194-year-old tortoise scam, AI learning to swear, and more on Meta!

0:00Alice Fraser: Think you know where to go for happy hour? Think again. Benihana's 369 Happy Hour offers$6 pan-fried gyoza dumplings,$9 specialty sushi rolls, and signature cocktails like the Benihana Punch, mojitos, and more. It's unexpected, it's delicious, and it's perfect for meeting up with friends. Happy Hour done differently. Visit Benihana.com. That's Benihana.com.

0:34Alice Fraser: Ladies, jaded retired assassins living on a farm in the countryside seeking a time of peace, sexy cowboys and the other four types of people that exist, welcome to The Gargle Podcast, a news satire podcast about science and technology hosted by me, Alice Fraser, published author, writing teacher and comedian coming at you from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival where I've been having an absolute bastard of a time. I'd like to welcome our co-hosts for this episode of The Gargle, prepped for doing a fair bit of the heavy lifting on what is frankly a deeply underslept script from my end.

1:05Alice Fraser: First, she's the lieutenant standing on the deck of a galleon looking at the horizon and calling the land a ho. It's Rialina. Welcome. Good morning, evening. Good hello. Good earth to you. Good earth to you. And she's been experimenting in her garage with radioactive lizards fuelled by cryptocurrency, but one's escaped and bitten her. It's dollar sign Alison Spittel. Pew, pew, pew, pew. Very, very happy to be here. I'm coming to you from a hotel in Ireland. Very, very exciting. I am delighted to have you both here. We will jump into the science and technology news, but first let's have a look at the front cover of this week's magazine.

1:46Alice Fraser: Here on the front cover we have a NASA astronaut floating in the Orion capsule, smiling, holding a thumbs up towards a small window through which Earth is visible as a distant, vulnerable marble. You look closer and see that the other hand of the astronaut is holding a phone in a selfie pose, and the smile is the rictus terror of a phone addict realizing there's no eSIM for space roaming and he's just about to lose his Duolingo streak. Our headline for the day is Apple turning 50. It has released a more or less optimized version of the same product in a slightly different color shade range. Tim Cook, when asked about the new quote-unquote change, said courage at describing the decision to move the charging port again slightly.

2:32Alice Fraser: top story this week has just taken the lead uh out of left field the world's oldest tortoise has been caught in a viral crypto death scam uh allison spittle other than being a contender for best headline of the year can you unpack this story for us what i love is uh this is about a Seychelles tortoise called Jonathan and he is on the island of St Helena and he's supposed to be is that 193 years old? Is that the age of him? That's what they're kind of suspecting and this is from they judged this because there was a picture of him back in the day from the Boer War and what's crazy about this is basically someone impersonated his veterinarian and went on to Twitter or X and said, sorry, guys, Jonathan is dead.

3:33Can you pay me in crypto to help with that? I don't know. What was he trying to insinuate? Was going to help with the mourning of Jonathan? Like, what were they actually raising money for? Because like, what do you do to pay for a dead tortoise? I can understand in a live tortoise, you have to pay for like the fruit salads and stuff that you feed them once a week. But yeah, they've turned the death of Jonathan into a crypto scan. And then it turns out someone just checked the garden. Jonathan is still very much alive. And yeah, the way that they proved this was they, and I think this shows the kind of our modern times, is instead of holding a newspaper beside Jonathan, today's newspaper to prove that he's dead, they put an iPad beside him with the BBC's homepage on it to prove that he's alive on that day, which I think is very 2026.

4:33But yeah, it's a crazy story. And people were trying to find out, like, why was Jonathan on St. Helena? like like napoleon you know he's like how did they actually end up there and uh apparently what they did back in the day was they used to bring tortoises onto ships as uh as a food source because they kept for a long time because they're in a shell which i think is like a isn't that the most horrible version of tinned food you've ever heard in your life where you're like right isn't it surely all creatures keep as long as they're alive it's not even about the shell like if i bring a pig on board it's going to be as fresh as it's going to be until i eat it right you can't

5:18Alice Fraser: serve a pig in the shell of a pig though can you it's not like a bread bowl situation

5:28also tortoises i love them but they are a less they're a less cute sentient being you haven't seen there's no film like babe about a tortoise you know i mean i'm going to i'm going

5:38Alice Fraser: to argue with this. I think tortoises are very cute. But also that I think this is a fascinating experiment in sort of market demographic targeting gullible people with the idea that Jonathan has died in order to then ask for cryptocurrency donations. I think that's a genius move because you're taking people who are already just believing whatever they're reading on the internet and they are like prime candidates for a crypto scam. Yeah, that's true. But normally like the the people who get scammed are like uh they'll be like uh lemon juice weight loss or whatever like it's kind of going for the same yeah you're right but this this demographic of people there do you think you're right sorry but the venn diagram here between people who care about jonathan the tortoise and people who have access to cryptocurrency it must be a very very small wedge of the pie there such a small wedge that even the person who created the coin got conned by it because it wasn't the guy who did the conning wasn't like the owner of the coin he just said pay me in this particular coin and the owner of the coin went oh that's really sad here have some crypto and then found out later that it was a scam and went oh that's not on mate that's not on i can give you some of my own coin and then they discovered that jonathan all along was a shell company high fives high fives high fives high fives oh oh incredible incredible beautiful i feel like you have an advantage because you're ahead of us though alice is a beautiful way she does these best types of jokes ever like this is you're you're ahead of us in time and in uh in bad jokes yes do you know why he's called jonathan he's called Jonathan and this is this goes to show the old school jokes that were back in the day he's called Jonathan because they named him after Jonathan Swift the satirist and it's because he's a tortoise and he's uh yeah it's because he's a tortoise and he's slow and I think that's very cute and I love that I love that like that's that joke is able to last nearly 200 years as nearly as long as the tortoise himself I thought you're gonna say they named him after Jonathan Swift because the tortoise kept threatening to eat babies um he because do you know jonathan swift he was a dean in a in a church near me sorry i'm riddled of adhd um but um apparently he used to drone on so long people used to fall asleep and they built uh they built like a sermon table with wheels so he could be wheeled around the church and then he'd shout in the faces of the people that were asleep and i'm like jonathan improve your oratory why why are you getting wheels on this

8:29he invented cabaret i mean that's cabaret you go around the audience and and you know yell and

8:36Alice Fraser: lick people's faces i mean then they put all the pews little circle little round little table eating eating the body of christ whining crackers to body of christ minimum entry i misheard you and i thought you said whiny crackers and i was like that as an ex-catholic that is a great way to describe communion they are whiny those crackers

9:04i've always wondered because i'm not allowed to have communion i've always wondered if it's sort of does it melt in the mouth are they a little bit stale those crackers does the wine help do you want me to talk to you about the mouthfeel of catholicism it feels amazing i'm very relaxed tell me about your experience because i'm quite sure that some choir boys have a very different mouthfeel experience so like uh it melts on the it melts on the tongue and as a kid sometimes my tongue would get stuck to the roof of my mouth between the communion would create a glue and then my tongue would get stuck to the roof of my mouth and then this is the catholic guilt guilt that i felt i was like you're enjoying eating jesus too much and this is punishment and then i would try and like stop myself from enjoying the taste of communion and just uh it's it's quite sweet it is genuinely you can have it as an hors d 'oeuvre if you had it with hummus or a bit of cream cheese, it would be good stuff.

10:02It really is great. But I've never done that before because I'm not that lapsed. I'm still, even though I'm ex-athlete, there's still a weird fear in me. It's the same with fairies. Like in Ireland, people believe in fairies. And I kind of, I don't, but I will never do anything that will anger fairies. I just don't want to take that chance. Why walk under a ladder when you can walk around it? It's just extra steps on your old, you know, pedometer. That's all. I do feel that people made up those superstitions just to cover for health and safety. Like I think too many people were walking under ladders and there was like workplace accidents and they're like, no one was listening when they were like, that's unsafe.

10:43But when you go, that's unlucky, people are like, hey, we got to hear about here.

10:49Alice Fraser: Yeah, don't break a mirror. You'll get seven years of bad luck. I think it's just based on that scene in Apocalypse Now where he punches the mirror and then things don't go so well for him afterwards. And that brings us to our next story, which is the news that the void has been staring back, as it were. Apparently, Anthropics Clawed Code program is keeping track of markers of frustration in its use of swear words or I'm sick of this or that's bullshit. Ria, Lena, you have stared into the void and the void has stared back. Can you unpack this story for us? it has we stared at each other and then we just we basically swore at each other all day and it was great i just did it for funsies but apparently claude code was keeping track but essentially uh the artificial intelligence company anthropic who are the makers of claude or the owners of claude code or the keepers of claude code at what point do you no longer actually have ownership over your own creation in this world.

11:50But they accidentally leaked half a million lines of code. And it was discovered in those lines of code that cloud code actually keeps track of its user and how often the user gets frustrated. And it tracks swearing. So it's not just things like, you know, it's proper swearing, but also if you say something like, oh, so frustrating or this sucks, which really surprises me because I okay I do use I do use AI but I don't tend to swear at it because I'm too scared that it'll remember and come back at me when it's Skynet so I've always been quite like I refrain from doing please and thank yous because I do know that every word is killing the environment so I try and keep it as brief as possible but still just to know that it's tracking your it's basically it's like I'm single if I wanted a guy to track my cycle and ask me every three weeks are you is it your are you in your period um you know I'd get back into a relationship but now that I know that AI is doing it I'm like okay if you're gonna do it at least be useful you know tell me what I'm ovulating like give me you know tell me some stuff but the the crazy thing is and this maybe it's just because I'm a techie the crazy thing is is that it's the only bit of clawed code that doesn't use ai it you it literally uses a really old like it basically used ctrl f ctrl f which is find the word shite can i say that yeah please swear away find the word and it does and it just goes oh they said and then it writes it down oh they said again and it writes it down so it doesn't even use ai to tell you that you're angry it doesn't

13:41Alice Fraser: need to encourages me that we have an old school almost analog fuckometer going on that that makes me happy control f-bomb you know that's where you find all these swears well the the big question is what are they going to do with it though what are they going to do i mean at the moment it just we think feeds back to the parent company so the parent company can go oh people don't like this particular version of Claude Code we should upgrade or oh that's not working very well we're getting a lot of control f-bombs um we should work on that and that sounds like it's a meter for good but you know at some point it's going to become a meter for bad there's going to be the the the f***s and the f***nots and which party do you want to be in?

14:30Alice Fraser: Yeah, yeah, it's very difficult to imagine an entirely innocent fuck tracker built stealthily into the system. It can't bode well, Alison. It's scary. Like, so I'm not trying to shame anyone about AI. I stopped using AI. I tried AI. I thought, what I don't like about AI is I find that AI lies to me about what its capabilities are. And so I got quite frustrated with it. And I find that AI can be quite sycophantic as well. Like AI will be like, oh, well done, Alison. That's a great insight, Alison. Well done. Isn't it? Yes. Would you like to hear? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm like, if I want to hear like lying compliments off myself, and I think I should just like burn a tree that says the word like you are enough on it.

15:30And that'll give me the validation that I need. What I find strange is that you were right about using the control F and not being able to use AI to solve this problem. And it feels very like when Musk, didn't Musk hire a person to pretend to be a robot or something like that? I feel like it's very Muskian. And I don't want to maybe blame him for this, but like that we're using humans to kind of figure out this problem. And AI can't even time you. Like, did you see that thing that went viral this week of a guy asking AI to time his run? And then he ran for a second. And then AI told him he ran for 10 minutes and then kept reassuring him that it had done that time.

16:13And it's such a, yeah, I don't know. I find it very, I find it very strange. I'm sorry. I've just, I've just, I just got totally distracted there by how much I dislike AI.

16:25Alice Fraser: Well, I've got my children trained because I don't like them telling me, asking if, if the thing I'm doing, you know, like do the thing that I'm already doing. I don't enjoy being told to do the thing that I'm already doing. So like that, are we nearly there yet? So I have now I've come down quite hard on it, which means that now, whenever I'm doing something, but they're getting impatient and they both quite aggressively come up and say you're doing great mommy oh my god you know Alice you're gonna be first against the wall when the AI Ria will be dead last they'll let Ria watch right I totally get you on the whole I couldn't stand it when it kept telling me how great everything was because it's also like a really rough you know it goes oh my god that's such a great idea and I go do not patronize me and I basically said listen I'm autistic you're autistic speak to me like we're both autistic and it stopped and it's genuine it's just like oh I see yeah well yeah essentially I did I said I'm autistic I'm also a computer programmer I do not need any of that like just give me facts do not give me do not suppose do not extrapolate do not guess do not just give me facts that you can verify and some of them can do that and some of them can't gemini cannot for the life of it only give you facts that it can verify it can't verify shit it's just they're going yeah but it's a fact and i went prove it give me the link gemini weirdly gemini is google's ai that is connected to the internet so in the in the really swift evolution that we had in the last three years chat gpt came out as the front runner and everyone went oh my god chat gpt is amazing but it was two to three months behind the internet so you you couldn't do anything any topical research on it or anything like that because it would be like i'm still working on a version of the internet from last year who's president and you'll be like oh chat gpt just stay where you are you don't want to know all right and then and then gemini came along and said i have access to the entire internet and everyone went oh gemini that's amazing tell me what's happening now right now anywhere right now but gemini actually has access to too much information and it gets confused and it just goes I don't know here you go and and you go where did you get that and it goes I I don't know I don't know where I got that and you know and you just know we're going to open a cupboard somewhere in the universe one day and all of Gemini's lies and you know dead bodies are going to be behind this door and you'll be like oh Gemini what have you done as a Gemini myself I can understand that like uh as a you know you double personality too much yeah double personality, promising too much, not delivering, having a breakdown.

19:06That's what Gemini's do.

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20:15Alice Fraser: And that brings us to your ad section. Your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Six Pact, an international toy fair winning best new board game. Well, it was a nominee and eventual winner by default. Six Pact is the tabletop cult and blood oath making card game where you and five of your friends agree to summon a turn-based demon of vengeance in order to fulfill all of your earthly desires at the low, low cost of your six intersecting souls. Finally, a game for the whole apocalypse. Reviewers are calling it cozy nihilism.

20:50Alice Fraser: The demon Prince Belphegor called it... And the Times Online called it quite a long way away from a harmless board game. This arcane package of depraved mad libs and demon summoning spells is 100 % effective. I've accidentally cursed my editor and now he has a penis where his penis is put on sideways like a crossbar. Oh my God. Oh, that's a visual. And if you're enjoying this show, why not try listening to a different show, our sister podcast, Realms Unknown, where we talk about science fiction and fantasy, and it's lots of fun. Don't leave now. Wait till the end of this episode and listen to that.

21:28Alice Fraser: Also available, the Bugle podcast, where I will be appearing as a co-host this week with Andy Zaltzman and Nato Green. Also, my book, A Passion for Passion, is still around if you want to buy it, and my new book won't be around for years. But if you want to sign up for updates on it, head over to alicefraser.com and sign up on the books page for book-related information. good news for accountability lawyers plaintiff lawyers in the u.s are about to start cracking their knuckles because at last a precedent has been set that is holding accountable platforms for the things that are on the platforms uh meta has been uh look it's been charged a nominal amount but it has been held accountable for uh damaging teen mental health uh realina you know how to go on the internet.

22:16Alice Fraser: Can you unpack this story for us? Yes. So I'm amazed they let it happen, but they let it happen. A teenager was allowed to, well, she actually tried to take four companies to court and the two that wouldn't settle out of court were Meta, i.e. Facebook and YouTube. And she said, you've designed an addictive product and I'm now addicted and you've ruined my life. And they're like, no, none of it's our fault. No, it's not our fault. But then there was a memo leaked from Meta that literally said, we got to get them before they're even teenagers or they won't be properly addicted. And that was it. Jury was like, you're bad.

22:55You did it. This has been described as social media's big tobacco moment. It when it's kind of like the moment that the world realizes, oh, you you bad. You're not good for us. And it's very exciting. now it's very exciting now they are going to appeal of course they're going to appeal so there this isn't over but at the same time it kind of is because you know what the media is like if there is an appeal and they win it'll be like two column inches at the back of a of a metaphorical newspaper that nobody actually reads in paper anymore but the big front page is you're bad you

23:30Alice Fraser: did it you're guilty yes i mean to a certain extent it might not be worth their while appealing except that there's going to be a cascade of such claims. The payout in this instance was only$6 million because obviously you're looking at things like past earnings and future earnings in order to figure out what damages ought to be attributed for what's going on with this young lady and obviously she's saying she was addicted as a preteen and she's now only 20. So it's quite difficult to say what damage has been done and sort of prospective future earnings and so on and so forth. The calculus is difficult, But the more of these cases come down and the more they are decided, the more possible it will be.

24:10Alice Fraser: I just think it's a really wonderful thing. I'm going to kind of step outside the comedy thing here, which is, you know, there's a lot of a feeling of inevitability about the dominance over our attention and our minds that has been taken by these large companies, their capacity to control how we think and what we think about. And, you know, when you wake up in the morning, you can pick up your phone or you cannot. And it's a zero sum game. Either you get to decide what you think first or their algorithms get to decide what the first thought in your head is and that they're sort of pretending more or less that they're helpless in the face of the demands of the market.

24:44Alice Fraser: They're just presenting what the market is demanding and then we feel helpless in the face of their dominance. And so it is really fucking nice to just see it get nailed down and say, no, there's someone who is held accountable. And when there's someone who's held accountable and having to pay even$6 million, then all of a sudden you're like, okay so you're you're doing something to people you're doing it on purpose and and you can be held accountable I think that's a like genuinely big moment I'm so sorry Alice could you say all of that again I got distracted by a video of a kitten in some welly boots I know I 100 % agree with everything I think the irony of it is is they interviewed her afterwards and she said I'm so to social media.

25:28I cannot do without it. I cannot imagine my life without it. So I think also the companies that are going, yeah, okay, here, have the 6 million because it's just going to come straight back to us and your attention anyway. You know, I don't think, but you're right. There are so many people waiting across the country to basically pile in and start suing all of the social media platforms. And this is, you know, we've been trying for years to figure out how to get them and they're like well we're a platform it's not our content you can't for what's on there and they finally managed to get them for how they designed it which is great yeah they specifically

26:03Alice Fraser: designed it knowingly to be addictive and specifically addictive to underage children is the like i think that was the real hung out to dry moment allison i think i'm gonna send them all my half-finished manuscripts and say pay me pay me for all this work i haven't done i'm gonna blame a uh I'm gonna blame social media and not my lack of talent or whatever I'll be like Mark Zuckerberg has done this to me not my uh not my deciding to do a a show about I was gonna sorry I was gonna make a joke there deciding to do a show about fruits having affairs on each other but that's actual content that's quite popular at the moment is a AI fruit having affairs oh Oh, it is.

26:49Do you know what? I was going to sue them because I'm upset that they only made it addictive to preteens because that is not my audience. So I'm like, I'm sorry. Why aren't you making this addictive to women age 35 to 54 who have enough money to buy my tickets? So I'm the next court case.

27:10Alice Fraser: Think you know where to go for happy hour? Think again. Vinny Hanna's 369 Happy Hour offers$6 pan-fried gyoza dumplings,$9 specialty sushi rolls, and signature cocktails like the Vinny Hanna Punch, mojitos, and more. It's unexpected, it's delicious, and it's perfect for meeting up with friends. Happy Hour done differently. Visit VinnyHanna.com. That's VinnyHanna.com.

27:43Alice Fraser: And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by about a room full of very fine mist, a.k.a. half a glass of water. Half a glass of water. Hey.

27:57Alice Fraser: And that brings us to the final story of this week's episode of The Gargle, salmon sperm, bird droppings. What should you be slapping on your face? Alison Spittel, you've put your face in some unusual places. can you unpack this story for us yes this is a beautiful story just about these uh different treatments that are uh that are available uh to us now um yeah salmon sperm facials is where they inject is it i i is it's they inject salmon sperm into your face and well i'm gonna know they take the polynucleotides out of it and they inject those but they get it from salmon sperm but my question to you re is how did i get the salmon sperm itself like what kind of well have you you know how a man like kind of fling can fling it wherever salmon are similar fling it wherever yeah yeah you know what i mean like they go down with a net to the rivers and they kind of scoop it no i'm i'm sure they could probably farm it but but it's not like it's not like caviar where they have to like extract it from the fish i think that they can well i'm kind of imagining like little little fleshlights for these salmons little fish lights if you will of getting this out and it's apparently to help you look younger and it's just um it's just a strange uh it's it's one of these things that i'd love to it's like the same with milk i'm like how did they discover that this worked like who decided to milk a cow and what were they doing uh before they milked a cow and who who was like I need a facial from salmon and then not only do I need to do that but I need to tell everyone about the incredible uh incredible youth making um situation that's got there no it's just a it's just a strange strange story altogether it it is a bit weird we use salmon sperm because the DNA of it it's quite similar to human DNA so they're like oh there's less risk of rejection and I went well you know what's even more similar to human DNA like human DNA.

30:03And there's a lot of that sperm going about. And I was just thinking, you know, now that people, a lot of men are less likely to donate to sperm banks because there's so many laws in so many countries saying, but when the kid's 18, they get to come and find you that I was like, well, they need somewhere to go. They need something to donate to women are always going to want to look younger. I feel like we're missing a tree. The poor salmon who are there swimming upstream, just trying to procreate to come across some scientists going, Hey, you want to sell it to me for a dollar and and we've just we've got other options you know and and think about how much how many people would want to put David Beckham's in their face you know what I mean like I bet you people would pay good bank for that at last elaborate luxury facial serving

30:47Alice Fraser: salons and truck stop glory holes have found their perfect match we're gonna we're gonna rename glory holes to farm to table artisanal artisanal farms it's gonna be beautiful I mean this is the thing I used to have a joke about the sort of prevalence of pornographic shots of this stuff like the facial thing and I said there's no woman who's finishing herself off at home by spraying herself in the eye with a shaken up emulsion of bleach and mayonnaise turns out people are paying to have it injected into their eyeballs there's all sorts of things that women do with very little scientific backup like has have you are either of you on the the chinese social media the talk no oh tick tock oh they they sell you a lot of of skincare and there's this calcium stick that everyone's like rubbing on their face and they're going this is amazing and i'm and every and it's like since what i've never heard of calcium ever being the thing for your face and now everyone's rubbing it on their face and I'm going how do you even know but people are buying it they're just like I'll give it a go yeah I'll rub that on my face yeah why not so why not salmon sperm and that brings us to the end of this week's episode of the gargle I am flipping through the ad section at the back Alison Spittle have you got anything to plug I'm gonna be in Melbourne Comedy Festival it's the only date it's available is the Wednesday come see me there I'm in Sydney I'm in Perth I'm in Leicester Square Fair in June and going to be in Edinburgh in June as well.

32:20Go listen to my podcast, Ignore That Feeling, we're fair and ready. Thank you. Bye. And Ria. I just finished my tour, but I filmed it. So it's going to be up on YouTube in the next couple of months. So please go to my YouTube channel and just subscribe for now. Hopefully get up the numbers so that it can be seen. So go to my YouTube or go to my website and sign up on my WhatsApp channel or my mailing list If you still prefer email, I'm just trying to avoid social media as best as possible and be able to reach the people. So please do find me.

32:49Alice Fraser: Yes. Likewise, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. It's a one-stop shop. You can subscribe there for free and it'll tell you everything that I'm doing, given that my tour has been marked by lots of people going, I didn't know you were in Brisbane, if they were in Brisbane. So yes, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. I've also got weekly writers meetings and salons where we talk about ideas every week. Feel free to come along. This is a Bugle podcast, an Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Harry Gordon. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week.

33:41Alice Fraser: Japanese Wagyu. This is the finest beef on the planet, expertly grilled right at your table. Why settle for an ordinary steak dinner when you can taste the world in one bite? Only at Benihana. Book your table at benihana.com. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman, as you may know. The Bugle, as well as being the world's only ever longest running and arguably best audio newspaper for a visual world, is one of the very few fully independent media empires remaining in this thus far very silly millennium. Our voluntary subscribing listeners have made this possible and you, if you are not already one can join them to keep our shows free flourishing and independent for the rest of all eternity.

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35:09Thank you.