The Bugle - H A P P Oh God Why!?

Episode Date: March 23, 2025

This week, we investigate the happiest nations on Earth and ask: How?! Finland is officially joyful, the UK is redefining disability, and the bizarre love-hate triangle of Trump, Putin, and Zelenskyy—does anyone in that mess feel happy? Meanwhile, in Dublin, Molly Malone is getting groped… but why?Plus, we take a trip back in time to when a British Prime Minister found himself in an actual duel (yes, with real guns), and Andy treats us to his latest, highly scientific, bear impressions.🔹 Support The Bugle! Become a Team Bugle subscriber for bonus shows, exclusive merch, and the warm glow of self-satisfaction: www.thebuglepodcast.com/donate.🎧 Check out our new show, Realms Unknown! Now fully visualized on YouTube. And if you love passion, you’ll love A Passion for Passion—grab your copy here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/RealmsUnknown.Written and hosted by Andy Zaltzman, Ria Lina, Neil Delamere.Produced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh hello strangers, I'm Alice Fraser, your guide to the galaxy's goblins, dungeons and dystopias. We'll be hurling ourselves into an all-weekly hero's journey through realms unknown into the dark but sensual heart of all our favourite speculative fictions. We'll navigate the wild realms created by brilliant authors, filmmakers, game designers and more. New episodes drop every week on your podcast app or on YouTube. Do not resist the call to adventure, Chosen One. Join me for Realms Unknown.

So do you want me to growl or do you want to find some actual bare sound effects, Chris? Well, OK, for the sake of this room here, I want you to growl. Yeah, please growl. I may or may not use it. Yeah. The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4,335 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world, barking at the wrong moon since 2007 with me and his altman coming to you live and recorded from london where once the aurochs roamed the plains but now they'd have

probably been stuck in traffic or causing people to quietly harrum from the northern line for taking up so much space in the tube carriages is that progress that's not for me to judge it is the It's the 21st of March 2025 and I'm joined today. Firstly, from Dublin via Bulgaria by Neil Delamere. Welcome back from Bulgaria, Neil. Thank you very much. I was in Bulgaria filming something that I didn't really realize I was filming and that was an unusual scenario. We met a Turkish arms dealer at one point and he insisted he was a very good man. And I said, who do you sell the guns to?

He wouldn't go on camera. And he said, oh, he sell it to Western governments and, you know, forces of law and order. And I'm not, I'm not a bad man. I'm not a bad man. And he insisted this for about 10 minutes. And then his phone went off and the theme tune was Darth Vader's, you know, do, do, do, do, do, do do do do do do. It was amazing.

But I didn't realize I was going to Bulgaria. It was, I would describe it as a Wambles based mix-up, which really begins, makes me doubt the veracity of RT's claim I'll be going to Aranoco next week as well. But it was very entertaining and it's good to be home. Also joining us from here in London, it's Rhea Lina. Hello Rhea. Hello. Hello, hello. Hello.

I haven't actually been in touch with any of my Turkish arm dealers lately. You've just reminded me, I do need to just touch base and make sure that they're okay because they're people too. And their mental health is as much, if not more important to me than mine, because if they get angry, the wrong people win. Maybe now that I think about it, maybe the reflection that was a reflection not on him as a ringtone, maybe that was you ringing him. It was set to you. It's about you.

It is. I do very much relate to the Star Wars universe. And so I'm kind of chuffed that he remembered that cause I don't think. We discussed it. I think the last time it came up was like in a coffee that we had together in 2005. So, I mean, it's really nice that, you know, when someone remembers the details connected at a deeper level, I mean, yeah, it's emphatic. That's what it was. You and the Turkish arms dealer. Well, it's all businesses need that human touch these days.

Even the ones that traditionally didn't really didn't really major on it. Anyway, we are we are recording on the 21st of March. On this day in 1829, just a few miles up the road from from where I am in South London, in what is now Battersea Park, there was a duel involving the prime minister. Oh, happier times, times when people sorted out their political differences in the time-honored way of pretending to shoot at each other. The prime minister at the time was

the Battle of Waterloo celebrity, the Duke of Wellington, who took on the Earl of Winchelsea, George Finch Hatton, early in the morning after the Earl of Winchelsea, wrote a stroppy letter to the Standard newspaper about the Duke of Wellington and his introduction of the Roman Catholic Relief Act that removed restrictions on Catholics in national life. And it led to a duel just up the road from here, around about, I think, 7.30am. I mean, that's not the best time of day, is it? The Duke of Wellington fired wide, the Earl of Winchelsea fired high, and they learned to get along and became relative friends. Is this not

politics working more efficiently in older times with different values, sorting things out? You'd have to say that a duel is where Rishi Sunak comes into his own. You know how difficult it would be. I mean Jansen, you fancy your chances all day long. You'd rush him, you'd bumble it, you get your eye in, you've got a big target, Soonac's putting you down all day long. You'd look, you'd turn around, you'd see him, you'd have no idea how far he was. You're losing your confidence. I mean, he's the winner all day long there, isn't he? I mean, I think that's what he should have included in his campaign pledges. Most big things would be settled by June.

I think we should bring it back, if anything. I mean, there has to be some rules and structure to it. You know, you have to have at least 10,000 people sign the signature that they're happy for you to fight on their behalf or something. But, you know, I think definitely there's I can think of a number of things. I'd love to be able to shoot at Keir Starmer for legally. I think Diana Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn would have been great in a duel. I know they're going very, very well.

But the idea of you going, OK, count to 10. And then down, I would just counting to in a duel. I know they've gone very, very well, but the idea of you going, okay, count to 10 and then down Albert just counting to any random number and she just walks into the distance. It would be amazing. I mean, if you're the Duke of Wellington going out for a duel, thinking, you know, 14 years before that, he'd been fighting the Battle of Waterloo and survived that, survived many military campaigns and there must have been obviously, it seems like quite a significant proportion of duels ended non-fatally for reasons either of incompetence or manners. But I mean what a way to go that would have been for someone who'd fought so many actual battles to die in Battersea Park, where now there is a

children's zoo in a squabble about an article in The Standard. That's, I mean, that would have been disappointing. I mean, I do think that points of view would have been much better if instead of writing a dodgy letter in that the person who'd made a television show could then go and shoot the person who'd written the letter in. As always a section of The Bugler is going straight in the bin. The 23rd of March Sunday as we record is World Bear Day. So to mark this in the bin this week we have a free audio bear to help you live out your dream of living in a commune of bears. Various sounds of your audio bear that you can play as and when you see fit.

Firstly, the bear sleeping. Now the bear growling. Oh, I really wish people could see him do the actions. This is definitely going on. So he's doing the actions. Now the bear disappearing off into the woods. Did he fart as he walked away? What was that? Excuse me, I may be some time. Now the bear playing dead.

Now your bear listening to dance music. This is your bear being jumped over by a stunt motorcyclist. And now this is the bear itself on a motorcycle jumping over a canyon. Do requests? Please do requests. Can you do the dead bear being strapped to the front of RFK's pickup truck and then dumped in Central Park You see, is he still got a Spanish accent doing this? But that was Spain!

Well, it was bear. Anyway, fortunately that section is in the bin, so you won't have to address lessons of that Top story this week, Finland is the happiest place in the known universe. The annual World Happiness Report has shown that Finland for the eighth year in a row is the happiest country on earth. And from all the evidence we have from anywhere in the universe, which doesn't appear to be an absolute hotbed of happiness. Now, before we go into what makes a country happy or not, we should probably have a quick look at the history of human happiness. It's a question that's been troubling, stroke fascinating humanity since the very dawn of

evolution when a little fishy in the big old sea thought, I don't like being wet all the time. I had a crack at moving onto land and making some changes to its life. Fair play. The ancient Greeks took a bit of time out from naked wrestling and pornographic pottery to contemplate the meaning and nature of happiness and seem to come to the conclusion that it largely involved naked wrestling and pornographic pottery with a bit of epic blood-soaked high-body count slasher fantasy romance drama on the side. Have we moved on the intervening two and a half

thousand years? I don't think we have. After the collapse of Greek civilization, politics and religion came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to try to eradicate as much happiness from as many people as possible and did so successfully for most of the intervening couple of millennia until the 1960s came along and a rather bizarre school of thought flickered into life under which people should be able to do what they want with their lives. This rapidly transmuted into the unlicensed private school of thought

that rich, powerful people should be able to do what they want with other people's lives. And here we are today. So what do you guys make of this continuing triumph of Finland over all other countries on earth in terms of happiness? I think it's a lie. I don't know. I think they're just the best at whipping their people into answering the questionnaire the way they want to answer. I just I don't know. I've been don just the best at whipping their people into answering the questionnaire the way they want to answer. I just, I don't know. I've been, don't get me wrong. Finland's absolutely gorgeous. I love it.

For about three days a year in the middle of July, it's a joy. But for the rest of the year, I mean, there's a reason they don't talk very much. It's too cold to open your mouth. Your tongue will freeze. You know, and they're also, they're right there next to Russia. Maybe, maybe they You know, and they're also, they're right there next to Russia. Maybe, maybe they answered the questionnaire right after they were let into NATO and they were having a particularly good day. They were just like, oh, thank goodness, you know, the coalition of the willing is going to come to our aid if Russia turns their mind, turns their

attention to us, but I don't know. I just, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I believe that. That said, I recognize that my theory that they've been whipping their citizens into answering this questionnaire falls down by the fact that China isn't even in the top 10. Because if anyone is going to make their populace, if that's the way they want to answer them, it would have been China.

China unsurprisingly does not rate highly in happiness or in benevolent measures. They are not listed in top countries for helping strangers returning lost wallets volunteering donating none of those things Unsurprisingly Afghanistan is bottom Where they even which I was amazed at how to score for the women They even said even the women are unhappy and I went I again I don't believe you were allowed to speak to them to find out So I don't know I have some issues with the report, but what I thought was really funny is that one of the ways

that, I'm a scientist, okay? I'm always interested in the metrics. How are you judging this? And one of the things, the metrics is how likely is your wallet to be returned by a neighbor? And the Netherlands is top in how likely, and I was like, now I don't want to live in the Netherlands. I know Netherlands is in the top 10 of happy,

but I'm not going to feel comfortable if I know that my neighbors are constantly stealing my wallet. And then coming around and returning it to make themselves feel better. Well, that is deeply suspicious. That is the deepest suspicious view of the world, really. Deeply suspicious. No, it's just logical.

Like, why are your neighbors returning it the most? I mean, how many times has your wallet fallen out of your pocket in your own garden, and your neighbor, who just happened to be trimming the hedge, goes, oh, I'll return that to, I'll return that to Neil later. I've been married for 10 years. I no longer controlled by wallet. I'm not letting near my wallet. I have a hand with a stifend at the end of every week. And that is all I know. It's basically money is put into the prison commissary for me and I spend it on razors and toilet paper. And that's it.

I've been to Finland. I like the Finns. I think they're happy. Eight years in a row though, Andy, it's a farmer's league. It's a farmer's league at this point. Even PSG haven't won it eight times in a row. I'm against nation states getting involved in this sort of competition. The Finns are the light with themselves in my experience. And Annie Panto, six of the seven dwarves are named happy at this point. McDonald's most popular meal is just called the meal in Finland because all meals in Finland are happy. The Fonz's sitcom was called Days. Pharrell Williams, biggest song has no name in Helsinki.

And what's really important in this is, OK, the Finns did well, but Ireland was the 20th happiest country. And then we started the UK was 24th and we immediately jumped five places to the 15th happiest country. That is how we measure it. Other countries have fallen down the rankings one the reasons apparently is because particularly Americans now they don't eat together anymore and eating together is one of those things that creates this sort of social cohesion and it is hard to to argue with that. If you look at the stats, like, for example, like 12 out of 13 people were delighted at the last supper. I mean, one had a lot on his

mind. He was a bit worried about what was about to come. But all of this kind of leaves two questions. One, why are they happy? And two, what the f***** more do the Italians want? What do they want? They've got the best food, the best wine, the best language, the best climate, the best art, the most beautiful people, they've created... were at stark six months of the year. Grow a pair, put nine out of ten on the farm and we could all be happy. You're clearly the winner you moany, moany bastards. That's a very valid point and you know the the top of the table is dominated by Nordic countries. Finland top, Denmark second, Iceland third, Sweden fourth, Norway seventh with the Netherlands and Costa Rica storming into the top 10 in sixth place, followed by Israel in eighth, which I don't know what you can read into that. Anyway, but declining happiness and social trust in the US and Europe has been cited as a factor in the increased political polarization because a lot of modern politics

does depend on telling people how shit things are and pretending you could make them better. So America was still relatively high in this in the top 25, but this was from last year. And bearing in mind that the findings have, according to the president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Jeffrey Sachs, that happiness is rooted in trust, kindness and social connection. I think America might be challenging Afghanistan in next year's global happiness index. One thing that really worried me was

the disappointing performance from countries that play test test cricket. Because obviously, you know, I've long assumed that, that, you know, I've long assumed that that's, you know, that's the sole key to happiness. And none of the top 10 countries are test cricket playing nations. Australia is 11th, New Zealand 12th, Ireland 15th, recent addition to the roster of test playing nations, I think just to bump up the overall average happiness because they're brought in Afghanistan at the same time. The UK, encompassing England, 23rd, South Africa, 95th, the only two countries that are part of the West Indian, Cricut,

Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, both in the 70s. India, 118th, Pakistan, 109th, Sri Lanka, 133rd, Zimbabwe, 14rd Bangladesh 134th in Afghanistan as you mentioned 147th and last of the countries in in this list and it makes me think imagine how much worse all those countries would be doing if they did not have the happiness inducing joy of test match cricket I mean Afghanistan would be even lower than absolute last. So what number is what number is Afghanistan? 147th out of the 100 not every single nation is. I mean, if you're Afghanistan and you're looking at the numbers and you're going to be like the hundred and forty fifth or one hundred

and forty eighth, you're going to go for one hundred and forty seventh. Just so you can shout it out. Surely. Surely you're going for 147th. And maybe they don't need to play cricket more, they need to play snooker more. That is the route to all. Does Israel play cricket? Well I mean not to an elite level I think it's I think it's fair to say. I'm just wondering I I mean, if you're playing cricket in Israel, where is the boundary? Is it, are you hitting it to 1967 boundaries? Are you hitting it to boundaries from the 40s? I mean it's a complicated question isn't it? Along with Costa Rica, Mexico has made a first appearance in the top 10.

So that great big wall might prove useful after all in the USA for keeping people in rather than keeping people out. Just a little more on why Finland is so happy. I've done a bit of research into this. And as you mentioned, one of the key factors could well be that they look across the border to Russia and think, yeah, it could be worse. That's got to help, frankly. They became independent after several hundred years of non-independence. And looking at it from a British point of view, that appears to make people happier

than being a fading post-imperial force harking after a fictitious age when it was better than it is now. And are forced to play cricket. That's a very generous welfare state. Huge number of lakes and islands, 168,000 lakes, 179,000 islands. That's one lake and island per 30 to 33 citizens. And surely that's got to just boost your morale if you basically think you own any given time around about 3% of a lake and 3% of an island. That's surely got to be do a lot for your general mood and optimism.

You get to pick the 30 people because I would move to Finland tomorrow if I knew when I got that they'd be like, just find your 30 people, friends, whatever family and we'll give you a lake and an island. I'd be like, yes, yes, I'm coming. I was interested by the use of the returned wallets as a metric. And apparently people are twice as likely to return wallets as we expect them to be. And it's interesting to see, you know, what does that teach us that we are innately pessimistic, but also more moral than we think we are, or just that we spend too much time watching the news, see the kind of people who get to the top and think we're all f***ing c***s. So I don't know the science on that. Or is it simply that- Can't believe you rubbed the Ryanair motto for this, Redjays. or that wallets are not as full as they used to be and people can't be asked to go through

the tedious logistics and paperwork of stealing someone else's identity and using the contents of their wallet on the off chance that there's some actual money in those bank accounts. It's a sad reflection on everyone and everything. I think basically we're just too lazy now to bother keeping a wallet that we've randomly picked up in the street and I don't think that reflects well on humanity at all. It's like a 19th century punch magazine ends up, they're too lazy to steal that random group of people. Yeah.

The UK languishing in 23rd place, dropped out of the Premier League of world's happiest, happiest nations. But, but I mean, the thing is, I think the only time that, that out of the Premier League of world's happiest nations. But I mean, the thing is, I think the only time that we in the UK are happy is when we are unhappy. So inevitably just the natural cycle of that is going to bounce us up and down a bit. The happier we are, the less happy we become. And then we revel in our own national misery and that makes us happy. And so it's a kind of a fairly, you know, self-contained controlling cycle of grump stroke happiness.

So it's all timing of the question then, isn't it? So are you happy? No, I'm not happy. How about now? Yeah, I'm fine now. How about now? No, not happy. So it's just about the timing of when you ask the question.

That's what you're saying. Yeah. So, so, so much of life is. It's a Newton's cradle, isn't it? You just, one end is happy, the other end is not, and they just bang each other back and forth. Yeah. That's, I think Newton discovered that because he had six testicles. Anyway, that's, that's neither here nor there.

Neither rear or his ball. So you could drop, yeah, in the mid, in the mid-twenties now, to try and ensure that we keep our place out of the top 20. The government this week has announced an overhaul of the welfare system, under which, according to some experts, over a million disabled people will lose thousands of pounds in benefits. The overall plan is to save five billion pounds of public expenditure. Now, five billion is one of those numbers that sounds really big until you realize how little of the overall national expenditure it is, which is considerably less than 1%. And trying to find this money from over a million disabled people,

I don't know if it's, you know, Labour trying to up-sheistify itself to try and hold on to the whatever Tory votes it won at the last election. Debbie Abrahams, the Labour Chair of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, warned against, quotes, balancing the books on the backs of sick and disabled people. Now, this figure of five billion, five billion per year, I looked at the

Times Rich List of the richest people in the United Kingdom. The top 20 had a combined wealth of 303 billion pounds. The gap between the top richest people, the Hinduja family and the second, Leonard Blavatnik is eight billion. So the Hindujas, should they wish, could pay the five billion cost of the first year of this scheme and still be the richest people in Britain by three billion pounds. So I guess that highlights why it's a kind of politically odd way of going about raising five billion. You could line up the 33 richest people in Britain, all worth six billion pounds or more, and draw lots.

And even if the poorest of the 33 richest people in Britain was pulled out of that, had to pay the five billion, they would still have a billion pounds to keep ticking over through their new harshly straitened circumstances. If they combined to pick up that tab for 10 years, that would cost them 6% of their combined wealth, meaning that they would still be worth collectively almost 750 billion between them and individually at least 330 million pounds each. So the government's still unwilling to contemplate a wealth tax for reasons that neither I nor basic mathematics fully understands. But also to factor into this, the wealth of the wealthiest people in the United Kingdom

is going up. In January, Oxfam issued a report showing that the wealth of Britain's billionaires was going up by 35 million pounds a day, meaning that the British billionaires collective wealth each year could pay for the entire five billion pound cost of this, and still have let me just work this out on a calculator, almost eight billion pounds of change for them to get the bus back to all of their multiple homes, and still have all of the wealth they had anyway, completely untouched. Now, I'm not saying this is a better solution than bringing anxiety, stress,

poverty, and depression to the less fortunate in society. I'm just saying it might be, and maybe it's worth just at least trialing it in some way to see how it pans out. It's not what you expect, is it, from a Labour government? Is it reducing benefits, changing winter fuel allowance? It's like waking up tomorrow, is it, from a Labour government, is it? Reducing benefits, changing winter fuel allowance. It's like waking up tomorrow with Nigel Farage. If you woke up tomorrow and Nigel Farage was the reformed Prime Minister and his first press conference was in front of a podium that says,

increase the votes, you'd just be like, what? What? Like, you've got to use your... PM Farage, in an unusual move, has redirected a billion pounds of funding away from a red trouser and tweet factory to a facility to make more dinghies for people fleeing desperate situations. This coming hot on the heels of his campaign to declare the late Vera Lynn a non-binary icon is a bit of a change in direction. You just don't expect it from them, do you? I mean, and all this money, five billion quid, is probably gold. The money's been, it's mainly been saved from incapacity benefits as far as I can see, and it'll probably go into defense spending, right?

So if the Western world goes to war, we'll send young men to war and they'll be injured and they'll come back to the UK and guess what they'll be looking for? Here, Star Wars just, I mean, I think it's very logical that if you're going to have to face someone in a duel, who do you want to face? One of the 30 richest people in the UK who can probably afford their own personal, you know, sword fighting tutor, cause that's what they're called. Or do you want to face somebody at the other end of the spectrum who only has one arm who you're gonna fight in a duel right yes well maybe that's why they've announced it around this anniversary

what a grim job it is though like that's you're gonna go you're gonna determine if people get much needed support imagine how much that corrodes your soul. There's no way that that doesn't spill over to the rest of your life. You're just gonna be traumatized by that in future years. You're just gonna be watching films shouting at the Captain Hook, no, Ironside, no, Professor X, no, my left foot, okay maybe. Just, just, it's, oh, it's kind of grim on every level. Well, because obviously there's some confusion over the logic behind this. So if any of you can explain to us why taking lots of money from people who have not very

much money is politically preferable to taking an indiscernible amount from people who have loads, do email us. We will print off your emails and hurl them into a disused quarry whilst screaming at the futility of the politics. Moving down the table to the 111th happiest country in the world, which is on this year's table Ukraine. Vladimir Putin has agreed a 30-day halt on attacks on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine. See, he is a man of humanity, pity and generosity, after all. Some people have expressed concerns that maybe Putin and Trump are not the most trustworthy of peace

negotiators. I don't know if Putin and Trump make mathematically a double negative, which makes a positive and will bring about eternal world peace. We don't know. I mean, they are essentially kind of wolves in wolves costumes, also wearing wolves gonna wolf t-shirt slogans and wolf pride badges

with audibly rumbling stomachs and slavering at a rate of 22.3 liters of slobber per minute. Do you think this is progress, Neil? You are our official finding a glimmer of light in an ocean of darkness, correspondent. Oh my God, it's so depressing. The idea that Trump is some sort of master dealmaker is ridiculous, right? First of all, imposing levies kills trade globally. And pretty much everybody agrees in that because you get these tit for tat scenarios. Right. So my friend writes for a US topical TV show and I do one here and we try to send

each other reciprocal tariff jokes and they were stopped at customs. It's an absolute disgrace. Putin has rejected the idea of a ceasefire. Trump is still touting this as a victory. Imagine getting no concessions and calling that a victory. Imagine a child said to you, I wrote to Santa Claus for a bike, a PlayStation and some trainers. We had an excellent dialogue, a frank and robust exchange of views. And he agreed to give me nothing. Nothing. Santa Claus gave me nothing. Not only did he give me nothing, he also added preconditions about the process going forward. Any recent territorial land grabs by Lapland must be

respected. Any contribution by the North Korean elves must be overlooked. And all reindeer must be allowed to spout pro-North pole nonsense on Fox, especially Vixen. This is nonsense. Look at his record in terms of doing deals. He's going to start a trade war with Denmark over Greenland for God's sake. Do you know what Denmark imports into the US? Ozenpic and hearing aids. So imagine making it harder to get weight loss drugs and hearing aids when you're in a beat man who's recently been shot in the ear. This is insanity. Which of his sons did he send to Greenland to drum up interest? Don Jr. He has two older sons. One swarthyer and darker-complected,

and one lighter of hair, almost strawberry-blonde. You have two choices to send your son to Greenland and you don't send Eric the Red. You're an idiot. If I was doing a deal with the US and one of my sons was called Amerigo Vespucci Christopher Columbus Delamere, he would be the one that I would send. And he's criticizing Zelensky, right? This is a man who avoided Vietnam because he had bone spurs

on his feet. Opoity calcium, that's what stopped him going to Vietnam, upper the calcium. You still want Ukraine's rare earth metals. Your feet couldn't control your own mineral deposits, but you still want theirs. All of this, it speaks to Trump, he just doesn't know what he's doing. You know what, map making businesses have a lot to answer for because they have historically over embellished how large Greenland is in comparison to the rest of the world and now Trump's been looking at that map going that's a nice bit like isn't as big as you think it is like honestly if you really wanted a

landmass go for Australia you know that's that they're almost kind of a continent but not quite like go for that, but no Greenland. Not immediately though, because I'm supposed to be going to Australia to watch cricket in November and I need him to hold off at least until after the ashes has finished. I don't know if you've noticed your face, but I think you'll be fine. Andy, no matter where you go, you'll be fine under, under a Trump, Putin, Netanyahu coalition, you'll be fine under a Trump, Netanyahu coalition. You'll be fine. I wasn't expecting Mercator, the guy who came up with the projection that over

Emcee's how big Greenland is, to be the main source of blame for the next war in the Arctic. But I mean, you learn on this podcast like nothing else. But I mean, you learn on this podcast, like nothing else. Well, we will have full coverage of how the peace deal pans out currently. It's not started too well, I think it's fair to say. And history tells us that we cannot judge a peace for years, decades, even centuries afterwards. But obviously modern attention spans demand a definitive verdict within the length of time it takes an influencer to advise you to rub strawberry yoghurt into your eyeballs for that super glimmering smile. But we will tell you if despite everything, Trump's genius negotiating tactic of giving Putin everything he wants so that the Ukraine situation becomes so desperate they simply have to negotiate, bears lasting fruit for a better planet. for a better planet.

Moving on in other statue news now, Neil, you are the people in Dublin groping the metal breasts of statues correspondent. And it's an unwieldy business card. A statue of Molly Malone in Dublin has come to media prominence in the last week after a campaign to try to stop people groping its metal tits, which is a technical sculptural term. I like the way you said metal tits as if a metal statue would be all metal and the tit possibly would be made of a different material.

So you get to say metal tits. Like, have you? I know the Irish and their wooden titted metal statues. They just want to be different. So just quickly, Molly Mallow, the statue went up 37 years ago. Yeah. And people have been groping a metal version of a probably fictional late 17th century woman who

sold shellfish out of a wheelbarrow, then died of a fever, and came back as a ghost. I guess that shows there's a niche, a niche for everything. You can get anything on Pornhub, but it's just, it's just ridiculous. I am. Yeah. There's a statue and it's, it's kind of near Grafft Street near that. It's hard to explain where it is, but, uh, yeah.

And if you look at it now, it basically is kind of a copper color on most of it. And then two large gold baubles, uh, are on the the on the front because people have been groping a statue. I don't remember this happening when I was growing up by the way. I think it's got a relatively recent thing and look so it's not some sort of Blarney Stone kind of get look. It's been a this mis-spread on various tourist websites apparently and if you grop this thing and you will get good luck it is Dublin once again proving itself as the classiest city in the world the Italians throw a throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain and you will

return to Rome once again and we have grab a pair of knockers and you'll be back for it it's not great I mean we assume it's source doing it. Again, my job was to bring the lighter side to this podcast. I'm going to be optimistic in this. And I think the very best reading of this is that the health messaging has gotten through and she is checking herself regularly. That is what I hope is happening, but I fear it is the first scenario I'm afraid. I think it's a remarkable statue. If you have a look at the picture of it, it's funny that people do still grope her because she does look like she has some kind of infection

that's slowly rising up her decollage and could well be infectious, whether that be scabies or you know, I'm not sure some kind of psoriasis. But what amazes me about this story is the fact that this outrage means they're going to try and raise her up on a plinth, not paid for by the Americans. They're going to try and raise her up on a plinth so that she's too high for anybody to touch.

And the fact that all that one university student had to do was complain about this disgusting behavior, and they're like, yes, we should do something about that immediately. And yet the number of women that are being sexually assaulted on a daily basis, barely anything's been done about that. And I just went, so the answer is women be more statue-like, have metal tits, and then people will actually pay attention to what's going on and perhaps provide us all with plinths that we could stand on to avoid being groped. This story is actually reminiscent of this. This happens also to another statue in Italy, in Verona.

There's a statue of Juliet. And so whereas if you, if you grope Molly Malone's tits, you will have luck and potentially return to Dublin. Apparently if you grope Juliet's tit, you will have luck and love. Uh, and I find that also rather disturbing, um, that they go, if you grope this virgin, you will be lucky in love. And the messaging there is a bit bothersome. I mean, you know, Molly Malone at least was thoughtful, at least know what she

was doing, uh, and, and probably would allow you a grope for a groat. I don't know what your old money was, Neil. Um, did you have groats? Well, when she was around, it was the same as the UK. So it was shillings and pence and all that sort of crack. And she sold cockles. Oh, really? Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. So was shilling from a shag or whatever? So I now know that when walking down a dark alley, if I do feel threatened, that what I need to do is stand very, very still and be made a metal. Fully metal.

In terms of the science of whether touching the statue's breasts does or does not bring good luck. I've done my own research into this. I've been to Dublin maybe five or six times over the course of my life. I've never fondled Malone's metallic frond. And I've been, but I've been quite lucky in life. I think it's fair to say. Whereas my fictional friend, Strevel, he did on his one trip to Dublin,

he befondled the bronze bubiés and he sadly, swiftly lost everything in an ill-advised pyramid scheme. So hard to get planning permission for such a space inefficient form of burial these days. He then lost an arm when a crocodile cheated him in a game of slaps and was last heard of trying to earn a living,

charging people 20 pound a pot not to disturb their grandparents' funerals by standing at the back of the room singing you're dead and you know you are. So my research into this suggests that the statue does not bring good luck. I know that's a joke, but I'm 100% going to do that at a funeral.

And now, now Stravio is going to lose out on his pit payments as well. Poor guy. Really kicking him under down. That brings us to the end of this week's bugle. Next week, you can, if you're in Belfast or Dublin or both or anywhere near that, you can see me do my show. I'm in Belfast on Friday, Dublin on Saturday, Glasgow on Sunday. I think that is full.

Tickets at my website andyzoltzman.co.uk. Neil, anything to plug? Yeah, I do a podcast called Why Would You Tell Me That? Where we have weird and wonderful facts. And I'm also on tour at the moment so I've just added an extra Leicester Square Theatre in November and I've done all around the UK, the Glee Club in Birmingham and the Glee Club in Cardiff. They're all on my website neildalameric.com. I'm going on tour in September so those tickets are now on sale from my website realena.com.

I'm going all over England, Scotland, and Wales at the moment, but I think we still have a few more dates to announce, so just keep an eye on that on my website. There you go, Buglers. Don't forget, if you want to join a Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to help keep our show free, flourishing, and independent, go to the buglepodcast.com.

Subscribers will also get exclusive access to the monthly-ish Ask Andy show in which I answer your questions about anything in the known universe. We will be back in a couple of weeks. Next week we will have a sub-bugle for you. Until then, goodbye. The End