The Gargle - YouTube gamified | Testosterone | Scare psychology

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Alice Tovey and Cerys Bradley join host Alice Fraser for a loosely Halloween-themed episode 180 of The Gargle.All of the news, with none of the politics.🎮 YouTube gamified💪 Testosterone therapy🦈 Really old shark😨 Scare psychology💀 ReviewsWatch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BuglePodcastSupport Bugle podcasts here https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateWritten by Alice Fraser, Alice Tovey and Cerys BradleyProduced by Ped Hunter, with executive production from Chris SkinnerHOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLE- Keep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, which can put us two times more at risk of heart disease or stroke. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. This is a podcast from The Bugle. In the shadowed heart of Capitolopolis, where skyscrapers reach to pierce the midnight air, something wicked stirs in the world of lore. Benjamin Cross is a cutthroat attorney and night-fighting Asian fusion vigilante investigator, feared in the courtroom for his ruthless precision and in the streets for his moderately problematic

modified Germano-Japanese karate chop. But tonight, as Halloween casts a chilling veil over the city, he's about to find himself entangled in a case unlike any other, a case where the dead hold as many secrets as the living. A mysterious summons leads him to an eerie estate cloaked in fog, ancient ivory, and memories of his childhood love. Eloise Gray, a brilliant and enigmatic defense attorney with secrets deeper than the shadows and eyes deeper than the secrets and bosoms as deep as they need to be for the plot. Her smile is as sharp as a scythe

and her blood red fingernails can see in the warm heart he remembers from their rough childhood in the orphan dojo. Their past is ancient history but there's an undeniable spark between them, a seductive pull that neither can resist. As their fates twist and tangle the haunted walls around them seem to whisper of the past, of forbidden love and 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 Alice Tovey. Hello, hello, how's it going?

It's very good. It is going well. If by it you mean whatever it is that you make in New York. Just discourse, comedy, Halloween, ooh, spooky wellness. And Carys Bradley, welcome, welcome back. Hello, hello. Thank you for having me back in the very brief period that teachers can do things that aren't teaching. Important and vital.

Before we take hands and do the one plus one is two that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine. This week, the front cover of the magazine is Timotei Shalome at a New York Timotei Shalome lookalike competition, starting a Timotei Shalome Highlander battle to the death where there can be only one. The new Timotei Shalome is expected to be Brunson Johnson of Bushwick. May he hold the crown well. And the satirical cartoon this week is a series of billionaires dressed up as newspaper outlets wearing novelty Swiss cheese hats saying, we can't possibly endorse a candidate, we're simple innocent cheeses, we're just made of cheese. Evie But Timmy's really missed out on an opportunity to call the event to me or not to me.

Tilda Apparently everyone was very happy. I would have had an existential crisis where I, Timothee Chalamet, showing up at a lookalike competition. Evie- Question for the room, do we find him handsome? I don't find him unhandsome, but I just want to get a temperature check. Luzi- No, he's very beautiful. That's the thing about him. He's sort of, in that attractive way, crosses gender boundaries and blurs lines of attraction so that people aren't sure if they find him unthreateningly feminine or alluringly masculine.

Yes, like a sad oil painting. He definitely, to me, seems like the kind of person who, with the like acres of space between you and a celebrity, can plausibly be attractive, but I bet he's so annoying to like physically be in the presence of. Whereas many of the drag kings that were at that competition, I was very into that. I was very into the drag Timothy Chameleau. Turns out that's a new thing that I found out about myself

having read that news story. Ha ha! It's always nice when a new interest unfolds itself from the depths of one's soul into the world. It's nice to be reminded, you've got to be reminded that you can feel things so I'm grateful to the Timothy Chameleon Dragon for that. This week's top story, YouTube is, it's not sufficient for them to host the connection between creator and viewer. They are now trying to gamify that connection. Alice Tovey, you've gone down a YouTube spiral before. Can you unpack this story for us?

I don't understand what any of this means, Alice. The more I read about social media, the more confused I get. Basically, what I've gathered is like it's Halloween, right? So YouTube, they're giving us the scariest thing of all, the means to form a parasocial relationship. Ooh, spooky. But they're just giving a bunch of tools to essentially keep people on the hook, on social media longer. Like they've got something called a hype measure,

that if you're a small creator it will give you some hype, which sounds like a little button you can press, and then Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch are gonna come out and be like, come on, come on, but no, it's just all, it's all just the same social media bullshit with a different wrapping. Like to me social media, it's like the TAB in Australia, which is the betting agency for horse races and stuff, but for young people. But instead of the TAB being full of sad divorced dads, social media is full of irony, poisoned children with bad opinions, and we're betting on whether or not this is going to psychologically ruin us. And for everyone watching this on YouTube, don't forget to like and subscribe.

Thanks everyone watching this on YouTube, don't forget to like and subscribe. I mean they've already started, I mean I guess the like and subscription has already begun the slow or swift decline of all social media. The idea that you can quantify engagement and relationship is, I think, has led to almost everything bad in the world. Can I just say in the world? Keris, how do you feel about it? I'm just, I'm really relieved that Alice said that this was a very confusing story because in my notes I called it YouTube bleep bloop bloop.

I don't know what, I don't know what this is meaningfully doing to change the hellscape that already is social media. They're trialing polls so that you, now you can like put a YouTube video up and then you can ask ask your audience to like vote in a poll and they had one example like when kind of explaining how this would work of a guy who he's basically given up making content and is now just asking his followers like would you rather questions and so this is like this is the first step in the slow march to like in 10 years, people will not be making any content, like we will have just gotten rid of the creative elements of social media in its entirety. And it

will just be like little people in a network like pushing buttons to directly increase people's dopamine. It will be 1000 people asking each other where you would like to have dinner. Yes, yeah, exactly. Where would you like to have dinner? And the YouTube is now an actual tube that goes directly through your eye into your brain. And when people vote in your poll,

that affects the hormones that are secreted from your body. With the poll thing, this makes me sound a million years old, I know, but like back in my day, if you wanted a good would you rather, you needed to just cram into someone's living room and have a sleepover. And that only then can you find out if you'd rather kiss John G or John C

from your year seven class. Social media makes me feel very, very old. The trend that I hate the most is people doing like dad jokes on TikTok, that they have not written themselves. These are these are jokes that other people have already said before. And then they're like, they're like puns or one liners. And so that that is a written means like that. The easiest way of doing that is just like putting that out on Twitter.

But some kid has recorded themselves saying it, which means that when my young friends send me it, I now have to put on my headphones, connect to my Bluetooth so that I can listen to a joke that I already know when I could have just read it in much less time without having to do any of that. And I think that people who are inventing new things for social media should think about how specifically I would like to consume social media and ask the question of whether this serves any purpose or not. Because it just I like what what are we gaining from the gamification of YouTube? I don't understand it. Well, I mean, specifically YouTube is gaining the less loss of money to TikTok essentially.

Where does the money come from? Advertisers, it's all advertisers. The more, the longer they can keep you on their platforms, the more of your attention they can sell to advertisers and then the advertisers wallow in their gold bars. I don't know what the next step after the advertisers are making money is. I assume they then fund the ads. Oh, in that case, I'm all for it. Let's get hype. Let's click all the buttons at the same time.

Let's do this. Yep. So it's not enough that you can chat. You can now super chat and then you have like special people. And then it's not just enough that you're a fan. You can be like a quantified fan, more fanly than all the other fans. And it used to be that the fan would prove that they were the best fan by showing up outside your door at 3 o'clock in the morning. So

I think in general I approve more of doing it this way. Evie Maybe we just need a full pivot away from social media. Like we've got YouTube, I love your idea of the tube, Keris, I think that's fabulous but maybe let's try you you and it's just you and you sit in a room with your thoughts and you engage with yourself and then you sit in a room with your thoughts and you engage with yourself, and then you just have a nice sense of feeling good. With the super fans and the super chat, I don't understand why they can't just do a YouTube unwrapped like they do with Spotify, because the thing that makes me feel good

about my Spotify is at the end of the year when it says, you have listened to this song so many times that we are genuinely worried about you. You're in the top 1.01% of people who have listened to this song specifically. Do you know that you're autistic? And I think I would quite like it if I got like a YouTube, like the amount of times that you have rewatched this video has become unhealthy in 2024. And that would give me the same, like, I think that would be a better reality check than

being like, Keris, you are this person's superfan. But stop rewarding this behaviour. What we should be saying is if you're engaging this much, you need to tone it down a bit and go outside for five minutes. Your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy. And this is our special spooooooky ad section. Are your feet cold? It's sock o'clock!

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injecting themselves with steroids and testosterone at an unusually early age in order to be more manly. Keris, you are surrounded by masculinity. Can you unpack this story for us? I have so many thoughts on this. I do not know if they're going to come out in a coherent order, but firstly, it's 2024. And I would really like it is very important to me that we all understand that testosterone is not like steroids, like it's not a magical potion that you put into your body that makes you stronger and bigger and more masculine. It is not Popeye's spinach, like that's

just not how it works. You can't just like give these kids patch and then they will sprout a beard massive muscles. And And this kind of story where we talk about gender affirming care, but it's for cis people and then suddenly like it's okay and it works. So like testosterone, it wouldn't make me a man, but it will make that nerdy boy over there that I could bench more masculine. Like that's, I'm so annoyed by this, but I think a lot of people kind of misunderstand what testosterone is and how it works. And there's actually like, your body takes multiple different forms of testosterone, and they all do different things. And how testosterone affects individuals is not just due to the amount of testosterone

that you have. It also can be due to how good your body is at processing it. So there were lots of people, particularly women, who get told that they're not allowed to do sports because their testosterone levels are too high. But a lot of people who have high testosterone, it's because their body is really bad at processing it, so they have to make an excess of it just so that they can get the same effects as everybody else. And it's like, it's a really complicated, has a really complicated relationship with the body. Of course it does. It is associated with masculinity. It is not going to be simple and straightforward and do exactly what you want it to.

But everything that we know about testosterone and this like idea that society has, that testosterone, you put it in the body and it makes you more masculine and stronger, that comes from Nazi research. And I just think that if the like foundation of your understanding of something is research that the Nazis did, then you need to rethink it. And not just because the experiments that they did were very very immoral, like obvious obviously the Nazis were bad and we shouldn't trust their science because they were the bad guys and they did human experimentation, which was very immoral. But also they were terrible scientists.

This is not peer reviewed. Nobody peer reviewed the Nazis. Their research methodology is just not legitimate. So all of the arguments about how testosterone, it should be a banned substance Like we can give it to you. We can give it to teenage boys to make them stronger, but we can't give it to To trans kids because that would be really bad all of all of that comes from genuinely a Mad Nazi scientist who was just given like a human zoo and was like I'm gonna inject things into things and we'll see what happens

And then that that is a foundational aspect of our understanding of gender. I mean, of course, Keris, testosterone, I mean, I feel like your point is something like testosterone is a very complicated hormone, and it changes different people's bodies in different ways. And then the ways in which that makes us understand gender and so on, also very complicated. But on the other hand,

have you considered a 17 year old boy who's feeling anxious and thinks that one injection will solve all of his problems? Because I feel like that is what is what is happening here. I appreciate why he wants some kind of Captain America special serum, but that boy needs to do his homework and talk about his feelings. And then I think that that will just, I think that will be more effective than testosterone. And this, like, I just, I want to know what this is gonna do

to the testosterone market, because it is already hard enough for like trans-mask people and trans men to get hold of testosterone. And I don't understand why I have to have like hours and hours and hours and hours of interviews with therapists Where they asked me loads of questions like when you were little did you wonder where your penis was in order to justify me getting Testosterone and then some some kid just gets to be like I feel a little bit sad I wish I had a beard and then the doctor is like here you go

Here are all the testosterone patches that you need. I just don't think that's fair. And this is gonna be like when West London got really into quinoa and then nobody in Peru could afford their basic food. Like this is gonna destroy the testosterone black market, which is an incredibly delicate ecosystem and something that lots and lots of people really rely on.

So shockingly, I think that these young men are not thinking about other people when they are demanding this quick fix. Really? That's the first time they've done this. That's wild. I know, I know. That's what we're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's shocking, isn't it? Those bastions of human empathy. Well, I mean, I feel like there's, at the heart of this idea of masculinity is a fundamental misunderstanding

about what is attractive about men or what is considered manly about men. I was the other day at a train station with a friend and his two children, and he had one on his front and one on his shoulders, and he was also carrying two large suitcases and I was behind carrying my suitcases and every single woman that we passed looked at him like she wanted to jump his bones against the wall and we got to the top of the stairs

and a guy was like, oh, pussy whipped and I was like, you, sir. Evie Do you know what it means when you're pussy whipped though, fellas? It means that you've seen the pussy and you've been whipped by it. What a delight! That's an honour! I just think this whole thing is so wild that it's gender, like it's testosterone influences, right? It's like Joe Rogan and all these other really toxic, toxic guys spreading that young guys

should take testosterone to be more manly, whatever that means. Gender theorists were not ready for TikTok. Can you imagine explaining TikTok to Freud? Like you could follow your mum on there as well as try and f*** her. Like I don't know, this is crazy stuff. And that brings us to our reviews section. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to review something out of five stars. Alice, Tovi, what have you brought in for us this week? So yes, it's Halloween. We're getting spooky, so I decided that I would review skeletons. Now, there is something very whimsical about having this silly guy inside of you that just copies everything that you do, your every movement. It's kind of like having a shadow that you can't see,

but like they're more skeletons, they're more than just pathetic clothes hangers for our skin. Like if cartoons have taught me anything, it's that skeletons are an emergency xylophone. How many times have you needed a xylophone only to be left phoneless? If sneaky things are happening, the xylophone be a tappin'in. And skeletons, like, you know, they they're famous, they're famous babes. You know who the real star of Hamlet is? Not Hamlet, no, it's that gorgeous skull.

He's a scene stealer, that's a real Jeremy Allen White of a skull right there. And skeletons, they've graced us with some of the most beautiful baby name options known to man. Ulna, Tibia, Ilium, Maxilla, like that's a good drag name as well as a baby name. Like truly if I came up to all of you and I said this is my son Voma you'd be like this kid is a legend with endless nickname potential like V-man, Voma Simpson, Iced Vovvo, Voma's Odyssey, it doesn't end. And like even when a skeleton breaks it's still kind of chic. If you broke your arm

in primary school, you are suddenly very popular and covered in gel pen. It didn't get better than that. I am going to take one star off the skeleton though, because it makes a lot of noise. I particularly have a very noisy skeleton. No matter how I stand up, my skeleton just plays the drum solo from coming in the air tonight. Call me pork belly, because I am crackling. But overall, big fan of the skeleton, my bony lass, that's why I'm giving it 4 out of 5 stars. 4 out of 5 stars for the skeleton. Thank you, Alice. And Keris, what have you brought in for us this week? Well, I feel bad. I've not done a Halloween themed one, but I was thinking about reviews

that I've done in the past and they've all been quite negative reviews. And so this year I would like to, or this episode I would like to review going on holiday, which is something that I did properly for the first time as an adult this year. My partner and I went away. It was like a real holiday. We went away for 10 days. It was not, I'm going to a festival that I'm going to perform at and then we get to stay like an extra day afterwards, or like I've got a gig in a different city, let's turn it into a mini break. It was a real holiday. I didn't take my laptop. I understand why everybody does it now. It was really nice. We like did tourist things and didn't think about work and I didn't answer any. And I slept when I wanted to. And we had like

fancy dinners and ice cream every day. And so I give it five stars. Like if you could go on holiday, you should go. I don't understand. I haven't been on holiday since I was taken on holiday by my parents as a child. Why have I denied myself holidays for 10 years? They're wonderful. And the guilt that you feel about not working, that goes away after like two days. And then you still get eight days of a holiday where you get to feel good about yourself and have a nice time. So I really rate it five stars.

That's a magnificent thing. As somebody who is in the arts and works for themselves, not having a holiday is the nature of the beast. You carry the work with you. You're the most terrible boss and the most terrible employee at all times. So I'm very pleased that now having entered the world of normal human jobs, you're allowed to have a normal human holiday. I get five stars for you having holidays as well.

And that brings us to ancient, undead, well, not dead yet, shark news now. And this is the news that marine biologists have confirmed the finding of a 500-year-old Greenland shark. What an exciting thing. If only the shark could speak, we could ask it what it felt about being 500 years old. Keris, you've stared into the abyss with a cold heart

before. Can you unpack this story for us? Yes. Scientists have found some really old sharks, except that they're now dead. So they were really old sharks, but these ones are dead. So we don't actually know if there are any. We could have killed the only 500-year-old shark in the same way that there's a really tragic story about the guy who cut down the Oldest tree in the UK. So you like you obviously you date trees by counting the rings So he didn't know when he was cutting the tree down that it was the oldest tree But he cut down this tree then counted the rings and then was like, oh no, what have I done?

This is the oldest tree and now he works in marine research, not killing very old sharks. Cutting sharks in half and counting the rings. He works on a boat in the middle of nowhere because people come up to him and are like, aren't you the guy who cut down the really old tree? And he's like, I do not know what to do with the grief of the action. But what's interesting about the story is that this particular species of shark, the Greenland shark, we didn't know how to age them. Because for other sharks, you can, you don't count the rings inside them, but you can count rings of calcium like around their eyes. And these sharks don't have that. And so they've had to develop a new kind of carbon dating technique, which is in the

eye itself. So like some of the cells that are formed in the eye, like when the shark is a fetus, will still be in that shark 500 years later, which I think is incredible and completely like ruins that, oh, your whole body changes every seven years, that's when all your cells have been replaced. Not for that shark, that shark can never forgive and never forget itself, because it will never evolve or change. And so they've developed this new technique, which we're very excited about, but it has got 120 years each way swing. So is the shark 500 years old, or is it like 200 and something years old? But it's very, very old. And what I think is most interesting is that based on this research, they now think that sharks reach, this species of shark reaches its sexual maturity at the age of 150, which is so much more sensible. I felt so like underdeveloped, not losing my virginity until I was in my early twenties, but like, yeah, 150, that's actually where it's at. I would make much more sensible choices if I was having sex for the first time at 150 than at like 22 or whatever. So I think we've got a lot to learn from the Greenland shark based on this study.

at 150 years old, no one is hot anymore, particularly if you're a shark, because sharks aren't hot. So they would make rational decisions about who they were going to sleep with. If no one swept away in passion, they'd just sort of stare into each other's eyes and go, ehh. It is wild though, Keris, this age discrepancy in the dating, because they've said that it was reaching 500 years old, but in the byline of the report said it was at least 272 years old. So like the shark is reaching 500 in the same way Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriends are reaching 30. Yeah, I think potentially, you know, scientists get like this with their research, they're very

excited, they found a new technique. Like we can cross the cross the I's dot the T's later. Like who cares if it's just slightly out? Like it doesn't it doesn't matter. If if a Nazi scientist can inject testosterone into a bunch of people and then claim that that is the fundamental like, serum that makes us who we are, and we can still be saying that on TikTok, like, 100 years later, then yeah, this is also good science. I think the main spooky thing about this episode is the scientific method and how much we put into the research when. I definitely feel like people can tell how old I am by staring into my eyes and seeing the hollow, hollow existential terror. And that brings us to our final story of this week's episode of The Gargle. And this is the news that people like to be scared. This is the Halloween spooky news that there are people who enjoy the sensation of being terrified.

As somebody who does not enjoy the sensation of being terrified, this is fascinating to me. I feel like all I need to do to be terrified is look at the sky and consider my tiny smallness compared to the magnitude of space, or contemplate an atom and think about how much bigger I am than the atom and how sad that makes me feel that I'll never have a conversation with an atom. So people who go out of their way to watch scary movies or seek out frightening experiences is extremely strange to me. Alice Tovey, you've done a show about this. Can you unpack this story for us? We are two different sides of the same Alice coin because you don't like being scared.

I love being scared. I love horror. So the study, they found a bunch of different things about why people like to be afraid. So it described what we call like controlled fear experiences. So that when you're watching a movie or you're reading a book, you have an out for it. And I can confirm as someone who watched The Exorcist when I was seven, I turned out fine. The fact that I could turn off the television, I am, yeah, who doesn't want to grow up to be this? This is good. And I'm also, I'm going to read a direct quote from the article. So

in one of the studies, the researchers found that people who visited these high intensity haunted houses as controlled fear experiences displayed less brain activity in response to the stimuli. So they're saying that that means that you're less anxious because of this. But look, and I, like I said, I love horror movies, but does the less brain activity that I have mean that I'm brave or that I'm not very smart? They also said as well, these uncontrolled fear experiences, they, they offer opportunities to bond. It's kind

of what your grandparents say, like if you want to get a gal you take her to a scary movie and they're always holding a really big cigar and they just become American all of a sudden even if you weren't from there. And psychologists have called it the tend and befriend system, which is coincidentally the system that my university crushes used when I tried to sleep with them. And that was really spooky. Let me tell you that much. Karis? I like that this research was like, yeah, trauma bonding is actually really healthy. You should go through, because comparing it to when we have to go into a house fire to

like rescue people, like everyone in the fire department feels that that's not that's, that's an unhealthy coping mechanism, actually, is what is what you're describing. I, I can't watch horror films, I don't like being scared. But I understand that they're very culturally relevant. And so I just I read the Wikipedia plot lines of all of the like important ones. Cause I think that the genre is fascinating and I think it's very useful way of talking about stuff.

But I do not like being afraid. And I wish that, cause there's some of the research is that essentially what you're doing is like exposure therapy and you can like dull your anxiety to situations. So like, if you watch scary movies, and get really freaked out in a safe space, then you become less afraid in the world. But all that really doing for me is giving me more things to be afraid of in the world.

So I think it's not working for me specifically. And then they've also compared it to like a running high where like you can watch it and then you get a massive release of endorphins and you realize you're safe and then you feel high after the film. But I don't like running either. Like I appreciate that being high is nice, but I have yet to do a thing where it is worth that. Like I'm not going to run so I can get to run as high. I'm not going to subject myself to a horror film. Most of my life is trying to bring myself

to the middle. Like that's what I want. I don't want these, like everything that I'm doing is trying to stop myself from massively going from very scared to very happy from this. Truly the scariest thing I can imagine would be waking up to a text message from a friend being like, do you want to join my runners circle? That's awful, spooky stuff. That is the modern horror film. The idea is that horror films like make you less anxious because you can sort of like micro dose the fear things in the same way that all of the people that I know, if we all had anxiety before the pandemic hit, when the pandemic hit, we were like, yeah, okay. So I'm actually quite, quite chill with this. Like I've, I've, I've practiced, I've been through all of these scenarios in my head already. This, this is actually my house now. This is where I live. And that's the idea of a, so I understand why they're therapeutic. But they're still scary, that like all the things

that are being discussed, like it's just all very unpleasant to like go through in order to get that, those benefits. And how much of the sensation of pleasure is just the sensation of stopping the pain? Like I'm going to hammer my foot for the sweet cessation of relief when the bruise finally heals. Look, I don't believe in ghosts, but I also don't not believe in ghosts. And I believe in ghosts just enough to never want to do anything that might invite a ghost into my life. So I feel like...

Yes. I just like it's Halloween. If I want a little high, I'm going to have a Kit Kat. Like what I want is a novelty chocolate. Like I want to pay three times as much money for the same amount of chocolate, but it's got a little ghost face on it. And that, I promise, is going to make me in a more stable and emotionally safe way, feel good than subjecting myself to two hours of horrible, horrible torture just so that I feel relief when it's over. Happy Halloween! Or is it, you're not meant to wish a happy Halloween. I'm happy!

Hauntingly existential Halloween! And that brings us to the end of this week's special Halloween edition of The Gargle. I'm flipping through the ads at the end. Alice, have you got anything to plug? Yes, if you're in Sydney, Australia I run a monthly comedy night called Binfire Comedy, otherwise I've got my little horror movie up on YouTube, Hen, but yeah elsewise you can follow me on social media and go to alicetovey.com and yet bully me to come to a city near you, I would love that. Yes, if you are looking for a delightful fright on Halloween, go watch Hen. It's online. It's very good. Did you watch it? Oh, I'm so sorry. I hope I didn't. I hope you didn't get scared.

I did. It was so scary. But I felt loyalty to the team. So. Oh, thanks babe. Keris, have you got anything to plug? Yes. Does Hen have a Wikipedia page? And can I just read the plotline there? I think that's what I would like. So this week for Halloween, I'm going to be at the Museum of Comedy doing a weirdo's show, QAnon versus Dracula, which is the Halloween American politics mashup that everybody has asked for this week. So I think it's sold out on Halloween night 31st, but there's tickets available on the 1st and 2nd of November. And then I'm working on a new show, Queer Tales for Autistic Folk, which is coming to the Nottingham Comedy Festival on the 9th of November. And I would like to sell some tickets to that, so if you're in the Nottingham area you should come see it. And also I have revamped my newsletter so if you want a kind of weird, fun, sci-fi,

sometimes kind of horror story, fortnightly in your inboxes then you can sign up via my website carisbradley.com. carisbradley.com and you can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser if you'd like to join my writers meetings. There's two a week and there's about to be a long form course if you're working on a novel or something larger, then there will be an extra one. But you have to sign up at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser to find out all of the details of those writers meetings. Also you can get my book which is called A Passion for Passion. It used to be the Dancy Lagarde reader but it is now A Passion for Passion because most people in the world have not heard of Dancy Lagarde.

So A Passion for Passion is available at Unbound.com and it is out on the 6th of February next year. And this is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Our 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.