The Gargle - Vatican phenomena | Smelly stamps | Testicle plastics

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Siân Docksey and James Nokise join host Alice Fraser for episode 158 of The Gargle. All of the news, with none of the politics.🛑 Driverless car prank✝️ Vatican phenomena🥖 Smelly stamps🥜 Testicle plastics🍍 ReviewsWatch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BuglePodcastStory 1: https://carscoops.com/2024/05/t-shirt-with-stop-sign-on-it-fools-waymos-autonomous-vehicles/Story 2: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/17/europe/vatican-guidance-supernatural-phenomena-scli-intl/Story 3: https://amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/article/2024/may/17/french-post-office-releases-scratch-and-sniff-baguette-stampStory 4: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-confirm-microplastics-now-detected-in-human-testiclesWritten by Alice Fraser, Siân Docksey and James NokiseProduced by Ped Hunter, with executive production from Chris Skinner.HOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLE- Keep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Gargle. Welcome to The Gargle, the sonic glossy magazine to the bugles, audio newspaper for a visual world, all of the news, none of the politics. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are James Noki, say hello. Hello, hello. And Sian Doxey. Hello. Hello. It's exciting to have you both here. And before we sit down at the magnificent feast that is this week's Top Stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine.

This week the front cover is Anne Hathaway posing provocatively as the unrealistic Hollywood representation of a hot 40-year-old mum, despite being a hot 41-year-old mum. And the satirical cartoon this week is Scarlett Johansson dressed as Ariel from The Little Mermaid, facing off against OpenAI's Sam Altman, dressed as Ursula the Sea Witch, during the scene in which Ursula takes Ariel's voice.

This is the story that OpenAI asked Scarlett Johansson if they could use her voice to voice their chatbot, and she said no. And then they did it anyway. Which I feel is much more unfair than the contract between Ariel and Ursula the Sea Witch. Other than being underage, that was a perfectly legitimate contract. You can't renege. That brings us to our top story.

Top story this week. Apparently, if you wear a t-shirt with a stop sign on it, a car won't hit you. This is our car news now. Sian, you've been in a car. Can you unpack this story for us? Yeah. Firstly, can we just acknowledge the sheer confidence of a man walking around with a big red stop sign T-shirt? Like, I feel that's less of an experiment about technology. It's more of a

stressful social experiment. But I was thinking about it being a guy because like, if I was walking around London with a t-shirt that had a big red stop sign on it, I would get so many like eye rolls, people would assume I was making some kind of statement about consent, they would walk up to me, they would argue with me about it, they'd assume there'd be a QR code, I'd make them scan to sign a petition. I just like envy the world this man lives in where it's about technology rather than people. Yeah so what this guy claims he was trying to achieve was to test driverless cars on what are called edge cases, so unusual things in the environment where the car suddenly has to make a decision.

So the car has to decide whether there's a real risk of causing harm or whether to crack on. So he's walking around roads where driverless cars operate, catfishing as a stop sign, essentially, to see whether the car would be tricked and man can still overpower machine.

Yeah, so this, I don't be honest, I think that the commentators on this news story over egged it when they said it was like a nuanced technology experiment. I think that testing will car stop when we want it to is just not that deep. But great that he's giving it a try. He wasn't like walking straight into traffic either he was like walking along the sidewalk to see if a car would mistake him for a road sign like the world's most boring cosplay convention um honestly i'm on the side of the cars with this one i think the whole thing it just seems quite rude i think that like the driverless car is not at fault the car is trying to do its job.

And some guy is jumping out from the sidelines and going, ha ha, I fooled you by disguising myself as the instructions you have been trained to follow. It's like if you trained a lab rat to go around a maze following lumps of cheese and then tricked it with a lump of cheese that's just a marshmallow with a sign that says cheese, the rat is just doing its job.

We have not demonstrated the superiority of the human species um the main thing i thought was interesting about this story is how ai is so incredibly polite there's something in these driverless cars that is so like conscientious to the point of possibly having low self-esteem maybe the issue with driverless cars isn't like a public traffic health hazard. It's that we need to give them more confidence. Or maybe it's a cultural thing. Like perhaps American driverless cars come with this like Calvinist, Protestant, strong work ethic.

If he tested it in Southern Europe, the Southern European like driverless car would see a man with a stop sign as a challenge. Like waving a red flag in front of a bull. But the bull has sat nav and the would see a man with a stop sign as a challenge, like waving a red flag in front of a bull, but the bull has sat nav and the flag is a man. So well, I just feel like this is a failure of the education system, essentially, because what we've done here is we've put all these people in charge of programming the cars, none of whom have philosophy degrees. And if they had philosophy degrees, they would have spent way too much time doing the trolley problem. And they would have answers to all of these questions. All of the hypotheticals that first year university philosophy students ask themselves, you know, is it more would you should you run over a flock of pigeons or a child?

What about if there is a man dressed as a pigeon versus a child dressed as a pigeon? All of these questions are important as you encounter Kant and Hegel would have been hashed out well and truly and now we're having to find them out on on the fly as it were by the way a man dressed as a pigeon cannot fly you find that out once when you push him off a roof James look I'm not going to say that I was once drunk in first year at university, dating a philosophy student and found myself in Wellington's manners more hanging upside down from a tree, dressed like the crow, Brandon Lee, and screaming, I am a pigeon. Cuckoo, cuckoo. But my main concern with this is the combination of our first two stories, which is you're going to have cars that sound like Scarlett Johansson. And then there's just going to be a bunch of dude bros with stop t-shirts, just making cars stop when they don't want to and starting to go, hey, how are you doing?

And just starting to just riz up these driverless cars because if no one's going to get in them, then they're going to get in them. And can we just appreciate that the man who pulled off this prank, which for our American listeners is so San Francisco, it's such a San Francisco thing. His name, I believe, is Jason B. Carr. And he is an enthusiastic bike rider who must have been mercilessly bullied about his car last name to become so anti-car in his adulthood are we seeing a trauma response in this story is that the sort of cumulative effect of 10 years isn't all a trauma response my friend

yes i'm the only human car on this road he says facing down his nemesis i mean it is quite a risky uh risky proposition putting your money where your mouth is he has to be fairly certain that the car wouldn't have run him over or that he would get a lot of money if he was run over by a car it's also just one of those great stories which sounds like it's like this kind of genius prank but you just know was two dudes on a couch smoking a joint going bro do you reckon if i wore a stop sign t-shirt these automatic cars would stop let's try it i mean it is a very refined uh experiment the next one is the one where you paint a stop sign on your bottom and you pull your pants down and you show your bottom to the car

did you guys have the thing at like freshers week or like random uni club nights where it's like the traffic lights thing so single people wear a green go t-shirt like it's complicated people wear like a yellow t-shirt and the i'm in a relationship people wear the like red stop sign t-shirt like yeah the thing about having scarlett johansson's voice and people jumping out of cars creates like an ai dystopian model of this like dating process what orgy driven British university? New Zealand is nowhere near that open. Oh, really? I mean, I don't think of it so much as open as just like ruthlessly businesslike or efficient.

It's like you're triaged. I mean, I don't know. I think it's the opposite of open. I think it is sort of turning. It's going back to universities as a sort of like, OK, great. Let's just like create the couplings of this next generation of people i do just want to point out that we're not prudish in new zealand we just have a different system where you wear the same rugby jersey as as whoever you hook up with and then you get drunk with them and then you date them for your entire time at university

your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy and this episode of the podcast is brought to you by lips lips the boobs of the face don't ask me what boobs are yes they're the butt of the chest and are you a big strong man are you hard and dry and cracked like the desert and definitely not like a wet woman's hand with her weak moist palms? Are your eyes gritty and bloodshot and handsome? Has your sperm become pearl-like in a bad way? Try half a glass of water. Half a glass of water for men. Slam it down for the most masculine quench. Our waking hours are dictated by the brutal hierarchies of human society. Someone always above, someone always below. Have you ever wanted to sleep in a hierarchy?

We have, and that's why our sponsor today is Bunk Beds. Bunk Beds, child-sized metaphors for life. 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.

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and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Now it's time for Vatican News. And I love when Vatican News isn't like horrifying, heartbreaking, generational, traumatic news. This is the news that the Vatican has released new guidance for supernatural phenomena. Now, Sian, you're a witch. I'm going to come to you, but we're going to start with James Nukise

because you've heard of the Vatican. Can you unpack this story for us? Thank you. As the son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers, it's always heartening to see the Catholics catch up. This is a changing of the rules so that the acknowledgement of supernatural phenomena, and you'll know stories like when someone opens a sandwich and the ham looks like Christ or there's a particularly strong curry and they destroyed a toilet, but it resembles the Virgin Mary.

These now need Vatican approval to be declared holy. You can't just have the local bishops and whatnot just declaring it. This is because they've discovered with social media, with things going more online, with YouTube, that there's just apparently, and I know this will be shocking to people who follow religion, a lot of grifters who are just using religious phenomenon to get people to give cash, to feel better about themselves. So as opposed to Catholics

and the Reformation, that's a different podcast. So the point is, is that these new rules in place should streamline the whole discovering a supernatural phenomena, reporting a supernatural phenomena and having the Vatican itself declare it. Otherwise, as we all know, Christianity could just splinter into dozens of different subsects. This story was sent in, of course, by our Catholic correspondent, Alison Spittel, as a roving reporter. If you also if you ever have any stories that you think we would like to have, you can tweet us at HelloGogglers or you can look us up also on Blue Sky and send the story in. Sian, how do you feel about all this?

Oh, I loved it. Vatican dropping the sickest subclause to the supernatural recognition criteria. I loved it. I really enjoyed how it felt like essentially the pope is like having to rein in a load of overconfident like startups on the side that are damaging the parent company brand and is having to sort of yeah set up a system for like blue tick verified papal seal of approval on the supernatural sightings um yeah i mean i thought it was

interesting as ever like religion and capitalism have a difficult relationship and some of the grifters are using it for like financial gain like that seems to be the main um thing they're trying to rein in of if there's any like profit in finding just like stigmatas or blood-soaked crucifixes out in the wild also i really love the kind of weary tone that came with that of like oh god another blood-soaked crucifix is it it had real kind of clean up on aisle five kind of energy but yeah i think what was it the um so now the church, are going to start making the distinction about whether the sighting seems truthful and in good faith or whether it's suspicious and derives in the pursuit of profit, power, fame,

social recognition or other personal interest. I'm mainly devastated because there goes my business plan for the Like a Virgin Mary pop-up mocktail bar. I, yeah, well, it was, I find this sort of vaguely hypocritical by the church who famously have done things like selling indulgences and presumably are now researching camel-sized needles

for rich people to pass into heaven with. But on the other hand, I can understand why they don't want their brand diluted. This is a classic shareholders problem. It's being diluted out from under them. James? Did you guys know that there's a gift shop in the Vatican

where you can buy photos of the Pope outside the Vatican like a buddy Jesus? Oh, no. It's just like the Catholic church is essentially what modern capitalism is built on. Like the entire structure is what your corporation is. The Pope is just the CEO. Like, it's just really funny for them to be going, what? People making money off this.

Oh, that seems wrong. We should go and sit down in the basement of the Vatican Museum in one of our 20 golden carriages and think about the ramifications of this. I think we need to have a bit more sympathy for the Pope here because it's like he's running into the problem that musicians have with no longer being able to make money from streaming services. And it's like with the gift shop, like, I've got to sell merch, man, you know? And all of, yeah, all of these people out there,

like begging the Pope brand need to be reined in. So I don't know. I enjoy this as a kind of like, if there is something sacred, how do you build sustainable income around it instead of it being eaten alive by these vultures i never thought yeah pope apologism i think we should do it james oh no look i'm i'm gonna get too giddy if i keep making jokes about the catholic church it's um it's i think it's it's it's it's fine. You know, let them have their cake. I think you'll find the cake is Jesus. And that brings us to our reviews section.

As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. Sian, what have you brought in for us this week? I would like to review out of five stars. Sian, what have you brought in for us this week? I would like to review cat ASMR. So this is being talked about a bit in Belgium, where I'm from, because there's this growing trend of bringing animals into hospices and hospitals as part of patient care, for real. And part of that is this very wh wholesome ordinary thing of like hey most people enjoy the experience of having a pet that's why in the uk we have cat cafes instead of funded

mental health services but part of the thinking is that like the purring of a cat um as like a sound wavelength is inherently therapeutic like it's a mindfulness activity it has potentially measurable health benefits um and i was thinking about this because two weeks ago i was cat sitting for a friend and they had two cats and these cats were super friendly like they're beautiful but they did the thing of like they would just come up to you and start purring and this had the opposite effect of me to asmr it was not relaxing not because i don't like cats or the sound of cats purring but because had the opposite effect of me to ASMR. It was not relaxing. Not because I don't like cats or the sound of cats purring, but because I felt like they were just doing the

job of cat really badly. I didn't feel there was that kind of window where you have to like earn the respect of a cat before it concedes to like letting you rub its belly and roll around. I don't know, I just kind of felt like I was being short-changed so I didn't feel like I'd earned it, I didn't feel I trusted the cat and that made me quite stressed I felt the cat was being more just like dog and bounding up unreservedly where I think now god could please please just have some more self-respect so wait wait wait are you just slut shaming the cat no I'm no no I'm I'm doing the opposite I'm saying own your worth. This service that you offer is precious. Again, set up a stronger paywall. Look to the Pope for some structural advice.

Yeah, I don't know. So I'm kind of on the fence about the cat ASMR because yeah, I think it's this inherent suspicion when it's offered too readily. Separately, though, I think that we should be more ambitious with animals in hospitals. I think if someone comes in with a broken leg, just give them a lizard and see what happens. They might be overwhelmed by the beauty of nature and miraculously heal. Or put an ostrich into an operating theatre. It might have some great ideas. So cat ASMR, I'm thinking overall, three stars. James, what have you brought in for us this week? I'm very excited.

I am this week reviewing Auntie's Pineapple Pie. Now, this is a great delicacy of the Pacific people. Very rare to have in a short stay back at my folks. What you've got is basically a cheesecake-style crust. Something we are told is pineapple. It's like a combination of canned and jelly. Don't overthink it. A little bit of cream on top.

And then if you're really fancy, you chuck some tinned apricots on top of that. I cannot overstate that this is crack to pacific people such is the power of the pineapple pie that upon it coming into my father's house as the lone sibling who is staying here at the moment i it was my duty to inform the other siblings that pineapple pie had arrived lest i be discovered and ostracized from my family for denying them the pineapple pie um i will now sample said pineapple pie um and cheers amazing just absolutely so good um although anyone who is familiar with my work will notice I said it is double cream

on top of the pineapple and I remain lactose intolerant which is why I'm hoping we finish up this episode soon thank you

how many out of five stars for pineapple pie five pineapples five pineapp many out of five stars for pineapple pie? Five pineapples. Five pineapples out of five stars. And that brings us to our next story. This is French news and in possibly the Frenchest news, the post office in France has released a scratch and sniff stamp with a baguette on it that's meant to smell like fresh bread

uh shan you've eaten bread before can you unpack this story for us so many problems with this story firstly should not be able to smell post just know this is obscene i what a horrible prospect even if it is a nice smell. Like, why would you want to associate a wonderful smell like a bakery with your tax return? Smell is just too emotional for admin. But for real, like, because in the brain, right, the smell area is linked up to the part of the brain

that is most emotional. It's like precious childhood memories, smell of the sea, love, sex, nice stuff. Like I don't want that linked up with my Thames water bill. I hate this news. I'm sorry. I appreciate it's the most French thing that's ever happened. Oh, my other problem. So it's a scratch and sniff thing. Who is out there scratching bread? That's obscene. Like no one picks up a croissant and thinks, thinks oh better scratch away the top layer of this on their merciless hunt for dough any food that you have to scratch your way

into something has gone horribly wrong I've never had to scratch my way in or out of a cake and I hope to god I never had to have to um yeah honestly I found this news the most upsetting of all the features um I I feel like my mail has been forever just like sullied with this and my appreciation of the french and of bread will never recover well i feel like the french were the ones who invented like the second the scented billet billet uh you know the idea of a woman putting her perfume on a love letter and sending it in or something but i i feel like this is sort of a distorted rendition of that of that concept yeah i just saw a tweet that had um snippets of napoleon's love letters to

josephine and one of it was like i'm back in three days don't wash so obviously yeah like yeah oh james just kind of folded in half. Yeah. Goddamn, Napoleon. Match his freak. I don't know. Also, the French baguette was given UNESCO heritage status in 2022. How long has that baguette been there? That is not a baguette anymore. That's a traffic bollard.

I was really upset by this story. Yeah, I didn't understand. I mean, obviously, this is old news that the baguette was granted heritage status but i don't really understand what the baguette having heritage status what the implications of that are other than not being allowed to do it in a different way i guess or if there's one in front of your house you're not allowed to build an extension is it like is it possible to give something heritage status that is inherently like a perishable good does that even work i mean look if anyone can do it uh the french can i just i feel like this is not the right move i i don't know who who's the who is this for

other than a i guess it's really for the messenger pigeons right this is for messenger pigeons carrying letters who want a bread based reward yeah is it also not gonna as a health hazard drastically increase the risk of people eating their post but with a completely valid justification of it smelled great. You made it smell like bread. I'm sorry. I can't pay my phone bill. I've ingested it. I mean, you start by licking the stamp.

Where does it end? Yeah. James? I have two big issues. One, it smells like a baguette on the stamp that has then been in a post box and gone to a mail center and then been in a post box and gone to a mail center and then been in a post bag and then has been on the floor of your apartment or whatever through the mail slot. The second is France. They said that the baguette was the jewel of our culture. France.

the jewel of our culture, France. Savant? Come on, man. The jewel. Like in New Zealand, we love a steak and cheese pie. Why? Because there's too much weed and not enough people close by. And even we would not declare that the jewel of our culture.

Like France, we've been in patisseries. We know you've got fancier stuff than the baguette. You can't declare it. You're not Japanese. You can't claim minimalism. You're the French. You are the height of complicated, unnecessary food. You saw snails and went, let's make this a thing. No one asked you to. There were other things in the garden for you to eat. And yet somehow you have ended up declaring the breadstick. Because that's what it is. Let's be honest, France. It's a fancy sandwich topping. You just, the jewel.

This is why French Polynesia wants out, guys. Aren't you going to cover the olympics in france james you might yeah if you can delay releasing this until after i'm back from paris 2024 that'd be great guys i feel like you're you're going to be attacked by baguette wielding outrage i'm going to wake up in my hotel room and there'll be like a baguette in the bed with me to be fair that happens on a good night in France too. Yeah, that's a tip. It wouldn't be the first time.

Being attacked by baguettes is how people tip out there. If anything, it's worked really well. Well, in other licking news, microplastics have permeated all testicles. All testicles have microplastics have permeated all testicles. All testicles have microplastics in them. This is devastating news. James Newkey say, you've got a pair.

Can you unpack this story for us? Well, it's nice of you to acknowledge that for once, Alice. Look, the secret's out. We finally did it. Men have come up with, it took us a while, to be honest. We've been skirting around, but we got together last year. And 2024, we've decided this is the new excuse for us not to wear a condom. We've got, baby, don't worry. I've got microplastics in my balls.

Turns out they did a study on dogs' balls, and they found there was microplastics in all the dogs' balls. And they were like, well, this isn't good. I wonder, as we all think when we look at dogs' balls, if it's similar with men. And so they got some testicles of men, and they discovered not only were there microplastics in every single sample of testicles, but it was three times the average of dogs. Now, what's the difference there? Dogs constantly licking their balls.

Men unable to lick their balls. I'm just throwing that out there, helping relationships as best I can. So, look, this is for anyone who wants to know the science is the same science has always been. It's it's microplastics are in everything. And now finally, we've discovered it's balls as well. We're not sure what we can do about any of this. There's a very massive concern that it's going to affect fertility rates with men.

Some would argue porn and toxic masculinity have slightly higher causes of affecting fertility rates with single straight men. But apparently it's microplastics to blame now. So that is actually the genuine scientific concern behind all this. The reason they're reporting it is they think that microplastics being in every guy's balls is going to affect, I think, circulation. I'm told it happens to men quite a bit over the age of 40. And they will not be able to get enough sperm going.

And we could see populations declining because of this. Well, I mean, on the bright side, though, James, this is all very negative news. On the bright side, you won't have to buy that fake plastic snow for Christmas decorations anymore if you get enough microplastics in your balls. It's a very valid point. It's a very valid point. But I would counter that my wife has set some very strict rules about jizzing on the Christmas guests and claiming mistletoe is involved.

Sian? My great sadness about this story is that when they say men's balls are full of microplastics they don't mean like a kinder egg it's not like you open a scrotum and there's a little lego man inside or a prize i also think that we should see a positive on it and look on the bright side and we were talking about the fertility rates my wild take is is it so bad that kids will be born made of 50 plastic that kid is gonna save so much on botox going forward so really there's a strong silver lining that we are ignoring you say health hazard i say

fillers um i'm kidding but uh i so side note i'm not really on tiktok because it makes me feel like maybe the kids won't be fine but my sister sister has been showing me, um, a couple of tween influencers talking about, like, being full of plastic, like, surgery, and my sister was showing me a video of this girl, and the video was, watch my lip filler dissolve, and I realised that we were watching a video of a woman's face melt as, like, content, so, I don't know, I feel like we were watching a video of a woman's face melt as like content so I don't know I feel like the future is a terrifying place with its relationship to like plastic and body autonomy um anyway um yeah it makes my kind of full body autonomy pro-choice feminism kind of slightly go nuts and want to throw everything into the ocean and read Descapital but on men's balls generally I feel like this problem has risen from everything being thrown

into the ocean in the first place oh yeah just completing the cycle um I think we should all be much more attentive to men's balls um my day job is I'm a copywriter for a gay sex shop. And my colleague last week had a customer call in complaining that he had a ball stretcher in the wrong size. This was not the shop's fault. This was the guy hadn't measured himself properly. So yeah, it's quite reassuring in the sense that, you know, no matter what's happening, there's always someone out there

who's ordered a ball stretcher in the wrong size who's having a much worse day than you. It's a self-esteem issue, really. You think your balls are the wrong size or you can blame it on the stretcher. And I feel like that's a very positive body image if you're saying the stretcher's the wrong size. If I may take the role of the audience for just a second. I apologize. I grew up with ministers. What exactly is a ball stretcher? Have you ever thought your balls aren't stretched enough, James?

I've got a lot of plastic down there, mate. The logic is, I think, to firm things up, make things go harder for longer. But honestly, my experience of working in this shop uh hopefully they won't listen to this is you could create any gadget for men and put the word sexy in front of it and they will buy it like the the number of things with nebulous gains or any like measurable uh pleasure improvement that exist in this shop um yeah this is the thing i i'm not convinced that a ball stretcher works or does anything but men will buy it as a like yeah let's f**k about with something down there do you do does it stretch

them first do you stretch while you're doing oh basically james what you want is to have balls that have been stretched wide and long enough that you can put a stop sign on them so that you can stop an automated car running over your penis. That's... Look, it's a San Francisco story. It's conceivably happening there. And that brings us to the end of this week's episode of The Gargle.

I'm flipping through the ad section at the back. James, have you got anything to plug? For people who live in Edinburgh, the monthly political gig, The Edits, will be on next week on Tuesday the 28th and again on June the 25th. I do have a new podcast project which will be coming up in October,

but I cannot tell anyone about it. Oh, well well just block out October the podcast uh Sian have you got anything to plug people who live in London I'm doing my pole dancing comedy show at Soho Theatre on the 21st and 22nd of June it's called Pole Yourself Together and I also do a monthly sub stack about pole dancing, comedy, feminism everything in between, it's shandoxy.substack.com That is wonderful I'm Alice Fraser, you can find me online

at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser it's a one stop shop full of my stand up specials podcasts and blogs as well as my weekly writers meetings and my weekly salons where we all get into a zoom room and chat about stuff if you want to come we have the level that is available for $1. You can sign up for $1 a month, but that is closing at the end of this month.

So you can sign up for $1 a month and then at the end of this month, no more $1 a month. Everyone will have to pay more to pay me. This is a Bugle Podcast, an Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programs from The Bugle, including The Bugle,

Catharsis, Tiny Revolutions, Top Stories, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.