The Bugle - Future Of Humanity Update

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

Billionaire vampires, DNA hacking, vaping; all indicators of the state of humankind. Andy is with Hari Kondabolu and Chris AddisonWhy not check out 15 years of top stories: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/topstories.Featuring:Andy ZaltzmanChris AddisonHari KondaboluProduced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dancelaguard fans, you will be thrilled to know a book is coming out if you fund it via Unbound. We are publishing the Dancelaguard Reader by Alice Fraser and Dancelaguard, a glorious insight into the world of Dancelaguard, self-published romance maven, and online bestseller. If you would like to find out how to support it, go to thebugelpodcast.com. If we get enough support, we will publish the book. That's a real thing that's going to happen. Thebugelpodcast.com to support the Danciler Guard Reader. A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A- Audio newspaper for a visual world! Hello, Buglers! And welcome to issue 4,265 of the Bugle, the longest running and only covert, coded potato processing industry podcast.

Uncovering the reality of what happens to potatoes, once they've been hauled from the soil they once called home and cast into the mechanical whims of the human food chain. If you listen to this show backwards, you know exactly what I'm talking about. For those listening forwards, I am Andy Zoltsman, Tuesday the 30th of May 2023. And this week on the Bugle, we will be exclusively revealing the winners of the 1934 Oscars. I don't want to give too much away, but if you're a fan of romcoms and specifically of it happened one night, you are in for a treat.

Sadly, the winner's speeches will be be for circumstances beyond our control, somewhere in the brief too non-existent range at the shorter end of that range too. But before that, we have our regular endoscopy of the world's news filled guts, for which I'm joined by none other than Rock legend Mick Jagger, him- sorry, by two other than Mick Jagger himself. The first of those two from the bucolic idyll that is Southeast London, back for the first time in a long time, it's Chris Addison. Hello, Colin.

Hello Andy. Hello. It's lovely to be back with you. It's a relief, if I'm honest, to be back. I'm just a minute return from Moscow, where I have my first ever drone flying lesson. I haven't got a second. Didn't go as well as I expected.

Although I did seem to go as well as my instructor, Valodinit, expecting to be so far, by everything. But I feel like this week was an important moment. There was an important moment which for you in the evolution of cricket, when the Indian Premier League T20 final started on Saturday and finished on Monday proving that the short form of the game can be played Andy over the multiple days and I think that's the compromise you've been looking for. Yeah in some ways I think I mean I does show that you know compromise is possible between warring factions on this earth and you know cricket is essentially in a state of what mutually assured destruction with itself. It's very much a metaphor for modern America, I think, in a lot of ways.

So yeah, this is very exciting. It's amazing what rain can do to improve the duration of something. Also joining us from the bucolicadil that is Brooklyn, New York City. It's Harry Condobolo. Hi. It's really great to be back and I know that I was banned from the bugle for a few months based on those terrible terrible things I said about you and that podcast and I'm I'm glad you were able to forgive me and have me back on right. I mean that does seem to happen pretty much every time

You do this show that yeah, there's a ban that lasts several months. But I believe the podcast, I said the terrible things on was this podcast. All right, okay. I don't think that was the smartest move. But we are forgiving at the bugle, so you're welcome back for a probationary episode. We are a gauding. As I said on the 30th of May 2023, Thursday, the 1st of June, is national say something nice day in the United States? Were you aware of this?

Are national say something nice day? No, no. Malcolm X still doesn't have a day by the way, but you continue. Maybe just something nice could be pleased to Malcolm X have a day. Yeah, there we go. It stands out from the other 364 and a quarter days of the year like a mechanical laser-eyed fire breathing elephant in a ballet competition, but still we need to take the opportunities to say something nice to each other these days. So here are some phrases for our American listeners to say to their fellow Americans on national say something nice to each other these days. So here are some phrases for our American listeners to say to their fellow Americans on National say something nice day.

Frays 1 Your interpretation of your Second Amendment rights is one of the most charming pieces of willfully misunderstanding 18th century legislation that I've ever had the pleasure to enjoy. Frays b, I mean I wouldn't vote for him myself, but yes I suppose we do all have the right to vote against our own self-interest as individuals and nation and as species, and good on you for utilizing that right. Frees 3, well we can agree to disagree on the method, but yes the capital building still needed a bit of sprucing up. And Frees 4, you're angry with me, I'm angry with you, let's face it, it's the start of

a romcom. From the 1st of June 1495, John Caw, a Scottish monk recorded the first known batch of Scotch whiskey, a true landmark for human civilization, the first ever Scotch whiskey. 1st June 1495, and 2nd June 1495, John Caw, the monk, apologized to the other monks in the monastery for anything you might have said to them the previous night for waking them up at 4 a.m. singing show me the way to go home very loudly in the cloister's and for vomiting at breakfast. As always a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week. A bugle science supplement special supplements new bugle science magazine in total whiskua which stands for what if something completely unfeasible actually happened. We look at what would happen if a crocodile became Pope, if waterfalls stopped working and the water just carried on the way it was going instead of falling downwards.

We look at what would happen if the large cadran collider in Switzerland went wrong and started pumping out a million cubic meters of molten marsh mallow every hour. What would happen if an asteroid the size of Manhattan and an asteroid the size of Brooklyn collided in the sky above Queens, the science suggests that the Brooklyn asteroid would end up relocating to Los Angeles. It's like baseball all over again. And we also look at what would happen if the rule of three became the rule of five. And in our special with Scooter hit put section that is what if something completely unfeasible did actually happen in the past. Special features by the science and non-science correspondent from the Daily Telegraph, Irwin Splutteridge, including was the Titanic sunk by a leftist woke conspiracy and how millennial political correctness stopped Isaac Newton from discovering

a nuclear fusion. That section is in the bin. And sometimes I think you would make more sense to me if you were a written Almanac. Like instead of a human man, you were a leaflet that was handed out with tons of information on it. Right. I mean information is all I've putting it. All the next 10 have facts in them. That's the thing. All the next ten to have facts in them, that's the thing. All the next ten to have facts in them.

That's the major difference. Yes. I don't know, what would be a false or a form of an act? I don't know. Well, don't ask us for the pun, I mean, that's... Top story this week, the future of humanity. Well, we're looking at various things that are going to affect the way we live as a species. In particular, the quest for eternal life, because this week in Vampire News, it is emerged

that Brian Johnson, the American tech billionaire, guzzled gallons of blood directly from the veins of his infant son. Well, it was a transfusion, a liter or so, and his son is a teenager, and he also himself, Brian Johnson Blast, is some of his own blood cells, plasma, and billion adjuice into his elderly father. But still, Brian Johnson is, to all intents and purposes, a vampire, and it just goes to show Chris and Harry, what happens when someone has not so much more money than sense but so much money that it is impossible to have any sense left. This is quite an extraordinary story.

I mean, have either of you both got children as as producer Chris, I mean, strictly between us. Have you ever looked at your kids and thought I can harvest you and become a Mortal. I mean if you can't use your kids blood for whatever purposes you deem fit what was the point of becoming a parent to begin with? That's the thought. Brother. Yeah. That's fair. It's a huge paradigm shift.

This is the first time having a kid can make you feel younger. Yeah. First of all, what is the point in searching for turn leaves at this stage of human history? This is the curve before. We are leaving the stage shortly. If you really want to live longer at this point, you need to be concentrating on finding where you're stopping AI

because it is five years from the mass of them until we are all dead from AI dogs with guns on their heads, roaming streets, seeking out humans. And second of all, this guy is spending $2 million a year Andy trying to regain his youth. Have you seen him? He looks like someone left Tom Hiddleston out of the fridge for a couple of days

and he's begun to go off. Not quite a lucky lucky, more a lucky lucky. But in any case, there are far cheaper ways of living forever. Look at David Aftonborough, right? Still fit and active in his mid 90s and he's achieved that by simply never changing out of a light blue short-sleeved shirt and beige chinos for the last six decades. In any case, age is simply a matter of how you measure it. If you measure your youth by how far off retirement you are, right, then what with governments constantly raising the state retirement age and the cost of living crisis eating into your pension pot, you have meaning you have to work longer, you're effectively getting younger all the time anyway.

Yeah, for no money. Oh, thank you. I mean, also with Attenborough, one of the reasons he stayed alive to, I think he's 140 now is because every time he's filmed something of one of his programs, after filming, he boils down the animals in the documentaries for stock and drinks their life force. And he also stops referring to something that's really happened on set. So I mean, he's essentially functionally immortal through the medium of soup. Can we, can we refer to him as Dracula Dad from now on instead of Johnson?

Yes, okay. Sorry, Dracula Dad. Yeah. Okay. That applies to many Johnson, still, honest. He's been street loads of money on strange procedures to achieve unending physical youthfulness also to try and achieve his lifelong ambition and becoming a character and a Greek myth who exists for the warning to all humanity

about the dangers of human arrogance and stupidity. And he's well on the way to achieving that goal, but probably before he achieves eternal life. I mean, two million pounds a year. Yeah. I mean, if I had that kind of money to spend on personal grooming, I think I'd spend $25,000 having a beak attached to keep the plague away and the rest of replacing

my legs with diamond encrusted pogo sticks. But each to their own, I mean what would you what would you guys do with you know, I know, Harry, you do spend, well I mean probably only around about a million a year on personal grooming, but on hair alone, of course. Yeah. But I think we should look at the actual numbers because there are numbers that, uh, that we've gotten from Dracula, dead Dracula, dead and his doctors who he pays money to, uh, claim his overall biological age has been decreased by over five years. Uh, he is a 45 year old with a heart of a 37 year old. biological age has been decreased by over five years.

He's a 45 year old with a heart of a 37 year old, the skin of a 28 year old, the fitness of an 18 year old, but sadly still has the self-consciousness of a 15 year old. And also there's a danger in going too far back. Right, right. You know, if you're going down 37, 28, 18, when you go to, you do not want to, you know,

as a billionaire, you don't want to wake up screaming in the middle of the night every night, crying uncontrollably, having pissed and shut yourself. I'm sure. It's certainly what he's trying to avoid by getting old, but if he gets too young, it'll essentially have the exact same thing. So there is one great irony in this because in the article, it claims that his scientists say

that his penis, quote, functions as it would if he was an 18-year-old. So to review, this means he's now a 45-year- old who deals with premature ejaculation. That is the claim that they have publicly stated. It's a fair point, right? Why do you even want to be 17? Let alone now, a baby. If he's trying to have the body of his 17 year old son, I suppose the good news for the rest of us is that if he achieves that, he'll no longer be eligible to vote.

Why would you want to be 17 again? You'd have to be having to vote. But in any case, what I would you want to be 17 again? You'd have to be having to do your A levels. You'd have to get a job on Saturdays and our price records, which would be very hard to do because they went out of business in 2004. You'd be eligible for the poll tax, and you spend far too much time looking through film magazines and pictures of Winona Rhyder. No, thank you very much. I'll stick to my 50. The ability to afford decent wine

and typing Winona rider 90s into Google image search. But $2 million a year. I mean it's clearly very worried about wrinkles. If you look at his face, if you're spending $2 million a year on personal grooming, with that money you could pay for, not only a sensational range of vintage cricket memorabilia, and I'll say that without a hint of jealousy, but you could also pay for 250 wells in deprived parts of the world,

providing clean water to half a million people. So no wonder he's worried about wrinkles, because I mean most of us make such choices in life to a certain extent, but if you're doing that, you must wake up hating yourself every fucking morning. That's going to make you frown, isn't it? So I can sort of see why he's, why he's I don't know that he's got the personality or self-awareness to do that because it always strikes me that the people searching for eternal life and every of these

people turn up in the media, they're always the most boring people imaginable, they're every single one of them, the kind of person you try to lose early doors on a stout. People need to realize in general that aging is a fascinating experience in and of itself. Lots of out of it can surprise you. For example, I would never believe when I was younger that once I got to middle age, I would have to spend quite so much of my time reading about the crap-pot science schemes of white boy tech gazillionaires. But Zuckerberg, this idea, it's like they all sold Wallace and Bromance, thought it was a series of training films.

I reckon we are six months max off that guy from Spotify announcing that he's going to build a time machine. I much prefer to it in the old days when evil billionaires were more interested in building secret underground volcano layers, which by definition they couldn't keep crapping on about on Twitter. Well, I mean, we have to wrap up this section really with an opinion piece in the bugle says, uh, this is the real truth from the bugle. Personally, at the bugle, we have no problem with Brian Johnson doing this. People criticise billionaires for earning more money than the average human being can comprehend, so at least do something f***ing weird with it, fair play do.

And look, let us ask ourselves a question. At heart, are we not all vampires? Who amongst us has not stood over the cot of our sleeping progeny, or indeed someone else's sleeping prodigy and felt the urge, the primeval compulsion, the evolutionary necessity indeed, rise within us before we succumb to the unquenchable bravery of our dark souls and slake our thirst on the youthful blood of a youth before watching it down with a sweet little pint of plasma

and a bone marrow cleanser. Just me on that one. Anyway, what we need is not fewer brine Johnson's, but more. I want him cloned drinking the blood of all children. Moving on to other future of humanity news, it's not just 45-year-old tech billionaires who are having their entire fundamental nature changed by science, but babies, correspondence. And you would like to have this new branch of fertility science, IVG, in vitro, a gamito genesis. Just explain, I know you love three letter acronyms and love explaining them. So just explain exactly what IVG involves and why it's going to make our species even better than it already is

Okay, I'm gonna speak in layman's terms because I only speak in layman's terms but basically freak's Basically freak's scientists found a way to take any cell and turn it into a sex cell So they can take two of my cells and turn one into an egg and one into a sperm and then I can make my own child with all my genetic material, which for an egomaniac is perfect. Apparently, the field of bioethics does not have a big sway. It's clear to me that nobody's listening because this is going to lead to trouble. Some circumstances include a mother that could be a 90-year-old because you're just taking someone's cell.

It could be a nine-month-old fetus, which it would be very hard to listen to your mother if that was the case. It was only nine months older. You could also take any random cells from anybody. So, for example, if I bumped into Tom Holland and got some of his skin cells, I could have a baby with Tom Holland without him knowing. And that kid would then star in the film Fat Spider-Man. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha So that's Tom Holland, the actor you're talking about rather than the story. Right.

Good, correct. The actor. Unlike your humor, I'm not just reaching for just you Andy. I'm going for the large share. I'm saying. I can feel another band coming up. In theory, you could also, if someone sat on a toilet seat, you could take that toilet seat and then make children from what you find on

the toilet seat. So let's say hypothetical, this is hypothetical, you were to get a toilet seat that John Oliver sat on, right? You could then have John Oliver back on the podcast or at least some freak hybrid of you and John back on the podcast. Then my Then my notes here say, Andy makes pun with John's name and his name. I mean, the thing is, I mean, that's very hypothetical because John Oliver no longer uses any kind of bathroom facilities, so I believe they're known in America because he's so busy at a special surgical operation that means that he's not really no longer has time for that, as long as the bugle, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, surgical operation that means that he no longer has time for that. I'm not sure if he'll learn where his time for functions are that to get to keep turning out that number of shows. The procedure I believe is called

human centipede and is the reason he is behind a desk. So custom making human ovulidals and spermatica in a laboratory using any self-repecine spotty Obviously, this could have huge beneficial impacts on fertility treatments. Clearly, there are deep sea to ethical issues involved. But equally, obviously, everyone is now thinking mad scientists makes baby out of cell stolen from celebrities. Celebrity baby grows up to rule the world

and destroy and or save humanity. So, I mean, we wanna see how this pans out. So, ethically, should we not be jumping on board? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we wanna see how this pans out. So ethically, should we not be jumping on board? Wait, wait, wait, wait, we want to see how this pans out. No, we don't want to see how this pans out. Did you read Dr. Barrow and was like, let's see how this pans out? I think, I don't know about that because we're lacking certain details here, aren't we? To what degree will we be able to design these babies, right?

Will we be able to remedy some of the things that human evolution has so far bafflingly overlooked? For example, would we finally be able to create human beings with pockets? Every parent who's leaving a house with a baby is a huge production number. What a boom! To have a pack of sparing nappies and some pseudocrame in the baby itself. What parents hasn't struggled to mix up baby formula with one hand whilst holding their child with the other could we perhaps design these babies so that they're magnetic so that when it's time to make their food they can be stuck on the fridge out of the way. What sweet deprived parent wouldn't want the middle of their screaming babies forehead

to feature a mute button? Come to that. Could we not simply equip them with a snooze function? How much further and more specific could we go with this boys? Could we design babies with a left leg considerably longer than it's right leg to make it naturally easier to reach difficult shots in Snooker. Could we help solve the transport crisis by designing babies with propellers coming out at the tops of their heads? Could we design a bait that with one incredibly thin orange wedge shaped thumb so that they can prize a part stuck Lego bricks by themselves instead of their parents having to spend cumulatively three months of

their lifetime doing it? Let's not throw this designer bag out with this designer bathwater hurry. That's what I'm saying. Testify. You do realize that there's an existential threat to stand up comedians if this technology exists. Because this is what we have is recessive. This is not a down-to-dum-trade.

This is something that would immediately be eliminated. This is the worst thing that could possibly happen. Well, also, I mean, if you can take cells from different people, presumably, you could take cells from lots of different people, and comedy increasingly over the last 20 years has had more and more people doing shows about their relationship with their father, like their parents. And if suddenly comedians have thousands of parents, they'll just be churning out these fucking shows until, until all comrades just die on the inside. So, um, and that will then spawn fat Spider-Man, the music. They do say that, you know, widespread application of this science in humans does remain quite a long way away but they said that about the internet in the 17th century and look at us now.

It's caught in a scapegoat of the intellectual grass watching the future we could have had evaporate like a sausage in a snowstorm. But for me politically, I think it's quite exciting because like I said, you could presumably take bits of self from all 8 billion people in the world And put them together in one Embryo and thus create the average person and that's politically we would finally know what the average person does And this could lead to a you know a golden age of politics, I think the age of politics, I think. That's what we are not going to do. Or exactly the opposite. The thing that worries me is certainly about it, and that backs up Harry's concern about

seeing how this pans out, is that one of the scientists who's leading this research said, and this, by the way, is a direct quote. He said, we are in the pathway of translating these technologies into the humans. Let me just restate that. We are in the pathway of translating these technologies into the humans. The humans. I do think that any scientist already, anyone else in a position of power who refers to the humans, could probably not be allowed anywhere near these worlds changing technologies. The only people who talk like that are Bondundvillans and Daleks. It's such a dead giveaway.

Where did you even learn the language? Does Duolingo have an English for evil scientists? Of course. Other dead giveaways include having an assistant called Egor referring to female visitors to your lab as my pretty and holding up a smoking vial of purple liquid shouting, now the world shall know my name. My mean, yeah, my pretty stuck on a whole whole

different. After also political events in Britain, I know, with a former home secretary. Oh, God, I mean, we also have to consider, you know, the great things the government could do with such technology. You could, in a lab, take the best human traits that, you know, a government finds preferable. Let's say it's a conservative government, right? And you take all the best traits and you create a sort of like a race, like a, like a, like a

toprote, like a master race. I feel like a master race that will then look exactly the way you want it. What, what, the point I'm making is apparently, apparently Hitler was ahead of his time. And if you could just be here now, it would be completely reasonable and be done without bloodshed, his dream of a masterpiece. According to the article on the NPR site, a Japanese scientist claimed to have perfected this process in mice. And I'm quoting direct from the article now, the researchers use cells from the tails

of adult mice to create induced pleuripotent stem cells, IPS cells, and then coaxed those cells to become mouse sperm and eggs. Coaxed! That is not, that to me, that is a non-scientific... come on, come on, it'll IPS cell, who wants to be a sperm cell, you want to be a sperm cell, or do you want to be an egg? You want to be an egg? Look do you want to be an egg? You want to be an egg? Look at you, you cheeky little thing. You're blushing, you want to be an egg? Egg, egg, egg, egg, egg.

It's not in science, my parenting methods for you there. It's not bugulous. But I mean, for me, this could be one of the most exciting breakthroughs in human reproduction since God, real life, there must be a better way of making new people than ripping someone's rib out while they're asleep, popping the rib into a giant test tube, saying abracadabra, and hoping for the best.

was there a sleep popping the ribbon to a giant test tube saying abracadabra and hoping for the best. I just want to clarify that I am anti-hitler. All right. In case that wasn't clear earlier in case people imagine having an anti-hitler. I let your anti-hitler speak. I don't think that's what you're talking about. I think we have to be careful though because the existence of designer babies implies the inevitable existence of knockoff designer babies. Ah! The ones that you get down the market next to the stall selling Louis Vuitton bags and Galtse and DeBammer belts for a five or cash only. The problem with the cheaper designer babies is you never really know what you're getting

two days after you take them home, one of arms comes loose where you realize it's head stuck on the wrong way after a couple of years when it starts to talk it turns out you can only speak Slovenian which is fine if you're Slovenian but surprisingly few people out the total human population are. To be fair aren't we knock off designer babies? Speak for yourself, hurry. Oh, what have God's chosen people? I haven't read the book, but I've heard it's quite popular. In other future news, obviously with all these very worrying trends emerging, we are going to have to find ways of poisoning our children so they don't have to deal with it.

One of these that we've been, we developed recently, is vaping. But it's now turned out that, well, people are getting a little concerned about the extent to which we are poisoning children through the poisonous gases in vaping. The vaping community has been rocked to its sweetly-cented foundations by research that found high levels of lead and nickel in vaping, the vaping community has been rocked to its sweetly-centred foundations by research that found high levels of lead and nickel in vaping products. And I mean, sadly, it's turned out that

selling something highly addictive containing poisonous chemicals for children which might have serious adverse effects on their short and long-term health might be having serious adverse effects on their short and long-term health, which is something that you couldn't possibly have known without the benefit of either hindsight or foresight. So, I mean, this is a concern, is because obviously the Roman Empire collapsed because everyone started drinking too much lead. And we love copying the Roman Empire right to the,

we're basically modeling ourselves at the moment on the decline and fall of a once-mighty civilization. And now we're jumping on the get that lead in your bloodstream bandwagon that the Romans so skillfully piloted. Do either of you vape? No, I'm an adult. That is beautiful and brutal. Now it is beautiful and brutal. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah.

Why, I mean, again, this is just like when we found out smoking, you're telling me breathing these fire sticks in is going to harm us. Like, this was obvious. You're breathing in chemicals with a plastic tube. Yeah, there might be some health risks. I don't understand why this story. It's almost like they made it to the market fast enough where people allowed it until questions were asked. Huh, breathing in these chemicals in a plastic tube. Could this hurt our children? And then the research was done. It's like, yeah yeah our suspicions were in fact right that breathing in chemicals with a plastic tube

could be harmful to children. There are some really statistics about the number of children who do it. There's a rise in this country in the UK there's a rise in vaping amongst 11 to 17 year olds from 7.7% last year to 11.6%. But there are other statistics that are more encouraging. So for example, the number of people who look absolutely f***ing ridiculous vaping hasn't risen since last year's figures of 100%. The number of men who haven't quite realized that enveloping themselves in a big cloud that

smells of strawberry and cream flavor does somewhat play against the image they're trying to promote with the Mexican deathhead they've had tattooed on the back of their hands, also remains at a pretty much the same level of astonishingly high. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, we've been burnt previously by the suppression of health science and, you know, those scientific reports from the turn out to be covertly funded by the cigarette industry that revealed for example that filterless lung scrunches are the equivalent of a Mediterranean salad and that's making 160 high-tar artery cloggers that they make you fit in the normal impact cyclists. Those turn out to be not entirely true and

I mean children now you say I mean that they are marketed aggressively at children with these these these these flavors very popular among school children such as strawberry milkshake, raspberry, beret, fira, falea, the sweet sweet nectar of knowledge and odour Michael Gove for those children who miss Michael Gove is their former education secretary in the UK. Are we not selling mixed messages to our children though? We're just sort of clamping down on these, you know, addictive products. Because see, a vast amount of advertising,

whether it's in sport or elsewhere, are telling us adults to get addicted to things that will do us harm. For example, gambling, alcohol, medication, debt, fresh-melting, laundry, love, funerals, and hope for a better future. But as soon as we find a quick, efficient way of hooking the next generation of children onto something that will ruin their lives, we try to stop

them doing it. I just, I don't get the logic myself. I think we need more ways to get our children addicted and therefore controllable. Otherwise, who knows what utopias they may unleash on us as we get old? I mean, I'm mostly concerned with the idea that they might be damaging their bodies and then we're not going to be able to use their cells to make more children or drink their blood to live forever. This goes against everything that we've been trying to do with science. Quite right, Harry. American News Now and well, America running out of money update. The US

Treasury is expecting to run out of all cash by the 5th of June. It will then just have to ask to borrows stuff just from people hanging around just often to let you have borrow $10 to pay for the entire state education system and things. I mean, Horace, again, we touch on America running out of cash. It seems on an annual basis. And the defining doctrine of American politics is of course mutually assured failure between the democrats and republicans uh... it will be what was will america ever learn how to manage its finances or is this just something

that we now live with this sort of annual financial uh... no it will never learn to manage it doesn't need to uh... this isn't uh... a country in the developing world this this isn't Greece. All right. Like, if we don't want to pay back the debts, we'll just get rid of the debt ceiling

and add more money, or we'll not do that, and then we'll default, and that'll just hurt poor people. So that works for America. If we want money, eventually people will let us borrow it because we have nuclear weapons and are very big and can hurt them if they don't give us what we want, as well as if we really wanted to hurt the world, we could deny them American popular culture, which would be devastating.

So as a result, this is just procedural. Right. There's no bargaining position, essentially. Well, they're going to suspend it till 2025. And so it's just drama. It's just like the, I mean, the only real cost is to poor people in America, because eventually the Republicans will have to settle, the Democrats will have to settle and just to keep under the cap,

they're gonna have to like cut programs, not military-spunding, which will go up, but, you know, social welfare benefits. That's usually what ends up happening. It's basically like if you ate a pizza for breakfast and then a pizza for lunch and then you had a snack of a full pizza and dinner with a full pizza and you had dessert with every single one of those meals. So lunch, dessert, breakfast, dessert, snack dessert, and then you start counting the calories, and it reaches a number you didn't know calories could get

to. And at which point you decide, you know what, the salad has to go. Because that's the feather that will topple everything over. And that's what it is like to do this every year. So I mean, how could America raise raise money? Because there are rumors that the Louisiana purchase could be reversed that France could buy back the 828,000 square miles that it sold to America in 1803 for twice the original purchase price of $15 million. So I mean, guess that could be worth it. Yeah, and it would also give France somewhere a larger area of which to have race riots. Yep.

Well, I mean, they'd be competing race rides because they might be race rides happening in the US while the French rights are being imported in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I imagine there's a whole lot of tariffs that have to be discussed about that. Well, they've done the deal though, and that's the thing, you know, President Joe, I can't remember what I was just talking about Biden, and Speaker Kevin, please let me be, Speaker, please, please, please, please, I'm going to go on business, McCarthy. I did come to a deal but

even so like shitting bears they are not out of the woods the house of representatives and the senate have to approve it McCarthy and Biden's deal is as likely to get the approval they so badly need from Congress as Donald Trump is likely to get the approval he so badly needs from his dead since 1999 father the US treasury that is Secretary Janet she yelling has warned that, as you say, if the deal isn't passed by June the 5th, the government will be out of money. But we've all been there.

It's only the beginning of the month, right? But your bank balance is already perilously low. You have to make some adjustments if you're going to make it to pay day. And with that in mind, I've asked the Bugles financial editor for a list of top money-saving tips for keeping the American economy open in the cost of living crisis. To one, sell unwanted items. We've all got stuff that we've accumulated over the years that we don't really need anymore, but could get us a bit of extra cash if we e-bade them.

For example, Puerto Rico, do you really need American Samoa and Guam? Or could one of them be sold to get the money to, for example, put metal detectors in schools? Two, don't get all your fruit and veg at the supermarket. Tons of money can be saved if you grow your own said tomatoes and sourdough, you don't need a bit garden. You can serve them in any little unused space like Marjorie Taylor Green's head or the bit where Mitch McConnell's heart is supposed to be. Great, we all need to get out and do stuff, it's good for our mental health, but it might be time to cancel expensive trips to Hamilton or date night at Hooters

and swap them for things that don't cost anything like speaking at the UN General Assembly or sending thoughts and prayers. Or cancel Netflix. Five cut out alcohol can be hard to do, but these days have plenty of substitutes for beer like mocktails or Budweiser. Six, and if you've done all that and you still need to save them, why not get a part-time job? Nothing too taxing, maybe you could get an early morning paper round, or grab a couple of shifts a week destabilising a South American country with a vaguely socialist government. It would be absolutely in no time. Witchcraft news now, and while American justice has raced into action, lawmakers in Connecticut have exonerated 12 people,

almost 400 years after they were convicted of witchcraft. Now, I guess, better late than never, although for the 11 of those 12 who were executed, 370 years late are never, and not really too far apart on the spectrum of injustice. I mean, Harry, is there a danger that these lawmakers will be seen in the current political climate of going soft on witchcraft by just doling out these pardons. Well, absolutely, because shortly after the exoneration,

12 bats appeared at the courthouse and changed into people. And one said, oh, thank God that's over. So yeah, it's not going to look good. I mean, what was interesting about this case is that the Senate in Canada to get voted 33 to 1 to exonerate the people who had it in the 1600s. One senator, Rob Sampson, voted against, saying he believed that it was wrong to quote, dictate what was right or wrong about periods in the past that we have no knowledge of.

I guess you could slightly take issue with the idea that we have no knowledge of the 17th century. A few historians might slightly dispute that. Also, I think Boris Johnson is probably relying on the same principle, essentially, that we can't dictate what was right or wrong about peers in the past that we have no knowledge of. Just for stuff that happened three to four years ago, not three to four hundred years ago, what is a couple of noughts between friends? Also, I mean, I'll come at this from a Jewish perspective. Is it not time to respect controversial judicial verdicts, past according to the laws of the time, rather than banging

on about how one guy might have been found innocent if he'd been tried under today's legal system. We have to respect the judicial decisions of the past. Also, I mean, there's a bit of a difference isn't it? Because you have presidential pardons in America, which is essentially legalized crime, depending on the whims of departing presidents, for people who've done actual crimes, but saying sorry to someone who was hanged in the 17th century because they looked funnily at a hedge

or wore the wrong sock or turned flour into bread just by baking it within a mile of where a frog might have been. That's not okay. That seems inconsistent to me, America, but. I think it's just nice to say America taking women's rights seriously His campaign is hoping in 378s. I'll get around to federal protection of abortion So warlocks are Did they ever go to warlocks ever go to trial or was it just just witches? No?

I bet you it's the warlocks that sold the witches out I bet you it's the warlocks that sold the witches out. It's always the way isn't it? I can't get out of this marriage! Oh god that's really dark and almost certainly true. I guess what we can learn from this story once again, as from pretty much any study of history, is that a lot of people in the past were absolutely there's you new t-shirts right there well that brings us to the end of this week's bugle it's been a pleasure having you both back on after prolonged hiatuses I don't know how long your ban is going to be this time but where can our listeners

hear you in the meantime? Well first I released a special on YouTube called Vacation Baby. It is available for everyone for free but I also released a longer version and an album on bandcamp, which I call extended vacation baby I actually did just because I like the name 25 it's like 25 minutes longer and it's 12 bucks and I realize money is tight So if you only can see the free one that's fine. Just remember that I am the father of a small child But no pressure also I'll be touring through June, June 2nd and 3rd, which will be this weekend. In Chicago, Illinois, June 6th, I'll be in

Bugle Stronghold, Morgantown, West Virginia. June 7th, Columbus, Ohio, June 8th, Louisville, Kentucky, June 9th, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 28th, Buffalo, New York, and then June 29th in shows that are surprisingly almost sold out Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and all that can be found on hurrycundabolo.com, but more likely you will Google, hurry, Indian, comedian, and figure it out. Chris, have you got anything to plug? I don't really have anything to plug. We've just finished filming the last season of breaders. And that'll be on the telly eventually. But the first three are available on FX on Who,

Lew in the States and now TV in SkyCV in the UK and wherever you get your quality programme. You'll be able to hear me banging on about cricket from this Thursday for more. Yeah, why don't you start? First date England Ireland, Chris will be coming to support both teams. Excellent. Well, thought of. Also the news quiz is heading towards the end of our second series of the you can find

it on BBC sounds or after a delay elsewhere. Thank you for listening once again at Bugleers. We will now play you out as Chris puts on his cricket island cap. We will play you out with more from the Bugle Wall of Fame, commemorating the great contributions to human culture and advancement made by Bugle Voluntary subscribers, all the advancements that I have made up, and credit to them to join the Bugle Voluntary subscription scheme together with one of our current contributions to help keep the show free, flourishing and independent, go to the Buglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

All of our voluntary subscribers on the Wall of Fame this week played key roles in the evolution of popular board games. Foremost amongst them, Anthony Iacovoni, who made monopoly the popular game it is today by suggesting to its makers that it be set in modern London rather than in the uninhabited prehistoric wetlands that were where the city now stands today There really wasn't much property speculating to be done unless you were a newt notes Anthony Michael Swift suggested that chess become a monarchy rather than a theocracy at chess become a monarchy rather than a theocracy, having become tired of it being nothing but priests moving diagonally and telling pawns they weren't allowed to do anything or go

anywhere. Eric Tullus enhanced the popularity of the detective-based intrigue of Cludo, also known as Clu, by prohibiting the violent interrogations that were an integral part of the original version of the game. It just made it much more family-friendly," says Eric. And Gwen Morrissey also helped Cludo establish itself as a much-loved member of the board game Pantheon, by persuading the makers that they did not have to include an actual corpse in the box, even if the corpse was only one of a mouse dressed

up as a man, a not, of an actual man. Beyond the Leonard was the stickler who insisted that only correctly spelled words should be allowable in scrabble, bringing some order to the high-scoring chaos that existed in the early years of the game. The modern classic Catan has Jasek Shuraski to thank for its success. Originally the uninhabited island of Catan was populated with poisonous bats, feral bears and flesh-rending pelicans, not to mention regular outbreaks of plague, meaning of the early settlers all died within two moves. Jasek suggested making it less realistic, but more playable. Nick Razzanski turned trivial pursuit into the smart asses game of choice by advocating

printing questions on cards, rather than using a cardboard Ouija board to solicit questions and answers from the dead. It could be fun, says Nick, but it could also degenerate into guessing whether Mildred had had an affair with Eric in the 1920s. Whilst admiring the ethos behind the original version of Risk, entitled Trade and Treaty, Simon Heap realised that a positive military imperialism was more funnest and after dinner pursuit than hacking out mutually beneficial trading arrangements and shared product standards. Matt Robinson was travelling around China a few thousand years ago and helped make go into the eternal classic still play today by suggesting that the playing pieces should be discs rather than spheres and that the board should be flat, not on a slope.

And finally, Ergo Ojisu made back gammon the global phenomenon it is today by arguing that, regardless of tradition, the board did not actually have to be made of actual gammon or indeed any other pig meat product. Urdu notes, it opened up whole new markets for both religious and climatic reasons. Thank you to our Wall of famers and to all of our voluntary subscribers.