£12 Billion COVID Fraud Exposed + Chernobyl's Mutant Animals Are Evolving

A baby seal walks into a bar... no really, it happened. Plus: the UK's staggering COVID fraud scandal, mutant animals thriving in Chernobyl, and a 61-year-old legend who built a 123mph garden shed. 

🔥 TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro - Old People, Missing Billions & Bar Seals
01:00 France's Aging Crisis: 1 in 3 Will Be Over 65 by 2070
05:00 COVID Money Scandal: £11 Billion Lost to Fraud
11:00 Chernobyl's Evolution Miracle: Black Frogs & Radioactive Dogs
23:00 Ed the Shed: World's Fastest Shed at 123 MPH
33:00 Baby Seal Walks Into Craft Beer Bar
43:00 This Week in History: Top 5 Historical Events

📰 STORIES COVERED:
- France's demographic time bomb and pension crisis
- UK's £11 billion COVID fraud - where did the money go?
- Chernobyl's animals are evolving to survive radiation
- British legend builds world's fastest shed (with a TVR engine!)
- Adorable seal hides under bar dishwasher in New Zealand

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- By 2070, 1 in 3 French citizens will be over 65
- Much of the UK's COVID support fraud is "beyond recovery"
- Animals near Chernobyl are genetically distinct after just 40 years
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted this week in 1948

📖 READ THE FULL STORIES:
🇫🇷 France's Aging Population Crisis:
https://www.reuters.com/business/france-faces-pandemic-level-spending-support-ageing-population-audit-office-says-2025-12-02/

💷 UK COVID Fraud Scandal:
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-schemes-fraud-and-error-cost-taxpayers-11bn-13481207

☢️ Chernobyl's Mutant Animals:
https://www.newspointapp.com/english/city/chernobyl-weird-mutations-include-colour-changing-frogs-and-rapidly-evolving-dogs-Daily-mirror_english/articleshow/14504820b5e4e57a6250c6c11da5f975a026f5ed

🦭 Seal Walks Into Bar:
https://apnews.com/article/seal-bar-new-zealand-pub-richmond-487e2a8207c9f0e69be79ac7eb8045c0

🚗 World's Fastest Shed:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp85164r85mo

Don't forget to LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and hit the BELL 🔔 for more weekly news analysis with a side of British sarcasm!

#News #CurrentEvents #Chernobyl #COVID #Podcast #UKNews #Evolution #Science

---
Temporally Scripted - Your weekly dose of world news without the doom and gloom (well, mostly)

Subscribe to our channel on YouTube

Check out our website at temporallyscripted.com

Follow us on X, too!

Transcript

0:05

So our top five this week for the first week in December is all about history and the history of week commencing. The 7th of December. So tell me, Adam, take it away. What's the first thing on our list this week in the past? Okay, so in 1948, on the 10th of December, uh, the, a Blueprint for Human Rights, uh, was adopted. And so the United Nations General Assembly met in Paris and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Which is the first global document, setting out fundamental rights and freedoms for all humans, uh, regardless of nationality, ra uh, race or religion. Uh, and it basically came, I guess after, after World War II because there was so much just horrific stuff that went on and they said, okay, we need to. You put into paper that everybody has this, this list as a right, no matter what. Um, and should never be denied certain things. And it's something that obviously has made a big change to how the world works and I guess in some small way has led to people like Ed the shed being able to build their world's fastest shed and, and nobody say that that is not a pursuit that he should follow through with. Indeed, it is his God-given right as a human being to. Make a shed go 123 miles an hour. And maybe the next bit is, you know, rights for seals that they are allowed to go into bars and have a drink. But this seal was underage so you can understand why they had to remove him from the craft beer place. And it's, it's also, it's also your right to, uh, provocatively wave salmon add a seal should you want to. Absolutely. Yeah. It's one of the things that I'm allowed to do. So what's next on the list? Okay, well, going back to you, the 12th of December, 1901. Um, Italian NTA Marconi, uh, claimed to have received the first transatlantic wireless radio signal. So this was in St. John's newfound land, uh, and they sent the moss code letter S from Paul to Cornwall. Over about 3,400 kilometers. Um, and so yeah, the announcement electrified the public, even though some scientists at the, at the time and since have questioned it because it's, and we still don't properly know, he says, yep, I send a signal all the way across the Atlantic and I heard from OS codes for s being transmitted, but a lot of scientists in sand then were like. It wouldn't work, but there's no way you could send a radio signal of the kind that he was using. Uh, that far, but there, there was a slight chance apparently. And so there's still a bit of debate. Well, it's 26 to one as well, so it could have just been a lucky guess. You know, I've had, I've had teams come in on the World Cup score where I've said it'll be four, one to, you know, Switzerland and. At 26 to one, it's come in. So it's possible, but it is also true that nobody really fully understands how some of those things work, right? It's like no one person really understands exactly how all of the parts of the infrastructure work, so that I can call you or me and you can be sat in two separate places now on video. Thankfully not cutting out and being able to record this podcast for these lovely people. And it is amazing that that tiny beep was the ancestor to smartphone, satellite internet, and doom scrolling in bed. Yeah. Thanks very much. Yeah. Marconi. Oh, and one thing for, uh, you said about 26 to one, um, sometimes on TV you'll see like a magician. And there'll be, there'll be a magic uh, show, whatever, uh, and they'll be recorded for tv. And I'll go to someone and be like, think of a card. Was it the two of diamonds? They'll go, wow. Yeah. When you recording for tv, you ask 52 people probably. You'll get it right eventually. There we go. The destroyer of magic. Thank you. That's you not getting into the magic circle ever. Anytime soon. Okay, number three. Okay. Well this is the mother of old demos. So on the 9th of December, 1968, uh, there was an engineer called Douglas Engelbart, and he gave a 90 minute live presentation in San Francisco. That became known as the mother of all demos, and he showed all in this pre presentation, uh, the computer mouse, uh, the idea of windows, not the Microsoft thing, but anyway, uh, hypertext video conferencing, word processing, and collaborative editing. So basically in this one presentation, he introduced to the world everything that we still. No. And use about computers in 1968, was he the same guy who said computers were gonna get 10 times bigger and 10 times more expensive, or was that a different presentation? Oh, I dunno. Maybe you just threw that in at the end, or maybe we just focus a number of things when you got right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or maybe, you know, we live in a simulation and he'd just come from the future back to tell us about computers, which as we know, we proved that a simulation is real last week until next week when we disprove it. So yeah, I, I think take that steep jobs. Yeah, exactly. Uh, okay. Well, I guess that brings us onto number four, dropping into Jupiter. So on the 7th of December, 1995, uh, NASA's Galileo, uh, space Galileo, just gotta drop that in there. Uh, but that, that released an atmospheric probe of maps lynched into Jupiter's atmosphere. And that was transmitting data for about 58 minutes before it was just completely destroyed by the pressure and heat of Jupiter, but it, it gave scientists, um, unprecedented information on Jupiter's winds, composition and stricture. And it was just, uh, a really cool moment when you think about it. It still always baffles me how, well, it doesn't baffle me, but I still find it amazing that we can do some of these things and just sending something out there so precisely to have it, uh, just fall into another planet's atmosphere and send back data. Yeah. When you think at some point we didn't know how to create fire or sparks, or. You know, cure a stake or whatever else. It's, it's quite, quite an incredible move. And we're just like, yeah, let's just spend a few billion on chucking this thing into Jupiter to figure some shit out. Yeah. And it's just, it's just so amazing, really. And then. Sometimes, especially in the uk, you'll get things like public transport or different government agencies, and it just seems so like chaotic and badly managed and you're like, come on, humans can do really cool stuff. Can you not just get a bit of inspiration and not make the train breakdown? Uh, so many times in a day. I totally agree. Yeah. Now bring us, bring us home a number five. What's the fifth in history this week? Uh, number five. So we're 13th of December, 1776. It's going back a little bit, but during the American Revolutionary War, uh, general Charles Lee, who was captured by the British at Widow Whites Tavern, uh, which was in New Jersey after straying from his troops. Uh, so he is basically in, in charge of this kind of platoon. This, it was like a, a really big. Amount of, uh, soldiers. Um, but yeah, later accounts say he'd gone in search of a bit of female sociability, uh, rather than reinforcing George Washington as all legend went on the sash. Yeah, basically. I mean, I guess it, it's tough being in a war and being in a, the general, you're in a position of a lot of responsibility though, and he's just gone. That's it. I'm, I'm off to a boozer, gonna try and chat up some birds and especially wars back then. I mean, the amount of death rate in those kind of wars would've been quite insane. So yeah, fair play to him. He is a man after my own heart. Good. Is that, is that what you do in the same position? Absolutely. Absolutely. Just abandon, abandon the troops. Yeah. They, they can look for, they can look after themselves. It's fine. Yeah. Come back later and check in was one. Jobs are good. Yeah. Nice one. Lads. Where were you? Incredible. So need to take a bit of time out. I love that. So that wraps us up for this week's top five. Thank you Adam. I appreciate you taking us through this week in history. So. Here we are at the end of another episode of Temporally Scripted. If you've enjoyed today's episode, don't forget, share it with your friends. Tell everyone, you know, binge watch our other 400 episodes. We're not, we're not quite yet there, there yet. We are absolutely close to 50, but go and check it out. There's a wealth of interest in stuff in there. Anything you wanna leave the audience with today, Adam? Uh, not really other than that thing of, even if they know someone that they think would hate the show, just send it to them anyway. Especially if it's someone they don't like, oh, no, this really good thing. You should, you should watch this. Yeah. Yeah. And we might get more trolls, which we'd love. You know, trolls are a sign of success because it's good fun. Well, Adam, until next time. Yeah, until next time my friend. Goodbye. Bye everybody.