The Gargle - Naked sunbathers | Haunted village | Tuna

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Tiff Stevenson and Josh Gondelman join host Alice Fraser for episode 18 of The Gargle - the weekly topical comedy podcast from The Bugle. 🦌 Buck naked sunbathers👻 For sale: haunted Scottish... village 🐟 Subway tuna not tuna🔥 Heat melts streetcar cable🍾 Message in a bottle🥴 Tiff's hangover reviewed☀️ Josh reviews the sunThis 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. I'm your host, Alice Fraser. Your guest editors this week are Tiff Stevenson. Hello. Hi. Hi from the Book Nook in London. And Josh Gondelman. Hello. Hello from the book-free zone in Brooklyn. Book-free Brooklyn sounds like a place that would be cool but also quite scary.
Starting point is 00:02:05 Very scary. Just like, no books here, but we do everything word of mouth. When we're trying to beat information out of prisoners, we do it with our bare fists. Oh no! Your front cover this week is the Fast and the Furious 9 film finally passing the Bechdel test in a way that doesn't specifically involve Gina Carano fighting Michelle Rodriguez in a tube tunnel. I think that counts as a conversation between two women not about a man,
Starting point is 00:02:37 but it's hard to translate the punching into English. Depends on if all of the cars are metaphors for men. I genuinely had that thought because it's Michelle Rodriguez and Gina Carano, but it's like, well, Michelle Rodriguez is a baddie before she gets her memory back and before Gina Carano betrays them all and they have a fight, but it's a wordless fight in a tube tunnel. And I genuinely watching it as a fan of the Faster Than Furious franchise and also fully aware of its many, many, many, many, many, many flaws,
Starting point is 00:03:07 I thought, does this count? Does this pass? This is progress, Alice. Sometimes it doesn't look how you want it to look. Other headlines on the cover are, these celebrity facts will change your perception of space and time. And what has Harry done now? Who knows? Who cares?
Starting point is 00:03:27 The satirical cartoon this week is that meme of a dog surrounded by flames saying this is fine, but the flames are the heat wave in North America and the this is fine is a Twitter comment section denying that cause and effect are related. That's always a fun Twitter comment section to read, isn't it? I feel like sometimes I read isn't it i feel like sometimes uh i read the news and i'm like this is bad and then i read the comments and i'm like this is worse like i read the news i'm like surely we can all agree that this is bad and something must be done
Starting point is 00:04:00 and then you read the comments you're like this is fine and nothing must be done and like okay all right agree to disagree no yeah disagree to disagree which brings us to our first story in section one our nude naked body section uh this is a story out of australia my own country makes me feel nostalgic for the place that I'm in right now. The police commissioner came out and discussed obeying our current lockdown regulations in the face of COVID and drawing attention to the case of two men who were rescued from the bush, having been found nude after nude sunbathing,
Starting point is 00:04:42 and they claimed to have been startled by a deer and run into the forest, and they were both fined $1,000. Josh, you've been nude sunbathing. I mean, technically, I guess that's true. I've walked by a window or two in my day. So can you tell us more about this story? Yeah, so there were two men sunbathing together, nude,
Starting point is 00:05:04 and supposedly a deer right startle them. They ran to the to the woods where they became lost and had to call for help. And the police came and and rescued them. But they were fined one thousand dollars for violating lockdown restrictions. Right. Right. Which does feel I know this took place in Australia, but it does feel very American to me to be like you're distressed and in need of assistance. Here's a bill for one thousand dollars. I'm like, oh, that's like that's our health care system. Not to quibble, because I do think the stories don't fully line up. Right. Like, yes. Yes. Right. Like There's a lot of stuff going on here where it's like, you were sent by the news, startled by a deer,
Starting point is 00:05:49 ran into the woods. This doesn't sound... It's a little suspicious. Also, the article said they were both naked but described one man as wearing a backpack. So which is it?
Starting point is 00:06:00 Was he naked or was he wearing a backpack with his ass, dick, and balls out? Shoddy journalism, honestly. We've got to get in there and see what's going on. And this is the problem with nature, right? Like if we take this story at face value, we think of nature as idyllic, but it's also scary and dangerous. These guys just want to have a nice time sunbathing in the nude.
Starting point is 00:06:21 But then they got chased by a deer and ended up lost in the woods which is why people always commune with nature when they're on psychedelic drugs because that just brings you on to the same f***ed up level that the environment is already at just animals chasing you around the woods a scary labyrinth uh yeah i i i think you know not to get too hard but i think maybe psychedelic drugs were involved in this story and were written out of the article. I like that you said it sounds American and then went a completely different way. Because when you said it sounds American, I thought you were going to be like, like when you read a Florida guy story. Oh, sure.
Starting point is 00:06:59 The Australian version of Florida guy is Sydney man found naked wearing a backpack lost in woods. Why do they keep calling it in the article and on the news footage they kept referring to it Alice as sun baking. Is this to make it sound more culinary? He's sun roasting, he's sun seared
Starting point is 00:07:20 I mean we just call it sun bathing here is that an Aussie thing? It's because we have the whole ozone layer. There's nothing so gentle about bathing in the sun here. You're definitely 100% already causing yourself severe crisping the moment you expose yourself to any sun. But this is the kind of story that makes me empathise with QAnon because he is a reputable, authoritative source,
Starting point is 00:07:42 police commissioner, giving me information. If you watch the footage, he's a very serious man. The lady doing the deaf signing is very expressive and I highly recommend you watch the clip yourself. But also, like, this is a reputable source and I absolutely do not believe it. I don't know what happened, but I don't believe these two men were nude sunbathing,
Starting point is 00:08:04 got startled by a deer and then ran into the bush so hard that they lost their way back to the beach, the massive beach that surrounds, I don't know, the whole of Australia. I don't know the real explanation, but anything that makes emotional sense will slot into the hole in my credulity right now. So I am willing to believe anything. I feel like i empathize with the q anon people if you tell me that the two nude sunbathers were startled into the forest by a cabal of elite pedophiles i'm in i mean like i mean it sounds like you know like when people track deer it sounds like the deer were tracking the men like if they went that deep into the forest they were like we were trying to escape these deer for like three hours.
Starting point is 00:08:45 And we're like, if this was a plot of a horror film, everyone would be like, the hunter becomes the hunted. Yeah. Everyone would be like, this is unbelievable. You know,
Starting point is 00:08:52 like the horror film trope where they, they've kind of almost spoofed it as the girl runs away screaming whilst removing layers of clothes. It frightened them to getting naked. What's going on? I'll tell you what, if I were sunbathing naked and ran into the woods startled and got lost as long as i couldn't prove it i would pick a scarier animal than a deer to say that started me you've got you've got full creative license here nobody knows what animal is there.
Starting point is 00:09:27 I would go coyote maybe. Just something. Well, even a roo, a kangaroo, they can be quite terrifying. They're very strong. How tall are they? I don't know. They can be quite tall. They can be six feet tall.
Starting point is 00:09:40 They can take your guts out with their legs. It's a whole thing. They'll say they're 6'2 on Tinder, but it's closer you know five ten well if you count the tail very big indeed i measure from the tip of the tail well because they can can they not balance just on their tail yes that's how they like fight that is insane have you seen that josh they'll fight that was balancing no no no like there's there's like video evidence of it just balancing on their tails whilst both of their feet are in the air just like smacking the shit out of someone quite quite scary i the thing that does me is the one item of clothing because that's just when if when one item on an otherwise naked body just looks stupid
Starting point is 00:10:26 or you know like one sock or a watch like take it off i'm not having sex with you you can't leave one thing on it's distracting if the watch you won't you won't bang someone wearing a watch yeah let's take it off as if time is stood still and no longer matters i don't same thing with me and watch i don't want to be monitored matters. I don't, same thing with me in a watch. I don't want to be monitored for time. I don't like feeling like an athlete running, doing a time trial, running heats. I could totally understand taking off an Apple watch because you don't want it to count towards your steps for the day. Yeah, you don't want your Fitbit getting involved.
Starting point is 00:11:01 Yeah, you don't want suddenly to meet your move requirements, close your exercise ring in the midst of passion. I don't want to find out that I didn't meet my move requirements. Well, that's all the time we have for Section 1. Now it's time for your ad section, because the desire to possess is the snake that eats itself. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by hand-knitted or heavily crafted goods. What do you get for the
Starting point is 00:11:25 person who has everything something they neither want nor need but into which has gone so much labor and love they will never be able to dispose of it knitted or heavily crafted handmade goods give the gift of guilt in the form of the gift of a quilt and has your parent or designated beloved boomer come to you with a computer problem? Yes, my dad is staying with me during lockdown. You love them too much to refuse, but you know it's going to be a nightmare, right? Try the CompuSolve 8000C, a state-of-the-art cutting-edge device for all of your looming boomer tech solutions. Essentially a tranquilizer gun gaffer taped to a Roomba, the CompuSolve 8000C uses decommissioned East German mechatronic emotion
Starting point is 00:12:05 detectors to analyze your boomer's level of distress, phishing, scam, or password problem, and will gently put them into a restful state while you solve your problem without them hovering over you asking worried questions about things that are so obvious you'd have thought they'd go without saying. When your boomer awakes, you can hand them back their fixed device or just tell them computers don't exist anymore and get on with your day. It's your call. The CompuSolve 8000C. Buy one today. 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 00:12:56 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
Starting point is 00:13:11 broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate. Available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com That brings us on to section two of the magazine, the property section. Tiff, this is a story about a Scottish village.
Starting point is 00:13:43 So I feel you're the expert on Scotsmanship around here. Can you explain this story? Yeah, it's a small village in Loch Tay. I have to say it like that because Paul will listen to this and I just go, Loch, on the Loch. And he's like, is it spelt L-O-C-K? No, it's Loch. You've got to do a little bit of a spit when you say it.
Starting point is 00:14:05 It's basically a place where a woman called the Lady of Lawyer, not Lawyer, Laura, Laura, lived in a house on the edge of the Loch, and she was reputed to have been some kind of clairvoyant slash witch because she predicted um like a bunch of things that were going to happen so if you buy the property properties bitcoin exactly if you buy if you buy the property it's up for a hundred thousand pounds but it may also be haunted and i i liked this story because it fits in nicely because i've been looking at scottish auction sites for most for most of lockdown because I want to build a thing.
Starting point is 00:14:49 Lockdown. Lockdown, yeah, in Scotland. We call it lockdown. I want to build a thing. And when I say a thing, I mean a house. And when I say I, I mean Paul. I want Paul to build a house in Scotland. So this would be right up my alley.
Starting point is 00:15:04 Like I'm kind of into buying a witch's house. So some of the things she predicted. Hey, if you want to build a house, if you've already got an alley, this is start. Yeah, yeah. So this is, she predicted that there would be steamships and she predicted the railway. And one of the other things she predicted was that the uh roof slates would not make it onto the church and now this is seen as a stunning proof of clairvoyancy but i see it more as like she'd been watching these builders spend months and months and months and when they
Starting point is 00:15:38 delivered she was like they're never going on the roof these guys are shit and so it was just about slack workmen i think but yes it's a haunted property um it's up for sale would you buy it well i don't know but she probably did i would absolutely buy it it sounds like such a good deal to me i pay new york city renter prices so this sounds like an incredible deal for like a hundred thousand pounds you get the village and a ghost in new york city for a hundred thousand us dollars you just get the ghost that's how much a ghost costs and it would be another like five grand a month just to rent the cottage i think the ghost should be extra an aggressive mystical home security system yes or a twitch buddy or a twitch buddy you're streaming you're haunting i think because this isn't a 17th century property
Starting point is 00:16:34 right the ghost this woman lived in the 17th century her unfinished business is probably so easy to help her complete it's like wash a shirt in the river, fix a horseshoe. Like, there wasn't that much going on back then. I feel like it's just easy to clear up old ghost stuff. Although I will say, because it's the ghost of a woman who could allegedly predict the future, that sounds like a painful experience to be that ghost, because you get to see your predictions come true, but there's no one left alive for you to tell that ghost because you get to see your predictions come true but there's no one left alive for you to tell i told you so i feel like if you watch most horror films like their property renovation shows they begin to make a lot more sense you think about it
Starting point is 00:17:17 like there's blood running down the walls yeah that happens if you try and dry clothes with the with the windows closed you've got to ventilate. And the taps, they keep turning on and off. That happens in horror films and property renovation shows. The doors are creaky. They just need some WD-40 on them and an exorcism. This old bitch is haunting the place because her property in the next life is part of a chain. So she can't officially move on
Starting point is 00:17:42 until someone else has sold their house. I like it. I feel like they, you know, I would like to go and shoot a movie there. And now I've said that, someone's going to do it before. I live with a Scottish director, so I feel we should, like, lay claim to this. Like Prima, Prima, well, was it Prima Noctura was the right to sleep with Scottish women first when the English invaded. So I think we should do prima cinorama or something
Starting point is 00:18:07 and we just say a Scottish person has the right to make this before anyone else. Agreed. Well, I mean, Tiff, you're a very good actor and I think that acting in independent, heartfelt, Scottish remote village films is actually easy for someone of your skill level. It mainly mainly as far
Starting point is 00:18:25 as i can tell involves staring out windows yes looking well there's a lot of shows that that do that i mean like we're staring out where there used to be a full wall um in this case but i do feel like that is a huge part of acting if we look at the current spate of recent dramas staring out windows is is is big you know it's big little lies you're staring out the window into the ocean wearing a long cardigan sipping wine you know mayor of east town staring out of the window at your husband's house at the end of your garden puffing away on a vape like it's a very it's a it's a skill as an actress that i've i've worked hard on honing by looking pensively out of a window.
Starting point is 00:19:07 It's hard to look pensively out of your window because usually your cat is doing something horrifying. Yes. The killing season, which it is at the moment, which means he just keeps dragging things in. I'm ghost proof, I think, because I grew up in a house that was so ancient and falling to bits. Genuinely, my brother once turned on the shower
Starting point is 00:19:25 and the water hammer in the pipes was so bad that the ceiling collapsed and a skeleton came out. And when we were six or seven, we thought it was a human skeleton. It wasn't. It was some lamb chops and some possum bones, which is less sinister but makes less sense. And I figure if that house was not haunted or if it was haunted, I didn't notice.
Starting point is 00:19:46 So I feel like I'm pretty immune to hauntings. Whenever you hear these haunting stories, it's always someone who died, like a headless horseman or a witch or someone who died hundreds of years ago. It's never someone who died in the 90s, like, pilled up at an all-night rave, just, like, appearing at the end of your bed with glow sticks in the middle of the night like why is it always people from hundreds of years ago yeah if anyone has the
Starting point is 00:20:10 energy to go on after death it's somebody who's had way too much eat and they're just their unfinished business is just waiting for the bass drop yes and there it is. And then she's like, whoosh. That's a fairly easy exorcism. I'm just going to get some drum and bass or some house music and just play it until they f*** off. Casper, the way too friendly ghost. You need to do a diplocism. That brings us to the end of our second section
Starting point is 00:20:47 and on to our reviews section. As you know, every week we ask co-editors to bring in a review of something and mark it out of five. Tiff Stevenson, what have you brought in to review? Today I am reviewing my hangover. Basically, this episode is being recorded the day after Englandland won the football
Starting point is 00:21:06 and also uh last night i won 250 pounds on an online slot machine wow no jokes dust so i had two cocktails last night and a groany followed by a manhattan which is a lot of liquor um and i i'm in my 40s now i know shock horror don't all like literally like go and fact check this you're like i can't believe it she looks 25 but i am and every hangover in your 40s is sisyphean like it's by the time you've pushed the rock to the top it's time to get drunk again um so so here's here's my review of my hangover uh i went to bed about 2 a.m., proceeded to be forcibly shunted around the bed by my complaining partner. My snoring sounded like, and this is a direct quote,
Starting point is 00:21:51 bagpipes being trodden on. I woke again at 4 a.m. where I proceeded an inventory of every mistake I've ever made, concluding with the fact that I am an awful person. 4.15 a.m. I went to the bathroom and had a horrible time. 4.30am back in bed with blood
Starting point is 00:22:12 running to my head quicker than it runs to Matt Hancock's penis in an office setting. I proceeded to take two codeine whilst feeling incredibly vulnerable. The cat seemed to sense this so attacked my feet under the duvet repeatedly 5 a.m to 10 a.m sleep before waking to the strains of my alarm anthony's song by billy joel
Starting point is 00:22:34 to be reminded that working too hard will give you a heart attack 10 to 11 a.m one hour of shame penance followed by nausea. 11.30, so happy to be alive, I have reached euphoria stage. Hangover, a four out of five, hit nearly all the buttons, but no vomit. That's excellent, four out of five, that's pretty good. I approve of that as far as hangovers go. Classic, really. Classic of the genre.
Starting point is 00:23:07 Classic hangover. Josh Conneman, what have you brought us in to review for today? So this ties into another story that we're going to touch on, but my review is for the sun. First of all, love the early stuff, the sun. By that I both mean sunrise and warming my face in spite of a gentle breeze nourishing all life on earth with your rays love that but the sun's new stuff i would say arguably too aggressive rising sea levels destroying public transit equipment with heat
Starting point is 00:23:43 public transit equipment with heat. I just feel like they're trying too hard. Go back to your roots. Just kind of dawn, you know, photosynthesis. It's okay to play the hits. I don't want to say anything too cruel. So I will just say one star, which doubles as a negative review and just a description of the sun. That brings us to section three of this magazine.
Starting point is 00:24:17 This is this is a subway tuna news or fishy fish news. Josh, you are in America, the land of subway. What is happening with this story? So a New York Times investigation has revealed that the tuna fish in Subway restaurants, restaurant also may be a scientifically dubious term, but in their Subway sandwicheries, the tuna is not tuna at all. It is, they called it a concoction. They said the tuna's actually made of various concoctions. That's what scientists came up with. Which, that's not a, that bugged me a little bit,
Starting point is 00:24:51 because a concoction is not a scientific term. That's just like how a LARPer describes a gin and tonic, right? Just like, another fantastic concoction, please, good barkeep. Would you mind reducing the volume on the tournament of ball baskets on your illuminated wall windows perchance i don't trust subway sandwiches that's true but i also don't trust these scientists because the best that they're giving us if they're saying it's various concoctions like you can't get closer than that like there's a limited range of what it could be it's not kryptonite it's not unobtainium it's not vibranium get in the ballpark is it another fish is it wood chips and mayonnaise
Starting point is 00:25:33 give me something scientists it's hard to trust subway after their reputational hit they took when they hired that uh skinny pedophile to be their spokesman. Well, hold on. They hired – no, I guess you're right. I guess they didn't hire him until he was a skinny pedophile. I was going to say they hired quite a large pedophile, and then he got skinny. This reminds me – it's got a touch of the Soylent Green about it, hasn't it? Like, if it's not tuna, what is it?
Starting point is 00:26:00 How long before we see John Cena and Michael Phelps being carried off on a stretcher shouting, Subway tuna is people. I feel like as long as it's not people, I'm fine with it. That's my threshold. That's where it goes. It's like, not tuna? Yeah, it's Subway.
Starting point is 00:26:17 Oh, the New York Times. Another Pulitzer on the shelf because they realized Subway isn't a great restaurant. I mean, it said no fish, no traces of even fish, though, which is worrying, isn't it? That is worrying. The lawyers are suing for fraud. And I have to defer to Alice here to get her take on this. An unjust enrichment. Like, I thought enrichment was a good thing.
Starting point is 00:26:41 You unjustly made my life better. How dare you? Like, what is unjust enrichment? Unjust enrichment is them making themselves rich unjustly made my life better how dare you like what is unjust enrichment is them making themselves rich unjustly uh they've taken your money uh under false pretenses okay unjustly enriching other people would be kind of fun right that's like what robin hood did well the relevant case in english law i don't know what american law would apply but it would be the probably the carbolic smokeball uh case which is your kind of classic precedent in terms of truth in advertising uh whether whether something in an ad is like a mere puff or whether people uh believe in it substantively or not do you uh believe that
Starting point is 00:27:15 people believe that subway sandwiches are what they say they are i mean technically technically, it's like some falseness, some truth, right? Because when they say tuna sandwich, that's half accurate. It's a sandwich. Nobody is going to say that that's not a sandwich. It's a thing between other things that you can eat. I think legally Subway is not allowed to call its bread bread in Australia. Yes, that's true. So is it a sandwich if
Starting point is 00:27:45 it's not with bread? Is the question? I think so. Too much sugar in it, right? Is that what that is? Like, it's a cake-widge. A piece of cake and a piece of cake with not tuna in the middle. Doesn't they got in trouble that like in 2014, they got in trouble for using a chemical. This isn't a tuna cake it's a bit magrette it's an impan tuna cake they got in trouble for using a chemical called azodicarbonamide i think that's i'm saying that right azodi azodicarbonamide um in their bread this chemical which is also used in yoga mats
Starting point is 00:28:22 which is great that i can do my downward facing dog on a sub roll before eating it at which point it will taste like feet and parts so probably the same but think about it this way you leave yoga you're hungry from a hard workout give that mat a little nibble it's probably as edible as a Subway sandwich. This is the optimistic version. I like it, Josh. I like it. You're a positive person.
Starting point is 00:28:52 That's me. This kind of relentless positivity is what has led America into the terrible state it is in now. This is real food. Blind idiot confidence. This is a healthcare system. It looks like a government. That's us. Now we move on.
Starting point is 00:29:10 This is a pull-out section. Tips for making a success of an office affair. Tip number one, don't do it. Tip number two, do it in the photocopying room but not on an active photocopying machine. No one needs 125 pages of that. Do it with your wife in a wig because then if you get caught, it's romantic instead of disgusting.
Starting point is 00:29:30 And don't do it if you've literally made a career of telling other people not to do it. Do you have any tips for a successful office affair, Josh or Tiff? I would say not with someone who can fire you because then if you try and end it, you lose your job. F*** down, not up. But then it's always going to... No, don't f*** down, not up. F*** someone at the same...
Starting point is 00:29:55 Sideways. Yes. F*** horizontally. Someone at the same level. I think that's advice we can all take. Don't be ambitious. F*** horizontally. It's better for everyone.
Starting point is 00:30:03 Parallel. A lateral move. Your back isn't be ambitious. Horizontally. It's better for everyone. Parallel. A lateral move. Your back isn't that strong. You think your lower back's that strong, but it's not. And I would say if you're going to have an affair at the office, do it at a job that you are maybe planning on quitting anyway. That way if it blows up, that's two birds in one stone. You didn't fire me.
Starting point is 00:30:23 I was going to leave. Mm-hmm. up that's two birds in one stone you didn't fire me i was gonna leave now it's time for section four which is our hot and wet section beginning with hot tiff stevenson you're real hot tell us about this story i'm hotter than july as stevie would say um a street car in portland has had to be suspended due to the heat wave that's currently happening and I quite like this story because it feels
Starting point is 00:30:49 like Josh was saying the first story felt American this to me feels quite British because our trains are scared of everything as well so in the UK we have it's too hot the lines are buckling
Starting point is 00:30:59 there are some leaves on the track so we cancelled everything genuinely leaves on the track to use a scottish word it's a bit dricht and we don't like it which means drizzly and you know and so so uh the authorities or the uh transport authorities in portland uh shared a picture of the melted cables and as you were saying earlier josh sometimes a thing happens and you're like, it's bad, but the response is worse because immediately a guy come on and went, actually, I was about to do the voice of an English man I disagree with. So let's make it an American man. That's actual abrasion and a design issue.
Starting point is 00:31:38 And I was like, of course, well, this man must be an engineer with a specialty in transportation. No, he's a photographer he literally has no f***ing clue what he's talking about like I know more than the engineers working on this transport system I know what that is so a bit of dad um is it dad knowledge is that what I'm looking for or just that thing of like a dude thinking he knows better than the people who do that job professionally I feel like each instance of this is a perfect advertisement for the Kickstarter I'm going to begin, which is called Assigned People a Font,
Starting point is 00:32:11 where you assign people a font based on their level of expertise. So if you're like an academic with 10 years of experience in the field, you get Times New Roman. This gets Comic Sans. I just, or Papyrus if you prefer. If you feel Comic Sans is ableist, we can go with Papyrus. What about like New Gothic? Who gets that?
Starting point is 00:32:33 Well, I think. Creative people. Creative people. That's where you're like, you have something interesting and insightful to say, but not necessarily expert. Takes some liberties with the facts. Josh, do you go anywhere by cable car you know it's been a while um i'm kind of a cord cutter so uh i i mostly go by streaming car but i relate to this cable car right because it was so hot that even public transit was like i'm not going anywhere today. And so I do relate to that.
Starting point is 00:33:06 But I will say that the temperatures in Oregon were hitting like 114 degrees Fahrenheit, which, of course, in Celsius translates to too hot. The plus side is it's really setting the stage for the Portlandia Mad Max crossover that I've been writing. And like, look, I feel like we've all been in a relationship that's like reaching a crisis point, right? Because the other person does something that should be a deal breaker for you and you let it go and they keep testing your boundaries and then things become unlivable and they blame you for pushing them to the brink. And maybe it is kind of your fault.
Starting point is 00:33:45 And in this case, that partner is the earth and you is the human race. And to save this relationship, we have to metaphorically do the sex stuff that the environment is into, even though it feels like kind of a chore. And by that, I mean drastically reduced carbon emissions. That brings us to our wet section of the hot and wet section. And this is also a good news section in the magazine here. This is a romantic in the old-fashioned sense story of a teenager in Royalton who has put a message in a bottle in 2018 and thrown it into the sea in an act of either littering or benevolence.
Starting point is 00:34:26 And it was found it was discovered. And now he's Zooming with his new pen pal in the Azores. Josh Gondelman, you send all of your emails via bottle. Can you unpack this story for us a little? I think it's so sweet. Like you said, Alice, though, it is kind of whimsical littering. Like after the last story about climate change, I'm like, kid know you're lonely but you gotta recycle that bottle well on the bright side the ocean's rising probably means it traveled slightly further than otherwise would have yeah otherwise it was gonna stop in Greenland or whatever I think this is a sweet story and
Starting point is 00:35:03 it's sweet this kind of like bridging of the analog and digital gaps, right? Like the bottle became an email and a Facebook message. But I do bet that that makes old timey message in bottle senders very cranky to see how easy it was to make this connection. Like, kids today have it too easy. In my day day we couldn't just go on the internet to see who sent the bottle we had to chart the trade winds monitor the jet streams rent a boat chart a course and then hope the person who sent the original message hadn't
Starting point is 00:35:36 perished on a desert island by the time we got there i mean my favorite part of this story is that uh the the mother laurie smith noted that the twin brother had written his message in Morse code. So it's probably a good thing that Sean's bottle made the journey instead of his brother. His brother's bottle actually did make the journey, but it unfortunately catalyzed QAnon. That cryptic Morse code message was discovered by someone with slightly more sinister motives. And that brings us to the end of the show. We're going to flip through some ads now.
Starting point is 00:36:13 This is a personals ad in our classified section for the grand old Duke of York. He's looking for 10,000 men. So no tie kickers. No tie kickers there and also enjoying the freedom of independent travel
Starting point is 00:36:31 just go out into the wilderness with no clothes on and wait for a deer to startle you Tiff have you got anything to plug? Oh I've got a Soho Theatre run to plug on the 3rd to the 7th of August I will be doing my show Mother as my tour dates have been moved a bunch of times. So that's coming up.
Starting point is 00:36:50 I'm also doing the Wardrobe Theatre on the 29th of July when we're hoping we will be reopened. But the Soho shows will definitely be going ahead because they will sell at limited capacity first, I think. And hopefully if we're fully open, then we'll allow more seats to go up for sale. So like, please go and book tickets for that because they've all been spread out.
Starting point is 00:37:13 They're like kicked all over. Like I've spilt coffee on my calendar. You know, like I don't even know now. So I've not been able to do the usual amount of like PR and plugging and pushing. So if you enjoy my stuff please share like the links on Twitter and on Instagram please tell people to go if you like the show and lots of actually lots of people listen to this podcast and the bugle came when it
Starting point is 00:37:37 was like oh it would have been the last post I think but came came to see the show in like New York and and people came to LA to say hello and they were part of the Bugleverse, the bigger Bugleverse. So yeah, so I appreciate all of you and yeah, please shout it out. Please do. Word of mouth or word of bottle
Starting point is 00:37:57 is the only way to spread comedy in this new world. Josh Connellman, have you got anything to plug? I do. I have my own podcast called Make My Day, which is a comedy game show with one contestant who always wins.
Starting point is 00:38:10 Alice has been on. It was a great time. We talked about fonts. We did. We talked about expertise. And I have on July 17th, I'm hosting a fundraiser for voting rights.
Starting point is 00:38:23 We've been doing this on Zoom once a month with a couple of friends. And the lineup is great. The organization is called Field Team 6 because in the United States, you need to raise money just so the one political party doesn't stop people from participating in democracy. That's certainly what democratic politics is all for shutting down the other side and as always some of our stories have been sent in by roaming correspondence in which you also can be a member of the party of roaming correspondence by tweeting us at hello garglers on twitter this week our nude sunbather story was sent in from all directions by damien joshua erlich and
Starting point is 00:39:04 the intrepid stephen chilcott as well as our non-tuner story was sent in from all directions by Damien Joshua Ehrlich and the intrepid Stefan Chilcott, as well as our non-tuner story was sent in by socially distant kitten. And our message in a bottle story was sent in by Jeff Spakowski. Remember, you too can be a cadet reporter for the gargle. This is the gargle. I'm your host, Alice Fraser. Find me online at at alliterative on Twitter and Instagram. A-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E. Or look me up on Patreon,
Starting point is 00:39:25 patreon.com slash alisfraser for a one-stop shop, all of my stand-up specials, podcasts and blogs, as well as my weekly Tea with Alice salons. The executive producer of this show is Christopher Skinner. The editor of this show is Ped Hunter. The Gargle is a Bugle podcast, an Alice Fraser production. I'll talk to you next week.

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