The Gargle - The Science behind the Chin, Hershey's degrading Chocolate, and Book Red Flags!

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

On this week's Gargle, the glossy magazine pull out to The Bugle’s audio newspaper, we open it with Alice Fraser, Josh Gondelman and James Colley, as they navigate their way through the Science behind the Human Chin, the angry letter to Hershey's from a grandson of a chocolate magnate, and the possible red flags in what your reading!Alice Fraser: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraserJosh Gondelman: https://www.joshgondelman.com/James Colley: https://www.instagram.com/jamcolley/?hl=enAnd if you want check out Colley's recommendation Hover Race Car by Matthew Reilly: https://www.amazon.com.au/Hover-Car-Racer-Matthew-Reilly/dp/0330440160Subscribe 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.

Welcome to Season 2 of the Gargle, the fortnightly tech and science pullout section of the Bugles' Audio Newspaper for a visual world, now available in a visual format via our YouTube channel, thereby directly contradicting the subheadline of the audio newspaper. And did you know, science fact that the pull-out section is not ineffective as a contraceptive, but you can probably do better. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and you can probably tell from my voice that the wanting ambition that has led me to bring the gargle back to life has immediately stricken me down with some sort of, hideous disease and also possibly the laziest dirty punchlines for every possible joke I've written today so I apologize in advance for how many jokes will be about penises this week speaking of which I would like to introduce our guests for this week welcome returning from

the long trek across a deathly swamp with only a bunsen burner and a reined hood for company it's james collie hello thank you it's so nice to be anywhere after that trek And seeking forgiveness for the technological monstrosity, he just cyberjacked into sentience. But now it's gone mad and torned all pornography on the internet into an AI deep fake of your mom. It's Josh Gondelman. Thank you so much. I don't deserve forgiveness, but I will grovel for it. That's kind of a blanket statement about my personality.

And the front cover of this week's magazine is a picture of a sexy space station flaps akimbo, hustling, tempting billionaire. to shoot millions and billions of dollars into space. Also, science fact, jizzing into space is the number one cause of pregnant moon. And also the saying, shoot for the moon, which I cannot emphasize enough again, is about sex. I do actually have a running hypothesis that old men taking high doses of TRT, testosterone replacement therapy, is what is ruining the world. like, you know, like all, you know, you're sort of meant to fight your way to the top with aggression and no mercy. And then you get to about sort of 55 and you wake in the morning and like 3 a.m. suddenly stricken with regret and fear and go,

maybe I should build a library. You know, you're sort of, you're meant to come down off the testosterone high. Now there's all these men who are like on 22 year old man jacked up levels of testosterone. And instead of sort of considering how they might, you know, return some seed to the earth there, you know, they go, I need to send my ticket to space. Very, I think doctors are to blame, functionally speaking. Well, this used to be like the great, the dream of particularly the Australian male used to be to become successful enough that you can buy the strangest car on the market and circle it around your town getting, it's the only kind of like positive attention

you can get at that stage. And now they're trying to make out in the back seat. You're right. It's a terrible idea. genuinely bad Josh. And Alice, I want to circle back to something you said, which is that doctors are at fault. And I don't know if you know this.

Doctors are the number one cause of knowing that you have cancer. Without doctors, you would just be like, oh, that's weird. And go about your day. And so I do think doctors are to blame for a lot of things. I'm not sure if I've told you this, but I like, something that like really undid any good, there was a big push in my town for Doctors Without Borders, right? and I like putting donation in and I signed off each one with get yourself some borders which I feel like undoes any positive of the actual charitable contribution

because if it wasn't that funny I wouldn't have done it if I'm honest I only donated for the joke I believe we have a new charitable outreach program instead of charity muggers on the street just stand up comedians I take it back immediately I'm contemplating this it's a terrible idea Are the headlines of this week in a world where any given explosion could be a domestic, a terrorist attack by disgruntled Reddit investors or a gender reveal party gone wrong? An environment of political discourse laden with so many straw men, it's got to be a fire hazard. We are the orally penetrative, or glossy magazine to the Bugles' Audio newspaper for a visual world. The headline this week, the front cover, is a picture of pervert, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor,

hideously deep fake mash-up with beauty influencer Tati Westbrook, and the monstrous chimera thus created is saying, and you did it on my birthday, which is only funny to the people who are into 2016 beauty, YouTube scandal culture, and also royals being arrested for general sex crime-related grossness. Top stories this week. The mankind with discussions on the rise about what constitutes humanity we have at last achieved an answer,

and it is chins, yes, not self-awareness or language or couples therapy that takes us above the animals. It is chins. James Colley, as a man with a handsome chin, can you stare powerfully into the upper quadrant of the frame while you tell us a little bit more about this story? Well, so this comes from the University of Buffalo. Now, the team to run this research, the team of the University of Buffalo investigated the collection of 532 skulls they just so happened to have lying about. Don't worry about it. Thank you for coming, Mr. Colombo. No further questions.

Thank you. Now, this is a complicated story. I'm not sure how complicated they think it is because I'm going to quote new scientist here. In simple terms, the chin is a bony projection of the lower jaw that extends me on the front teeth, which to which the average new scientist subscriber probably went, oh. Oh, Jen. We mean this in the dark.

Okay, so. Is that how you spell that? I'd only been hearing it out loud. They found out why I have a chine. A chine? What's a chine? Oh, a chine. We have our reason.

Very, very exciting. Drum roll, please. And it is the, no reason. We just have them. Evolutionarily speaking, we were working on something else at the time and ended up with a chin. We acquired chins in the same way that I have children. It wasn't what I was trying to do, but it was more worth. an offshoot of what happened.

Look, you were, you were not, not trying. It's like, if we get some research out of this, sure, who cares? But I think like, so as, and Alice, you're similar, as the owner and operator of a four-year-old child, like you can assure the question, why do we have chins was going to come up sooner or later, and to be able to confidently answer, oh, don't worry about it, watch TV, is going to be really helpful for me. I tried to take a couple of punts at it for us.

So none of our close relatives have chins. The simple scientific reason for this is that apes and other hominids do not have a soul and therefore cannot wear a soul patch. And so without the soul path, they're simply evolution steps in and doesn't allow it. And as Homo sapiens evolved and slowly gained consciousness, football allegiances, acoustic guitars, hacky sacks, and penny farthings, there were suddenly a plethora of reasons we would need to be punched square in the jaw and therefore nature provided one. So that's my theory of why it's happened.

There was previously a theory that the chin existed to protect the kind of tender parts of your neck and throat. But all that really means is it's way more likely for your face to get f***ed up if someone swings on it. Just a real pointy part at the bottom of your face. to land an uppercut on. Good news. We found a way to protect your thigh. We've put a ball bag right in front of it.

That's right. It's just kind of a soft landing pad for fists and knees against your thighs. Also, because there were many hypotheses before this current one. And others thought that the chin was attractive to potential mates. And that's why we selected for it as an evolutionary trade, which is interesting because I would always think that would go the other way. Like, what is a chin if not a canvas for soup and barbecue sauce, rendering you unable to reproduce.

I would say as an exposed chin haver, like to me it gives me more the affectation of a cartoon bulldog than it has ever any kind of prowess or indication. I, you know, I am glad that this research has come out because it gives me something to point to when in conversation with my aforementioned four-year-old. Although I have to say I do appreciate the requirement to constantly deduce first-preference.

principles from any order of magnitude. For example, I was asked today why you don't put your fingers in your mouth in public. And I had to explain that it makes people feel quite insecure to have attention brought to the places that lead to the inside of your body because people don't like being reminded that the inside of their body is squishy and disgusting. And so we don't touch any of our holes in public. And I feel like I can stand behind that as a principle. That's not bad at all.

Yeah. Yeah, make sure a bit better for me because I would have gone with, it's yuck. One interesting thing about this, I didn't know this before, but there is the idea of a chin is what's known in evolutionary science as a spandrel, perhaps, which is a feature that evolved incidentally along with a more crucial attribute, although spandrel does sound like the offspring of a spaniel and a mandrel. Who knows where they met? And it seems like the chin might be a result, right? It's not like we need a chin, but it's because that's what comes along with our upright posture, large heads, and small teeth. Which is so funny to me to think about, like when you talk about a leading man in a movie having a strong jaw line, what we're also impressed by are his itty-bitty baby incisor.

Which I just, I don't know, it's so fun. And it's also like the idea that it makes me think that like maybe. Maybe celery only exists because we also have buffalo wings and blue cheese dressing. I just love the thought of being like, oh, that, that Gregory Peck, that Carrie Grant, neither of that. There were soup only people. You've got to look at it. Look, if I know anything about evolution, and I do not, my guess is that this bony protrusion was on its way to trying to become a crab. Face crab, very important.

And that brings me to a chocolate tempest in a normal teacup. This is the news that the grandson of the Reese's family fortune has accused Hershey of degrading his ancestral family's chocolate, making it, quote, not edible, end quote. Josh Gondelman, you all are living in the loading screen of the ruins of a once great empire. Can you let us know more about this story? Thank you for the credit you gave to the past of the United States of America.

Yes. So in a letter to Hershey's corporate brand manager, the grandson of the inventor of the Reese's peanut butter cup, alleged the company is hurting the Reese's brand. Hershey now owns Reese's and is hurting the Reese's brand by using inferior ingredients. I say grandson, but he is 70 years old and there should be a different word for an old man who's someone's son's son, but you already knew he was 70 years old from the fact that he sent a candy company a letter.

He's upset that the Hershey's company has started using lower quality milk, chocolate, and peanut butter. And those are the key ingredients in the flagship peanut butter cup. If you replace all of those things with other ingredients, but keep it in the same shape, you have what I would call a real ship of Rhesius situation on your hand. Cup of Ruseus, it doesn't make sense. Right. Hershey has acknowledged that it changed the formula for some Reese's products.

They've stopped claiming that the cups contain milk chocolate, which has a specific compositional ratio. And they say peanut cream instead of peanut butter. And at this point, they might as well go ahead and call them peanut-scented cups or brown-sludge-covered allergen paste. Brad, Brad Reese, who's the name of the grandson, which Brad, great-grandson name, often quotes his grandfather's philosophy. Give him quality. It's the best. advertising, which is kind of a beautiful way to approach commerce, yeah, although it does feel a little old-timey. Nowadays, the best advertising seems to be see if Matthew McConaughey is available or slightly change the words to a Backstreet Boys song since they appear to need the money.

Even more unfortunately, this dispute has done nothing to clear up the company's longstanding controversy over whether it's Reese's Pieces or Recy's PCs. And we may never know. I mean, the degradation of the process of providing consumers with a product has become wildly extreme. I'm glad that people are noticing. The nature of modern capitalism is that soon all chocolate will become a subscription to the option to buy chocolate as a monthly service. And then the base product will become so adulterated. You'll have to up your subscription to the option to buy chocolate that doesn't taste like

shit. And then they'll start replacing every fourth square of non-subscription service chocolate with actual human or rat pieces and the people at the higher subscription levels will get to place bets on when their poorer friends and family go, what the f*** is that? And you can make your fortune. The entire American economy then will become based on you can bet online whether your chocolate subscription will actually arrive or not. I actually own a dot PNG of the part of the forest that the chocolate would have been gotten from if they could still produce chocolate or for us.

I found there were parts of this that I became obsessed with. Mr. Pacey, as mentioned, penned a, penned his letter on Valentine's Day, a Valentine's Day LinkedIn post, which Hemingway Eat Your Heart Out, for sale baby shoes. Here are six lessons I learned about managing a team by selling my baby and its shoes. I never got why that was a sad story. people give you heaps of baby shoes that your child will never wear. Babies don't need shoes. They can't walk.

I have desperately wanted a shoe store to say, for sale, comma, baby, shoes never worn. Also, if you think about it as coming from a store in that way, then it's like, well, then it's not sad at all. You don't expect someone to have worn the baby shoes in the store. That's like the condition of a store. I do agree on this story. I do agree that the Reese's PCs are cutting corners.

because they're little round chocolates. And the other thing that's, the other thing that's usual to say is that, so the, we have given the, again, and I feel we cannot over-emphasize this, this very old grandson, one of the oldest grandsons you can imagine.

Like, you know, like the first couple moments of Benjamin Button, that's him. That's who he is. The old grandson is, he seemed to be, as we've told, the story so far quite dignified in his response but he also changed his home page to have an orange cap that has this phrase make racy's great again which i guess is just the only way we can do protest now you have to pick a color and a hat and it's just tinge of fascism i i do get it though

like this is this is his grandfather's legacy his grandfather fought died and yes killed for these chocolates in world war one he would capture crowds he would scoop out their innards and he'd place them with peanut butter. And decades later, when he worked out a tasty even better in chocolate, the company took off. And I can understand wanting to preserve that memory. Speaking of preserving memories, farts, um, there is, there is now a fitbit for farts. It is allegedly very serious. I'm, I'm getting word that you just won the Nobel Prize for Segways.

That, uh, this is a, uh, this is a, uh, this is a, science story, as some of our science stories, looks like they're going to be very funny, but actually they're quite serious and important. So this story about farts, James Colley, because of your gourmand supertaster connoisseurship interest in this area, you are our farts correspondent. Please tell us a little bit more about this story. I'm also the scientist on the, okay, I do have my science screen. And if you want to know it's worth, it is. It is, literally at this moment in a box holding up my laptop, which is about as much use as I've ever got it out of it, but it's there. Every time I come on the gargle, I am forced to once again

explain that I do not hate science. This show makes me hate science. So the Fitbit for Farts, this is an era of quote, smart underwear, which I simply do not trust because any underwear of sufficient intelligence to become aware of itself and its purpose will be tempted to kill itself and obligated to kill me. So up until now, artificial intelligence hasn't gotten that far. Up until now, methods of gastrointestinal science relied on self-reporting, which is notoriously difficult, not just to accrue data, but also get an accurate reportee because we all know it's the one who smells it that dealt it.

And scientists say this could have practical applications, a creation of this smart underwear that tracks your flatulence. I moved my glasses there as if I was making the important point. I just don't want to say five a hundred times. But it's good. Like it could have practical applications, which is good because it's underwear and it should have practical applications. All I need is like...

Have you seen the women's lingerie section? I see that there's three main functions for undergarments, and they ought to be covering the bits you're meant to cover, absorption and warmth. And there are products on the market that offer none of those things. Look, all I really want, and if artificial intelligence can help with this, sorry, if artificial intelligence could help with this, sure. I just need a certainty meter that's something that works on like kind of the same accuracy as the feels like temperature, that you're like, farting coming, 82% certainty,

just so I know what kind of risk I am taking. So this study, on average before the study, in the before times, we'll always know it as the BF, the before FART study. It was thought that people had about 14 Farts a day. Why did we think that much? We just picked a number and no one questioned it for thousands of years. And then in this study, it has been up to 32 as a more accurate number. And in one case, in one person studying this, 59. Now, researchers considered studying this participant more than thought about it and went,

actually, you know what, you'll find because be free. They also apparently created an artificial butt for this project, so they say, which is also what I would say, were I caught with an artificial butt, that it's for the science program I'm doing that's helping people all over. This is for a study that has apparently going, to be called the human flatus atlas flattus. But it should be called the human flattus actor should be called. And about this point I realize there are about 4,000 different ways to go with this joke. So I went with the telltale fart. But if you, the dear listeners to the gargles, send your idea

to Alice Fraser for a penguin classic with one word replaced with fart, I can guarantee you Alice will give the best one a terrific prize. And you can enter as many times as you want daily, hourly if you're nasty. Just send your idea straight to Alice at any time. Email us in at the gaggle at the buglepodcast.com. Harry Gordon is our new producer and editor, and he's going to enjoy those immensely. I'm surprised. I've read quite a number of news stories.

I try to triangulate the facts in this kind of thing. And obviously all science news has grabbed this story with both hands. and run straight for the audience at a million miles an hour because they're all desperate for a story that actually looks like it might be fun enough to lure someone onto their websites where they might learn something new. They all went with underwearables for the smart underpants

and none of them went with Thunderpants, which I feel is a missed opportunity. Thunderpants, fart bit, a fit bit for parts. Farts is a fart bit for certain. There it is. Well, that's when you're like, oh, that'll tell you what's it going to be? That's, I think, a more useful device. It's like that water bottle that tells you how much water you've drunk out of it. It's like the underpants that tell you when you've shot yourself. This is a great point, Alice, because if you want to know how much you're farting, you don't need some kind of evasive electronic device in your underpants. All you have to do to keep track of your farting is move in with someone that you're dating.

you'll never be more aware of every single pop of air that passes between your cheeks. Also, underwear that keeps note of every time you fart, that's not smart underwear. That's rude underwear. That's a different thing. I have to bring this up. One scientist even described these underpants as a continuous glucose monitor for farts, which is insane. A CGM is a device that commonly helps people with diabetes monitor their blood sugar. so they can keep it within a healthy range and adjust their insulin levels accordingly.

And you don't need an Apple Watch up your ass to tell you to cut back on the beans. If I wanted an Apple Watch off my ass, I'd go to the club and ask it. Never mind. This is how Christopher Walking kept my Daddy's Apple Watch all those years. Time for your ad section now, because you can't be what you can't buy. You can't buy happiness, but you can't buy apps. and while that won't fill the hole in your soul, it will make you feel like maybe the hole's a feature and not a bug.

New from Dwayne the Rock Johnson, the making of Young the Rock, a documentary about the making of his sitcom slash biopic slash pre-pre-presidential PR vehicle and associated merchandise, including his energy drink, his alcohol drink, his getting knocked down and getting back up again drink, and a scale model of all his biceps for all your household biceps needs.

And what do you do when you're all alone in your neighborhood and you can't drive, but you're going somewhere good? Who are you going to call ghost buses? Can we talk about ghost buses for a while? It was that or bringing back the long, beloved staple of the gargle ad section, which was goat butlers. So, you know, you don't want to know. So is it a bus with unfinished business that never completed its route?

Yes. Now, is it a bus made out of golf? or is it a bus only for ghosts? What combination of who is? It's just a normal bus, actually, because all buses are full of ghosts. Sorry to break. Wow. I feel like, like ghosts can't drive, but they do need to get about their unfinished business. And there isn't a bus in the world that wasn't the place of a terrible tragedy. So that's what I was thinking. I thought you were saying I was like, grow up. Every bus had someone die on it. That's how they make them go. They sacrifice someone.

And that brings us to our last two stories of this week's episode of The Gargle. Reading Red Flags. This is in our arts section, arts science section, which is that there is now a new kind of red flag. The idea that if you ask someone what they're reading and they tell you certain books, it puts up a little whoop, whoop, whoop, signal in the back of your head that they may not be the kind of person you want to be hanging out with. Josh Gondleman, you live in New York, a city full of dreadful people. Can you tell us a little bit about red flags? But before you do, bear in mind for the context of this bit, I did live in New York for one year and I did once go on a date with a person who made an excuse when I arrived

to pick them up from their apartment block that made me go up to their apartment block so they could leave me in the hallway for 10 minutes so that I could look at the expensive artworks that they had in their apartment. How do I know the artworks were expensive? Is it my brilliant eye for value in modern art? Is it they'd left the price tags on. They had left, presumably, as I don't think artworks are delivered with the price tags on, put some price tags on their artwork, which if it were art, if they were doing that as art, would have been quite good art, but as it was, not art, was awful. Right, that's right, that's right up there with duct taping a banana to the wall as kind of a piece of commentary on art.

The only time I would want to see a price tag on art, which I've, yeah, I've never even heard of before, unless you get it at some kind of yard sale or flea market and it says like $4 and you're showing off what a good deal you got and that's up my alley. If you're like, look at this Picasso I got for $9.00. That's fun to me. Yeah, there's become this kind of meme logic idea that reading certain books is not just a red flag because of what's in the book. It's the person outside the book. That's the problem. Right?

You're kind of showing off your, you're trying to project a certain air about you. It's a performance. To which I say, I don't know if you've ever watched a performance of any other kind. This is very subtle to sit silently and read. I would not call this performative reading. Performative reading to me, you're taking out a jeweler's loop. You're going like, hmm, persnickety, interesting. Then you're pulling a dictionary out of your bag, licking your finger, turning each page individually.

This, it seems like we are, we're making up categories to dump kind of individual annoying behaviors into. That's, that's my thought. I think, and it's also like, it's kind of like what we would call a few years ago, people would say like, oh, lit bro. Like we're talking David Foster Wallace, that kind of thing. To me, any book that tells you how to be good at business is. that's to me a red flag.

Any business book. Because to me, all that be good at business book is, is the only ways to be good at business under American capitalism at this point are mistreat your workers, accept money from the government, and then forsake the government as an entity for leeches to suckle off of. So if you are reading that kind of book, the other like 300 pages are just a guy convincing you

that he's not a monster. And that is a red flag. Well, also, you know, in America, the idea of being successful in business in a book is just a book that tells you how to be born as the grandson of someone so prominent that you're still referred to as a grandson in your 70s. But also, I think it troubles me the idea that reading something is a red flag. Perhaps if you say that's your favorite book, it's the book that you kind of identify yourself most with that might be considered a red flag. But How weak do we think people's personas are that the reading of a book that contains some repugnant ideas is going to completely disintegrate their personality and reform it as the worst possible kind of person? I sort of dislike that as has a, you know, I've read Ayn Rand and I feel like I'm still fine, you know.

It's not a book with a philosophy you disagree with that's going to ruin your whole personality. it's a podcast, a podcast, that's a, any self-help book written by someone who also has a podcast is a red flag to me. I think they've picked the wrong books because like Infinite Jest is the go-to right now. One, Infinite Just is actually quite readable.

It's about smoking too much weed and watching short-form videos and destroying your brain. It's actually pretty good for right now if you want to go into it. I do love when tech pros go into are not just reading business books, but reading The Art of War, which is very much about horse maintenance. Like so much more of it is about horse maintenance than anything that's going to help you in any actual boardroom. I was trying to think, because I've got a, I've got my books at the side of me. I've got, we would say, eclectic collection of stuff that

could be various. Almost every book could be its own kind of red flag or not red flag. I was trying I think of like what would definitely be if you are reading an A3 large print copy of a Vexillology book and have gone to the Vietnam section, that's a massive red flag, but you do get a gold star. But I would say the only one I can land on from my whole book collection, I would say that that is a definite red flag and I would not want to speak to the me that owns this is Bono on Bono, the collection of Bono's thoughts about. about himself from various interviews with Bono about Bono.

And I would say, you're welcome to take that at face value. Carry on. That's understood. I shouldn't read it on a train. I get it. Back in my day, the Infinite Jest was called, this is the song that never ends. And it would get you bashed in the school yard.

I thought you were going to say Bono on Bono is a collection of his tasteful erotic photography. It's also like, look, people just, especially in this country, just don't read books. So like any, if you're, if someone's reading a book, it's like, hey, good for you. You're ahead of the curve. Unless you are actually making a performance out of reading like a, you know, you're like, oh, it still counts. And you're going, you're sitting there at a bar going, oh, green eggs and ham. What will they think of that? Josh, you need to know a great bit of Australian law, which is that.

one of our most successful writers ever, a man named Matthew Riley, who there's an explosion every chapter. Bloody, it's great. Oh, can we do a spin-off podcast about Matthew Riley? Please, God, Alice, I'm there for every part. But so Matthew Riley very famously launched his degree. He's incredibly well-selling author now, something like 30 books, all shit. And he launched his career when he was an independent author.

author by there is one seat on the front of Australian buses, and maybe all buses, none of my business, but one seat that faces the rest of the bus. And he would sit on that seat and open his own book and audibly enjoy it. That was his word of mouth market campaign. And now he's one of the most successful authors ever. So performative reading works. The word of mouth of the ghosts on the buses is what that is. I mean, he has a, he has a falcon called Horus. He has a left hand that is a robot left hand that he lost in a volcano incident. He, there is at least a chapter, which is about the ordinance and nicknames that all of the

characters have. I thought you were talking about the author. No, no, no. This is the character. Jack West, one of the nine great warriors of human history who rides a Boeing 747 that he stole from Saddam Hussein. And it is, I, please, read it out loud to your loved ones. It is.

This is incredible. I truly, when you were like, he lost a hit in a volcano, he has a falcon, and like, this author is the most eccentric man who ever lived. You're talking about the character. I also think this would be a perfect. It's all just autobiography. He solves all of these puzzles, never by the deductive reasoning as presented by the inklings that the reader should also be able to solve the puzzle as the protagonist.

just like by remembering a page and a book he read once. That rules. This is so good. Also, him, you're saying reading your own book and audibly enjoying it on the ghost bus. Because that's a perfect activity for ghost bus because it would make me say, it's a kind act to the ghosts who can't read, can't turn the pages. I, oh man, what were we talking about? I think we're talking about blue cobalt,

Matthew Riley's book that's kind of a Power Rangers rip off where the Power Rangers fight in front where the golden one is an offensively gay caricature. Blue Cobalt is like calling a book Red Rouge. God, I want to mute this guy so bad.

And the point is that the idea, the premise of this concept that there are flag books that if there's somebody performatively reading a particular kind of book, it tells you something about their personality, completely aligns why we now have performative reading, which is the existence of the Kindle and the subtle reading. And this is like this red flag guy thing is very mask coded. But I cannot tell you, if you see a woman reading particularly a very cutely decorated

Kindle, I guarantee you she was reading some of the most filthy and depraved pornographic story. that you couldn't possibly imagine. You were a ghost that had been on a fuck bus for 100 years. You could not imagine the kind of sput his women. Where are we introducing the fuck bus into this? There has been a terrible crash on the bang bus and now the haunted souls and the spider stuck from all eternity. We have to notify so many necks of kin.

There's so much unfinished edging business that is happening. on that book. Oh no, now you have to make the ghosts come. I warned you that this was going to be a filthy show. And that brings us to our final story of this week's episode of the Gaggle returned. And that is the rise among us of a new kind of person. A new kind of person has launched. Tech Society in San Francisco is wrestling very profoundly at the

cutting edge of the implications of AI's impact on personhood and value. And some have presented in contrast to this disempowerment of increasing AI technology, the concept of the agentic person, James Colley. You've got a daughter who's going to grow up to meet people like this. Can you unpack this story? Oh, that upset me right on the way in. I haven't gone to do this thing. What they say on the ghost famous?

I'm so sorry. So this is a type of person who, and I haven't gone to do this on the new bugle. So, hey, your finger on the centre button. We have a word for this kind of person in Australia. It's a bit of slang. It's a c-a-k. And so they've invented a new kind of this person. And so the idea is that someone,

whose whole thing is that they can fake interviews and be put in a position in power that they're not qualified for and then has created a device to get other people in positions of power so that the systems can erode more effectively in the world and faster because no one knows what the fuck they're doing and everything's actually being controlled by a device built by an idiot who didn't know what he was doing when he built that and so on and so forth in a bulshka doll of incompetence. So now instead of having things like thoughts or dedication or even let's say loyalty or integrity or anything of the sort determining your lot in life. It is now down to the people most willing to just do things without thinking about the consequences, which is an incredibly

wily coyote way of running an entire society. And I'm so excited to be dying sometime soon and not having to see how this ends up. Yeah. We're really putting the future in the hands of less reliable spell check and I'm terrified of it. I think I like every once in a while you get you keep the someone will crop up in an interview. It'll be like some guy who whose company makes chat bots and he's like chat bots. That's basically people and I'm like well you shouldn't get to vote. I don't know if they're people. You're less of one for saying that. I just hate it. Oh, it makes me it makes my blood boil a thing I'm capable of because I'm a person with blood. I genuinely like I would rather you know how like the cliche boring thing is someone's dream

I like hearing about people's dreams they're weird they're bizarre they're interesting I would rather get the fucking raw data from someone's fart underpants tracking than have to listen to what prompts they put into chat GPT over the week. It makes me sad. It makes me sad so whenever somebody's like, oh, I asked chat GPT and I'm like, oh, what happened? Did all your friends just, did they all sink on a boat? Did everyone in your family go missing on a hike and you had to, you didn't have anyone's phone number anymore? This is what cousins are for. If you want someone to lie to you, get a cousin and ask them anything about the history of the world. I feel like I could set up a website where I would just say

whatever answer to people and they would treat it as gospel, that would be fun for me. And I would do it for free. And it wouldn't even be that environmentally catastrophic, although I would be drinking a lot of water. I feel like it would take a lot out of me to have to do this all day. I mean, all of this well and good. It feels like we are stepping further and further into a future in which there are, you know, very much the kind of Eloy, uh, agentic, high agency people who are capable of intellectual thought. And they conceptualize the rest of human as these Morlocks who are

you know, completely subject to the whims of AI, the thing that they themselves have invented. It, yeah, it upsets me. It, like,

it's also like, it's just a thing that does a facsimile of a human function, right? It's like, obviously not real. And you know that because you made it. Which is like so, it's like so baby-minded to do.

Like, do you think the first person, who ever sculpted a realistic human-looking sculpture was like, oh, I guess that's my dad now. Like, what are you talking about? Just because it does a human thing. You know what I mean? It's like, nobody's ever, like, looked at a dildo and been like, I got to marry that thing. I mean, the problem, of course, is that we are completely unused as a species to conceptualize

anything that produces language as something other than a thinking mind, because we have identified the presence of a thinking mind by the presence of language. and the things that look like they produce language, we attribute to a thinking mind, CF-Oidjabord. You know, so it's very hard for us to have something that talks to us and not think of it as a person. But I did see somebody on a podcast say it's the combined sum of all human knowledge which means it is basically God,

and I don't know how to tell him that if your idea of God is just people thinking together. Like, it's, the whole point of God is not that. Like, that is beyond the sum of human comprehension. And look, I don't believe in God, but if I'm believing in a God, it's a better God than chat GPT. It's better than every person going. Also, all human thought combined, that means it's like, at best,

49% wrong. I also, like, these are all very sophisticated. Decated arguments. I think we should throw these people in the little pit of the angry monkeys that hate the new monkey and let those monkeys just rip them to shreds. Isn't that nice? Then everyone wins. Little monkey gets his little plush toy. Everyone else gets a world without these freaks and the monkeys get to feed their blood loss. You know, it feels like a primal. It's actually quite beautiful. And because I thought of it and said it out loud, it would be scraped by someone's daughter and give you an answer there. And now this is in the realm of things that Chad GPT could say. Look, I say this to all of you who are worried about the presence of AI in your lives. The only solution is to become wildly unpredictable. I was just thinking like how great it will be for like my, you know, my 80 year old grandson one day being sucked into signing up for a subscription service so he can recreate me and have a

conversation with me and all I say to him over and over again is I think less of you for subscribing to this service. That does sound like grandpa. And he'll be saying that into his 70s. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Winter Olympics merch, half price because everything's smaller in the cold and the sports are either doing things so fast or so high, it laughs in the faces of God's physics that hasn't even been invented yet and the sports. that are better both performed and watched while seriously stoned on frozen hot brownies. And that brings us to the end of this week's episode of The Gargle. Josh Gondelman, have you got anything to plug?

Yes. I write a newsletter called That's Marvelous. You can sign up for it at That's Marvelous newsletter.com. It's full of jokes and pep talks and all my live dates. People in the U.S., I'm going to be in Los Angeles on March 28th, Cincinnati on April 10th, 11th, Washington, D.C. on the 12th, and then Bristol, Kentucky, the May 29th and 30th. I think that's all the road stuff I have on the book so far. I'm sorry if I missed anything. I'm also sorry that I said so many things. No, do not apologize. James Colley, where can people find you? I would say you can check out. There's a show called Always Was Tonight, which was a really fun-produced

First Nation show from Australia that was controversial enough that it was several jokes, something like 15 of its jokes were read out in Parliament about people being very angry about it. It's also going to be on a thing called the Australian Network or the ABC Australia Network. I only know about this because they made me write a promo for it. I can't remember what it actually is. But if you get something that seems to be called the Australian Network, then you can watch the show on that or, you know, ABC, I have you on a VPN. I'm not your dad.

But what I really want to plug here is that if you have a young adult in your life, if you have someone who is, you know, getting into reading. Matthew Riley wrote a book called Hovercar Racer, which follows a man named Jason Chaser, the Hovercar Racer, in the futuristic world of Tasmania. And you really have to dig deep into that book as soon as you can. And you can find me in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Newcastle in Australia, and then in London and the UK and Edinburgh,

all of the dates are up at patreon.com slash alice Fraser or my website, alicephraser.com. I will be touring my show A Passion for Passion and also my new work in progress show tentatively titled, oh man, and it'll be a lot of fun. But I also do weekly writers meetings twice a week over at the Patreon. You can sign up there for free. I'm using it as my central point because the algorithms don't work anymore.

So you can subscribe there. It's more or less a mailing list, but it's a mailing list where I will eventually attempt to provide you so much value that you begin to feel guilty and want to pay me money because I cannot bring myself to actually ask you to do that. Also, my Swiss writers retreats if you want to write in the Swiss Mountains with me in October, there are just a tiny, tiny number of places remaining. So feel free to sign up there again, patreon.com slash alice Fraser is the place to go. We are going week on week with realms unknown, which is our. science fiction and fantasy podcast. Stay subscribed to the gargle here, but go subscribe over there to realms Unknown. If you like, that you can have the every week. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Harry Gordon. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner.

I'll talk to you again next week.