The Gargle - Ransomware | Musk biopic | Bat sex

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

Guest editors Ian Smith and Eleanor Morton join host Alice Fraser for episode 138 of The Gargle - the sonic glossy magazine to The Bugle, with one rule: no politics! Ransomware theft  OpenAI firing Musk biopic Bat sex ReviewsStory 1: https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/11/ransomware-group-reports-victim-it-breached-to-sec-regulators/Story 2: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67474879Story 3: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/20/caught-not-quite-in-the-act-church-cameras-reveal-bat-sex-ritualStory 4: https://variety.com/2023/film/news/elon-musk-biopic-a24-darren-aronofsky-1235787115/HOW 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/donateCONTENTS00:00 Start01:47 Front cover02:23 Satirical cartoon02:46 Story 1: Ransomware group reports victim for not reporting theft07:04 Ads08:15 Story 2: Sam Altman controversially fired from OpenAI then rehired18:25 Reviews22:51 Story 3: Bats mate without penetration30:11 Story 4: Darren Aronofsky to direct Elon Musk biopic39:09 Bye / Anything to plug?  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. Commercial shuttle flights are the worst. Nobody tells you how much people stink in space. But a job's a job, and your job is mining asteroids for the Muskeberg Corporation on a low-wage, zero-hour contract. And you can't really complain, because every bit you mine goes towards building

the future of the human race the future of the gargle hello this is the gargle the sonic glossy magazine to the bugles audio newspaper for visual world all of the news none of the politics i'm your host alice fraser and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine uh Ian Smith. Welcome. Hello. I regretted how I said that. Hi. We can go back. We can retake it. How would you prefer to have said that?

I don't know. I find saying hello, the initial hello on a podcast, is quite hard. Yeah. Essentially, it's the putting your hand in front of the horse's nose or the dog's nose so that it can sniff it. It's just so that people know that this is the sound of your voice. Oh, okay. Isn't it?

Yeah. It's like I say Ian Smith and then you go, and that's how they know that that's the noise that you're going to make from now on. Oh, okay. So they don't get you confused with Eleanor Morton who makes the other kind of noise. Hello. Oh, that was quite similar to mine. It doesn't need to be an impressive intro.

You don't need to come in all guns blazing. Oh, thank God for that. But you're nailing it. Just a low hum. My voice confirms my identity. Before we begin beating our hands against the drum circle that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of this week's magazine.

The front cover this week is King Charles honouring BTS at the Korean state banquet this week, saying that they were Korea's match to the Beatles, which yes, they are an inconceivably popular band of young men who make music, but I think there are some points of distinction that can be made in both the pros and cons direction. Like, for example, you know, I feel like the Beatles came together in a slightly more organic way and were less sort of farmed from a crop of desperate young hopefuls.

And on the other hand, I don't think the Beatles could dance the way BTS can dance on like 12 calories a day the satirical cartoon this week has been censored for hate speech because it failed to contain in a single panel cartoon the entire nuanced and multifaceted evils of every current conflict political kerfuffle and or social injustice for which the political cartoon of this week apologizes knowing that apology is and always will be inadequate and promising to learn and grow from this shame to tunity. Top stories this week.

Ransomware apparently acting for good. Is it good when evil people do possibly good things? One of the most active ransomware groups in the world has reported one of its victims to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a sort of a, I guess it's blackmail. Is the technical term blackmail for this? Ian Smith, you've thrown bricks through windows before. Can you unpack this story for us? Yes.

Can you unpack this story for us? Yes. I mean, I guess maybe I'm not taking it as seriously as the company that have had the ransomware delivered to them. But I just think it's quite funny. It's a funny crime, I think, where my understanding is that they've sort of delivered some kind of computer virus to a company and then they're aware of a new regulation which says if a breach has been made where customer information has been breached and privacy has kind of been broken, you have to report it within four days and they haven't.

So then they've reported the company or they threatened to report the company um so it's a bit like stealing a business's smoke alarms and then reporting them to the health and safety officer um which i i think is just good innocent fun i think this is quite fun maybe i'm missing some ramifications for this because at the minute i just think these are some fun little scamps is that right yeah i think fun little scamps is a good way to define the people who are potentially stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars part of the job of companies is to keep their customers data safe if there is a breach of that data they are required by law to report that

because it makes their customers less safe and their customers have a right to know that. But of course, there's an incentive for them not to do that because they don't want everyone to know that they've been compromised. So these sneaky little thieves want to up the pressure on their victims by reporting them for not reporting the crime, essentially. Because part of what the hackers get is the publicity of hacking them, but also it's punishing these people who are not paying them the money that they're blackmailing them for by showing that they can ruin their reputation.

So they hack them and then they report them. So they don't pre-report them and then hack them. No, they hack them and then within the four-day limit then they report them for not reporting that they've been hacked, essentially. And is this anything to do with the Millennium Bug? It got us in the end. I knew that was going to destroy us all. It's just a matter of time.

Well, the year 3000. Well, we can't all deliver to deadline, can we? All prime crimes involve reporting the crime to the police at some point as part of the heist, I feel. Just to add that extra fillip of like, are they on the side of good or are they on the side of evil? I've enjoyed this particular story because also i imagine all hackers as wearing those wraparound sunglasses and ankle length black coats like in the 90s and a bluetooth headset yeah whereas i feel like actually in real life

hackers tend to just have increasingly ergonomic chairs. I always assume they're all 12, but I just always picture 12-year-old boys, but maybe they're all sophisticated men in smart suits. I don't know. I think sophisticated men in smart suits are all 12-year-old boys. That's my theory. Turned it around. 12-year-old boys sitting in a chair that i can't afford yeah making more money than you will ever see in

esports in some obscure game that you'll never hear of yeah the world we live in now is it too late for me to pivot career-wise no i think you'd make a great eSports champion. Thank you. I appreciate that. Your ad section now, because you can't be what you can't buy. And this section of the show is brought to you by knees. Knees are the elbows of the legs. Knees, a bend in the road where the road is your legs. Knees, put the U in genuflect.

Knees, don't tell goats they've put them on backwards. Knees, try some today. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by the newest social media platform. No longer do you need to go to the new money tech bro algorithm wankfest to serve up their heady mix of contemptibly half-coherent political takes, jealousy-inducing boastulence or froth-fingered rants that are clearly direct misinformation. Now bringing you Yentl, a social media platform where a nice old matchmaker lady curates a selection of posts she thinks your mother will like.

Yentl, you haven't been doing that well on your own. Let us take it from here. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Extreme Sports, a great way to remind yourself to drink half a glass of water as you sit on the couch. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite. Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships houses divided corporate rivalry and a performance

enhancing broom it was a year i'd like to forget broom gate available now a cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com Now it's time for AI News. This is the news of Sam Altman's firing and now breaking news, rehiring by the board of directors of OpenAI. So Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, if you need any of the terms defined. OpenAI is one of the big players in the AI space, the genesis of ChatGPT. And CEO Sam Altman is a bajillionaire who thinks extremely highly of himself.

He was fired by the board. He staged an incredibly impressive counter-coup by mobilising hundreds of his employees, social media. He included recruiting the original coup leader, the person who had originally tried to get him fired, then came in on his side, and he won the support of all of his investors. He was wooed by Microsoft.

Allegedly, two of the board members were the main ones who didn't like him because they were worried that, like Sam Bankman-Fried, he was going to deprioritize safety in the pursuit of AI over everything. Eleanor, you believe in AI over everything. Can you unpack this story for us? I can't, but I've got chat GPT to write it for me. No, I haven't. That would have been a funny idea. This is quite, is Machiavellian the right phrase for the way this is playing out? I think it is.

Yeah, do you remember last, was it this year or last year, there was a Russian general who had a coup against putin and everyone was like oh putin's going down and then he got uncued it feels a bit like that um where there's a lot of a lot of politics happening in a but you know instead of russia it's uh ai and uh i don't know much about sam altman but i don't trust anyone with a computer key in their name. I think that's up for debate on how trustworthy he is. It does seem weird to me that this obviously this is a massive story because it's such a, you know, AI is such a valuable thing currently and a big, big thing currently. thing currently um but it just it does seem funny to me that all this uh turmoil and money is uh going into this whole uh debacle so that we can all type uh raccoon dressed as sherlock holmes

into open ai and see what that looks like or uh or whatever you want to do with it um yeah i mean again i i think I understand it. Yeah, it's been really bad for the reputations of two of the board members in particular, Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley, one of whom is married to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the actor, and both of whom, quite publicly, are subscribers to the recently Sam Bankman-freed

reputation-tanked effective altruist movement, which believes in maximising the good for the most number of people. If by the good, you mean having a think tank about shooting ourselves to space. But it started very nicely with sort of mosquito nets for children. Anyway, they were worried that he was doing this maximalist crypto utopian hip slinging bullish stuff about AI and not actually prioritizing the possibility that AI could destroy the world. I don't know. How badly could it go? I literally can't imagine a single thing that could go wrong. Why do bitches hate progress is what I'm saying. Without progress, we wouldn't have the universal suffrage. We wouldn't have depleted uranium

shells that give both civilians and the soldiers who use them forms of cancer that have never been without progress we wouldn't have the universal suffrage we wouldn't have depleted uranium shells that give both civilians and the soldiers who use them forms of cancer that have never been seen before do you want to not have votes on new cancer ladies come on back off and let the man cook is what i'm saying he was sort of fired for mysterious reasons and people are still not quite sure why but the reasons have been put forward as either this safety issue possibly some accusations of assault or just generally that they didn't like him very much it always boils down to such boring things like that doesn't it like workplace harassment or uh people not liking you but what it looks like from a distance is like some kind of super villain in a volcano lair but actually

maybe he just was a bit annoying at work. Like that's not very glamorous. I mean, I just am impressed by the reputational jujitsu that's made him have people defending him like he's the little man rather than the man with the wealth of a medium large nation state and boss of both the biggest AI engine

and the cryptocurrency WorldCoin, which is a sort of a way to cryptoize the idea of universal basic income to make universal basic income even more imaginary and solve all of the job loss problems that we are in the process of creating with AI. Ian, would you fire Sam Altman and would you hire him back? It's hard to know if you should fire someone when the reason is so vague. Like, at the minute, what I've managed to find

is that the board accused him of not being consistently candid in his communications, which I don't know what that means. I don't know if that means lying or just withholding information, they've said it in a very polite way and if it does turn out that there's been some kind of workplace harassment then that, I don't think that's how you're supposed to describe that

it hasn't been candid in his communications but yeah it's just such an odd thing that... So my understanding is that there's a board of six people and that four of them had voted to get rid of him. But then after they did that, one of the four said, oh, I regret doing that, which made it a tie. But it had already been decided which is disappointing because i'd like to know what the tiebreaker round is in a um dismissal at a big company

they're usually quite fun fun rounds um like a kind of team exercise or a tug of war or something um but yeah and then microsoft did microsoft seem to give him a position or seemed to hire him or, I guess, threaten to hire him to a point where he would have then been everyone's boss, including the people who sacked him at one point. But it just feels, I think this is one of the problems with 24-hour news, I think this is one of the problems with like 24 hour news that if we'd waited a bit then we would know what's happened if it was just a news at 10 every day you could go all right well so this guy was threatened to be sacked um but it's actually all blown over and these are the two people who have left but instead it's like breaking news this is happening there's been a huge development

i think we just need less news so that we can um just summarize it once it's happened or maybe if you waited a week the news would have been sam altman not fired and i think with any news story like um yeah even even big international conflicts like we're seeing at the minute, I'd be quite happy to just not hear about any of it. And then maybe in two years' time go, oh God, you're not going to believe what's been happening. But it's all sorted now. And by sorted, we mean it's been a huge catastrophe that we've just chosen to keep you unaware of to make you happier. I feel like you've got your handles on something there ian i think basically we need to slide frictionlessly towards death and then as we pass through the final gate someone can tell us what happened yeah what he's interested in is agi which is Artificial General Intelligence, which, as far as I can tell, is just what AI is actually meant to be.

But what we now call AI isn't really AI because it's more like a sort of giant smorgasbord of everyone's stuff that we've already created, sort of sicked back out as. And then he's sort of... Or OpenAI is trying to get to this level of actual AI. I'm saying AI a lot. And I think, I felt like when they talked about the communications thing,

it felt like they know that he's got some kind of, they think he's got kind of some kind of big secret, like the code to actual AI. And they're all scared that he's going to use it to i don't know like shoot a rocket into space they're all obsessed with going to being shot into space so i say go for it it's because they want to mine the moon yeah why bother why bother leave the moon stop feeling the moon cheese already we don't need more. One of the articles, when it said what artificial general intelligence is, it said it's basically the idea there will one day be AI tools

that will be able to do a number of tasks as well as are better than humans. I feel like that's here, isn't it? Yeah. There's a lot of things my computer can do. I'd say my computer can do a number of tasks better than me. My fridge can keep food colder than I can, and that's been around for years, so... My pants can keep my legs warmer than my legs can.

Yeah, that's AI, I think. I think it's AI. I can also hold on to my keys better than my butt crack can. Like, there's so many multifaceted ways in which technology has improved our lives. We really should respect it more. They always frame AI like we're going to use it to make our lives easier so we can do lots of fun stuff. But what AI is currently doing is doing all the fun stuff

so that we can have to do all the bad tasks. Like AI is writing all the art in films. I would love to spend my entire day drawing a picture of Elvis as a beaver wearing a top hat. Exactly. While AI did my taxes. Yeah, but for some reason we got it the wrong way round. And now it's time for your reviews.

As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of Five Stars. And now it's time for your reviews. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of Five Stars. Eleanor, what have you brought in for us this week? This week I'm reviewing buttons. I'd like to call them zips for the more vintage inclined. I think they are versatile, versatile stylish and they can bring outfits together or completely ruin them really depending on how you use the buttons um and i think uh one of my favorite things is is just how they hold an outfit together uh literally and figuratively

um you know they can be used for lots of different things and I'd give them a solid four stars. They're not as useful or as direct as Velcro or zips, but they are just a bit more personable. So I'm a big fan. And you're far less likely to catch your penis in a button. Exactly. You would hope. It's not impossible.

I find meditating on zips extremely useful because even though I know how they work, I keep having to think about how they work and how incredibly complicated and yet simple and beautiful they are as a piece of technology. If I ever think I understand a complex political issue, I'll just look at a zip for a while and be like no i'm a idiot buttons are classic buttons are timeless you know you we've been using buttons for a long time and i don't think they're going away

so uh i really want to champion that even buttons though i think at first they're pretty magical you've got to get a thing through a hole that sort of doesn't fit through the hole, but does if you squeeze it a little bit, but then doesn't easily get back through the hole. Otherwise, nothing, it would be pointless. And think about all the historical moments that would have been ruined if buttons hadn't been there.

The very embarrassing... Before buttons. I mean, you think about the technologies that we had before buttons, which was the thing where you would get a jar full of nuts and you'd get a monkey to put its hand into the jar and grab the fistful of nuts and then it would refuse to

let go of the nuts and so its hand wouldn't come back out of the jar. That's what buttons used to be. Exactly, yeah. And that's a lot of monkeys to have in your shirt. Yeah, and who wants that? I think Henry VIII would have probably been a lot of monkeys to have in your shirt. Yeah, and who wants that? I think Henry VIII would have probably been a lot less violent if his trousers kept falling down. When he was trying to condemn his wives to death. I demand you be...

Oh, God. And then he's just got to pull them back up. What were you going to say? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Ian, what have you brought in to review for us so i've sort of written this like um a review on amazon this is a traumatic experience i i bought some hellman's tomato sauce um as opposed to heinz tomato sauce um so what i wrote was um this is a product that doesn't really stand out either way

when compared to the leading brand in fact i would say the taste is almost exactly the same however the shame of having it is enough to affect your mood um repeatedly the saving of £1.15 was not worth the damage it did to my self-esteem to have bought it and then you're reminded of the shame every single time you use it which is frustrating because tomato sauce lasts ages um so in the future i'll be paying more for the same amount of something that tastes exactly the same to avoid how this product makes me feel and i've given it two out of five just just feel humiliated to um it's fair. Yeah, I just look at it, it's like £4.50 for a bottle of ketchup, which seems mad. So I got the cheaper Hellman's one

and then just felt like I was putting stuff over it in my basket because I didn't want people to see. I didn't know Hellman's did ketchup and now I feel really stupid. Of course they do. You're living in blissful ignorance we'll forget you ever said it

they're the mayo people stick to mayo is what a lot of people were shouting at me in the supermarket yeah I found it to be a horrible experience I don't know if I'm overreacting but it's pretty distressing for me no no your feelings are valid Ian particularly in the reviews Horrible experience. I don't know if I'm overreacting, but it's pretty distressing for me. No, no, your feelings are valid, Ian.

Thank you. Particularly in the reviews section. Now it's time for just the tip bats news. This is the news that bats have been banging without putting it in. Ian, you understand Tetris. Can you unpack this story for us? Yeah. Well, this is one of those stories where someone talks about some research they've done. And it's quite easy to say, why have people been researching that?

easy to say why have people been researching that um and i don't know if that's maybe lazy comedically to go why why are we researching that and not these things but i will repeat why are we researching bat sex and the fact that there are any diseases still left is the fault of the people who are watching these bats making love. It just feels to me like I can understand if you're researching like the mating rituals of pandas because they're not sort of getting on enough. But bats, there's no shortage of bats. They've just sort of caused a pandemic. I don't know why we can't just sort of blissfully go, they're having sex, and however they're doing it,

absolutely fine. Let's focus on the, if I'm allowed to say this phrase, the non-f***ing animals. Yeah, but there's some horrible sentences in in this i didn't enjoy the description of the um uh the quote the male's erect penis is enormous and ends with a heart-shaped head that is seven times wider than the female's vagina i don't like reading that or picturing it the image i've got in my head i know it's got a heart shape at the end it's quite nice but it's still not ideal it's not the optimal valentine's gift uh elena have you

been following this bat sex story for a while or is this new yeah i've got an alert on my uh on my search engine um i think it's just important to remind everyone that this research has proved and shown that sometimes the research thing is too big and that can be detrimental to everyone's enjoyment and reproductive efficiency. What I was picking up from this is that the bats come out of it absolutely covered in various fluids.

I assume they eventually find their way to the place they need to be um but i mean have you ever seen us have you ever seen slugs mating it's that's that i mean not that i've i have seen it in my garden i didn't search it out but it was happening and um that is quite similar actually they but you know they're also hanging upside down uh slugs are hermaphrodites though so so they each have a penis that sort of joins together and um it's definitely more effective than this but i i feel like physically uh it looks pretty similar um but what i what i like is that first of all um the research was almost impeded by the fact that um one of the researchers sent the other one some stuff and it went in his spam folder because it had the word penis in it,

which is funny. It was only saved when the researchers saw the Latin name for the seroton bat, which is classic. Saved by Latin. The number of times I've been saved by Latin. Haven't we all? But this sort of reminds me of another story from, I don't know if the Bugle covered it a while ago.

Ian was asking, why do we research these things? And I think it's almost like, why didn't we research it before? Why didn't we know how bats have sex? You'd assume we would have figured it out by now. They've been around for as long as we have, maybe longer. But there was an article, was it this year or last year? It was last year, about how scientists have only just discovered

that female snakes do have clitorises, which, according to the BBC, shatters a long-held assumption that the females didn't have a sexual organ. And this was all over the news because it was hilarious to think about. But also the fact that basically what happened, which could have happened here as well, is that male researchers were too awkward about all of this to ever do any proper research into what the genitals of female snakes are like and uh

they just left it they would you know they've got whole whole biological anatomy textbooks all about snakes hundreds of years worth of research but they were all like we're not doing that bit that's that's weird we'll just leave that bit we will assume she's got something and then a female researcher had to go do all the dirty work so to speak so I wonder if this is someone else looking at the textbooks and going the problem is that our scientists have been too prudish

in the past and that's how we don't know what we should know It's entirely possible and it means hundreds of years of having missed the opportunity to call them clitorhissers Yeah you go you see Oh my god it says they to call them clitorises for snakes. Yeah, you go, you see? Oh, oh my God, it says they have two individual clitorises. Sorry, this is the snakes.

But anyway, I don't know how much we can say clitorises, even scientifically. I mean, snakes and ladders would have been a much more interesting game had it been invented with the knowledge that female snakes had two clitorises. Someone's going to have to update the illustrations at the very least. Just go in and add it. I mean, I don't understand the scepticism about this area of science.

I think it's groundbreaking. I think it's wonderful. I think it makes me, as a human, feel grateful that we lucked into the version of horrifying mating ritual that we have. You know, it could be it could be way worse well exactly I mean do you want to come out of it first of all with not

being able to do the deed and secondly covered in absolutely absolutely covered in semen which I guess you then have to sort of figure out how to put to use I mean I assume some people are into that, yeah, but certainly not if you're trying to have a child.

That's very... The fire hose approach. One of the researchers has been, previously he's been documenting fellatio in fruit bats, which is like, that really is a question of

who decided we needed to know that because they won a Nobel Prize for that research I think you won an Ig Nobel Prize which I think is is that not the joke one? I don't know

I could be wrong or like the one that you get for being doing something a bit weird oh I should have known you don't get it for bat blowjobs. Well, unless the bats are running the prize and then they're like, that's the top one. Yeah, if they're the judges, that's the kind of...

How come this guy's won the Nobel Prize this year and why are all the judges bats? And why do they all look so happy? this guy's won the Nobel Prize this year and why are all the judges bats? Why do they all look so happy? Hollywood news now. And this is the news that Darren Aronofsky, the Hollywood auteur known for sort of unsettling

and mind-bending movies, is to direct an Elon Musk biopic telling the story of presumably Elon Musk's rise and rise from mere from mere merely wealthy young man to extremely powerful bajillionaire Eleanor you're you're in Hollywood can you unpack this story for us I am and I am a billionaire uh well what Darren did there is he he looked at all the films he's made about disturbing individuals and weird situations, and he thought, why bother writing a script? Driven mad by the power of maths.

Yeah, and being weird to look at. And he thought, why bother writing a script when I've got... It's all just laid out in front of me so we're having yet another billionaire biopic I assume it will start with Elon in the nursery surrounded by emeralds and you know it's a tough start in life, how's he going to get through that

he goes to America I mean for the sake of accuracy it was only a share in it sorry yes, no I do apologise it's tough, tough life so maybe it's more diamonds and sapphires in the nursery I don't know but yeah

I think it's interesting when people choose to do biopics about people who are still alive because you know the whole point is that you're covering their life and normally that does eventually end uh with you know some semblance that there's been a narrative there uh whereas this i don't know when he's gonna make the film but i don't see elon leaving as

anytime soon um and i wonder if he'll have to do a sequel, Elon 2, to Elon 2 Furious, where he sort of catches everyone up. Obviously, by the end of his life, I assume he will have procreated at least 20 more times. So you've got to add that in. A bunch of stuff. Well, this is the problem that Ian was saying about the 24-hour news cycle. We're still in the midst of it. We need to wait until the end to figure it out.

And, I mean, Elon is known for appearing on screen in various things. He quite likes a cameo. So will there be a cameo of Elon Musk in the Elon Musk biopic? Oh. Like a meta... Oh, he wouldn't like a meta cameo, would he? No, that's not a good idea. If they do another film when he dies,

there's going to have to be a scene where the actor playing Elon Musk attends the premiere of the film about him, where the actor playing Elon Musk is also at the premiere, watching himself on the screen. It's going to be like a Spider-Man meme. Yeah.

The tricky thing about it is also the casting. Casting is so political. They can cast somebody who is more beautiful than you but not very good at acting, or they can cast someone who's very good at acting but hideous to behold. And, you know, how do you feel? Do you feel complimented that they've cast somebody

who doesn't look like you at all but is a very excellent actor? Who are they going to cast? It's all, you know, extremely valid. Are they going to cast Timothee Chalamet or are they going to cast Paul Dano? These are the questions that we need to know. There was a headline that I saw, like, on the side of this article about timothy chalamet um that made me laugh because the headline was timothy chalamet if you would have told me when

i was 12 that i'd be starring in wonka i would have said you're lying and i just can't imagine a situation where someone goes up to a 12 year old timothyet, and he says, you're going to be starring in Wonka. And this 12-year-old is just like, you're lying! You're lying about that. And I think he was a child actor. Wasn't he, Chalamet? Is he still a child actor?

Yeah. But if he was acting when he was 12, he might be like, yeah, yeah, I guess they might, I can imagine them doing some kind of sequel or prequel maybe he just didn't believe that we would have run out of ideas that quickly and that they're already doing a bonker biopic

yeah I think what's his name, Ashton Kutcher should play him I think he should play all the billionaires he's already done jobs yeah like how Kenneth Branagh play all the billionaires. He's already done jobs. Yeah, like how Kenneth Branagh did all the leads in Shakespeare. Exactly, yeah.

And then they'll have some kind of computer-generated standoff where they're all in one big film, like Avengers Assemble, but billionaires. The businessman origin story I want to see is the person who invented the robotic cobbler men that go in the front of cobbler's windows. Yeah, because when they first come up with that idea, and they got all the cobblers to be like, yeah, let's all have a robot hammering man in the front. The amount of money they would have made very quickly would have been astronomical because it must be hundreds and hundreds of cobblers but now the business

model of that company is walking around the uk to try and find a cobbler's that doesn't have one and then saying would you like a little robot man who's like hammering a cobbler shoe to put in your window and trying to convince them that that is a useful thing to do. It's also such an odd mix of past and present and future because the nature of the work that the cobbler man robot is doing is work that is made redundant by the existence of robots. That's true, yeah. Yeah. That's true.

What a confusing thing is happening there a robot is doing a job that a robot has taken off the thing that the robot is depicting yeah and now you can't even just have a man pretending to put a shoe together in the shop window because his job's been replaced by a robot too yeah and with electricity costs soaring, it might be cheaper just to hire a younger boy, instead of a paperhound, who just dresses up as a cobbler and just does that movement constantly in the window. What scenes would you like to see in an Elon Musk biopic? The registry of the birth of the child whose name no one can pronounce.

Just like a sketch basically where the where the woman's like at the desk is like you want a name at what and that's that's 10 minutes um yeah i mean again like the childhood it's not the thing about biopics is you know think of some of the great ones uh the ray charles one um nina simone anyone who's come from adversity they've got a gift they fight through they you know edith piaf there's a bit of tragedy there it's i mean even the best and most interesting businessmen there's not a lot of for me anyway on the screen there's not a lot to see when it comes to like uh i've become a businessman um and even less so if you've already started

with as we've said quite a bit of money so I mean I wouldn't like to see any of it on screen is the honest answer I don't think that's going to stop me I mean it is Darren Aronofsky so I'm hoping that it just goes into the imaginative realms of I think we start on Mars and work backwards

from there oh yeah that's good yeah no i would watch that actually i'd like to see brendan frazier in a fat suit playing him as a baby so it's all actors in fat suits but then all the scenery has been made huge so that they look baby size and all the adults are played by you only see the adults from the foot to the knee

and it's just elephants that have had their legs painted pink and big shoes put on them and their dialogue is dubbed in yeah that's what I would like to see you want to see live action boss baby yeah which I believe is based on the life of Elon Musk so

it's already a remake that's what I want to see I want to see him playing in a nursery and like asking a kid for like a slinky or something and the kid refusing to give it to him and then it cutting immediately to the next day when the nursery's changed it's name to like X and there to the next day when the nursery's changed its name to like

x and there's no other kids in the nursery and elon musk has got the slinky and somehow the slinky is like a bit more racist now um and all the staff are just not allowed to leave because it's just become a part of their lives um and they want to leave but they can't. I mean, I'd watch that movie. And that brings us to the end of this week's episode of The Gargle. I'm flipping through the ad section at the back. Eleanor, have you got anything to plug? You can find me on all the social medias and what is coming up.

I am going to be in Leicester in February doing 8 Out Of 10 Celts, which is a game show where a Scottish woman, a Welsh woman and a Northern Irish woman battle it out to be Queen of the Celts. And also I will be at the Glasgow Comedy Festival. Tickets for that are about to go on sale, I think. So, yeah, just Google it, guys.

Check that out. And Ian, have you got anything to plug? yeah I'm going to be going on tour next year so I'm doing a couple of dates again at Soho Theatre and then going around the UK

kind of February to April and yeah I guess the best place to find that out is on Instagram because my website is very poorly maintained and Twitter has become a hellhole. So, yeah, Instagram and Linktree

and all the LinkedIn bio type stuff is the best way to find out. If you want to support the gargle and the Bugleverse family of podcasts, you can become a voluntary subscriber if you go to thebuglepodcast.com. You can get things like a vinyl episode of The Bugle and a monthly Ask Andy podcast,

which is an advice podcast with Andy Zaltzman. You can find me online at patreon.com slash alicefraser. It's where all of my things are. I'm also on the social medias. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week.

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