The Gargle - Romance Novels | EmotionAIl | Porridge

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Chloe Petts and Steve Bugeja join host Alice Fraser for episode 165 of The Gargle. All of the news, with none of the politics.This week: Romance novel bookshops and emotional AI. Also, porridge, too hot or too cold?Watch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BuglePodcastWritten by Alice Fraser, Chloe Petts and Steve BugejaProduced by Laura Turner and 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.

Wendy's small frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment and not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian Dairy, it's also refreshingly cheap just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet Acas powers the world's best podcast. Here's a show that we recommend Here's a show that we recommend. Hello in Tansi. My name is Joel De Moncran. I'm an actor and I'm indigenous and I've created a podcast called Actors and Ancestors. It's a podcast all about indigenous actors here on Turtle Island and our experience in the industry.

So if that sounds like something that your ear balls would be happy to listen to, then check out actorsandancestors.com and go to any of your favorite podcast players and we're there. Acast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere acast.com Acast.com Hi and welcome back to the channel if you're new here We look at all the latest viral fashion so you feel bad about yourself for being old and out of touch Don't worry We'll have all the product linked below so you can buy your way back into the youthful coolness you never had

Remember when things were better because you were young enough to feel joy Maybe a $53.99 Amazon Prime order will make you feel that way again. First off the mark, you've probably seen this online. It's been on all my feeds, this viral color matching lip-pumping hair iron. It's just like the 90s. Second, the gargle.

This is the gargle. Welcome to the Sonic Glossy Magazine to the Bugles Audio New audio newspaper for a visual world. I am your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Chloe Petz, welcome. Hi, thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure, and Steve Bajay, how are you?

I'm great, thanks Alice. Thank you very much for having me. It's a delight to have you. Before we make the braided beads in each other's hair that are this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of this week's magazine. On the front cover of the magazine this week is viral influencer and handsome maniac Jeremy Fragrance back in the news this week. The news, if you don't know Jeremy Fragrance, he was an influencer who discusses fragrance. And people fell out of love with him

after a series of photos emerged of him chilling with some fascists. But he's back in the news now because he has put out a call for love. He's trying to find a girlfriend, specifically a girlfriend that looks exactly like a gender-swapped version of himself that he's constructed with an AI filter. So good old Jeremy Fragrance.

Have either of you aware of Jeremy Fragrance or have I just introduced you to the world of Jeremy Fragrance? You've introduced me to her but I'm very fascinated by how you can chill out with some Nazis. That feels like something you can't do very easily. Hey, hey, hey, fascists, Steve, not Nazis. Sorry. Be careful your language there.

Still, it feels like fascists aren't the easiest to chill with. I mean, they're not known for their chill as a demographic genre. Like, they tend to be known for the like, the wildly twitching eye and the sweaty upper lip. Maybe that's why they needed the fragrance, because they wanna sort of, yeah,

reform the image of the fascist, and they wanna, look, we wanna bring nice smells to fascism. Yeah, I don't, I mean, Everyone wants to smell good, whatever your political viewpoints. It's true. That's the one thing that binds us all across all party divides is we just want to smell

good. Blood purity and aromatherapy is what we're looking for. Yeah, absolutely. As a party. I'm just interested in, is he aware, is Jeremy Fragrance aware of the fact that he's just AI generated his opposite or is he sort of ignorant to that fact that he doesn't see the irony? Yes. No, no, I think he's one of those people who believes that if you believe in something hard

enough it will manifest itself in the world even if that thing is yourself, the girl version of yourself. The only person who wants to speak with... But does he know that it's a girl version of himself? Does he know that he wants to... Oh yeah, he's made the girl version of himself. This is the sort of a... But has he said, this is a girl version of myself, or has he said, this is the woman

that I want to sleep with and everyone else has gone... It's just a mirror with long hair. No, no, he's done it on purpose. He wants to pigmalian reality. Got ya. He wants to manifest himself. Horrible. It's a terrible thing. Not enough to just get the

same haircut as your partner. And the satirical cartoon this week is a doctor prescribing to a patient a tablet that says, the news side effects may include madness, despair and expressing your half-baked quarter formed third-ridge gurgitated opinion on social media. That's satire for you. Now it's time for our... sometimes people are like is your satirical cartoon like a satire about satirical cartoons or is it actually satire? And I say yes. That brings us to our top story this week. Top story this week is mass tourism protesters getting out there and squirting water at tourists in Barcelona. Chloe, you're a dab hand with a water gun. Can you unpack this story for us?

Yeah, so basically loads of tourism in Barcelona. you can kind of see why everything is terrible weather wise elsewhere. So why wouldn't you want to go to Barcelona? But there's been such a sort of storm of people going there that I think people are sort of buying, you know, second properties and then renting them out as Airbnbs and then that's making the locals that the prices are rocketing and they're sort of taking it out on the tourists squirting water guns at them. It's difficult for me to know what my opinion on this is because I'm sort of I'm in two minds where when you watch the videos you see the people squirting the water guns and you think you're f***ing arseholes and you watch the videos, you see the people squirting the water guns and you think, you fucking assholes. And you sort of wanna fight water with water

and kind of go back at them. But I think they've got a point. But maybe I would just like them to sort of protest the government rather than the people that are trying to have a nice food in a sandy beach. I feel like water guns are an appropriate sort of Barcelona weapon because everything there is melting anyway

Or at least it looks like it's melting because of the Dali buildings. Yeah, maybe it's like a nice treat Maybe they're maybe they're just like trying to cool the tourists. They're like You know We do want you to go home, but also we want you to go home in comfort. I Actually think it could be counterproductive because there are certain People who would actually quite like being squirted with water guns, you know, would see that as a kind of almost masochistic experience.

So actually they might end up attracting tourists to Barcelona because they're going to get squirted with water guns. Steve, are you talking about yourself again? It doesn't matter who I'm talking about. The point I'm making is that actually be careful what you wish for Barcelona because you might end up attracting maybe potentially worse tourists with your this method given that you know when they last tried this it was running tourists out of town by letting loose a stampede of balls at them and that's turned out to bring a lot of tourists back into town yeah I feel like this is a slippery slope lubed up by the squirting of

a thousand water guns. Literally very slippery, yeah. I think that it's kind of cute though in it. Like it's kind of nice because the water guns are quite small. They weren't using like the big super soakers, they were using like little. So I think, you know, it's something quite sweet about it. I mean, sweet or unambitious I feel like if you are gonna try and chase tourists out of town with a water gun you want a super soaker 5000. We're pissing it. We're pissing it yeah perfect but won't won't the police sort of like counter it with one of their big like anti-protest water guns so that that could be quite a sort of... It's just a huge water fight. Yeah, just a huge one that the police are ultimately going to win.

But yeah, I think that could be what Barcelona needs. But everyone sort of in the video, everyone took it with quite good humour like it. There was no sort of real vitriol between the tourists and the protesters. I do just think anytime someone's saying, go home, I'm a bit like, oh, that's quite select language. That's sort of taking from the lexicon of old Jeremy Fragrance or whatever his name is. He would be so offended to hear you calling him old. And that brings us to our ad section. Your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy.

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And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Taxas. Taxas, a monthly subscription service to public utilities so that tech bros will get behind the idea. I'm indigenous and I've created a podcast called Actors and Ancestors. It's a podcast all about indigenous actors here on Turtle Island and our experience in the industry. So if that sounds like something that your ear balls would be happy to listen to, then check out actorsandancestors.com and go to any of your favorite podcast players and we're there. Ego se! Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. Now it's time for your ants news. Ants news now. This is the news that ants are doctors. Dr. Ant was right.

Steve, you've seen an ant before. Can you unpack this story for us? Yeah, love ants. And I think this is exciting. What was that, Steve, you look like you can carry more than 40 times your own body weight. Those were the options. And you looked at me and thought,

no, that's just not believable. So the story is that Florida ants have, well scientists have observed them performing, well surgery makes it feels like a big term, but effectively performing healthcare on injured ants. So they'll do amputations and they have antiseptic, like some sort of natural-forming antiseptic in their glands and it can cure other ailments so they are the only the second species. Are they called ant-putations? Yeah very good. I mean the joke there is antiseptic right? That's so funny Alice that you went for ant-putations when antiseptic was right there. I sort of thought he hadations when antiseptic was right there.

I sort of thought he had already done antiseptic and then I realized that he hadn't realized it. Completely unaware. I said there were antiseptic. The original Jeremy fragrance. But this is an exciting development, I think, that answer, because, you know, the NHS is on its knees and there are a lot of ants so it might be the solution that we're treating the new health secretary is actually I mean he won't he won't see it coming but actually if we could employ a lot of ants to do some of that to clear some of that backlog even if they're not doing that good a job.

clear some of that backlog, even if they're not doing that good a job. I was brought up on deeply unconvincing adventure novels as a child in which, you know, problematically described native tribes would stake people out on an anthill as a form of torture. Maybe they were just admitting them to the local hospital. Yeah. Yeah, maybe they just had a sprain ankle Do you think at this scope for ants to do other stuff, you know, like a Sort of cheap just a general sort of GP appointment like triage kind of Yeah, yeah, I Think I think the AI is ant infestation. I Think they're clever little guys though and? I've always had huge respect for them.

They kind of, they toil away and now we just thought they were sort of these kind of this hardworking proletariat, but actually, you know, they're university educated. They've been through the system and, you know, they're doctors. I wonder whether it's like only some of them are the doctors. Have they actually created like a little mini society there where they've actually got ant doctors there but they've got other roles that we just haven't spotted yet like there's lawyers in there you know there's like teachers there's unemployed ants that that you know have

to get retrained there's you know I just maybe we're not watching them enough basically. They might have actually built a whole world. Oh yeah, we need to witness the awkwardness when there's an ant aeroplane and someone calls out for an ant doctor and someone steps forward and they're like, oh sorry, I'm only an ant PhD.

Maybe. In philosophy. Maybe the three of us could write a film called Ants and it could all be about... Ants though, in the year of Bugs Life, I really feel like it was just the worst of the two films right? Do you agree? Yeah, undoubtedly.

Some people have told me that they prefer Ants and I'm like, you're thick, you're stupid, you're an idiot. I know they put a Z at the end and you might have been enthralled by that, but A Bug's Life is a far superior film. Are you sure they weren't just saying they prefer ants as an animal, as a species over the film Bug's Life?

Because actually it does sound like watching ants might be more entertaining. Okay, what would you, okay Steve, here's a question for you. Would you rather watch one hour forty of a Bugs Life or one hour forty of an Ant Hill? Well it depends if it's hospital day because if it's hospital today on the Ant Hill then I want to see it. It's like ant casualty. Yeah.

And that brings us to our reviews section. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. Chloe, what have you brought in for us this week? OK, well, let me read you my review, which I have written down. OK, so here's the review. I recently went to the London Dungeons. There were warnings not to participate if heavily pregnant or under the age of five,

but unfortunately there was no warning not to take magic mushrooms. So my friend and I just assumed it was a prerequisite. So we were doing absolutely fine, pinging our nuts off as we passed from the Whitechapel labyrinth to Mrs. Lovett's pie shop. It only became a problem when Jack the Ripper said to me, excuse me, are you Chloe Petz?

Now, I don't know if you've ever been on hallucinogenics and been recognized by a Victorian serial killer, but it does make you shit yourself quite hard. So I screamed, ran away and shouted, I'm not your type, I'm not an East London sex worker. And had to recover at the Shrek Experience next door where I was not recognized. One star for London Dungeons, five stars for Shrek. Wow.

I've got so many questions. Ask them all. Ask them all, Steve. How did the hallucinogenics affect the Shrek experience? Because I thought that would be weirder. In all honesty, we just sat in the cafe. We were a bit sort of sick. We took the mushrooms like not in a pill or like a chocolate or anything.

We just ate them. And it makes you really queasy so when I said when I said I shit myself like it was partially literally okay yeah yeah so you could you could do it again or yeah I'd do it again for sure I think any I think any I think any London landmark is improved by being on mushrooms I think any London landmark is improved by being on mushrooms. Yeah. London Eye. Definitely.

You're just in a box looking at stuff. Mushrooms. Mushrooms is going to make that better. Yeah. Yeah. South Bank Centre. Ugh, boring. Who likes culture? Mushrooms, better.

Big Ben, even bigger. The bong is even bongier. The clock melts. Yeah, the clock melts like Dali. That's the theme of the day. Steve, what have you brought in for us to review today? Mine is shorter and less drug related because we just lived very different lives actually. Mine is about porridge. Stodgy like cement, very little

love went into making it almost like the chef did not care, served lukewarm, finished the whole thing five stars. That was about my porridge this morning. No one would have guessed that Steve unless you specified that that was about your porridge this morning. Well the reason I specified it was because I've had complaints about my porridge recently. People who wouldn't give it five stars for example example. They maybe give it one star. And they've been saying it's too, well, cement is the word they use, and it's unacceptably cold. And I just thought this is how people eat porridge.

And I've been doing this forever, really. And it's only recently occurred to me that I like a very niche type of porridge. Why is it cold? It's cold because that's just a practical issue of when I cook it, I then take it off the hob and I tend to like forget about it for a bit and then I serve it. So that's just a logistical issue. That's not actually your choice, but I don't mind it being a bit lukewarm. See, you would be my toddler daughter's

perfect breakfast chef because she actively requests cold porridge and in fact refuses to eat hot fresh porridge that I've just made until I've cooled it down with ice. Fantastic. And does she like it kind of in a goo, like a big pasty kind of? Because she wants it now, but she wants it cold now. Yeah, that's reasonable.

What do you have on the porridge? Yeah, that's reasonable. What do you have on the porridge? I have peanut butter, blueberries and raspberries. Love that. Wow, like a health blogger from the early 2000s. Yeah, but I'm so far behind in my food nutrition. This is upstate for me. I also have chia seeds.

Is that out of date as well? No, that's very up to date. Yeah. I really, but I don't cook this. I just put the chia seeds on like at the end and apparently that's wrong as well. Cause they don't, but they don't burst. They're just like, they're just some seeds on top of the porridge. Gritty. It's gritty. That's the right word.

It's a gritty cement paste that I'm eating. Like a chia seed that's actualised itself is meant to be somewhat gelatinous, right? Yeah, I honestly didn't know that. An actualising chia seed. Yeah, apparently it's kind of slightly more soft in texture not the way I have it no, thank you I Like my raw dog my chia seeds He crushes him up and snorts it And that brings us to our

AI news of this week, which unusually for the gargle, is positive AI news, possibly positive AI news which is the news that they can now do. Karen White Noise, essentially, an AI that aims to shield workers from angry callers on call center calls. Steve, you've been an angry caller before, can you unpack this story for us? Yes. So SoftBank in Japan have been developing for three years an AI technology that will, I guess, be in their call centers that will effectively stop angry customers kind of being angry to their to their call center workers like instantly so the AI will instantly translate or change their voice and tone so that their call centers aren't subjected to such abuse

and levels of anger which is an incredible use of technology what I would say is if a company is receiving such regular amounts of vitriol and anger from their customers, maybe the solution isn't to invent an AI that gets rid of that, it is to maybe improve their product. Because they've tried to solve the wrong problem. Yeah, it's an incredible technology essentially.

In real time, it's an incredible technology essentially. In real time, it will translate your words to the same words, but slightly less pissed sounding. The term they used was emotion canceling, which I mean, I could do with that sometimes. Yeah, it's a much better version of noise canceling. I feel like it's cool though, cause I'm really into those videos

online where it's always headlined like motorcyclists defuse road rage car driver with disarming charm and I feel like it could be really useful because I feel like if the person shouting at you is still shouting at you but if you're responding to them in the most calm way then maybe it will just sort of naturally diffuse their anger and eventually the AI won't have to be covering the anger. They'll just stop being angry you know because the only thing and when you're feeling angry is when It's when someone's really calm because it means that they're not like meeting you at your level. Do you know what I mean?

Yes, but it feels like This is the worst possible thing for me because I would assume like I always assume that everyone's angry with me all the time Anyway, oh I would assume, like I always assume that everyone's angry with me all the time anyway. Oh. Even when they're speaking in a calm tone of voice. And now I would just assume that they were, they were A.I. They were A.I. And they were being canceled out by an A.I. Oh yeah, that's so true.

I would get so paranoid as well. I'd be like, no, they hate me. I know they said such nice things, but it was fake. You guys really need to work on your self-esteem that you're taking a conversation that you will have with someone one time. Yeah, well that's alright, I've just got a new therapist, it's this aunt who's offering therapy now so I think it's going to really help. I feel like anything that can protect call centre workers from abuse is probably a good

thing but also what would be a good thing for call center workers is not working in call centers and I think generally burn them all down send in Jeremy fragrance with a scented Molotov cocktail. And what instead of call centers what do we like each each company has like an individual complaints department rather than like these kind of centralized wait hang on what we speak to if we had a problem no one you solve your problem yourself but what if my internet's not working i don't know how to fix hyper optic fiber learn no i mustn't up skill Chloe up skill I can't up skill I turn off the internet for everyone by accident I mean I feel like that would

be a good accident lots of lots of broad sweeping statements today Molotov cocktail call centers internet off for everyone That's our manifesto. Yeah. Sit down, watch some ants, touch grass. Oh. I've just occurred to me, has this whole podcast been on an AI thing? Cause I'm getting very negative energy from all of you. Is it?

Yeah. I've been calling you a massive twat for the last half an hour. Oh, I think the AI is broken. Chloe just said she loves me. I don't know what's going on. And that brings me to our final story of this week's episode of The Gargle. And this is the news which will come as a welcome clamour to all fans of Dancy Lagarde that romance bookstores are booming. This

story is included in this week's gargoyle to celebrate the fact that we are closing down the part of my book where you can get your name in the book. So if you go to Unbound.com and look up the Dancy Lagarde book now known as A Passion for Passion, you can still buy it, get the early bird purchasing thing where you get to have your name in the book. After that you can still buy the book but you can't be in the book. So before the 7th of August go to unbound.com and look up A Passion for Passion and then you can get your name in the book. Now onto the story. This is the story that romance bookstores are booming and getting sexier and sexier,

and that people are more and more comfortable with, for example, going in and asking essentially for literary pornography. Chloe, you've licked your fingers and turned some pages in your time. Can you unpack this story for us? So, yeah, this is the story that there's been sort of a burning romance novel. Well, it's not even sales because I guess the through line of the New York Times article that this is in is that it's always been massively popular, but it's always just been a little bit frowned upon reading romance books. And I think it's probably rooted in the inception of romance novels, right? It was always sort of like a thing that

that silly ladies did that was a sort of frippery that, you know, it's not high art, it's not high culture. So I guess one of the shameful things around it hasn't necessarily been the content of the books. It's been like, oh, am I reading trash, is I guess the thing. But I think now we've sort of embraced this kind of blend of high-low culture within society, I think. Go on, sorry. Historically speaking, high culture is where a woman suffers horribly and then dies as a punishment for having sex.

And low culture is where a woman has orgasms with a sexy cowboy who shows up and solves all of her financial problems. Whereas now we know that that is high culture. And also for me, high culture is going to the London dungeons on magic mushrooms. But I feel like, yeah, I feel like this is, I feel like it's really cool. And I feel like, I feel like we're in this position of women truly sort of embracing chatting, chatting about their desires and chatting about sex. of women truly sort of embracing, chatting about their desires and chatting about sex. And I think that's incredibly powerful and incredibly cool.

Yeah, well, I think it's very scary for men to believe that they might be compared to, you know, due to actually care about women's orgasms. So I think that might be a reason why they've been historically squashed a bit. Steve, your thoughts. Yeah, well, as the most qualified person on this topic, I've generally found it really interesting

that they're opening specific shops for romance novels around New York. And it makes sense like I'm surprised and frustrated that men aren't getting in on the romance novels I think that's the next step you know because I don't think it should be exclusively women who are reading these romance novels I actually think it could be the solution to a lot of male porn addiction if we could just get men reading some nice, smarty stuff, maybe they wouldn't watch such awful things on the internet.

I'm saying they, I mean we. Because there is Littrotica on the internet and I've read some of it and it's great stuff. Like it's way more satisfying to read it. And I think men, maybe I'm gonna be the leader of a movement to get men to read Lidrottica. I mean I don't I think that's a brilliant idea Steve I've always thought this about romance novels like of course they're silly but they're not like more silly than James Bond you know know? Which is a perfectly legitimate thing

to say that you like in public and not be embarrassed about. It just goes back to that thing again of like, what is, what's valued and what's not. And like, you know, men with cars and guns is cool and women being like, yeah, I wanna hear about a fairy in a unicorn isn't cool. But actually, when you put it like that,

it's the coolest thing you could possibly do. Isn't it amazing when you're under pressure, the ideas that come out of your brain, Clare? Oh, that wasn't one that was under pressure. That one's been going around my head for a long time, Steve. He passionately adores her, but he is her guard captain and she's the princess so he could never touch her but he has to carry her on a horse across the border and they touching each other on the horse but in like a totally legitimate way but then they both come and

then they get married. The end. Common marriage. This is too much for me. I can't cope. I mean look as a romance novel historian, I have to say, historically speaking, romance novels can kind of track movements in culture. So it used to be that you would do a lot of fingering before marriage, but you weren't allowed to bang before marriage.

But now in romance novels, they almost always bang before marriage because that's how culture is. That's really cool. Is it like, is there something, should we be worried about the fact though that like Bridgerton is quite like a big thing at the moment, like women are sort of,

their sexual desires are going back towards times when they were a bit more conservative or is that just the lens through which we're seeing like modern, so everyone's kind of liberated within those stories, but it's just in the context of the Regency era or something. Well, I mean, okay, look, I could talk about this all day,

and in fact, I have written a book about it, but essentially, historical fiction acts as a kind of a metaphor so that we can have obstacles in the way of our protagonists and then they can work out their emotional journeys around the structures of their and strictures of their times. So women are becoming more conservative sexually? No. Other than tradwives.

Oh yeah. That's a different. Oh yeah, that is a wild movement. Yeah, I'm a tradwife. I tan skins by hand using a rock. I eat all of my calories in summer and then starve through the winter. That's my tradition. If anyone's looking for a trad husband, then Steve and I are looking for trad wives hit us up at Steve Bejeu at Chloe Pets trad wives yeah although I can't do any of the kind of providing for thing financially I'm struggling with that but other than that yeah totally up for trad husband

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. Steve, have you got anything to plug? Yes, I will be at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August with my brand new show Shining and it's all about achieving my dream and answering the questions that I've been interested in trying to chase my dreams. Zoe, what have you got to plug? I am also going to the Edinburgh Fringe 31st of July to the 25th of August. I'm on at 7pm at Pleasance 4th every day. Otherwise you'll be able to see me holding hands with my friend Steve in the Pleasance Courtyard having little drinkies and looking for our wives.

And the other thing is that I have done a Radio 4 show called Toilet Humour which basically is sort of like an irreverent and silly look at the history of toilets to try and understand how we've got to where we are now with these big cultural conversations around gender and who gets to go where. Wonderful. Those are two shows at the Edinburgh Fringe which don't clash with each other, so stick them in your programme if you'll be in Edinburgh. I will not be in Edinburgh, but you can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser

at the One Stop Shop full of my Stats, Specials, Podcasts and Blogs as well as my weekly, actually twice weekly writers' meetings. If you want to write something or you're writing something or you've got something finished and want to workshop it, sign up at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. I'm also doing a workshop in Tokyo on October the 12th. And as a reminder on the 7th of August, the bit where you get to be in my book named will close. So go to unbound.com and look up A Passion for Passion. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Ped Hunter,

your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week.