A £200m Mystery London Zoo Donor!

0:01Alice Fraser: Welcome to The Gargle, a satirical science and technology news show. Neo in The Matrix saying, I know Kung Fu. Me, watching at home, irritated, saying, no, you just listened to a podcast about Kung Fu. That's not the same as knowing something, you dumb f***. The number of Dunning-Kruger motherf***ers who really believe they know something just from hearing about it. Like when Mark Wahlberg said 9-11 would have gone down differently if he'd been on the plane. I'd like to welcome our co-hosts first. First, he's the ghost that lurks in the walls and has a haunting crush on the Phantom of the Opera.

0:32Alice Fraser: It's Jaws Norris. Hello. Thank you for having me. I always get... Dunning-Kruger is where stupid people are really stupid. Is that the one? Or is that the one where after you notice something, then you notice it all the time? What's that? Look, I can't tell you because the more you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect, the less you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect. Right. And I... I'm going to just keep my head down. Yes. Then you're the expert. and the colorized microscope photograph of a molecular charcuterie board. It's Ria Lina. Good morning. Am I the salami in this? Yes. Yeah, you are the sausage.

1:06Alice Fraser: Is that what I am? The salami? I am the sausage. I'm all right with being the sausage. Is it like being the man? Is that the new euphemism? It really is. I read the other day an article when I was looking for articles for the gargle. I found a substack meditation on the nature of the clitoris, that all clitorises are between 9 and 11 inches, and therefore the prototype, same material as the penis. So all women have bigger penises than men. And I was like, it doesn't really count as science news. Doesn't it, though? Come on, that's anatomy. I feel science-y, yeah. Well, it was less science news than it was somebody trying to make a political point about the nature of the female orgasm.

1:50Alice Fraser: so I thought maybe for dinner table conversation or the introductory sequence to the gargle I love both those things I'd love to be at that dinner party if I'm honest I'd love to be the dinner party where no matter what's in front of us everybody can talk about the size and shape of the clitoris without losing their appetite I welcome those days I enjoy the knowing for a fact that having said that women's clitorises are between nine and eleven the arms of the clitoris they look like that, between 9 and 11 inches, and that's bigger than men's penises. There will be men who are currently typing to me.

2:27Alice Fraser: Actually, there are some men who have even bigger penises than that, to which I will be forced to reply, is it you? Because if it's not you, you're not allowed. Before we get into the news of this week, let's have a look at the headlines first. Scientists have finally at last confirmed negative time is real. Researchers have proven that photons can spend less than zero time interacting with atoms exiting a gas cloud on average before they've even arrived. This discovery is either well overdue or significantly premature. And with the new information provided by this paper, I can confidently say it's both.

3:03Alice Fraser: There's also archaeological evidence suggesting that humans were riding horses as early as 3500 BC. and that that function of riding horses reshaped the genetic map of Eurasia, I should clarify, by spreading people around to f**k, not by f**king horses. In these monster romantic times, it is worth clarifying such pedantic little points. And China has unveiled a GD-01, a pilot-operated transforming robot that stands nine feet tall and is capable of smashing through concrete. It is what's called a manned transforming robot. It's from Unitary Robotics. The company representatives claim that the$650 ,000 machine is intended for civil transport because God knows we need more all-terrain civilian transport vehicles that can smash through concrete.

3:51Alice Fraser: Finally, a car that lets you experience road rage on two legs, four legs, and I've fallen over and can't get up legs. They're going to use it for the military. We all know that. That's what it's for. did they invent a transformer and then have the nerve to call it a transforming machine like that's a like there's already a name copyright ip big brands you can't kind of meddle in this stuff they're china do they care like like like who's you're gonna sue china through the trademark systems of the u.s like call it call it what it is a transformer that sounds cool do we know if it's like a good one or a bad one yeah yeah it's an auto bottle Autobot or, yeah.

4:33Alice Fraser: One of the good ones. Decepticon? I want to say Decepticon. Decepticon? Yeah, that's the one, I assume. I hazarded that as though I didn't know, but I knew it was a Decepticon. I have seen one of the new Michael Bay Transformers movies, and then I've also, on the anniversary of my mum's death, Dan Illich and Toby Truslove, two Australian entertainment people, took me. I was in LA, and they took me to Universal Studios, and we went on the Transformers ride, the michael bay transformers ride and i at last experienced transform transformers as it is meant to be experienced which is like oh you're being shaken around someone that's blowing hot air in your face someone's spraying you in the eye with water and then then like it all makes sense if you're experiencing it as a ride and i was like oh this is my he's just ahead of his time or in the wrong medium do they put you inside a transformer and then transform it around you because i guess hasn't arrived that would be like isn't that a dalek if you're a little thing inside of a machine oh yeah i mean it depends if we're in medieval times it's homunculus uh but that brings us to our news stories now this is the new news of a new system of anatomy that has been discovered uh there they have they've discovered a new an anatomical system uh they thought there's the blood system and the lymph system and they did not think that there was like various intersections Rialina, you read this painstaking article in the New York Times.

6:01Alice Fraser: Can you unpack this story a little bit for us? Because I feel like when they discover new systems at this point, the news is less we discovered a new system and more. We missed a system for ages. Well, we missed a system twice for ages. So first of all, it's called the interstitium because it's interstitial to other things that we were already familiar with there. We missed it first in that this just came out in the New York Times, but was actually discovered in 2018. So there's some kind of, I don't know, pre-post-COVID delay on getting this from the scientists to whoever animated this for the New York Times.

6:39It was an animated HTML article where you had to scroll through and read three lines at a time while it changed the graphics in the background. Although the graphics were made by a graphic designer and were in no way anatomically relevant. but this the other way that we've missed this is the fact that the chinese have known about this for thousands of years so when we say they've discovered a new part of the body the west has acknowledged that there's something in science that they didn't acknowledge before um but haven't gone as far as acknowledging that maybe the chinese and eastern medicine does know something about what they're talking about uh so it's called the interstitium and it's a vast interconnected network of fluid-filled channels running around and between cells, tissues, and organs throughout the entire body.

7:25So just think of it like a sheet of chicken wire, which is like collagen bundles that provide structure embedded in a sponge-like gel, which is the hyaluronic acid, which all of us like to slap on our faces, which absorbs and stores fluid cells, molecules. And they kind of seep through this gel at a rate separate to the lymph system and the circulatory system. And they discovered it by, you know, and again, some of these science experiments done in China, where they would inject something at the bottom of your wrist and they'd find that it would make its way all the way up to your heart. And they think that the interstitium is what the acupuncture meridians are based on.

8:06They're like, oh, is that how acupuncture works? So now the West is willing to accept that maybe acupuncture does do something, whereas before it was just Eastern needle mumbo jumbo.

8:20Alice Fraser: Excellent. I will think of it as a sheet of chicken wire. That's my favorite thing to think about. I often imagine my body as a sort of a hollow puppet being managed by a bloating brain. So this is very useful to feed into my model of the world. uh josh norris how do you feel about a new system in your system i feel weird about it i feel weird that because it's it's gaps right it's basically the idea that there are all these gaps in between these other systems which now we know do this separate thing i reckon well it's the chicken wire it's the chicken wire in the gaps there's the gaps between the between the wire right and that's the but there is a gel moves through that there is a gel right right i don't feel comfortable with it.

9:04I think we can get rid of the whole layer.

9:06Alice Fraser: Is it more unsettling to you, Joss, to imagine a functional gel than it is to imagine just a hole? Yeah, I just don't like the texture of gel. I don't like the idea that there's this new thing inside me I didn't know about. I was fine with, you know, I've had enough time to understand bones and I've had enough time to understand kind of like fluids and spongy tissue. The idea that there is now like gel with big holes in, because, you know, that's a phobia. People have that phobia of holes. So if that's inside, I feel like we could probably get rid of the whole thing and then that would make us all like about 20 % smaller, right?

9:38Do you mean the entire thing or the whole thing? The whole layer, like this sort of system of gaps that we now have in between us. You know when you shrink wrap something and you just take all the air out and it gets smaller? I reckon now we know about this, we can do this. And then people will get a bit smaller and then that will solve all kinds of problems. I don't know which problems, but like overcrowding on trains and buses.

10:01Alice Fraser: what was going on with the Wicked 2 press tour. Yes, I mean, women would be thrilled if you could just hairdryer your body and just shrink wrap into a slightly tighter shape. No, I find that deeply upsetting. Speaking of deeply upsetting, there is a$20 million animal perving institution that has just been established. Well, there was a mystery gift given to the London Zoo and it has been turned into the mystery gift to 20 million pounds has been turned into a viewing, a viewable veterinary surgery institution. There's an animal hospital in the London Zoo, which you can now go and watch animals getting checked up on and operated on and just it feels, I mean, I don't think they have privacy issues, but I feel it feels like an invasion of the R &VAC's privacy.

10:57Alice Fraser: I feel affronted by it. I feel it's a bit pervy in a way, not in a sex way, although maybe, I don't know, mystery$20 million gifts. I don't trust philanthropy in the UK ever since I heard about Jimmy Savile. So I'm, no, Joss Norris, how do you feel about this 20 million pound perv hospital? I feel mostly just really curious about the nature of this mystery donation. That was the big thing about this article where I was like, who's done this? Because I think it must be Attenborough, right? I was trying to work out who at this stage of their life would have the resources and the inclination to go, do you know what?

11:33I've had a good life and I want to leave something behind. I've got 20 mil. I think it's got to be, because it's also it's 200 years of London Zoo, I think. And it's 100 years of David Atman.

11:44Alice Fraser: Yeah, and he does love perving on animals. He loves perving on animals. He's the gold standard of perving on animals. But I also don't really understand what the 20 mil has been spent on, because presumably there was already a facility at London Zoo where they were looking after animals. So is this a£20 million window? And now people can look in. Is that it? Is that what they've done? Yeah, I don't think they actually had. I think they're just building another building where part of it is the viewing gallery. It is really weird, though, that you're going to be able to watch live vet procedures.

12:20And it says, first time publicly in the UK. And I went, I don't think it's for the first time. I'm pretty sure Victorians also didn't give them any kind of privacy or respect or dignity. So I'm pretty sure we're reinventing a wheel that we moved away from for probably very good reasons. But also, it's going to include vet care, science research, professional training, public engagement under one roof, but not a single cafe. And I don't know if you've ever been to the London Zoo, but I mean, the cafe is good, but it isn't sufficient. Like, I cannot believe that 20 million doesn't cover a cup of tea and a cake after you've watched some penguin health check or an ultrasound on a pregnant aardvark.

13:02Alice Fraser: Yeah, look, I mean, in all seriousness, I think it's really lovely for people that want to go into animal care. It'll be good for the environment and everything. But it is troubling to me that the donation is mysterious, even though that's like probably a good thing that somebody doesn't want to show off their donation. uh it feels like it i feel like transparency in all things otherwise what do you what are you buying with your 20 million other than silence what if it's from a Thai millionaire who wants to remain nameless that's the guy that gave five million to Nigel Farage oh yeah I'm so sorry so wait maybe he's trying to make up for it maybe he's trying to like yeah balance Or like Musk or someone like that who has a reputation as like a bad sort of alpha male dude who secretly is like, no, I'd like to do some good for the world and sort of siphon some money off into something a bit more altruistic.

13:58He doesn't want us to know.

14:01Alice Fraser: Even though I've come out as quite anti this, I'm definitely going to go with my four year old daughter and make her watch something. i just hope they get the building right because they want to do the vet care and so that you can kind of watch animals you know doing gorilla ct scans or whatever which sounds fascinating but they also want to investigate how disease spreads from animals to humans in the same building and if you recall um those kinds of things don't always go well but apparently zsl already do research into bovine tuberculosis and bat carried viruses and i'm like well we we remember what happened the last time a bat carried virus yeah george clooney got nipples on his suit no you're talking about something else which brings us to our ad section your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy uh did you know someone came to my live show the other day with a homemade you can't be what you can't buy t-shirt.

15:02Alice Fraser: Aw. Right. Made me very happy. And it sort of, I mean, made me think I should have been selling merch that said you can't be what you can't buy. But sort of. How much were they? Was the human for sale? I assume so, but I only had pocket change. Ad section. Ad section. What if you could miss something before it's gone? presenting the premature nostalgia goggles, augmented reality lenses that overlay a remember when filter onto your present moment. Look at your boring office desk. The goggles show it as a sepia-tinged relic from when you're looking back in 2042 with a caption that says, you never knew how good you had it with this ergonomic keyboard.

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17:04Alice Fraser: Microgrief, loss, now inconvenient 10 milligram doses. now it's time for old news is new news news uh old news is new new news um pcos has been renamed ria lena uh you've met an ovary can you unpack this story for us i think i've i've met not one ovary i think i might have met two but uh i've never had that confirmed uh but there is a condition and if you haven't heard of it where have you been because up until last week it was known as polycystic ovary syndrome. So PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome. And they have, after a worldwide campaign, and this took 14 years to achieve, they have successfully managed to rename it polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome.

17:53And the reason that's so important is because when it was named polycystic, it implied that first of all, that's how you look for it. And in fact, multiple cysts on the ovary is not always a sign in this particular condition. Secondly, because it meant that many, many doctors went, this is a reproductive issue, and it is not. It is an endocrine issue. It is a hormonal issue. Thirdly, it just came with a lot of stigma, came with a lot of stigma surrounding it and this reproductive focus and this idea that, oh, well, we only need to treat it if you want to have children. Or, well, you have PCOS, therefore you can never have children, both of which are not true.

18:37So now that it's been renamed, it's now going to be far more better managed. Because I don't know if either of you know this, but women don't always have the best experience when they go to the doctor. I know, crazy, right? But so often they're not treated correctly or told it's all in your head, or why don't you lose a bit of weight or I don't know what you want me to do. I'm a podiatrist. And this means that now they're going to get much better care. So we're not calling it polycystic because that isn't always a thing. Polyendocrine, meaning that this involves multiple hormone systems, not just one, you know, it's insulin, it's your androgens, it's your gonadotropin releasing hormone, your luteinizing hormone, so many different things that when they go out of whack, create all of these symptoms that women have been suffering with.

19:24And now that it's been understood for years, actually. And it was Professor Helena Teet, who is an endocrinologist and director of Monash University Centre for Health Research and Implementation in Australia that led the charge on this going, this is a me thing. This is an endocrinologist thing. This is not a gynecologist thing. So this is huge, huge, huge.

19:45Alice Fraser: Is it weird to say that I am simultaneously pleased and also slightly upset that it is a female doctor, because on one hand, it's nice to see a female doctor getting credit for making a discovery. And also, of course, it's a female doctor because you can't get male doctors to care. They're just like, well, I guess that's how your vagina is now forever. You know, I hear. Jos, how do you feel about PMOS? I feel like, I mean, ordinarily on this show, I would sort of try to find ways to deliberately misunderstand the science or pick holes or something just to try and be funny with it. But I feel like with this one, it's just a really long overdue thing and I'm glad it's happened, you know.

20:28I think it'll make things better for people. I'm reigning in my will to be snarky about it. I just think, I mean, 14 years is mad. 14 years, like, actively campaigning on it.

20:40Alice Fraser: Yeah. From, like, they knew 14 years ago that this was a problem or, like, they began to suspect or, like, they knew for 14 years and it's just taken that long for people to go, It took 14 years of global collaboration. Wow. Because everybody had to agree to change the name. That's so bad. There were probably a lot of men going, no, I know more about this than you do, Helena. And we know this name now. It's sort of easy. I'm going to have to learn like four new letters. Like how long is the new one? P-M-O-S. So I've got to change one whole letter in that thing. That's a lot. Yeah, but it's in the middle.

21:12So you have to reprint the entire label. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a faff. That takes at least a decade to sort through all that kind of admin.

21:20Alice Fraser: This is Ovarian cysts gone mad, is what they'll say.

21:26Alice Fraser: That brings us to our reviews section. As you know, each fortnight we ask our gargle guests to bring in something to review out of five stars. Joyce Norris, what have you brought in for us to review? I am reviewing The Sheep Detectives, a new Hugh Jackman film in which Hugh Jackman plays a dead shepherd whose sheep have to solve his murder. incredible film really really great film and I feel it's actually like quite hard for me to review it because I can't work out whether it's actually a good film or whether it appeals very specifically to the things I'm currently interested in because I'm currently making a show about Hugh Jackman and I'm also trying to write a murder mystery at the same time so to me I had a great time haven't worked sheep into it yet but since watching this I've decided that might be the secret sauce maybe that's how you do it I think it knows what it's doing I think it's it's a really stupid film but I think it does know it I think because because I'm kind of like an unreliable reviewer for it I'm going to talk about a specific bit of it that is the most fascinating like sequence of events in a film that I've seen in ages and I had to really puzzle out what had happened there's a bit where Nicholas Braun as a police officer and Nicholas Galatine as a journalist who's covering the murder are walking down a street it's all set in a little quaint village and they walk past what looks like a kind of a barn and very prominently on the front of a barn is a neon sign that says Nancy's Neon.

22:44And then next to it, it says huge discounts for local residents. And it's very prominent. So I thought, oh, I wonder if that's going to be a clue for the murder mystery. It's never mentioned again, but like five minutes later, they go to the police station and the police station is like a little wooden cottage with a huge neon sign that says police station on the front. And then other than that, that's it. You don't. And I was trying to look at why this happens. And I think it must be that they sorted their location, this quaint little village and then they looked around and went oh no building here looks like a police station what do we do and then in some sort of focus meeting somebody was like could they have a neon sign on the front that says police station and someone else must have gone yeah but why would there be a neon sign in a small village and someone else went I guess there could be a local business that does neon signs and offers local discounts for that's the only explanation I can think for why this happened and it's such a reverse engineered way of like getting somebody to understand what the police station is and I also think they're like there can only be like 40 people in this village.

23:39So how many, like you're going to work through the local discounts so quickly. It doesn't make any sense as a business, but it's one of my favorite background details I've seen in a film ever. So I'm going to give it five stars. Loved it. Gave me a lot to think about. And it knows it's dumb. It does know it's dumb.

23:56Alice Fraser: Okay, excellent. I feel like I ought to go watch that. That's now on my list. Ria, Lina, what have you brought in to review? I want to review probiotic pills. you know the ones that that they you go in and they go it's live culture and it's got 50 000 billion life forms per pill yeah that's they sell the edinburgh fringe yes exactly well i i went in the other day to get some because whenever i sometimes i just get a bit of a dicky tummy and then what happens when i have a dicky tummy is i eat all the wrong stuff I just go, do you want more Coca-Cola? No. Okay. Do you want more nerds? No, that's not good either.

24:38Okay. So, and then eventually I go, I've messed up my system and I go and I buy like symbiotic pills because I go, these, these must fix everything. Right. And then I wait to see my brain increase in power because I feel quite smug about knowing that if your gut health is happy, then your brain gets smarter. um and i and so i want to give a review but to all of them including i found out when i went in to just buy some generic you know gut pills i i went in i found out that you can buy um these sort of bacteria biotic gut pills for something called well let's call it female health um but it's for when you are out of balance in your vaginal area which is women will know if you're totally out of balance, it goes one of two ways.

25:27You either end up with a yeast infection because that side of the ecosystem is taken over, or you can end up with something like bacterial vaginosis, which is when the bacteria takes over. But either way, you're out of whack. And what I love about those pills, I found out, I was like, so you take these pills, how do they, if you swallow those pills, how do they get into your vagina to sort that out? And it turns out that you swallow them. They go all the way through your gut. They wave to the gut bacteria on their way out. They're like, like, I guess like one of those big, you know, slides, super slides that you have in a water park.

26:03They're just like, whee! And they go all the way down. They come out of your bum. Then they crawl across your perineum and they go up into your vagina. And then they go, right, what's going on here? Who's out of order? Who needs to be taken to the neon signed police station of the vagina? know um and that's how they sort you out and so for that action to go to that much effort like

26:25Alice Fraser: five out of five yeah yeah i mean it's sort of a fascinating thing i i often feel like seizing a stranger in the street and saying did you know that my vagina is constantly at war with itself and then moving on uh just just for the fun of it um i don't think you should move on i think you should then go into and my clitoris is nine to eleven inches it's bigger than your dick it's got legs. They all do. Yeah, look, I feel like that is a, that's a, that's a marketing problem. If you need to have the thing go all the way through the wrong way, like when you could just have it go up in the one way, that feels like we need to have females be more comfortable with touching their bits.

27:12Or not washing your bits. Because if you wash your bits, you're watching, they've gone all the way through. They're on that final journey across the perineum. Then you go in there and wash them away. It's a very, it's a very, it's, I know, I see why we were given the responsibility of these body parts to just be able to handle the delicate balance that they are, to understand how to keep ourselves clean without washing away, you know, the, the, the pilgrimage. Yeah.

27:41Alice Fraser: Well, everything is multitasking because you're doing everything while having a vagina and backwards in high heels uh jaws i'm amazed they even let us cook in the kitchen you know what i mean like presumably it doesn't when it comes out of your bum it doesn't come out still as a pill right by that point because i'm picturing the whole pill come out and then it's kind of just make its way across yeah yeah i mean i agree with alice i can't it's pointless i still don't understand why it's a pill and not a pessary i'm still going ah okay but no i think it It breaks it down into that. I don't know.

28:16It gives me the creeps when I think about it because they're alive. And so I'm like, so you mean they're just sort of crawling across my perineum? Are they dragging themselves at this point? Are they just like, can't be outside for too long? And do they know from the point it goes in? They know where they go? Are they kind of like improvising the whole way through? And then when they eventually get there, they're like, oh, cool. We did it. Or does it know where it's going? Well, that's the question because it's a pretty one-way direction. From the moment you swallow it, there's only one way through.

28:47But then imagine coming out of the rectum. And you're not the bum. You could go anywhere. And you have to go left or right. Yeah, exactly. Like, what if 50 % of them are getting it wrong? So how many stars out of five, Ria? Oh, five. If that's the most, I can get five out of five for that.

29:06Alice Fraser: And that brings us to old news. old proper proper old news now uh this is crab facts news uh this is the news that the crabs sideways walk may have evolved only once uh josh norris you're pinchy pinchy pinchy pinchy can you tell us this story i am always pinching um so this is the story that they've discovered that uh all sideways moving crabs are descended from one ancestor uh like most crabs move sideways few of them don't and all the ones that do can be traced back to one point in evolutionary history all the ones that still move forwards come from multiple different branches of the of the thing so they now think that the sideways moving must have been a huge evolutionary advantage for some reason so it became a trait that like fast-tracked all this other kind of explosion of stuff I really like this story because it sort of makes me feel as though evolutionary history feels a bit like a kind of a frustrated artist to me now because you know the thing about like uh the earth keeps producing crabs like crabs have appeared at multiple different points in evolutionary history uh completely separately so the earth just keeps going like crab like whenever it's trying to invent a new idea it's like should i do a crab again do you want more crab and you know like your aunt you heard you like owls once yeah yeah yeah all my i once like accidentally drank too much of my uncle's gordon's gin while i was staying with him uh and it now means whenever he has to get me a present for anything he'll get me a bottle of gordon's gin and i don't i don't really drink gin all that much but he's decided like oh you like gin because you stole all my gin that time um but i also feel like you know kind of like as comedians what a passive aggressive gift yeah like yeah it's really just like remember the time you drank all my gin well here you go never touch my gin again here's your road terrible about it it's really baked in you know how as comedians you sort of like um you're always trying to like do a new thing but you always end up making the kind of the kind of thing that you make like i keep thinking one of these days i'm going to make a stand-up show where i just stand at the microphone and tell jokes for an hour and then inevitably by the time i've finished it i'm like oh i took my trousers off and ran around and and shouted and had loads of songs again like a crap yeah yeah yeah much like but you sort of you can't help but like keep doing the thing that you do but then one day you'll have a breakthrough and you'll be like oh I worked out how to actually make it work and then it sort of steps forward so I really like this story because it makes evolution feel like a frustrated comedian that's just going crab crab crab crab and then one day goes sideways moving crab and then goes oh my god I worked out how to do it I solved my crab problem so uh yeah it this makes me feel like I have some kind of empathy for the universe as a whole.

31:51And I quite like that.

31:53Alice Fraser: Yeah. Yeah. And then you show everyone the sideways moving crab. And you're like, look at this innovation. They're like, it's just another crab. Yeah. They go, you've done that. I've seen this. I've seen your shit. But yeah, well done. It moves sideways now. And you go, no, no, this is going to be so different. This one's really going to work. I think it's fascinating that once the crab, you know, once the earth created the sideways moving crab, the crab itself then copyrighted or trademarked the sideways movement and went no other crab is allowed to move this way except for my descendants which means that they're all really incestuously like you know we go one single ancestor means they're all related to each other like no matter you imagine being on crab tinder just going oh it's my cousin it's my cousin it's my cousin are you swiping left or right it doesn't matter both are sideways and that brings us to the news uh speaking of crabs inner lives and dating um preferences apparently dinosaurs lived much more complex lives than we have ever thought uh josh norris you're our old things expert for this segment um what kind of spicy lives were dinosaurs living yeah well i did notice that all the stories that sort of uh most leaped out to me this week were about like evolution or old things so i i don't know what i've learned about myself that i still just sort of a little boy obsessed with dinosaurs but i i really like this story half of it was behind a paywall so sadly i don't actually know what the conclusion of this story was but the the half of it that i was able to read uh was about there was a they've they've reached the conclusion that dinosaurs probably didn't live the way that we think they did they didn't behave the way we think they did based on um Jurassic Park and pop culture.

33:37And the specific example they give is that velociraptors probably didn't hunt in packs. And I think they probably go on to draw lots of other conclusions about things that they now suppose that I can tell you. Oh, yeah. Oh, the second half. Well, I kind of I hope it doesn't ruin it for me, because my my favorite sentence in the whole thing is there's a bit where this scientist says there's not much evidence that velociraptors did hunt in packs. but because dinosaurs existed all over the planet for hundreds of millions of years they probably did at some point because in that time anything that we can imagine dinosaurs doing they probably did at some point which i think is an amazing claim for a scientist because i can imagine dinosaurs doing a lot i can imagine them like batch cooking a lasagna which now means according to this scientist they did that and if they did that that must mean that another dinosaur at some point invented pasta like as soon as you kind of crack open the doors i feel like he's really changed the game so i'm kind of sad to know that one of us could access beyond the paywall because it means we'll presumably find out what he actually meant i mean i find that really

34:39Alice Fraser: heartbreaking actually because that means as a dinosaur scientist he's never seen the popular 90s television show dinosaurs is that the one where they all wear shirts family sitcom yeah i love that show he's never let himself imagine uh ria tell us what was behind the paywall well first of all my favorite bit is also that scientist talking he said the whole reason that people assumed that they hunted in packs is because they found um i think a whole bunch of carnivores like tyrannosaurus rexes or something in dead in a group around a uh herbivore so they went oh they must hunt in packs because look at all these hunters dead around this herbivore and he's like but when does that ever happen when do lions hunt in a pack kill an antelope and then all fall down dead.

35:26It doesn't happen that way. So that's why they probably didn't hunt in packs. But then at the same time, they probably did. We just have no evidence for it. So they also found out that herding in herbivores was also more complicated than they thought. So large groups of herbivore fossils exist, but many may reflect mass death events rather than permanent herd living. Juvenile dinosaurs, there was a surprising pattern. Juveniles make up only about 5 % of all dinosaur fossil finds. Yet when groups of dinosaurs are found together, roughly half are juveniles, which strongly suggests that juveniles deliberately gathered in groups away from adults, classic teenagers, right?

36:07Gathering in groups and then falling down dead so that we can find them in groups years later. The average clutch size was 20 to 50 eggs with multiple clutches possible per year. that's a lot of mothering can i just say that's a lot of mothering i mean really evolutionarily

36:25Alice Fraser: speaking what that indicates to me is a lot of bad mothering if you know what i mean yeah oh well yeah if you're having to have like 20 to 50 babies three to four times a year because you keep losing the others you know stop letting them gather in groups clearly that's what kills them there was fossil evidence that shows um that predatory dinosaurs frequently target the tails of prey which is strategically effective because the tail contains the single largest muscle group powering dinosaur locomotion so they would go after the tail in order to cripple their prey um they found extensive fossil evidence this was a very long article fossil evidence of intraspecies combat they found out probably the behind the paywall was everything that the guy said that they probably did i think that the um scientists they interviewed was also not allowed behind the paywall.

37:16That's what he said. I think they could do other things.

37:21Alice Fraser: You said something stupid on Twitter in 2014 or yesterday. It doesn't matter. Instead of writing a sincere, time-consuming apology that involves looking into the causes of the mistake, let the deepfake apology generator handle it. Just upload your face and voice samples. Type in the vague nature of your offense, and our AI will produce a photorealistic video of you looking genuinely remorseful. We add trembling lifts, a single well-timed tear, and background music that sounds like sad cello from a BBC documentary. You'll never have to learn to grow or even understand what you did wrong. The apology goes viral.

37:57Alice Fraser: Everyone moves on, and you are free to offend again next week. Deepfake apology generator. Sincerity is expensive. Come to the live gargle at the Bill Murray on the 26th of June. It is going to be so much fun. It'll have all of the stuff that you enjoy from the gargle and a signing of my book afterwards. And I'm doing a bunch of other previews and you can check them all out and find them over at thebuglepodcast.com or alicefraser.com where all of my upcoming dates are. Ah, that was the end of that sentence. Good. Also, if you are in Australia, my book, A Passion for Passion, is available via my website.

38:33Alice Fraser: So if you want to cut out the middle land, you can come via my website, buy the book for a normal price and I will include a hand-drawn sketch of Fabio. I've been doing that. It's been fun. And that's your ad section for today. And that brings us to the end of this week's episode of The Gargle. I'm flipping through the ad section at the back of this glossy magazine. Joss Norris, have you got anything to plug? I do. I'm doing a show called Eggbox on Tuesday, the 26th of May at the Pleasants. We screen short films and do live readings of brand new scripts. So that's coming up. I'm also starting on a new show called Joss Norris' Hugh Jackman is The Phantom of the Opera, which is going to Brighton Fringe, Exeter Comedy Festival and Work in Progress is at the Edinburgh Fringe.

39:19These are all Work in Progress things because it's a new show. And I'm finishing off my old show, which is called You Wait Time Passes. That's wrapping up its tour in Canterbury on the 20th of June. And then we'll be doing a one-off for Shedimbra during the Edinburgh Fringe. So three things coming up. They're all on my website. If people would like details of any of them come along, I'd love to see you there.

39:38Alice Fraser: Excellent. Ria Lina, what have you got to plug? I'd like to plug my Patreon please if people could come and join me on my Patreon we're building a community there's lots of free stuff there that you can enjoy come join me we also do a live stream every Sunday morning called Paper Jam which is like group therapy for the news also Jos Norris you have a sub stack speaking of subscriptions I do have a sub stack which I should also try to work out whether and how I'm going to monetize it one day at the moment I'm still too scared of the idea of asking people to regularly spend money on um on stuff but one of these days i probably should turn it into a patreon or something but yeah if people would like to sign up to my newsletter that's uh josnorris at substat.com or something like that or some combination of those words will surely find it surely what was the short film thing you said again i know oh i mean it's called it's called egg box and we we've been running it for a couple of years as a place where we sort of screen uh comedy short films people have made and we do live readings of scripts that are kind of work in progress just because so many people are making really good scripted comedy and it's very easy to feel like it's like within tv in particular i think it's so kind of like doom and gloom it's all a bit negative about like there's no money how do you get anything made so we're trying to create a space where we go well these people are making cool stuff and i don't know just try and create a little bit more positivity around the idea of making scripted comedy because it does feel quite hard at the moment you can join my writers meetings which are sunday uh every week sunday night and monday morning australia time sunday sunday uk time and i'm also going to be doing some special masterclasses coming up.

41:09Alice Fraser: If you want to patreon.com slash Alice Fraser, you can subscribe over there for free to hear all of the news. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Harry Gordon. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next fortnight. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman, as you may know. The Bugle, as well as being the world's only ever the 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're not already one, can join them to keep our shows free, flourishing and independent for the rest of all eternity.

41:53Disclaimer, eternity may not be completely eternal. Get more of what you love, exclusive subscriber-only content, including the almost monthly Ask Andy show, in which I, Andy, answer your questions, plus fresh hits of Bugle merch. We just sent our premium subscribers a jigsaw with my face on it. If that doesn't sell it, nothing will. I and my wonderful cohort of co-hosts will continue to blast the Bugle's trademark cocktail of satire, insight, puns, disinsight and unashamed high-grade drivel into your ears and all over the planet. Here's to another 18 and a half years minimum. To become a true hero, or just to join the voluntary subscription scheme, go to the buglepodcast.com and click the donate button.