The Bugle - Musk Mess Masked by Massive Madman

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

🎧 Support The Bugle! Get bonus shows, exclusive videos, and a smug sense of global awareness at thebuglepodcast.comThis week, Andy Zaltzman is joined by Alice Fraser and Neil Delamere for a global sweep of chaos, climate, and confused birds.🇺🇸 In the United States, Elon Musk continues to make noise, and riots bring yet another wave of existential dread. Democracy? Still TBD.🌆 Sinking cities are on the rise (and by “on the rise” we mean going underwater). Is climate change trying to take real estate off the market?🐧 In the Antarctic nationalist row nobody asked for, penguins have waddled straight into a geopolitical spat. Are they fascist birds, or just lost? We investigate.💬 It's time to 'Ask Andy' - send your questions now.📺 Watch our fantasy comedy series Realms Unknown now fully visualised on YouTubeProduced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner. Climate-proofed by penguins. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4344 of the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world. I'm Andy Zoltzman here once again in the shed of Immutable Truth. And I'm joined from various parts of the universe. From Australia by Alice Fraser. Hello, Alice. Hello, Andy. How are you going?

I am going adequately, which in this millennium I'll take, frankly. I'll take and I'll have taken it in the last millennium as well I've been organizing my Swiss writers retreats and putting drawing pictures of houses and writing people's names into rooms and assigning people spaces which is like playing dolls but for adult adults social dynamics which are way more complex. Also joining us from Dublin, Ireland, well it's a man who's just claimed he's one of the world's leading footballers and he's about to explain why, it's Neil Delamere. So hello first of all, your shed always has sporting memorabilia behind it and it's usually cricket nonsense right I have a jersey with my name on it because I agreed last week to play in a charity football match with a lot of comedians and actors against a Premier League legends

team now normally these would have one person who was once in the Premier League okay their starting team however was Ryan Giggs, Karl Paborski, Jason McAteer, Keith Gillespie, Jermaine Pennant, Clayton Blackmore, Dimitar Barbertov and Stelian Petroff. That's who their team had. Our team had Gout. I'm not even joking. We had Gout and we had a guy who had Gout and we had a guy who had cerebral palsy and we played against these guys and they were absolutely unbelievable. They scored on us when we played three goalkeepers at one point. We had 25 players against their 11, but I thought I would show you that I am a truly an athlete at this point.

Right. Well, that's, that's, that's, that's good to know. Is there going to be a second leg? Uh, no, I don't, I don't think there is. There was a moment where the ball went by me and I thought, this is my moment. This is my moment. But I had not realized since the last time I played football that aliens have put my head into a much slower man's body. I didn't realize that that was possible as a thing. I remember starting running in

May. That's all I remember. And I think I got to the ball by June or June. But it was an amazing experience. So thanks very much. And it was all for charity. That's good. I mean, they're all good. These charity sporting events, just to remind you how unbelievably f***ing s*** you are at school. Oh my God. But I had, I mean, I thought about it. I thought I'm going to run at gigs.

I'm going to run at him. He's not going to expect that. I'm going to run at him full tilt. And then at the last minute I'm going to introduce him to my brother's wife. I just thought that as a tactic. I mean, he cannot resist the sister-in-law. He cannot resist. Well, I've never been asked to play a charity sporting event of any kind.

And arguably that's either because I'm not as famous as you guys or because if I was to play a charity sporting event, people would think that I was the charity. I did charity boxing. I got a draw with Manny Pacquiao over 15 bare knuckle rounds. I didn't want to make a fuss about it, but you know, we do what we can. A lot of people would say that is that matchup would be deeply unfair because you would be much heavier than Manny Pacquiao.

Yep. Well, true. But, you know, he'd had more practice than me. But even now, that's a great thing, isn't it? That's a bit like beating Lance Armstrong in a bike race as well, but only because he was disqualified. We are recording on the 9th of June. Tomorrow, the 10th of June is apparently National Herbs and Spices Day. We've recently discovered herbs and spices that have been added to the sum of human herb and spice knowledge. And when I say herbs, America, I mean, herbs, herbs, herbs. There's a fucking H on the beginning and spices.

No, no real crime with how you pronounce that. What are we doing first? Are we going to go to Scarborough Fair or? No. Well, these wonderful new spices that have been discovered. Griffin weed, which is slightly hallucinogenic if added to the right bolognese. Cock weasel, it's a useful alternative to ground pepper, albeit with powerfully laxative after effects. Bladderwort, it's a herb that grows only in hedges by trunk road, similar in taste to a cross between tarragon, scotch bonnet and off milk, with an inescapable aftertaste of diesel. Clatch, which is seaweed-like but from land, and contains toxins that cause pronounced swelling of facial features for up to three months, but is delicious in melted butter and inexpensive if stolen.

And Miel de Wazoc, ironically named spice from Wazoc, an uncharted area of rural France. This distinctly unhoneyish chili alternative was reportedly used by prehistoric peoples to tranquilize bison so they would stand still for the bison painters to keep running in and out of their caves to take a look at the bison whilst trying to capture the true essence of bison hood on a cave wall yet again. Miel de Wazoc was also used as a performance enhancing substance in 13th century athletics, most notably by the Duke de Florence when he allegedly ran a mile in two minutes, 13 seconds

before vomiting uncontrollably for a week howling like a wolf for a further week than barricading himself in his castle for 40 years. Do not use before midday. Also spices that are being celebrated today. The spice melange from the book Dune, which allows you to see through time. And also spice menage, which is where you take six people in unhappy marriages. They all snort a line of pepper and then f***. Family show. Family show.

Family show. As always, some sections of The Bugle are going straight in the bin. This week we have a special pullout on the leading TikTok influencer of the week. This week, because we love to keep our finger on this particular pulse, we have OEJ Gorilla Gorilla. Sorry, Naughty Japs. There's two ape emojis in his name. Anyway, Naughty Japes sprung to prominence as a crime normalizing tip-tock hypefluencer whose nanofilms have inspired a global generation of law-breaking hoodlur. And Naughty Japes' latest contributions to the sum of human anti-establishmentarianist happiness include a video of him going into a supermarket loading up a trolley with food from the grocery

aisles then affixing for military attack drones to the corners of the trolley climbing into the trolley lifting off from the floor firing a rocket through the ceiling of the supermarket and flying out without paying for his fruit veg and suspiciously prominently placed processed meat snacks also as some of the latest video and bear in mind these are all no more than three and a half seconds long, it shows him avoiding fares on public transport by dressing as the Grim Reaper, waiting for a frail looking octogenarian to toddle towards the ticket barriers, then scuttling through after them, leaving any tickets off wondering what they actually just saw and thinking it was probably something to do with their own lack of sleep or question resourced herbal tea, rather than the criminal act of

fair dodging. Also, we see naughty Jep stealing a commercial airliner by using an air of confidence and some fake ID to access the pilot's lounge at the airport, then hypnotizing an actual pilot with a classic swinging pocket watch on a chain maneuver, then filming himself in the cockpit of the airliner wearing a Batman outfit saying letter rip Robin to an excited looking co pilot. People are so it's amazing how easily these these people do these things. And finally, we see naughty james selling arms to

terror groups by posing as a genuine despot from a trading partner nation and convinced convincing a Western government minister there is a genuine rebellion that needs crushing buying 5.4 billion pounds worth of munitions on a pay-as-you-use basis, then flogging them off to currently low-profile terror organizations in hilarious hidden camera deals. So some wonderful work from Naughty Jakes that we commemorate in this week's section in The Bin. Also in The Bin this week, we bring you the best noises made by people watching the French Open final between Carlos Alcaraz and Yannick Siné yesterday, which was a truly extraordinary match lasting more than more than five hours won by

the brilliant young Spaniard and the noises people made while watching it include Oh, geez, Joao T. Shoof. Yeah. That's also, and those are just the commentators. That's also in the bin. That's also in the bin. That's also in the bin.

Top story this week. Top story this week. American president doing the kind of thing and using the kind of words that an American president would do and use in a TV drama in which America has been taken over by fascist news now. Sorry, update rather, sorry, re-updated update news. We've got there in the end.

And well, this is Los Angeles, the city of angels, also the city of the latest evidence of Trump, Trumpist and despottery. In response to protests in LA about the treatment of immigrants, Donald Trump has essentially militarized California. He's federalized the National Guard without precedent for decades in America. And, I mean, in terms of quelling concerns, Neil and Alice, about the fact that he is essentially a Nazi despot dressed as a 21st century pumpkin. He's not sort of quelling those concerns with the way that he's going about it. California Governor Gavin Newsom called the deployment of troops, purposefully inflammatory, which I think Trump probably

took as a compliment. Personally, inflammatory is the brand of bronzer he uses. So basically, he's decided to send in the National Guard to quell these anti-anti-immigration raid protests. And Haigsef is threatening to send in the Marines, despite the fact that Los Angeles Police Department has said that the demonstrations in the city have remained mostly peaceful. ICE has been bundling people into unmarked bans and refusing to show ID during arrests, which has also apparently inspired a bunch of cosplayers to intimidate and kidnap people

they perceive as potentially illegal immigrants. And there's people who are protesting ICE enforcement sweeps and deportations without due process. So let's just clarify. This is arguably unlawful deployment of military force to enforce peace on peaceful protests over illegal arrests of illegal immigrants, right? Yes, I think that's definitely an accurate reason. Yeah, bearing in mind that the entirety of America's service industry is based on the underpaid labour of people willing to work for less than minimum wage, and I'm not entirely

sure the Republicans are fully across what it will look like when all that work is being done by resentful 13 year olds. This could possibly get worse as well, because as you said, Pete Hegset, who is the controversial hardline defense secretary, a man completely unsuited to being a defense secretary, not so much a square peg in a round hole as a complete ring piece in a Pentagon. Has raised the possibility of deploying the US Marines on the streets, as you said. Now, the only, the only good thing about that is that we will have plenty of notice and plenty of warning because we are all in his WhatsApp group.

Whether you need to know this or not, you'll be at Tesco and the signal chat will pop off and you'll know to get your relatives out. Now when you watch this kind of LA coverage, you kind of bring your own sensibilities to it, I think. So like if you're from a totalitarian regime and you see troops in the street, you think, I've seen this story before. Whereas if you're like a UK pensioner affected by the winter fuel allowance tobacco, you're like, Ooh, I wonder how long a car does burn for. That's quite interesting. Actually, that could how long a car does burn for. That's quite interesting. Actually, that could be a source of lovely winter heat. Protesters blocked the main artery through the city, which I always think

sounds like the most basic road in the US as well. Like, what are you working on? I'm at that's freeway 101. That is freeway. Completely simple. But the LAPD said that they had it handled, that they didn't want any help, as we've said. CHIPS, the California Highway Patrol, were responsible for the actual freeway itself. They were involved in marshalling protesters away. The National Guard were involved

and they fired tear gas, they fired rubber bullets and flash bangs in between them to clear the road. And you just think that is why Extinction Rebellion did not take off in the US. I will glue myself to the M25 in London. I will happily glue it because you will not hear, get on the ground, bang, bang, bang. You'll hear, please sir, stay still and let the solvent do its job. That's all you're going to hear from the M25. I don't know if you've ever been tear gassed, which I know it's a weird way to start a conversation, but I have actually. Well, did the cricket pop off, did it? The Surrey Massive suddenly get the ultras out, did they?

It wasn't, it was actually, it was a long time ago when I was about 12. It was actually a long time ago when I was about 12. I mean, this sounds implausible, but I was on a rock band tour of France. Everything about that sentence is implausible. Everything. Was it a tear gas or did you walk through quite a fruity department store and there was a perfume counter popped off and 12 year old Andy lost his mind. So after the tour opening concert in possibly Grenoble, I can't quite remember, and this was a band of sort of private school boys aged 10 to 13, touring France doing covers

of 60s and 70s rock songs that our music teacher liked. I mean, you cannot call that rock and roll, Andy. That is dry grinding against a pair of sheets. Some of the terminology is load bearing. I was on a rock tour of France, Alison, don't you f***ing forget it. All this tells me is that you have always been 45. You came out and you were 45 years of age. As long as I stay that way, then I'm happy with that to be honest. Now it's starting to work for me.

So what I'm gathering from this story is honest. Now, now I'm, it's starting to work for me. So what I'm gathering from this story is you did rock and roll and the crowd tear gassed you. Yeah, basically. Then, when it wasn't the crowd, it was, I think it was a sort of after party, which was as rock and roll, an after party for a load of privately educated 10 to 13 year old British kids in France. And some local kids came in, I think they tried to steal some snacks and soft drinks. And when they were ushered out, then sprayed sort of tear gas into, into the room. So, so I watched tear gas in a rock and roll scenario,

but the details of that are in France. The details of that are, um, you know, do raise into question, uh question some of the terminology. That reminds me of the time that I didn't go to a strip club with the Harvard crocodiles. Anyway, I went to the Champions League final and also in France, they seemed to be a bit tear gas happy in France and the tear gas of people like maybe 20 or 30 yards in front of us. But what they did, and it's terrifying, but what they didn't realise that my friend, Tim McGarry, grew up in North Belfast in the seventies and he laughed in their face. We all had tears in our eyes, but Tim's were from nostalgia mainly.

How did we get on to Tegas? Because the LFED and the National Guard used it. By the way, they hijacked, they burned out hijacked driverless cars. Surely hijacking a driverless car takes all the fun out of it. Surely it's true. Like who do you point your gun at? You just pointed at the dashboard with the computer going, you're going to take me exactly where I need to be taken. And it's like, that is the idea. Like it's just kind of.

If romance novels have taught me nothing. And I think from this book, it's clear that they have taught me nothing. It's that you only hijack a car if you're intending to fall in love with the person driving the car over the course of a quite fraught road trip. 100% that's how I met Andy. That's supposed to be our special secret. So Trump said on on Sunday we have violent people and we are not going to let them get away with it. I think you're going to see some very strong law and order. And now, buglers, I have a challenge for you.

Just try to think about those words, maybe even repeat them to yourself, say them out loud even into the mirror, without thinking of the January the 6th insurrection and without remembering that Trump released hundreds of people responsible for that assault on law and order and without giggling at the naked prior epic hypocrisy of it. You can't do it, can you? You can't do it, Bugles.

I'm gonna give you five minutes to try and do it. You can't, come back in five minutes. We're just gonna talk about the rock tour of France in the meantime. So essentially what we had here was a sort of awkward situation in Los Angeles and Trump, in the famous words of Simon and Garfunkel, like a bridge made of feral rhinoceroses, cesium coated warheads and powdered piranhas over troubled waters, harrumped into the situation with the sole express purpose of making a tense

but manageable situation into something furious and chaotic. And, um, he'd done so quite effectively, to be fair. He, um, in one of his social media messages, uh, stroke official communications, I think they're basically the same now, uh, he, as he tends to, said, concluded, make America great again with three exclamation marks. Now, I'm never a fan of the exclamation mark, as you would know, buglers, if you've ever read the full transcript of the bugle, I think they've only been two or three in more than 600 and 600 episodes now. Three exclamation marks. One, I would say if you use one,

that's to highlight a humorous quirk or equip to signifies absurdity and or nonsense. Three, it just sounds sarcastic frankly. If you're using three exclamation marks, that is basically a way of communicating sarcasm. He called Gavin Newsome, Gavin News scum. So essentially, basically as president, he has become up to the same level to a snickering sweat covered below the line, anonymous,

peeve mongering, purveyor of barely entry level, snivel gripe. And and you know that is just the world but it's just the world that we live in so um anyway well to be fair Andy he does need to send the army in in order to distract from his ongoing feud with Elon Musk I think yes well to To reclaim the news cycle as it were. Yeah, exactly. I mean, okay. But Andy, before we get onto the Elon Musk Donald Trump fight, I want to, I

think we need a content warning and it would be irresponsible to continue without one. There is as much as three to 24 hours between us writing these jokes and recording them, between recording and getting the show up occasionally 10 to 12 hours, depending writing these jokes and recording them. Between recording and getting the show up, occasionally 10 to 12 hours, depending on editing speed, upload schedule. By the time you, the listener, are actually listening to this material, the situation on the ground will have materially changed

to the point where this hitherto a news satire podcast has functionally become a historical satirical reminiscence of news gone past. Where we sigh humorously about the good old days where there was news yesterday or this morning when Elon Musk wasn't riding a man dressed as a horse dressed as Donald Trump over a flaming pit full of burning Tesla shares before Donald Trump fires the White House Tesla into space. I just want to say we are aware making these jokes now that whatever you're hearing, everything will have gone horribly wrong since then.

And this will seem like, Oh, remember how great it was back when it was just impeachment and bitter acrimony. When you say the good old days, I think maybe the good old hours should now be. If you're listening now, Buglers, it's amazing that those were Alice Fraser's last ever words, in many, many ways. Shortly afterwards, she was put into the boot of a Tesla. Like you're saying that like one day now is like seven weeks in dog years, which is a thousand eons in American tube turbo fueled social media, meme lord, troll king politics. And as such, you know. fueled social media, meme lord, troll king politics.

We'd have to work so much harder. Listen, we're going to have to upgrade it. It's not Four Seasons anymore. I mean, there's way more going on. It's just ridiculous. Finn, sit back down there. Write harder. By 6pm tomorrow, Trump will announce that not only have they reconciled Elon Musk's about to impregnate him with their first child.

Some people thought that Elon Musk would genuinely go all the way to the end of a second Trump presidency, but he lasted six months. Who could have foreseen that, my friends? An electric vehicle maker not going on as long as its stated range. Who could have spotted that? Yes, I mean, it's been a fascinating few days and already nominated for celebrity breakup of the year, inevitability of the decade, megalomaniacal dick swingers metaphorical Wang fight of the year, and harrowing endoscopy

into the diseased bowels of American politics of the week. So lots of nominations for the Trump Musk feud. I was recording the news quiz last Thursday. And while we were recording, Elon Musk, tweet ext that that Donald Trump was in the Epstein files. I assume not relating to the sculpt Jacob Epstein, I don't know if Trump had bought one of his rather elegantly made sculptures, but to which everyone responded when Mark basically said, oh, Trump's implicating the Epstein files. I went and said, yeah. But why did you need to say everyone had just assumed that to be a pure unadulterated fact.

What are the few facts of the millennium? Uh, so far, uh, Trump has warmed musks of very serious consequences. If he, uh, backs, uh, the, the Democrats, um, at some point in the field, like you said, I mean, it's, it's, it's not really worth looking at the things that have already been threatened, counter threatened the bitch and counter bitch of the breakup so far when even during the course of this sentence, something else will have materialized. Well, I mean, there was this whole thing where Trump was threatening to cancel the space program and Elon was like, fine then, I'll take the dragon spaceships back right now.

And they just, I mean, you wouldn't want to be an astronaut right now. But the ways you see all the people online having their say, the ways in which people have been discussing this whole fight are frankly insulting to teenage girls who are infinitely more competent at psychosocial warfare, PR management and bitchy gossip bombs. A teenage girl can ruin your life just by a well-timed... Okay. I think we shouldn't focus on how bad these men are at fighting, but I think the really extraordinary thing is how helpless everyone else in the world feels to refute the central premise, which is underlying all of these threats, which is that these two men have the right to cancel the space

program or infrastructure projects or increase or drop the amount of money the nation takes from the ultimate wealthy or how much money is worth in your pocket in order just to ruin some other f******g day. It's an extraordinary thing. I'm just so glad teenage Alice never saw teenage Andy's tour of France because her review would be worse than the tear gas. Okay. Would have been horrendous. You know, if you were having a row and the Russian government has taken the piss out of the fact that you're having a row, you know that you've done something wrong. The Senator who once ran Russia's space program wrote, if you encounter insurmountable problems in the US, come to us, Elon, don't be upset.

I mean, I wouldn't get too cocky, Mr. former head of the Russian space program. The Russian space program exists only so Vladimir Putin can throw people out of slightly higher windows. We're out of the earth's gravitational pull. Time for the accident. The Kremlin bureaucrats, they can't understand that there could be a row between Musk and Trump. They're like, what do you mean the country's richest man and the country's authoritarian leader are two different people? It's like Jesus and the Holy Spirit. They're not

really different people, are they? Even Medvedev got involved with his little comments, his little bitchy comments. This is the dude who was the president when you know who couldn't be the president. Like he didn't make any of his own decisions. He was fully Jim Henson's by Vladimir Putin. He was full. I think I haven't fully looked into it, but I think that Rod Hull was forced to live in Moscow between 2008 and 2012. Get back in your box man. Well he said, well taking a short break from supporting a genocidal murderer to have a quip

on social media, we are ready to facilitate the conclusion of a peace deal between Donald and Elon for a reasonable fee and to accept Starlink shares as a payment, don't fight guys. And I mean, that is, I think when you think about the world that has created that specific social media message, I think that almost encapsulates every single failing of humanity from the moment we evolved into our own species. It's, yeah, I mean, there's, you could write encyclopedias about everything that is wrong with that. Well, it's not happening without damage. Elon Musk's net worth dropped by about $34 billion in one day, but he still has $335 billion left.

I think the problem here when people say, Oh, Elon Musk's lost money is that people don't really have perspective on how much more than a million a billion is. It's so much more that if you had $1.1 billion and you lost a billion dollars, you would still have a hundred million dollars. $100 million. I do like when you see people and they're trying to figure out based on the tweets, whether to buy or sell Tesla shares and like, Oh, Musk is leaving Doge. Oh, I'm going to hold on to the shares.

Oh, Musk has had a row with Donald Trump. I better sell the shares. And then they're like, Musk is calling him a paedophile. And you're like, fuck it. Why did I do that? What? Do I buy a bouncy castle? the shares and then they're like, must call him a paedophile. And you're like, I f**k up, I don't f**k with you. I buy a bouncy castle. So I don't, why don't I want to buy it? It's just insane. It's wonderfully petty.

Trump is now going to sell the white house Tesla. Have you seen this? Yes. He's going to sell it. If ever there was a man in the world that I would not buy a used car from. It is Donald Trump. Can you imagine having any of his cars? Like the mirrors would face you, you wouldn't be able to move them.

You'd just, they'd be just faced in you. There'd be scratch marks in the boot from where Melania tried to get out. There'd be bronzer on the headrest. The sun roof wouldn't work because that's welded shut on day one. And it would just veer to the right, just massively veer to the right, constantly over and over and over. Well you mentioned the falling value of Tesla sales, I mean, tanking worldwide down over one third in the UK alone. And it has sparked rumors that Elon Musk could soon be voted out as Elon Musk and someone

else will have to become Elon Musk at some point in the next few months. So it would be quite interesting to see how that pans out. I guess the problem for Tesla is that as we reported a few weeks ago in our Capacity as the World's Leading Economic Journal of Record, consumers are now slightly put off by the sense that what once was a futuristic exciting step into a technological wonderscape that was well worth looking a bit of a tool for owning a Tesla has become the 2020s equivalent of driving a swastika, the controversial swastika shaped

automobile with swastika shaped wheels that briefly dominated the domestic car sales market for Mercedes in mid to late 1930s Germany. If I put an end Chris on the front of that word Mercedes, that covers us legally doesn't it? Sure. Yeah, okay. Oh, rumple of the bayley meets Ali McBeal there. The rumple of the Bailey meets Ali McBeal there. In other Trump news, this is very concerning for you, Neil, Trump has added Ireland to his trade blacklist. Ireland could, reading between the lines, be banned from the USA entirely.

All people with Irish names, connections and family could be rounded up and sent to New Zealand, I reckon. The US could invade Ireland within a week and drag the Republic across the Atlantic through the Panama Canal and up the coast to replace the quarryless California. Guinness in the USA could be forced to have 90% white and 10% non-white balance to satisfy the desires of the Trumpian regime. And the famously snake-free country could be filled with American snakes as part of the reprisals. How is Ireland coping with its newfound status? Yeah, so we're on this trade blacklist because we have such a massive trade surplus with the US.

Now, I'm not saying that we don't believe Donald Trump is going to do anything about this, but this was just announced and the Irish stock exchange then hit world record highs on Friday. World record highs. That is a whole country going, sure he'll do your tariffs. Oh, you're a big, brave boy. You are a big, brave boy. You won't back down. You big tackle. Oh, you're so cute when you're mad. No, I mean, I don't what we're worried about. Well, first of all, we're in the tariffs situation now. The tariffs in the EU are currently in the 90 day pause period, right? Which is that's up on July the 9th. I know what you're thinking. July the 9th. He's not going to restart them on July the 9th. What? On Paolo de Canio's birthday? On the feast of the martyrs' sense of China? 124 years to the day after Barbara Cartland was born?

Are you insane? Are you insane? Now, if listeners are listening to this podcast and haven't lost the will to live at this point, are going, who is Barbara Cartland? Well, Barbara Cartland is the second greatest romance novelist of all time. What we're very worried about actually here is if they do tariffs, if they genuinely get around to tariffs on the pharmaceutical industry. Ireland exported 44 billion quid's worth of pharmaceuticals to the US last year.

And most of that was Elon Musk's personal supply, but even so, we make a huge amount of chemicals here. Did you know that all of the Botox in the world is made in Westport and County Mayo? All of it. Oh, that would raise my eyebrows, but it can't. It would. You look surprised if you could move your face. Yes. But like there are people that Trump needs to be scared of. Like he needs to be scared of the Chinese government. He needs to be scared of the international bond market. But also if you think the Kardashians are going to take this sort of stuff lying down, you've got another thing coming. They will mobilize, not the faces, but they will mobilize.

First, they came for the Botox and I said nothing because I did not use Botox and then they came for the Phillips, etc. etc. etc. But yeah, we are a little bit worried if that comes to pass. And then they came for the Bonap pills and I couldn't come at all. It's so peculiar, despite people's very kindly meant 30 post blue sky explainer threads, Donald Trump still seems to have a very strange idea about what a trade surplus actually means. The idea that you have to have an exactly equal exchange of goods at all times. It's like if you're a man and you have penetrative sex with someone and then you insist that they

insert exactly one and a half tablespoons of their bodily fluid into your body in return just to equalize the balance. It's not how it works. He's the Prince of Wales, he can do what he wants. Humanity literally sinking news now and Alice, you are our urban de-elevation correspondent. And it turns out that cities are sinking, not all of them, but many of them are heading headfirst towards the center of the world. It's unclear whether this is caused due to physical issues of buildings being undermined, or if it's just cities seeking refuge from reality by burying themselves underground. Can you enlighten us at all? Yes, Andy. This is great news for people living on high floors who are very afraid of heights. According to a recent study by Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, 48 coastal cities

across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas are sinking at alarming rates. It's also good news for clouds with sensitive skin due to skyscrapers becoming increasingly less capable of scraping the sky. I feel like this, obviously, as with all of these kind of science publications, they say alarming rates. It could be some sort of exaggeration, but I feel if you told me any city was sinking at any rate, I'd be pretty alarmed. Cities, I might be on the outlier here, but cities aren't meant to sink, Andy.

I wouldn't be alarmed if you told me 48 coastal boats were sinking at alarming rates, even though boats aren't meant to sink. It's sort of more in their remit. Like you can conceive of them thinking. Apparently, it's a combination of rising sea levels due to badly distributed wetness plus sinking land due to badly distributed wetness. It's a double whammy. The water is not being where it's supposed to be. Apparently 76 million people are living in these areas that are sinking more than one centimeter a year. Although the real MVP of the sinking is Tianjin in China, which is sinking up to 18.7 centimeters a year. A lot of people are

being forced to evacuate. Some locals are refusing to leave because they can't sell their houses and are needing a little bit of education in sunk cost fallacy. Sorry, it's pronounced sunk post fell in the sea. That is our sinking cities news for now. Venice has got to pull its socks up and start sinking faster if it wants to continue to be notable. For so long the poster city of sinking urban landscapes, so it'll be interesting to see how it responds. I was thinking that much of it is caused by groundwater being used and leaving sort of voids underneath cities. As I said, very technically badly distributed wetness, Andy. Some solutions have been suggested. One that could work is to pray for God to install special hydraulic platforms under all cities

so they can just be gradually hoisted up as and when necessary. Another suggestion is to refill the missing groundwater from underneath cities by making all people in the affected cities pour half a glass of water into the ground every couple of hours. I think you'd be on board with that Alex, if you're not. Another suggestion is to change the DNA of humans so we stop doing things that obviously have adverse long-term effects on ourselves, our environment and the places that we live. So those are three achievable options, I think. I think we've got more options.

I think we've got more options. We could start living in cities that float. Cork, that would come to mind. I mean, that could be the biggest misnomer since Greenland, but it's worth a try, isn't it? Indonesia's moving its capital because it won't be in Jakarta anymore because Jakarta is sinking so badly. So it's not going to be on another island, on Borneo, I think. And London is one of the cities that is sinking. So maybe the UK could move its capital. Now I would move London to Derry, just for the crack.

What would you call it? Oh, we could chat about that for ages. And while we can talk about the causes of this, it looks like, as you said, taking groundwater out, you take groundwater out, basically you create a gap and then the soil just kind of compresses down and when the soil compresses, then the building that is on top of that soil, then that kind of tends to subside. And it might be a controversial thing to say, but I've never been afraid of the controversy on this podcast. And somebody needs to say it. Jack and Jill have a lot to answer for. Jack and Jill went up that hill, not for the first time, mind you, to fetch a pail of water, fully cognizant of the issues with the underground aquifer. Did they care?

They did not. They were looking at their own narrow self-interest. Jack fell down. Of course he fell down. The ground was uneven after the subsidence because they were taking too much water out. He broke his crown. Good, good. I'm glad. And then Jill, and this is Carmich Justice, came tumbling after, presumably spilling the water onto the ground where it was able to seep back into the earth whence it came. I for one am glad that Justice was doled out to Jack and Jill because this sort of rapacious capitalism needs to stop in the nursery rhyme world. Don't get me started on little Jack Horner. Vegetarians news now and research has found, as research so often does, some findings and amongst these findings, I found the finding that vegetarians are less concerned about traditions, conformity and benevolence than those who eat meat. Now let

me emphasize this study that found that vegetarians are more power hungry than meat eaters was a study of several thousand people not just a study of history's most famous vegetarian. It's not just him. Vegetarians are more likely to support values related to stimulation, achievement and power. And again, let me emphasize, it's one study. It doesn't mean that you, buglers, that you're going to eat a carrot and immediately set it out on a personal journey that will result in you overthrowing a national government and installing yourself as a supreme executive leader with power of life and death over all your subjects. Actually, that is more likely for you to live on a diet of burgers and diet coke. But anyway, look, it's, it's this this really upends everything we thought we

knew about, about vegetarianism, does it not? Well, yes, contrary to the stereotype of the vegetarianism, does it not? Well yes, contrary to the stereotype of the benevolent vegetarian, apparently vegetarianism isn't necessarily associated with more altruism. Vegetarians tend to prioritize personal success. The question, Andy, is whether this is causal or correlative. Do you become vegetarian because you want to be the best you you can be, or does being low on creatine and B12 make you crave conquest? His power, the other red meat. Otto von Bismarck was famously vegetarian. His national plan called for blood and iron. Was that just because he was hungry for more iron? That is a lie actually in his youth. Otto von Bismarck was very famous for

swallowing half a dozen eggs at one sitting and at one meal he was reported to have eaten soup, eels, cold meat, prawns, lobster, smoked meat, raw ham, roast meat and pudding, all while complaining of digestive issues. Then he had one nice green leaf and he was fine. Yes, that was a lie about Otto von Bismarck. I couldn't let that lie stand. He's so non-vegetarian that he had pickled herrings named after him, the Bismarck herring. That was famously because of the shape and smell of his under nuts and genital pees in the slice on the... Thank you, I was very proud of it. Penguin's News now, and well this is a subject that too often humans, and this podcast is

as guilty as any other, we stay clear of Penguin News, but not this week. Three baby penguins in a zoo in Mumbai are at the centre of a huge political argument and mass protest, not mass protest but a few people outside the zoo protesting, over their names. Officials from India's ruling nationalist BJP party, the personal fiefdom of Narendra Modi, have said that the three penguins, currently named Nadi, Tom and Pengu, should be given Marathi names having been born in Maharashtra. Now, there's a couple of issues with this. One, are these names Noddy, Tom and Pingu actually British names as was claimed? Noddy, actually that's short for night observation device.

Apparently this baby penguin could be in the dark. Tom was actually named after Thomas Aquinas, the Italy based 13th century professional. The third most popular baby is named in Britain, according to the baby's name. Only when people carry their baby on their feet. They just carry their baby on their feet from position to position. Andy, they should not be given local names. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. All penguins are British. They are dressed in a white tie, tux and tails, and they all talk about how Gerald lost the estate that wasn't entailed because he had a taste for gambling. Would

it be better if penguins were better at cultural integration? That's not for me to say. I guess it depends on your country's norms, but you cannot make a leopard change its spots and you cannot make a penguin change its name. That is the true cost of modern nationalism. Oh, I, for the first time ever, I disagree profoundly with Alasdair on this podcast. For the first time ever, I disagree profoundly with Alistair on this podcast. I think, I think first of all, first of all, the guy, one of the local leaders, Nitin Bankhara, a local BJP leader, BJP, the banning jinguistic penguins party,

he'd written to authorities in the zoo and he'd led a protest outside the zoo. Do you see the pictures of the protest? Stationary. There was, it was a stationary protest. What a wasted opportunity. He could have had a march of the penguins, but he chose not to. What an idiot. The penguins are Humboldt penguins, right? Which reside off the Pacific coast of South America. So I think they shouldn't have Indian names or English names. The penguins should really be given a good solid Peruvian name that would offend nobody like Paddington. Something like that. Paddington would be good.

Or Chilean names. Now, I'm not hugely familiar with famous people from Chile, but I think we could have Pingu Pascal or possibly my favourite, Penguinushe. Pascal or possibly my favourite, Penguinushe. Now you'd imagine Penguinushe would have a massive right wing, but that's as much thought as I've given it. Look, the people I feel sorry for in this are the penguins themselves. Is it right that a three month old penguin should find itself at the center of a geopolitical post-imperial culture warsy in dispute? There's so much to deal with as a penguin at that tender stage of life. And we expect them to express a coherent but flightless opinion on issues way beyond their sphere of knowledge

and experience. It's just not right for me. Are you saying it's not black and white There's occasional flex of Yellow on the side as well The the zoo's penguins Were signed in a big money transfer from South Korea in 2016. So maybe they should be given Korean names Instead as an aval pal would no doubt testify. well he on this episode, Mumbai is not entirely renowned for its Antarctic-like climate, so the feathered but flightless evolutionary balls-ups have to be kept in a special controlled enclosure, so maybe they should be given names that transcend any

location, but you know that just belong to the miracle of science that enables penguins to survive in Mumbai, despite the traffic, or just let the penguins to survive in in Mumbai despite the traffic or just let the penguins name themselves with names such as and Chris do you think you can get some penguin squawking sound effects here? Squawking the right word? I don't know I can't really remember but of all the things we say in this podcast you're worried about the nomenclature for Penguin Calls? Yes, it's what our audience expects. That is true. Well, Buglers, that brings us to the end of all the week's news and this edition of the

podcast. Next week we have Tom Ballard and for the first time on The Bugle Sarah Barron. Do join us for that. In the meantime let's have some plugs. Neil what have you got to plug? I'm doing a UK tour at the end of the year and we've added an extra Leicester Square Theatre because the first two sold out and we're doing this at the stand in Edinburgh and Newcastle and the Glee Clubs in Birmingham and Cardiff and Hotwater in Edinburgh and Newcastle and the Glee clubs in Birmingham, Cardiff and Hotwater in Liverpool and Frog and Booker in Manchester and various different cities around the UK. So they're all neildalimere.com forward slash gigs.

So please come along. Alice. Well, I'm on tour in Australia in three weeks. It's a show called A Passion for Passion, which is a comedy show about writing a comedy book about romance novels. I will be in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. Please come along to that.

Also, I have a podcast called Realms Unknown, which is about science fiction and fantasy. And if you want to listen to all the latest in book news, you can tune into that. Also I do writers meetings over at my Patreon, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. I have one show to plug, which is a bonus tour extension show of the Zoltgeist at the Frume Festival on the 7th of July. Do come along to that details via my extremely sparse, but currently accurate website. We'll be back next week. via my extremely sparse but currently accurate website. We will be back next week. Don't forget if you want to join

the Bugle Voluntary Subscription Scheme to help keep this show free, flourishing and independent, go to the buglepodcast.com and click the donate button and subscribers will get exclusive access to the Ask Andy show. We will be recording the next slightly delayed episode extremely soon but anyway thanks to everyone who already subscribes and if you want to be way way cooler than you are now which no doubt you probably

don't if you listen to this podcast join our voluntary subscription scheme I've not plugged this very well but the point point is... See you next week. Goodbye.