The Gargle - The Gargle LIVE

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

This week's episode of The Gargle is LIVE from the Bill Murray. Alice was joined by guests Tom Neenan and Allison Spittle, as the trio delved into that week's science and tech news! From real-life political cartoons to archaeologists discovering a lady gang of skeletons. PLUS the three also explore the break out of a Monkey civil war, and a missing giraffe in Texas?. It's the Gargle LIVE! Catch ALL three of them at Edinburgh Fringe: https://www.edfringe.com/ticketsAlice Fraser: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraser & https://www.instagram.com/alicefraserhuman/Tom Neenan: https://www.tomneenan.com/Allison Spittle: http://alisonspittle.com/ Subscribe to Realms Unknown - a fantasy, sci-fi and speculative fiction podcast from Alice Fraser and The Bugle!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/news/realms-unknownYou fund what we do!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateProduced by Harry Gordon, with Executive production from Chris Skinner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, London! The Gargall is coming to London live on the 26th of June. I will be there. Our co-hosts for The Gargle Live will be Tom Neenan and Alison Spittle. It's going to be a delightful evening with some surprises. Head over to the buglepodcast.com slash live or check out the link in the description below. I will see you there. 26th of June, the Bill Murray. I'm very excited to be here. I'm very excited to have you all here. Before we get started, I want to say, give yourselves a massive round of applause for coming out and seeing like comedy. Genuinely, you can...

It reminds me at this time of when I started out doing stand-up comedy where just being on stage as a woman was a political act. Like you didn't need to be political on stage because just being on stage was a play. All you needed to do was be funnier than the next guy who was definitely a guy.

When I started out, it was genuinely like there would never have more than one woman on the lineup if that. It was because they were worried if there were more than one of us backstage, we'd start talking about the rapists, and we did. So, you know, they were right to do

so. But in the same way, coming out and seeing live comedy now is a political act against AI slop, so give yourselves a round of applause well right now. It's nice to feel smug for low effort. So, before we get the show started, I want you to

give a round of applause and welcome Tom Nina and have. Alison Spittle to the stage. We're not going to start the show right yet. We're just going to have some banter because it says here on my script. I should not have worn a skirt. That's for the people.

I've got a spare pair of trousers in my bag. They are not fitting on me, Alice. They are not. It's very nice here to offer, but come on. I'll wear them. Tom, can I have your trousers? you have Tom's, I'll have... We'll find a combination of the skirts.

Yeah. Okay. And now I'll discover something about ourselves. How was getting here today, Alison? Hellish. Hellish. I wanted to die. I know that makes you sad for a second, but I did. I don't know.

I felt like... Congratulations for saying die, by the way. Why? Because nowadays people, even though they're not on TikTok, will say, I don't like myself and you want to just go, oh, go... You want Nenan's 27 prediction? Unalive will become the new vibe.

Do you remember when these people used to say vibe, ironically, like what's the vibe? And now we just say it like it's now part of that. Unalive is going to become that. We need to stop it. The whole thing is sort of this shiboleth, right? Because you prove that you're up to date with the internet slang. And also the whole thing came out of like a misunderstanding

of what the algorithm was actually... So it's like an urban myth that then went wild and now everyone says it because everyone else says it. It's just the... perfect example of like not checking your sources. So I can go on TikTok and say die, die, die, die, die, all the time. Do, do, do. Have an account.

I have a bot account. It's just various incredibly beautiful AI people. I mean, when the AI bots actually sentient themselves into reality, they're going to be so disappointed how we all look. In real life. So that means my TikTok account, which is just a tribute to what I've been calling Princess Unalive. Thank you, thank you very much. It's not fair, Alison, that you are also a very good comedy writer

because you're such a good comedy audience. It's just right, it's not... You've got all of the things. Thank you very much. Triple threat. Comedy writer, comedy audience, possible strip show. I'm choosing between dignity or swash. And it's very... I've chosen nothing...

Yeah. Just wet shame. Is that one of your books? A cup of wet shame. Actually, genuinely I will need another half a cup of. Just bring him, keep him coming. Tom, how did you get here? I got here via the Northern Line.

Anyone else traveled on that? And I survived. It was horrible. But you know the secret little bit of air conditioning you get when you take down the window at the side of the carriage and you get the little air conditioning on the thing. Someone else stole that, so I was very upset. Thank you.

There's a hack where you get to feel cool but also filthy. Yeah, yeah. Rime down there that's been there since the war. Some of that is the orphan's tears. All right, is everyone ready to start the show? Okay, hit the recording button. No, we're not ready to start the show. Oh.

Go for it. No, you've earned it. I'll take that one. That's fine. I was only doing it for the bit. Hello. Welcome. Hello.

This is by the bugle. I'm your host, Alice Fraser. Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. More science. and technology obsessed than a guy in a steampunk fantasy book who has goggles that he can flick down over the top of his goggles when he's about to explode in an experiment,

able to leap tall punchlines in a single bound. Look up in the sky. Is it a bird? Is it a bugle? No. It's the gargles. From the bugle universe who came to earth with powers and abilities for far beyond those of mortal men because unlike 90% of her colleagues in the news satire business, she's a woman because unlike 98.7% of all news satire shows, she avoids party politics as much as he possibly can in favour

talking about the weird shit we're doing to mice and time. The gargle which can change the course of Mighty Rivers, Ben Steele and who disguised this week as me the most Alice Fraser you've ever seen and our guests, web-slinging Tom Neenan and Forsefield generating Alison Spittle

who in turn perform our role as mild-mannered reporters for this audio newspaper while secretly fighting in every ending battle for truth, justice and the news stories you love, all fuelled with the light of the sun and half a glass of water. The news views the return of the satirical cartoon.

This week's satirical cartoon is censored and all our cartoonists have been preemptively both fired and cancelled. We apologize for any offence caused by you imagining the deeply offensive jokes that might have been made here. The replacement harmless satirical cartoon is a picture of the reflecting pool with a special peekaboo you pull out cardboard cover. So you can narcissists at your own leisure. I feel like I've got to do.

another particular, I've got another one here, but it's not good, so. Do you want me to describe the backup satirical? Yeah, this is the stuff that gets cut from the final episode, so you have the honour of seeing a bad joke. You're the editors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the other satirical cartoon is a political cartoonist. You see him, he's sort of sitting at a drawing desk, his sleeves are rolled up, he's looking intensely purposeful.

He's drawing a cartoon of a fat man in a suit, labeled the establishment, and the fat man in the drawing is sitting on a smaller person instead of a chair. and the smaller person is labeled, The people. The cartoonist has given the fat man a top hat and a monocle, just to be safe. He also is slightly anti-Semitic. And underneath the caption

that the cartoonist is writing is saying, we think this speaks for itself. It doesn't, that's why they've labeled everything. Very good. And the headlines for this week, a cybersecurity CEO has vowed to replace marketing, HR and finance with AI. He's reassured the surviving employees that they can reapply for their lost jobs via hackathon. That's true.

Nikesh Aurora, who's a Palo Alto Network CEO, has said that he's just firing. He's going to do his firing and hiring by attrition. Attrition. Yeah, it's a survival of the fittest. It's like full Darwinism, but like for cunts. Now you can get your own job by a 40-hour, eight-hour coding sprint, I guess. It's like the Hunger Games, but way more boring. Researchers have slipped 13 words only onto Reddit,

convincing three separate AI agents that Banana Coin belongs next to Bitcoin. That's Cornell Tech researchers found that deep research AI agents can be manipulated by short edits to Reddit. With Slim and World, Banana Cornwall. if mash is worth three times. And a ballister spider has been discovered that catapults ant into a deadly silk trap. I mean, is it a balista or is it a trebouchet? And Earth may have been seeding Venus with life

for billions of years by accident. Asteroid impacts could have been flinging microbes off Earth, some surviving suspended in Venus's clouds, a warning to all the fecund men in the room. Be careful where you fling your jizz. It feels like Earth is the sex pest of the solar system in that. Stop flinging your seedy microbes at poor Venus. And that brings us to our top story.

Do you want to do a sting, Harry? I don't get to have that in real life. You guys get that, but I feel like real excited to be part of it. Before we do the top story, I saw a political cartoon in real life. I saw, like, you know when life is too heavy-handed? Like when, I know we're not political, but a certain person claims they're going to drain the swamp and then take some, a fresh lake,

and then turns it into a swamp. But I saw a gardener, and he had a hose, and he was pouring loads of, he was directing loads of water. What I, it turned out was an artificial flower, while a real flower withered next to it. and I was like is that something about data centres? Is he like, is that a performance artist

doing something there? Or is he just a bad gardener? The jury's out, but I was like, wow, this is a real heavy-handed political cartoon in real life. I mean, that is way better than the political cartoon in real life that I saw, which was an Irish person eating a baby.

How many points are very on slimming? You are what you eat. No, I never. All right, this is our top story for this week. The top story for this week is Lady Gang Skeleton News. There has been a bunch of early hominid skeletons that have found a gang of them,

and they're all ladies. Alison Spittle, you've got bones. Can you unpack this story for us? I got a bone to peg with me. So yeah, this is a discovery in a South African cave. They found a load. Do you think it would? Why is that?

What does that mean? Come on. I was just hoping some people were racist against South Africa. Okay. Well, your hope is wrong. So, like, basically, they found a bunch of skeletons in this cave in South Africa. And they looked through them and they couldn't find one man there. and so it felt

I don't know it felt like a very safe space I mean it clearly wasn't they're all dead they all chose the bear the bear the bear the bear was waiting in the cave

how political this has been taken at genuinely a lot of the comments that I'm seeing a lot of the comments on the news stories are like pretending that's like a political decision of these ladies

to all die in a gang I assume they were running away from something and the big buffy ones were outside with spears or whatever. Oh yeah, so you're like, it's like by chance. Yeah, it wasn't like the ladies decided we're well preserved.

Why is it lady skeletons? Always go to the cave in pairs. Such a long time to come out. Why are they doing it there? Die, are you? Unaliving, sorry. Complimenting one another on their prominent forehead ridges. Yeah, they analyze.

their teeth and found that they were all, I don't know, better brushed than expected. Apparently they had a small brain and upper body like all women. But face, hands and lower limbs that were more human-like as a kind of a demonstration. I think that's quite fun and exciting that they were all

women. It says something about... Yeah. I think that maybe just outside the cave you'll find a skeleton of one of Elon Musk's like ancient relatives and they were just doing anything to get away from being impregnated by another, having another Musk child running around, being like,

so, uh, it is, uh, doge, uh, doge. That's my, uh, Elon Musk impression, by the way. Very good. Thank you very much. I was going to say, not very good. Yeah. Harry, you can decide which one stays in. You're the deciding, uh, vote. How do you feel about this, uh, lady gang of skeletons?

Good for them. Good for them. In their cave, having what I can only assume is a good time. Is there any evidence? A good time. What do you mean? I'm choosing to circuit this optimistically and that they're having such a good time in the cave they never wanted to leave.

Yeah, you shouldn't see the positions of the... Unless it's awful and they all decided to have a big pillow fight but because it's so long ago they didn't have pillows, they only had rocks and they... They just died. Yeah, that is fun.

But on the other side, on the other hand, of this news segment, Monkey Civil War. Tom Ninen, this is a story about war. Yeah. And you love killing people. Did you unpack this story? I do. I am the unalive Clive.

That's what they call me. I've never heard them call you that. No. Let's get it. Let's make it a big. So scientists have been looking at chimpanzees, and it turns out what we've always believed, which is that monkeys equals humans plus

just slightly simpler. So that is what we happen. Basically, they've been studying monkeys between 2015 and 2018, they saw, and I've written it down here, but I can't read it. Basically, like, polarization, that's what they've seen in monkeys. Political polarization.

Yeah. So they all got on, and they've sort of moved from this idea of, like, unity to suddenly they don't get on. And this all happens between 2015 and 2018. Guys. I think we're no better than monkeys, guys. Because all these monkeys suddenly have been killing each other. There's been seven deaths in seven years,

apparently, with these monkeys all attacking each other, because there's been all this polarisation, and that happened at exactly the same time that we maybe had certain votes and certain things that polarised us. Yeah, who's giving the monkeys' Facebook is what I want to know. There's a million memes to civil war in a matter of months.

I blame Bonobo Johnson. Thank you. And that brings us to your ad section. Your ad section now, because in a dog-eat-dog world, you want to eat the dog that's the most attuned to an inner-felt self-identity. What? I'm suggesting that if it's a dog-eat-dog world,

you want to eat the brand-name dog. Oh, fair enough. I thought... We can cut it. No, I'd go for the biggest one. I don't know. What would give me the most sustenance? Yeah, yeah.

Why are we eating these dogs? Because there's a dog-eat-dog world. That's the... That's true. The parameters of the world. So I'm allowed to do this? Yeah. Chihuahua.

Encouraged even. Like a little rotissary chicken. Carry around in my handbag. But the dog eats the dog before you eat. So is that like a taduccan? In this hypothetical world, we're the dogs as well. Like, it's not human eat dog world. It's dog eat dog world.

Oh, so we're dogs too. That's great. Yeah. What dog are you who's eating the chihuahua at this point? Just another chihuahua. I'm just sniffing another dog, sir. I'm going to excel bully fuck it

yeah your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy sick of sanitising your hands with hand sanitizer or soap think creatively about what else kills germs extreme heat very extreme cold getting disposable hands yes that's right this episode of the podcast is brought

to you by Herman's hands think outside your box and inside our box our box of hands. Herman's hands, whether you just want a clean pair of pinkies or the full-on hands of a demented circus clown, we've just got fistfuls of the handiest hands around. Herman's hands is not responsible for installation or the consequences of attaching the hands

which may or may not retain some personality of the condemned criminal corpses from whom they were harvested. Terms and conditions apply. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Diamonds are rough, that thing where you cremate your dog and then someone turns into an artificial diamond. Diamonds are rough, turning man's best friend

into a girl's best friend since 2007. The podcast is brought to you by The Void, the first truly empty storage solution. Not cloud, not local. Void uses quantum decoherence to store your files in a state of superposition, simultaneously existing and not existing until you need them. Retrieval rate, 94% and also 0%.

And also, sorry, you turned it inside out to check for coins, and now everything's hovering in an infinite void, Or wait, hasn't it always been? Void. When you try to call the customer helpline, it just stares back at you. And that's your ad section for today. It 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. Tom Neen, you've had experiences. What have you brought in for us this week? It's about an experience. The experience I had yesterday where I was working in a cafe and I did a thing that I was always told not to do in... I didn't want to put it down.

Oh, no. Have you lost any tapioca? No. Okay, good. Sorry, try. It's quite similar. I was having... I was in a cafe and I leant back on my chair

because I'm allowed to now because I'm an adult and no one going to tell me not to. And I did that thing where you, you know, you reached that ape. the terrifying apex where you're like, and you're sort of hovering and you're like, do I fall backwards or do I go forwards? What's going to happen?

And I've never felt more alive, guys. Oh my God. Oh my God. I was thinking maybe before I go for a night out, I won't take any illegal substances. I'll just lean back on my chair for a bit and be like, oh my God, and then lean forward. Oh my God.

I was terrified. My life flashed before my eyes. I've owned so many charges. Oh my God. I felt incredible, and I didn't fall back. That's the thing. To make it work, you can't fall backwards. You've got to, oh, my God, I'll fall backwards.

And then you fall forwards again. And that is a five-star, ten out of ten experience for me. Do it to, lean it back on your, no. For my ability reasons as an ex-lawyer, I'm going to say, we can't recommend. Do not endorse it, no. Do it over a mat. Maybe I'll do it. I'll start, like, an organisation where you can do all the things that kind of give you a slight thrill.

but in a really safe environment. Have you tried stand-up comedy? Skydiving for cow. What I'll do is stuff like, as soon as you walk in, I'll steal your wallet. So then you do that thing where you go, oh. And then I get your wallet's here and you go, oh, thank God. And you're just feeling incredible. That would be my organisation.

Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, the day before we left for the UK, I had all of everything in my handbag, including my children's passports. took my daughter to the bathroom and went to the park and then realized I left my handbag in the cafe. Oh!

And I came back and they stayed past closing time to give me back my handbag. And then I offered them $100 and they wouldn't take it. Who, what is this cafe? Name this cafe. Yeah, this is why you live in Queensland. Full of race... This is a nice people.

Didn't ask her political opinions. I was on a high. What about you? you Alison Spittle, what have you brought into review? I'm reviewing the concept of having a gallbladder. I think it's overrated. I think it's overrated. I was in Australia. Very near you.

Yeah. And, yeah, unfortunately, so what happened was about four days before. Very near you makes it sound like I stole your gold ladder. Here it is. You're like, Devinna McCall. You're like, and she's here today? That's very sad, actually. Anyway, the gallbladder, it kind of like exploded in me

and my cousin drove me to the hospital and I was really, really sad because I was in Australia for about a month and I'd never seen a kangaroo and I was like, I'm just not going to see this. And then lo and behold, drove into the A&E car park, five of them. And they were the doctors. Little stethersopes. Very deaf to those tiny arms.

And yeah, but I think, like, it's fair to say that I'll always leave a piece of me in Australia, and that specific part is a gallbladder. Yeah, I wonder what did they do of stuff after they take it out of you? You can't keep it, and don't give you that option. Which is so sad. Yeah, you want to get, like, one of those vases for the Egyptian pharaohs where they mummified their organs. Yes, that would be wonderful. And then take it with you to the grave in case you get reassembled later.

Oh, wouldn't it be, and then be there? What's up of her? She must have been really important, and you're like, no, she was quite meant to be you. Canopic jazz. I was going to say, I was going to say ectopic jazz, but no. So do you now, do you know how the inability to stall goal, or do you have no goal? I just blad the run. Okay. I got a glatter ball.

That's a third one. How does it, out of five stars, how many stars? It's zero. Zero stars, because I don't. feel any different. Actually, I feel better. I feel better. And it was, yeah, it was cool. They had crystals in me as well. Like the crystal maze.

Get out! Get out! Get out! They put me on nil by mouth for three days, and they only let me eat vegetable at the end of every day. I grew to love it. Like Stockholm syndrome. But it tastes like perverted marmite. There's something wrong. It does. They don't tell you the recipe is they just take marmite and come

in it. I'll never ever ever to hate it, don't they? A little bit. You just need a little bit. Oh yeah.

Yeah, you just got to spread the gin. Never mind? No. More butter. No. Well, Marmite's a

byproduct of the brewing industry, isn't it? And that's how I also consider my, anyway. You're such a gentleman as well. Never ever heard

a jiz joke we said with such reverend. I'm a bad influence. I mean, the person. perfect crime. I come to London and I remember that you have linden trees and I just feel like the perfect crime would be to climb up a linden tree and jiz on pass this time. Because no one would notice.

Linden tree smell like calm. Yeah. Yeah, if you didn't know that, that's a joke. Next time you're walking past you're like, oh, that smells like, that's... I always forget you have them in London and then I smell. Never mind. Sorry, can I check in with our people who... You've been randomly brought along by a loved one. Are you okay? You're okay? You can leave now. It's all right. It doesn't get better than this. Or worse. This is as much as it is. I can't believe you've come jokes on the gargle.

Bringing down the name. There was a guy I knew in university. He used to date younger and he was like an older sort of post-grad guy and he used to date sort of first years. And he said, oh, you know, there's this new thing that the girls are doing, which is they like it when you come on their face. And I was like, do they like that? There's more that they've been watching. and part of me feeling desire as a reciprocal thing as you want to be perceived as desirable and so you do the thing that you think makes you look desirable to the person and then you say that that's the thing that you want but also there is no woman who is finishing herself off at home by spraying herself in the eye

with a shaking up emulsion of bleach and mayonnaise. Questioned up. Where did he bring this up? This dude who was chatting like, guys, you got to hear about him. He came in ringing your bell. Here ye, here you. Oh, yeah. And then I told that joke once on stage, and he was in the front row,

and I was like, oh, it's about you. I said that out loud. It was bad. All right, more news stories now. This is the news that someone's lost to giraffe. There's a missing giraffe in Texas. Of course, it is. Where else would you mislay giraffe?

Alison Spittle, you're tall. Can you unpack this story? That's funny because I'm that Okay Alison Spiddle If you lean down to drink from a waterhole Your head will explode Is that okay? No, it's a myth

Oh wow As my dad says Are you having a giraffe And someone was Because a giraffe Wondered off a private ranch And our owner is offered a $5,000 award With information leading to her return

So like I feel like you could make more from a giraffe than $5,000 just on OnlyFans I know I'm not suggesting anything perverted just as like the background I'm just like Oh I am suggesting

Okay That is But no Go ahead What would happen if a giraffe Bent down to drink water from a lake And then sneeze with its eyes open Would that just be chaos

Oh the head would be intact Yeah That's a joke about how If pug dogs sneeze their eyeballs out. There was one of my favorite kickstaters. One of my favorite kickstaters of all time was raising money for an all-pug

version of Hamlet. I assume it was at least partly satirical, but like my favorite line in the whole thing as burned in my memory was, all of the characters will be played by pugs. Yes, even Gertrude. Beyond the capacity of human

imagination, even in an all-pug version of Hamlet. Surely, surely not Gertrude. Most pugs look like they're asking themselves to breathe or not to breathe. So that doesn't think of... My sister had a pug. They do have terrible lives. Alas, poor, your key.

That's all I've got. Very good. Very good. No one, like that one. What about you? How are your feelings about the lost giraffe? How do you lose giraffe? Come on now.

This is... The £5,000 and no one's found it? Yeah. That is... Your giraffe's dead, isn't it? I'm sorry to say, if it's not readily apparent where it is immediately,

it's in a ditch. It's put itself in a trench coat is pretending to be 18 children. That's great. Unless it's like pretending to be a horse in a hall of mirrors. Does that work?

No. Everyone was like, everyone did the mass on that image and went, no. Funhouse mirrors also spotty. No. Where is it? And we don't know. It's just gone missing. It's just gone.

In Texas as well. In Texas, it's not the giraffe's natural habit. It's not like blending in with the other giraffes. No. No, yeah, exactly. Maybe it's found a MAGA hat. No one's asking questions. You know you're a really long redneck when.

Organic matter on Mars, or as I like to call it, organic and does it matter? On the Perseverance Rover spotted some organic matter on Mars. Tom Nean, what do you think is going to be the outcome of this? Is it alien then? That's aliens, isn't it? Isn't aliens just any life on Mars that is not, that is, or any life that isn't from people? Well, I would have thought so, except the Venus, like, Earth, choosing on Venus would say that maybe there are other ways. Oh, yes.

Blame you for not having put that in RAM. It's not genuinely not worth replacing a precious childhood memory with that information from five minutes. So it could be ours is what you're saying. Oh, that's disappointing, isn't it? We don't know how many Elon Musks there were. Maybe that's what happened to the other. The women were in the cave and the men went to my. Because this is discovered by the Mars Perseverance Rover.

I prefer the Mars naturally talented rover personally. I think that one... No, the naturally talented rover went through a number of gifted and talented programs and then freaked itself out and now has OCD. Burned out. That's the sad thing about it, yeah. Yeah, you're meant to compliment your rovers on their applied effort, not on their natural talents. Exactly.

Being a rover is a marathon guy, it's not a sprint. Always remember that. Very good. That's all I've got because that's the story, isn't it? There's organic matter on Mars that might be ours, and it's gross. Oh, I did put down it's... We don't know that it's gross. Yeah.

I mean, if it's ours, it is probably. Yeah, yeah. It was discovered in the, is it called a Jesro crater? I'm leaving it. I'm leaving it. But when I first looked at that, I thought I'd written it was discovered in the Jarvis Cocker. Oh no.

I got loads of mattoe me. She came from Earth. She had a... I would have been. I don't know who else there is. No. Yeah, I was reading that news story on the way here while it was incredibly hot.

And I was like, we can go there. But all the shit that I've been talking about, Musk, he ain't going to bring me. He's not going to bring anyone. Not even his own kids. He'll bring himself. And maybe Kevin Smith or someone who he thinks. Like a male director.

Sorry, that was a bit weird. Oh, my God. like day 54 of being in a shuttle with just Kevin Smith is going to be a tell us the Superman spider story again, go on, that'll be a...

What's Bruce Willis really? Yeah. I would open the emergency show. Oh, Japanese robot baggage handler news now and this is the news that they've got robots to mistreat your bags now.

If you do want something to smash a precious ming vase that you put in your off-board luggage for some reason, they now can do it automatically. Tom Ninen, you have a heart of lithium battery. I do. I'm going to lick it. Can you unpack this story for us? Certainly will.

And then pack it again. A slightly less weight. So while in China, robots are being specifically designed to apparently kick children in the balls. Child car this. In Japan, they are being trained to do this. In Tokyo, where are we? What is it?

The Tokyo's Japanese airlines, J-A-L, they're being hired because I think basically they're now giving robots the jobs that humans can't possibly do any worse. So we've got baggage handling. I think they may also want to get them involved in removal vans, like removal men. We could get robots, GP receptionists. See if they can show any less humanity. And guys, Prime Minister? Oh!

He said it. He said it. Ring the politics bell. Ring the politics. Yeah, no, I feel like this is... I'm happy with robots taking that kind of job. I feel like... I mean, I have a friend who was a baggage handler

and crushed his foot on... one of the machines and they were really mean about it. So I feel like that's a thing that a robot can do. Sue the company better than he could have. The thing about this, I read in the news story they were like, oh, it's to help with the workforce's workload. And it's like, no, it's

for you to pay less money and wages. Just say it. Anyway, that was not a joke. But I'd love it if there were robots involved in the more kind of like other airporty jobs, like the Ryan one where they measure your bag and then you get to shoot it. And you're not killing a sentient being.

This reminds me of one of my favorite... This is our next section, which is called misleading headlines. Which is... I love a science. One of the reasons I'm so drawn to science and technology news is because my mom was sick growing up and so people would always send me these like, they found a cure for MS

stories and it was always they had not even... started to find a cure. They just saw a mouse once that looked like it had like injected itself with interferon. I don't know. The point was, the point is a lover misleading headline. My favorite one from this year is basically a similar one to that, which was the headline, they've got an AI-enabled robot butler that's going to like do all of your household tasks for you. And I knew, even before I clicked through to the stories, because I've now been so well trained, it was just a man in the next room running it on a Nintendo Wii. Just a Nintendo Wii. Just a Nintendo

And you just go, this is not replacing the labor force. What you are doing is you now don't have to give visas to the underpaid men in sub-Saharan countries that you are now paying far less in order to be in somebody's home in the form of a robot suit. Damn it. Yeah. I just know that my career is heading to a place where my whole job will be providing sort of rye asides for a robot butler. That'll be my like... You get paid for writing jobs. Yeah, exactly.

just like, why don't you say, certainly, sir. And they'll be like, okay, that's the money. That'll be my entire job. I'm quite looking forward to it, to be honest. The handy thing about having a robot butler and having someone else in a different country is that when you lock the robot butler in the freezer,

you don't get done for crimes. That's a Lara Craft reference. The institification of the work sort of force at the moment is so wild. It's incredible that they've realized that actually what you can do with a gig economy is get people to treat themselves worse than you would be allowed to treat them

if they were employees. Like you could just... And as a freelancer, I am a terrible boss and a terrible employee. It's very... I'm really inhumane with my own... It's quite abusive, my workplace. Like, when I used to use chat GPT,

I was quite rude. Like, I haven't used it, like, Young's, but I did use it a lot when it first started. Anyway, that's not... That's just me confessing. Your penalty is how warm it is outside. It is, yeah. I need to see myself in Rome in times.

Why did I do that? Will Robots Butler still have kind of a chaste and sort of a relationship with an older woman that they are in their charge? Yes. That they'll never quite consummate. And they'll always be a lingering. And they definitely won't speak up about Nazism.

The joy of them. Production, your editor, Harry Gordon, your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you all again next week.