The Bugle - Intellectual Cats WILL Run The World

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

🎧 Support The Bugle! Become a Team Bugle subscriber for bonus episodes, exclusive videos, and that warm fuzzy feeling that you’re funding nonsense: thebuglepodcast.comThis week, Andy Zaltzman is joined by Alice Fraser and Anuvab Pal as the trio plunge head first into a whirlwind of headlines,  from irritable emojis and French public holidays to comets and judgemental pets.And of course the team check-in to the land of Trump only to find a disappointed Donald celebrating the FIFA Club World Cup. 📺 Watch Realms Unknown, our visual fantasy-comedy show, on YouTubeProduced by Chris Skinner 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 4348 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world with me audio newspaper for a visual world with me, Andy Zoltzman. It is Wednesday the 16th of July 2025 and I'm delighted to be joined in person in a bizarrely grey studio that we've never worked in before on a gorgeous oval table that looks like might have had some weird mystical medieval shit going on at some point. Fresh off a plane from Australia, Alice Fraser. Hello, Alice. Hello, Andy. I am delighted by the oval table. It's for when you don't want true egalitarianism in your nights. Also joining us, about to be fresh onto a plane back to India, Anubhav Pal. Hello, Anubhav.

Hello, hello. This is a great reunion of, you know, we're usually on a Zoom trying to stare at each other and now, you know, one bugler on a Zoom trying to stare at each other and now, you know, one bugler in, one bugler out. I think that's how the Commonwealth should be. Now normally I take my refuge from the news in cricket, but this week there was a nail gnawingly soul-shreddingly gripping test match between England and India at Lord's and I've had to dive now first into world news for a bit of soothing respite. Anubhav, you were there on the last day, ended up with England getting a slightly fortuitous and bizarre win. How has the nation of India reacted to

this traumatic loss? Well I think just like that last batsman broke into tears, I think 1.3 billion people started howling and hugging each other, except there weren't that many English people around sadly, but one thing I've realized about cricket in your country, which is that it, uh, in India, cricket's the people's game here. I feel like if you're a 40 plus man, there's a sort of medieval druid subculture Where is my people you're talking about? But they say they come across over like me from India and 45 and they just come up secretly like cricket

And and the moment you say yes you get And then they probably sit around a medieval table like this and discuss cricket And it's like a secret order that you have to get it Which I quite love I just feel it's too accessible in Everybody likes it. Where is well, I mean cricket has done a very good job of making itself less accessible in this country And I'm glad to see that is berry fruit. Yeah speaking of medieval tables I went to the medieval fair in Kaboolcha in Queensland. I took both of my children, I dressed them up as tiny medieval people. I went, there was a black snake that had to be removed from the venue and there was jousting

and I think my son became a man. He's one and a half years old and he was watching the jousting and then he just started going, yes! I'm like, yeah! I'm really into it. You know, I had the good fortune of attending a history festival in June, and one of the speakers had written a book on the guillotine, and they really tried very hard to get a guillotine. But apparently the Salisbury Council, whatever it was, they didn't allow it.

Eventually, they said, you safety gone mad. We are recording on the 16th of July. On this day in 1228, St. Francis of Assisi was canonized, Big Frank as he was known at the time, underwent the traditional canonization process of being loaded into a cannon in the Vatican and blasted up to the heavens, hence the origin of the term and from a family with an unusually high proportion of etymologists. Tomorrow, Thursday the 17th, is World Emoji Day. I don't know if any of you are celebrating emoji by pulling unusual faces. The craze, of course, inspired by Michelangelo's sensational retelling of Bible stories using emojis on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. I don't know what you guys think of the folded hands, the master emoji.

That's usually where people send it to say, I'm humbled, thank you. I absolutely hate that one. I feel like the moment someone sends me folded hands for a thank you, I want to punch them in the face. Right. I always thought that the one with the hands together was someone who just swatted a fly between their hands. See, that's a good use of it.

But I do think there's some good that's come out of it, people being reminded to eat their vegetables with all the aubergines. I think that's progress. I wonder why I keep getting hungry. Well, that leads us sort of on to our first section in the bin, as always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week we have a special conversational memes pullout, which I guess, you know, is sort of sideways move from emojis, rather than him personally sending a one second video micro snippet to friends and colleagues. We're giving you the opportunity to drop into conversation a description of a meme or nano vignette that encapsulates a feeling,

thought or reaction. So just use the following phrases randomly as reactions to people while you're conversing with them. A mole emerges from its burrow just as a golfer swings a club, narrowly missing the mole's snout. The mole expresses quirky resignation, then burrows back underground. I reckon that has a myriad of uses, the vicissitudes of fate and how it's best to just keep out of the way of things. Your conversational meme too. A donkey trampolines in a low ceilinged room, repeatedly banging its donkey head on the ceiling, but carries on regardless with a look of defiant futility in its donkey eyes. And I'd use that phrase when trying to express the frustrations of the limitations of life

or the failure to break through beyond a certain level of achievement. Conversational meme three, a toddler falls asleep and faceplants into an open medieval handwritten monk illuminated Bible. That's fairly self-explanatory. It's fairly self-explanatory because it's fairly self-explanatory because obviously a joke, a toddler never falls asleep. It just doesn't happen. Sorry, yeah, I'm a bit out of the loop to be honest. And your final conversational meme, an aubergine rising and falling, that just means whatever you want it to mean, vegetables are cool.

Our other section in the bin this week, preview of the Open Golf Championship at Royal Port Rush in Northern Ireland. We take you through some of the favorites and outsiders. Well, one of the favorites, Scotty Scheffler, world number one, who in a pre-tournament press conference asked, what is the point of playing golf for a living? You just don't see enough sports people. Actually, sports people start doing that, the whole edifice is going to crumble.

Anyway, Scheffler's rock-solid game could suit the port rush course, but he is now vulnerable to existential distractions, potentially even wandering off the final green on Sunday when four shots are head-muttering, we are but butterflies in the unending Vesuvius of time, breadcrumbs on the buttock of the elephant of history, I reject the corporeal boundaries of golfic reality I am but wind spirit and echo Let's see if that happens some of the outsiders to look out for drank Pella core of the USA Renowned as the slowest player in pro golf takes up to 13 minutes to play each part look out for his distinctive routine

And which he tries to commune with the green by summoning ancient deities of the soil to bring in good fortune Then reads a complimentary poem to the grass to carry its favour, and then just cuddles his ball for two minutes to make it relaxed before he finally strokes it with the putter. Nack Jiklus, leading Jack Nicklaus impersonator, an eerily realistic impression of the legendary US golfer in his 1970s prime, could propel Jiklus, real name bunstone arrowhead, to the top of the leaderboard. Codgel Skrykvike, the South African self-described golf mercenary, he quit the controversial Schismek Live Golf Tour due to a, quote, disappointing level of wokeness in the top levels of Saudi sports administration.

He's now working as a personal swing coach for Vladimir Putin. Of course, he's the reigning North Korean absolutely not open champion. So look out for him. And also the incredible Signor Flavio, Italian superstar, the European Tours one qualified magician recently won the prestigious Spitzbergen Invitational by hypnotizing his playing partner and the rules official. They allowed him to just place his ball in the hole. He then magic to score cards showing him 77 under par on the 72 par course to win the tournament. If he ever takes his top hat off, you know, things are about to get funky.

Full exclusive coverage of the open golf only on the Bugle podcast. Top story this week, France news. And, um, well, uh, not a lot, a huge amount is happening in the, in the UK right now, apart from just a general sense of post-imperial terminal decline. So let's cross the channel to have a look at France. And France is in absolute turmoil after it was suggested that two public holidays could be scrapped to reduce the country's national debt. If they do scrap two public holidays,

I think it'll take it down to a mere 115 in the year. I'm including weekends. But France is not taking this attempt to stop them lying down, lying down. Criticism has flown in from all sides of what they call in France, Le Spectrum Political. Jordan Bardella of the far right National Rally said cancelling

two holidays is a direct attack on our history, our roots and on working France or in this case not working France for an extra couple of days. Whereas from the left-hand side of the political seesaw Fabien Roussel of the French Communist Party described it as an organized holdup. It's devastating. I can smell the burning cars from here. I feel like they're talking about combining your first world war commemorations with your second world war commemorations. I feel, you know, basically France is in hot water with the EU because their public deficit sitting about 5.8% of their GDP, which is significantly

over the 3% limit, let's not even get started on their $3.3 trillion public debt. They certainly haven't, if you know what I mean. I mean, they need to start dealing with it. The interest alone on their debt is 60 billion euros a year, which is tracking to become their biggest budget item. Apparently, it's a mortal danger to France, this debt, and so they need to figure out how to lower their expenses as a nation. Public spending, private spending, everything, they got to tighten their belts, but not in a fashionable way. So here are some tips for French people to lower their expenses.

Number one, cut down on mistresses. 2.5 mistresses per household, I think, between everyone involved. Halve the baguette budget. Right. But of course you have to halve diagonally so that you get the nice slices. Have they tried not treating tourists like shit? And then my last suggestion, I know it's not going to be popular, but you can't, you know, you can't, uh, sneer at these things.

Um, maybe they should resurrect some aristocrats. A little bit of a Marie Antoinette back on her game. They seem to have a lot of money. Yeah, bring him back. Well, I got an email from a colleague in France, it was a journalist colleague. Now you would think journalists are people who are supposed to stay on the game.

His email says, we'll be out of the office and we'll reply as soon as possible in September. That's either he's left his out of office on or he's put it on early. office and will reply as soon as possible in September. He's left his out of office on, or he's put it on early. I don't know if any other country has months long out of office as the French do. My view is that they're getting this wrong, that actually what they need is more public holidays because how do we know that that wouldn't be even worse if there weren't so many days off?

If I recall from my experience of the workplace, which lasted just under a year in a low grade business publishing house in the late 1990s, I worked far more efficiently when I knew a public holiday was actually no, it wasn't that I worked far more efficiently before they put a TV in the office that we could watch the cricket and the tennis off. But the point stands, the point definitely stands that you need a mentally fresh work, but you want to work off your national debt. I mean, there's different ways of doing it. Either you can just pretend it doesn't exist, which I think is the American approach.

I mean, France is used to, you know, it had Haiti in debt for almost 200 years. Um, so it could just, just replicate that relationship, but with itself, uh, and, you know, just, just basically stretch the process out, uh, or it could, you know, double the amount of national holidays and extend weekends to four days rather than two. And, you know, even if it didn't reduce the national debt, everyone will be happier. One of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life is on the left bank in Paris at the cafe frequented by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. And there's a sign there that says the three things that ruin the world.

And it's written there, fascism, terrorism, and employment. And I think the French have lived by that. So any sort of employment is seen at the same level of terrorism. The Socialist Party MP Boris Vallow accused the government of always asking more from those who have little and so little from those who have much is neither serious, effective, nor just. No, you're quite right on that. But it is easy.

And it also avoids the awkwardness of those who have much saying, no, we're quite happy as it is having much. So could you please ask someone else? I mean, this is the barrier that governments always come up against. I know I find it very socially awkward to ask people for favors too. Yeah. So yeah, it's certainly asking billionaires for- Yes. It's tricky, isn't it? Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny scrap of their outrageous earnings that they couldn't possibly spend in a lifetime, even if they tried. Yeah.

But you know, it's just really hard to ask a question of someone above the noise of a private jet taking off to fly to a tax haven. They say eat the rich. You wouldn't even have to eat that much of one billion. This is the French revolution they need. Cannibalism. If they do want more national holidays, I can suggest maybe commemorating England's victory in the 2019 Cricket World Cup final. And also the Titanic last day of the the recently concluded laws test. That'd be the

14th of July. We just check. Oh, no, they've got that covered with Bastille. Oh, that's a shame. Well, it's gonna have to be another date. Let's pick one at random. The 26th of October can be a new French national holiday in which France can tune into the Bugle 18th birthday live stream show. We will be coming to you live from the Leicester Square Theatre. We will have Nish and Alice involved and other other Bugle co-hosts to commemorate 18 years of this podcast is now old enough to murder someone in the name of a state. Anyway, further details will be coming your way soon, bugglers, but do put that date in your diary wherever you are in the world.

In other France news, the Beyer Tapestry, France's best known 11th century piece of needlework is set to come back to the UK on loan for the first time in over 900 years. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Bayer Tapestry is a 70-meter long, almost 940-year-old artwork stroke jumped up propaganda needle blast masquerading as a luxury super, super king-sized bed sheet. It shows Team GB's 1-0 win over France in the 1066 European catching an arrow in your eye socket competition. And it's coming across the channel in a swap deal in which the Bayer Tapestry heads north and celebrity Britain based relics including the 12th century Lewis chess pieces swung off on a French exchange trip. Huge excitement amongst embroidery fans here in this country. The Tapestry's Home Museum in Bayer, appropriately enough, what a coincidence that is, is being renovated

in time for the 1000th birthday of the late King William I, the Battle of Hastings Star, aka William the Conqueror, aka Big Billy Conks, who sadly passed away before he could see the tapestry depicting his famous victory displayed in the British Museum in London in a couple of years time alongside a load of QARs. Questionably acquired relics is now the term for the rest of the stuff in the British Museum. I mean, this is, I know you're a huge history fan, Anuval, and probably a huge tapestry fan. There's been a huge debate on the Beo tapestry around whether a bunch of the things stitched on

are penises or not penises. Have you heard about this? It's a big thing that the British Embroidered Association had a whole thing going on and figuring out how many such members existed across the tapestry and were some members, were some of them jokes, built-in jokes? So it's been a massive, it's going to reignite again once everyone can see it for themselves. Yes. I mean, there are an extraordinary number of wangs in it. I mean,

people did have it. It is conclusive proof because, you know, often history, you know, papers over these things, but people in the 11th century did have cocks. And now we'll see it in the British Museum. Well, exactly, because people have doubted this for some time. And, you know, a lot of the other sort of artworks from the time don't show conclusively one way or the other the presence of willies, but the Bay of Tappishly, I think, is pretty much conclusive proof. I think it's very important at this time of increasing polarization globally,

a lot of militarization happening, the UK is having to pull up its bootstraps and get back on the arming itself game. I feel like going back to our roots and taking some instruction from the Beow tapestry, going into battle with your pants down, that kind of thing. I feel like that could really reignite national pride. In terms of the dignity of battle and politics, people just waggling their privates around is something that I think would definitely improve the world as it is now. War tends to be fought in a very angry manner rather than a very childish manner, according

to the... A number of historians have commented that, you know, it was necessary for ventilation and such things when you're running across fields, you know, fighting armies. The other thing I want to bring up is great cool by the British Museum because loads of arguments have been made about them returning things. Instead they're getting more things, which I mean, maybe this is a good time to ask for more Elgin marbles. Yeah, the whole Parthenon maybe. I mean, it is a Swapsies deal, announced by the under pressure boss dogs Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron last week.

Starmer did look understandably nervous at the prospect of a tapestry winging its way to London that depicts an English leader who had recently won a significant victory Failing to back up that win and rapidly subsiding to a career-ending defeat as happened to Prince As happened to King Harold in the Battle of Hastings So you can see why he's a little wary of of this is there anything of historical French significance that exists in Britain? Could be returned part of a war I mean, there's loads of Roman stuff if the Italians wanted stuff you could give them York But my question is whether loan signings like this are really the way to build up your museums long-term could be returned part of a war. I mean, there's loads of Roman stuff. If the Italians wanted stuff, you could give them York. But my question is whether loan signings like this are really the way to build up your museums long-term.

To me, when you get a loan signing, they're just there for the money really. And I can't help but worry that the Bay of Tapestry is gonna pick up its paycheck and just phone it in. Sure, it'll still be an irreplaceable historical artifact, but are we gonna see it at its best, really going for it on the needlework detail, digging into the reality of 11th century warfare and politics and showcasing an unnecessary number of Blonkers. I just

don't think so somehow. Also, as part of the transfer, not only we get in the taxi, but we're getting some of the contemporary tabloid newspapers from the time that have been in museums in France as well, with headlines such as, nor nor blimey Harold suffers Hastings pasting a storm in Normans romp to victory. Sax appeal Saxons up in arms after Harold down by arrow fired from offside position and hard luck at Saxon sleepiness after beating Viking Harold Hardrada at Stamford Bridge. Crucial and disappointing home defeat says our battle correspondent Athelstan of Malmesbury. So look out for those as well.

In exciting comet news, astronomers claim to have found what might be the world's oldest comet. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it took an enormous telescope to spot it. It's clearly not a bird or a plane, but it could possibly be a really old comet. Still chugging, maybe not as fast as it once was. Maybe needs to take more breaks than the younger comets. Occasionally just stops for a snooze. But still, a comet is named 3i stroke Atlas, and it may be 3 billion years older than our own solar system, according to astronomers from the University of Oxford. Sorry, sky boffins. I don't know.

I mean, obviously, comets always portend some fateful happening, Alice. What do you expect to? I mean, this is the great thing about humanity is that no matter what you're looking at, it probably portends something dreadful happening because we do just keep doing dreadful things. I'm excited by this comet. Matthew Hopkins, who's in Oxford, he told BBC News we're all very excited by 3i slash Atlas showing that Oxford astronomers

get excited by anything in space. Really, I don't think it's proof. Basically, they just look at stuff that's going on and they go, it's probably old because they know that they're never going to be disproven. The comet's never going to like swing by earth and go, you know, fuck you, I look good for my age. I remember when Haley's was the big one, right? Do you remember Haley's comet that went around there? Here's the thing though, I don't have any strong views on comets because it's like fireworks. They go around. Asteroids,

that I care about because when I hear asteroid, I think, oh, this is it. So I think astronomers need to be careful. They just need to announce stuff that's coming straight at us. Not stuff that's flying around us. So it's like a thing to see in the evening. Matthew Hopkins, of course, used to be the witch finder general in the mid 17th century. Good to see he's moved on from his career as a mid-17th century witch finder to work in astronomy at Oxford University.

I guess the witch finding business isn't what it was, and astronomy is probably a steadier income than witch finding. Is he paid per comet discovered? Well, this is the thing, as far as I know, from the astronomers that I know, it's just brutal internecine fighting for like one minute on one of these powerful telescopes. And they want to then, they're incentivized then to say that anything they're looking at is interesting, which objectively it's not.

It's just very far away space. Yes. So basically I feel like the incentives are misaligned here and we're not sure if it's as interesting as they say it is because if we looked at it, we wouldn't be interested in it. True. Until there are some slimy green aliens, that's the message from this show.

Shut the f*** up, astronomers. Absolutely correct. I have a friend who works at NASA and he studies Titan, which is I think one of the moons of Saturn. Right. And they've always said there's water on the moons of Saturn, could be life. Now how does he get yearly promotions? Because he goes in every day and he just keeps staring at Titan.

And it's not like Titan's giving him new shit every minute. So how is he getting promotions? What is his work thing? You know, like maybe it's a very steady job where not much is expected. I don't know. I guess, you know, do you get promoted if you're really good with the moons of Saturn and then actually get the moons of Jupiter and you end up with the actual moon here. You're getting closer and closer, is that?

Possibly. I think the principle is it's like a watched pot never boils, and so if you keep an eye on all the planets, they're not gonna do anything sus. Yeah, yeah. Keep your eye on them. And they're very territorial, these astronomers. So like, if their job is, if this person's job is Titan,

and you start messing about, you know, the other astronomers going to go and complain. It's quite like East Germany in the 1970s. Global love affair news now and well the smoldering romance between Australia and China, Alice, has taken a few steps forward, I understand. Yes, it's very exciting news for us in our global political positioning, maneuvering between the giant of America and the giant of China. Apparently, Xi Jinping really likes Anthony Albanese. He spent quite a lot of time being friendly with him, which is super exciting for us as Australians knowing that we could be absolutely destroyed by either of our major superpowers with whom we have friendly relations. It is being seen

in Australian circles as potentially a step towards closer friendship with China in light of potentially more unstable relationship with America. But Australia, we just sort of have to play these two big guys off against each other and hope that we get some of the trickle-down fun as they try and show off to one another. Curious to know, if China did attack Taiwan, would Australia come out in a big way to defend the island of Taiwan. We would certainly speak very strongly and say something like, that was not nice. That's the thing. Everyone needs semiconductors and Australians are the closest to defending semiconductors. I mean, none of our phones would work if the Chinese decided. Nor would small orchestras if you didn't have any semiconductors.

Well, recently America said that we might have to pay some more for the submarine project that we're meant to be doing and that it's not necessarily guaranteed that we're going to be doing the submarine thing with them. So this feels also maybe like a, quite a strong show of like, well, we've got other options, you know, trying to make America jealous by wearing a low cut shirt and going out with our ex boyfriend. a low cut shirt and going out with our ex-boyfriend. My major concern is just that whatever Australia needs to do to stop a Chinese nuclear attack on Australia before the end of the forthcoming Ashes series, I'm on board with.

But again, when I look at like top world hotspots where a nuclear bomb could drop, Perth and the Gabba in Brisbane are not on my list, but then again, I don't know how real politic works. Maybe they're up there. Yeah, I mean, that pitch in Perth is pretty bouncy. So yeah, I mean, a nuclear strike could really, really impact on team selection if you don't think the pitch is going to play the way you thought it was going to play. I had a fight with a man in Perth last week.

Oh, right. He wanted to take a photo of my baby. Five o'clock in the morning in a noodle shop. That sounds like the start of one hell of a country song. And that's how all nuclear wars start. I think it begins there and then yeah. start. I think it begins there and then yeah. Animals news now and well, there's a couple of stories that really worry me as a participant in the evolutionary race in which, you know, our great species has been in really well for quite

a long time. I'm increasingly concerned that we're going to get caught up, possibly overtaken and almost certainly eaten at some point. This one story about a pet food company's efforts to understand the cat's psychology makes me think that they are particularly worried about cats exerting their vengeance over humans for centuries, millennia, even of domestic exploitation. Well, this is a sort of a really interesting story. Basically, this cat food company, very large corporation, I think they're owned by Mars originally, they have honed in on a problem that cat owners have that dog owners don't have, which is that cat owners are deeply insecure about whether their cats like them or not. Every cat owner is an anxious attachment kind of person and every cat is an avoidant attachment kind of creature. And so they're trying to figure out how to create

a feedback mechanism whereby the cat shows gratitude to its owner, thereby creating more of a bond with the owner and therefore more people buying cats, which means more people buying cat treats. It is a very trickle-down approach to the problem of how to make cats not c***s. Yeah. I mean, we had cats when I was a kid and I didn't have any sort of anxiety or insecurity about whether or not our cats liked me. I knew full well that they f***ing hated me. I mean, otherwise why would they have repeatedly urinated in my bed?

I think they are cats are unreliable individualists. I've seen nothing to dissuade me of that. I think we need to try and make them feel more insecure. Look, I think cats are very insecure because the only people I've ever known with that level of aloofness are just sort of looking out the window contemplating all of their regrets at all times. I find cats somewhere between French intellectuals and an Indian parent. Nothing is ever good enough. No amount of knowledge, no amount of success you bring to the table is good enough. I think human beings were meant to have stupid pets.

I mean, I have, I have a dog. I get unbelievable amount of love. Uh, when he sees me, whether I'm there, not there sometimes it doesn't even have to be me, someone who looks like me, which a lot of people do. I think something about stupidity and pet ownership go hand in hand. something about stupidity and pet ownership go hand in hand. I don't know if we're ready for another intellectual mind game manipulation with a pet, after you've done it in the workplace and with family,

and with finances. Do you want your pet also to display that level of machination? If you want a cat to be grateful, get a dog, they're bred to be fawning sycophants. They're, you know, they've got to, they get a, they have been engineered to get a dopamine hit when they see you. It is sort of, you know, if you did that in a movie about a person, it would be one of those dystopian ones where a sexy robot lady is in love with a media command and

then realizes that he's tricked her and murders him. So we've all been there. We've all been there. I mean, I can understand why cats feel deeply inadequate, but particularly in the age of TVs, where cats will be sitting on the sofa, nature documentary on, they see their evolutionary cousins taking down a wildebeest or emitting a roar that can be heard 10 miles away. And they think, you know, they have to beg for some little nibbles.

Maybe that's why they're chasing the laser pointer because they hope they can seize the laser and they're by the means of production. I can see why they're not really, uh, not feeling great about themselves. And rightly so this story really worries me that scientists, um, who once again, had not been focusing on what they should be focusing on, have apparently discovered that animals react to secret sounds emitted by plants. I mean, this is what we all feared as humans when we evoluted our way beyond the animal kingdom and became a different brand and category of living thing, prancing around in our special techno industrial universe, divorcing ourselves from nature and biology, striking out alone,

having outgrown and outclassed our rivals in the Darwinian race. But the fight back is beginning. Animals and plants teaming up to plot our downfall. And what's particularly worrying is that for so long, plants and animals have been rivals, you know, antagonists, as anyone who's ever watched a panda savaging a bamboo plant or a squirrel forcibly occupying a tree or a dog wazzing on a blackberry bush, will testify. But now they are ganging up against us. Yeah.

Now you've got an otter being muttered, seditious talk by a daffodil. Apparently female moths avoid laying their eggs on tomato plants if they made noises that are associated with distress indicating they might be unhealthy. So the female moths like, oh, I wouldn't, you know, feeling empathetic towards the tomato plants. But I don't know, I already feel worried that everyone's talking about me behind my back. Now I have to worry that an oak tree is slagging me off to a squirrel.

Insects need to be able to fill out Airbnb reviews, you know? You know, I'm just like a size thing, right? I'm a small wasp. I've just gone into this plant to sleep for the night. I expect silence. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's my resting area, right? Suddenly I've got noises, I've got opinions coming from the plant.

I've got points of view. I'm not up for all that. Now, where does that wasp go? He has no consumer protection. Yeah. You know, I mean, yes, some human will write an article about it, but you know, I mean, the wasp has to deal with all these evolutionary problems with plants having points of view and say, what are your politics before you stay here?

They'd rise up against us, but they're too busy leaving each other negative Yelp reviews. Obviously, mushrooms have been doing their secret covert underground resistance movement hive mind subterfuginous communication for some time now. But the fact that now, you know, for example, a lion and a lettuce can swap numbers and work out how to eat us alive from within a salad or disappoint Texans on trophy hunting expeditions by swapping places and you know, this is. This is very concerning. I had no idea that mushrooms had an underground Marxist revolution.

Absolutely. You do. Um, apparently this research was done by a team at Tel Aviv university. The sentence from the, uh, report in the, uh, it was a BBC website. Uh, a team at Tel Aviv university found that female moths avoided laying their eggs on tomato plants if they made noises associated with distress. And it's quite imprecisely written that. Who is making the noises? Is it the plants, the moths, the eggs, or the research team?

It's unclear. I mean, most tomatoes are either furious or embarrassed, judging by the look of them. So I understand why they emit sounds of distress. Also if you're a tomato and you find yourself growing, well in England for example, you would probably crap yourself on behalf of the planet. But I don't know what these researchers, how they were forcing the tomatoes to emit distressed sounds. Is it like threats? Wouldn't it be a shame if you ended up in a nice bottle of ketchup?

And finally this week, well, we've quite skillfully, I think, avoided the big stories in the world this week because well, as we've sort of talked about before, they are not only overwhelmingly bleak, but also so changeable that by the, you know, we record something at one day and it takes Chris or this week Ross more than 12 seconds to produce and publish the podcast. They could have gone out of date. The bugle, deftly dodging relevance for almost 18 years. So plus, like I say, I've been cocooning myself in 10 days of cricket in 13 days, and it's been a lot of stats. Cocooning yourself on a quiet tomato. Yes.

Um, we will have some, uh, uh, some Trump news to, um, can you feel the enthusiasm in my voice, Douglas? Donald Trump has really come down hard on Vladimir Putin this week. He said he is disappointed with him. I mean, that is some of the strongest language that Trump has used of, I mean, disappoint disappointed in you. It's like treating Putin like a naughty underachieving school kid rather than a despotic murdering war criminal.

He said he's disappointed, but not done with Putin. I feel, what will it take for Trump to be done? What does Putin have to do to get you out of his butthole? It's like Demetri in Midsummer Night's Dream. It feels like Putin is actually deliberately now going out of his way to make Trump just leave him alone and get over him. This is such an interesting story, such an interesting interview. Apparently, this is sort of a side tangent. Within the interview, he was asked about surviving the assassination attempt against him. And Trump said he liked to think about it as little as possible because if he did think about it, it might change him.

I was actually listening to the interview last night and it was extraordinary because apparently, Gary O'Donoghue is the name of the Washington correspondent of the BBC. But he was just going about his business and he got a call at like midnight saying the president wants to have a conversation. And then what you heard is sort of like the president of the United States in bed, just having nobody to talk to, having a chat with this 60-year-old BBC correspondent about just random things. I've been listening too hard to the unquiet tomato of my mind.

Carry it on, it was a tomato. You know, I'm a bit surprised because Donald Trump found a former head of the KGB duplicitous and treacherous. Right. And he's still not sure if he's duplicitous and treacherous. This sort of reminds me, you know, I'm obsessed with World War II documentaries, and they keep making, like, Nazi documentaries. And I've always wondered, like, why do they make so many of them? Is there somebody in the world going, I just need one more? Yes.

To just figure out if they were bad. Yes, all of the 50-plus men who don't watch the cricket. That's him. Yeah. Just one more. Sometimes it's an intersection of the two. So, the whole world's been saying, this man's a madman. Trump is like, hold on just five more minutes. Maybe he's not.

Well, he says if there's no ceasefire deal in 50 days, he will impose the worst thing he can possibly imagine. Not a threat of nuclear force force but a threat of increased tariffs It feels like is a cover-all solution for any kind of problem Increased tariffs on other countries on ex-wives on journalists Just the thing is that the Russian economy is booming right despite these tariffs, you know, which is quite fascinating because Like it just seems that Trump's policy sort of like Neville Chamberlain's

policy when he gets a letter from Hitler and comes back and announces, we will have peace in our time because Hitler's given me his word. He calls up to Putin and he's like, should you give me your word? Yes. I mean, Putin has, I think it's fair to say, laid his cards arguably too firmly on the table over the past two and a half, half decades and expecting Putin to, you know, see, see the light to chill out, grow up and peace out now. It's not so much expecting a leopard to change its spots as hoping that a fossilized T-Rex

changes its teeth. I can't see it happening. In other Donald Trump news, he's basically turned himself into a football trophy. The controversial FIFA Club World Cup, FIFA's heroic attempt to set a new benchmark for the least well-conceived and most unnecessary sports competition that will stand the test of time despite other sports continuing and heroic efforts to match it, finished last week. If you want to know who won, ask a podcast that gives a shit. Look at all the reasons the Club

World Cup was, well let's just say shit. Let me count the ways as Elizabeth Barrett Browning would have written had she been a 2020s football journalist rather than a 19th century romantic poet. From the ridiculous qualification process and criteria via the pointlessly one-sided matches between the world's richest football business clubs and their petro state owners and teams from the kind of places those clubs fleece to acquire all their players to the cramming of yet another over bloated tournament into an already saturated calendar, keep squeezing that golden goose but do be aware that what flies out of its arse might not necessarily

be a golden egg. And then Donald Trump handed the trophy to the winning team at the end and sort of joined in their celebrations, right as if he was captain of that team. Now look, a national leader hijacking a sporting event for his own political grandstanding purposes, you might think that's the kind of thing that, for example, a generic mid 1930s European leader might have done at a hypothetical international multi-sport event based loosely on an ancient Greek predecessor. But that's just the way of the world now.

That is just, you know, he implanted himself into the winning team's celebrations, as I say, further upshytificating the already almost remorselessly shite tournament. He didn't make an attempt to play for the hearts and minds of European football fans by saying that he could put forth an executive order decreeing that soccer be compulsorily called football in the United States. Right. Yes, freedom of speech. The country of freedom of speech will no longer have the freedom to call football soccer. Yes. I mean, I imagine quite a lot of his core support are quite big fans of

American football or as they call it, football. So that's risky politically, isn't it? I also feel like there are not enough sporting events in the world where Donald Trump has been superimposed. You know, like I'd like to see him with Pele lifting the seventies World Cup, uh, with the Indian cricket team in 1983, lifting the cricket World Cup. I mean, with Jesse Owens. I just feel like there are way more places

he should have shown up. The Club World Cup trophy is apparently, he's claimed will stay in the Oval Office, which is a touching tribute, because obviously without the inspirational entrepreneurialism of Donald Trump, football would never have evolved in the 19th century. Although actually on reflection,

club football's wholesale rejection of sporting equality and fairness in favor of rampant market hoarding, plutocracy and glorified institutionalized corruption does fit with the Trump brand on reflection. The Oval Office is the most appropriate place for that trophy. The White House where democracy rules, hope, justice and sport go to die. I can see that boast on a poster behind Trump's head within a maybe we could have a daily social media post of Trump awarding the trophy to himself while smirking at a collection of 50 mirrors held up by a group of his cabinet ministers.

The tech licks, spittles that are still in his favor, media moguls who need to feed and suckle the beast and FIFA boss Gianni Infantino. I would absolutely watch that. Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle. It has been delightful to have you both in the, not just the same room, but the same continent, to be honest. Alice, plug your forthcoming shows. Yes, I am going to be doing two previews with Tiff Stevenson, a bugler. One is on the 21st of July in Camden and one is

on the 26th of July in Hemel Hempstead. I'll be then doing the Soho Theatre from the 6th to the 9th of August and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from the 11th to the 25th of August. So if you go over to my alicefraser.com or patreon.com slash alicefraser, all of the stuff is there and you can buy tickets and say hi. I am returning to India. Unfortunately, I'm not doing Edinburgh this year, but I have a film release that's just come out on Amazon Prime in India and soon in the UK where I play a suspected murderer. That should be a good start to what's it called? It's called Pune Highway. Right. advertised as a gritty who done it.

Well, I think I speak for everyone listening to this this podcast and I cannot wait to see that. You can see the super cut details of the bugle 18th birthday live stream show on the 26th of October will be coming away soon soon along with details of my 2026 Zoltgeist tour extension. Next week we have a Arialina Anne Jenner Friedman. Until then, goodbye. Goodbye! Hi Buglers, 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.