The Bugle - 7th PM in a decade!

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Joining Andy on issue 4386 of The Bugle is Alice Fraser and Nato Green. As the trio report on the week's news, following of outbreak of Cyclosporiasis in the US and Pete Hegseth announces testosterone deficiency screening for troops! The UK welcome there 7th Prime Minister in 10 years as Andy Burnham steps into No.10. PLUS Earth-like exoplanet found to have an atmosphere, and The Bugle closes the curtain on the 2026 World Cup.🇺🇸 US in the muck: The Bugle has a special health report into the USA's Cyclosporiasis outbreak🇬🇧 7th in 10 Years: The Bugle report on Andy Burnham officially becoming the UK's 7th PM in 10 years as he steps into No.10🏆 World Cup update: Andy, Alice and Nato discuss the curtain call on the 2026 FIFA World CupDonate to Emilia: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/a-safe-accessible-home-for-emiliaAndy's Links: https://www.andyzaltzman.co.uk/Alice Fraser's Links: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraserNato Green's Links: https://www.instagram.com/mrnatogreen/?hl=en🎧 Support The Bugle! Become a Team Bugle subscriber for bonus episodes, exclusive video editions, and the righteous satisfaction of funding satire:http://thebuglepodcast.com📺 Watch Realms Unknown on YouTubeProduced by Chris Skinner, Laura Turner and Harry Gordon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

for a visual world. Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 4,386 of the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world with me, Andy Zaltman coming to you live and recorded in advance from London, where as we record, a new Prime Minister is rifling through the Downing Street intro and muttering, oh, f*** shit. It's the 20th of July, 26th. The World Cup is over? Or is it?

Yes, it is. It's definitely over. Finished yesterday. and to analyze the first bugle of the post-26 World Cup, which isn't pretty going to be a particular feature of the show, but it's historically correct. I'm joined by Alice Fraser and NATO Green. Hello to both of you.

How are you? Hello, Andy. I am very well. I met a guy at my university college reunion the other day, and he said he used to listen to the bugle, and I said, what made you stop? And he said, I got more left, and I became frustrated by the bugles failure to be calling for more political revolution.

And I told him you should start listening because you've gone full red and that he should tune back in and listen to the instructions about the next meeting of our cell. But yeah, he basically wants us to give him instructions on how to overthrow capitalism. So just take that as a note. He's obviously not been listening to it backwards for all the coded messages. But NATO, I mean, this is, I feel, where you can really step up to the plate to win us back, I won the lost listener. Yes.

Hey, Andy, Alice, Bugglers, happy to represent the, the Bugles' Revolutionary Marxist Caucus. I think he specifically, he wanted more action items, just like as the piece of feet. he wanted more instructional. So it wasn't the nature of the critique. It was like the follow-up. Yeah, it was that like he'd like us to do something. He'd like us to tell him to do something about what's going on. Okay, well, Alice's old classmate, if you're listening, organize a union, go on strike,

over there, the government. Yep. And then tap back in and then join the Bugles' voluntary subscription scheme. And storm the winter palace, if you got time as well, if you're in St. Petersburg. So, well, welcome. How are you, NATO? I'm good. I spent, I was in your continent, Andy. I spent a couple weeks this summer with my family on vacation. We visited Prague, Vienna, and Budapest as a Jew visiting. I was on sort of the Holocaust Trail. and being in Austria where I guess they make the white people,

like they're so pure and pristine the white people there. And I found myself thinking, you know, maybe they are the master race. I hadn't quite seen it with my own eyes before. But of course, the World Cup suggests that Spain is the master race currently for at least the next four years. I think that's how it works, isn't it? What is that going to do to your vermouth habit, Andy? Yeah, it could get tricky.

We are recording on the 20th of July, 2026. It's international chess day, apparently. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, you mark that however you want, buglers. Maybe just, if you ride a horse, make sure that you don't go in a straight line.

You have to go sideways and then forwards, or forwards and then sideways or backwards and then I forget some forwards. I forget anyway, but just don't go in a straight line. My daughter now knows exactly three moves of a chess game, how to set up a chess board and do the first three moves of a chess game, which is to say she knows how to get the hopes up of a group of elderly people in a library for about two and a half minutes before dashing their hopes that they're witnessing a real chess prodigy about to happen.

and well if you're in a castle just try and move it just move it anywhere you can as always a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week well it's summer certainly in this hemisphere and so we're giving you a free t-shirt slogan but as an audio show it's an audio t-shirt slogan so just wear a plain t-shirt then say the slogan out loud whenever you walk past someone or if you're stationary every minute during your conversation The slogans were offering you for free are I bought this lousy t-shirt and then I went to where I currently am

Brackets evidently slogan to when life gives you lemons sell the lemons to make a small off-book profit I lung New York I think it's about my mother organs from the heart got some t-shirt action and Garfield Sobers was the greatest cricketer who's ever played the game

so those are your slogans your section in the bin Top story this week. America News. NATO's obviously been I'm sure World Cup fever has swept you along the last six weeks or so.

But there has been other stuff going on in America as well and your president, Donald Trump, with the midterms looming later this year, appears to have been, well, doing his best to stay on brand and undermine the very foundations of America. democracy. Yeah.

So, Andy, apropos of our early discussion about the bugle not going far enough to the left, as the bugle's official Marxism correspondent, it seemed like a place to start today would be with a review of dialectical materialism. As portrayed in the recent movie, I love boosters by my friend Boots Riley, whichever would you go see.

Dialectical Materialism is in its essence. the theory that history is driven forward by contradictions. Social phenomena that are at odds or intention with each other in a system that builds until it bursts like a cherry tomato on an anvil, which results in a new historic synthesis. And America under the Trump regime, I would say, is driven by at least two sets of contradictions. One is that the MAGA movement fervently want to be fascist and establish a 1,000-year Reich that inflicts ostentatious cruelty on the politically vulnerable, which is in tension with the fact that they are very, very stupid.

They are, in fact, more stupid than they are racist, which is something. Considering that they may be the most racist people in history, consolidating a fascist government requires a minimum understanding of the apparatus of government, which they lack, instead of building an entire approach to governance based on owning the libs. The contradiction is fascist aspiration, bumbling buffoon implementation. The temptation to call them clowns, but as you know, clowning takes discipline and practice. The second contradiction is between Trump's grievance-fueled narcissistic ideology and the real world.

I said that their project is fascism in the service of cruelty. Now, some people argue that their project is fascism in the service of greed, but I think greed comes second to cruelty as evidenced by the fact that Trump has destabilized the entire world economy with the Iran War. Until a few months ago, known in America knew what the Strait of Hormuz was. We thought it was a contraction of straightforward horticultural musings, a diary of best methods for gardening perennial plants like blackberries and leaks. Okay. So, for instance, right now in the United States, we are in the midst of a cyclosporiasis outbreak.

It is a parasitic infection resulting in explosive diarrhea caused by single cell protozoa called cyclospora transmitted through food or water contaminated by feces. It is a problem, scientists say getting worse because of climate change, which Trump doesn't believe in, that is more out of control than it would be otherwise because Trump cut the budget for the Center for Disease Control. Ideology versus reality. Ideology says climate change is a hoax and CDC is government waste. Reality says, how about some explosive diarrhea? The dialectic has spoken. Thousands of people have gotten across the country.

have gotten the cyclosterias is due to contaminated lettuce that may be traceable to a Taco Bell. I don't know if you frequent Taco Bell, Andy, but all Taco Bell food comes with diarrhea. It is standard. They charge you extra if you request the diarrhea on the side. I should say just for the sake of balance and to cover our backs legally, it can also come with vomiting as well. That's right. Apparently it's a specific lettuce company.

It's not diarrhea. they've traced it back to a specific lettuce company. Taylor Farms, I think. That's right. So it's Taylor Farms, a company which donated a million dollars to a Trump-aligned super PAC after the FDA delayed a new food safety rule. And to celebrate the delay, the executives at Taylor pooped on their lettuce. So first of all, you know, this claim that they are the most racist people in history, probably technically correct given that they probably are the people who know about the most racist and hate the most in history. I feel like the people who are sort of inventing phrenology probably were more emotionally racist,

but maybe less had less breadth of available racism because less international travel. But I think that the reaction to everybody talking about how the late, and reduced disease surveillance and Medicaid cuts have led to this parasite being much worse than it might otherwise have been. Like, I think it's a short-sighted view. Like, we only know that the response to the cyclosporiasis outbreak has made it worse than might otherwise have been because we're still clinging to outdated ideas like cause and effect science, the bacteria, parasite, an infection hypothesis of disease, and so on.

I don't know if you've seen Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey buglers, I haven't, but I think it's probably a really good reminder that we can just blame the gods for stuff. We were fine before facts. We'll be fine again post-facts. And I know, yes, we weren't fine before fact, but that's a fact. So, fuck it. Arguably, we were better off before facts because, I mean, as long as we're not one of the guys who isn't Odysseus in the Odyssey.

So long as we're all Odysseus, we will be fine. We will survive the curse placed on Odysseus by the gods. And we'll be awesome at archery as well. Yeah, so good at archery. all we need is for everyone in the army to be Odysseus and no one will ever shit themselves to death. For this piece of comedy to have worked, we do also have to ignore the reality

that most people in history died of shitting themselves to death or a tooth infection. Statistically, it's one end or the other. We are all just self-involved padding over long, vulnerable tubes. Yeah. The CDC has identified 1645 lab-confirmed cases of cyclosterises, but has a backlog of 5,100 cases.

And it seems like explosive diarrhea could help clear a backlog. I mean, they call it explosive diarrhea, which is pretty bad, but it's not as bad as plosive diarrhea, which is where you can't stop doing poo, put, put, put, put, poo. Or implosive, which I imagine could get tricky. Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks for Trump, the oxyginarian contrarian, acting out his childhood dreams of being openly scoffed at by the entire world and booed at football matches. But he gave a presidential address last Thursday, in which he dug up the old moldering, still twitching corpse of the 2020 presidential election.

He accused China of interfering in it and said that people couldn't trust the American electoral system. And he said, if there can be no trust, there can be no greatness. This, I mean, more people are saying it. Sadly, that was not the start of a remorseful resignation speech. But this obsession with greatness, NATO, I mean, would voters settle for food, money, medical care, and housing? Or is greatness really what America needs?

Well, particularly because the only source of greatness is Trump saying so. again, the contradiction, fascist intent, stupid implementation. He gave a speech about the U.S. elections that was widely seen as intended to cast down on the integrity of the American election system, had to midterms to create a foundation for Trump to attempt to deny or steal the election. But it was pretty dumb because there's a lot of open space between wanting to nullify any election that you legitimately lose and an actual plan to accomplish that goal, kind of like how there's a lot of, of open space between my abs and those of any Hemsworth. It's theoretically possible, but lacking the understanding,

will, discipline, or competency to get from point A to point B, intent versus capacity, the dialectic has spoken. He argued that our election system is vulnerable to fraud and abuse. Can you believe that the U.S. election system is so fragile that they allowed a sundowning fascist to get elected twice? Someone should look into that. He claimed that China accessed our voter files. The problem with this is that anyone can access our voter files.

If you're an American listener, have you ever gotten a piece of campaign mail? Somebody accessed the voter files. And apparently there was a bunch of intelligence reports in Trump's document release that China did access the voter files but couldn't be bothered to do anything with them because our politics are too dumb to interfere in. What could any sinister foreign spies do to us that we haven't already enthusiastically done to ourselves? Yeah, they sort of concluded that there was quite a few investigations into this. And they concluded that China had mainly tried to undermine Trump's re-election chances through things like social media and making official public statements. But that there were as many people who were trying to get him elected as unelected and it was social media. and we all sort of knew that that's what's going on anyway,

people just disturbing one another on social media by having opinions about stuff. But then they released this huge quantity of heavily redacted files, which is a classic tactic, because you have the files, which look like an evidence, but then you reject the files. So the more blank space you leave in, the more room there is for the audience to pull out their red string

and start pinning things together on a board. It's like how I leave punchlines off a lot of my jokes so that the audience... Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you did it yourselves. It was better than what I could have produced. It is a bit strange for him to be still harping on about 2020. And, you know, if he hadn't lost that election,

look, I admit he only lost it if you judge it by how people voted and the outcome of those votes. But if he hadn't lost that election, he wouldn't be president today. He'd probably be somewhere in a research facility with electrodes all over his body, with scientists trying to work out if they could use his DNA to develop a vacancy.

vaccine for megalomania. It also didn't mention the scandal of the 2016 election and how he became president despite getting around 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. And as a democracy, he found that must sting his justice-obsessed soul on a literally hourly basis. I mean, just churning back to the 2020 election, the CIA's director, who was at the time Trump's director of national intelligence concluded after an investigation and assessment that the 2020 election was, quote, the most.

secure in US history. But that itself raises the question, what if John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, had been hacked by the Chinese? What if he had swallowed a Beijing developed microchip when trying a free sample of a frankly spectacular, Oolong tea, that implanted itself in his brain and made him say whatever a remote programmer in China

wanted him to say? So we can't rule that out at NATO. And also, what if all that bipartisan research into the 2020 election had just been very unluckily wrong? We can't, we can't rule it out. And what if Joe Biden was actually a lizard in a human outfit? So there's all these, all these caveats to the assumption that the election was fine. One of, one of the claims that, uh, was that, that Venezuela had hacked our voting machines.

Um, and more precisely that Venezuela might hack our voting machines because Venezuela had hacked their own voting machines. Um, which is to say that the government of Venezuela, President Nicholas Maduro hacked his own election, Maduro who is at this moment sitting in prison in Brooklyn. So the way to stop the president Nicholas Maduro from hacking elections in America is to bring him to America. I'm glad they thought that through. Manliness in the American military news now. And well, exciting news for people who think that the American military needs to be more driven by an alpha male image of itself. Pete Hegseth has announced there

there will be mandatory testosterone screening for all over 30s in the US military. Testosterone has a pretty good claim to being the most damaging substance in the history of the human race produced in abundance by the vast majority of the worst people ever to stalk the earth. And you might also think what the world doesn't need right now is more drugged up alpha males in the American military.

You might think, were you woke enough to be distracted by things like how America's current military operations are going, that what America needs now is not more of a substance that reduces your cognitive ability to make good, calm decisions and increases your likelihood of behaving impulsively, and it might need more instead of, for example, planning, strategy, patience and wisdom. But that's not the way that Pete Higgsith sees it at NATO.

That's right, Andy. And whenever we need to talk about Pete, Hegeseth, in honor of his commitment to masculinity, I am going to be fully erect. So I can only sustain this conversation for about 20 seconds. But in his ongoing quest to demonstrate that he is the manliest man, whoever manned, Secretary of War, Pete Hegeseth announced mandatory annual testosterone's greeting for all military personnel over 30 to ensure maximum combat efficiency. And when I read about this, among other things, I get hung up on the word testosterone and wonder why we don't pronounce it in an Italian accent like testosterone, which feels more fun.

Anyhow, the men's health experts are concerned about the approach of testing without symptoms. They recommend testing only in a case of symptoms associated with low testosterone, like erectile dysfunction, reduced libido, and fatigue. On the other hand, testosterone supplementation also has side effects like decreased fertility. How are you going to increase combat readiness by having more soldiers shooting blanks? Other side effects include increased risk of fracture, acne, hair loss, mood volatility, and breasts. So to recap, Pete Hexas plan is to improve American combat readiness by tracking testosterone and result with an army made up of energetic, bald pimple soldiers with raging boners, breast, broken bones,

and balls filled with dust. The mighty fighting in cells. Tea is like Captain America's super soldier serum, but super assholes. If you are worried about having enough testosterone in your soldiers, there is a group that you know for sure is giving themselves loads of tea and it's transgender men who they have banned from the military. It's so strange how these right-wing men want a version of masculinity that leads to the gayest possible implications.

Ideology versus reality, the dialectic has spoken. The other thing is the fusion of an imagined fantasy of traditional masculinity with chemistry is so interesting to me. Like, the concern about high-tie soldiers isn't rooted in any medical evidence, but in body chemicals as a metaphor. Like, no one looks at an army that was defeated in combat and thinks, clearly not enough antioxidants out there. get them some assaibals.

Well, yeah, so this idea of masculinity is this hard penis, right? This is basically what it is. The idea of masculinity is that through the metaphor of the hard penis, as you pay, permanently erect, failing to take into consideration that a soft cock is right twice a day, at least. You know, that's not people obsessed with these metrics of, well, for example, the penis, metrics of penishood. And by penishood, I don't mean foreskin.

I mean, you know, length and girth and so on and so forth. No one's ever talking about the quality of a penis, if it's available, availability, enthusiasm, appropriateness of erection. You could have a perfectly proportioned penis if it's getting a harder co-worker's funeral. That is a bad quality penis, depending on the co-worker. This obsession with testosterone is a metric of masculinity, the idea that we want in a standing army, bear in mind, a standing army. That's what you want, directionless aggression. famously good for civilian populations having lots of young men trained to dehumanize the other in a social context where three TikTok videos are about enough for someone to other

their beloved auntie for sharing the wrong kind of minion meme. I'm sorry, this is a very confusing and stressful story for me because my show this year, old man, is about masculinity. And I have literally 42 academic papers about the function of testosterone as a confidence and competition drug rather than an aggression drug. And actually, we get to choose what the metrics are on which people are competing, whether that happens to be abs or penis strength or military aggression. So I was sort of trying to write jokes for this,

and then my brain froze in indecision. And ironically, I could probably inject some testosterone and deliver on the premise, as it is, particularly in a modern army where most of the jobs are just drinking, Mountain Dew and doing drone warfare, it feels like a terrible decision. But, I mean, well, that's an interesting point about the drones, because the latest research does suggest that if you slather a drone with testosterone gel, it will shoot things in a more manly way. So that's something for the military to take into account.

Look, I'm a lover, not a fighter. Actually, I'm neither a lover nor a fighter. But anyway, this obsession with testosterone in American politics, I mean, Donald Trump is, you know, he's claimed to have phenomenally high testosterone levels, to go with his off-the-scale preposterone levels as well. And a lot of the great figures of American military heroism, you know, hugely testosterone fuel, the likes of Captain America, Rambo, Hannibal Smith, and Jack Reacher,

all packing some serious, serious natural tea. But medical professionals don't seem to think this is a particularly good idea or likely to have any beneficial consequences. So that's, you know, I guess two of the things that the Trump regime generally goes for a bad idea that doesn't work. It's been described as putting the cart before the horse and then smearing the horse with testosterone cream until it smashes the cart to pieces and then tries to have sex with a bus shelter that looks a bit like a lady horse. So whether it'll work out long term is a bit early to say. It also fails to consider the presence of sort of generals and people who are meant to be cooler heads in the military hierarchy.

I mean, I don't know about it. I don't know if you've heard about this, people in possession of testosterone. Gentlemen, you're meant to calm down eventually. The tides of testosterone are meant to recede, and you're meant to think things like, oh, maybe I should build a library. Well, having seen the plans for Donald Trump's presidential library, I'm not sure that is good I say, to be honest. Having just visited Europe and I spent a bunch of time in art museums

and saw some wonderful classical artistic depictions of like, you know, I think we need to get back to a version of classical masculinity. Like, Theseus fought the Minotaur completely naked. And Hercules tamed the Nemean lion completely naked. And I think all the American military needs is to go into combat, slathered an olive oil, buck naked, dicks out. Well, that's for the foundations of the civilization that essentially laid paved the way for the Western world. It worked for Odysseus, as that was that. UK news and yes, we have a new Prime Minister again. Andy Burnham, as of this morning, is officially Prime Minister.

I mean, we are living in the UK through the era of the self-immolatingly, Weird. But Andy Burnham, one of the first things he did in his speech when he came back to Downing Street after having his little chin mag with the King, which King said, yeah, you can be PM if you want, was to highlight quite how absurd it is that he is Prime Minister by saying, pointing out that he's the sixth Prime Minister to take office in the last 10 and a bit years since June 2016, 10 years and one month ago, six new Prime Ministers. That's as many as they were in the previous 40. years and that 10 years one month, that's shorter than Margaret Thatcher served as one Prime Minister or Tony Blair as a single Prime Minister, the fourth new PM in the last four years since September 2022. We had three in 28 years from 1979 to 2007. So it's quite an interesting thing to sort of almost the first thing he says as Prime Minister is, I really shouldn't be doing this job. It's completely fucking absurd that he is Prime Minister and that things need, uh, uh, need to change.

Well, it's all such an expensive way to get this brief injection of hope before being fundamentally disappointed because it turns out that actually who is the Prime Minister doesn't affect the underlying problem of there being no fucking money to spend. Many of the problems that exist are problems that can only be solved by the judicious application of money. Electing someone who you think would spend the money you don't have more responsibly and effectively than the person currently in office isn't spending because it's not there, doesn't move the needle on the fact that your country's up crap creek

and someone's just told them the only paddle is AI data centres. Just to remind you, Andy Bonham wasn't even an MP until a few weeks ago, then stood in a slightly contrived by-election and is now prime minister. He's taking over a government that won a huge, if mathematically, bizarre majority just two years ago but has collapsed in a way that's with the Roman Empire several hundred years to manage.

These are, you know, the weirdest times in British, British politics. As I said, he had a sort of half-hour meeting with the King. What was said, it's an intensely guarded secret, of course, but the bugle's secret microphone hidden in King Charles's favourite Laboubu. That's the Incredible Hulk one. Couldn't reveal that the King just banged on about how small chocolate bars are these days. There you go. It's interesting what they talk about when the cameras are off.

Andy Burnham in his speech also called for a new sense of national unity. Good luck with that, Burnham. Yeah, set achievable goals. Don't call for a new sense of national unity. Call for a slightly reduced national sense of disunity. It's not as catchy, but it is a more viable target. He called for a new political model. The details on that yet to be made clear,

because he's become Prime Minister without having to set a manifesto before the nation. What that will involve, we don't know. It could be a second chamber that makes even vaguely plausible sense rather than just being people's mates put in there for life. It could be some form of proportional representation so that every single vote in the country isn't loaded with impenetrable subtext so people can vote how they want to vote in a general election rather than voting how they think they need to vote to make sure the people they least want to vote for

don't get enough votes from the people they'd rather didn't vote at all. Even if it means that the people they do want to vote for also don't get enough votes to have a meaningful mandate. So we have this bizarre complex system, whether Burnham will regenerate it or reboot it in some way. We don't know. It could be an AI parliament, which frankly is already long overdue.

He slammed the 1980s as a decade, generally. Not sure if it was for the bad hair, the questionable fashion of the disappointing cricket results or the unbridled free market fetishism that laid the crumbling path to the barely functioning public sector we have today. He called for a more collaborative, nation, which is a low bar. He called for problem solving, not point scoring. Those two are not

mutually exclusive. Let's not rule that out. We can have both. We can have the dream of both. And he said he placed to get more of life's essentials under public control, which you can interpret either as the Bolsheviks are at the gate or a bit more of the nation's wealth might go to benefit ordinary people, delete according to preference. And he pledged also to re-industrialize Britain. And our industrial sector is currently someone's granny and Derbyshire who knits voodoo dolls of football referees. So it'll be interesting to see how it all plans out. And he said he's got a 10-year plan for Britain,

so that will cover not just him, but the next five prime ministers to come as well. I mean, the idea of Britain as a collaborative and unified nation has, I mean, has never been true. I think he should follow up the under 16 social media ban for an over-16 social media ban and go back to the point where nobody was talking to each other in lifts or on the tube or at all or ever.

and that all communication was done through sort of a simmering sea of class resentment and small talk. I mean, people who, I grew up at a time when people would make fun of small talk and look what it was hiding. If only all social media were just commenting on the weather. And also if only all the weather wasn't like terrifying heat waves and wildfires. I read that the conservative said that Andy Burnham was making. pledges without any plan for delivery, which I guess was their move. And in his speech, it was a short speech. I read, he just did a tight five.

And, and, and, but his, his pledge was that he was going to, uh, move to end rough sleeping. Um, which as an American, I think that's such a fun British turn of phrase. Uh, in the, in the U.S. we call that homelessness. Um, Because for me, it raises this question, is the sleeping bit really the issue? And what happens if you end rough sleeping but not rough eating, rough shitting, rough fucking, rough playing cards, rough drinking and rough yelling at stupid politicians on the television? Obviously, AI and related technology are set to be amongst the biggest challenges for all governments

as they make the tricky economic calls on whether we just all be better off being replaced by robots and living out our lives as vestigial lab rats in the fever dreams of tech pros whilst we won't wait for the most. full release of Armageddon or not. It's a tricky call for governments to make. It's 50-50 at the moment. But there are many scare stories about AI, but also opportunities from a British perspective to outsource our national characteristics

to artificial intelligence, the things when we like to think we're good at, but we can't really do anymore. True British things like stiff upper lip, calmness under pressure, basic admin, pretending to be Christian and actually baking things rather than watching other people do it on the telly.

AI can cover all of that, I reckon, and free us up for more more time for the modern core British activities of furious online squabbling, waiting for coffee and a hankering for a non-existent lost golden age. So, ince see how this pans out. Yeah, I'm interested too. I'll tell you a thing that I found out today, which was a bit of a shock to the system, sort of one of the things I was talking about AI fair bit was the environmental impact.

Turns out streaming video just as bad, if not worse. So a lot of people streaming a lot of video about how bad AI is for the environment and maybe should figure out how to bullet point their points using some sort of AI. I have a question, Andy. You know, for me as an observer of British politics, but not in it, I understand that Keir Starmer was fairly unpopular. Was it, was the reason for his unpopularity specifically anything to do with his regulation of technology and business? Were the British people clamoring for less oversight or government involvement in technology?

It wasn't specifically that. I think the reason for his unpopularity is just that we love our politicians to be unpopular. And the best way to achieve that is by not liking them. And so really that's what British voter is looking for. And I've talked about this on the big... people before, but our voting system is perfect for our national psyche. I mentioned the first past the post system. Labor got 33% of the votes on a low turnout, so around about only just over some 20% of the available votes, but got a big majority. So that gives at least, you know,

78, 79% of people in this country free reign to complain about the government because they didn't vote for them. And, you know, this is what we want. We want from our leaders. We want them to be pretty much guaranteed to be so unpopular that we get the cathartic release of moaning about the prime minister. And Andy Burnham's honeymoon period, if it's anything like the honeymoon periods of recent governments, is already over now, approximately, what, seven or eight hours after he became prime minister. I mean, are you looking forward to hating Andy Burnham? Well, I don't know.

Not personally, but I think the nation is, you know, because, you know, our capacity for we get to that stage much quicker now and also it's one of those things that the more you have of it the more you want and that's why we have this constant churn now that we don't have the patience and endurance to hate politicians

for a decade at a time we need them gone within within a couple of years I mean I don't think that you know Thatcher wouldn't last 11 years now with social media three max I reckon because we just don't have the patience

to really dislike primary for an entire decade anymore. We've changed. No, you hate them while they're in office, and then if they're sufficiently fleet of foot, they can win it all back on strictly, can't they? Space news now, and, well, we might not have to worry about what life is like on Earth for much longer because scientists have discovered an exoplanet just 49 light years away

that might possibly theoretically be kind of inhabitable, if you don't mind living on a place that weighs, as it's four, five point six times as heavy as Earth, presumably with attendant issues regarding the strength of gravity that go along with stuff like that. For me, that's a big issue. The gravity is the key thing on the inhabitability of planets. You're going to practice your squat, Sandy.

Well, the difference in gravity, Alice, is the impact it will have on sport. You know, will cricket. cricket has been calibrated to work with the gravity we have on Earth. Will it work as well if gravity? I don't think it will work as well. If gravity's six times, you know, or three times more, or whatever, then you're going to have to recalibrate the entire game. It's going to be much harder to hit sixes as well.

So I just don't think young viewers who are brought to the game by balls flying into the stands. They might lose interest. And, you know, with tennis, I feel increased gravity. I mean, could that help serve volley tennis? I don't know. I don't think it will. I think it's going to make the ball dip even more. So, yeah, who knows?

I mean, snooker would make it, I mean, it could have a huge impact on snooker as well. But anyway, you are our future of humanity on exoplanets correspondent, Alice. So what have we got to look forward to on this place? Well, I think the main thing is that it is potentially the closest thing we have ever found to having a planet that has a kind of atmosphere and oceans that would be possibly conceivable to contain or support life. The planet is called LHS 1140B, and it's a relatively wrong, rocky planet, which is to say, like hardcore rock and roll. They've only found very sexy

things there and a lot of drinking and trashing of hotel room. The scientists are very excited about it, but we should bear in mind that light years are very far and we are not going to be able to fire all our billionaires there anytime soon, which makes it less interesting. So they didn't detect helium, which is apparently a big deal. But apart from that, it's all pretty exciting. They look at other planets. They didn't detect atmospheres on that. They've ruled out false positives.

They are almost sure that this is the thing that they think it is, bearing in mind that they are the scientists who are the only people who could prove or disprove the thing that they know. And it's 49 light years away. So if you look at it through a special telescope, people are wearing massive trousers and or really tight trousers, depending on what kind of trousers they liked at the time. There you go, Alice's friend from the left, the bugle advocating. If you want an action item, figure out a way to catapult all of our billionaires to LHS 1140B.

There's your to do for this week's bugle. I couldn't get over the fact that the scientist in the study was named Cherubim. I'm concerned about what the seraphim have to say about habitable life on other planets also liked that data showed that helium was escaping the planet atmosphere into space and I was sort of momentarily tickled by the idea that like we eventually get there and discover that there is life on the planet

but because of all the helium they have squeaky voices and that seemed fun to me Anyway, we'll have full details on human efforts to inhabit LHS 1140B at some point in the next 10,000 years. They have discovered over 6,000 planets orbiting single stars dotted around the universe. So far, not even a fucking tourist brochure, let alone an inhabitable human commune desperately fighting for survival against local flesh-eating aliens and a clunky metaphor for earth-based politics and society. So I'm not holding my breath. Sport now and as I mentioned earlier, the World Cup is over in the final yesterday.

Argentina gained one of the most thoroughly merited defeats in World Cup final history, failing to even try to score a goal for almost a match and a third. It went to extra time and Argentina finally attempted to kick the ball into the goal, which at one point in football history was considered the purpose of the game. they finally tried it after conceding a goal. Spain won at 1-0. The highlight of the World Cup then came at the trophy presentation when Donald Trump walked out with Gianno Infantino

and the crowd roundly booed. Either one or both. I enjoyed that booing probably as much as I've enjoyed any moment in football history, certainly since the 1982 Brazil team. It was a glorious moment And then Trump gave the World Cup Spain And then lingered around to try and get in the photos

But wouldn't look at them celebrating As if he was so resentful That someone else was getting the attention of the world That he felt he should be there But he couldn't bring himself to put his fetid eyes On them So it was a shit game With a shit post script

But at least a decent decent tithe team one. I did think NATO, as he waddled out for this trophy presentation, that he was looking increasingly like a walking Politburo corpse embalmed in his own fetid aura. Is that a fair assessment of where your head of state currently is? Oh, Trump's not well, Andy. There's been a lot of just the the the other day Lindsay Graham died suddenly and America came together the whole world I would say in in one voice

said why wasn't it the other guy that would have been so much more fun yeah he's very sickly and seems to be just kept alive through some mysterious hand bandaging and a IV full of Diet Coke. A story that emerged after the final is that the two Spanish players, Gavi and Fabian Ruiz, having honored for their part in Spain's victory by their hometown, Los Balacios Ivila Franca, by being given their body weight in tomatoes, which in the world of modern football where players,

have paid stupid amounts of money and everything is wildly over the top. I found this just a glorious throwback to simpler times. Your body weight in tomatoes. I mean, they'd be good tomatoes, I reckon, good Spanish tomatoes. It makes it all worthwhile, all those sacrifices they make to get there. Yeah, it used to be in the Egyptian underworld, you'd have your heart weighed against a feather. I like the idea of being weighed against my body weight in tomatoes. I'd feel the pressure to get a decanning, though.

Overall, I've seen a couple of these World Cup games. I've been involved. The celebration has been happening around me. I'm here in London. I'm not convinced by the premise, Andy. All of these men fighting over a ball with their feet, they're all millionaires. They could buy a ball each. Give them each a ball, I think.

Maybe we can solve the problem thusly. Or, you know, take the ball away and make them play with something else. Give them a puzzle or some drawing to do. Let them see, let's see them make a card for an auntie. I think is what we need in the game. A bit more of that. Since last week's bugle, England's attempt to make it into the final

ended when they collectively crap themselves at the sporting magnitude of what they're about to achieve when they went one-nil up in the semi-final and stayed true to this nation's footballing tradition of completely crumbling at the crucial moment. It was very much the perfect blueprint of how to let your opponent back into a game, a strategic masterclass in leaving yourself unable to regain the initiative that you've squandered in an important game of football.

So that was something to cling to. In this age of difficulty and we've got this new prime minister, we don't really know what we are as a nation at the moment. But certainly in England, we know that what we will never lose is the ability to absolutely choke important football matches with a sense of dread inevitability. So that's the one thing binding the English nation together. Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle. Thank you very much for listening. If you've enjoyed this edition of the bugle, or indeed any other edition of the bugle at any point in the last now heading towards 19 years,

why not join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to help keep our show free, flourishing, independent and devoid of adverts until we achieve life on the exoplanes. planet LHS 1140B. The Bougal will keep the B is for Bugle though. That's where we're intending to relocate when the time is right. Go to the buglepodcast.com and click the donate button. NATO, anything to plug?

Sure do, Andy. I have what will be my first stand-up special and third album dropping soon. It's called The Darkest Hour, released from Blonde Medicine. The specials out on YouTube, July 31st. there's an extended excerpt coming out a week later and the audio August 14th. So please watch the video on YouTube, buy the album on Ban Camp, is the best way to get me some money or Spotify, you know, you listen to Spotify, Pandora title, whatever, also fine.

The Darkest Hour. Alice. Please join my Patreon. Patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. You can subscribe there for free. It's basically just a mailing list. or you can pay money and get the bonuses that are available for people who pay money. Please do join that.

I just got quote unquote paid for my Australian festival run. And I was very annoyed that I hadn't been paid until now and now. I'm just very annoyed. So we are doing a live Realms Unknown at the Latitude Festival. If you're one of the three bugle listeners who is cool, come at midday to the Latitude Festival to see us do Realms Unknown Live. this Sunday, the 26th of July, I will be there in the cosmic shambles forest. And it's going to be really fun.

Apart from that, please listen to the sister podcast of the bugle, which I call it The Gargle and Realms Unknown. The Gargall is science and technology news, and realms unknown is science fiction and fantasy. Alice was gracious enough to invite me to pop into her writer's salons. And I used them to fix a few of my jokes that ended up in the special. So there were some punchlines that were annoying me, and I solved them because Alice made space for it. So thanks for that. And Edinburgh Festival? I'll be at the Edinburgh Festival at 8.

Thank you, Andy. Look at you, getting good at teaching people to do plugs. I'll be at 8.40 p.m. at the Tron, O'Neill's Tron, Monkey Barrel. 8.40 p.m. every night. I will also be in Oslo on the 30th or 31st of this month. Oslo at the new theatre. If you're in Oslo, you can look it up. It's on one of two dates. 50-50. Take your chances. It's the 30th of the 31st in Oslo at the new theatre. I'll be there.

9pm. I know the time, but not the day. There are various other bugle co-hosts also performing at Edinburgh Festival. Do go and see all of them. Next week on the bugle, we will have Hari Kondobolu and Tiff Stevenson for our final show before our August summer hiatus.

Until then, goodbye.