gymnasts going to turn 14 and become ineligible to participate? Like what's happening here? I mean, you say that, Josh, but yesterday I've just bought some gummies that the official gummies of the Japan 2020 Olympics. So there's a lot of merch that has got to be used by a date, hasn't it? I think discount Olympic merch. This could benefit the whole world. They don't even know if they're going to have fans in the stands. Do you know how silly Olympic sports look without fans?

Have you ever seen someone throw a shot put without fans around? It just looks like someone found a bowling ball and doesn't know what to do with it. You're just like, is this the game? If a shot gets put and no one's there to see it, is it actually shot put? Is the ball called the shot put? Are you shotting the put? Are you putting the shot?

I think you're putting the shot. You're putting the shot. I'm just making that up. Yeah, because that sounds like you're making it up which i feel is the real olympic sport the real olympic sport is the watchers making up opinions and rules about sports that they have until this moment never witnessed you're just like oh yeah i wouldn't dive off that like that oh now i would hey josh yes you know how you're worried about whether the medals expire they do because they're actually you don't know this they're actually made of chocolate

gold medals yeah like at easter or for our jewish listeners hanukkah if they didn't understand the concept of gold foil wrapped around chocolate without that frame let me break this down for you because there are a lot of jewish people that have just never heard of easter they're like yeah what would it look like if you wrap gold and foil oh like the hanukkah ones oh okay so exactly the same all right i'm on it i'm on it i'm really worried uh for the for the volunteers right because it Because it feels like they're not getting treated super safely. I'm also worried that a single careless athlete could turn one of the regular quadrennial orgies in the Olympic Village into a super spreader event.

That was literally my next thought. How much Olympic Village sex happens? So much. Volunteers can't stop that. Volunteers, they can't stop human urge can they no they absolutely cannot get punched are you kidding me if you try to you're trying to get two olympic athletes to not have sex they'll tear a volunteer right in half you can't stop that they will and they're strong too especially the wrestlers they could tear them

in half yeah you don't understand the surging hormones you get from a wind-down period after, you know, years or decades of training at the peak of your capacity. Then you're meant to do a bit of a rest and then you don't make your heat and you've got all this pent-up juice. You've got to drive it into something. Or the post-gold medal boner. Yeah.

We've all had one. Especially if we're on the rowing team well maybe it's just the zoot suit is unforgiving to a boner it frames a boner yeah way that you know i think it uh yeah frame is the right word it um drapes oh there's a word but i can't think of it because i have a baby and I have brain damage now. Ooh, someone won an Olympic medal nine months ago. Yeah, you lose 20% of your brain. Is it 20%? That feels right. Yeah, up to 20% and then it grows back over two years.

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broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate. Available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Now it's time for Drug Animal Section.

Section 2, Drug Animal Section. This is a Panamanian story exciting news out of panama a drug runner's cat was caught trying to sneak narcotics into a panamanian prison and uh i mean first out of the gate it's remarkable for a cat to be used for a job my impression of cats is they're not very job oriented not very malleable emotionally compliant right you know they send dogs with a with a little brandy right in it to people in the mountains that's like kind of the legendary thing if that was attached to a cat those people would just straight up die sober yeah in the ice quickly that cat would go oh up there all right see ya it's the wrong kind

of snow that's the one you can't snore Felicity you've been following this story uh what's happened oh I love it I love this story little cat had something tied around his neck and they're very vague about it they said some white powder and some leaves and something else were in this little cloth around his neck and that he was supposed to be running drugs to his owner slash inmate at the prison and look i have a lot of issues with this story the first one the report said it had a cloth tied around its neck it's central america that's a very common thing to do to stop sunburn this could have just been a very typical Panamanian cat. Number two, how do they know it wasn't the cat's drugs? They're going to blame someone already in prison.

Let me guess, the cat was white, yeah? Number three, this might be a stupid question, how do you penalise a cat for drug trafficking? Do they then also go to prison? And what if that was part of the plan? The powder in the neck of Chief might have just been flour, but the real cocaine is in a condom inside his butt. That's, of course, not the first time creatures have been used

as drug runners by prisoners. The phrase drug mule, a famous phrase, came from the early 1930s during prohibition where booze runners would get their mules high on cocaine. Didn't really work to move any illicit substances, but it was memorable and the name stuck. Can you imagine how hard a mule would kick you if they're on cocaine? Like they're stubborn animals anyway. They will f*** you up on coke. And can you imagine how many bad and intense ideas about agriculture

they'd be like, look, if you want me to plant a field, I'll tell you how to plant a field. What if you do a zigzag, huh? We're getting more area. I can carry this all the way across the continent. It's like, that donkey is keen.

I know donkeys and mules are different for the people listening. I hate getting stuck talking to this mule at the party. We're saying the cat's owner was the drug runner that that that was like maybe in charge of this operation but i've seen the way people treat and like pander to and pamper their pets i think maybe the cat was in charge of the drug ring and the guy was working for him we don't know that that's not true yeah this also i'm sad to say it but um this settles the dog person cat person debate right like i have a dog i love my dog so much i i consider myself more of a dog

person but my pug is not risking jail time on my behalf she would snitch on me in a second if you had peanut butter. But, I mean, the stakes are so much lower for a cat. Even one life sentence is barely a ninth of its life. Also, cats can get in and out of anywhere. You can't jail a cat. That's true. You can't just get out. This is so, it's so exciting, this story.

I'm really psyched for the next season of Narcos on Netflix about the brutal rise of cartel leader manuel porriega i'm always torn about cats because people say cats have no shame but i i worry that actually cats feel only shame and that's why they sort of stare off into the middle distance thinking about their regrets they They're just these existential creatures. They're not aloof. They're sad. They're just having a crisis.

That makes sense. Turning to drugs. Yeah. Constantly having a catastrophe. Oh. Hashtag no regrets. Hashtag no regrets. That's all the time we have for section two.

Now it's time for your reviews section. You were asked to bring something in to review out of five stars. Felicity, what did you bring? I've just decided to review Parenthood. The biggest, you know, like the most obvious point is that there's no consistency. You have very high highs and very low lows. And it's very much like an addiction.

Just when you think you're going to leave it, they reel you back in with a Panamanian cat. It's not for everyone. I will say that. The rewards are great, but the downfalls are very hardcore. They are physical, mental, spiritual and emotional. So, look, on some days I'd give this a real 10 out of 10. On other days it's been a minus eight.

So for today, we'll average it at a seven. Seven stars there for parenthood. So if you're considering buying some parenthood, investing in a bit of parenthood, take that into consideration. Josh, what have you brought in for us? I'm going to give a quick review of answering phone calls from an unknown number. So, yeah, it's a real mixed bag here. It's kind of an uneven.

It's like one of those movies where it's just like a lot happens and you're like, wow, they really went for something here. And it doesn't all work. But it is fascinating right because it could be a friend calling from a phone a new phone or it could be a uh someone giving you an opportunity to to leave all this behind and start a totally new life or it could be someone you owe money to or a scam saying that the warranty from your car is expired and you haven't owned a car in a good six years. So it's really all over the place. It's emotional highs, emotional lows. It's just the full spectrum of human feeling, which, you know, I'm not a fan of the entire spectrum.

We don't talk about enough. That spectrum, some of it's real bullshit. So I'm going to go three and a half out of five stars. Three and a half out of five for answering calls from an unknown number. At the moment, I am in the midst of a bunch of bureaucratic and administrative stuff, and the Australian government insists on calling from no-caller IDs because I don't know if you know this

about the Australian government's administrative system at the moment, but they do this great thing now where they don't give you a number to call. They just ask you to email and then they say they'll call you back from an unknown number. So you then become obliged to answer every. Like they're trying not to go out with you. That's like, oh yeah, just email. We'll make a plan. To be fair, australian government has proven time and time again that it doesn't need to go out with me to f**k me

now we have our section three section three flipping some pages there's a pullout section on pot plants pot plants more suspicious than you thought, question mark, question mark. And then we're on to our next story, section three, Meghan Markle. Meghan Markle is controversially continuing to do normal work like a normal person. Outrageous. Josh Gondelman, you're a big royalist. Have you been following this story? I have been following this story, although I will say I've just been following it as a big fan of Meghan Markle's excellent work as Rachel Zane on the show Suits for seven seasons. And I'm glad she's still thriving in the literary medium.

I think that's that's really where I'm coming at this from. Meghan Markle is writing a children's book called The Bench, and it's based on a poem she wrote for her husband, Harry. And it's about his relationship with their son, Archie. And at first from the title of the book, I thought it was going to be a tell-all about Forrest Gump from the point of view of the bench he's sitting on when that feather falls. But it's not. It's about fatherhood, sonhood. People are very upset about this, I assume. I imagine Piers Morgan is furious that she didn't write a book about his children, but we won't have to know about it because he's not on TV anymore. So that's exciting. And yeah, it's a story of a father and a son,

presumably a son who grows up and says, I could have had how much inheritance, dad, before you just left the country. But I think this is great. I like Meghan Markle. I find her charming. I think she is very, like, outspoken in a cool way. And I like that she still goes by the Duchess of Sussex. It's right there on the front of the book. Can you believe it?

I think that rules because she doesn't have to, right? Like she doesn't need that for recognition. It's not like Megan who? Oh, the Duchess of Sussex, right? It's like, it's just like, hey, um, f*** you to your mother-in-law. I'm the Duchess of Sussex still. And the children of the world will know it from my book, The Bench. Oh, my absolute favourite part.

I disagree with you absolutely. The last thing we want to do is give our children a story written by a woman who had a successful career before marrying a man for love and then articulating her boundaries in the face of his rich, snobby relatives. But who am I to have an opinion on this? Maybe she is a conniving wretch

who desperately wants more fame than she had from being famous and wussed out because she couldn't bear the burden of having to wear gloves on state occasions. Felicity? Well, gloves can be oppressive. I get it. I get it.

I just love that she wrote, Megan, the Duchess of Sussex. I almost want there to be a mother f***er underneath. It's so cool. It's so cool. It's so spicy. I wish he called it the bench. Like this is the only way it would have been better if it was the bench by the Black Duchess. Bitches.

It's so, oh, it's so deliberate. It's such a fuck you to, well, let's face it, people that deserve to be told f*** you. Like why? Why? Why are there a royal family? I'm very lucky. I actually got the first line of the book.

I got a preview. It's really beautiful. Oh, yeah. Just this, the first line of the poem, it says, I sit on the bench watching you and your daddy daddy a lovely man who comes from a very wealthy family of reptilians i don't know what she's gonna rhyme with that scintillating stuff i actually read as this line was written even though he never heard it that's what killed prince philip no they know um sorry that's probably in poor taste but i

assume no one cares i mean i've been following this story and i think you know uh i'm definitely on the side of harry and megan um but even if i'm only on the side of harry and megan because they have a better pr team and tell more convincing stories to the kind of media that i read i still think you should award them the victory in this battle a hundred percent yeah when oprah picks a side that's the winning yeah it's over it's over bread wins over not bread harry and megan win over the rest of the royals yeah this it's just like that's how everything should be decided you don't there's no like debate there's no coin flipping it's just who does Oprah choose yeah that's why I kind of wish she did a fight club instead of a book club

she wouldn't be able to talk about it it's like look under your seat you get brass knuckles yeah you get brass knuckles all right shirts and skins let's go is that how you split up a fight club shirts and skins yeah someone takes their top off someone doesn't those two people fight yeah i'm such a fence sitter though i'd be the one who was wearing a shirt, but it has, like, abs and nipples drawn on, so you can never tell. Yeah, yeah. God, Alice is so indecisive. Like, just fight someone. Will they or won't they?

I guess we'll find out in season two of Fight Club. Look, this is a very tangential note, but I was looking up the spelling of the word duchess, and I'm like, yeah, no, there's not a t in there and then i realized the only reason i question why there's a t in there is because fergie the artist that was attached to the black ips her album the duchess is with a t is she dutch i can't imagine so i can't imagine that she has a lot of cultural flavor. For delicious.

She's up in the club just working on her tulips. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, she is Dutch. My lovely lady lumps are just her smuggling overpriced tulips over the border. You know that song, is it Clumsy? Where she goes, Fjord help it, the girl Fjord help it. That was a Fjord joke. Someone get the shoehorn in here.

And the percussion in the background is all wooden shoes just clapping together. It's clogs. Clogs. Clogs is a word you don't hear enough, isn't it? Unless you're Dutch, I imagine. I'm not Dutch. Ironically, because you hear them coming. They don't even have to say it.

They don't have to announce themselves. They speak for themselves. Like that. Clogs are coming. Now we, of course, have a borderline not politics section pushing the very boundaries of our brief. Normally this would be considered political news and therefore off limits for a glossy rag like the gargle but we have a fun borders and boundaries pullout section with tips for how to move the goalposts on your relationship

without causing an international incident, how to set up boundary stones on a first date and where to put your waffles in a world war. up boundary stones on a first date and where to put your waffles in a world war this is the story of a belgian farmer who's accidentally redrawn an international border by moving a rock felicity you're all about boundaries you made i bloody love a boundary god when someone gives me a boundary i'm like oh thank god i know exactly where i stand oh this has made life a lot easier. I appreciate that. Yes, a farmer in Belgium has caused a stir after inadvertently redrawing the country's border with France. That must have been a hell of a stag do. That is a Bucks night that will not quit. What did you get up to last night? Oh man, I changed the country's border. Wow. How is your wife your wife gonna respond that's very heteronormative

wasn't it he moved this rock uh seven and a half feet or one Dwayne the Rock Johnson one Dwayne one Dwayne and uh people seem to be more charmed by this than historically precedent would suggest people react to the movement of borders. Josh Gondelman? Yeah, I mean, I relate to this because one time I kind of moved a stick out of my way as I was walking down the sidewalk and I changed the Eastern time zone by 45 minutes. This is, look, first of all, French fries were invented in belgium but france gets the credit i think they owe them a little more country that's only fair yeah i'm so glad that this this dispute happened between european countries that generally get along because if this happened here

right it would be just the kind of excuse the United States military has always been looking for to bomb Canada into oblivion. Just a Canadian moose farmer moves a rock and the border changes and just boom, now Canada is a crater. This border is marked by a rock that was placed in 1819. And I do think we need to update that technology of delineating borders right of 200 year old rock i think we can do better there must be some kind of laser or at least a sharpie that's been invented since then that we could use i look i think you're underestimating the power of the rock it does does what it says on the tin, you know? It's a rock.

This is the border. End of. You know, when you've got fancy wires and fancy lasers, what if it's a laser and then someone presses the wrong button and they destroyed France? What if the Wi-Fi went down and the very notion of the nation state evaporated? Thank you. Josh, you haven't thought this through at all, mate.

What about a newer rock? Like what if we put, as you mentioned before, Alice, the rock? He seems pretty resolute. So he just stands there and he tells you what country you're in, depending on which side of him you are. Yeah. And that would really show his range too. He'd be able to say France or Belgium.

And he's good with lines. I feel the world owes Belgium this, you know, like this seven and a half feet of land. I feel the world could give it to that. As you say, the French take credit for French fries. Old white men take credit for waffling. It's just, it just doesn't seem fair. Look, I'll be honest.

That the world takes from them but doesn't give. I want to agree with you except I think that Belgium have been involved in some pretty bad shit, like Rwanda. I think they sort of went, oh, we're getting out of here. We've done some damage. See you, tootsies. I mean, yes, obviously, Felicity. I understand this.

But also have you heard about everyone and everywhere? No. Go on. There is no surface on the world that is not the site of some horrendous shit. If you ran a black light over the globe, like blue planet indeed, this whole place is f***ing, you don't want to look back since it's a nightmare. I would not sleep there no for our australian it would look like a a gold coast hotel bed the week after school is um so school is josh is at the end of school all uh lots of 17 and 18 year olds go to a place called

the gold coast and they get drunk and there are older men called toolies who go there trying to hit on young. I just learned about this from Alice. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. That's so weird. When were you talking about it? We,

she talked about it on my podcast like a month ago. Oh really? Yeah. Oh, that's so funny. Yes. How for schoolies, I went on a tour of my local libraries.

I had no friends. I went to a tour of my local libraries because i had no friends i went to a folk festival so it sounds like everybody goes to a folk festival if you know what i'm saying if you know with the right accent they do i'm going to a festival is that fergie is that a fergie yeah that's fergie yeah yeah that song's called clumsy what's the ratio of predators to innocent young ladies trying to have a good time at a folk festival as opposed to schoolies? I suppose like Australia's number of COVID cases versus the UK. So there's still like reasons to shut down the Gold Coast,

but not as many. And now it's time for our final section of the show today, an NFT update. We always love a bit of NFT technology. If you don't know what an NFT is, it's the beautiful idea that artists can be paid for their work expressed very importantly by not paying them for their work, but by spending money on a platform some idiot invented to associate your name with the work on an abstract blockchain in indelible digital ink that nobody can read our first story of course is about wine felicity ward they've tripled the price of online wine with nft which i'm sure your listeners know is non-fungible tokens and i

understand why they abbreviate it to nft because saying the word fungible is so embarrassing fungible fungible people give moist a lot of crap but fungible is so much worse. Yeah, fungible's up there. Yeah, it's like panties and moist combined. Fungible. Well, also the idea of a non-fungible token casts everything else into doubt because what's specific and special about these things is that they are non-fungible and then you think, well, what is fungible? What is fungible?

And all of a sudden everything else is polluted in your mind with the prospect that it might be fungible. I'm literally Googling fungible right now. If you can't wrap your head around it, Felicity, don't worry. I've spoken to a lot of people who think they're dumb for not understanding these glorious excrescences of the new blockchain economy. The problem is if you read about it and you think you don't understand it,

you do, you just feel like it can't possibly be as dumb as it is. Yeah, right. But it is. Oh, it absolutely is. I mean, the whole thing is you're minting these coins and minting the coins is basically firing up a pollution machine to create value, which is the value of registering how much pollution it's created, more or less. Okay. Very exciting. The core problem with all of this technology is that, like, Bitcoin worked really well, but Bitcoin working well was a f***ing gamble. So while some of the people who were made wealthy by Bitcoin and other blockchain wealth, some of them were smart, forward-thinking operators who could see the potential of this technology, many of them were just suckers neck-deep dunning kruger who got carpet bagged by some tech bro podcaster high on

hair growth supplements into throwing their money into a badly understood black hole that just happened to work out for them but it did and now they think they're smart god that's the dream isn't it that's what i've been shooting for all these years. Better make your parents proud. So this virtual wine, right, sold for like $300, which is, this is actually like an exciting facet of the technology. When you buy an NFT of wine, you can still smell it. You can't taste it, but you can smell it. And the bouquet has notes of your own ass because that's where your head is. So that's exciting. And when you spend $300 on wine you can't drink, that's kind of the perfect thing for a sober person who still wants other people to know that they're an asshole.

So there is a use for it. People say these are useless, but that is the use. And it's so bad, Alice, like you said, for the environment. Right. It's just like they use so much energy to to keep these NFTs like registered and valid on the blockchain. So why would you even buy an NFT of wine when for the same cost to your bank account and the Earth's natural resources resources you could just drive to a vineyard and burn it down that seems more fun you're certainly putting your mark on history yeah which seems to be the the goal here look i i admit to being seduced by the idea of artists being paid for their work but i i certainly got turned off when i realized that in in many instances it is

not artists being paid for their work, it's other people being paid for the idea of artists' work. I am so confused. And I don't think I'm dumb, I just think this is confusing. And I think that speaks to my ego. No, no, no, you're not dumb. It's dumb. It's as dumb as you think it is.

I don't even think it's dumb. I don't understand what we're talking about. So it's like, say there's a picture on a wall somewhere in a museum, right, and instead of owning that picture, you pay money to sign your name on a secret box in a different room that says that you own the idea of the picture. I own the idea of the picture or I own the picture? You don't own the picture. You absolutely don't own the picture. You own the right to put your name in the box.

And the box takes an ungodly amount of energy to power. It's like a box made from a model t ford that's like so it's like you're keeping this antique car running 24 7 to to let people know that you own the idea of this picture um i daisy juke is that what you're trying to tell me okay great okay now i now I get it. Okay, I want some NFTs then. In other NFT news, not the artist, but somebody involved in an NFT is finally getting a little bit

of money out of it. Zoe Roth, who is now the grown-up version of the child in a famous meme of a small girl smirking at a camera while her house burns down in the background, a famous meme of a small girl smirking at a camera while her house burns down in the background, has sold the picture of her for $473,000 real dollars. So how does this work then? So someone did get money?

Yeah, she gets the money because she's sold the right to put somebody else's name on that picture. Okay, so it's like she's bought a song. But the picture is still on the internet. They can't do anything like there's still heaps of it but because it's her selling it they're associated with her so she gets meh this is very much like a train leave chicago going 50 miles an hour another train the part that always confuses me about it is just like who can sell the nft just whoever like calls dibs is that like what it is yeah yes essentially yes but obviously it's worth more if you're associated with the picture in

some way already because the whole thing that you're selling is association it's like how people pay more money to sit in the vip section of the bar even though it's smaller and more boring oh now i'm listening i guess it makes sense because like i could autograph a picture of michael jordan and it's not worth that much money but i could still sell it exactly that it may devalue it oh yeah definitely gonna be worth less trying to understand nfts was like when i was reading the Lord of the Rings and I was trying to mentally place the different regions on a map in my mind and understand who was the son of who and who was related. And then I got to the end of the book and realized there was a map at the back. And that was hurtful.

Except here, I don't know that there's a map. There's no map. A map and a genealogy yeah if you can sell a meme of yourself as an nft for hundreds of thousands of dollars spongebob squarepants is about to get so rich and he needs the money so he can finally quit his fast food job he's been working there for years they don't pay minimum wage even under the sea but now felicity i've been recording your reactions to the idea of nfts and i'm gonna sell that track okay of you slowly comprehending nfts as an nft okay and will you get the money for that or will i get the money for that absolutely you get the money

for that so unless you do it before me i'm gonna get rich but don't i own my voice no no i don't know my voice you still own your voice in yourself. No? I don't own my voice. You still own your voice and yourself and arguably what I'm doing is copyright infringement but it's not because there's no actual rights that you acquire over the object. This is getting very Little Mermaid. Are you Ursula? I am Ursula, yes. I'm Ariel and you are Ursula.

Is that NFT? It's more like I'm the eel, henchman, and then I go to the bar and tell everyone the story about what Ursula did. Okay. And I get credit for that. And you get money for telling the story. Yeah, because I'm associated with the whole situation.

So you're a comedian is what you're saying. I am a comedian. Only it sounds like there's real money at stake here, not just like 50 bucks. Yeah, yeah, it sounds like you're getting paid, though. And one drink token. Yeah. That's so insulting.

Every NFT comes with a drink ticket. With a little paper drink ticket, yeah. And you get 25% off food. Yeah, yeah. Come on. Just give me the sandwich. Give me a bowl of chips. Don't be a tight ass.

My good friend Laura Davis does a thing when she has a gig like that. It's called Charma Parma. She tries to get their chicken parmigiana just by saying that she was promised a chicken parmigiana as part of her payment for the gig. She's very hard at a Japanese restaurant when she's doing a gig. I was promised a parmigiana. She's very charming. We can do a bento box. You're not listening.

Chicken katsu? Yeah. That means no for any Japanese people that don't speak Japanese. One of the few words that I know. I studied for four years. I remember chotto, which means a little bit. Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of The Gargle. We're flipping through the...

I was going to say, what an anticlimactic finish of The Gargle. Me saying chotto. And us all going, I don't know where this is going or why. More magazines should have a section where people are just like f***ing, i don't know man

shit's hard out there life is hard life is hard i understand why old people watch more julia roberts movies because life is hard yeah she makes me feel good i just want to believe in love and i want to listen to fergie and eat chicken parmesan. Why is this so hard? I have mixed feelings about Julia Roberts. I have mixed feelings about her. Part of me is very reassured by her presence on the screen. Part of me worries that her whole mouth sides will open up and her whole head will open up like a Pac-Man.

I'm looking forward to that. See, I'm a real glass half full kind of girl. I'm a real mouth all open full kind of girl. That wasn't a joke, but I certainly said said some words and that's the important thing. It's more like a head half full. Yeah. That image. That brings us to the ad section at the back. We're going to flip through some of the advertisements. One half used shoe. That's available if you want it. Josh Gondelman, have you got anything to plug? Oh, my gosh. I have a podcast of my own.

It's called Make My Day. It's a comedy game show with one guest, so the guest always wins. And Alice was recently on and was a new all-time high score. And it was really, really fun. So I hope you listen and enjoy it. I would listen to you, Josh. You have a very listenable voice. Thank you. Itable voice thank you it's very warm and melodic i appreciate that it's very soothing and then there's a series of ads for different kinds of rich dogs rich dogs including the deeply inbred

anime teddy bear dog the dog that looks like a statue of a dog and the dog that is past its use by date being kept alive by way too much medical technology. Three kinds of rich dogs that you can buy in the advertisement section there. Felicity, have you got anything to plug? If you're in Australia, I'm in a TV show called Wakefield, which is on the ABC. You can watch it on iView.

You can stream all episodes or it's on ABC Sunday nights at 8.30. And it's a drama. It's not even... It's got some funny bits in it, but it's a drama. It's extremely good. I highly recommend it. Felicity's very good in it. Thank you. That's exciting.

Cool. I'm going to check it out. That brings us to the inside of the back cover, which is a picture of a young lady draped over a bench. I'm not sure if it's an advertisement for perfume or maybe a bag, possibly a fashion line. This episode was brought to you by The Bugle Podcast and Alice Fraser. The editor is Ped Hunter.

The executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programs from The Bugle, including The Bugle, The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts. I'm Andy Bush. I'm here to tell you about our weekly board games podcast that you might just love called Bush's Board Game Thing. Every week, me, Brian and Eloise get together, sit around a table, play a few board games

and mainly just go off on massive tangents about life and stuff like that. It's less about the minutiae of the board games themselves. What we love is the fact that games bring people together and can spark conversation. Each week, we have a terrible board game fact from Brian, which absolutely makes him ramble into the wall. And one of you guys get in touch

to pitch us a board game that hasn't been made yet. Our favourite so far was an extremely tired dad who came up with a board game about camping and going for a wee in a hedge. Bush's board game thing, give it a listen, it might just change your life.