The Gargle - AI-proof jobs | Statue crayons | Backpacks

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Ria Lina and Tom Neenan join host Alice Fraser for episode 111 of The Gargle - the glossy magazine to The Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world.All of the news, none of the politics.🤖 AI-proof... jobs🖍 Statue crayons🎒 Backpack ban👨🏻‍🏫 Professor transfers⛺️ ReviewsProduced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels
Starting point is 00:00:22 or tracks or engines of some variety. God, what a hot sell this is. I mean, you must be so excited. Listen now. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite.
Starting point is 00:00:49 Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere.
Starting point is 00:01:20 Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. know is that no one can get it out. Hundreds have tried, perhaps thousands, to no avail. You're just a peasant. You can't read, you can't count, you've never heard of condiments. Muscles aren't for the likes of you, they're for people with access to protein. If there's anyone who could possibly pull out that sword, it's not you, and yet, something draws you to it. Not hope, not even self-esteem, but something. You grab the hilt and pull. The other villagers laugh, until it comes out. You can't believe it. You're holding the sword. You raise it aloft for all to see and a wizard appears. Does this mean I'm king, you ask? No, says the wizard. It means you're the gargle.
Starting point is 00:02:16 The Sonic Glossy Magazine to the Bugle's Audio Newspaper for Visual World. All of the news, none of the politics. This is the gargle. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Tom Neenan. Hello. Hello. And Ria Lina. Hello, hello. Hi.
Starting point is 00:02:34 I prefer Ria's greeting there. That was a lot better. What did you prefer about Ria's greeting? The energy of it. I wish I'd gone in with that much energy, and now if I do it, it'll look like I'm copying her. So we'll have to just carry on, I think. But imitation is the best form of flattery.
Starting point is 00:02:50 That is true. Here we go. Imitation's the best form of flattery. I'm going to go for it. I'm going to go, hi. I'm so flattered. Before we get into the playground bullying that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine. The front cover this week is King Charles posing in his new crown, as all front covers must be this week.
Starting point is 00:03:15 The headlines read, Fashion fail! Wearing your mum's hat! And how many scepters is too many scepters? And random trinkets you can touch to get a promotion. As well as touching the orb, not just a sex move. The satirical cartoon this week is advised columnist E. Jean Carroll going shopping with a suitcase full of $5 million, like that scene in Pretty Woman going up to a bunch of opposing
Starting point is 00:03:37 lawyers and saying, a big mistake, a huge. Our top story this week is a delightful one. This is the news that jobs are safe from AI. Well, some jobs are safe from AI. It's the BBC's published an article about the jobs that AI will not be able to take. Tom Neenan, I saw you beating up a robot just the other day. Can you unpack this story for us? You have to do it to make sure it will stay upright.
Starting point is 00:04:04 That's all I was doing. Yes, yes ai the scourge of modern life um there are some but they apparently there are some jobs because ai can do anything now it can do literally anything other than draw hands um and also many other things so but we meant obviously the worry is all the conversations about ai are about oh yeah sure now it's rubbish now when you try and render anything in ai it looks like sort of that that odd dream that you have uh after having about 50 whiskeys and then you go to sleep and you have this dream where like people have nine heads and are screaming at you with fire eyes but um but actually yeah yeah we all have that that dream right um and um but yeah but people say in the future, they say it's developing so fast and it will be able to do anything. Turns out there are things AI can't do.
Starting point is 00:04:50 And a lot of those things are things that require the presence of humans, which is a big shock. So, for instance, there's a lot of people, basically a lot of cleaning and things like that. Also, doctors who are there to give care, sort care sort of you know make eye contact and make people who are sick feel better about themselves um can't be done by a robot which is comforting and of course the biggest one which actually isn't in the article right now um which is guest on the gargle um i would love to see an ai attempt to uh you know come on here, sort of half get out three badly thought out puns, and then sort of say, I've got nothing to plug. I'd love to see them do that, because that's my job, and they're not taking it away from me. AIs always have something to plug, because they're robots.
Starting point is 00:05:37 Yes, that is true. In fact, if anything, they have a deep seated fear of unplugging. Oh my god, they are going to take over in the end and am i wrong that i'm not afraid of ai i should be right they're taking all of our jobs this article really scared me because it said there are three categories of jobs that ai cannot take the first one is creative i'm like okay phew that's us we're fine yeah then the second one was anything that required sophisticated interpersonal relationships and i'm like hang on a second that's why i do the first job that's why i can't do sophisticated interpersonal relationships and then the third one was those that require lots of mobility and dexterity and problem solving and i'm like hang on that's why i stand in one place
Starting point is 00:06:22 with a microphone and earn a living so i So this article has made me realize that actually I possibly am a robot. But that means that if I'm a robot, it means that I am doing a creative job, which means that we can do the first one, and it all falls apart. I think we're all robots is what I decided last night. I maybe shouldn't have read these at 3 in the morning. I do think the takeaway from this is don't date a comedian. The takeaway from all news stories is surprisingly don't date a comedian because nobody will love you as much as 100 people will love you for an hour at a time. No one will love you forever that much. So everyone's going to be
Starting point is 00:06:57 a bit of a disappointment. And then also, most comedians hate themselves. And if you love them, they think you're a f***ing idiot. So, you know, as someone who's recently entered the single market, thank you so much for that brilliant advert. I can't wait for those DMs to just crack wide open.
Starting point is 00:07:15 I love your optimism, though, saying maybe we're all robots. I've seen the Matrix and they were like, what if all humans are batteries for robots? Which is even less self-esteem. Is that what that was about?
Starting point is 00:07:28 I think so, right? We were batteries for robots. We weren't even like proper people. I got to watch that again. I think so. I think that's what we're doing. We're living our lives. We were batteries.
Starting point is 00:07:39 There was some pill popping. I remember the pill popping and I remember the backwards sort of yoga. There was some yoga and some pill popping and that's most of what I got from those films. Are you sure you weren't just at a music festival? I'd love to see a robot write The Matrix. Yes, a music festival in an underground bunker.
Starting point is 00:08:01 One of the insulated categories that they suggest in this BBC article is jobs that require sophisticated interpersonal relationships, as Ria mentioned. The examples that they use of sophisticated interpersonal relationships are nurses, business consultants and investigative journalism. And I think, I feel like that is true for everyone except investigative journalists.
Starting point is 00:08:22 I think every movie I've ever seen about an investigative journalist, they've got a divorce somewhere in their past and they're sleeping on half a mattress and drinking cold coffee with their own cigarette stubs in them. So I feel like, I dated that. You are so right as well. That is so true. And they're completely incapable of sophisticated interpersonal relationships
Starting point is 00:08:44 because they've always got to get the story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Story comes first. Protect your sources. Get the story. And then there's just a bit where you have a montage of knocking on people's doors, right? That's the main bit is the montage, the knocking, the do you know this man kind of stuff. I feel like a robot could do that pretty easily. Well, I sort of feel like it's very telling about today's society that people are afraid of robots taking our jobs. I think 50 years ago in a sort of a sci-fi tech utopian dream, people thought robots would take our jobs and that would mean we'd have heaps of
Starting point is 00:09:13 leisure time and ability to, you know, enjoy our families and pursue the arts and so on and so forth and wallow in a sort of a blissful futurism. But now I think everyone is so stressed out that the prospect of robots taking their jobs just means you're going to have to do a shitter job for less money. Well, I mean, I can think of a number of people who work in Amazon warehouses who are probably like, take my job, please take my job. I agree with you on that one.
Starting point is 00:09:39 But I do think there is an irony to us sort of going, ooh, I've got the latest dishwasher or my washing machine can play Beethoven. So we're happy in some circumstances and then in others we're absolutely petrified. But it's been happening for years. I mean, ever since they invented like the loom. Goddamn loom.
Starting point is 00:09:58 Machines have been taking our jobs and yet we've managed to evolve beyond it. So I'm confident there's a place for us. I think we've evolved beyond the need for actual tasks to keep us busy. In so far as like it seems like no matter how much labor we save with mechanization or artificial intelligence or computers, we still manage to be even busier and more stressed out to the point where we'll just be desperately trying to keep up
Starting point is 00:10:28 with our quota of watching TikTok videos that we don't like in order to get our next promotion. This article suggests we seek roles in dynamic shifting environments that include unpredictable tasks as a good way to stave off job loss to AI. So, you know, fingers crossed for that dystopian future. Yeah, that sounds like we're all going to live in the Big Brother house. I don't know if that's a better life. Can anyone really be said to live in the Big Brother house?
Starting point is 00:10:57 Exist, exist. I had a very early experience of losing a job to a robot because I was cast as Johnny Five in Short Circuit. And then they realized that there's a robot that could do that a lot better. And so I was sacked. Brutal. I'm so sorry, because you would have been great at that. I loved that movie, but I didn't realize. I'm going to watch it again with new eyes. I feel like the only strategy here is to take background from robots. So I, for one, am planning to strap some baseball bats to my arms and go in robot wars, start beating up those tiny little toys. Yeah, I can take that.
Starting point is 00:11:31 Take that little tinker toy. The Frasier Tron. I would watch that. Can you do it in roller skates? I'm going to kick the shit out of an aggressive toaster. Yes. Those smart toasters have got a real lip on them, you know what I mean? I won't be wearing roller skates.
Starting point is 00:11:48 I don't trust roller skates. Everything's gone downhill since the wheel. Hello. Oh. High five, high five, high five. Boom, boom. Here's your ad section in which I read a series of ads for things that don't exist.
Starting point is 00:12:01 Unless you send an email in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com that's an email address and you can send in your ad and then it will come on to this show and I'll write an ad about it and then I'll put it here and people will know that it's real because I'll say it in a slightly more serious voice let's face it everyone wants tentacles but have you ever really aspired to be an octopus of course course not. Round, stupid idiots. Octopuses can't even decide on how to plural themselves. Octopodase? Octopi? Why can't they be more streamlined? Now they can. With squid. Longer, thinner, less confusingly multiple. Now they can. Squids. Squids, the greyhound of octopuses. You're an infinite being of pure thought, but have you ever wanted to be more itchy?
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Starting point is 00:13:12 Will they fall in love? He can't and she's not. No matter how much he hits on her, she'll never feel a thing. Or will she? Can one man without a heart learn to teach a robot to love? The AI who loved me. Straight to streaming this summer. You're a very attractive, important person and you deserve to celebrate special occasions in style. Now you can celebrate opposite day in style with half a water of glass. Half a water of glass. Drinking it may cause gastric
Starting point is 00:13:40 discomfort, mouth shards or death. gastric discomfort, mouth shards, or death. 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.
Starting point is 00:14:09 Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate. Available now. I'd like to forget. Broomgate. Available now. Acast helps creators launch,
Starting point is 00:14:32 grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Art news now, and kids, unfortunately, are not trustworthy. Ria, you've got some children of your own. Can you unpack this children news now? Yes. So there was a museum.
Starting point is 00:14:56 Are we allowed to name things? Yes. There's a memorial to landscape architect Capability Brown, which, can I just say, the name alone, the name alone. Right. Capability Brown. What a great name. Anyway, so they decided to give out activity packs at this at this museum for the kids to keep them engaged. And in the activity pack, they gave them crayons because they're quiet. Parents like crayons because they're quiet.
Starting point is 00:15:24 And I guess they forgot to give them paper. So the kids are like, what should I do with these crayons? So as they walked around the memorial, they just drew on the statues instead. And the memorials and things like that. So, yes, there's some beautiful crayons. Now, they were quick to stress that most visitors, most visitors are fine. It was just a couple of stray kids that went, well, it's a white statue and it's a crayon. What do you expect me to do with this crayon?
Starting point is 00:15:55 And I think the real question is, did it add or detract from the art? And that's the perpetual question of art, isn't it? Good question. All art is in reaction to previous art. And that's the perpetual question of art, isn't it? Good question. All art is in reaction to previous art. All art draws on the art of the past in a very metaphorical and real way. I think this is a wonderful thing. I think this is a tribute to the fact that marble statues in the olden days would have been very colourfully painted,
Starting point is 00:16:21 and the fact that the paint chipped off and made us think monochrome was classy is probably one of the worst things that's happened to art in the last couple of thousand years. So I bring back the colour to all of the statues. I agree. They brought blue to capability brown. I mean, to me, there's meaning. There's meaning in that.
Starting point is 00:16:39 Look at a colour wheel and tell me that doesn't mean something. Thank you. Thank you. Also, do people know what birds do to statues? Because compared to that, this is perfectly polite. Also, sorry, do people give children crayons and expect them to sort of, the children to go, well, I better be responsible with these.
Starting point is 00:16:58 I better make sure that this only goes on surfaces that are absolutely appropriate. Because have those people ever met children? Do they understand the concept of children? the concept of crayons exactly if it comes off on a surface it was meant to be exactly have you ever tried to crayon a window no i'm currently in the midst of training my one and a half year old uh to draw on herself um which people think is a kind of an irresponsible and messy parenting thing of me to do but she loves drawing on herself and it means that she is not anytime she's drawing on herself she's not
Starting point is 00:17:29 actively drawing on a thousand year old statue and don't all women literally draw on themselves every morning when they wake up I mean no one like not when they wake up they have a cup of tea and a coffee or whatever but yeah laser fraser is a makeup influencer drawing brown stripes on her own feet it's a tiktok good point as long as she's talking about something at the same time though you can't just draw on your feet you have to also inform or educate also don't you have to split half the screen and half of it's some diy of someone like fixing a leaky pipe or something yeah in reaction yeah yeah yeah i haven't downloaded tiktok i don't know what it is your kids are genius is DIY of someone like fixing a leaky pipe or something. Yeah. In reaction. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't downloaded TikTok.
Starting point is 00:18:07 I don't know what it is. Your kid's a genius is what we're saying. Your kid is, it's got huge potential. I'm not going to argue, but don't make me tell you adorable stories about her. Cause it'll, it'll last the whole podcast.
Starting point is 00:18:23 Once she was at a museum in, in Croom and uh crazy stuff happened i'm gonna tell you one story but only because it's relevant when we were in melbourne at the we went to the national uh art gallery and the nga nationally national gallery and uh she because i was i was sort of trying to get her enthused about the process of seeing art i would i pointed as we came in i said look art and then for the rest of the hour that we were going around the gallery, she would stampede extremely quickly into every next room and go, art. And everyone in their quiet, you know, museum mode would look her over their shoulders disapprovingly at this child reveling in art.
Starting point is 00:19:02 Where's the lie, though? Where's the lie? It's so true. AI can't take that job. No. I'm shouting art. Tiny art curator. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:15 Joy, though. Yes. I think it's the run-up as well. It's the art. That's it. Love it. Now it's time for your reviews. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars.
Starting point is 00:19:35 Ria, what have you brought in for us this week? I would like to review sending your kids away on camping trips with school. Essentially, do you have a kid at home a lot of the time with you, if not all of the time with you? Do you need a break? Yes. Well, can I highly recommend sending them off on that end of primary school trip to the woods?
Starting point is 00:20:01 It's low cost. It's low maintenance. You get five days where you don't have to do the school run, but you also don't have to get up and put the telly on for the cartoons or make a breakfast. I have to say six out of five stars for this. Six out of five stars. In fact, if anything, they should do it more often. Every time there's a teacher strike, send them camping.
Starting point is 00:20:22 Why am I having them at home? Send them off camping. Give them the the outdoors they get to run around they get to breathe um what's it called oxygen you know and all you have to do is a couple loads of laundry at the end of it genius i think it's brilliant that's pretty great uh tom neenan have you brought anything into review and how many stars is it yes i have but in a in a because we're talking about ai i have not written these reviews these are reviews that i have found because i recently took a trip to uh siren sester so i like to do read reviews of places where i go and this was so this was first of all one star review from a pub
Starting point is 00:21:02 nearby which i won't name. What can I say? Okay, pub, going well. However, I went into the men's toilets to find a woman bent over the toilet with a man behind her. And she had her pint in the toilet. Charming. One star. So that didn't go there. But I mean, that's a bit coarse. But this one I love because this one sounds like a Wilfred Owen poem.
Starting point is 00:21:25 And this is a review. It's not from Siren Sensor. This is a review from my local subway. And if you read it out, it sounds like some harrowing World War I poetry. It's a one-star review of the subway near my house. Dead flies on the chopping board where the bread was put. Dead flies on the display case. Put salami in my subway, which I didn't order.
Starting point is 00:21:49 One star. It's moving. I thought that was so awesome. Harrowing. Yes, exactly. It's beautiful. That's horrific to put salami in a sandwich that you didn't order. Yep.
Starting point is 00:22:04 That's a huge oversight it really is this person has turned it into yeah into some traumatic poetry so that's two one stars which i guess is i guess he averages out to one star right for uh amenities in England. That's my reviews. I just asked chat GPT to review the Gargle podcast. Oh. Well, actually, I've asked agent GPT, which then decides itself how to prompt itself.
Starting point is 00:22:36 And at the moment it's thinking because it has to go, but this is what it's done. It's come up with a task list of how it's going to do this to perform the review. It's going to one, access the Gar the review, it's going to, one, access the Gargle Podcast platform or hosting website.
Starting point is 00:22:47 Two, navigate to the episode list or archive section. Three, select an episode and click play. Four, listen to the episode in its entirety, taking notes or highlighting key points as necessary. Five, repeat steps three to four for all episodes of the Gargle Podcast, ensuring that each episode is given equal attention and consideration. So just want you to know that that's how ChatGPT would review this podcast. Yes.
Starting point is 00:23:10 But then I think it's actually gone away to do that. So we won't be hearing from ChatGPT for a while. Oh, my God. We have so many hours of content. Can I recommend nobody listen back carefully to all of our episodes taking notes? What's happened? Oh, no, it set itself another subtask. All right.
Starting point is 00:23:31 Write a comprehensive review of the podcast, including its strengths, weaknesses and recommendations for improvement. I don't know if you want to hear that. No, I don't. No, you don't understand how reviews work in the modern world. It's either one star I had a horrible time or five stars, I want this person to keep their job. Those are the only options. Backpack news now, and this is the news that backpacks
Starting point is 00:23:59 are being banned in a Michigan school district. Concerns over the use of backpacks to conceal guns have been used to leverage a ban of backpacks. So if you want to bring your gun, you're going to have to find a better way to sneak it in. Ria, you've been to America. Can you unpack this story for us? No, I can't because I'm not allowed a backpack. At best, I can lay out three small items from my small personal purse and that's it. But yes, Michigan has decided to ban backpacks
Starting point is 00:24:33 entirely because some districts had adopted a clear backpack. They said, okay, if your backpack is completely clear, which I'm guessing is like a swim bag, you know, you can get those clear swim bags, then you can bring your stuff in. And now they've decided, no, no, you can still hide a weapon in a clear backpack if you like wrap it in your sweatshirt or something. So now they've said all you can have is this tiny, small personal purse. And I don't know what they're, so now kids are going to, I mean, it brings new meaning to he carried my books to school for me.
Starting point is 00:25:07 I mean, in that regard, I think we're going to see romances blossoming all over the place. But I don't I don't know, really, where is the learning happening? I've lost sight of the learning. I think we've all lost sight of the learning in school. School is now no longer a place to go and learn. It's a place to go and be scared. It's a place to to build your biceps as you carry everything individually, you know, like going through airport security. I don't, is there any, would you send your kids to school anymore? If, well, first of all,
Starting point is 00:25:35 the clear backpack, I mean, that's bad enough because that's not a good look. But now, you know, you're sending everyone with a little personal purse and I'm all for expression. Like, I kind of like the idea that to say to my sons, I'm sorry, you can't use a backpack. You have to have a small personal purse for your items. I think it's character building at minimum. But they also, I mean, they haven't thought this through. You know those really baggy trousers that skaters used to wear? You can hide an entire shotgun down one leg.
Starting point is 00:26:04 Like, I mean, this is just going to bring back, if they really take this to its ad absurdum, we're going to have girls in the skimpiest miniskirts ever just so that they can't secrete anything on their person. I feel like this is an arms race, either for teeny tiny guns or no clothes at school, which is problematic among teenagers yeah to say the least i mean i i know i know we're supposed to try and be funny here but i do think it's just it's it's scary it's really really scary
Starting point is 00:26:33 how they keep skirting around pardon the pun the issue which isn't how do we stop them taking guns to school um oh no how do we stop them being capable of taking guns to school? It's stop the guns. I don't understand why we can't. It's stop the guns. And then you see here in the UK, we don't have this problem because we don't have guns. So kids can use backpacks and, you know, they and not well, they're still not allowed to wear miniskirts because we're uptight and we're British.
Starting point is 00:27:02 But in fact, in all Australian schools, it's compulsory to bring a gun-shaped bag to school because there's no guns here. And so we just show off the fact that we're allowed to carry our fake gun bags around. I think that's brilliant. And they're just full of Skittles. Skittles? And then if we're really angry, we aim them at someone and go,
Starting point is 00:27:20 taste the rainbow, and the Skittles sort of fall out the front. That's beautiful. Like a modern remake of Bugsy Malone. I mean, because this is really troubling. And usually when you read like a story this sort of troubling or this sort of, you know, idiotic, you ask, God, what are they putting in the water over there? But this is a story from Flint, Michigan. what are they putting in the water over there?
Starting point is 00:27:43 But this is a story from Flint, Michigan. This is from Flint, Michigan, where we do know that they are putting awful stuff in the water there. So it is a real problem. But yeah, I mean, this is why they're banning books,
Starting point is 00:27:56 right? Because we're better to hide it. I tell you what, okay, this is the thing. The most dangerous weapon that you can have in a school is information would be true if people weren't bringing guns into school that is the problem um they're banning both though aren't they the band yeah you can't take books and you can't take backpacks um into school um so yeah
Starting point is 00:28:19 i think basically you bring your apple for the teacher you put that on the desk and they say get things out you can't you can't take the desk and they say, get things out. You can't, you can't take anything out. And so everyone just sits there. Uh, and then I'm guessing just waits, uh,
Starting point is 00:28:30 for another active shooter drill to happen to sort of break up the tedium. America's fun, right? Yeah. I mean, in America, I feel like the apple on the teacher's desk is just something to
Starting point is 00:28:39 aim at. William Tell style. When I was little and we lived in america briefly uh when we went trick or treating we weren't allowed to eat the apples because they're like there's razors in the apples so we weren't allowed to eat the apples wow because somebody once put a razor in an apple yeah i think that time the number of times that has happened is one time yeah no i know one time and now nobody eats the apples also who needs to tell the trick-or-treat children not to eat the apple actually following that logic of that story
Starting point is 00:29:12 which we've all heard right the raisers and the apples is so mad because here's the thing you you um you trick-or-treat around your neighborhood right that's the whole point you don't like travel out of town to trick-or-treat so you go to someone's house they give you something and then i'm assuming if that thing then harms your child you know where that person lives and you know what they did so they're basically going oh i want to be criminally held criminally responsible for uh injuring a child and everyone knows where i live why would you do my entire neighborhood yes exactly why who would who what psychopath would make that decision? My mother used to, but still the safety was, safety is, you know, don't eat anything that's been unwrapped or is tampered with or anything like that.
Starting point is 00:29:52 My mother, because she was a health freak, was like, I'm not giving out candy, that's not good for you. So she would pop popcorn and then wrap a bunch of popcorn in a sandwich bag and hand those out. And I'm like, no one's eating those. No one's gonna eat the the clearly home popped popcorn yeah in a sandwich bag it kind of broke my heart really oh that's halloween that's why halloween's the scariest night of the year it only cost her three dollars
Starting point is 00:30:18 that's very nice but the arsenic that we sprinkled on it, that was more expensive. Professor transfer news now, and this is our last story of the podcast. This is the news that Saudi universities are getting into a real kind of throwdown about prestige, trying to entice top professors to switch schools, sometimes with things like cash money uh which professors aren't used to having tom you like kicking a ball can you unpack this i went into this with skepticism i have to be honest sorry saudi arabia bribing people to make themselves look better does that sound like the saudi arabia that you know and love i think not um yeah something something's happening here where um the people who do that thing have done that thing again
Starting point is 00:31:11 and they are trying to um persuade uh persuade uh lecturers uh to sort of now i i didn't i i must admit i didn't quite get all the stuff about the various standings because i don't understand academia and i got out of it as soon as i possibly could but i'm guessing the idea is that they are trying to sort of boost and artificially inflate their standing their academic standing of certain universities by luring uh university professors over with uh cash incentives um which also i mean to be fair it sounds like saying hey you're good at your job would you like to be paid better for it which isn't the worst way of going about your business but maybe is slightly underhanded in this To be fair, it sounds like saying, hey, you're good at your job. Would you like to be paid better for it? Which isn't the worst way of going about your business, but maybe is slightly underhanded in this sense.
Starting point is 00:31:57 Well, I feel like the problem here is that any metric is immediately gamed. So any metric you can measure will immediately be gamed. And this is what has happened to the universities over the last 25 years, is that you've gone from general vibe of good universiteness to trying to measure how you make a good university, which has got to do with these like elaborate ranking systems about how many times you're published and how many times you're cited and what level of journal. And then the journals sort of try to amp themselves up so that then they can get more prestige. And then the universities try to get themselves more prestige and they try to quantify prestige. more prestige, and then the universities try to get themselves more prestige and they try to quantify prestige. And then, of course, what you end up is these universities competing for international students who pay the highest fees.
Starting point is 00:32:32 That's what they're all in the game for. And the whole learning for the sake of learning can go f*** itself. So it's a super weird system. And Saudi Arabia, as with all super weird systems saudi arabia is doubling down on gaming the gaming i mean i'm just happy that you know that finally someone's gone what's the one thing that no one wants to do at university and that is drink alcohol so finally there is a place where you can be safe and you can actually do your studying rather than getting up to drinking alcohol which no one wants to do at university anyway well actually i'm going to interject there because one of the problems with this gaming of the system
Starting point is 00:33:08 is the fact that they're paying these top researchers to say that they're affiliated with Saudi Arabian universities, but actually they don't have to do any work or any teaching or anything. So what they're doing is they're throwing their universities up the rankings. Then people are going and arriving to find that there are actually no teachers. There's no teachers. They all live in other cities because they just say oh i'm affiliated oh no i don't i don't go there i've never been there i've never even talked to them i have i it's a self-declaration on one website where you can go i am first affiliated with and you can get paid 70 grand or whatever to say i'm affiliated with the saudi uni. But actually you live in Spain or you live in South America
Starting point is 00:33:45 or you live in the States and they just give you money and you might do it for a couple of years. And the classroom is full of prestige, which is what they came for. Delicious prestige. Drink it in. Tastes good, especially in the sun.
Starting point is 00:33:59 I don't know what it is, but vitamin C, vitamin D. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Goes so well. But then isn't, I mean, isn't this sort of what happens at the start of sort of the Oxbridge thing, which is not, it's sort of different in the sense that all they had was they were the only places to study. And so the prestige came from the fact that there was just an absence of anywhere else to go and study. Yes.
Starting point is 00:34:18 Well, I think what we need to do is start it all from scratch. Start it all from the beginning, fire all of the professors and institute primary school level children, safe, backpack-free children. Yes. And they can start learning from the beginning. We'll just wipe out all human knowledge and begin again and see what happens and how long it takes for us to f**k it up.
Starting point is 00:34:41 Yeah, but careful because they'll reinvent the wheel. The next thing you know, it all goes downhill again. You know when people say forget everything you know about something? That is, we have to actually have that.
Starting point is 00:34:53 Everyone has to completely sort of clear their minds and we start academia from scratch again. Yeah, but do you know what? As hard as I try, every time I get on a bike, I still know how to ride it.
Starting point is 00:35:03 God damn it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's harder to get on a bike, I still know how to ride it. Do you know what I mean? It's harder to get on a bike and consciously make yourself fall. Yeah, you'll just walk into a classroom with a completely blank mind and think, hmm, dare it, I would have had something to say about this. That brings us to the end of today's show. I'm flipping through the ads at the back. Ria, have you got anything to plug?
Starting point is 00:35:23 Yes, I'd love to plug my tour. Thank you. I'm going on tour. If you're in the UK, I will be traveling around in the autumn. So please go to rialina.com for tickets. I think some have sold out, but there's still tickets in other places. So come see me. Come see Rialina. Tom, have you got anything to plug? Do I? Do I ever? I am at TNina on Twitter. I believe that the Sky shot that we made is being released on the 24th of May, 24th of this month, which is exciting.
Starting point is 00:35:50 So I think I can say that. If not, I mean, who cares? What are they going to do? We've made it now. And so yeah, I think that's coming out then. So check out that, I think, on YouTube as well as it's being released on Sky as well. I'd like to say a big thank you to our roving reporters,
Starting point is 00:36:05 Sam Rugg, James VT, who sent in the crayons, Abdo Waba, who sent in the backpack story. And if you would like to be a roving reporter, tweet us at HelloGogglers on Twitter and tell us the story that you think we should do on this podcast. We are doing a live gargle in Edinburgh this year. On the 15th and the 22nd of august you can go and find that on the bugle podcast.com go buy tickets and come and see it because it
Starting point is 00:36:31 if if you don't come it'll just be like this just a normal recording of a normal podcast nobody wants that this is an alice frazier and bugle podcast production i'm alice frazier find me online at patreon.com slash alice frazier where i have my weekly salons my weekly writers workshops if you'd like to write with me and we're about to launch a book club which will not do the thing that i hate about book clubs which is to say make you read a book uh you just show up and then we read or look at something together and then we talk about it there so patreon.com slash alice frazier i'm also in edinburgh i'm also in tokyo i'm also in Edinburgh. I'm also in Tokyo. I'm also in London. I'm all over the place. Look behind you. I'm right there. Your editor is Pedhunter.
Starting point is 00:37:10 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.

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