The Bugle - Kashmir, Cash and Cojones

Episode Date: April 15, 2023

India descends into 'Etsy Fascism', fake money takes real power and ball sacks; how do you make them beautiful? Andy is with Alice Fraser and Anuvab Pal.We only survive thanks to listener donations. Please support us monthly or one off to keep this fine show running: http://thebuglepodcast.com/donate - new premium merch being ordered at the end of April so make sure you're on board!Why not check out 15 years of top stories: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/topstories.Featuring:Andy ZaltzmanAlice FraserAnuvab PalProduced 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. The Bugle, Audio Newspaper for a visual world. Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4,259 of the audio newspaper now officially recognized as the one source of evidence for future historians of planet earth.

Anything not covered in this week's show will, in essence, not have happened, so do pay attention. I am, go on, have a guess, you really should get this one, I'll leave a gap for you. Well most of you got it right, well done, I am Andy Zoltz and this is the 14th of April 2023 as we record and I am joined today by the voice of the Southern Hemisphere herself, Alice Fraser and representing every single person who has ever is now or will in future come from living or have any other link to their renowned continent of Asia. Anuva Pal, hello, both of you. Hello, Andy. We have a tricontinental bugle today.

Anuva, you are in New York City. Yes, I'm visiting New York City, Andy. I was called in for the deposition of President Trump. So apparently he's a liar, and they got in touch with all the other famous liars in the world I'm a very well-known liar in India and they wanted to do a comparative study of lying And so I'm just here for the weekend to depose and then I'm gone. Yeah, okay. Oh, that's that's how I just look a lot of fun And

But can we believe you? He's both brothers. He's the liar that always tells the truth and the liar that always lies. Alice, you are in the continents of Australasia. Does that have a term people still use or not? People still use Australasia. I mean, the continent specifically that I'm on is the other one, the Australia part of that. I'm an old school, I'm an old school Australasian, I call us Gondwana land and you can't make me change, you can't make me grow legs, I'm just going to stay here.

You are currently, it's about halfway through the Melbourne Festival or a little bit further. I've tipped over to the point of the Melbourne Festival where you give up. The first week your audience are half full and you think, oh maybe I'll get word of mouth and then second week you're like, ah that word of mouth and then third week it is like fine. Fine, this is what it is. We are recording on the 14th of April on this day in 1912 the British passenger liner Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank but I see that as typical negative anti-British reporting. To me British hero ship Titanic of Britannica, selflessly attempted to reunite a lost-eyed iceberg with its Arctic ice sheet mummy by giving a good old knock northwards. It was partially successful before then volunteering to be a new luxury seabed feature for North Atlantic's hard-working deep sea creatures. So let's look for the positives in Brexit Britain.

I've always thought that Titanic was a story of victim blaming Andy. Why are we blaming the ship when the iceberg was right there? You know, not resolving its issues. Absolutely. You will not get a word of argument from me. On the 15th of April, tomorrow, as we record, in the year 1755, Samuel Johnson published his dictionary of the English language, the first proper dictionary of the renowned language. Turns out he missed out quite a lot of words, including internet. He did have internet have internet, spelt, INTER, NE-TT-E, which was a female resident of a jail. Photo bomb, he knows that word out of the world, he did have portrait painting bomb, albeit it wasn't quite as common as the photo bomb these days, just took a lot

more patience and logistical planning. Some words he did have in including Shithead, at which he defined as the epic journey of a rascal cattle bastard as a jilly-picking scruffer-nuckle, or that rascal-cad or scruffer-nuckle himself, that word is often mispronounced today. Some words, of course, have changed, including Hungary, which was a term at the time in which someone fell into a temper whilst disputing the validity of their judicial conviction whilst being led to the gallows, de-platforming, which was the opening of the trap door at that public hanging, and woke in those days meant the state of

having been roused from sleep. That's changed incredibly over these. Also included the words that we now know have no place in our shared vocabulary, including empathy, perspective, compromise and calm constructed debate from different dew points, accepting there is more than one way of seeing an issue or problem and that others views may be valid and relevant even if we personally currently disagree with them, that was then the longest word in Johnson's Dictionary.

Sadly, absolutely. There's a man called, my knowledge of British literature is not vast, but there's a man called James Boswell, who I think wrote a book called Samuel Johnson Alive, which people consider the first and even today the greatest biography ever written, often individual. That is, of course, still, and the resultsman, a life in cricket comes along. So it's only temporarily for 350 years. It's the greatest biography ever written. Everything is temporary. Everything is temporary.

Even mathematics, I think it was only 250 years ago, but there we go. We'll take, we'll take a quick section in the bin this week to commemorate the leaks that have emerged recently from America. We have some exclusive bugle leaks that we've managed to acquire and are now leaking, including that Prince Charles is close to brokering a peace deal with Errant Sun ex-Prince Hatholomew, whereby the former role will rejoin the family business in the new ceremonial as the Duke of Dudeship, in which he will attempt to make the monarchy more cool. America is in advanced talks to sell Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia. Britain is rumoured to be considering

an application to join South America with the possibility of Uruguay becoming part of Europe joined South America with the possibility of Uruguay becoming part of Europe in a part exchange deal. And singer Ed Sheeran, apparently, is where not singing his oddly popular songs, a covert operative for Interpol responsible for the personal slangs of no fewer than 250 drug lords, warlocks and mafia hypercheezes over a 30-year reign of terror. Those leaks exclusively from the bugle. Oh, it's good to be back Andy. I wonder history book that says Ed Sheeran's Reel of Terror. There's a section. Matter of time. Matter of time. That section in the bin. the bid. Top story this week, India. We're beginning in India this week. We're going to do news from all three of our countries, but we're going to start Anuvab with India. And, well,

I mean, Indian politics, as discussed on this program, variously over the years that you've been doing it, trying to understand Indian politics as an outsider is like a duck trying to understand astrophysics. It's good to give it a go, but you must accept that you will never succeed. So just bring us up today with the latest developments, including the Opposition leader Rahul Ghandi, who has been kicked out of Parliament. So yeah, I mean, look, Andy, I started doing the bugle in 2014 and... Out the talk, I don't remember, I think somewhere around that. I'm pretty sure it was 2016. 2016 somewhere there.

I mean, you have sneaked into a couple of recordings. I was secretly... I was secretly... I was secretly doing the bugle three recordings. I was secretly, secretly, doing the Vuegel three years before I started the Vue. Were you impersonating John Oliver for the last year that he was doing it? When I'm not John Oliver, I am a short, bold Indian man.

I have two different personas into it. That's why I'm in New York. I'm John Oliver here. Yeah, exactly. But when we started talking about Indian politics in 2023, I know even less than when we started. And we talk about it every week. India's opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was just thrown out of parliament. And the reason this happened is because there was a complaint filed by a man called Purnesh Modi, a leader in Prime Minister Modi's BJB party.

Now, just keep in mind the names. The guy who filed the complaint, his name is Purnesh Modi, the Prime Minister's name is Modi. And the reason the complaint was filed was that in 2019 Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition, during an election rally, said, why are all thieves in India called Modi? And he was referring to two other Modi's. So we're in a Modi metaverse right now. The Modi's he was referring to was an Indian billionaire, diamond merchant, called Nira Modi, who stole a billion dollars from an Indian bank and didn't repaid.

And the founder of the IPL Cricket League, Lullith Modi, who ran away from India under charges of financial chic Henry. So, by the way, both these other Modi's are in London. One of them is in Wandsworth Prison and the other one is in Living in Hyde Park. So those are Modi London. One of them is in Wandsworth Prison and the other one is in living in Hyde Park. So those are modies. In Hyde Park, like a duck or in a house near Hyde Park. Like a duck studying astrophysics, which is needed. So both these modies in London,

Rao Gandhi gives a speech saying, why have all modies, why are all Modi's thieves? Why they're running away to London? A completely unrelated Modi, pernash Modi, gets upset with this, goes to the Gujarat High Court and goes to the Gujarat Lower Court and files a complaint and the judge convicts him. Saying, you know, I'm a Modi, he's saying all Modi's are thieves. This is a direct affront on me Modi and Prime Minister Modi. And the judge gives him a two year suspended sentence. Now if you buy Indian Constitution, if you have a criminal conviction,

you cannot be a member of Indian parliament. However, it is important to note that you can have a criminal charge and be a member of Indian Parliament. However, it is important to note that you can have a criminal charge and be a member of Indian Parliament. In fact, at the height of this glorious situation in the mid-80s, there were number of members of Parliament, which were up to 30 or 50 criminal charges. But they were not convicted. Rao Gandhi has been convicted for two years.

He has to give up his seat. And now he's going on rallies around India as a convicted criminal defamor because the charge was for criminal defamation. And he's attracting even bigger crowds than he was attracting earlier when he went on his rally across India, which we talked about, which let me do some research, Alice and the about whether it is a bad thing to be a political leader and go to jail. So I found a man called Eugene V. Debs, who was an American man in an Atlanta penitentiary serving a 10-year sentence when he lost the 1920 presidential election. And more recently,

as a host of other people, Prime Minister Benjamin Nethaniahu is in the middle of an ongoing corruption trial. Brazil's Luiz in ASEO Lula de Silva was in jail and now President Imran Khan is about to be arrested. Prime Minister Malaysia and Najib Razak is currently in jail. Argentina's Christina Fernandez de Krishna, Vice President was convicted of fraud, but given a prison sentence, South Korean President Park Geun-hee was sentenced to 24 years for corruption. Nicholas Sarcosi has France two separate cases. He's been sentenced to prison and he's appealing. So I'm beginning

to realise that prison is not the exception. It's the norm, Andy. So I'm surprised that Britain hasn't caught up with this because this is clearly very unfashionable for your politicians to be able to prison. Yes, I mean, we did have a Boris Johnson had a bit of a running with the law which hastened his departure from his completely absurd state of being Prime Minister. So, I mean, do in terms of Indian politics, obviously we must respect the judicial systems of all countries, but is it a bit suspicious that India's main opposition leader appears to have been excluded from parliament on the basis of what appeared to be just a bit of a joke? Listen, this thing about India becoming a fascist state, I don't agree with it.

I've said this many times on this podcast, if anything, it's gentle fascism. It's fascism, if fascism was done by Etsy, if fascism was done by Lululemon. This is what you would get. This is an independent judge who has independently convicted him. Now, the judge happens to be in Modi's home state. The judge happens to like Modi. The judge is probably called Modi. I don't know.

And maybe the judge is upset that people name Modi should not be called thieves. It could be a number of reasons. Andy, but we have an independent judiciary set up by you. And... What may personally? You personally set up the judiciary. And, you know, I think it's really unfair to say

that the whole state machinery is sort of being moved around just to convict Raul Gandhi. Now, it is true that the government of India has changed the way judges are appointed. So now Modi has a direct say in judge appointments. But again, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about here, nothing, nothing. It's an independent thing, yeah. I mean, I guess in terms of whether or not you trust a government, I guess there's a certain checklist, step by step, check this you go through, and deciding whether or not to trust a government. I mean, for some people, the question is simply, is your government the government, in

which case that's enough not to trust them? But you know, you might look for more, you might look for disqualifying opponents and parliament, suppressing dissenting voices, eroding social harmony and public institutions, and building ridiculously massive statues and naming stadiums after yourself, despite you not being very good at sport. Those are things that might all kind of tot up the Donjian Tali Trust Me Vi, which might be why there's a certain level of skepticism towards the environment.

There is, there is. But I think some of these things, institutions, democracy are too hyped, like Modi's asking some basic questions, like why does the judiciary have to be independent of the executive? You know, why can't we all be one happy family? And these are questions that why can't I

have a say in the appointment of the judges? Why does the election commission, which conducts the world's largest free and fair election, have to be so free and fair? Why can't I meet the election commissioner right on the eve of elections and ask how the voting is going? If my friend Donald Trump can look for 12,000 votes in the state of Georgia, why can't I get into this?

We all learn from America, why can't I get into this? There are certain institutions of democracy, which I think Prime Minister Modi sensibly is questioning. What are the values of the big D? Another questioning posed to Modi at the moment is the decision to host a meeting of the G20 in a city called Srinagar, which is in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir. Now Kashmir, Anu Vhabhis, a region that has been, well I think disputed might be slightly underplaying it. This decision to host the G20 in

Srinagar has been criticized by Pakistan as irresponsible and it does seem a curious decision. When India is a big country it is, you know, has a lot of people in it. It is humping itself merrily towards the one and a half billion population mark. It has, according to Wikipedia, 46 cities with a million or more inhabitants. Srenegar is one of those 46, and just a few horny weekends away from 1.2 million people. It's 31st biggest city in India on the list, and but it's the only one of the top 85 most popular cities in India in the controversial Kashmir region. So it would have been quite easy for Modi to choose to host the G20 somewhere less provocative.

By that logic, there were 84, I don't know if he just threw a dart at a dart board on which there were 85 cities and it just happened to land on on string. It might just be bad luck, but how else can you explain this decision? A topic that doesn't often come up on a comedy podcast is the status of Kashmir. It's not up there with Tinder dating and so on, but I'm gonna give it a shot, Andy. So Pakistan has just said, India's irresponsible move is the latest in a series of self-serving measures to perpetuate its illegal occupation of Kashmir in sheer disregard of the UN Security Council resolutions.

So Pakistan does not consider Kashmir Indian territory. Right, now everybody might be asking, what on earth is going on? So Andy, I thought I'd give it a shot and take your listeners back to 1947 for a brief summary of what this problem is all about. Okay, but before we start this, Andy, would it be wise for any British listeners

of a historically sensitive disposition to turn the volume down to a roundabout zero? Just a little bit. I mean, if there are any relatives of Lord Mountbatten, I think they mean to go back and sort some stuff out. Everybody else, you can listen, they did have a role to play. On 1947, Kashmir's population was 77% Muslim, 20% Hindu. It was ruled by Hindu king who, to complicate matters, saw himself as British. In 1903, King Harish Singh served as a page of honor to Lord Kursin at the Grand Delhi Darbar. We all know what page boys are famous for, and ruling Kashmir is not one of them.

In 1930, Hari Singh attended the first round table conference in London. He suggested that Indian princely states should be made independent of India. So the British were considering a country called India and he retorted say, India, what on earth is that? Because he wanted his own kingdom. In 47 after India gained independence, Kashmir could have joined India, could have joined Pakistan, or remained independent. This king maneuvered in such a way that he wanted to play India and Pakistan off each other and get stuff from both of them. He was so unpopular that his ratings at the time, when there were no polls was around minus 2%.

There was an armed uprising against him in a place called Pooch, supported by Pakistani militants. They wanted to overthrow him. He reached out to India for help. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Naru was ready to send troops. But the Governor-General of India, Lord Mountbatten, advised the Maharaja that if you want troops, but the Governor-General of India Lord Mountbatten advised the Maharaja that if you want troops, then you have to sign a document saying you are seeded to India.

And the Maharaja signed the instrument of a session 26th of October 1947. So as Indians, we have to thank Mountbatten, who by all accounts had no idea what he was doing for kindly giving us Kashmir and I'll explain this to you in in terms of Disneyland. Okay Andy I think this is the best way to explain it. You're in Disneyland okay and you've paid a day pass for all the rides. There is a special ride that you haven't paid for okay. There's a there's a guy on the, you see this guy is falling. You say, I can help this guy, so he doesn't die. The guy in charge of the ride says, okay, if you do that, I can give you this ride for free. You say, I wasn't thinking of that. I was just thinking of saving this guy's life, but sure, I'll take it. That in a nutshell is the history of what will probably be the next nuclear war.

Right. Oh, thank you for explaining that. So, so clearly for us. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, asking for a divorce, inviting his Tinder date to a romantic evening of bowling in the backyard of his soon to be ex-wife. Like it's... Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what Modi is doing. He's making a statement saying, oh, sorry, that was another important thing.

Kashmir had independent status till 2019. In 2019, Modi repealed that independent status. So it's been revoked, so they are no longer an independent autonomous country. So it's been revoked, so they are no longer an independent autonomous country. So India now fully runs it. So Modi said, now that I run it, I can buy a house in Kashmir, I can do the G20 summit in Kashmir. I can open a theme park with water slides in Kashmir. I can do whatever I want. Come world. And that's what he's doing. Well, I mean, if he opens a theme park with water slides in time for the G20 summit,

that this could be one of the great moves in global politics, because so often these summits are rather serious events. Yeah, I've always said global politics isn't wet enough. But if you've got all these world leaders having an absolute blast, going down water slides, having fun with each other Is that not going to open the lines of communication?

That could make this apparently provocative move into something that will be seen as Step one towards eternal global peace Absolutely, this is one more of these questioning. Why do these summits have to be this boring? Why does democracy have to be so democratic? These are the questions. We need to answer in 2023. These are the cushions I have on my couch instead of live-life love. Let's say, lubrication and gravity solve a lot of problems. Australia news. Alice, one of the big issues in Australia at the moment is the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, which is due later in the year. And it's causing a lot

of political rumpers to explain it to us Oh, for those of you who don't know the idea of an indigenous voice to parliament is mainly exactly what it sounds like and people feel about it, mostly how you would imagine they would feel about it. It's the idea that they'll be a role now for a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice that will advise the government of Australia on things that affect indigenous Australians, people who object do so mainly because they're like, but that means they'll have an opinion on everything. Because everything we do affects the indigenous people of Australia, which the answer is yes, yes. There are also the people

who think it's a distraction from the pursuit of treaty, which I feel would be a better outcome over something that we should be focusing on, political energy on, which fair enough. And then there are the people who think this whole debate is a waste of time because they're saving up their empathy and historical racial accountability for a rainy day where they might need it. The Australian Electoral Commission has launched a public education campaign hoping to improve knowledge of the Australian constitution, which currently sits at the level of what we've got a constitution and the referendum process and also hoping to combat misinformation and disinformation because they're anticipating a wave of misinformation, disinformation. It is fascinating to watch the government talking about all of the preparations that they're

making to combat disinformation and misinformation because it's basically then just continually saying we are not equipped to deal with the internet. We know for a fact that we can't do politics, and yet we're about to throw a massive voting party on an incredibly complex and fraud-historically-laden subject, and flag inviting people onto your yacht while ostentatiously reading your How-To-Driver big yacht for dummies' book.

In the hope that will make them feel safe. Referendums are in recent times have a bit of a checkered record record and if I may quote what a very wise man once said about the Brexit vote is reducing massively complicated social and political issues who oversimplified binary choices right or wrong. And Australian politics always looks for rifts I guess and in the same way that politics in every single country looks for rifts. But it does seem, I guess, that you can see there's an element of skepticism about allowing

this voice, because it represents something of a betrayal of modern Australia's heritage, you know, it was a nation founded on British imperial values, which included not listening to the voice of the indigenous population, either by ignoring it, silencing it or stealing all its food and natural resources, so all it could say was please gonna have some soup. So I also don't forget the period where it was defined as the flora and fauna, that's fun. Yeah well we've chosen two stories here that really giving Britain a bit of a historical kicking to get the sugar. But it's quite hard actually to find many new stories that don't do that at some point if you go far enough down the line. I don't know, Andy, I'm obsessed with the Government Misinformation website. I find it so

immensely unconvincing. It feels like if a government releases a website intended to combat misinformation, it makes me think this website looks sketchy. Like it just, there's something about a government misinformation website that it just makes me feel like, are you just pretending to be combating misinformation in an attempt to make me trust you, so you can misinform me more effectively down the line. And because it's a government website, the answer is yes, yes, absolutely. Don't trust them. the answer is yes, yes, absolutely. Don't trust him. Well, we've done India and Australia. UK news now. Everything is rubbish. It's really not a lot more to add. I'm trying to get the UK section done in

under 15 seconds otherwise I'll start getting upset. I mean the home secretary is a racist, not according to me, but according to members of her own party. So that's not me saying it. I'm being purely objective in reporting what her own supporters or people who should be her own supporters are saying, yes, it's increasingly hard to escape the sensation of it, but a within a husk of a mirage of a fiction. But still, team GB, it's only, it's only come up to 11 years since London 2012, we've still got that, we've still got that. Hey, Andy, on the bright side, it used to be you'd have to walk into a lake with stones in your pockets and stay underwater for ages, but now you just walk into a river and you

will immediately melt. That's fun. Yes, yeah. There's, I mean, literally, there is shit everywhere. In many ways, our rivers are just living metaphors for the state of our national politics. Now, it's time for a bugle currency section. Alice, you are the bugle's cryptocurrency correspondence. I know you are as fascinated by cryptocurrency as it is with you, for those of you unaware of it, cryptocurrency is made up money that is even more fictitious than real money already is, but which has proved occasionally more stable

in financial crises than real currencies, even though it's less real than them, although at times it's also even more unstable due to some kind of glitch in the space-time continuum, that means that reality doubles in on itself and the whole thing falls apart. So Bitcoin remains the most well-known cryptocurrency. Of course, there are others, there are others including Swizz Dollar, Crookido, Theivirium,

Deludo and Hallucin H, many of which are struggling, but just the environmental impact of Bitcoin is proving to be, well, in layman's terms, a f***ing massive. Oh my goodness, Andy, yes. If you think of Bitcoin, just think of it like Schrodinger's currency, but the cat is Tinkerbell, and you have to believe in it really hard, so that when the box opens, the money's real. I know all money's tinkerbell but some money is more tinkerbell than others. Bitcoin is it. Another way to think of Bitcoin is, Bitcoin is to money, what pornography is to sex. In theory it's sort of the same thing but one is way more flashy and you're not sure if the physics works and it's maybe illegal and someone's definitely going to strain a groin.

Another way to think of the cryptocurrency is cryptocurrency. When you buy it, you're not getting scammed. You're investing in the opportunity to scam someone else in the future. But one of the best ways to think about Bitcoin is if you imagine Bitcoin, it's like money, but if money were literally only a record of how much electricity you have wasted. What happens is Bitcoin is generated by the complex machinery of computers doing sums that nobody needs doing. And as a result, for some you get a cryptocurrency

minted and what people are doing because people are people is they're making these massive plants to generate Bitcoin Which is to say to generate nothing just to waste an electricity It's like you waste electricity and then someone prints the receipt and then you can use that receipt to buy milk They don't use the receipt to buy milk because cryptocurrency is good for very little except buying criminal enterprises and Pictures of apes smoking cigars criminal enterprises and pictures of apes smoking cigars. Now these massive power plants that are used to waste money occasionally stop wasting the electricity and sell it to people for real money as another way of making money that is more like making money than the other way of making money. I don't know, it's so depressing Andy, it's almost impossible to wrap your head around

how depressing it is. And in terms of the amount of electricity used, I read that it's more than Argentina per year. That's Argentina that were announced, f***ing massive South American country with more than 40 million people in it. To put it in further context, Bitcoin, you just more electricity every minute than the entire Roman Empire used in its entire 500-year stints

as your up-sleading power franchise. So, I mean, it is... It's not actually making anything in these massive factories. They can turn off the factories whenever they want, which allows them, as these massive energy drains, to save and make money by manipulating US power markets. So they can avoid fees that get charged during peak hours. They can resell the electricity at a premium when people are desperate for it.

They can be paid to offer to turn it off, so that it'll less of a drain on the system. Even if this were renewable energy, which it isn't, it would just be an uncontrollable waste of electricity that could be being used to do anything good. Can I just quickly add that hallucinic, the currency that Andy's ultimate just invented, should be a bit coin. If it isn't. I mean, if we can have Solana and Ethereum, hallucinic should absolutely be a Bitcoin. Of course, even though cryptocurrencies have become increasingly prominent,

real currencies still exist. In many ways, the original cryptocurrencies and the dollar, the American dollar, is well struggling to retain its position as the world's number one ranked trad currency. Annuvaib, I know you have been hoarding all currencies for many, many years. Tell us about the dollar's current state of affairs.

Yeah, so just very quickly, this topic is fascinated me recently, because there was a consortium of countries that got together around 2005. And they were the BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China. And I don't know where the SS, Slovenia, I have no idea. And they were supposed to be the next world power. And we know where that went, except China, which sort

of killed everybody. But these countries often meet and come together and still want life to be like it was in 2005. And the latest agenda is to de-dollarize the world. It's China and Russia leading it. They do not want the US dollar to be the world's standard anymore. And it's fascinating to me because the US dollar is as strong as it could ever be. The US economy is doing very well. And China and Russia are saying we need to trade in something else.

Now, it's a very good idea not to have a currency behemoth, of course. But the problem is the alternative is coming from China and Russia. I don't think we are near the day that if I left my children and inheritance in Juan or Rubo they would be happy. And that is why I don't have children, Andy. So that's the best way to avoid having to make these awkward decisions. Yes, I...

I store all of my money in what I call cryptocurrency, which is a money that only comes good after you die. So they say you can't take it with you, but the it in that sentence is real money and this isn't, so maybe you can. Bye bye bye and find out when you die, die, die. That's my selling point to Andy. I've used it to buy a bridge that I can sell you later after this podcast. I think I'm largely leaving my children cricket memorabilia.

So I'm hoping we'll become the world's leading currency at some point. Bugle art and aesthetic section now. The aesthetic story is from an article in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology which is not a publication that I believe we've mentioned before on this show and it includes in its conclusion. This is one of the greatest, I don't know if it's, it counts as like a full academic conclusion, but these words were written as the conclusion.

Ultimately, it was barely possible to identify a quote's beautiful scrotum. We must instead speak of the least ugly. And it's a paper on scrotum aesthetics and the increasing trend for people having Cosmetic surgery on there nuts act now of course the male scretulia has long been regarded as the ugliest Siliest and most comical part of the human anatomy ever since they're announced species designer god rattled off the human form in a few minutes towards the end of a very busy week And they had to tag on a few appendages right at the end after realizing it had forgotten bits in the rush to meet his deadline. But it's now become part of the human vanity.

Now human vanity has been one of the few growth industries of the third millennium so far, continuing and even building on its impressive form from the previous two, three to ten millennia. And, you know, here it is that cosmetic ball sac surgery exists. How have we reached out of all the insane things that this millennium has thrown up so far? This has got to be right up there with the most ridiculous. Well, and this is the thing, you know, we have increasingly these visual aesthetic feeds coming into our faces, into our eyes all the time. People should look, how things should look, how parts of your body should look, many people feel uncomfortable in their bodies and are seeking plastic surgery to address it. And if they've done that, if they see a part of their body, that they think is ugly, they

think, well, I should try and get plastic surgery to make this look better. The problem is with the scrotum that people know when it looks wrong but they don't know when it looks right. So they're just generally tightening it but there's no real aesthetic sort of rule of thumb about that what direction it should be tightened in, what shape it should be when you're done, people are just like, fix it. But there's no such thing as a beautiful scrotum, as the paper concludes, just the least ugly scrotum. So I feel like we're all in unknown territory here. And I completely agree with Alice, just to add, you know, I feel like all life at one point or another is just screw term aesthetics. We know what's ugly, we don't know what's beautiful. I think Picasso had the same problem.

I guess for the nut sector, we've got the latest body part, supposedly benefit from the morphic lunacies of the Vanity industry. As I said, it is strange. I was reading about some of the options that are available. One is a hard casing in a bi-ovoid shape made of practical and durable polypropylene with an attractive mahogany veneer for that classic antique look. You can get a molded wax coating similar to that found on E-DAM cheese, but available in a range of colours to suit every occasion. You can get green

bays for the snooker-loving testiculant, LED implants to a nighttime navigation, and you can have your scrotum stretch flattened pleated or scrimped and then polished and made water resistant with a high-boilogenic varnish gloss or matte as required from going into his intimate body resins. Or you can even get scrotally in testicular braces, in which you simply put on your testicular braces at night to gradually maneuver your bollacases to the ideal location for you. And over just four years of not even scrotally in usage, you could end up with each nager securely relocated anywhere in the waste area even as far away as the outer hip. So I mean there are all these options in many ways I'd say that's too much choice.

I feel like the people for people who feel like their scrotums are insufficiently attractive. I have a few pieces of advice. Number one, don't lead with the scrotum. I feel like so much of dating now is sort of dick-pick-forward whereas in fact I feel like the penis should never be your best asset. It should be like the card you hold back and ideally presented at the point where it's just a charming aspect of your personality. Secondly, if you are scrotally aesthetically challenged, take a tip from the comedy industry in which there are many people who lean on comedy as a way of achieving attractiveness, it doesn't need to be purely visual attractiveness can be a number of facets. Slap a couple of googly eyes on, draw a little moustache, bring the charm to the panorama

and maybe it won't seem so setting to you. But thirdly, just hide them. Just put a little hat on, just a little upside down hat and hope for the best in the way that many people who are who are fully killily challenged on the top end just put a little little fedora on top, fedora on the bottom, milley, the other at the same time. You know, after this conversation, it's not often that I'm happy to be living in a poorer country, but now I am.

LAUGHTER MUSIC Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle. I think we've covered pretty much every relevant story that certainly needs to be consigned to the history books Thank you very much to Alice and Annuab Alice How much longer is your Melbourne show running for? It's running until the end of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which I think is about the 23rd of April

Do come along if you want to see me do something Like comedy also you can listen to the gargle which is the sister podcast to the bugle the Do come along if you want to see me do something like comedy. Also you can listen to The Gargle, which is the sister podcast to The Bugle, the glossy magazine to The Bugle's audio newspaper for Visual World, or find me on patreon.com slash Alice Fraser where I'm running weekly writers workshops now. That's a thing that I'm doing. Annabelle, any projects to plug? Yes, and the 23rd of April, I am stopping by London to do a work in progress at two north-down Nierkings Cross. It's called the Department of Britishness.

It tries to look at where Britain and India are today, which I feel like we've already done on the bugle. So I'm just stealing from there. Yeah, and then I return in August for Edinburgh for 14 days. Well, consider those projects thoroughly plugged. We'll be back next week, and I will play you out this week, with more entries on the Bugle Wall of Fame from our premium level voluntary subscribers

to join the Bugle Voluntary subscription scheme to give a one off or a current contribution to help keep the show free, flourishing, and, go to thebouglepodcast.com and click the donate button. All of our wall of fame this week have conducted extremely important research on behalf of our great species. Alexandra Keith found an early manuscript of John Milton's Paradise Lost and its smash-hit sequel Paradise Reegained, proving that the 19th century poetry celeb's work was originally

about him losing his keys and then finding them again sometime later down the back of his sofa. Janosh Ortman added further to this discovery by a nothing a series of letters between John Milton and his publisher, who suggested that keys lost and keys regained, would probably not sell that well, and suggesting paradise as an alternative. Jumping on board this particular literary historical research bandwagon, Raphael During, joined the dots and found that Milton's publisher was none other than Suspensivold Guinterak, founder of course of the Penguin Publishing House. Sandra Schmidt added further to the sum of human understanding of 17th and 18th century

English literature by discovering that Alexander Pope was not in fact a Pope at all. It's a popular misconception, says Sandra, he's not one of those people who took his name from his job. But Alan Smith jumps in and points out that it is quite possible that when he was changing his name, having got his new job as a poet, he was just a little bit drunk, and when he was trying to say poet, it sounded like Pope and was written down as such. We may never know." Lee Jackrell found that Shakespeare, contemporary and pinnacle boy of metaphysical poetry, John Dunn, was so called because whenever he finished writing a poem or whatever he was hacking

out that day, he would shout, Dunn. According to Justin Christian's research, another 1600 quill wiggler, Milton's buddy Andrew Marvel, aside from rocking a distinct 1970s Argentinian centre forward vibe with his trademark long locks, only did poetry because his preferred job, airline pilot, did not exist yet. Moving on from poetry to salad ingredients, Carla Hoffman has unearthed almost unarguable proof that the origin of salad dressing was from a collision between two freight trains, one carrying olive oil, the other carrying vinegar, which were derailed into a field of lettuces with delicious results.

And David Murphy proved scientifically that cucumbers are edible. For millennia people had assumed they were lethally poisonous. A key part of David's research was also the realization that cucumbers are easier to eat, if you don't attempt to eat them whole. Thank you to all contributors to the Bugle Wall of Fame.