The Bugle - BREAKING NEWS: The Future Never Runs Out Of Money

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

🎧 Support The Bugle! Become a Team Bugle subscriber for bonus episodes, exclusive merch, and the unmatched pleasure of elite-tier status: thebuglepodcast.comThis week, Andy Zaltzman is joined by Josie Long and Josh Gondelman for a turbulent episode stacked with big beautiful bills, endless Norwegian funds and outrageously rich pets.Produced by Chris Skinner, Laura Turner and Ross Ramsey-Golding Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4346 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual and frankly toasty world. Right now I'm Andy Zoltzman coming to you live from the swelterous city of Birmingham where angels fear to threaten us or not worry just where I have come for the cricket which begins tomorrow the second England v India test match and with the tentative sort of ceasefire holding in the iranio-israeli act will they won't they militar militarize bat?

It is looking increasingly likely that we might get all of the England-India cricket series in before the world is enveloped in an apocalyptic species-ending new cough. So I'm in a good mood this week, and to share this joy with me. I'm joined firstly from New York City by Josh Gondelman. Hello, Josh.

Hello. It is a real joy, despair rollercoaster over here and I'm glad to be riding it with you for a little while. And also joining us from Glasgow, it's Josie Long. Hello, Josie. Hello from the place most likely to be instantly vaporized in the UK in a nuclear conflict. Oh right. Right next to those nukes over in wherever they are.

Fazzlane? Over in Fazzlane. Is that a secret? Are we supposed to share that on a podcast? Please don't stream this to our enemies. Right now to Fazzlane, I will be a fine film dust the second it kicks off. And isn't that all we can hope for? Yeah, exactly. Just, you know, make it make it quicker and make it filming. That's what

you want from your nuclear apocalyptics. We are recording on the 1st of July 2025. On the 1st of July 1908, SOS was adopted as the International Distress Signal. Little did they know that 117 years later, those three simple letters would basically be a translation of every single news bulletin and scientific report. So next time you're working out an international distress signal, try and do it quite as efficiently as that. In 1987, the American radio station WFAN was launched in New York City. It was the world's first all sports radio station. Was this the moment that civilization truly began? Or was it the moment that civilization began to end? You decide, Buglers. I'm too invested in it. There is evidence that the

ancient Romans had a radio station devoted to sport with a guy shouting in the forum, responding to members of the public telling them what they thought. According to a scroll recently deciphered that contained transcripts of all the conversations in Rome, the conversations on the ancient Roman sports radio included, the lines were terrible today, Alan. They barely even nibbled at the Christians. I don't know why I bothered paying my money to watch that rubbish. So we've not really moved on, to be honest, in the 2000 years since. What does WFA stand for? Does it stand for we're f**king all nerds?

Jokes, I take that as a personal slide. As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin and well on the subject of sport, we have a special Wimbledon section. In the bin, we review some of the new shots that are being unveiled by the players at Wimbledon this year, including the backhand roundhouse dink slam, the cross court behind the back hanging looper and the growling windmill block volley. Look out for them as the tournament evolves. Also the new noises being developed by players as they hit the ball. These include sounding like you're trying to open a heavy door with your elbow whilst carrying a large pile of books. You might hear one of the players go, inadvertently walking into a bollard, trying to recreate for a police officer the noise an escaped donkey made whilst rampaging

through a stall at a village bake sale. Realizing that you've walked three quarters of the way to the railway station but forgot to bring your packed lunch with you. And thinking about the disappointing final series of much loved TV drama. So listen out for those at Wimbledon. Also, the first year they've done away with human line judges, they brought in an automated system. But there have been complaints that people can't hear the automated calls without being able to see a line judge sticking out their arm whilst whelping, fault!

I'm trying to avoid 150 mile an hour serve down the middle from hitting them square in the Pluto. It's hard to know when a ball is out. So there are suggestions that next year's Wimbledon could involve robot line judges with lasers in their eyes, which could improve on court discipline significantly. And in our Wimbledon section, we track the latest strawberry based controversies, including allegations that there are tracking devices in Wimbledon's famous strawberries. Is this true? No. But is it also true that government ministers use their power to covertly secure strawberry supply contracts for their friends, even though their friends had no experience in the strawberry industry, resulting in customers complaining that their strawberries were in flat, either inflated raspberries or ping

pong balls painted red? And will Wimbledon's new dynamic strawberry pricing structure prove unpopular? The price of the strawberries is now tagged to the prize money up for grabs in that day's matches so a punnet that cost £10 in the first round cost £300 on finals weekend but if you eat it whilst watching doubles you only have to play about 20% of the price. Will that incentivise the strawberries to perform better? We'll have exclusive coverage for you as the tournament evolves. We look at the new tantrum analysis data from companies such as Strop Tracker, Tantralizer

and Kniptec Huffmeter, which can now measure the force through the racket frame when a player smashes their racket against the net post. It can also measure the protuberance of facial veins during a rant at the chair umpire at a key stage in the deciding set. It measures the extra square centimeters of air exhaled by players due to temper flareages during key moments of a match. And workouts. Scientifically, the ratio of blame apportioned by a player to their coaching team equipment, crowd surface, crowd weather, passing wildlife, the cruel hand of fate, basically anything that isn't themselves. So all this tech helps you get closer than ever to the mid-meltdown tennis star and it's really

bringing exciting new dimensions to the coverage. All that reviewed in our section in the bin. our section in the bin. Top story this week. American news. Well, Josh, as we record, your one big beautiful bill is on its way through the highly diseased digestive system of American politics. Bring us up to date with exactly what is going on, why and what the f**k it all means. This is a great question. And I am humiliated that we have to call it the one big, beautiful bill. Although I guess because it is a Trump thing, we should be grateful that you didn't call it the big, thick bill that never has trouble getting hard no matter what anyone tells you. It has been a tough week.

So here's where we stand now. The Senate, which is half of our legislature, or one of the two houses of our legislature is in the midst of a Voterama to amend the budget. Another wildly undignified term for creating That's the real term? Voterama. That's what they call it. Because they go I thought you were being funny and whimsical. No, I did not make that up. I would go given how how horribly this is going and what the effects will be with a vote flagration or kind of an American vote stock.

Ninety nine for a throwback. So, yeah, they're voting on all the amendments. That's what's happening now. There's a huge amount of funding for border enforcement. And in addition to the racism and violence this would promote, it is also extremely corrupt. Hiring more cops of any kind is a huge handout to the Oakley Sunglass Corporation. Open your eyes, people, and then take off your tinted lenses so you can see better. It's been really bad. The border stuff has been bad. I know this is a little digression, but the whole country ice has cracked down racially on people of color doing, you know,

kind of suspicious things like having jobs and walking down the street. The Trump administration has hastily put up a migrant prison in Florida that they're calling alligator Alcatraz. That's real. The bill itself, coming back to the bill, it's really bad there for a while in it. There was a tax on alternative energy sources. So not only were they stripping funding from wind and solar energy, but they were actually taxing people to to use that kind of energy to promote it. It's pretty cold to be against gender transition and objectively pro climate change. So they are for change only when things are getting worse.

pro climate change, so they are for change only when things are getting worse. They stripped out a provision proposed by adult debate kid Ted Cruz that would have made it illegal to regulate AI for a full decade. It was voted down 99 to 1, although I'm sure Google's AI summary says it's set to go into effect tomorrow. And the bill, if it goes through, it seems likely to take away a ton of funding from Medicaid, which in millions of people will lose their health care. And it's really scary. America has been in a rough place to begin with with health care, of course. And if our social safety net were a literal safety net, we would be a country full of

dead trapeze students. So it's a bad time. Well, in terms of the environmental schemes and you know, taxing green energy, cutting environmentally beneficial schemes, I guess the long term plan is to save money by rendering all of the USA completely uninhabitable. And so is this not the kind of far sighted long term politics that we don't see enough of these days? Also, I think it will achieve their goal of fewer immigrants incoming, right?

Because once we are kind of a Mad Max hellscape, we are going to become a nation of outgoing immigrants very quickly. I just think that's a brilliant plan if you want to deter people from coming to your country to make it as bad as you possibly can. I also think economically it's very bold to take a strategy of kind of making people's lives worse to really, really transfer all the remaining wealth on earth to the same three rich guys because obviously historically it's never ever, ever worked. But I feel like Trump's strategy with it is to say, but imagine if it did.

This is really wild. I've heard this bill described as the greatest upward transfer of wealth in history, which is kind of impressive because I didn't know the rest of us had enough money at this point for that even to be possible. I thought they had so much money that we couldn't possibly top the previous upward transfers of wealth. I was thinking, I read this quote by one of Biden's former advisors. And she said, Republicans are testing the proposition that there is nothing

they can do to working class people to make them lose their support. And I just thought like the level of like kink in the American working class is unbearable to me. They can't even imagine not having a boot on their neck, so their only choice is to lick it. It's very scary to me. Mason Hickman Republican Senator Katie Britt said, we're going to make sure that hardworking people can keep more of their money. But all these economic analysis seem to suggest that they will be keeping more of much less money that they'll be having. I don't know how that works mathematically.

And the stuff they're trying to buy with it will be more expensive, so they'll end up even further in debt. So in essence, they'll be keeping more of their own money, which will actually involve keeping less of someone else's money. But I think that's what people voted for so I think we've just got to respect that. Still, sadly, no sign of the flying magic bison shitting gold bars from the skies of America that the whole economic scheme is based on, that we've been tracking this on the bugle for some months now. Someday it will come and all the economic maths will start to add up. See, what you shouldn't worry about with the bill, Josh, is that it is also wildly unpopular.

Don't worry about that. Not only will it be unsuccessful, everyone will hate it. This bill is kind of like a hot dog in that it's like dominating the news around the 4th of July and the more people learn what's in it, the more nauseated they feel. I was just told that 55% of people oppose it, 31% of people support it, which obviously adds up to 86% because Americans use like pounds and ounces or something. When something is this bad, right?

When our legislature is on the verge of making a truly disastrous decision that will probably result in like death and poverty, people are encouraged to call your reps, tell them to vote no on the bill. And I understand that democracy is participatory and it asks us to show up every day, but some of them have to realize already this is bad. Like they're reading the same news I have.

They might know more. It's just crazy to me that you'd think stop voters in your jurisdiction from dying would not be incentive enough for them to just kind of vote. And it's like, what can you say if they're in favor of the bill? You call them, there's only so much you can say, you want to urge them to vote no, and they go, okay, they're not going to do that. You can't call up your senator and be like, hey, man, I'm going to come down there and kick your ass. Like, he's a hardware store owner that sold you a broken lawnmower. Like, what are we supposed to say to these people who want us to die. But just imagine the thrill if you did happen to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

Like if it was your call, like 10-06, you call them and you, I don't even know what you say. 10-07, they changed their mind publicly and you know it was you? You know what, worst case scenario, I get to meet an FBI agent. I've never done that before. It's been suggested that the bill will increase the US budget deficit by $2.5 trillion over the next decade, which sounds like a lot of money until you put it in context of what the budget deficit already is, which is shitloads of trillions more than that. And also, even if it does, it increased the budget deficit by that much, Josh, $2.5 trillion. That is someone else's problem.

And that person lives far away in the future. So this is this and they're very, very we've talked about this before in the bugle as well. The future never runs out of money. They're very, very generous. They're very, very rich with basically based on the assumption they will have found a magic new element that's worth a billion times more than gold and looks a bit similar and is liquid until it gets hot, unlike gold and grows in the middle of eggs. So, you know, it's all going to work out. We just need to just need to give it give it time and not

not burden it with the cynicism of of the 2020s. Trump has warned that if the bill doesn't pass, there will be a 68% tax rise. The evidence that he's given for this is the evidence that he gives for anything. Absolutely cool. But it's, it's a bizarre kind of threat. It's basically like a veterinary surgeon saying that if you don't pay him a $100,000 to do a one cheek Brazilian butt lift on your pet dolphin, then instead he'll have to perform a full body horizontalizing corporeal redistribution procedure.

In other words, run your dolphin over with a steamroller. Now this doesn't mean that the butt lift is therefore the right option, but it does mean that none of it makes logical sense. Well, so I hope I've explained it in accessible terms for any dolphin owners out there. Where do you think a dolphin's butt is? So I hope I've explained it in dolphin culture what the values are. Yeah, it would be very funny if I chose one and they were like, that guy looks like JD Vance to us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just like, oh, that's a long creepy tale. Elon Musk ex tweeted about it. All I'm asking is that we don't bankrupt America, which I guess is the kind of thing that someone who is not a natural-born American would tweet because basically the entire economic history of America is finding ways to bankrupt America. And you know, Elon Musk kind of waltz in from his outsider's perspective and say that this is not a good idea.

It's pretty amazing how much debt America is in. Like, at this point, it feels like we're trying to set the new debt high score. Like, that's what the goal, it's like, how much debt can we accrue without doing anything for people? It's incredible. I did read an argument where they said basically, we need more money for healthcare. So if we cut the money for healthcare, we'll then have that money to spend on healthcare.

I thought, I suppose that makes some technical sense. You need money for food and then you don't buy any food and just hold onto that money and then give that money to the richest people on earth. And if the total amount of food that you can purchase, you meaning everyone on earth remains the same, it doesn't matter who's doing the purchasing, right? As long as there's an equal amount of broccoli to go around.

Doesn't matter if it's going around. Also, no one really likes broccoli, so, you know. You say that to Marshmallow the hamster, he's absolutely obsessed with it. And fortunately, he's Jeff Bezos' hamster, so he's up to his eyeballs in broccoli, which is not that much broccoli on a hamster, it's butternut jive. That's why hamster billionaires, it never works out.

Dolphin butt cheeks and hamster billionaires, we truly have raised the bar for discourse. That's what modern economics is these days, you've just got to find ways of illustrating it. Well in slightly more positive news for those of a progressive persuasion or a non-regressive persuasion, the New York Merrill primary has resulted in a surprise victory for Zoran Mamdani over Andrew Cuomo, who people had assumed was just old enough and crooked enough to win by default. But that hasn't happened. Can you explain why, either of you? Look, I've been taking a victory lap on this all week, and not just because our future

mayor follows me on Instagram. So this is huge for me. Oh my God, I'm so jealous. This is big. Multiple friends have texted me like, how did that happen? I'm like, don't worry about it. These things happen. So if you haven't heard or if you have, Zoran Mamdani is an assembly member from Queens, New York,

who identifies as a democratic socialist. Politically, I'm really into his ethos. I think it's a lot of progressive, left leaning, forward looking stuff that will really be helpful for the city and the people who live here. I do not think we should have a mayor who's younger than me. I don't know what we can do about it at this point. So this is what happened, right? In the late days of the primary election, we have ranked choice voting in New York City.

And so it allows this kind of coalition building that is here to for kind of only used to f*** over progressive candidates in New York. And we flipped it on him in America and we flipped it on him. In the late days, Mamdani cross endorsed with Comptroller Brad Lander and also former state rep Michael Blake for the purposes of defeating Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo did have experience as governor of New York State, which a lot of people liked, especially when they ignored that a lot of that experience was resigning in disgrace after being accused of sexual harassment by 13 women, which is what they call a Gropers

dozen and mismanaging government funds, allegedly suppressing the number of covid deaths in nursing homes. And after all of this, Cuomo, like polls were coming out early this year of potential candidates and Cuomo was way ahead in the polls until he announced his campaign and then the support rapidly started to slip away. His big constituency seems to be people who think the mayor has to be the oldest Italian guy who is willing to do the job. And that is a dwindling constituency.

And they got a new pope, you know, so they're kind of busy. We got a Chicago pope. They don't have, they don't need the mayor of New York City anymore. I just want to say internationally, socialists everywhere, we're rejoicing. We're putting up the marks, bunting, we're lighting the Christmas Lennons, we're finally back. Every time I say to myself, I don't want to get involved in electoral politics anymore, it's rigged against the left, it drags me back in. This time, such a joy, such a joy. And you know what, one of the biggest victories for socialists, in fact, genuinely the biggest

victory for a socialist in a hundred years in America. And that means, you know, all the comrades are out tonight. You've got the ghost of Eugene Debs rising up from the cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana, you've got Joe Hill, whose ashes of course is scattered across the United States, apart from the one state he didn't like, but I can't remember which one. They're rising up and it's absolutely thrilling to me. It's thrilling. And I do feel for the democratic establishment because obviously they despise the left and

they spend a lot of time having to sort of navigate this path where they hate the left. They want to destroy it, but they need to pretend that they don't and they're part of it. And the problem they keep having is that material conditions do keep meaning that reality has a left-wing bias which is unbearable for them. I remember there's this thing that everyone says when they're trying to get yous, the leftists, to vote for a centrist. They say, vote blue, no matter who. You've got to vote blue, no matter who. It's been very interesting to see people trying to alter the rhyme now, like vote vote blue no matter who, except Mamdani, because I canny.

And unless it's Zoran who unfortunately has a lifetime barn, you know, it's hard. I'm not very good at writing short-rhyming slogans, it transpires. I think the heatwave, there was a heatwave on the voting den, I think that really helps because if it's hot outside, people are going to get more left-wing. Didn't the Russian revolution happen in one of the coldest places on Earth? You've got to count jackets when you're in total temperature. That's how they did it. But what it also says, I think, I can see why the right wing of the Democratic Party is frightened. I can see why, you know,

the far right is absolutely losing their minds about this, because obviously, if socialists can make it in New York, then they can make it anywhere. It is like really wild to see the way Mamdani is being painted as a radical by just some of America's great racists and idiots. Quote unquote business leaders have opposed his wild plan to make buses free to ride for people in the city. I think that's pretty deranged of him to suggest that people should get to go from place to place within the city. And they have had the good sense, these business leaders, not to say, what are you going to do next? Make my limo free for me to ride.

But they unfortunately have gone straight for racism and Islamophobia. This is such a classic when you get somebody who, yes, he is a socialist, but he is not the most radical person on earth. He's just simply proposing some policies that would improve material conditions somewhat. And it's like, we've got to such an extent that when somebody comes out like that, they have to be painted as Joseph Stalin himself. Because if people actually get to hear what that person is saying, they'll like it too much.

And that's even on Fox News. They're like, this guy wants to give people childcare. And even like the the everyone watching is like, wait a minute, we're supposed to be mad because of why? Like, you can't, I'm not just gonna get mad because you say it mad. Well, I'm so sick of being threatened with a good time. They're always like, this rampant communist is going to absolutely destroy it. And then I read it and it'll be like, I just think maybe minimum wage should be able to cover your bills. I'm like, ah.

We should tax the income for the wealthy 2% more. People are like, that's who can afford it. That's who should. Godzilla is ravaging the city. Oh my God. In this small book. It is really, I mean, he's really spoken out for trans people. He's like built this really great coalition of Muslims and Jews. People keep asking him to denounce the phrase globalize the intifada,

which is not a phrase he has used or does use. And if you're going to ask people to denounce random strings of words that you just kind of like associate with them because of your own biases, I think we need to ask where Andrew Cuomo where he stands on the phrase, that's a spicy meat to ball or see if Donald Trump stands behind the expression if there's grass on the field, play ball. I do not think he'll be happy with the results. What Trump has said that Mamdani must quote behave or risk losing federal funding and we know he's young in his early thirties, basically treating him

like he's three, not 33. Behave. Is that, I mean, this seems, I mean, the level of American politics we've talked about over the years with you, Josh, is this all it's come to now? It's just the president saying behave or else. This is actually tragic because Donald Trump has, it seems like his mental faculties are declining because what he obviously meant to say is be white and he misspoke tragically and didn't say what he really meant. And you know, I just hope he's getting the care he needs. I hope it was said in a more 1970s British campy way, you know, oh, behave.

Oh, kind of in Austin Powers. That's my frame of reference as an American. Yeah, they cut the quote short. It was actually behave sexy, baby. This is where Donald Trump chose to debut is Austin Powers impression. The problem with headlines, they don't tell you tone of voice. It's funny because I do appreciate that quite a lot of the right strategy is to boil people's piss and upset them. And I do

hate it. I hate the politics that is based around just upsetting people. But sometimes, when we do it to them, it's really fun. It is fun. It is really disgusting how racist and Islamophobic so much of it has been. But it's so funny watching people so much of it has been, but it's so funny watching people try to make him sound like uncool or like his idea. It's like it is like watching Elmer Fudd try to like turn the other Looney Tunes against Bugs Bunny. I think his answers to like kind of tough questions have been really thoughtful and warm and easy for people to understand. And it's like nice that like one city in one election made a good choice. We were talking before we started recording about my wife during big

elections, national or local, just like goes to bed very early. And it's just like to find out in the morning, I can't vote more tonight. What am I going to do? And I got to come in and like, wake her up with good news when I got into bed tonight. And I was like, I don't even know how to break good news anymore. Well let's have some more hopeful news now. Budapest Pride update. And to be honest, Hungary politically has not brought a deluge of hope to people who are

not fans of, well, headcase stroke so-called hard man leaders. Viktor Orbán has a carefully curated reputation as one of modern Europe's foremost purveyors of bile-filled prejudice and hate-fuelled divisionism. But last weekend, an estimated 200,000 people converged on the Hungarian capital for Budapest pride and extended the firmest and most rainbow-colored of middle fingers to Viktor Orban. He has spent a disproportionate amount of his time clamping down on what people wish and choose to do in the privacy of their own lives. And for whatever reason, his rollback of rights has not produced the economic miracle

regrowth that it generally doesn't anyway. He's been unlucky. I mean, all the economic figures suggest that clamping down on personal rights relating to sex, gender, sexuality, and the like, boosts GDP by between 100 and 1 million percent per week if you do the maths wrong and then make up a figure at the end. So he's been a bit unlucky on that front. The authorities attempted to stop the Pride March. Hungarian police said it was illegal to attend the march, but the mayor of

Budapest then loop hold the crap out of it because municipal events don't require authorization, so he basically made himself the organizer of the march, which made it legal and 200,000 people turned up. 20 EU governments signed a statement criticizing the attempted ban on the march. Numerous political figures from across Europe joined in and all ban was left pretending that the egg on his face was a trendy new cosmetic treatment to keep your looking fresh and smooth and unwrinkled. If like him, you spend 60 now as a day scowling. So it's, I mean, it does feel like a genuinely hopeful moment and whether it turns proves to be a turning point or not, generally hopeful moments turn out not to

be quite the turning point, more just like a swivel that then kind of accelerates off with greater sort of centrifugal force. But let's cling to it while we can. Absolutely. And I really can't wait for the film adaptation. I just want to see the mayor saying, well, unfortunately for you, provincial events don't require a federal authorization. So it looks like I'm the f***ing organizer now. Stuffed out, picks up a tiny rainbow flag. There's nothing you can do about it.

Victor, not this time. Or ban, you can do about it. Victor, not this time. Orban, you can't ban it, I'm afraid. I hope that this gives rise to at least one Hungarian-themed drag queen named Csikder Herban. Also, this is good news for me personally, because I've always wanted to go to those swimming pools where old men play chess. But recently, I felt like it would be unsavory to put money into that economy. I tried to do that, but my nights drowned and I lost.

And they drown in such a funny little way, don't they? Forwards and then to the left. Swim up, swim up. Every time they swam up, they'd swerve. Straight up, you have to go straight up. So, well, as I said, we'll see if this proves to be a turning point between the forces of a destructive cantankerism, such as Orban, and those who believe that maybe, just maybe, the world's problems are not all the fault of anyone who isn't immovably, irrepressibly

heterosexual. Who knows? But in a world where hope is on the wrong end of a game of constant whack-a-mole, it was at least a moment of hopeful resistance, and let us cling to that popsicle of optimism as we swelter in the sauna of populist regression. Wealth news now, and while the world is torn asunder by violence and hatred, but there is one unifying force that will always bring people together, and that is the force of love. And nowhere was that put on show more gloriously that is the force of love. And nowhere

was that put on show more gloriously than in the wedding of one of the world's richest people annoying an entire Italian city. Jeff Bezos, I think we can call, say, now current wife Lauren Sanchez, sparked fury amongst Venetians with their I think we can say mildly over-the-top wedding It's raised an interesting kind of philosophical questions looking at Jeff Bezos Wedding what is happiness? What is love and if a billionaire gets married and it didn't cost him tens of millions of dollars and piss off an historic city, is it legally valid? And I'm not sure there is a Definitive answer to that question. I'm not a lawyer or a billionaire or an Italian city. And also, if one of the world's richest men gets married, can he ever truly unquestionably, in a never even thinking

about it kind of way, know that his espoused is marrying purely a hundred percent for love. And there's only one way to find that out. And he chose not to take that way. And that way was to announce at the altar that he was giving away all of his money and see if she runs out of the church, goes straight onto the Pluto catch wealth based dating app and start swiping around anyone with a net worth over 2.5 billion. But he chose not to do that, so he will never know. He will never know.

Neither of you were there, were you invited? I know what a classroom review is. That's the thing I couldn't go in the end. You had to RSVP declines with regret. I'm so sorry. I said if only I could. Declines with regret is basically a brief history of Britain from up above. Declines with regret is my short book about how I was forced to learn grammar when I went

to university. For me, the most exciting thing about these things, because they're such lavish spectacles, it's the food. I don't know if you know, but I looked at the menu of what they had for the main dinner. The starter was 100,000 otter lamb per guest. The birds are so small that you shouldn't eat them because it offends God. So everyone's necking 100,000 of them, so they've been covered in the veils. Then they fling them off and they bring the main course. Now, if it's a millionaire's wedding, you'd be having something like 420 blackbirds baked in a pie, but obviously scaled up to one of the richest men on earth. That's going to be 4200 million blackbirds baked in a pie. And let me tell you something, Andy, when that pie was opened, most birds really

did begin to sing. It was for coughiness. Have you ever heard something like that? No, you haven't because you'll never be rich enough. Luckily, Jeff Bezos, of course, he didn't hear it because all the guests who heard it were deafened. That's part of the spectacle. But luckily Bezos, of course, he was hiding in the counting house counting all his money. His wife was in the parlour eating bread and honey. Sadly, did not work out well for the maid who was of course in the garden hanging out of clothes. Don't know what, if you know what it's like if 4,200 million blackbirds come and peck off your nose. But didn't work.

Well, what I'm really aware of is that I don't think Josh has heard this nursery rhyme. This is a classic nursery rhyme. Birds of the pie, pie's open, birds begin to sing. Dainty dish to set before the- It's a dainty dish to set before a king. Or just kind of a garden variety ol' hark. Yes, well, this is the thing.

It's the song of sixpence. But when you scale it up, it's no longer dainty. We have to tax the rich until the dishes become dainty once more. Make America dainty again. Make blackboards 420 again. And also what you'll get there is you'll get the weed contingent, you know. They'll see that. They'll be on board.

4 and 20 blazebirds. It was nice. I, you know, I don't think President Trump was there, but he did send Bezos the gift of passing a massively regressive tax package in the budget. So that was really nice. They might as well, instead of calling it the one big beautiful bill, they should call it the one big beautiful

Bezos wedding present. And they had to move it. There were protests all around in Venice. They had to move it to a different location. That's probably the best version of, if anyone sees a reason why these two should not be married, speak now or we're all going to be peace.

I'm showing up with dozens of people and they threaten to fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles or as I would whimsically and inaccurately call them, canalligators. Canalligator is actually a Canadian alligator. That's why they've built that prison for them. In other wealth news, the dreams of wealth were snatched away from thousands of people in Norway who were told that they'd won millions of kroner in a lottery only for it to emerge that there had been a computer malfunction. And instead of when the prize money from the lottery was converted from Euro cents to Norwegian kroner.

It was multiplied by 100 instead of being divided by 100, making the prizes 10,000 times more than what they were supposed to be. Now I don't know if that makes you appreciate the one 10,000th of what you would thought you were getting more. If you have your $25 figurine of a rabbit ski jumping, do you appreciate that more than you would have enjoyed the $250,000 scientific project to see if you could actually make rabbits ski jump to an Olympic level and, but that dream was ripped from you.

So do you look at your figurine of the ski jumping rabbit and think, no, this is better now I appreciate the small things in life more. I would say that this is very much a dolphin Brazilian butt lift issue. They played at Glastonbury, I think. They did, I think. They said some pretty offensive things. What Norwegians don't realize is they've already won the lottery. Like they have the best quality of life of anyone on earth. You know, like, oh no, I won't be able to renovate my winter house in the cabins up in north, which all of us have, you know?

Oh no, my clothes made of such decent fabrics will now hang in a slightly inferior wardrobe. Like, come on, give us a break, Norway. You're thriving. Oh, if I didn't win so much lottery money, what will I do on my six weeks of vacation? For Easter. It is so funny how many people should be mad. I would be mad too. But it's so funny that they're whoever commissions that, you know, the lottery commission, their job is to give away money and people are still furious at them. Also, they called the Norsk tipping board, which makes it just feel like they're

just giving you a little, oh, just a little tip for you. I thought in Norway, everybody won the lottery once a year. I thought that was like part of the social safety net there. I bet you if you tallied up the current Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and you toted them out to everyone in the states, you could probably give everyone just a nice little bump. Yeah, I think that's not bad. They could just do that. It's allowed.

It is so funny because Andy, I got to disagree with you. All right, I've got to offer a contrary point of view at least. This is the most depressing way to find out you won the lottery. And then go like, Okay, you did win. Yes. How and it's going to be a million dollars. Psych 3252. And then you still have to be happy. Celebrate with a nice. Yes, you have to be happy. You can celebrate with a nice bottle of champagne if you kick in another $50 out of pocket. I actually had an experience a bit like this

where a very sweet great aunt of mine died and I really loved her. And when she died, I found out I'd inherited a couple of thousand pounds. I couldn't believe it. I used it to make a feature from my friends. I was so thrilled. And me and my sister were like, wow, a great aunt has given us a couple of thousand pounds. This couldn't believe it. I used it to make a feature from my friends. I was so thrilled. And then my sister was like, wow, a great aunt has given us a couple of thousand pounds. This is astonishing. And then we found out that our cousins on the other side both inherited about a hundred thousand pounds. And honestly, I didn't realize she fucking hated me. Like, I thought she liked me.

And also that's the other thing. We couldn't be ungrateful. Like it was still lovely of her to leave us money. We didn't expect it. And it's quite a lot of money, but it was very like, oh, well, that's the other thing, we couldn't be ungrateful. Like it was still lovely of her to leave us money. We didn't expect it and it's quite a lot of money. But it was very like, oh, well, that's great. It was a very intense experience and I can give counseling. This shows why this should be praised and lauded and ideally spread around the world. Because this is, you know, the people of Norway have been given a valuable lesson in life. It's basically just just accelerating the process of what happens in a consumer capitalist democracy.

Basically being told you can have it all, or maybe not all some, you can have bits of some. Well, theoretically, you could have had it all, but instead one individual is going to get the lot instead. But don't give up that dream. And that is a process that usually takes decades on an individual level, sometimes even a century on a national level. And this has been efficiently condensed by this lottery blooper into one rapid fire disappointment,

one instant powdered anti-climax. Just add the salt water of your own tears. Think of how good it would have felt if they'd done it the other way though. If they'd gone, we're going to give you seven Kroner and then you go, 700. All right, that's not bad. I think that's how they should announce all lottery winnings going forward is they divide it by a hundred and they go, ah, we were just f***ing with you. It's a hundred times more than that.

That's the best day of your life twice. That's how they should break medical diagnoses as well. Go in big and then just withdraw a little. We're gonna have to amputate the arm. No! Okay, the finger. Okay! Okay. Isn't that just right wing political strategy? That is what they do, isn't it? Well, that brings us to the end of this week's, this week's bugle. Thank you very much for listening. If you want to come and see my show at the Froome Festival on Monday, the 7th of July,

then please do. Details and tickets available on the internet. Josie, anything to plug? Yes, I'm doing the Edinburgh Fringe every single day at the Pleasant's Dome. It's my show, it's called Now Is The Time Of Monsters, and it's about parenting and climate change and politics and prehistoric, extinct charismatic megafauna, and there are tickets available. The tickets are £10,000 each. Psych! They're like £10! Oh my god, what a plug-in! And yeah, I think it should be fun.

Josh? What a plug-in! And yeah, I think it should be fun. Josh? Yes, I have a new stand-up special out. It's on YouTube currently on Blonde Medicine's YouTube channel. It is called Positive Reinforcement. It just came out last weekend. People have been so lovely. I would love if you watched it and spread the word.

It's a very independent release that I just did with the little record label I work with. And my wife, Maris Kreisman, put out her book today as of this recording. It's called I Want to Burn This Place Down. It's about kind of imagining a bigger, more comprehensive way of being in the world that is good to people. It's a personal essay. She's really brilliant and funny and warm and lovely. is it's good for our house's financial well-being if you purchase our book. It's available everywhere. This is so nice. It's supportive but it's also fiscally sensitive. It's responsible. It's just responsible. And you can find out where I'm going to tour. I'm going

on the road a bunch. I'm going to the Catskills and I'm going to be back in Toronto at joshcondleman.com or joshcondleman.substack.com for my newsletter. It's free every Monday. It's called That's Marvelous and it's full of pep talks. We will be back next week with Nish Kumar and Ian Smith. Until then, bugglers, it's Producer Chris here. I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now. Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally

anything. So please, come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.