The Gargle - Human brains | Roof alligator | Wu-Tang Clan

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

Nish Kumar and Josh Gondelman join host Alice Fraser for episode 22 of The Gargle - the weekly topical comedy podcast from The Bugle. 😳 Man nearly wanks himself to death🤯 Ancient exploded b...rain🚬 Tobacco company buys inhalers🍟 $200 French fries🐊 Alligator on roof👐 Wu-Tang album sold by US governmentThis is a show from The Bugle. Follow us on Twitter.This episode was produced 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's audio newspaper for Visual World. Welcome to the show. Fresh, fancy and full of opinions, our guest fashion editor this week is Nish Kumar. Welcome. Good to be here. Remember, fashion is for everyone.
Starting point is 00:01:56 And our guest science, technology and Dunkin' Donuts editor is Josh Gondelman. Welcome back. My three passions, and I would say equally. Welcome to the magazine, gentlemen. Before we dive in, let's have a look at the front cover. The front cover this week is Simone Biles posing provocatively in a white tracksuit going, Oh, now you give a f*** about gymnastics, Gary. The sub headline is, Is it time for a mental health Olympics?
Starting point is 00:02:23 Other words on the cover include, Culture section, jazz, is it time for a mental health olympics other words on the cover include culture section jazz is it and why not and top tips to the new body confidence eight of them are surgical intervention and the other two are just get over it plus jesus and his homeopathic fish how to feed a host with just a drop of fish sauce diluted in half a glass of water the satirical cartoon today is a movie poster of a j. Lo and Ben Affleck gritty reboot. J. Lo and Ben Affleck of course known as Blo-Pez. In this gritty reboot she's weaponised and rebuilt her iconic butt after burning it down for the insurance money when she was on the run from the mafia and he's actually the grim Batman man from the DC movies
Starting point is 00:03:00 but one who isn't Bruce Wayne by day. they're making out together on a yacht with a surprisingly visible amount of tongue and it causes a rift in the space-time continuum that's making the robot who played jaws in the movie jaws achieve sentience and become an existential philosophy professor at penn state it's a lot to carry for one panel satirical cartoon but the artist has really carried it off i'm so worried that if they break up, Ben Affleck will get the worst tattoo in human history. I think every day about what that tattoo would be. And the two that I've come up with are like, it's like the green monster at Fenway Park, full chest and stomach piece. The green monster at Fenway Park and like the Yankees are storming it.
Starting point is 00:03:41 And the Red Sox are pouring boiling Dunk boiling dunkin donuts iced coffee down upon them and then the other version is it's the last supper right the famous the last supper but with the dropkick murphys instead of jesus and the apostles i feel like the most telling thing about cultural pressures on appearance but even for Hollywood actors is the fact that she hasn't aged and he has I do think though if you I feel like since they've gotten back together he's de-aged like nine years like in the past month if you look at him I 100% agree there is some sort of aura around Jennifer Lopez. Yeah. Like, if you put a baby near Jennifer Lopez, it devolves back into sperm and an egg.
Starting point is 00:04:31 Yeah. There's some kind of magic around that woman. It's the curious case of Bennifer Button. Let's dive into the magazine. Our first section is our human brain section. Let's dive into the magazine. Our first section is our human brain section. Now this story, a man in Japan has stroked himself while stroking himself in the worst Olympic event nobody ever asked for. This 51-year-old man is being reported as having masturbated himself into a stroke.
Starting point is 00:04:59 Josh Gondelman, have you been following this story? I have been following this story. been following this story i have been following this story this man um was masturbating around three times a day and no judgment here but who has the time um and he he had a stroke he it's almost this like a very frequently fatal condition and he survived and the french call the moment after an orgasm le petit mort right the death. And this guy almost got the whole thing, which is, he's Japanese, but spiritually very French. In many ways, every orgasm is just the tip of death. He's described in the news reports as being an unnamed right-handed man. And imagine how much masturbating you have to do for someone to look
Starting point is 00:05:47 at you and go i don't know your name but i'm sure you're right-handed that thing is enormous it looks like a giant foam finger you'd get at a basketball game well the thing about this is that he masturbated frequently enough he masturbated several times a day it is entirely possible that the stroke just happened and when he went into emergency, he didn't need to mention the masturbation. I'll go this far. I think the masturbation might have been what shook it loose, the blood clot. I think he could have saved his life. He's just used to like expelling things. I think his body was just in top flow form of all fluids. I have to say I had a very different reaction to the story to both of you, because my reaction was, oh, so I guess
Starting point is 00:06:27 we can't do anything anymore. Don't have too much alcohol. It's not good for you. Don't have too much coffee. Don't have too much chocolate. And now it's like the one pleasure I thought we had left as human beings has been compromised. Is it going to turn out looking at pictures of
Starting point is 00:06:45 rihanna and channing tatum gives you diabetes this is what happens when you expose yourself to the woke left part of your brain watches you masturbate and goes this is toxic masculinity i'm cutting it short i think especially given the last sort of 18 months that we've all endured i feel like part of the when we all went into lockdown initially the first thing they should have done is said right first of all you've got to try to stay two meters apart from people wash your hands wear masks and also if you go to town in yourself three times a day your brain might explode because surely that has been one of the key health risks of the pandemic i do think you're right that globally we've been in kind of a golden age of masturbation
Starting point is 00:07:37 right a real renaissance this this really has been the the you know when you study historic periods you think why is this particular the time why this particular place you just have to look at the cocktail of circumstances forced to stay indoors and the proliferation of high-speed internet that is two ingredients for vintage a vintage masturbatory epoch absolutely i think that's what it's going to be known as in the future history books more than the pandemic remember at the beginning of like early 2020 like march april when people like there's going to be so many pandemic babies but i think what we're really going to find is it's going to be like
Starting point is 00:08:23 somehow sock companies became incredibly profitable. And like just dozens of new lotions were invented. Sex toy companies have experienced that their share value has gone through the roof. Through the roof. People who make dildos are the new disaster capitalists. It does plug a hole in a dike. Like the little Dutch boy.
Starting point is 00:08:55 In other brains exploding news, on Twitter it is often tempting to ask, what, do you have rocks for brains? But it looks like that might be offensive to people whose heads exploded during the extreme heat event known as Pompeii getting volcanoed. Nish Kumar, you love a volcano. Have you been following this story? Oh, listen, I've been following this story very closely.
Starting point is 00:09:17 I love a volcano. I love an exploded brain. The one thing that I would say from this story is that I've never really understood why the phrase mind blowing was ever meant to be a compliment. Because having your mind blown apart, it sounds like one of the worst possible. It's like having a dinner and going, boy, this is a real anus demolisher. And it's not a good idea that does it. It's just heat. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:09:47 It wasn't like someone dropped a real truth bomb on this guy it was nature dropped a real actual bomb on this dude yeah so this is the this is what has happened with uh a body from pompeii they found a couple of bodies that have basically vitrified brains which is a glassy rock brains. And they posit that the heat made these brains explode and turn into glass. Josh, have you ever had an exploded glass brain? I felt like it for months. I feel like lately when I've tried to think, I've tried to have new ideas, I'm like, hmm, probably just a big hunk of glass up there, just some kind of paperweight or something.
Starting point is 00:10:24 I'm like, hmm, probably just a big hunk of glass up there, just some kind of paperweight or something. The brain was petrified at 950 degrees because of the proximity to an active volcanic eruption. So I don't know much about this person, but I do know they didn't have the smartest brain if they were just standing next to an active volcano but i will say i did have a a terrified reaction to this because like if organic matter if a human brain can be discovered and have the kind of like acids within it analyzed 2 000 years after death i am so scared about who finds my laptop hard drive after i die and when because that thing is way sturdier than my head. I think it's well past time for us to reintroduce like getting cremated with all of your valuables, just including particularly your most recent five laptops.
Starting point is 00:11:17 Like you can't take it with you refers to your wealth, but it should not refer to your browser history. You should be able to take that to the grave literally surely this is the new business idea like really destroying your laptop like there's no chance that anybody's going to be able to find your internet history yeah we'll turn the ashes of your beloved ex-spouse into a diamond and then use that diamond to scratch the shit out of the motherboard and then put it in a cannon shoot that cannon into the cloud okay whatever whatever server hosts the cloud and just explode that well this is the other thing there's all these uh projects underway to sort of recreate people's people's conversations through ai after death
Starting point is 00:12:03 it's like which conversations are you including? Are you feeding into this AI? Because you might end up having some surprisingly suggestive chats with your ex-husband. Or just petty ones. I don't want my loved ones being like, I miss Josh so bad. And then they bring me back and they're like, Josh, how are you?
Starting point is 00:12:23 Papa. And I'm just like, can you believe the line at this brunch place? It's eggs. In other things that have glitched out my human brain news, Philip Morris, the mustache twirling hench thug super douches of the cigarette industry, have decided to move into the wellness space. Josh Connellman, you live in New York, so I assume you're surrounded by people artistically smoking cigarettes at all time. Have you followed this story? Yes. Well, as you know, my apartment is a large leather jacket and people frequently stop to smoke outside it because the building is shaped like the Ramones.
Starting point is 00:13:01 building is shaped like the Ramones. And it's, I just think that this is like, it's infuriating to a degree that turns my brain to glass. Like, I mean, obviously they've been trying to diversify. It feels like tobacco is kind of,
Starting point is 00:13:22 it's like not in vogue and they've been trying to get into this kind of health space. They're now trying to buy an inhaler producing company called vectora and they they were working on this but for years science hadn't gotten far enough for philip morris to enter this because they hadn't invented balls big enough for a tobacco company to buy an inhaler maker it is is a bit like Coca-Cola owning Coca-Cola and also Mount Franklin water. You just, you feel a little bit surrounded on all sides. Yeah. If you appoint Jack the Ripper to be the chief of police,
Starting point is 00:13:53 then you should not be surprised if the number of murder investigations drops spectacularly. If one day it turns out McDonald's veggie burgers were all full of cow, I don't think anyone is going to be surprised. Equally, if you start letting Philip Morris make inhalers, I think you better get ready for some smoking 12-year-olds. And I do not want that cut and taken out of context, okay? I mean, on one hand, who knows what you need in an inhaler better than the people that had and hid the data about how dangerous smoking is for decades. So they do have the inside track on what people need in an inhaler.
Starting point is 00:14:35 Yeah, they just held off telling us how bad the disease was for so long because they were looking for a cure the whole time. Honestly, that's kind of sweet. It's like the husband who comes home and goes darling i've decided to stop cheating on you yeah like thanks philip apparently the company is aiming to earn uh at least 1 billion in revenues by 2025 from its beyond nicotine products which i mean i don't even know what that means but apparently one of them is respiratory drug delivery and the other one just says self-care wellness and i don't know what that means but i assume it's the practice that resulted in a man in tokyo having a stroke
Starting point is 00:15:15 well beyond nicotine is actually fully vegetarian nicotine so that's exciting just clouds of broccoli smoke from your async they've they have a beyond nicotine whopper which is it doesn't taste great but i can't stop eating i mean into the wellness space they already have you know cigarettes and vapes and patches i'm i've just been waiting for a nicotine oil burner. Aromatherapy. What's so upsetting is the best wellness product they could offer is just no cigarettes. Like if they just stopped making cigarettes, they would be so good for health and wellness. No cigarettes, plant the odd tree. That's it yeah there you go that's your wellness
Starting point is 00:16:05 campaign yeah philip morris no tobacco and some occasional other plants corporation would be better for public health than whatever they're doing now because it's not like they're inventing an inhaler they're just acquiring a company that already makes them i just don't understand why at a certain point you can't go you know what we had a great run we had we killed a lot of people and made a lot of money let's just wind up the philip morris tobacco company once and for all and just admit we had a great time i assume there's like eight men on the board who are very wealthy and look like uh they all look like nutsacks that someone left out in the sun and and just yeah they could just back it in and like just enjoy their their largest states and uh the wives they have that are one third their age and just like stop i mean this
Starting point is 00:17:00 is the thing as well philip morris has got to have like at least a hundred shell companies. Couldn't they just use that one to buy the inhaler machine? You know? Does it have to be so brazen? You have to accept that things are a tarnished brand. I feel like Philip Morris at this point is like people who persisted in calling their kids Adolf in the 1950s. Listen, you can't blame the name. It's not the name's fault. It's a good name.
Starting point is 00:17:27 Philip Morris. When these men go on holidays, they hold a shell company up to their ear. Your ad section now. Because how else will you assert status in an increasingly dog-eat-dog world except by eating the most expensive brand name dog while being the most expensive brand name dog.
Starting point is 00:17:45 Today's show is brought to you by creepy museums that aren't really museums. It's just a weird person's house and they own a lot of similar things. Creepy museums that are just someone's house. Your entrance fee is paying for someone's divorce. I've been to one of those museums and there's a Graceland 2 and there's just a guy with a big collection of elvis memorabilia but like there's no hours so you just show up and hope that he's around to show you his stuff so we did and he wasn't there but his neighbor was like i have a ladder if you want
Starting point is 00:18:19 to climb up and look into his backyard a lot of weird stuff back there so we did that did the neighbor charge you to use the letter no very generous neighbor you are so lucky you were not murdered i know i i'm so murderable the only thing is it's like not cool like if if other creeps if they were like oh we got this guy they'd be like yeah he's like a child but big who cares that's nothing the one time i almost got murdered in new york i didn't get murdered mainly because i didn't notice i was coming home for a gig in the bronx it was like three o'clock in the morning and i was talking to my twin brother on my mobile phone as in 2009 he was in australia it was australia'clock in the morning. And I was talking to my twin brother on my mobile phone. It was in 2009.
Starting point is 00:19:07 He was in Australia. It was Australia time. And this guy came up to me. He was like, hey, you got any money? And I was like, oh, maybe tomorrow, mate. And then I registered that he had a knife. But I think he was so confused that I was so dismissive that he didn't quite know what to make of it. Or, listen, he's a New Yorker.
Starting point is 00:19:24 And he took out a knife thought i'll mug this woman then he heard you're australian and he was like i've seen crocodile dundee i absolutely know what's coming next well i mean really the way that i reacted was like that's not a knife yeah yeah just invisible to me you you took it to the next level where you were like that's not a knife and then the the implied larger knife was just your indifference the cruelest cut you're like existential crocodile dundee you don't even offer it up you just go that's not a knife think Think about it. That's crocodile ennui. Speaking of which, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Post.
Starting point is 00:20:13 Post Nostalgia. If nostalgia's not doing it for you, try Post Nostalgia. The sense that things were better before you started thinking things were better before. And remember, the remake of that cartoon you liked didn't destroy your childhood you destroyed your childhood by aging acas 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. Curling has Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry,
Starting point is 00:21:03 and a performance enhancingenhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate. Available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast.com. Now it's time for your food section. Food section in Eat the Rich News Now.
Starting point is 00:21:35 Sorry, in What the Rich Eat News Now. This is a New York special. So Josh Donald, I'm going to ask you to explain this story. What the f*** is happening with these chips? So occasionally in New york city a restaurant will decide like instead of making good food we'll make expensive food and then people will write about it and so they this place called serendipity which is the feeling of being born rich so good name off the top they have a 200 plate of french fries which they say it offers an escape from reality that's kind of the thing which like the escape from reality is
Starting point is 00:22:14 thinking you're gonna find people to pay 200 for french fries the only way a plate of french fries could offer an escape from reality is if it's like eight dollars worth of french fries and cheese sauce and then 192 dollars worth of psilocybin mushrooms this is like sarcastic poor people cosplay right yeah yeah yeah are not expensive but they've decided to pay a lot for chips there's edible gold on these and uh they're fried gold is edible if your teeth are hard enough they're fried in goose fat because they like to remind you that for these french fries something has to die which is like the most dangerous game of appetizers and then it's just a lot of truffles which i think is uh that uh, that's, like, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:23:05 You might as well put, like, a Gucci belt on top. Like, who cares? It's nothing. My favorite thing about this use of the phrase, the escape from reality, is that if you could afford to pay $200 for a plate of french fries, are you really that mired in reality anyway i really don't feel like you know there are people like walking out of charles dickens novels and being able to afford a plate of 200 chips it's it's a very strange if you wanted any more reason to brick the window of a millionaire's house these chips would be it i think this is ripe for one of those eating challenges which is you can pay 200 for these chips but you only have to pay two dollars for the chips if you don't instagram them
Starting point is 00:23:58 well i think i would say go fully the other way? This is like the thing that gets me out of this is like French fries are a perfect, inexpensive food. They cost nothing and they're so delicious. You can get them to McDonald's, you buy 200 orders of dollar menu French fries, you just show up at a party and you make it rain like Lil Wayne at a strip club. Like, that's such a more satisfying experience. Josh, I've said it before and I'll say it again. I desperately want to see you direct more rap videos. I desperately want to see you make it right chips that would be so fun all over some people dancing to a rap song this is backed by science pro social spending makes people much
Starting point is 00:24:54 happier than spending on themselves so your instincts are correct josh connellman it's a shame that you're not a billionaire in this universe i've always said that well that's all the time we have for our ridiculous food section because now it is time for our reviews as every week we ask our editors to bring in something to review out of five stars nish kumar what have you brought to review i i've i've brought in the experience of being mildly hung over not hung over mildly hung. I had three pints of beer yesterday with my friend, sat outside a pub, and I feel mildly hung over. And let me tell you, I feel absolutely incredible.
Starting point is 00:25:34 Like, I don't know what it is about being mildly hung over. Being hung over obviously makes me want to rip my skin off. But somehow being mildly hung over, I feel like I had a really good time and i feel like the negative consequences of that good time are still present so i feel that there's a karmic balance to the universe but at the same time it's not really impairing my day in any way so i feel like justice has been done but also i'm still having quite a good time so i give the experience of being mildly hung over four out of five excellent josh what have you brought in to review i've brought in my my dog busy um yep she's a pug she weighs 24 pounds science says she shouldn't exist at all
Starting point is 00:26:13 as to the laws of god and man oh yeah yeah yeah when she breathes she sounds like a toddler scratching a wicker basket, just like. She wakes up every night in the middle of the night to take a walk and eat breakfast at 1 a.m. Like she's on the road with Van Halen in the 80s, just like eating her last meal of the day at 2 in the morning. Lately, she sleeps in bed with me and my wife, but lately she's been getting up a second time at 4 a.m., refusing to sleep in bed, refusing to sleep at all unless I sleep on a couch with her on a nearby couch, meaning I'm tired all day, every day from this animal who, as soon as I wake you know do work and live my life she immediately goes back to sleep for the entire day um so my rating for my dog busy is five stars
Starting point is 00:27:13 she's perfect i love her so much never change wow i can't believe i started this started out by this saying that the behavior of your dog and its existence was at the front of the laws of God and man. Based on that evidence, your dog and I are pretty much the same person. Incredibly emotionally needy, doesn't sleep through the night, eats at 1am. I do also love a mild hangover feeling because the feeling of a mild hangover is almost like the feeling of having exercise. Yes. But without having to exercise. like the feeling of having exercise but without having to exercise look i think the thing about a pug is of all the dog breeds it is the most menacing because it's the only one that can sneeze out its own eyeballs apparently a threat yes yes because they're they're
Starting point is 00:28:00 so inbred that they don't have a proper nasal cavity what they have is what is called instead a nose maze that runs behind their eyeballs and so if pressurered that they don't have a proper nasal cavity. What they have is what is called instead a nose maze that runs behind their eyeballs. And so if pressure builds up, they can accidentally sneeze out their own eyeballs. My dog, she sneezes so much. She will, I don't know because I've never had a dog before. I don't know if other dogs do this, but she sneezes in anger. Like before she resorts to barking, she'll just sneeze in your face. Like, hey hey notice me do
Starting point is 00:28:26 the thing that i want notice me or i'll pop my own eyeballs out that's the that's the threat that's that's step three step four because it's new york city small knife speaking of animals uh this is our animal section now this is animals ending up in people places first of all alligators on roofs nish kumar you look up at the skies occasionally can you tell us about this plague of roof alligators well a man nicknamed bubba has stolen an alligator and tried to teach it a lesson by throwing it on the roof of a bar now i'm going to give you all one guess as to where this man might have been from in the on the entire planet earth that's right he's from the state that for the last 200 years has lived fully under the laws of the film the purge except every day it's florida baby
Starting point is 00:29:22 america's chinatown not America's Chinatown. Not as in Chinatown where you go to get Chinese food, as in the film Chinatown, where Jack Nicholson has to be led away in an existential crisis because he's realized he can't contend with the rules that are governing this place. This is so good. I think you hit the nail on the head because I sometimes am like, people like with their Florida man man like this, you know, these crimes happen because of the, you know, the kind of difficult conditions that people are living in financially, economically in some places.
Starting point is 00:29:54 And then you read a story about a man stealing an alligator from a mini golf course, which just a quick note, why does a mini golf course need an alligator? That's not part of golf, even the small version. I've been on mini golf courses where they do have alligators that you have to try and hit the ball through. But crucially, they are not real alligators, Florida. Fake alligators. At first I was like, okay, this is Florida. Maybe the alligator was working as the security guard at the mini golf course. But this is to Florida, right? And this is how the apex of the Florida-ness of this story is.
Starting point is 00:30:35 According to the news report, the man was charged with the crime possession of an alligator. Which for that to be a specific crime, not just possession of an unlicensed animal possession of an alligator which means that so many people have unlawfully possessed alligators that we were like we gotta break this out into its own statutes like it's happening so often that police are calling like we gotta code green down in the mini golf course. Like, God damn, another unauthorized gator wrangler. That's the third one this week. I'm also fascinated to know the specifics of what lesson this man was trying to teach the alligator. Because that was the thing he said.
Starting point is 00:31:20 He was apparently swinging the animal around and deliberately stomping on it and told police he was teaching it a lesson. And you have to, like, what is the lesson here apart from get the f*** out of Florida? I think, well, here's the problem. If the alligator survived, which I hope he did, thoughts and prayers for the alligator. The alligator is okay.
Starting point is 00:31:44 The alligator is okay. The lesson he learned is i cannot be killed and i have an enemy out there in the world who must be destroyed so you've just created an alligator with a vendetta and they have long memories which is what the phrase see you later alligator actually means this alligator is gonna hunt him down and kill him like a liam neeson movie they say an elephant never forgets but they fail to remind you that an alligator really ruminates on the ears the alligator stews oh very much the favorite thing about it is that they then returned the alligator to the golf course because they said they returned it to where it had come from. And you're like, get the alligator out of the golf course. Definitely shouldn't be there.
Starting point is 00:32:36 Which presumably means the guy was like, this gator learned his lesson. Time for me to bring him home. So that's the end of our animal section, which brings us to our second review section. This is the review of the Wu-Tang Clan album bought by Martin Screlly, which has now been sold by the US government. Nish Kumar, you've been on a rap album. I do have an upcoming appearance
Starting point is 00:33:00 on rap producer LaRange's new album. But let me tell you, Martin Shkreli, who is, of course, a farmer bro, which is a Greek phase, meaning total ****, paid $2 million in 2015 at an auction for Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, a 31-track double album created by the Wu-Tang Clan. He liked to put the album on eBay,
Starting point is 00:33:25 but was jailed for fraud at the time. The ownership of this album has now passed over to the US government. And all I can say is, Biden loves Wu-Tang. I think this was a policy platform Biden should have run on last year in the election. Wu-Tang is for the children Joe Biden Joe Biden and Wu-Tang both for the children America's future well apparently they took six years to produce this album and they released only one copy there is speculation that
Starting point is 00:33:58 the reason they only released one copy and made this big deal of it was that it's it's not very good you should always do that when something isn't very good right like the next time a movie comes out that that's not supposed to be great then you know the next time m night shamalan's movies get get panned by the critics he should just do one screening and it would be incredible this is like such a great you create that false scarcity and then it overwhelms the bad reviews. Just the fact that the Department of Justice, I imagine, has seized this album. I was like, it's pretty uncool that Martin Shkreli is the only person that has this album. But it's somehow worse that now Bill Barr has it.
Starting point is 00:34:39 I was like, I didn't think it could get more annoying. Just give it to me. I want it and I'll share it. And this is a problem, right? Is because it's such a trap philosophically because I don't, I think the American carceral state is there's such overreach and such cruelty. But I, and this isn't quite the same, but like civil asset forfeiture, right? Where the police can just kind of take anything that they suspect is involved in a crime and raise funds that way. So it's just like the American justice system. There are so many flaws.
Starting point is 00:35:12 And that is in philosophical conflict with my other opposing philosophy that more bad things should happen to Martin Shkreli. happened to martin schrelle those are two pillars of my belief in justice is that the united states justice system should be kind of radically reimagined and to to serve the public safety and health and that martin schrelle should spend every morning falling down stairs until noon that's they call that the schreli paradox it's a very important philosophical conundrum it's like the trolley thing you know where it's like you're on a trolley and there's six people on it
Starting point is 00:35:52 and you have to kill all of them or you can just run over Martin Shkreli and you're like well I mean I guess I don't want to be the one to pull the lever but someone's going to pull the lever and we're all going to make the same decision. Yeah, it should be distinguished philosophically from the trolley problem, which is where you can either call a thousand people a c**t once or get a thousand people to call Martin Shkreli a c**t. and then there's uh there's also the issue of shkreli's cat which is the cat is in a box and if you open the box the cat is or is not a real piece of shit it's a trick paradox all cats are a real piece of shit yep that's that's the paradox
Starting point is 00:36:40 the wu-tang clan said when they made the album that they were adopting a 400-year-old renaissance approach to music because they were offering it as a commissioned commodity as a sort of antidote to the music streaming services and the sort of online streaming and piracy nature of the way music is now released. And they did successfully adopt
Starting point is 00:37:04 a 400-year-old Renaissance-style approach in that they made it and one crazy rich asshole just kept it. This whole story made me feel slightly better about my basically lifelong relationship to hip-hop culture because there's real issues of like cultural appropriation and who has like a legitimate claim to art and culture and i'm a big rap music lover
Starting point is 00:37:32 and i sometimes feel like oh am i appropriating and then now i go well at least i didn't buy the only copy of a wu-tang album and let no one else hear it i'm probably fine well i feel like the wu-tang clan missed the best thing about medieval music production which is just showing up in someone's hall telling them how great they were and then f***ing their wife we don't know they didn't do that just sing a song about how strong your arms are and then your lady can take me to my chamber. I mean, there's a guy in the group named the Jizza. I actually saw the Wu-Tang Clan about two and a half years ago. And they take a very innovative approach to everything, including how they handle their deceased former members.
Starting point is 00:38:21 Because Old Dirty Bastard, R.I..i.p is of course joined the great wu-tang clan in the sky and he was replaced at the gig by his son who's consistently was referred to as young dirty bastard yeah i've also seen that in concert which is so funny because i mean they must know that it's funny to call someone like Young Bastard who's specifically what you know about him is his patrilineal lineage. Because Old Dirty Bastard is like, there's no father to his style. And they're like, well, Young Dirty Bastard, there is a father to his style. It is the Old Dirty Bastard bastard it's such a good name as my father once said oh baby i like it raw please old dirty bastard is my father's name
Starting point is 00:39:19 call me young dirty bastard so out of five stars how would we rank this unheard wu-tang clan album see so this is truly schrodinger's wu-tang album because it could be because no one can hear it so it could be great and it could be terrible so it's both great and terrible just in its anticipation. So I give it both one and five stars. Both great and terrible like Cate Blanchett at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings movie. Mish Kumar. Listen, I'm willing to accept that this may be a return to form for the Wu-Tang
Starting point is 00:39:59 because it does feature a contribution from Cher. And I'm sorry, but if you are not curious about a Wu-Tang album that features Cher, you need to expand your horizons, OK? Five stars from me. And that brings us to the end of the show. We're flipping through the ads at the back, all of the personals, ads, and a few others. Some memories are traumatic, some are pleasant.
Starting point is 00:40:23 All can be removed with the Colgate Brain Hammer. Nine out of ten dentists scream when you hit them with a hammer. The other one is a victim of toxic masculinity. The Colgate Brain Hammer. Why keep the pain on the inside? Josh Connellman, have you got anything to plug? Yeah, I have a podcast called Make My Day. It's a comedy game show where there's just one guest,
Starting point is 00:40:42 so they're guaranteed to win every week and then um i'm doing some live comedy until someone's like stop doing that you can't do that anymore again so come see me while live comedy is briefly allowed and get vaccinated nish kumar i have two comedy albums it's in your Destroy Yourselves, parts one and two, available on all streaming services and specifically not in the hands of Martin Shkreli. And if that's not a reason to listen to those albums, I don't know
Starting point is 00:41:15 what is. Well, I'm in lockdown at the moment, so I have no live comedy coming up. There is a live bugle coming up at some point that I will appear on. I think that's in September, though. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at alliterativealiteerative or on patreon.com slash alicefraser. One stop shop for all of my stand up
Starting point is 00:41:32 specials, podcasts, vlogs and my weekly Tea with Alice salons. This is a Bugle podcast and 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 programmes from The Bugle, including The Bugle, The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions...

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