The Gargle - Silicon Valley | Pride | Shame

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

John-Luke Roberts and Eleanor Morton join host Alice Fraser for episode 16 of The Gargle - the weekly topical comedy podcast from The Bugle.🦠 Bitcoin Covid party🇨🇦 NFT dogecoin party🚁 Flying cars✈️ Joe Rogan sky-shamed🏳️‍🌈 ‍Pinkertons for Pride🦸🏻‍♂️ Superhero sex tips 💦 Space jizzThis 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

or tracks or engines of some variety. God, what a hot sell this is. I mean, you must be so excited. Listen now. ACAST powers the world's best 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. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. Neither light nor dark, because the ocular nerve has nothing to do with audio content. This is The Gargle, the glossy magazine for the Bugles, audio newspaper for a visual world. Welcome to the show this week. Your guests are Eleanor Morton. Hello. And John Luke Roberts, returning. Hello. Hello. How are you both? Well, I can't speak for Eleanor, but I'm fine.

I'm good, but John Luke is terrible. Do you mean morally or...? Yeah, why not? Why not? Why not? Why not? Let's throw that into the mix early on in the magazine. First, we should look at the front page. The front page this week is a picture of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck

from when they used to date, and a new picture of them dating now. The headline reads, J-Lo and Ben Affleck back together again or a dangerous rupture in time-space continuum. Our quote marks scientists speculate. And the satirical cartoon this week is Jeff Bezos with a big space rocket strapped to a super yacht, strapped to his groin like a codpiece, standing off against his ex-wife Mackenzie Scott, who has a bigger codpiece with a little script written on it that says,

donating $2.75 billion to charity. The speech bubble from Jeff Bezos says, it's not a competition. Let's get into the magazine. Section one this week, Silicon Valley. Let's get into the magazine. Section one this week, Silicon Valley. This is our latest in Silicon Valley news, which is there was a party in Miami to glorify Bitcoin.

Eleanor Morton, you look like a Bitcoin enthusiast. Can you unpack this story for us a little? I was about to say I have tried to research Bitcoin and all of the cryptos on numerous occasions, and I still don't really understand anything about how it works or anything. Are they real? Can you touch them? Or are they all on a download? Well, the point is, what happened was there was a conference or or a con a convention for bitcoin in miami which seems like a dangerous place to put a load of people who are very into cryptocurrency far too hot um

but uh and they all a lovely time i don't know what you do at a bit a bitcoin uh conference i don't know if there's like people dressed up as like sexy bitcoins or well so they congregated together without any masks is the thing they came to this massive convention a whole bunch of them ended up catching covid but it's funny to me that that a group of people who can believe in imaginary money based in the blockchain refuse to believe in a very real virus it feels that if you have the ability to get your head around the complexities of the blockchain you should be able to to get your head around the complexities of viral infection but apparently not if you use uh invisible money you should use you should be aware of the idea of

invisible germs but i guess i guess it all depends on john Luke. You look more like you know about Bitcoin, do you? Oh, no, I know nothing about that. No, I thought that until recently, I thought cryptocurrency was an Irish rich vampire. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there you go.

No, I'm quite into cryptid currency, which is the coins Bigfoot uses. The thing about this I don't think is fair is if your thing is liking fake money, imaginary virtual money, then why do you have to meet up in real life? That's our thing. Why can't you meet up online and not spread these things around? I mean, doesn't that stand to... The people who like real money should meet in real places? Although I understand as I'm saying this, the idea of real money doesn't really hold water because real

money is just a promise for some gold which no longer exists. That's right, isn't it? Yeah. So like the idea of Bitcoin is a lovely idea. But at the moment, in the absence of some sort of regulatory regime, the whole point of Bitcoin is to sort of avoid things like taxes. But in the absence of regulatory regimes, it's difficult to convert Bitcoin into goods and services. So at the moment, it is just money cosplay. Very expensive money cosplay. Aren't the coins huge in terms of worth? So what I'm picturing is a is a huge giant coin like you get in a video game but i guess how like would you pay for your shopping

with like 0.0001 percent of a bitcoin or something that yeah like a pizza slice you take a slice out of the coin to pay for a virtual piece of pizza slice i guess at least you can buy the bitcoin and see if it bins i guess at least least Bitcoin is more hygienic because real money is disgusting and physically gross I don't want to think about what's on it No just lick it clean like a cat before you hand it over Do you do that?

Yeah With my scrapey tongue At least the thing about Bitcoin is that while it is very energy intensive to produce there's meant to be a cap on the number of absolute Bitcoins that will ever be able to exist. Unlike some of these other cryptocurrencies, including Dogecoin, the coin based on the Shiba Inu Japanese dog, which is currently the centre of a scandal. Justin Trudeau's half-brother has decided that he is creating a fake event

at which he will be giving away fake money to make a real party. Sorry, you didn't finish the thought. You said Justin Trudeau's half-brother. What's the other half? Justin Trudeau's half-brother, half-fish or half-horse? Given the criticism that he's levelled at Justin Trudeau in the past, it's probably half brother, half enemy. But he loves cryptocurrency.

He's not a big fan of his own brother. And he's decided that this joke cryptocurrency, which people love a joke. They love a joke so much that it is now the sixth most highly valued digital asset by market cap. And Elon Musk keeps talking about it. So people do keep buying it because that's the way the world works now but he's launched this event called the million doge

disco where he'll uh dish out augmented reality disco doge nfts and that's like a mad lib but a mad lib where none of the words make sense i don't understand i can't even visualize half of the concepts that we're talking about right now because the coins aren't they're not being given out physically are they oh no i know no absolutely not but he's explained it if you if for those people who are confused he's explained it with a series of other words saying our ultimate dream is to create a doge-fueled party metaverse a new party layer that will sit atop reality allowing anyone anywhere to instantly step into a parallel dimension alive with sound light and positive vibes which i think is called turning on the radio but i'm not a hundred percent sure are we just gonna have to wait for him to

release some other words to explain those words is this this just going on and on and on in Neverending? Yes, he's creating a virtual reality made out of words that only make sense to some people. Footnotes on footnotes on footnotes on footnotes. Yeah, it's basically the same as if you built a clubhouse in a treehouse and said no girls allowed without the password. And the password are all of these words. I quite like dogecoin i like the idea of making something as a joke and then suddenly finding uh it's worth huge amounts of money i would love that in my personal life um i just i don't know i

don't know why it happened to the dogecoin people and not to me yet well i mean what would you uh put on a john luke roberts bitcoin you know what i'd call it bitcoin but with two t's so there's enough confusion that people might invest heavily in my coin is that allowed can i do that i think uh there's no rules right no no it's all i did i listened i've listened to i've listened to so many documentaries about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and I don't really understand one, but there was one very entertaining one where the whole idea was the privacy of the thing. And so they had a ceremony where they wore wizard hats

and got in a hotel with loads of different phones. It was great. It was really good. But I forget the name of the currency. Look, I think the problem, my personal problem with Bitcoin, and I've said this before, is that there are some people who are interested in the blockchain as a concept. You know, this incredible idea of the blockchain as a decentralized way of regulating money, which hitherto has been controlled by government. So it's the prospect of a potential utopia.

But most people who have bought Bitcoin are not the people who understand Bitcoin. They are people who have bought it because some f***head on a podcast told them to. And they're just carpetbag scammeisters. They just wanted a shortcut to wealth. They're the kind of people who would buy erectile dysfunction pills off an email. And in this instance, it happened to work. And now they think they're smart. Do those pills not work?

They work, if anything, too well. It's been four months now and it's not gone down they're on the tube on the tube they're opposed to saying if you're reading about bitcoin on the tube now's the time to buy and it's no it isn't two years ago is the time to buy if you're reading about on the tube sell now please sell and i know nothing it's like the housing market the best time to buy a house was the 70s and the best time to buy bitcoin was the 70s when it was not a thing and then it's not a thing now speaking of pie in the sky uh dreams there is currently a car company that is hoping to take to the skies to create flying Ubers. Eleanor Morton, you know all about Uber. Tell us about this story.

I feel like everything we're talking about is stuff that if you told me we were going to talk about this five years ago, I'd have been like, that sounds like an insane, weird future. But yeah yeah they're trying to do uh flying ubers first of all i don't understand the difference between a car and a small plane a flying car and a small plane what what would the difference be it is it that they have number plates and cup holders or what's i don't know uh i don't know enough about the technology but they want to, they say they want to make them. I feel like it's one of those things that everyone keeps talking about happening,

but it's not going to happen. Like hoverboards. Hoverboards never really happened. We have like those wheel things that you can stand on, but they're not hoverboards. So it is pie in the sky, but it's a car in the sky, and it's a car that will charge you and then not bring you to your destination. I think the thing about it is that it is a small plane,

but they're just calling it a flying car so it sounds cooler and so that they don't have to undergo stringent plane regulations, which I imagine exist. I don't, again, I don't know. I'd imagine it's a kind of large drone rather than a plane. So I should have looked at the pictures, I think. You know, so it can take off vertically. It's like a manned drone.

The difference between a drone and a plane being whether there's a man in it. Well, no, you've got those little, you've got those helicopters, you know, they go... I mean, specifically the drones that you get an eight-year-old for Christmas and then they fly around the room a bit

and then stop. Those drones, you know, little plastic drones. But big. A helicopter. Yeah, I mean a helicopter. He means a you know, little plastic drones. But big. A helicopter. Yeah, I mean a helicopter. He means a helicopter. That's what I'm talking about, a helicopter. It's like a plane but less so.

It's like a car but more so. And it's not a helicopter at all. You should go into copywriting. That is absolutely wonderful. I'm sold. The thing I don't understand, they talk about this as to ease congestion. But it seems to be the last

thing you want is to add another axis into what these vehicles are able to do without regulation without being able to tell them what but how many crashes will there be if things and how much more traffic will there be when you go great we can do it in the sky as well my grandmother always said these new technologies always promising to ease congestion but what you really want is a bit of lemon and honey in hot water. That's Uber Eats. When you watch futuristic films like The Fifth Element and stuff like Futurama, and they've got traffic flying cars,

and the cars, they're always in very straight traffic lines in the sky, and there's always traffic in the light. There's always congestion in those. So, you know, it doesn't make it look better. But I don't understand how do they know to stay in a straight line because there's nothing there. It's air. How do they...

It's a 3D... In Back to the Future 2, I think there's little floating markers between the thing. Okay, that makes sense. But I can't speak to the other films. But Back to the Future, the whole franchise, they thought everything through except for the plot. Okay, that makes sense. But I can't speak to the other films. But Back to the Future, the whole franchise, they thought everything through except for the plot.

But it was fun anyway, so good. Are these going to be driverless flying Ubers? Because I can't think of anything more terrifying. Because they already did driverless Ubers and that didn't work, I don't think. Well, people have died. If someone's died died it doesn't work right yes yes how old yes i mean yeah i mean but cars if if dr frankenstein had come in with that

attitude yeah no you're right you never have had the cautionary tale about trying to play god try try and try again i can't think of any good size to a flying car because, you know, the whole point of a flying car is it sounds fun and exciting and freeing, but the second you get a flying car, there's going to be traffic and regulations and all the stuff that was on the ground. So there's no upside. Ah! Ah!

Well, if... There's an upside and there's a downside and there's a long through the air and... Yeah. Dr Frankenstein definitely was the was the exemplar of the motto try and try again and if at first you don't succeed it'll come and kill you because you're not its real dad cautionary tale for the ages yeah i think it's the frankenstein of inventions and i don't want to go near one but that's just that's just me. I'm not very... Alice, you seem like you're quite tech-forward.

Is that fair? Only because I live in Australia. I'm about nine hours tech-forward of where you are. I think I just meant that you sounded like you understood cryptocurrency more than me. Only because I'm constantly forced to make jokes about it. Can I also... I don't mean to be rude, Eleanor, but knowing, understanding more than you about cryptography,

it doesn't necessarily mean that Alice is tech forward. So much as just tech there, just tech in the middle, tech where we are. Tech fine. Yeah. How long is a piece of string and how much can you sell it for as an NFT? Six inches and £100,000.

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ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com Now it's time for section two of this magazine, Sky Shame. A Skywritten marriage proposal has included a stinger at the end. John Luke Roberts, you've got a spouse. Tell us about this Skywriting story.

Well, yeah, so this guy paid to Skywrite a proposal, which means getting a plane to fly and leave a chemtrail behind it with, obviously, the drugs in which alter people and make them more susceptible to government interference, but also a message. And romance. And romance. So he proposed. Then there were a series of further messages after that because he paid for 10. I think they did a kind of 10 messages for a certain amount of money deal. And so the second one was, she said yes. And actually, already I think that's not on. I think if you're going to propose through skywriting,

you should then have to wait for your prospective fiancé to hire their own plane and skywrite their response. So you have to sweat a bit while you're waiting for the yes or maybe no. But then I think the sixth one... Yes, let the punishment fit the crime, let the fit to the request exactly yes yeah exactly you of course you're a lawyer i forgot but then about i think the sixth or seventh one he decided to slip in there after these she said yes oh it's brilliant ah marriage great and then he went off topic a bit and one of them just said um joe rogan is literally five foot three with literally spelt wrong with literally uh literally spelt wrong but i don't think you can blame the guy

for that i think the plane it's hard to for a plane to spell but i mean pilots aren't meant to pass spelling tests so there must be extra stress there when you're i don't know how it works well this is the question is it is it is it the it's the same as all sort of cake spelling situations is the problem in the writing down of the message or is it the problem in the transcription of the message? That's a good point. We're not sure where the fault lies. Did he literally write down literally wrong?

Apparently it was about 17 grand to get this done. So you must really want people to know what Joe Rogan's height is. So this is the question. This is the central question. Is the marriage proposal a fake out in order to get to the Joe Rogan's height is. So this is the question, this is the central question. Is the marriage proposal a fake out in order to get to the Joe Rogan insult or is the Joe Rogan insult something fun that they say together as a bonding moment

in their relationship? Did they bond over seeing Joe Rogan being surprised at his height? Is it true? Who knows how tall Joe Rogan is? We only know how much he talks, which is a lot. And that has nothing to do with anything. So to me, this is all, the whole thing,

the whole idea of putting this up is predicated on the idea that this fact about Joe Rogan, his height, that he's smaller than you would maybe expect, predicate the idea that he's both of interest and surprising. And I don't think it's of interest and i don't think it's of interest and i don't think it's particularly surprising it's not like he's if you said joe rogan is 12 foot tall that would be like oh my god that's impressive wow i thank you for telling me this information so i thought that i would come up with some facts about joe rogan that i would find

interesting if they were sky written in a marriage proposal. Fact one. Joe Rogan trained to be a priest but left because Sunday Mass clashed with his five-a-side football tournament. That would be surprising. That would be of interest. That would. Joe Rogan used to write on the Golden Girls. Like Sam Harris's mum.

If you can afford those extra letters, yeah, like Sam Harris's mum. Joe Rogan beat someone up at a swingers party because he thought that that person was stealing his car keys. Or Joe Rogan is flying this plane. All those things I think would be more interesting. I think the sort of the premises, and it's an inherently flawed premise, is they're trying to body shame Joe Rogan

because they feel that to draw attention to his height would also draw attention to the fact that he is a hypocrite because he pushes these quite strict understandings of what masculinity entails, which includes that kind of toxic idea that men should be a certain height. And so that he's falling short by his own standards in the way that people would insult Donald Trump by calling him fat because he was so image obsessed. And then, of course, the problematicness of entering into that arena and throwing the kind of shit that everyone else is throwing and making you sort of a dirty participant. That said, still pretty funny. You're pretty funny.

I'm trying to think of the pettiest thing I would write in skywriting, having paid several thousand pounds for it. Candles are too expensive. I mean, that's pretty good. What about, what about, f*** you clouds, you can't do this. I hate skywriting. Write that in skywritingwriting self-loathing how am I driving?

this pilot sucks that would be pretty petty I don't have my pilot's license that's always fun help help I'm trapped in the cracker factory I also don't agree with public proposals like that I think they put a lot of pressure on people. But I guess if the proposal is literally thousands of feet away from you,

you don't feel under that much pressure. But then equally, you can't really get away from it because every time you look up, it's still there. Yes, I think you'd have to know your partner particularly well and to know that that was the kind of thing that they would like, that they were the kind of person who would believe in that kind of public display and that you'd already talked about marriage probably and had a positive thing i i had a friend who was at a restaurant on

valentine's day once and and saw a man proposed to his uh girlfriend and she said no oh this isn't that's that's yeah because what happens then if they say no for all the people that weren't those two people probably the most romantic way to spend valentine's day because that's a bonding moment you'll never forget trauma bonding i think that's called well uh just a personal message out there to to joe rogan and his small listenership uh which is i don't care what height you are i still think you're fine but not as great as people think you are alice we don't know that his listenership is small just because he is. We don't.

It doesn't work that way. That's all the time we have for our section two because now it is time for our reviews. Each of our guest editors this week has brought in something to review out of five stars. Eleanor, what have you brought us? I brought the colour blue. Oh, hello.

So as a concept, it's a great color for many reasons tonally lovely um goes great with a lot of things a lot of different people suit it a lot of the best things are blue sky c that's it but you know those two are quite big so that's good the man group yes blue man group blue fin tuna the blues jazz music and uh very calming statistically as shown it's very calm in color uh picasso's periods and also periods in advertisements yep yep exactly picasso's uh blue period which sounds you should go to the doctor about that but um just really good color really like it always been a fan been there for me throughout my life you know i've always had blue things around me and uh

so yeah i just like five definitely five stars five stars for me excellent five stars for blue john luke roberts what have you brought us into to review um the the heart symbol or emoji you know the little sort of two round bits and then a pointy bit at the bottom. Been used obviously for a very long time. Now, it doesn't look much like a heart. Obviously, hearts are sort of more like fists, really, fists of muscle and tubes. What it does look like, it looks passably like like a a bum um at least half of it looks so it's it's got part of the body but the wrong part and then it's got this sort of viciously sharp bit

very pointy on the other side which of course a heart can't have you can't have a sharp heart you'd be stabbing yourself all the time when you sat down so i think their mind wandered halfway through um they started on one side ended up drawing a bottom don't know what they were thinking of i think they got into a more lusty mood than they'd been meaning to when they started off romantically so i'd like to give the heart symbol one out of five one out of five or it could be an iconograph an abbreviation of the saying the way to a man's heart is through his bottom if you go the long way. It could be.

Maybe it is. Okay, two out of five. That's all the time we have for our review section because now it's time for section three, Pride. It is Pride Month this month. And as always, people are doing things that are incredibly embarrassing including the reappearance of the Pinkertons. If you don't remember the Pinkertons from breaking up mining strikes in the 1800s you might remember them from

recently busting unions for Amazon. And it's an amazing thing that a family business has been so successful for so long despite having bloody hands up to the elbows for generations of like ruining workers rights on behalf of the wealthy they have recently drawn attention to themselves by changing their icon to a rainbow icon Pinkerton's national detective agency with their the icon of an eye that stares and says, we never sleep, has now done a rainbow eye. And I have a lot of feelings about it. John Luke Roberts, do you want to explain this, why this might be not the best thing? Well, I mean, the corporatisation of Pride, honestly,

means I'm glad that it's gone this far. Like, I hope that there'll be some point at which, you know, Pinkerton's doing it might just be the thing which breaks the camel's back, but probably not. You know, like if, what's the weapons international conglomerate, if they did it? Although the other thing I would say is that Pinkerton's have missed the trick by just redesigning the logo by changing the

colours and not changing their name to red and yellow and green and blue and Pinkertons. That would have happened. There's more colours than that in it though. So I should have. But you get the joke. That's the general idea. That's the. That is the general idea. I mean, it's sort of the epitome of what is being done here. It might be the pinnacle of pink washing or pinkerton washing as it's now going to be renamed uh because the pinkertons have bought that logo and now claim it as their own and are going to destroy both your family and your business if you try to fight them on the copyright but it is just an amazing thing these are people who have for literally hundreds of years been known for fighting against the rights of the under trod in

the name of of capital and and and the big bosses and for them to sort of take on themselves the mantle of an oppressed group in order to sell bullying services it seems to be bullying services is the main thing that they sell uh it just it does it does sting a little i think it's nice that they've sort of you know they're saying hey it doesn't matter if you're gay if you're straight if you're trans if you're non-binary we'll beat you up no matter what you know uh also i like i really like that such a dark grim this isn't this isn't a hate crime it's a crime against humanity humanity as a whole yeah exactly it's like it's not cause you're

gay it's because we're terrible um and i really like that such a horrible group has such a delightful agatha christie style name uh doesn't pinkerton sound like two lady detectives in the 30s uh who like they set they set up a detective agency because they're both widowed and one of them's got a pug and they only solve crimes that are to do with a garden fate that's what it sounds like so it's really funny It speaks so well of their longevity

that they've been around since evil was twee you know the original Pinkertons had to put aside time in their day for twirling their mustachios as they tied young women to train tracks. Look at them still chugging along. But I would be murderous and evil if I never slept, to be honest. Because studies have shown that it's really bad for you not to sleep.

So no wonder they're in such a bad mood, you know. It's true. they chose the wrong motto hey oh now it's time for our superhero sex tips sealed section our pull out of the gargle this week in response to assertions that batman does not eat pussy despite the fact that it is clearly the only reason that his mask is shaped like that is to leave room for optimum head but in the name of batman here is a series of superhero sex tips from your favorite superheroes. The reason that was given by the way for why heroes don't give head is that they have to sell toys to children. They have to sell Batman toys and so heroes can't do things that

would make toys unsellable. To which I say that is a stupid argument. Do you have any idea how many Batman sex equipments you could fit on an adults-only utility belt? I just don't. Follow it. But first out of the gate in our sealed section is an announcement that all superheroes do give head, even the ones that aren't very good at it. The union of supervillains would also like it to be known that they also give amazing head, but you have to take supervillain chat with a pinch of salt. Also, to be honest, don't trust the superheroes when they say they're great at head.

Nobody that good looking ever has to be good in bed. They just have to leave the lights on for you to upgrade their score by at least 10%. A mind-blowing head is the most promised, least delivered thing since the coffee in the phrase, let's get coffee sometime. Everyone promises it and no one delivers it but here are a few pictures of your favorite superheroes giving sex tips here's hulk saying hulk says hulk smash with consent advice from superman about relationships never pretend to be someone you're not you're just setting yourself up for a hostage situation later down the line and uh an assertion just generally from the Batman Corporation that

Batman does give head but you have to pick your Batman. Adam West and his Robin this is a fact, once got kicked out of an orgy for refusing to break character. You know they're a laugh in the sack. You know Adam West would just pretend to climb you for fun. On the other hand, Christian Bale

Batman would just shout, where is she? at your vagina in the hope of finding your clitoris. So you've got to pick the Batman. I think you can't. Have either of you got any sex tips from superheroes before I get on to the fantastic foursome? Well, not from superheroes, but actual bats have sex upside down. Some of them do anyway.

So I don't know if i want batman anywhere near me to be honest because if he's taking his sex tips from bats the way he's taking everything else from bats um it would be a lot of blood to the head or a big rush to the head not good for you and um just not very comfortable i don't think so actually you know i can leave him the idea that so what happened was the Warner Brothers, or, well, Warner Brothers, I guess it was Warner Brothers because they're DC, said to the Harley Quinn cartoon,

no, you can't have Batman. Yes, and Harley Quinn is a really good cartoon and I heavily endorse it and it's very good. Yeah, right. FYI. But the selling toys thing is worth... I actually think it's really out of character for Batman. I do not believe Batman would give head.

Batman would only hunt out a clitoris if he thought it had killed his parents. I mean, his only interest in a vagina would be in its similarity and lack of similarity to a bat cave. You do not want to let him down there. He'll try and store a supercomputer and half a dozen bat vehicles in there. So I think Batman, definitely a selfish lover. Not sure he's ever taken the um the the cowl off i think he probably has a bruce wayne mask he puts on top of it it is horrible to me that this is obviously something warner brothers has already thought

about in detail um because they were able to come back and be like no we've got a follower about this here's all the things they can't do. Here's all the sexual positions they'd never do. Here's all the Batman he would never give head. He would never text to make sure you got home safe. He would... Because he'd already know. He would never offer to buy you a drink if you were sort of hinting that you were broke,

but too embarrassed to admit it. All that stuff, I think, is in a folder somewhere. Well, that's all the time we have for our sealed sex section, superhero sex tips section. Now it's time for section four, space jeers. Our clean section is space jeers. This is the news that mouse sperm has thrived despite six years of exposure to space radiation and is now currently being fine after, I don't know.

It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. And so maybe it will be fine. Maybe our jizz will be fine. That's what you want from mouse jizz. Yeah. I feel like this is sort of jumping the gun a little bit.

It seems like we're looking forward to a future in which you'll be able to get IVF in space for any particular reason. But John Lucas, have you been following this mouse jizz story? Yeah, I did. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I've got a Google alert set up for mouse jizz. So any mouse jizz story pops up immediately for anything else. Yeah, so they put freeze dried mouse sperm on it, which is the that's the scientific name for mouse jizz. They put that on the ISS, I think, and then six years down the line found that it could still make perfectly healthy little mouse babies. Yeah? Well, yeah. So they're basically hoping this is like good news for human testicles that have been to space, that you'll be able to have healthy

children as astronauts. But I just feel sad for all the previous astronauts who had to wonder. Well, not just that. I was really excited about all the mutant space babies we were going to have with all those brilliant like telepathy powers and being able to move things using just their minds and be able to fly unaided of wings and now no it's just going to be normal boring human babies that happen to live on Mars. Great thanks a lot science. I just can't imagine the stress of having been an astronaut and coming back to earth and wondering what kind of mice your balls would is after having been into space that's a very sad very sad prospect for all these people never really thought about mice having sperm until until now actually uh i mean obviously they do because they're mammals but it just seems um

they're so small anyway their sperm must be really tiny, which is very sweet. Actually, no, a mouse sperm is almost as big as a mouse. There's just this skin shell over it with the ears on and the whiskers. Oh, God. Oh, God. But I don't understand this obsession we have as a species with living on Mars. I don't know why we want to live on Mars.

Nothing about Mars appeals to me. It looks terrible. It looks boring. And I don't know why we want to live on Mars and nothing about Mars appeals to me. It's it looks terrible It looks boring And I don't know why we're so desperate to get there I guess unless obviously we set fire to this planet which looks likely but but people get really like Elon Musk is very pro Living on Mars and I don't he can I'd love him to go live on Mars. I don't but I don't really see It's not got any shops. So I'm probably not gonna go I think people want to live on mars

for the same reason that students want to live out live out of home i mean they go from an objectively way better more comfortable house to living in a shithole for no reason but they can microwave their own horrible food and that's that's all anyone ever really wants there's no tax laws on mars either so it's all the billionaires well i mean isn't he isn't isn't jeff bezos in space right now is that i i i think he's either there or on his way there as we speak he's going he's going with his brother um because uh that's a great way to do things wait was his brother the one who bought the ticket no no no okay because he's there's a ticket somebody some very rich person anonymously gets to go into space with Jeff Bezos, doesn't it? And Jeff Bezos's brother.

I would never go to space with someone and their brother. You know, they're just going to be farting and blaming each other. As far as I can tell, the way most brothers bond with each other is by sort of acts of mild aggression. is by sort of act of mild aggression. I think it would be funny if we found out that mouse sperm works in space but no one else's did and then mice reproduced and became like a mutant, new powerful species that could rule us in space. But they wouldn't be mutants. That's the whole thing.

They'd just be normal mice. I guess they wouldn't, no. And as someone who's currently on the east coast of Australia, a lot of normal mice breeding is not the right thing. Oh my god. I saw the news about that. That was insane. Eleanor, I thought you were doing the origin story for the clangers. No, but thank you for pointing out a better ending to that. Alice, do you know what... do they have the clangers in Australia? No, what are the clangers?

Is it not a kind of sweet... Oh, my... No, it's... It's a tiny little knitted pink mouse species that lives on the moon in a children's TV show. And I think their noises were made with, like, penny... They were... Yeah. We'll do clanger noises now.

Yeah. And there was a soup dragon, or was that Button Moon? No, it was the clangers. No, that was the clangers. British children's television just tells me that there was a lot of people in the 70s on a lot of drugs allowed to make a lot of television. All right, Round the Twist was made in the 90s,

so zip it. In Australia. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, now I thought about mousetraps more than I ever wanted to so I guess it's always nice to do new things isn't it welcome to the podcast

I hope it's not a case where they freeze dry all their food as well so I hope they didn't store it in the same place because you don't want to pour out your milk and find out it wasn't dehydrated milk yeah I remember as a kid I got freeze dried astronaut ice cream at the Science Museum, and now I'm wondering, how could they be so sure?

Yeah, you're pregnant with many mouse babies. Hooray! Scientists, they know everything. Which brings us to the end of today's show. We are flipping through the ad section at the back here. Hate your kids but don't want to go to prison? Cuddly Bunny Reprogramming Centre. We can turn your kids into someone you actually want to be around.

Or if you don't want to be around anyone, we can turn them into, I don't know, a garden ornament or a lamp. I don't know. They're your kid. Eleanor, have you got anything to plug? My Twitter is always there, at Eleanor Morton. But I'm around. I'm on the internet. And if you Google me, stuff will come up, so... Excellent. Flipping through more ads, second-hand lawn chairs

and do you love love but wish it was needlessly dark, violent and in slow motion? Now it is, coming this summer, Legally Blonde, the Snyder Cut. And John Luke Roberts, have you got anything to plug? I have a podcast currently being released weekly into the world called Sound Heap, which you are both in. I'm very proud of it. It's very silly. It's a fictional podcast network called Sound Heap, which you are both in. I'm very proud of it. It's very silly. It's just

a fictional podcast network called Sound Heap Inc, which makes hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of terrible podcasts. And it's got a cast list which is far too long. Or you can go to my website, johnluteroberts.co.uk and sign up to my mailing list so I can tell you things, because I'm

leaving Twitter because it's bad for my... It's bad for everyone. Oh, that's weird. I always feel very mentally stable. Really? Really? I'm pretty ruthless with the block button, so I find Twitter quite good.

Speaking of Twitter, a big thank you to some of our Twitter correspondents out there journalisting in the depths of the internet to find us some of our funny stories. Pablo Estevez has sent us the flying car story. Froggy Villius sent us the Joe Rogan story. And Radomio sent us the mouse jizz story. So thank you to them.

If you are on Twitter, I am at alliterative, A-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E. But also on Instagram under the same name. Find me on patreon.com slash alisfraser for a one-stop shop of all of my stand-up specials and podcasts and blogs and my weekly Tea with Alice salons, which are always actually a lot of fun. You're listening to The Gargle.

The Gargle is an Alice Fraser and Bugle Podcasts production. Your editor today is Ped Hunter and your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you 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.